I jumped into a taxi, a rusty old heap painted New York yellow driven by an elderly man as fat and hairy as a walrus who for some reason was trawling round the neighbourhood. The people here in Rampe Valée never go anywhere, or if we do, we walk down the hill to catch the bus, praying to heaven that the GAUTA is running today. Was it mektoub that brought him to me? I refuse to believe it. Both man and machine were old and clapped out, which meant they would know every lane and byroad within a thousand-kilometre radius and since Blida’s only fifty klicks from here, they could get there with their eyes closed. Sobbing into a hankie, I sat wringing my hands and trembling. The driver was sympathetic, he chatted away mostly to himself, a lone windmill turning in a gale. I offered monosyllabic answers as grist to his mill. It took my mind off things, I couldn’t bear to stare out at careening carts and old nags fit only for the knacker’s yard. Panic pounded in my temples and my heart was fit to burst.
‘Did your husband beat you?’
‘Snff . . . snff . . . yes.’
‘So where are you headed now . . . to your parents?’
‘Snff . . . snff . . . yes.’
‘Did you defy him?’
‘Snff . . . snff . . . I think so.’
‘You have the look of a good woman about you. I suppose it was the devil led you astray?’
‘Snff . . . snff . . . yes.’
‘And this man who claims to be a Muslim is letting you travel all on your own without a veil?’
‘Snff . . . snff . . . yes.’
‘Back in my day, it would have been a disgrace!’
‘Snff . . . snff . . . yes.’
‘. . .’
I felt tempted to upbraid him, we had inherited ‘his day’ a hundredfold, but given his age and the state of his car, I worried that his heart might burst or the fan belt of his jalopy might snap. I would be to blame for their deaths, for the martyrdom of a devout Muslim and the demise of an ancient rustbucket hallowed by the hundreds of pilgrims and who knew how many imams who had parked their posteriors on these seats. And besides, I wasn’t really listening to him, I had no wish to add to my sorrows the ravings of some oddball about how the female of the species likes to cavort with the devil.
On the second leg of the journey, he broached the subject of the punishments to be inflicted on wives according to the faults committed by them, their sisters, their daughters and their confidantes. A personal and a collective scale underpinned by an absolutist rhetoric. Guilty or not, they deserved to be punished, that was the gist of it. He talked about the talaq, but he seemed to think repudiation was a convoluted process suitable only as a last resort. What, did I hear right? I was about to demand that he explain what, exactly, was convoluted about a man throwing his wife out into the street or breaking her neck, and what precisely qualified as a ‘last resort’, but he didn’t wait, he had already launched into a comparative analysis of flogging and stoning before moving on to his favourite method of chastisement: having the woman clapped in irons and tossed into the bottom of a well for seven days and seven nights after which, with feverish devotion, the well is filled in. He talked at length about this authentically corrective ritual, largely forgotten these days probably because most wells are dry. He went on to discuss cremation, throat-cutting, quartering, the boiling of all or parts of the body, pouring molten lead into the ears or the nostrils and who knows what all – the Muslim world being as broad as it is rich in such pièces de résistance, he cast a wide net. It all sounded rather old-fashioned and ignorant of state-of-the-art techniques. Good God, they could simply put women in factories, gas them, electrocute them by the dozen, by the thousand, dissolve them in acid – what else? – turn them into candles, into polish. Better yet, melt them down and turn them into some revolutionary alloy, use them as fertiliser, or maybe for road resurfacing – they would provide a much more flexible surface. But I wasn’t really listening, I wasn’t really looking; we would soon be arriving at the convent and my heart was hammering. I decided I would send him away and tell him to come back in about an hour. I would give him some money and suggest he unwind in a nearby café maure – that mysterious space where never within the memory of man has woman set foot. He rolled his eyes, he could not understand what a creature who had defied Qur’anic law was doing at a Christian refuge.
The convent of Notre Dame des Pauvres is a squat building covered with wild vines set well back from the road that connects Blida to Chréa next to an overgrown path that smells sweetly of the Mediterranean. Everything about the place seems to smile, but it would be unwise to trust to appearances; there is a microclimate that exists in the mountains that look out towards the sea, it is a whimsical place where grass yellows before turning green and the blue of the sky can veer unexpectedly from white to red. No barometer on earth can comprehend its neuroses, it changes its mantle of cloud the way a person changes their shirt. Clouds scud past, heedless to the prayers of empty rain barrels, they linger for a moment in the heavens before heading for the sea there to surrender to the splendours of the water-cycle. How remote the sordid streets of Algiers seem, how strange the sky! The taxi slipped into first gear and climbed slowly between hedgerows of whispering spikes and thorns. It valiantly juddered along, strewing bolts and washers and, at every hairpin bend, another cog fell off the chassis. Under my breath, I recited a pious rosary of heave-hos. There is no shortage of cicadas, they are all one can hear. After a few scant minutes it feels as though, but for cicadas on earth and God in His heaven, nothing else exists. Blazing sunshine is guaranteed year round, but for the turning of the season when there is one whole week of actual snow, something skiing buffs in the days before the troubles spoke of as though it lasted twelve months of the year. Once more I thought of Camus, a son of the soil; he had spent time here among the crickets and the olive groves before exiling himself to the north pole, to the grim absurdities that dog us from birth to death. I think about Rachid Mimouni, another son of the soil who people say spent time here before becoming a harraga and leaving to die over there, in Tangiers the magnificent, gateway to every destination. It is piteous to be so impoverished. From our native soil we expect abundance and joy, not exile and death. Who tumbles into darkness lapses into violence is a saying that well expresses the descent into hell, but up in these mountains, ringed by radiant light and serenaded by homoptera, how could anyone be malicious or miserable without feeling ashamed? Absurdity again, madness again.
The door is sturdy, carved from solid wood and set on ancient iron hinges. Beyond it, well protected, silence reigns. It conjures a world of timeless mysteries, of lives lived plagued by worries and thorny questions, crippled or exalted by doubts and surely denied happiness – the elixir we poor wretched, helpless creatures do our utmost to filch where we can to avoid annihilation – or quite the reverse, spared the terrible misery that keeps the rest of us clinging to life like a buoy in spite of everything. I don’t know what to think about it, personally, I live in utter solitude in a ramshackle mansion surrounded by a vast prison that is falling down about our ears and taking us all with it.
On the façade, the name of the institution was carved in relief above the lintel, a single slab of pink marble: Convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Poor. The faint air of neglect hinted that the members of the order could probably be counted on the fingers of half a hand. Where are the beggars, Lord of the poor? Where are the nuns, the churchwardens and the donors rubbing their hands with glee to see their money so wisely used? Where are the processions, the saint’s-day celebrations, where is the smell of warm bread broken in the spirit of fraternity? Everything is in ruins, all our possessions and those of our friends, all our good wishes for happiness have been swept away.
The door made no sound and I had only my fists to make myself heard. What could I do?
An old woman sitting on a hillock, a basket at her feet, a bundle of firewood on her head, was struggling to catch her breath before continuing her journey into the unknown. Her wrinkled face sudden
ly came to life, she stared at me as though I were a freak of nature and spoke to me: ‘Where’d you spring from, you? The great door is for religion, if it’s healing you want, it’s round the other side – a white door with a green cross, you’ll see.’
She said the words as though speaking some great, evident truth, the care of the body is not that of the soul. Was she right or wrong? I thanked her with a blink, it was the best I could do, I had a lump in my throat and the rest of my being refused to respond. I needed only to hear Sister Anne say the last word to fall silent for ever. I knew, I could feel it, when I left the convent my life would be over.
Everything happened very fast although my nerves crackled with unbearably slow suspense. I was ushered inside by a vague young woman, a local peasant girl who had taken up medicine. Though her white coat was genuine, she wore it like a costume at a village fête. I remember my first white coat, I was so proud, I wore it like a wedding dress, sunlight shimmered on it and the air moved deliciously over its curves. Later I cut it up to make dusters. The girl’s unduly careful movements clearly signalled a fresh graduate. It probably takes her two hours to plunge a needle in, a slow death for her patients, but given time she will learn to look the part, to jab a patient faster than her shadow. She spoke the way she moved, groping for words, taking time to weigh up their solidity and only reluctantly pronouncing them. I pictured her as a tortoise afraid of tumbling into the void. She probably believes that the modern world is all prudence and precision whereas actually it’s quite the opposite, we make do and mend as fast as we can without troubling ourselves about old-fashioned considerations. She knew who I was, someone had told her I was a toubib, a doctor, she gave me a deferential smile and greeted me with a salaam. What more can a pilgrim wish for than to be expected? It’s pleasant. At Parnet, visitors are never welcome, the matrons and the porters ignore them until they pathetically turn tail and leave. The girl rubbed her hands together, then, shuffling away in her harem clogs, I mean her wooden-soled flip-flops, she led me to the Mother Superior whom she referred to as Lalla – mistress – via a vaulted maze that sprawled and coiled endlessly. It seemed to me only reasonable that it should require some effort to reach the saint of the sanctuary. I busied myself with such pointless thoughts to keep my mind occupied, I knew what was coming next. In front of us, a door opened and . . . yes, there could be no doubt, this was Sister Anne. The moment had arrived, my heart was fluttering. She was expecting me. Slim and scarcely taller than her white, starched wimple, utterly radiant and dressed in harsh grey. She was ageless, in the way that nuns so often seem to be, but she had certainly seen forty Lenten fasts. She smiled warmly at me and, in a sudden surge of heathen feeling, hugged me hard and kissed me. It was nice, she smelled of lavender, of soap and incense and the fine rich loam of the kitchen garden.
‘Come, my child, enter . . . You are exactly as I foresaw. Come, Lamia, sit by me . . . Here is a glass of cool water; take, drink . . .’
She spoke just like the Bible: take, eat; for this is my body; drink, for this is my blood.
She exuded an extraordinary sense of strength and gentleness which immediately calmed me. It is precisely the attitude I would like to adopt in my dealings with people though I realise I am merely a would-be virago trying to hold her own against the harshness of her Muslim brothers rather than a true saint capable of soothing lions with a luminous glance. For me, force of circumstance has always worked in the negative, I am contaminated, embittered, intolerant, spiteful, quarrelsome, impulsive and I don’t know what. I hate myself. I have been spared plague and cholera, which I suppose is a good thing, though for how much longer remains to be seen! And yet, I’m also a romantic, I write poetry, I believe in simple things and above all I cherish truth over sentiment. I was spellbound by Sister Anne, prepared to accept whatever she had to offer, whether grace or coup de grâce. She went on speaking in a distant, barely audible voice.
‘Chérifa came to us three weeks ago. She was in a piteous state. She had been wandering the streets of Algiers when a charitable soul, a friend of the order, noticed her. She brought Chérifa here, thinking it was the best thing to do. And in all conscience, I believe it was, though ordinarily our standing and our means make us ill-equipped to deal with such requests. We are tolerated here, no more than that. We offer some small service to the local people, they are so poor they dare not go into the city. I thought long and hard, it is a great responsibility, but given her circumstances, I took her in. I don’t know whether a hospital would have admitted her, she is . . . she was a minor, unmarried, pregnant and . . . bizarrely attired, hee! hee! Blida is an extremely conservative town, ruled by the Islamists. I was frightened for her, they can be so . . . so . . .’
‘If they were just evil, spiteful, vile and satanic, I wouldn’t mind, but they’re narrow-minded and stupid too,’ I said, to help her out.
‘You should not say such things, they are very dangerous. If they should hear you . . .’
‘There’s no fear of that, they’re deaf to all things human.’
‘I called upon a doctor who is a friend of the convent, Doctor Salem, it has been a long time since he practised, but he still has his wits. He took care of her and she quickly recuperated somewhat. I have a number of useful skills myself. We therefore felt she would be able to give birth here in the convent . . . She was so endearing, with her belly button almost touching her chin and that fearless air of hers!’
‘Did she have her holdall?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Her clothes, her belongings, the baby clothes.’
‘Her bag? Oh yes, she dragged it behind her by the strap, it looked like a puppy refusing to walk, hee! hee! hee!’
The slightest thing made the Mother Superior giggle. But she quickly became grave and abstracted. She sat for a moment, silent, thoughtful, staring into the distance, glancing here and there, at the ceiling, at her pale, slender hands clasped in her lap, at the crucifix hanging on the wall or a particular book on the shelves. This, to me, is what religion should mean: to silently contemplate the world, alert to its every murmur, its every tremor. There should be no need for troops and cannons. Words, sighs, glances, they are sufficient. Sister Anne’s eyes radiated the sort of awed apprehensiveness that clearly came from constant prayer. And from penitence, I imagine. Though they live isolated from the world of men, and in close proximity to the Lord, every day the Sisters here must find some minor sin to be erased. I would not be at all surprised to discover she experiences ecstatic visions. There are places such as this, austere, modest, where dream and reality become one as prayers are said. My old house is a little like that; ringing as it is with myth and mysteries and with the echo of unanswered prayers, I don’t know whether I am more enthralled by image or by shadow, nor why I spend my time talking to the dead, or rather to their ghosts. I thought about Maman who had the same habit of searching around whenever she began recounting one of our old family stories. It was as though, rummaging through a cluttered past, she chanced upon it by accident. At some point in this ritual, her eyes would suddenly light up. Something that had baffled her a little she could now see clearly, see the thread of the story amid the confusion of sundry images, she could draw it towards her and reveal its warp and weft, its magical design. In fits and starts of ‘Um . . . Oh, that’s right . . . ah yes, I remember now . . . let me just think,’ she would beat this carpet, dust off the cobwebs then, not quite herself, she would gently tease it out, as though fearful that, if she brought it too quickly from her memory, it might break or that our family secrets might come into contact with the poisoned air of the present, might wither before they could be known. We would wait with bated breath, ready to draw near the better to take in the apparition. I still have her words in my ear; one by one I took them in, treasured them, stored them in the hollow of my memory, more to reassure her than to hear them. She told us these wondrous stories so many times that we scarcely thought about them. I am obsessed by the tale of Tata Houria which is
fascinating and terrible. I often think about Tata Houria, one of Maman’s cousins, about what part love played in her odyssey and what part madness. Because to do what she did, for as long as she did, there had to be something going on in her head. In those unfathomable and uncertain days back in the douar, where there was no thought of deliverance, people lived and died as Adam had done. Firstly, Tata Houria refused to mourn her husband and allow herself to be remarried. Then, she died far from the douar, something no woman had ever done before her – indeed so far from the douar that no one knows quite where – in India, Guatemala, America, Poland or elsewhere. Maman could not remember the name of the country, the poor thing had no notion of geography, she knew the village where she had grown up and Rampe Valée and nothing beyond. She vaguely knew the Kasbah, where she would go once a month with her old friend Zineb to drink mint tea and discuss all the misfortunes in the world since Adam and Eve, talk a little about magic to steel themselves, then, all keyed up, they would rush around visiting the shrines and the mausoleums. Beyond these frontiers, all the world was darkness. Houria’s odyssey began during the Second World War and ended thirty years later in obscurity and legend. Scarcely had Tata Houria been wed than her young husband was called up and sent to war. She waited for his return as women have long learned to wait, praying and weeping in secret. Then one day came the marvellous, unexpected news: all over the planet, people were celebrating the end of the war. One by one survivors trudged home, scrawny, haggard, crippled, but not her husband. ‘Missing, presumed dead,’ according to the government letter read out to the villagers gathered around the local schoolteacher. ‘Wait and see,’ was the unanimous conclusion as everyone returned to their own preoccupations. The post-war years brought famine and unleashed great anger.
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