In Europe, the Third Reich was crumbling. Newsreels predicted that the war would soon be over, even as the bombing intensified: whole cities vanished in flames and ashes, the sky was black with the smoke of aerial battles, trenches collapsed beneath the caterpillar treads of advancing tanks. The cinema in Río Salado was constantly full of people who only came to watch the Pathé News they showed before the main feature. Allied troops had liberated great swaths of occupied territories and were now marching relentlessly on Germany. Italy was a shadow of its former self. The Resistance and the partisans were inflicting heavy losses on Nazi troops caught in a vice between the Red Army and the advancing American forces.
My uncle, wearing the thick jumper that hid his increasingly emaciated frame, sat glued to the wireless, never moving from his chair. From morning to night he sat turning the dial of the radio, trying to tune to some station without interference. Over the whine and static of the airwaves, the house hummed with news and speculation. Germaine had given up on her husband, allowing him to do exactly as he pleased. My uncle insisted on having his dinner served in the living room by the wireless, so that he didn’t miss a scrap of news.
As 8 May 1945 dawned, and the whole world celebrated the end of their nightmare, in Algeria a new nightmare appeared, devastating as a plague, monstrous as the Apocalypse itself. Popular celebrations turned to tragedy. In Aïn Temouchent, near Río Salado, marches for Algerian independence were brutally suppressed by the police. In Mostaganem, riots spread to the surrounding villages. But the horror reached its height in the Aurès and in the Constantine province, where the police, aided and abetted by former colonists turned militiamen, massacred thousands of Muslims.
‘I can’t believe it.’ My uncle’s voice quavered as he sat trembling in his pyjamas. ‘How could they? How could they murder people who are still mourning children who died fighting for the freedom of France? Why should we be slaughtered like cattle simply for demanding our own freedom?’ Pale, distraught and haggard, he shambled up and down the living room in his slippers.
The Arabic radio station reported the bloody suppression of Muslims in Guelma, Kherrata and Sétif, the mass graves where thousands of corpses lay rotting, the Arabs hunted by packs of dogs through vineyards and orange groves, the lynchings in the village squares. What was happening was so horrific that my uncle and I did not even dare to join the peaceful demonstration down the main avenue of Río Salado.
This savage, bloody cataclysm left the Muslim population of Algeria in mourning and almost killed my uncle. One night as he listened, he suddenly brought his hand up, clutched at his chest and collapsed. Madame Scamaroni drove us to the hospital, where we left him in the care of a doctor he knew and trusted. Germaine was distraught, and Madame Scamaroni offered to stay with her. Jean-Christophe and Fabrice came round and waited with us late into the night. Simon borrowed his neighbour’s motorbike so he could come too.
‘Your husband has had a heart attack, madame,’ the doctor explained to Germaine. ‘He’s still unconscious.’
‘Is he going to pull through?’
‘We’ve done everything we can; the rest is down to him.’
Germaine did not know what to say. She had barely uttered a word since we arrived at the hospital. Her face was pale, her eyes haunted; she clasped her hands and bowed her head in prayer.
At dawn the next day, my uncle regained consciousness, asked for a drink of water, and demanded he be discharged immediately, but the doctor insisted on keeping him under observation overnight. Madame Scamaroni offered to pay for a nurse so that my uncle would have full-time care, but Germaine politely declined. She thanked Madame Scamaroni for everything she had done, but insisted that she would look after her husband herself.
Two days later, as I sat by my uncle’s bed, I heard a voice outside, calling me. I went to the window and saw a figure crouching in the shadows. It was Jelloul, André’s manservant. I went outside, and as I crossed the path separ ating the house from the vineyard, Jelloul came out from his hiding place.
‘My God!’ I said.
Jelloul was limping. His face was swollen, his lip split; he had a black eye and his shirt was lashed with red stripes, clearly whip marks.
‘Who did this to you?’
Jelloul glanced around, as though afraid someone would hear, then said:
‘André.’
‘Why? What did you do wrong?’
He smiled at what was clearly a preposterous question.
‘I don’t need to do anything wrong. André always finds some excuse. This time it was the Muslim unrest in the Aurès. André doesn’t trust Arabs any more. When he got back from town drunk last night, he laid into me.’
He lifted his shirt and showed me the welts on his back. André had not pulled his punches. Jelloul turned back to face me, pushing his shirt tails back into his dusty trousers. He sniffed loudly and then said:
‘He told me it was a warning, that he didn’t want me getting any ideas. Said I needed to get it into my head that he was the boss, and he wasn’t going to tolerate insubordination from the hired help.’
Jelloul was clearly waiting for something, but I did not know what. He took off his fez and began twisting it in his grubby hands.
‘Jonas, I didn’t come here to tell you my life story. André threw me out without a penny. I can’t go back to my family with no money. If I don’t earn, my family will starve.’
‘How much do you need?’
‘Just enough to feed us for a couple of days.’
‘Give me two minutes.’
I went up to my room and came back with two fifty-franc notes. Jelloul reluctantly took them, turning them over in his hands.
‘It’s too much . . . I could never pay you back.’
‘You don’t need to pay me back.’
He looked at me and shook his head, thinking. Then, flushed and embarrassed, he said:
‘In that case, fifty francs is enough.’
‘Take the hundred francs, please,’ I said. ‘I’m only too happy to give it.’
‘I believe you, but it’s not necessary.’
‘Have you got work lined up?’
‘No.’ Jelloul suddenly gave a mysterious smile. ‘But André can’t survive without me. He’ll send for me before the end of the week. He won’t find a better dog than me.’
‘Why do you call yourself a dog?’
‘You wouldn’t understand . . . You’re one of us, but you live like one of them. When your whole family depends on you for money, when you have to support a half-crazed mother, a father who had both arms amputated, six brothers and sisters, a grandmother, two aunts disowned by their families and a sickly uncle, you are no longer a human being. You are a dog or a jackal, and every dog seeks out a master.’
Jelloul’s words unsettled me, and I realised that though he was not yet twenty, he had an inner strength, a maturity. The young man who stood before me that morning was not the lackey we had long thought him. He even looked different: he had a quiet dignity I had not noticed, a handsome face, high cheekbones, and eyes that were perceptive and unnerving.
‘Thank you, Jonas,’ he said. ‘I’ll make it up to you some day.’
He turned and began to hobble away.
‘Wait,’ I called after him. ‘You’re not going to get far on that foot.’
‘I got this far, didn’t I?’
‘Maybe, but you’re only going to make it worse . . . Where do you live?’
‘It’s not far, honestly. It’s just the other side of the marabout’s hill. I’ll manage.’
‘I won’t hear of it. Wait there, I’ll get my bicycle and drop you off.’
‘No, Jonas, it’s all right. You have better things to do.’
‘I insist.’
I thought that I had seen poverty in Jenane Jato; I was wrong. The shanty town where Jelloul and his family lived was beyond anything I had ever imagined. The douar was made up of a dozen squalid hovels on the banks of a dried-up riverbed. A few scra
wny goats ambled around. The place smelled so foul I found it difficult to imagine how anyone could spend two days here. When the path petered out, I left the bike on the slopes and helped Jelloul down the hill. The marabout’s hill was only a few kilometres from Río Salado, but I could not remember ever having passed this way. People shunned the place, as though it were cursed. Suddenly the simple fact that I was on the far side of the hill terrified me. I was scared something might happen to me, and I knew that if anything did, no one would think to come looking for me here. It was ridiculous, but the fear was all too real. I felt a mortal dread at being in this douar of ramshackle huts pervaded by the stench of rotting flesh.
‘Come,’ Jelloul said. ‘Come in and meet my father.’
‘No,’ I almost screamed, petrified. ‘I have to get back to my uncle. He’s very ill.’
A group of naked children were playing in the dust, their bellies swollen, flies crawling on their faces. Then I realised that it was not simply the stench; it was the drone of the flies, incessant, voracious, filling the foul air like some baleful supplication, like the breath of some demon that lowered over human misery, a sound as old as time itself. At the foot of a low toube wall, a group of old men lay dozing, mouths open, huddled beside a sleeping donkey. A madman, arms raised to the heavens, stood babbling wildly beneath a marabout tree from which hung talismans, coloured ribbons and candle wax. There was no one else: it was as though the douar had been abandoned to feral children and dying men.
A pack of dogs ran towards me, growling. Jelloul picked up a stone and drove them off. There was silence again. He turned and gave me a strange smile.
‘This is how our people live, Jonas; my people and your people too. Here, nothing ever changes, while you go on living like a prince . . . What’s the matter? Why don’t you say something? You’re shocked; you can’t believe it, can you? Maybe now you know why I call myself a dog. Even a dog would not live like this.’
I stood, speechless; the stench and filth turned my stomach, the piercing drone of the flies drilled into my brain. I wanted to vomit, but I was afraid that Jelloul would get the wrong impression.
He sniggered, amused by my awkwardness, then showed me around the douar.
‘Look at this godforsaken slum. This is our place in this country, the country of our ancestors. Take a good look, Jonas. God himself would not set foot here.’
‘Why are you saying these terrible things?’
‘Because I believe them. Because they’re true.’
Suddenly, I felt more afraid, but now it was Jelloul, his furious stare, his sardonic smile, that terrified me.
‘That’s right, Younes. Turn your back on the truth, on your people, run back to your friends . . . Younes . . . You do still remember your name? Hey, Younes . . . Thanks for the money. I’ll pay you back some day soon, I promise. The world is changing, or hadn’t you noticed?’
I rode away, pedalling like a madman, Jelloul’s catcalls like rifle shots whistling past my ears.
Jelloul was right. Things were changing, but to me it was as though these changes were happening in some parallel world. I sat on the fence, torn between loyalty to my friends and solidarity with my people. After the massacre in the Constantine province, the dawning awareness of the Muslim majority, I knew that I had to choose, but still I refused to take sides. In the end, events would make my decision for me.
There was a fierce rage in the air; it bubbled up from the maquis in the scrubland where militants met in secret, it spilled into the streets, seeped into the poor neighbourhoods, trickled out into the villages nègres and isolated douars.
The four of us who made up Jean-Christophe’s gang turned a blind eye to what was happening in these demonstrations. We were young men now, and if the down on our upper lips was not yet thick enough to qualify as a moustache, it emphasised our desire to be men, to be masters of our fate. The four of us, inseparable as the tines of a pitchfork, lived for ourselves; we were our own little world.
Fabrice was awarded the National Poetry Prize, and Madame Scamaroni drove all of us to Algiers for the ceremony. Fabrice was overjoyed. Aside from the prestige, the winning collection of poems was to be published by Edmond Charlot, an important Algerian publisher. Madame Scamaroni put us up in a charming little hotel not far from the Rue d’Isly. After the ceremony, at which Fabrice received his award from the great poet Max-Pol Fouchet, the prizewinner’s mother treated us to a lavish seafood dinner at a magnificent restaurant in La Madrague. The next day, eager to get back to Río Salado, where the mayor had organised a lunch to honour the town’s prodigy, we set off early, stopping at Orléansville for a snack and at Perrigault to stock up on the finest oranges in the world.
Some months later, Fabrice invited us to a bookshop in Lourmel, a small colonial town near Río Salado. His mother was there, looking stunning in a burgundy trouser suit and wearing a broad-brimmed feathered hat. Smiling benevolently, the bookseller and a number of local dignitaries stood around a large ebony table on which sat piles of books fresh out of their boxes. On the cover, beneath the title, was the name ‘Fabrice Scamaroni’.
‘Holy shit!’ sputtered Simon, who could always be counted on to undermine any solemn occasion.
The moment the speeches were over, Simon, Jean-Christophe and I pounced on the books. We leafed through the pages, turning the books over in our hands, so reverential that Madame Scamaroni was surprised to find a tear that trickled mascara down her cheek.
‘I read your work with great pleasure, Monsieur Scamaroni,’ a man of about sixty said to Fabrice. ‘You have considerable talent and, I think, every chance of reviving the noble art of poetry, which has always been the soul of Algeria.’
The bookseller handed Fabrice a letter of congratulations from Gabriel Audisio, founder of the magazine Rivages, in which the editor suggested that they might collaborate.
Back in Río Salado, the mayor promised to open a library on the main street, and Pépé Rucillio bought a hundred copies of Fabrice’s poems to send to his acquaintances in Oran – who, he suspected, called him an upstart peasant behind his back – to prove to them that there was more to Río Salado than idiots, wine growers and drunks.
Winter tiptoed away one night, and by morning, swallows dotted the telegraph lines like ink blots and the streets of Río Salado were awash with the scents of spring. My uncle was slowly returning to life. He had recovered his health, his old habits, his passion for books; he devoured them, closing a novel only to open an essay. He read in both French and Arabic, moving from El Akkad to Flaubert. Though he still did not venture out of the house, he had begun to shave and dress every day. He now ate with us in the dining room and occasionally exchanged pleasantries with Germaine. As regular as clockwork, he would get up at dawn, perform his morning prayers and appear at the table for breakfast at seven o’clock sharp. After breakfast, he would retire to his study to wait for the newspaper to be delivered, and when he had read the paper, he would open his spiral notepad, dip his pen into the inkwell and write until noon. At one p.m. he would take a short nap, and then pick up a book and lose himself in its pages until sundown.
One day, he came to my bedroom.
‘You need to read this. It was written by Malek Bennabi. The man himself seems a little suspicious, but he is a clear thinker.’
He set the book down on my night table and waited for me to pick it up. It was a slim volume, barely a hundred pages, entitled The Conditions of the Algerian Renaissance.
As he left the room, he said:
‘Never forget what it says in the Qur’an: Whosoever killeth a man, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind.’
He never asked me whether I had read Malek Bennabi’s book, still less what I thought of it. At dinner he only ever spoke to Germaine.
Our lives had recovered some semblance of stability. Things were far from being back to normal, but just seeing my uncle standing in front of the wardrobe mirror knotting his tie was wonderful. Germaine and I waited anxiously
for him to cross the threshold, to step outside and rejoin the world of the living. Germaine would throw the French windows open so he could adjust to the sounds of the street again. She dreamed of seeing her husband adjust his fez, smooth his jacket, glance at his fob watch and hurry out to visit a café, to sit on a park bench, to be with friends. But my uncle dreaded the outside world, he had a morbid fear of crowds, he panicked if someone crossed his path. Only at home did he truly feel safe.
Germaine believed that her husband was capable of the superhuman effort it would take to rebuild his life.
Then, one Sunday as we were finishing lunch, my uncle suddenly banged his fists on the table, sending plates and glasses crashing to the floor. We thought it might be another heart attack, but it was not. He leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair, then shrank back to the wall, pointing at us, and thundered:
‘You have no right to judge me!’
Germaine stared at me in astonishment.
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