And then Chérifa showed up. ‘Invaded’ might be a better word. What on earth am I going to do with her? She gets on my nerves, I can’t be dealing with her vanishing acts. Or her tantrums. Or her mess. Or her being here. And I can’t abide that high-pitched little-girl voice of hers. I need peace and quiet, I need things in my life to be straightforward. At any moment, I need to be able to tell myself: this is my freedom, that is my will.
Just how much, dear Lord, do our lives truly belong to us?
The first disappearing act came soon enough. It came the morning after her arrival. We were finishing our breakfast. To apologise for my torture session the night before, I brought out Maman’s best tablemats and the secret stash of Turkish delight I’d been hoarding since Eid al-Fitr. We were in slippers and dressing gowns, our eyes still thick with sleep. It was nice enough, pleasant, domestic, I still feel moved at the memory. She popped a sugar cube into her mouth and went upstairs to get dressed. What she said, what I said, I don’t remember. It was short-lived. And I was spiteful. To be completely frank, I gave the little madam her marching orders. I regretted it straightaway.
‘I’m just going out for a walk, Tata Lamia,’ she announced from the lofty height of her elephantine heels.
‘Go wherever you like, go with my blessing, but I don’t want to clap eyes on you again.’
‘Could you give me some money?’
‘You’ve got some nerve! You’ve had a good night’s sleep, you’ve had food, you’ve had a laugh . . . look, here’s 100 dinars . . . no need to thank me.’
‘A hundred dinars? Is that it? What am I supposed to do with that?’
‘It’s enough to phone your parents . . . Are you listening to me? What was I saying again? Look, I don’t know the first thing about you, I have my own life, and just because my idiot brother gave you my address doesn’t mean I have to take you in. All right, here’s another hundred . . . which, I’ll have you know, leaves me without a santeem. Salaries are paid once a month, not that you’d know . . .’
‘. . .’
While I was rambling on like a half-wit, she pocketed the money, grabbed her bundle, popped a piece of Turkish delight in her mouth, shrugged her shoulders and stormed out. If I was waiting for a goodbye or a thank you, I’d be waiting still.
Good riddance!
The return to the void was brutal. I hadn’t been expecting it, I’d assumed I would calmly go back to my solitary bliss. It was a wrenching pain, that emptiness that comes with separation. Then a sense of loss takes hold, saps the will. I had suffered it before, now here it was again. Shit! That crazy girl is no concern of mine. Only yesterday, I treated her like an extraterrestrial who had brazenly materialised in my garden and made itself at home. I wondered whether her swollen belly had something to do with Mars or Jupiter. The fact that she comes from Oran, a one-horse town in Algeria, and that my brother sent her doesn’t change a thing. What little I know about her – homeless, destitute and pregnant by person or persons unknown – is hardly likely to endear her to me. If everyone minded their own business, we’d all be better off. Now, suddenly all is silence and sorrow. Bluebeard’s shadow is still standing guard. Does the man never sleep? I don’t mind him being mysterious, but not all the time. A hieratic statue, he is watching me from above. Then, suddenly, the shadow turned and vanished. What the . . . ? Are my eyes playing tricks? Did Bluebeard just turn his back on me contemptuously? Damn it, what the devil has any of this got to do with him?
At the Hôpital Parnet, I glared at my male co-workers as though each one harboured murderous thoughts. I looked again. But, no, they bore the usual scars, nothing more. God, they’re vile, and they dress like a symposium of scarecrows. I don’t like the way they puff out their chests, the way they cut a swathe through the air before them. I’d hear their delusional prating: ‘Hum, hum, we’re the friends of the Sultan, get out of our way.’ They come and they go with the same couldn’t-give-a-shit attitude that has not only destroyed this country but, by the miracle of globalisation, fobbed off any responsibility on others. They talk in loud, bellowing voices, leaving the rest of the populace half-deaf. Whether singing or whistling, moaning or snivelling, whether bickering, backslapping or brown-nosing, they do it with the same gusto; there’s never anything new or different. Their lives are pitted with a thousand and one crimes, routine mistakes, petty slip-ups, but they don’t care. I can’t help thinking that they smile too much. Can there be a reason – any reason – to rejoice in failure? Can there be any excuse – however slim – to justify why they strut about like peacocks when their work is only half done and that badly? I wonder what true crimes they have committed to have such an air of inane innocence.
Shame is a funny thing. The world seems to whirl endlessly, it makes me dizzy. I’m ashamed that other people are not as ashamed of their flaws as I am of mine. On their supercilious faces their faults stick out so much you could forget they had a nose. Maybe I should see a shrink and talk to him about it.
I can tell it’s going to be a long day. I’ll visit the children’s ward, kids understand comedy, to them it’s not a synonym for hypocrisy.
My head is spinning, I’m sweating; worse still I have the terrible feeling of something wriggling in my belly. Could I be pregnant? By what? By whom? The Holy Spirit? An extraterrestrial? A film noir is running through my head, I feel like I’m about to kill somebody.
I’m tense and overwrought.
Where can the little vixen have got to? She hasn’t the first idea what she’s letting herself in for. Algiers will sweep her up in its madness. This crumbling city is pitiless, constantly reviling and condemning girls, and every day the outcry grows a little louder. The first passing taxi will whisk her away to some seedy den of iniquity. The way the old rattletraps prowl the streets makes you sick. ‘Get in or I’ll run you over!’ She’s a child, a stranger, a tourist, she has no idea, she’s too trusting. What does a girl from Oran know about the pitfalls of Algiers? In Oran, they take their misery and turn it into mournful melodies they call Raï, here in Algiers we play double or quits. That way Chérifa struts about, that hair of hers, that smile like a precocious nymph, that perfume, that ridiculous scarf – are these the signs of a good Muslim? Damn it, you don’t go around playing the starlet during a religious epidemic!
I spent the day pretending to work, tormenting myself, fearing the worst – which is usually the most likely. I just hope I didn’t accidentally poison some child on my ward, they’re so distracted they’ll swallow anything you give them. I was beside myself, in my mind I was running through the streets of Algiers, trying to imagine where I would go if I was wearing the sort of grotesque Chérifa favours. It was useless thinking about the places that marked my childhood, they’re all ancient history. What attractions are there left? The area around La Grande Poste, with its feverish crowds and its cosy tearooms, is a trap for any girl. Then there’s Maqam Echahid – the Martyrs’ Memorial – with its fancy boutiques and its hanging gardens where gilded youth parade, trailing the wannabes and the work-shy from the suburbs in their wake. In such situations it’s the followers rather than the leaders who are the real problem. There’s the famous Club des Pins – formerly the hacienda of Lucien Borgeaud, the greatest colonist of all time – now a state residence where the overlords of the regime live corralled in close quarters guarded by four watchtowers. The stories you hear about the place would have police around the world on alert, but to giddy little girls, it’s like the Big Brother house, they flock there in droves. Disaster dogs their every step but all they can think of are the dances, the parties, the surprises. The grand hotels are run by pros, placed there by the Organisation, but with her supercilious air, Chérifa could pass for a first-class vestal virgin. The old men scouting for prey from their comfortable armchairs would pay a lot of money just to nibble her earlobe. The hypnotic way they smile at cute girls and pretty boys would put a rattlesnake to sleep. A childlike Lolita sets the old pigs grunting. I despise them.
; ‘Hey, Lamia! Hey, wait up!’
I recognise that voice. It’s Mourad, a colleague from the hospital, the crackpot on our wing. Working with cancer patients drove him round the bend. He’s probably the only man I know who doesn’t dream of emigrating. Not that he lacks the capability or the courage, he just hasn’t got the energy any more. I’m very fond of Mourad. There was a time when he would try to chat me up, but he’s come to terms with it now. His liver is shot, he’s overweight, he drinks like a fish – a real Romeo. But he’s a sensitive soul, he’s philosophical when he’s in his cups and he wouldn’t kill a fly. I’m guessing no woman has ever looked twice at the poor man and now his liver is about to explode. At first, I thought he drank to reinforce his air of blithe indifference. Time was, he constantly undermined the young interns and laughed at the brown-noses. But he has evolved, these days he subverts authority by encouraging the go-getting doctors to work like dogs. On the day the director hired me on a whim and set me to work, Mourad sidled up and, having looked me up and down and found my belly button, he said: ‘Listen, kid, you’re cute and all, but I’ll save that for later, right now I just want to let you know what you’re letting yourself in for. This place is like the maquis, there are mines and booby traps everywhere. If you need any advice, come find me, but be discreet. In the meantime, think about this: less diligence makes for fewer problems.’
And he sauntered off, his hands in his pockets. A comedian. Men are contemptible, they see a woman wanting to do things properly as a problem.
That day, I opened up to him, about Chérifa, her whims, her disappearing acts, my helplessness, my shame. He immediately understood. There are facts, which can be viewed as a logical progression, but there are also feelings and what lies, repressed, in the deepest depths of the human heart. To put it bluntly, I feared the worst. He spent a long moment biting his lip and then finally he said:
‘You’re obviously fond of the girl! Why on earth did you throw her out? Oh well, I suppose women are never straightforward, or if they are something is up. You’re not going to find her by searching around the Martyrs’ Memorial or the palaces or the Club des Pins, that’s where the high-class girls hang out, it requires special dispensation from the Organisation. I’m not sure about La Grande Poste, the girls there work for crooks and gangsters and the takings are pretty slim. But this girl is pregnant, and that’s bound to influence how she thinks. A fish swims towards the sea, not towards the gutter. You’d be better off checking the bus stations or the women’s halls of residence at the university. If she headed for a station, then she’s planning to move to another city, so you might as well give up hope because rural Algeria is the arse-end of the universe. If she went to the university, then obviously she’s looking for help, she’s assuming that in situations like hers women support each other . . . well, you know what I mean, she’ll be looking for a place to stay and a little female sympathy.’
‘I can easily do the bus stations, there aren’t many, but I don’t see how I can check the halls of residence. How many are there? I can hardly knock on the door of every room and say: is Chérifa here?’
‘You don’t need to, you just get a message to one girl and you wait. Talk to any of the female students and you’ll have your answer within twenty-four hours. At university, girls are cut off from the outside world, they’re a closed network. Surely you remember what it was like when you were at college – though in our day, the segregation was more of a revolutionary nature, you could hold your meeting, propose your motions. These days, that’s all over, everyone is insane and no one messes with religion. Try not to terrify the poor things, they all have something to hide, some idea, some dream, some secret crush, some little foible, sometimes even a plan to commit suicide . . .’
‘The easiest thing would be to wait. I’m sure she’ll come back, she’s got nowhere to go.’
‘That’s up to you, but you know as well as I do where hope leads around here.’
These words struck a chord. I don’t know a single Algerian who doesn’t blithely talk about hope a hundred times a day. Not a single one. I can’t help but wonder what the word means.
I stopped by Hussein-Dey station before I went home. Have to start somewhere, I thought, and at least it’s on the way. The place was teeming. The world and his wife were there. The suburban commuters, the season-ticket holders who travel in battalions, silent, grey-black, half-dead, rucksacks slung over their shoulders, staring at the ground. Every morning they are swallowed up by crumbling factories from the socialist era and every evening they are spewed out after eight hours of being pointlessly ground down. They look like they’ve wandered out of a gulag and are just waiting for the siren to call them back.
The whole thing is preposterous, the economic war is taking place elsewhere; it is waged by computers and satellites in utter silence. These people would be better off going home and comforting their families, it’s impossible to escape both poverty and the IMF. A mother would be hard pressed to spot her child in a crowd like this. And, even in high heels, Chérifa is knee high to a grasshopper; how would I spot her? While I was trying to work out how long it would take to search the premises, the train arrived, surging out of the mists of time. A thunderous rumble shook the ground and half the sky was blotted out with smoke. How had such a crowd managed to pile on to the train so quickly, cramming into carriages like sardines and perching on the running boards? Damned if I know. This whole scene, the calmness, the patience, the hands stuffed in pockets, the rucksacks on the ground, it was pure cinema. The poor – all paid-up members of the school of hard knocks – have an ability to pretend that beggars belief. They surged forward en masse and, in a split second, dozens of them manage to slip through a crack a gloved hand could barely squeeze into. In the time it took to catch my breath, I was standing on the platform alone, with the bitter feeling that I had missed the last train of the year. An old soldier in a peaked cap and with a wooden leg calmly walked over to me and said: ‘Don’t worry, madame, there’s another train at 6.37 pm, but you’ll have to elbow your way on, this is rush hour.’ He was the station master, I could take his word for it. Thank you. I rushed off. If Chérifa had gone to a station I would never see her again, she would move from one crowd to another.
What about university students? Girls at university were ferried between the halls of residence and lecture halls by bus. How many such buses weave through the streets of Algiers? I don’t know, in this ossified city things grow like mushrooms. They’re everywhere, those buses, each one full to bursting. What are they really ferrying around? I asked myself. Boys with beards and girls in chadors, the boys dare not talk, the girls dare not move and the drivers careen through the city as though obeying secret signals. There’s nothing very educational about it. In my young day, buses did not go unnoticed, or were clapped-out Russian wrecks, half-eaten with rust and smoky as a damp cigar. We would sing ‘Qassaman’, ‘The Internationale’, ‘Le Déserteur’, we would spit on the bourgeoisie and their lackeys, make drivers nearly crash by flashing them a glimpse of breast, or by pretending to take down their registration number so we could denounce them to the KGB. Times have changed.
The journey home was painful. I dragged my feet, my heart in my mouth. The neighbourhood seemed seedy and unpleasant and the house – my house – gave me a cold welcome. I needed that. And yet I loved this grey dusk, caught between sun and moon, between waning day and emerging night. Relief comes, hope is reborn, we dither on the doorstep, fumbling with keys, eager to cross the threshold. We are done with the world, we retreat to our refuge, we shed our coats. Somewhere deep within us, an internal clock or a guardian angel activates a switch and we settle down to dream like children. For the poor, this is the true meaning of happiness. We relax, we move to a gentler rhythm, we do housework and minor repairs, potter around brooding over our uncertainties, we take a bath if the water has been reconnected, make a call if the phone lines are working, settle in front of the TV if the power cut is over, laze aroun
d, read a book, do a little cooking, water the plants, sprinkle insecticide to keep ants at bay, do some knitting. Then there are the evenings when the only thing we can think to do is prop our elbows on our knees and bury our face in our hands. Life is blank, it is useless to fuss.
What was it Mourad said . . . a little female sympathy? How dare he say that to me! What am I, a bear, a rock, a machine? What does he really know about me? What does he really know about women? He’s a man, he knows nothing. He probably thinks there is such a thing as male sympathy. What a romantic.
Am I seeing things? There . . . hanging on a coat peg in the hall? It is! It’s a panther-pink pullover with flowers in blue fabric crudely sewn on the front. If it’s not mine – and I know it’s not – then it must belong to Chérifa. Snff . . . snff. The house smells of weapons-grade plutonium perfume. A quick tour reveals a G-string in the bath, a bead necklace on the cooker, a handkerchief under the phone, a powder compact next to the TV, a pencil in the vase, a pair of ballet pumps hanging from a nail in the corridor, a beanie hat dangling from the handle of a dresser. The girl strews her possessions in her wake, she’d have a job going undercover in a detective movie. Where can she be at this hour? If she doesn’t come back to collect her belongings, it means she’s lost. No, the little minx would do anything to reclaim her treasure, it’s all she has.
Later, under a sofa cushion, I found a little handbag, the kind of preposterous clutch bag a bride might carry, so tiny that just trying to get your keys inside could result in losing a finger. It reminded me of the story of a chimpanzee in a laboratory, putting his hand into a jar, grabbing a piece of fruit and discovering to his consternation that the narrow neck would not allow him to withdraw his fist. I’m not sure which is sadder, mocking the chimp or thinking that we’re smarter. I dared not open the clutch bag, but I opened it anyway; my house, my rules. Inventory: a pencil stub, a brush, a pin, a coin, another pin, a full-length photo of someone. Well, well, would you credit it . . . ? A man. Thirty-five? He looks ordinary . . . or rather conventional, his every feature conforms to the new biology of exceptional Algerians: chubby-cheeked, pot-bellied, fat-arsed, he sports a hirsute adornment around his mouth which, depending on circumstances, is intended as a sign of moderate piety, an aid to seduction or a proof of intelligence, he is dressed like a mobster at a mafia cocktail party. It’s all so tacky, the minute these people have money in their pockets, they’re all over the place. There is a self-consciousness to the way he holds his head and a twitchy nervousness deep in his eyes. It’s an expression I know only too well, in every photo I look as though I’ve been startled by a one-eyed badger. He’s a little young to be her grandfather but too old to be a brother or a schoolfriend, although all families are dysfunctional. Obviously, the possibilities do not end there: an uncle, a cousin, a neighbour’s husband. Then again he could be a drug trafficker or a bar owner, professions that are all the rage in the new biometry. The Chérifas of this world are their preferred prey. Or he could be . . . as I racked my brain, I realised I knew this reprobate, I’d seen his ugly mug somewhere. A celebrity? Yes, that was it. What was he? A sportsman, a politician, a captain of industry, an artist with connections to the ministry? Whatever he was, he was some sort of bigwig.
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