Harraga

by Boualem Sansal

  I hate what I’ve become, I’m emotional, hysterical, quick to confuse things, too unbalanced to keep on an even keel, I’ve tipped into catatonia. I tell myself that reason is the antidote to these bouts of madness but even as I think this, it occurs to me that healing simply clears the ground for new contagion. God forbid I should have come to the point of finding my pleasure in pain, my freedom in captivity, my clarity in chaos, my tranquillity in turmoil. It’s a terrifying thought.

  I began to search again, I’m not one to sit around doing nothing. Scheherazade visited less and less so I went and surprised her at the university at Ben–Aknoun. After all she might have heard something. Monsieur 235 went with me at a moment’s notice, his rustbucket of a bus spitting fumes and flames. I thought it might be a good idea for him to visit the halls of residence so he could keep his mother supplied with lady’s companions and – who knows? – might even find a lady for himself – or two, or three, or why not four, after all he is a Muslim, a religion that favours one-sided polygamy. Scheherazade’s rabbit hutch was minuscule, but absolutely charming; it would make a lovely cupboard in someone’s mansion. She was wearing slippers and a night cap, her eyes were red and her eyelids twitched. I was worried I had tired her out with all my questions, but no, she had been cramming, burning the candle at both ends, exams were looming and rumours were rife that quotas had been imposed by people in high places. She was a nervous wreck. I tried to reassure her: there have been all sorts of rumours since the programme of reform proposed by the marabouts that would spell triumph for cretinism, militant fundamentalism and galloping racism. I know all about these reforms, I was a nervous wreck myself. The ministry wants no more nurses, no more doctors, and certainly no more lab assistants and absolutely no . . . what else . . . oh, that’s right, no more people who can read and write! Apparently there are so many we don’t know what to do with them, but then suddenly we find out that actually we don’t have nearly enough and have to start churning them out again. Still the ministry ploughs ahead, slashing funding, turning a blind eye to negative results, opening new hospitals wherever it can find four walls, operating on the basis that hiring thirteen numskulls to the dozen is the perfect solution to rampant unemployment. Development has become a co-ordinated series of imbalances, or at least that’s what I heard on some deathly dull TV talk show. This makes sense if you already know how to walk, otherwise it might be best to stay sitting down – something armchair pundits are experts at. The real problem is that the restricted intake into the medical profession is based on the size of the population and not, as it should be, on the number of people who are actually ill; while the former is dwindling dangerously, the latter is growing exponentially. In such circumstances, it seems obvious that the way to calculate is not simply by adding zeroes, but the ministry refuses to acknowledge this, preferring to cling to the old methods that worked well back when the dead did not talk.

  To distract myself from my woes and Scheherazade from her fears, we had some mint tea and sang old songs which, given our mood, were deeply depressing. The girls in Block 12, who had either been dozing and fretting or swotting and daydreaming, joined in and our sotto voce blues became a raucous racket that echoed down the corridors, leaving nothing to the imagination of Satan himself. When women get together, they quickly become shameless. The girls dug out scarves and tambourines and started to play and suddenly it was pandemonium, there was winking and belly rolls and more besides. It’s a glorious sight watching people revert to the wild state, and rediscover their vices. It was so loud we wouldn’t have heard God Himself raging against the infidels. Finding himself the centre of attention, 235 took the opportunity to hard-sell the virtues of his saintly mother. He was exultant, everything suddenly seemed possible. Every single girl there promised to come and sit with his Maman once their exams were over. And when a girl is perfect for a mother, how much more perfect is she for the son? All 235 had to do now was trust to the skills of these girls to capture him dead or alive.

  The fires of love having been kindled, I could slip away and carry on my lonely quest. From time to time, it’s good to stave off the tears, but mostly, the best thing to do is cry your eyes out. Just then, I felt torn.

  I did the rounds of the maternity wards, there must be about twenty in Algiers and the suburbs, I sowed some seeds by which I mean I appealed to colleagues, to those who still remember their oaths, to friends I knew from university, to friends of friends, and to their pals too.

  ‘You couldn’t miss her,’ I told my conscripts, emphasising the importance of doing a good job when you’re lucky enough to have one, ‘the second she walks into a room all eyes turn. She’s eight months gone, a Lolita dragging around a beach ball, if you keep your eyes peeled, you’ll spot her.’

  As a quid pro quo, I offered to get each of them some piece of medical equipment in return, the poor things have only their fingernails to work with and only their eyes to weep. They drew up a wish list that would have brought tears to the eye of a medical supplier. One of them asked for an electric generator. There’s no shortage of equipment at the Hôpital Parnet, the hospital manager is well connected, being the minister’s cousin and the Pasha’s nephew, but even so, this was some list! I needed to work out how to smuggle the things out of the hospital without being spotted. The security guards sleep all day, but if I trusted to that I was bound to get caught.

  I went back to waiting. I was tense, I spent my time agonising, surmising, supposing, going round in circles, never straying far from the phone. I thought about buying a mobile phone but they cost an arm and a leg, I don’t have the money and I don’t have the energy to traipse round the shops, it’s all too exhausting and I’m sick to the back teeth of sales patter. I trusted in my own alert system, Chérifa’s not the kind to sleep in the streets, she’d show up at some hospital demanding bed, board and blanket – something the King of Spain would be hard pressed to find if he took it into his head to seek treatment here. Life has given Chérifa a rough ride, yet somehow she’s managed to develop the personality of a spoiled brat; she could bring the sternest hospital porter to his knees.

  Minute by minute, I counted off the remaining weeks, the last days, the final hours before the end. By my calculations, on May 22, under the sign of Gemini, the nine months of Chérifa’s pregnancy elapsed and she was delivered. Wait . . . wait a minute, say that again, old woman! De . . . delivered! So . . . so soon, so early? Wh . . . where . . .? When . . .? How . . .? Is it a girl . . . a boy? Sh . . . she’s a mother . . . That makes me . . . makes me . . . um . . . I was babbling. Shock, delight, sorrow, worry, anger, disappointment, I felt all these things seething inside me.

  I know a thing or two about giving birth. Time was the maternity ward at Parnet exercised an irresistible fascination for me. I was obsessive. I would come and go, pretend to be dawdling like everyone else. The truth was I never tired of the joy of seeing those little amphibious monsters, flushed with fury, struggling like the devil to emerge from their mothers and greedily latching on to the breast. Hardly born and already starving. I was awed by the beauty of these wrinkled, blind, bawling, blood-streaked creatures that smelled of sour milk and yellow diarrhoea. And I also watched, distraught, as angels arrived dead, their bodies limp, their skin blue, watched their mothers gazing fondly at them clinging to the belief that Allah knows what He is doing. I call that murder, but deaths in hospitals are not counted that way and we have been taught to accept whatever Allah wills. I have watched wonderful midwives clucking contentedly as they worked and poisonous witches who acted as though they were in the pay of rich landowners anxious to enhance their health, their youth, their social standing; I have seen doctors who were the epitome of kindness and many more who are repulsive shits. And the problems of underdevelopment, the idiocies of religion, the dodgy deals of the cliques lining each other’s pockets as they preside over the neglect.

  One day, I’d had enough, I don’t remember whether I was chased out of the maternity unit or whether
I simply got tired of remonstrating with self-important idiots.

  The idea that Chérifa is somewhere in that grotesque system is unbearable.

  I phoned again and again and again. My heart was filled with such rage . . . and yet with such hope.

  ‘Sorry, she’s not here.’

  ‘Nothing to report.’

  ‘Are you sure about your dates? She’s definitely nine months?’

  ‘Try calling Beni-Messous Hospital, it’s like a battery farm, she’s bound to be there.’

  ‘She’s not here with us, I just hope she’s not in the maternity unit at Belfort – remember what happened there six months ago?’

  ‘There was a little Lolita here, but she was completely crazy, she acted like my ex-husband’s grandmother.’

  ‘Call the police, we could do with them investigating this place!’

  ‘Get in touch with the association for missing babies, you’ve heard the rumours . . .’

  ‘Sorry, I completely forgot that you asked me, I’ve got my own problems, my husband is . . . hello? Hellooo?’

  I hung up on her, I wasn’t going to get stuck listening to her problems, I had more than enough of my own!

  ‘Maybe she gave birth in a taxi . . . you know yourself that traffic jams are the biggest maternity unit in the country.’

  ‘Why don’t you put an ad in the paper?’

  ‘I’ve been off work the past few days. Give me a call tomorrow.’

  ‘. . .’

  You wouldn’t believe the things I had to listen to. Useless, the lot of them, looking for any excuse to give up. Some of them I’d happily kill with my bare hands. I’ll have to check for myself. Where the hell is Mourad? He’s never around when you need him! For pity’s sake, a man can have a hangover and still show up for work. I called 235 and he zoomed here in his bulletproof bus. He’ll get himself fired if he keeps doing me favours. We did the rounds of the hospitals, it was tedious, tortuous and disappointing.

  You can refuse to accept them, throw a tantrum, but facts are facts: Chérifa really had disappeared.

  I suppose that I might say: everything has come to pass. It was at this point that I truly gave up hope.

  One after another the days slipped past, stealthily, invisibly. Hardly had Monday passed than Friday drew to a close in shame and disgust. The noise of the city came to me as though from some distant planet, I don’t know whether it was this that I heard or the wind whipping up. My mind was on other things, I was connected to the ineffable pulse of time itself, that steady drip that echoes from one end of the universe to the other and deep within our every thought. Something had happened, far from me, beyond my control, beyond my means. Fate – I have no truck with it, but mektoub was clearly to blame – had proved more powerful, more cunning, more bitter and more swift than my love. I had been naive, I had been stupid, I had believed that love conquered all, that you only had to open your heart, your arms, your home to clinch the deal. I did everything I could – God is my witness – everything but what mattered: selflessness, doing something without expecting something in return. It’s too late, I know it all too well, I have ceased to weep, to complain, to fear, I have ceased to suffer.

  The days lose their dread the moment you cease to count them.

  What else is there to say? Nothing. Nothing happens here in Rampe Valée. And nothing happens here in Algiers. Like a cemetery on an autumn day in a dying year in a deserted village in a godforsaken region of a country lost in a misbegotten world. I think about it, but then I realise that thinking changes nothing, something either happens or it does not happen. In the desert, it hardly matters, in fact it is probably more futile to do than not to do. How dull is life, how insipid misery and death when they are stripped of meaning. What I mean is that without love and its torments, living is a waste of time. Of course people seek out what is best for them, and so they may delude themselves and even feel pleased with themselves. Me, I’ve ceased to believe and I cannot understand how I continue to exist. From time to time, between bouts of spring-cleaning, there comes a little shudder, I surrender to it, still in control, I find myself hallucinating. I imagine myself fulfilled, having given all the love, the truth I have to give. I picture myself in a better world, not one where I can take it easy, but one where I can get rid of the deadwood, weed out the rabble-rousers. I would have done a thousand things because I knew they were possible, because I knew I had the strength to do them. I would have brought charges against the loathsome minister: statutory rape, child abandonment, breach of trust and, of course, misappropriation of public funds. I would have prosecuted the Association and its Ladies Bountiful, Parnet and its Pasha, the State and its imams, the police and the judges, the army and the President, El Moudjahid and its henchmen, and every Saïd, whether from north or south, whether hajj or sidi. I would have moved heaven and earth to make the world better still. And I would ask for nothing but the chance to watch people come and go in peace. Dear God, I would have made the most of such a life to visit every restaurant, every dancehall, every cinema, to fall head over heels fifty times a day! Yet in a country where nothing happens but for the sand shifting beneath our feet, the wind whistling above our heads, what can I do?

  Since we are all masters in our own homes, I have decided to change everything in this house. As I said before, I’m not one to sit around with my arms folded and I can’t bear people feeling sorry for themselves before they’re dead and buried. I set about it with a vengeance, my ghosts were completely flummoxed! A sort of madness came over me, I went overboard, I emptied my piggybank, scraped together every santeem I could find, rushed into town and bought everything in sight. It was all just as shoddy and illicit as ever, but I didn’t care, I paid them with the money I was paid and rather than feeling cheated, I felt as though I was cheating them at their own game. I set a few past masters to work, those with golden fingers and modest appetites like Tonton Hocine and conman-cum-bus driver Monsieur 235, to clear out the warehouses then, shut away in my cosy house, I sewed and knitted, embroidered and ironed and I don’t know what else. Late into the night I was on a war footing. Following the example of Fantine, I got ready to breathe my last, crippled with pain, eaten away by tuberculosis. I got very emotional as I thought about it, mothers are extraordinary when it comes to laying down their lives for their children. Would Chérifa have the same chance as Cosette?

  And then, one day, feeling my work was finished, I slowed my pace. It was time to survey my magnum opus. Hmm . . . not bad, not bad at all. I had created the most magical nursery in the world. If Chérifa and our little baby could see what I had fashioned, they would rush home at the double.

  There is no message

  And certainly no moral.

  There is no joy

  And certainly no bliss.

  There is no truth

  And certainly no clarity.

  There is no hope

  And certainly no faith.

  There is nothing

  But what exists inside our heads

  This clot of madness.

  It is from here we must set out

  And the path is steep.

  La la li la laa!

  La la li la laaaaa!

  Act IV

  Life is a fairytale

  By dint of suffering, we forget.

  We do not only grow through pain

  Joy is a more powerful fertiliser.

  It is enough that God should will it

  And spring should come.

  And God had willed it.

  And spring had long since come.

  And still I would have to drain this bitter cup to the dregs.

  On the seventh day after what I had calculated to be Chérifa’s due date, the message came by telephone. It was early in the morning on 29 May and I was getting ready to go to the hospital. I still work there sometimes as a doctor, but more and more often I go as a patient eaten away by some deep-rooted disease. When the phone rang – though I had probably already been warned
, in a dream or by some other means – I realised that the end of my long ordeal was on the other end of the line. When flustered, I find it difficult to control my actions, foolishly I smoothed my hair, rubbed my hands on my thighs and even more foolishly I glanced around, searching for some help, some pretext, before nervously lifting the receiver as though angry at myself for behaving like a cornered animal.

  To my dying day I will remember that conversation: every word, every inflection and every ache in my head, in my body, in every fibre of my being. A few brief, banal phrases, a few simple words, a few unexpected, awkward pauses that succeeded in conveying extraordinary things. True, the turmoil of the past few weeks had heightened my senses to the point where the slightest thing seemed a sign of tragedy, farce and madness waiting to explode.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mademoiselle Lamia?’

  ‘Um . . . maybe . . . yes.’

  ‘Hello, my name is Anne . . .’

  ‘Sorry . . . Hanna?’

  ‘No, Anne, but it doesn’t matter. I’m calling you about . . .’

  No! Dear God no, not that! I can guess . . . she . . . she’s going to tell me . . . It . . . it will kill me . . . I’ll scream until the end of my days.

  ‘Please, madame, not that . . . For pity’s sake, please.’

  ‘I’m sorry . . . I truly am sorry. We need to meet.’

  ‘Why? What’s the point?’

  ‘It was Chérifa’s wish . . .’

  ‘What? . . . Dear God.’

  ‘I can’t tell you anything over the phone. Please come and see me.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Blida, the convent of Notre Dame des Pauvres. It’s on the outskirts of the village, on the road to Chréa. Ask anyone, they’ll know the way. I’ll be waiting.’

  I had considered every scenario, the impossible and the improbable – a commonplace in a country at war with itself – fate standing on a street corner and something that happens once in a thousand years, only once, a miracle so to speak, but this was something I had not considered, an intercession by the Church. I thought that this country was completely controlled from the mosque.