I spent my final Moroccan night at the station hotel, dining there, too, because downtown was beyond walking distance, and rose at dawn to a filthy, wet morning all set for my flight to Algiers. Even the porter, while I drank a cup of coffee, ran to pre-purchase my train ticket.
I was to finally reach Algeria. All that was left for me to overcome now was the bone-deep fear I felt about visiting such an unknown land alone.
ALGERIA
After my Meknès soaking and the stresses of the Moroccan transport strike, my plane took off on its short trajectory east, high above the Roman olive belt, flying safely over the closed frontier between Morocco and its Maghrebian neighbour, and landed into the Algerian capital, all without incident. Until I reached passport control where I was refused entry.
‘Why?!’
My papers were not in order.
The immigration officer was barely a girl, lacking scarf and veil, slight of build, short-cropped chestnut hair, in a mid-blue, trouser-suit uniform. She grinned, hand over mouth, stifling a giggle. ‘It’ll be fine,’ she reassured, while repeating that my paperwork was not in order and I could not continue to baggage claim. After my numerous attempts to gain a visa I was exasperated, which seemed to amuse her all the more. I was fascinated by her appearance. There were others like her, young women in neighbouring cubicles also without the hijab. I had expected the strict face of Islam to greet me.
‘Where’s the confirmation docket for your hotel?’
‘I cancelled the booking. I’m staying with an acquaintance.’
After Christmas, during a lunch party at the farm to celebrate our new season’s oil, our French beekeeper’s wife, Algerian-born Marie-Gabrielle, offered to contact friends, also apiarists, who lived outside Algiers. I was already travelling when Hocine, her beekeeping colleague, caught up with me on my mobile in Spain. It was he who suggested I stay with him and his family during my few days in the capital.
‘But you have declared a hotel.’
Attempting to placate the insistent young officer, I handed over the few details I possessed: Hocine’s mobile number and full name. I was ushered into an empty corner. She disappeared with my passport, returning a short while later with a burly, moustachioed senior in putty-coloured uniform and sturdy boots. He rang Hocine but the line was dead. I also tried to telephone, but I was not picking up an Algerian signal.
‘I am sorry we cannot let you in’ was the decision. ‘You must collect your luggage and return to Casablanca.’
‘Wait, please!’ I pleaded, playing for time, repeatedly punching out Hocine’s number, but the network refused all connection. Eventually, after consultations with other staff members, other burly men with black moustaches, and various internal calls, because, inexplicably, no one had a phone signal, the immigration clerk stamped my passport and welcomed me to her country with a broad smile. What made the difference, I could not say. I did not stop to enquire. I scooted to the carousel where one piece of luggage was still turning: mine.
Outside the terminal, pressing, shoving crowds. Impossible to scan all faces, but no one awaiting me. How would this beekeeper find me? If he had remembered my arrival at all – it was over a month since we had been in touch. My mobile remained signalless. My immediate future loomed formlessly. But I was here, in Algiers, in Arabic El-Jazair, ‘the islands’, a tribute to four islets that had lain beyond the bay and are today integrated into the city’s port. I ambled up and down, a tight grip on my backpack, chewing over choices. The rain with its louring sky was as unremitting as it had been in Morocco. Thin, yellow-eyed hustlers; harassed, bedraggled unemployeds; wizened elders with cigarettes hanging between limp fingers; all touting taxis to town. I declined. First impressions: a wall of faces; impenetrable, lined, strained faces, bad-skin faces, expectant strangers. And police officers. As I weaved my way through the throng searching for someone I would not recognise, who would not recognise me, I was all at once aware of the high level of police and military presence patrolling the exterior of the terminal.
Then, through this crush of madness, my name. Hocine, the history professor-turned-beekeeper, worried expression, suede jacket, work-soiled khakis, host for the early duration of my stay, pressed through bodies to reach me.
‘Salaam, salaam. Apologies. I’m never late,’ he begged. ‘I set off with three-quarters of an hour to spare. Something has happened. There are police everywhere.’
Settled in his pick-up, we slid into a solid bank of traffic halted every hundred metres by roadblocks, police, security. Bonnets, boots; every vehicle transiting the aerodrome was inspected. Ours, also. Naively, I assumed these were everyday measures.
Hocine frowned. ‘This is not normal.’
My phone sprang to life. It was Michel, anxious for my whereabouts, my safety. Bombs had exploded in both Casa and Algiers. Seventeen dead in Algiers. ‘Where are you?’
‘Exploded where?’ I replied weakly.
‘The details have not been released in Europe. Where are you?’
‘Algiers airport.’
I read the concern in his silence. ‘For God’s sake, be careful. I love you.’
I loved him for not ordering, begging me home, but I feared, after everything, I would be forced to leave, to strike Algeria off my Mediterranean itinerary.
I repeated the news to Hocine. His expression closed down. Swiftly, he began searching for an exit, a slipway to cut out of the chaos. The rain was pelleting against the windscreen. I wound down the window and sniffed like a tracker dog at the wet midday, searching scents, fire, singeing, burning, but either the bombs had exploded far from our present position or the inclement weather had obliterated their lingering plumes of destruction. We were creeping forward at a snail’s pace, seemingly getting nowhere.
Moments later, Hocine’s wife was ringing. Suicide bombers had detonated explosives close to the Prime Minister’s headquarters and the national library. Buildings had collapsed. The numbers reported dead were confusing, but the latest count was seventeen. Hundreds injured. Hocine hit his phone pad and began shouting in Arabic. I observed then, as I had frequently before, that Arabs shout when on the telephone.
‘Change of plan,’ he muttered.
We skipped the capital altogether and drove for about an hour to the district, the walida, of Blida. Passing through flat plains, once orange groves and today a muddled mix of flowering fruit trees and pockets of ugly, ill-organised buildings, we swung off the road, squelching through mud, into a yard, with armed guard at the entrance, where a line of rectangular one-storey outhouses awaited us: the headquarters of Blida’s Beekeepers’ Cooperative. Here to welcome us was Algeria’s President of Apiarists, Mohammed, nicknamed Hamzoui, to avoid the continual confusion caused by half the male Islamic population bearing the prénom Mohammed. Hamzoui, pronounced Hamshwee, I discovered during the ensuing weeks, was a remarkable human being with a network of contacts that would have made any businessman green with envy. He shook my hand warmly and led us through to his office; the least prepossessing director’s space I had ever encountered: four peeling walls, two foldaway chairs, a desk scattered with a collection of files, an outmoded computer and a large woman, Hamzoui’s assistant, who rose to greet us as we entered.
A brief tour of the cooperative, where a handful of reed-thin, tobacco-eaten, black-fingered labourers were employed in the construction of hives from organic materials. They spoke no French and were possibly illiterate. Back in the desultory quadrangle, standing in the rain. Above our heads on the flat roofs, legs planted akimbo, sodden young guards in combat gear, wielding rifles. Private security. Hamzoui pointed to a distant building within the cooperative compound.
‘I used to live in that house. We loved the countryside. I miss it. Town life is not for me.’
During the ‘Decade of Terrorism’, the nineties, Hamzoui had been attacked twice. On both occasions, his wife had returned home and found him bleeding on the floor. Beyond the cooperative enclosure were forests where the terroris
ts had secreted themselves in camps. Moving to an urban environment became an imperative.
‘A pity,’ he smiled. ‘Nature suits me.’
We set off on an extended tour into the mountains. The conversation – though the men spoke together in Arabic, I deciphered the obvious words – was of the bombings. The numbers murdered were higher than originally estimated.
‘You’re not to worry or feel concerned,’ reassured Hamzoui. ‘You are in the cradle of beekeepers and I have set up a réseau, a network, which will guide you across Algeria. You’ll want for nothing; you’ll be safe.’
Relieved, grateful, that they were not advising me back on a plane, I peered beyond the window, silently anxious for my immediate future. In better weather, our winding scenic ascent would have revealed the alpestrine forests flanking us. Under different circumstances, it would have been attractive, but walled by clouds, a curtain of misty grey rain and my sodden spirits, it left much to the imagination. At the foot of a glistening elevation, a gathering of Muslims photographing a trio of beige monkeys. Hocine pulled over, assuming I would want the same. Close up, the primates were bedraggled, uncared for. I snapped away, observing domestic litter jettisoned everywhere, and returned to the car.
Sentry points high above us, positioned within the rocky crags. Military; patrol of the long-distance traffic, particularly after dark. Black African illegals, highway robbers. This was Route One. It bisected central Algeria, descending some 3000 kilometres to Niger.
Algeria is immense: second only on the continent of Africa to Sudan; four times bigger than France; ten times the size of Britain. Its population of under thirty-four million resides predominantly along its Mediterranean coastline, known as the Tell, with pockets in the mountains and, beyond, yawning desertlands. An Islamic republic with 99 per cent Sunni Muslims and the other 1 per cent Jews and Christians, there is no Shi’ite representation in this closed land. Independence, after a century and a half of French colonial rule and decades of bloodshed, was achieved in 1962. Beyond independence, the country suffered brutal civil unrest climaxing during the 1990s in a decade of bombings, terrorism, kidnappings and murder. These years became known as the ‘Decade of Terrorism’ or ‘Black Decade’. Due to its inflamed history, there had been precious little tourism. Visitors to the archaeological sites, to a stretch of Mediterranean that I had been promised was bluer than anywhere else, and to the isolated Saharan locations were predominantly Algerians themselves or Muslims from neighbouring Islamic countries. Western tourism had not been encouraged. Unrest remained a reality though my new acquaintances swiftly reassured me that the nineties were behind them; Algeria was building a new and better future.
‘Without tourism, how does the country survive?’ I asked.
‘We have a buoyant economy, rich in crude oil, second only to Libya. Unlike Morocco and Tunisia, we have no financial need for tourism, but …’ Hamzoui fell silent.
‘The downside is Islamic Fundamentalism seeking control?’ I suggested.
Hocine nodded. ‘One of the extremist cells, linked to Al-Qaeda, was probably responsible for this morning’s atrocities.’ He drew up outside an alpine restaurant. It was three in the afternoon. We were directed to the mezzanine level, empty of other diners. This was the ‘family salon’, where women were tolerated. We ate brochettes, salad and olives, drank water and talked through the ‘programme’ they had prepared. I tried to explain that, hugely appreciative as I was for the trouble they had gone to (and I was deeply touched by their consideration), I intended to travel by bus or public taxis, following a flexible itinerary. I pulled out my notebook.
They shook their heads. ‘No matter what you have declared on your visa papers as your profession, you are at risk,’ warned Hamzoui with characteristic calm. He reiterated facts. Scores of journalists and writers had been killed or imprisoned by groups with extreme religious and political ideologies, the majority with links to Al-Qaeda. Between 1993 and 1997 more than one hundred figures working within the Algerian media had been murdered.
‘That was the nineties, Hamzoui, when violence was blighting your daily lives. You have just told me that Algeria is building a brighter future …’
‘No one expected this morning’s events,’ he continued gravely. ‘At any given time, somewhere in the region of three thousand young Algerians are in Afghanistan or Pakistan receiving a religious, ideological/military training. There, at madrasas [Islamic religious schools], they are educated by mullahs. A chosen few are sent to London, occasionally to Paris or Brussels. These boys are trained in warfare, in the honour of suicide sacrifice to the Holy War. More than 50 per cent of them will be re-infiltrated into Algeria to fight as soldiers of that Holy War, the Jihad. Boys without risha, roots, the disenchanted young whose families have nothing, are the prime choices. From the shantytowns, bidonvilles, where dissatisfaction is inbred, the terrorist pods are seeking their bait.’
‘Are you suggesting I leave?’
Both men shook their heads.
‘We hope you will stay,’ said Hocine.
‘We need your voice,’ added Hamzoui. ‘Consequently, beekeepers, associates of mine, all across the country, have accepted to welcome you. Without them, you will be obliged to register with the local police wherever you stay and hand over your passport. Hocine and I know your business, but I have not told my colleagues. You are fascinated by the olive, its future and by our Mediterranean history: that is sufficient. Better to be prudent. At every moment we will have someone accompanying you.’
I listened silently to these two men closing down my itinerary.
‘In the light of this morning’s grim events, after Blida, you will be delivered into the safe hands of other beekeepers who have been instructed to do the same. Right across the country. Beekeeping families will house and escort you. I trust all the people I have proposed. The Association of Beekeepers will not let you down or out of our sight.’
I suddenly pictured myself as a human parcel. Panic rose, but not for fear of the perils I might be exposing myself to. So determined was I to investigate this desert land that I had not considered the pitfalls. It was the entrapment. Still, I made the wise decision to respect the concerns of these considerate strangers; within forty-eight hours, I felt certain, I would be at liberty to roam freely.
That first night was spent with Hocine and his family close to the centre of Blida. Built on a Roman military site, Blida was refounded by Andalucíans in 1535. They developed irrigation works and orange farms. Blida: ‘A Bouquet of Roses’, the ‘First Rose’. Such poetic allusions I saw nothing of, no sweetly scented town. Looming tenements, endless rows of faceless barracks constructed for the military. The neighbouring agricultural lands had also been requisitioned for army personnel. Barbed wire, high walls, rifles at the ready. They returned me to Israel, except this was scruffier, sodden and somehow more hopeless. Here, no massive US investments to sustain the position. Home-drilled oil had financed all this. What the capabilities of this high-profile military were, its expertise, if push came to shove, I had no idea.
Boys were kicking a football in the mud-soaked, octagonal yard in between eight decaying high-rises. We climbed flights of echoing cement stairwells. His wife, with three shy children clinging to her pink and burgundy housecoat, waited, door open, to greet me warmly. Hocine made his excuses and disappeared to pray. I was handed slippers to replace wet boots, and a dressing gown. Apologies were made for the lack of water. Tapped water was available only two hours out of twenty-four, but those two hours varied. During the remainder, they used the litres they had conserved in plastic pails. The evening passed slowly. The television played mutely. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the day’s massacres. The death toll was now thirty, countless injured. Over and over, repeated footage: a veiled woman in tight close-up, terrified eyes, screaming voicelessly, smoke billowing from levelled rubble behind her.
‘To kill a fellow Muslim is a mortal sin,’ Hocine said.
‘Surely, to kill an
yone, Muslim or not, to take another’s life …’
‘Yes, yes, but to murder a practising Muslim …’
The dining corner was off the living room. While a sumptuous couscous was being prepared, Hocine and I sat on a sofa, later my bed, perusing a foolscap illustrated book, lacking jacket, of black and white drawings, copies of the prehistoric cave engravings from Tassili N’Ajjer in the southern Sahara, close to the Libyan border. He must have dug it out knowing that Tassili, with its immense spread of Neolithic artwork, had been intended as my final Algerian destination. When Stone Age tribes had inhabited those ranges, six thousand years before Christ, their lands had been savannahs, not deserts. Tassili N’Ajjer, Berber for Plateau of Rivers. I had been hoping their artwork might depict their vegetation, offering examples of prehistoric wild olives.
Regretfully, I had cancelled Tassili, not due to this day’s events but because the temperatures in April were already reaching highs that would be unbearable. In that moment, though, I longed to be down in the south and bemoaned the fact that I had not flown there directly, safely out of danger’s grasp.
Drifting in and out of sleep, I listened to the weather slap against the rusty, ill-fitting shutters, howling through the cracked, membraned windows. I listened to cats scrapping, hissing malevolently, to some poor devil attempting without success to kick-start a diesel engine. Restless, I half heard Hocine rise before four for the pre-dawn prayer, the fajr, first of the day’s five sets. He would collect water, too, if the taps were delivering. Half asleep, I was picturing a future without water. The muezzin’s call roused me, but I stayed awhile curled upon my sheep’s hair mattress. My prayers were that this leg of my journey would pass without incident. Perhaps, when adversity kicked in, life and death stuff, I would run home. When had a lone European woman last tramped this troubled earth? Doubts drummed with the rain.
Due to the intemperate weather Hocine’s bees were unable to leave their hives to gather nectar. Raindrops damage bees’ wings, and they are unhappy in the cold. Unfortunately, it was the orange blossom season; the flower’s nectar fed the region’s most lucrative honey crop. Hocine was worried. It had been raining for almost a week; the blossoms were being driven from the trees, their riches scattered. But inshallah, God willing, all would turn out for the best. Still, it was clear that my host’s financial future, his investments, were at risk. As the day broke, the rain’s force became a deluge, a barrage of water. I was going to Tipasa, a Phoenician then Roman port city. Hocine, unable to work, accompanied me with his eldest daughter, Z’hor (Rose).
The Olive Tree (The Olive Series Book 2) Page 24