Harraga

by Boualem Sansal

  ‘I agree, but that’s not the point. So where exactly were you all day today?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Don’t come the innocent with me, young lady, I want you to tell me right now. If you’re going to get yourself killed or kidnapped, I need to know how and by whom.’

  ‘I swear, you’re crazy. People go for a walk all the time.’

  ‘True, but you don’t know what else people get up to!’

  Dear God, why is everything so difficult with some people? This crazy girl is calling me crazy, what is this country coming to? Eventually I got it out of her, but by then I was beside myself.

  ‘I just wandered around the neighbourhood,’ she said.

  ‘Did you indeed? And what’s new since the last century?’

  ‘I had a chat with Tante Zohra.’

  ‘Did you tell her the truth? I hope you didn’t, because she’ll use it against you, she’s never happier than when she’s meddling in my business.’

  ‘We just talked.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I went into the old house.’

  ‘You did what? Say that again!’

  ‘Over there . . . the house across the road.’

  ‘What?? Say that again!’

  ‘The old house. The man waved at me from his window. . . so I went upstairs . . .’

  ‘Bluebeard?!’

  ‘He’s a sweet little old man.’

  ‘What?? Say that again!’

  ‘The old guy across the road! Are you deaf or what??’

  ‘Has he got a beard? Is it blue?’

  ‘No, he’s got a head of white hair and thick glasses perched on his nose.’

  ‘But he’s a human being? A real live person?’

  ‘He speaks some language I don’t understand . . . D’you think it might be French?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘He talks the way you talk when you’re angry with me.’

  ‘Well then, it’s French, I only speak it when I’m angry.’

  ‘He speaks Algerian too, but with an accent.’

  ‘That’s the pied-noir accent, you’d never mistake it for an English accent. So what did he say, this man?’

  ‘He told me that I was pretty and charming,’ she simpers.

  ‘Well, well, Bluebeard was trying to chat you up! I’ve always known how things were going to turn out, I’ve known since I was a little girl.’

  ‘He asked me if you had news from Sofiane, he said he hopes to see him again soon.’

  ‘It’s a good chat-up line, I’ll give him that. What else? I want to know everything.’

  ‘Nothing. He made us some hot chocolate. He’s got loads of stuff in his house, it’s lovely, he’s got furniture and things, paintings, souvenirs, he’s got cats . . .’

  ‘So, apart from the chocolate and the cats, did he give you a tour of the rest of the museum? Or have you forgotten? And how is it that I’ve never seen this old friend of yours?’

  ‘His door doesn’t open on to our street, it opens on to the hill on the other side. Anyway, he never goes out.’

  ‘Oh, so there’s a secret passageway. That’s another mystery solved. It’s amazing how many mysteries get cleared up when you’re around. Before long, we’ll know too much, and that’s dangerous. So, what happened next?’

  ‘He gave me this necklace – look . . . It belonged to his daughter, she died a long time ago.’

  ‘That’s what he said, he could just as easily have cut her throat like he did his six wives.’

  ‘What are you on about? She was an only child, she was ten years old.’

  ‘I know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘. . .’

  This snot-nosed little girl has made herself at home in the neighbourhood a lot faster than I did; after thirty-five years of exhausting comings and goings, I still haven’t really settled. It’s intolerable, she’s going to ruin my retirement. She’ll turn my house into the Cotton Club, people will come and unravel my secrets, torment my ghosts, annoy my aliens.

  No, no, no – I won’t stand for it.

  While I was about it, I bawled her out good and proper: don’t go out, don’t talk to strangers, look after yourself, be suspicious of everything and everyone, it’s not rocket science, for crying out loud! Then I calmly explained the situation, the strange things that go on in other people’s heads, the deaths by the dozen, by the hundreds, the thousands, the tens of thousands, the hundreds of . . .

  ‘You’re completely off your head!’

  ‘And you’re a gullible little fool! The people who died, they weren’t suspicious either. Don’t you know where you live? There’s a war on and it didn’t start this morning! People here have all but forgotten that it’s possible to die a natural death, but mademoiselle here goes out for a little walk, she chats to people . . . she drinks hot chocolate!’

  Thinking about it, I didn’t use her pregnancy against her, that might have made her toe the line. I could have scared her with talk of complications, acute septicaemia, ovarian cancer, the foetus turning into a crocodile and I don’t know what else. With three months to go before you’re due, you don’t take risks, you put on the brakes, you look after your health, you get ready for when the baby arrives. You talk, you plan, you prepare, you organise. And mostly you worry; for a child, the future is a big deal.

  But all Chérifa thinks about is herself, about living in the moment. The girl is so self-centred.

  I don’t know what I said to her, I wasn’t thinking straight, I carried on yelling at her, repeating myself, probably. That’s me – a sour-faced, cantankerous bitch; when I get angry, I don’t know when to stop . . . I . . . Was it something I said? I think . . . I’m sure . . . I don’t know, at some point she froze, her eyes almost popped out of her head, then she turned her back on me and disappeared into the labyrinth. It haunts me still – what was it that I said? What was it that I called her? Knowing me, whatever it was, I probably laced it with my bitterest venom.

  The following day, coming home from the Hôpital Parnet after an arduous shift, I knew the house was empty before I even heard the booming silence. I didn’t try to talk myself out of it, I couldn’t bring myself to, I was petrified. Chérifa is gone. A dead voice whispered the words into my ear, whispered them over and over. I didn’t understand, I stared into space, I couldn’t make sense of anything. Then something inside my head exploded, a terrible howl that chilled my blood, and I threw down my bag and I ran. Her bedroom was neat and tidy, but this was no miracle, it was proof: her clothes had disappeared and the baby’s clothes too. And of that scent of troubled little girl, all that remained was the vaguest whiff of inert gas. It was then I truly felt that death was busy digging my grave.

  I curled up in a corner and I waited. What else could I do? Like the film The Langoliers, with its plot about how ‘time rips’ affect humans, I watched, dazed and helpless, as piece by piece the world disappeared before my eyes in an apocalyptic silence. Then I reacted. I have this thing I do, something I made up for Louiza when, as girls, we were faced by the unfathomable violence of the world: whenever you’re afraid of something, you squeeze your eyes tight shut and think of the opposite and everything balances out. Chérifa will come back, I know she will. She’ll come back soon. I could cling to life.

  I’m fickle, that’s just how I am!

  Act II

  Memory or Death

  Reminiscence is another way

  To live one’s life

  To the full

  To its best

  Least painfully.

  And loneliness is the way

  To safely store in memory

  What the clamour of things

  Sweeps towards oblivion.

  You have to let go one side

  To hang on to the other.

  From what is reborn from day to day

  We fashion a new life

  And time drifts by and dreams drift by

  We journey only in ourselves.

&n
bsp; A warning:

  Let not sorrows distract you.

  Let not emptiness dazzle you.

  It is always by some oversight

  That we lose life.

  Days, weeks, months have passed and still I expect Chérifa to turn up at any minute. I leave the door unlocked, she has only to push. I have stopped looking for her, I’m too tired, I have turned the city upside down, I’ve searched every place where a few paper lanterns might dazzle a silly little goose, I’ve waded through the vast expanses of poverty where, in the dark dampness of slack days, the hopeless seek out shelter.

  I set Mourad to work. He can’t refuse me anything. At heart, the man is like a St Bernard – he knows a thing or two about barrels – and besides he has a car, so he can work more quickly. The poor man has given up his job, he spends his days brooding, phoning, chasing down leads, drinking and paying people for any information they are prepared to give; he wears himself out rushing hither and thither then comes back here, half drunk and wholly sickened by the indifference of people, and cries on my shoulder. We review the situation and we sigh, we squabble, I tell him a few home truths and every time he comes out with the same terrible question: ‘Why the hell are you still looking for her?’ The blockhead reeks of cheap wine, why should I listen to him?

  Is it wise to carry on when all is said and done? When the point of no return is passed, we brace ourselves and forge ahead. Chérifa will not come home of her own accord, I know that, I can feel it, and Mourad is too stupid to admit defeat.

  But he’s right – why am I still searching for her? What can I say? That’s just the way it is.

  I went back to the Association.

  I found the building still standing, which might be a good sign or a bad sign, I don’t know, seismic shifts are so common here and the gap between immediate and delayed effect is not always important. Only when your back is to the wall do you find out. But there is a golden rule: hope for the best, prepare for the worst – that way you are ready for anything.

  ‘Well, well, would you look who it is!’

  The way she said it, the spiteful government lackey! Like a sentry who spots a figure on the horizon and trumpets it from the rooftops. If she so much as mentions the word ‘database’, I’ll burn her alive, I thought as I said, ‘Hello, my dear!’ and added, ‘I’m afraid I have another little problem.’ She gave me a savage smile and I played the innocent and let the spiteful bitch walk all over me.

  And then we chatted. Nothing new, the young people of Algeria are still draining away, the country is like a bathtub that’s sprung a leak. Where there’s life, there’s death and disappearances. According to the statistics, girls present a different, though no less serious, case to boys. Girls disappear inland while boys head out to sea.

  ‘Who would have thought sexism extended so far?’

  ‘Girls don’t have the same reasons for disappearing. They tend to run away from the parental home, they are looking to find freedom, to hide some mistake, to follow some forbidden love; boys are dreamers in search of some great adventure, they don’t believe that the country will give them the means to satisfy their dreams.’

  ‘Why do girls run away from the parental home when it is so open, so loving . . . do you know?’

  ‘It’s not simple.’

  ‘Tell me anyway.’

  ‘Love is never unconditional, it is underpinned by values . . . by princ— . . . um . . .’

  ‘You mean tradition, the whole Arabo-Islamic thing, the hijab, the whole kit and caboodle, family codes and racial laws?’

  ‘I wouldn’t . . . um . . . I wouldn’t put it like that exactly.’

  ‘But when the home is open, loving, accepting?’

  ‘Even then, it can still impose draconian restrictions that some girls simply can’t deal with . . .’

  ‘Then surely you talk, you find a compromise, that’s what mothers are for.’

  ‘Maybe, but there are brothers and uncles and cousins and neighbours. Talking involves . . . um . . . exposing oneself, young girls have been brought up to feel shame . . . while boys have been brought up with the most pernicious beliefs. Imagine a young man who suffers from a preference . . . um . . . how can I put this . . . um . . .’

  ‘Homosexual? You mean a queer?’

  ‘Well . . . if you like. Can you imagine him talking to his parents? Our society is . . . well, you know . . . um . . .’

  ‘Hypocritical and backward-thinking?’

  ‘Not at all, I would say that, I’d say . . . um . . .’

  ‘Tolerant and forward-thinking? I don’t think there’s a third option, except maybe embryonic and shambolic.’

  ‘No, I would say traditionalist . . . faced with the modern world in an . . . well, an unwholesome international context . . . yes, that’s it, unwholesome.’

  ‘If that’s the case, I would just have said: moronic.’

  ‘So, anyway, the boy runs away to Europe so he can live his life . . .’

  ‘Let’s focus on the girls.’

  ‘It’s the same thing. Contrary to popular opinion, they are less able than the boys to deal with authoritarian parents and society. The pressures on them are enormous. A girl could have her throat cut, while the worst that happens to the boys is they get a stern talking-to and then they’re flattered.’

  ‘Though it might not seem like it from my manner, I’m not authoritarian if that’s what you’re trying to say.’

  ‘Far be it from me . . . I’m just saying that talking is difficult for everyone, even parents find it difficult to broach certain subjects with their children . . .’

  ‘Let’s get back to Chérifa. She’s six months pregnant, she’s here in Algiers, ever since she was a little girl that was her dream. Where do girls in her situation go? Are there hostels, homes where they can go?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. They improvise, some move in with the first man they meet, some marry a rich man, some resort to begging, and then there are those who . . .’

  ‘Stop! Chérifa is not like that, she’s too proud.’

  ‘That’s the problem, it’s often the ones who are too proud who go down that road. The others go home eventually, regardless of what punishment awaits them.’

  ‘Chérifa will come back! I know it, I can feel it.’

  ‘. . .’

  I wasn’t listening any more, I was watching her thick lips solemnly spouting her claptrap, her piggy little eyes rolling with dignified indignation. I pictured myself like this woman, my face contorted with po-faced piety looking scornfully at Chérifa, alone, struggling with her urges, trapped in her infantile world, it was horrible.

  What was the terrible name I called her?

  What was it?

  ‘Does that help?’

  Who said that? Oh, the sad case from the Association.

  Then suddenly I understood: the page has been turned. It is pointless to carry on looking. Algiers was designed to engulf people, and those lost within it never return, too many twists and turns, too many blind alleys, too many bottlenecks and closed doors and more complications than any soul could cope with, crowds tramping all over and everywhere, in the shadows and the sunlight, a tropical violence that shrieks and prowls and mauls, that stings and suffocates, intoxicates and leads astray. Chérifa is lost and I have cut off her retreat. I am a cruel, bitter, stupid old spinster. And a silly bitch besides.

  We call off the search. Chérifa is out there somewhere, she is in some other place, some other life, some other plight, but none of the places where my legs blindly lead me. And my heartache comes not from the difficulties I meet along the way, but from within.

  Maybe Chérifa was dead.

  Or maybe I was. I was pale, my eyes ringed with blue, my lips black, I smelled like a sewer rat. Worry had been the death of me, pain had put me six feet under, yet here I was still pitifully shambling along. Passers-by stopped to stare at me with the solemn expression they reserve for the dead. The fact that they are still alive can only be because they
are virtuous – that’s what the look means. ‘What are you looking at? Why don’t you just take a photo!’ I yelled at someone who clearly thought he was smarter than everyone else. Feeling sorry for others saves them from having to take a hard look at themselves. The pathetic fools can go hang, priggishness will be no consolation.

  I shook myself and headed home.

  Walking back through my neighbourhood, I stopped with the women who watch and wait so we could compare our sufferings. It is pitiful to see them, forever planted in their doorways, forever nailed into their slippers. They bide their time, neither frantic nor angry, just a little short of breath and a little misty-eyed. And probably a vicious twinge in the bowels, that’s something no one is spared. No, I don’t know a woman who doesn’t complain about her bowels. It’ll be my turn before long. Maybe like them I’ll park myself on my doorstep in an old pair of slippers, sit ramrod straight in my chair, plagued by an irritable bowel. The wind will bring me news of the world and I will listen and wait to discover my fate. And one day – why not? – I will see some miracle appear at the far end of the street. Is this the forlorn hope that gives these women such patience? What else could it be?

  I shuffled from one woman to the next, hands clasped beneath my chin. From each I took a little of her suffering and to each I gave a little of my own. We suffer less when exposed to universal heartache, we see our misfortunes for what they are, mere commas in the immensity of human suffering. We have a duty to forget ourselves.

  No, I’ll have no truck with their cut-price, off-the-shelf psychobabble. I don’t need to confuse myself any further, it’s impossible to be both honest and opportunistic. Only yesterday, I looked down on them or considered myself lower still, now here I am today putting myself on their level out of some sense of solidarity. Compassion bothers me, it’s not clear-cut. Taking on the misfortune of others and bearing it as some sort of cure amounts to drugging yourself while dosing others. Sorrow, like joy, is something that cannot be shared, I know that, certainly not through the magic of words.

  Hold on, I need to sort myself out, to pick up my life from the moment when Chérifa first marched in to colonise me.