Harraga

by Boualem Sansal

  A straw mattress in the hand is worth a four-poster glimpsed on the silver screen. Maman had her little maxims, she served them up for dinner with endless split-pea soup: If you don’t eat it, you’ll be sorry in an hour. Now, I mutter them to myself to help me endure the grinding poverty, but I don’t make a business of it like the people who run around with their hands out, going from pillar to post, from bank to bank, shamelessly pleading and prattling. In Algeria, the poor – like the rich – are ruthless, they’re constantly running, tackling, dribbling, scheming, gradually gaining ground. Nowhere in the world have people better mastered the trick of distracting someone’s attention in order to steal their place in a queue. But what is wealth when people don’t know the value of things? And what is poverty when people scorn knowledge? Those who would overcome misery must first accept it! It’s time for the poor to decide whether they want to stay in a hole or climb out, and for the rich to learn how to behave. The way they behave drives me mad.

  All this to say that Algiers is no picnic.

  There I was, slowly trudging home, dog-tired but deliriously happy to be leaving the hospital, looking left and right, thinking to myself how wonderful life would be if everyone would stop lying. I made the usual detours to avoid the women who lurk on their doorsteps, waiting for news. For as long as I can remember they have stood there, waiting, in fruitless, uncertain expectation. They no longer remember why they’re waiting; time has forgotten them, only the ritual remains, carved into their daily routine. Each woman brings a personal touch to her vigil: tears, prayers, tremulous dirges, pitiful pleas to the men who stop and stare, and crude obscenities at those who pompously look straight ahead. I always pretend to be preoccupied with things I need to buy on the way home – milk, bread, water, vegetables, candles, salt, insecticide – so that I can give the impression of an absent-minded woman innocently remembering something she has forgotten. It’s best to pretend to be deaf to the calls from behind you. I’m tired of having to bring news of the outside world to these women who have cut themselves off. In fact, they are the crux of the problem, I can understand that they need to know their fate, but for pity’s sake, why can’t they just read the State newspapers!

  I have to admit I can be a hateful bitch sometimes.

  Parked outside my door I discovered a sinister contraption like a bus that had been spared the wrecking yard, a heap of twisted metal designed to ferry the dead. I’ve never seen anything like it in the neighbourhood. The streets here are so narrow that cars scrape their bodywork as they pass. A stone’s throw away, in the Kasbah, it’s like driving through the eye of a needle. The streets of the Kasbah are so narrow that when two pedestrians try to pass each other, one has to reverse or abandon her family. After a flicker of hesitation born of fear – hup! – I dashed inside my house and double-locked the door behind me. I just had time to see a figure in the bus waving and gesticulating.

  Routine makes us deaf and blind. I never notice buses in the city, never hear their horns honking. There are so many and they make such an infernal racket, they’re like bulls in a corrida, hooves thundering across the sand, herding together at bus stops, muzzles steaming, bellowing like rutting bulls, jostling each other for space, only to belch black smoke then roar away in a cloud of dust. Want to know what a bullfight at a feria sounds like? There’s one outside my house right now, plain as the nose on my face, covered with a moth-eaten caparison, bellowing fit to burst. Then bang, bang, someone pounds on my door. Of course, I brush aside my fears, I open the door and who is standing there, looking more like Lolita than ever . . . Chérifa! And, as always, at her feet is her magic holdall.

  My heart soared heavenwards.

  And my eyes rolled heavenwards. Behind the shutters, Bluebeard’s shadow shifted this way and that like a hunchback dancing a jig. I remembered an image from Perrault’s fairytale, a devoted sister watching from the battlements, hoping for deliverance. Oh, Bluebeard, Sister Anne was right, Chérifa has come home to us!

  Behind her comes the bus driver, teeth clenched into a smile like a boy scout who’s done the good deed of the century. Did I invite this guy?

  The rules of hospitality are what they are, but I really feel they could do with a little clarification. The matter of preconditions isn’t addressed, for example, or the problem of consequences. Before offering hospitality, it would be nice to know whether it’s compulsory, what the conditions are and whether – when it’s over and done with – you’ll have the strength to stomach the sense of indignation. We wouldn’t find ourselves so frequently put upon, upset, humiliated and disgraced if we took the necessary measures and sent people packing.

  In this case, the bus driver – whose name, like the number on his vehicle – was 235, proved to be a crude but charming individual. I have fond memories of him.

  This, then, was how things had played out, not in the way Mourad had suggested. Mourad obviously doesn’t understand the first thing about girls. No bus stations, no university halls of residence.

  Whenever I come through a crisis, I tend to become a little crazy. I threw myself at Chérifa, prepared to tear her to pieces on the spot.

  ‘You could at least have let me know you were alive . . .’ I spat in her face. ‘You had me worried half to death!’

  ‘But, Tata, you said not to come back!’

  ‘I said, I said . . . that doesn’t mean you had to believe me!’

  ‘Well, as it happens, I didn’t believe you . . . that’s why I’m back.’

  ‘That’s still no reason!’

  The bus driver was staring at us, his headlights on full. The day men finally learn to listen to women without standing around looking pathetic is still a long way off.

  ‘So tell me, my dear Monsieur 235, what were you doing when you crossed paths with Chérifa and what exactly have you done to her since?’

  The guy was obviously not one of nature’s storytellers. He seemed to think that our actions are entirely decided by mektoub – fate. Which didn’t get me very far. A storyteller who doesn’t give his characters room to develop has no business in a souk. The whole reason people tell stories is because they’re sick to the back teeth of mektoub, we want our characters to act, to take decisions, hatch plots, screw up, land on their feet like a cat, win the game, make the sultan look ridiculous, we don’t want pathetic creatures like ourselves who wait pointlessly for heaven to send us a sign.

  ‘What could I do, sister? Three days ago, this girl got on my bus first thing in the morning while the engine was still cold and coughing like it had tuberculosis, I couldn’t even change gears. I’ve told the supervisor a thousand times that imported engine oil is better than domestic, but he’d rather foul up the engines – it makes no sense, I mean, we’re talking thoroughbred Magirus Deutz motors, they only speak German!’

  ‘Why can’t they be converted into Arabic?’

  ‘You’re not allowed, it invalidates the warranty. Anyway, like I was saying, I work route 12, from Chevalley to La Grande Poste via Rampe Valée. That’s a lot of steep hills, as you know yourself. So anyway, she takes a ticket and she sits behind me. Even looking at her in the rear-view mirror I could tell she was . . . well . . . a lost soul. Her mektoub . . .’

  ‘Yes, let’s leave her mektoub out of this . . .’

  ‘She spent the whole day sitting in the same seat, shuttling back and forth from Chevalley to La Poste, La Poste to Chevalley. Well in the end she fell asleep, as you can imagine . . .’

  ‘I can easily imagine, I feel myself nodding off right now, but I’d like to hear the end of the story . . . So, where were we?’

  ‘What’s the matter, Tata? He’s telling it just like it happened, I swear.’

  ‘I’ll believe you, I’ll believe anything, I realise disbelief is not an option . . . So, monsieur, you were saying?’

  ‘At 8 pm, when I finished my shift, I said to her, I said: Last stop! All change, please!”

  ‘And did she change?’

  ‘No, she asked if
she could sleep on the bus. I’ve never heard the like. I told her it was impossible, that it was against regulations, I have to take the bus back to the garage and you’re not allowed in there.’

  ‘The plot thickens.’

  ‘Absolutely not, we’re devout Muslims, we know all about hospitality. I said to her if you’ve nowhere to sleep, you can come back to our house, my mother would be happy to have the company. The poor thing, she . . .’

  ‘OK, so you get to the house and . . .?’

  ‘My mother looked after her like she was her own daughter. You have to understand, I’m an only child, and I’m a man and amah needs someone she can talk to about cooking and cleaning, someone who’ll listen to her problems . . .’

  ‘I can well understand her. And then what?’

  ‘So, anyway, three days later, this morning to be precise, the girl says to me, I’m coming with you.’

  ‘Would you credit it! And?’

  ‘So she came with me. And after a little while, when I was inspecting the bus before taking it back to the garage in case anyone had left their papers or their lunchbox under a seat, she says to me: I’m going back to Tata Lamia.’

  ‘That’s me!’

  ‘So, well, anyway, I brought her back to you. Now, I must dash, the depot closes at 8.30 pm sharp.’

  ‘Not before you have a glass of lemonade, dear Monsieur 235. I know a little about hospitality myself, and it doesn’t only work one way; besides, the garage is hardly likely to vanish because it’s missing a bus.’

  ‘A minute late is a minute too late!’

  ‘Only in Switzerland, my friend, only in Switzerland. Here in Algeria, it’s more like: where there’s life there’s leeway. We’ll tell the depot that the bus broke down, it probably happens six times a week and if they can put up with six, they’ll put up with seven.’

  And then the gallant bus driver told me his life story. This is it in a nutshell: at the age of sixteen, he was hired by the Greater Algiers Urban Transport Authority – GAUTA – where, by dint of perseverance and engine oil, he worked his way from cleaner to grease monkey to bus conductor right up to the dizzy heights of bus driver in less than twenty years. And from here? Ticket inspector, if God wills it. And why should God not will it, isn’t it what He has always wanted, to punish fare-dodgers and nit-pickers? Maybe, but his bosses operate on a different policy: they give jobs to their friends. Things had taken a philosophical turn, so I put on the brakes. Was there life after work? Truth to tell, he had never had time to dawdle, he spent his leisure hours looking after his saintly mother and his great dream was for her to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. Married? No, unfortunately, mektoub had dictated otherwise. His problem is he’s an awkward so-and-so who wants everything to be perfect for him and his elderly mother. Any sporting activities? Pétanque with his co-workers sometimes during lunch break, but otherwise . . . Hey, wait a minute, do you shoot or do you point, I’ve heard that in pétanque it makes all the difference? Um . . . it depends. So, what else? Fishing, during holidays. And? Dominoes with friends in the neighbourhood and um . . . going to the mosque on Fridays. And I’ll bet you watch TV? Oh yes, every night.

  Good old 235 clearly lived a life almost as thrilling and hectic as my own, all that was missing was the essential, those little extras that make the heart skip a beat. I was sad to see him drive away in his thirteen-wheeled, four-eyed dragon.

  The Greater Algiers Urban Transport Authority is very fortunate to have a man of such calibre. As is his sainted mother. There aren’t many like him these days. Though she might loosen the aprons strings a bit, the poor guy needs to let his hair down.

  Chérifa left me in a foul mood and has returned to find me in a foul mood. The little baggage is completely brazen, she sulks, she does a bunk, she shows up whenever it suits her, she brings bus drivers to my door. People behave better in hotels – you let the hotel know when you’ll be arriving, when you’ll be leaving, you leave your taxi driver at the door, you’re polite to the staff, you put your things away, you flush the toilet and turn off the tap when the water is running low. A few rules and a little common decency are essential in any family. She should tell me everything, whether there are people looking for her, whether she’s in danger, whether . . . Well, the possibilities are endless.

  ‘Now listen to me, mademoiselle, since my idiot brother has cleverly finagled things, I’m prepared to put you up, but let me tell you right now that my home is not a hotel, and it’s not a crèche where you can drop off your little problems. Now it’s not an army barracks, either, but I do expect a little discipline – assuming you know what the word means – and you’ll need a permit if you’re going out!’

  ‘But, Tata, I can’t stay cooped up in here!’

  ‘You go out when I go out . . . is that clear?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘I said is that clear?’

  ‘Hmmmm!’

  ‘Now, here’s the deal. Tomorrow, I’ll take you for a check-up, we need to know what’s in that belly of yours. Then we’re going to get rid of these frills and fripperies you’re wearing and get you a wardrobe more appropriate for an expectant mother. And we need to think about the baby too, whether it’s a boy or a girl, it’s going to need a cot and some baby clothes.’

  ‘And a bottle, a bonnet, nappies, a rattle, some . . .’

  ‘We’ll make a list. Thirdly, and this will be the hard part, you’ll have to lead a healthy lifestyle: wholesome food, lots of exercise, lots of rest. And a little reliability.’

  Over dinner, we drew up a list of baby things. The longer we sat at the table, the longer the list grew. We talked about colours. Unable to choose between pink and blue, we decided white would fit the bill. Before it’s even born, this baby is costing the earth and creating problems. But, well, you treat people according to their merits and this child had already tugged at my purse strings and my heart strings, there was no going back now. Never forget that children are the oldest and most expensive joy in the world.

  Today was truly one of those auspicious days for which Algiers is famous.

  What a wonderful moment, I could already see myself going gaga!

  Suddenly I felt a flash of pain. An association of ideas, a call to order, a warning to be cautious? I was besieged by memories of Louiza, my foster sister, my beloved little Carrot. What morgue does she live in now?

  We were no older than our dolls

  We dreamed our dreams of wonders

  Eternity cupped us in its hands

  In a world filled with enchantment

  Little noticing

  Little realising

  We died

  Walled up alive

  Such is the law

  Allah be praised

  And may they rot in hell

  The Defenders of Truth!

  I scrawled this in my splenetic notebook, one day when loneliness had the acrid taste of poison.

  That night we laughed until we cried. I was liberal with the jokes, with the Turkish delight, thinking this was a good way to coax the little runaway’s secrets from her. By midnight, she was doubled up in stitches, her cheeks streaked with tears she was too tired to wipe away. Mustafa, Louis-Joseph-Youssef, Carpatus, Daoud Ben Chekroun excelled themselves – I could see them sniggering in their graves. I tore Mourad off a strip, the silly man, him and his tales of proletarian bus stations and university halls of residence. Ending with a flourish, I put Bluebeard in the dock and accused him of comical crimes of my own invention.

  All that remained was to steer the conversation to get her to open up. The trick is to begin with ‘I’ve never told anyone this, but . . .’ to bait the hook and then pass the baton, ‘What about you, what did you do and with whom?’ It’s essential to recognise the perfect moment, to create an expansive mood, nurture the urge to talk freely – that is the real trick.

  Being a well-brought-up woman of a certain age, I had little to confess beyond a small scar and a bruise that had long since healed. I was evasive, I wa
s not about to invent trials and tribulations simply to cajole her, after all I’m not the one who’s pregnant and isolated from everyone I know. I told her about the secret boyfriend I had back when I was eight and Papa had already begun to stand guard at the school gates. An only daughter is a father’s worst nightmare.