by Simon Pare
“I was a novice teacher in a hamlet on the High Plateaux. I’d been lucky for an Arab growing up in the countryside; I’d been able to go to school and then study with the white priests. I was hoping that fortune would continue to smile on me, that I could cobble together a nice future for myself, a nice house, a nice wife. The schools inspector despised Arabs and didn’t have much time for me – nor I for him for that matter. I didn’t show it, of course; I satisfied myself with liking my pupils and my job.”
Tahar gave a sad smile.
“You see, it wasn’t much. But for me, coming from where I came from, it was enormous.”
He sighed, as if apologising.
“My parents’ village was about sixty miles from my school. Everything was wretched there. I hated its degrading misery and even if I loved my family, I only went back to my douar for special occasions. That particular time, it was for my nephew’s circumcision, my elder brother’s first son. The day after the festivities, a group of soldiers led by a captain entered the village. They were chasing some maquisards and claimed we had sheltered them. They questioned us one by one. As we all kept silent, they undressed several men and beat them with sticks and wet rope. Then they forced them to drink salted water. The captain ordered his men to hang up the man he thought was the village chief from a beam by his foot and wrist.”
Gently he stroked the bruise turning blue on his cheek.
“That chief was my father. For the first time in my life I saw this austere, white-haired, intransigent man weeping with pain and humiliation like a kid. The soldiers were laughing and I didn’t have the courage to take a strong stand against it. As for my elder brother, he leapt at the captain, but a soldier stopped him in his tracks with a bullet in the thigh. The officer, mad with rage, had my brother dragged off to a rocky outcrop and pushed him over the edge.”
Again his voice broke. He looked coyly in the direction of his prisoner.
“Do you have any brothers?”
“No.”
“Then you certainly won’t understand. That brother had protected me throughout my childhood; he turned himself in instead of me whenever I did something stupid because my father ruled us with an iron hand. How many thrashings did my brother get because of me! It was simple: I revered him; he made the sun rise for me. Up until that damned morning I was sure that I would lay down my life for him.”
A cuckoo made its characteristic coo-coo call. The dawn had long since melted into morning.
“What did the soldiers do next?”
“Nothing, apart from dealing out a few punches and disappearing as quickly as they had appeared with threats of the same treatment the next time they patrolled.”
“And you weren’t maltreated by the soldiers?”
“No, probably because I was the only one in the douar who spoke French. Maybe, to their minds, a native schoolteacher who spoke their language was necessarily on the side of the French army…”
Tahar broke off a blade of grass and stuck it in his mouth.
“We made a formal complaint. Well… I complained, because no one in the douar trusted in French justice. I quickly realised that people were whispering behind my back that I was turning to the courts to make people forget my cowardliness. Hadn’t they stripped and flogged my father, then killed my brother before my eyes without any sign of revolt from me? My poor mother didn’t accuse me of anything, but I saw that she more or less shared their opinion. She still loved me – I had been her favourite… – but she also began to despise me a little.”
Pulling the blade of grass out of his mouth, he crushed it between his fingers and then threw it away.
“Actually, they weren’t wrong. I’d been paralysed with fear in front of those soldiers. And also I didn’t want to lose everything – my brother, my teaching job and the minute ambitions I had devised for myself – in one go. A few months later, notwithstanding our statements and the lawyer who had relieved us of all our savings, the judges acquitted the soldiers and their captain. The worst thing was that they finally confessed, but the court didn’t take that into account. According to the judges, the accused had been doing their duty.”
The Algerian turned to the soldier, a bitter grimace twisting the corners of his mouth.
“That doesn’t really come as a surprise to you, does it, such indulgence towards your mates?
Mathieu forced himself to keep a neutral expression. The rebel shrugged his shoulders.
“After the acquittal, I took to the jebel. I didn’t have any choice.”
His voice was full of resentment.
“Yes… neither the village nor the French left me any choice. It wasn’t that I couldn’t care less about liberating Algeria back then, but, well, the humiliation had been going on for over a century and independence could wait a few more years, just long enough for me to feather my little nest! Until you captured me, I’d been wading around in mud for six months, dying of hunger, cold and fear, scared the whole time that a plane might bomb us or, worse still, burn us to a crisp with napalm. Looking back, I feel like eternity itself would have trouble matching those six fucking months for length!”
The pistol span one way on his finger, then the other.
“You see, at the end of the day, it’s not very difficult to become what you call a terrorist. How would you have reacted in my shoes?”
And realising the absurdity of his question the man fell silent for several minutes. Mathieu thought the other man would never speak again. He started to shift his legs into a less painful position but gave up, called to order by the pins and needles numbing his limbs.
“Then came the events in Melouza.”
“At the camp, I didn’t understand or get involved in any political discussions. I was too busy with my own rancour and remorse at having done nothing for my father and my brother while there was still time. Oh, such remorse! It was like a poisoned fruit that I just kept peeling. The more bitter it tasted, the harder I chewed. The leaders had decided to put several mechtas in the Melouza area that were casting sidelong glances at Messali Hadj and the MNA back on the right track. It was true that the war veteran had fought all his life for Algeria, but they kept telling us that he was past it, that his inflated personal ambition was harming the common cause and that his MNA, the Mouvement National Algérien, was gradually turning into a pack of traitors in the pay of the French army. The political commissars hammered it into us: if you want to fight for Algerian independence, there is only one party capable of this historic enterprise, the FLN and its military wing, the ALN, the Armée de Libération Nationale; everyone else are just fledgling renegades and harkis. For my comrades and me, that had become an article of faith as incontrovertible as the Koran! I had no reason to doubt my leaders’ word, all of them tough, courageous men who were always in the front line risking their lives when we clashed with enemy soldiers. One night we set out with six platoons totalling several hundred djounoud. Our commander had told us that the aim was to put the local MNA out of action and punish the recalcitrant douars. According to them our mission was simple: a show of strength, arrest some traitors, stiff fines and assorted threats for the future should the villages not come over to our side.”
He nibbled at his lip.
“I realise now that I wasn’t very smart. Not a doubt crossed my mind when the commander recruited back-up troops in rival villages: the FLN officers must know what they’re doing! The area around Melouza is a patchwork of Kabyle and Arab douars, and the two populations have never got on. I didn’t like the look of these civilians armed with knives and axes one bit, but we were assured that their presence would inspire even greater awe in the refractory villages.”
Mathieu saw him dig around in one of his pockets with the reflex of a smoker searching for a packet of cigarettes that wasn’t there. A wrinkle creased his brow. An additional concern knotted the Frenchman’s stomach: Why was the fell telling him all this now, and in such detail, when he hadn’t admitted it under torture? Did he already r
egard him as a simple pair of quivering ears on top of a ‘nice ripe corpse’, as their platoon referred to suspects due for elimination?
“After the first night and a skirmish with an armed group from the MNA, we headed for a douar a few miles from Melouza. We surrounded the rebellious douar of Béni Ilemane. I was just a novice mujahid in the midst of hardened fighters and I didn’t feel I had any right to comment on my leaders’ orders. So when, early on, I saw houses on fire I didn’t like it, but I didn’t say anything. That was maybe when the village constable and his family were slaughtered. I didn’t know anything about it at the time. Our troops were spread around the five mechtas and each of us had only a very partial view of events. Basically I felt that the brutality was inevitable; we had just been involved in a bloody skirmish, the region was turning out to be very hostile to the FLN and, naturally enough, the French army was playing on that to pursue and kill our men. The local people had made the wrong choice and they had to be taught a lesson to remember… Next, our leaders ordered us to take all the men over fifteen up onto the rocky peak above Mechta Kasbah. The local dignitaries had been gathered in a mosque with the aim of forcing them to rally to our cause. The discussions had dragged on all through the night. At dawn, despite the threats, the village leaders still refused to disown their old messiah Messali and his damn MNA. That was the moment the order was given to massacre all the men and teenagers assembled on the peak.”
Tahar clutched one hand with the other and a look of extreme bewilderment came over his battered face.
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing… I asked the man next to me, ‘What? What did the lieutenant and the captain say? For God’s sake, it can’t be true! We’re not going to kill them all? They’re just like us – I don’t believe this!’ And I added the following stupid question: ‘Brother, what will they say about me back in my village?’”
The horrified man ran the back of his hand over his chin.
“Yes… what will she say about me?”
Intrigued, Mathieu muttered, “Who are you talking about? Your mother?”
The Algerian flew into a fit of anger.
“No. I’m talking about a different woman… The woman I love… That I want to marry… I… I… And the devil take you!”
The Algerian’s clay-coloured cheeks had turned scarlet. Despite the gravity of the moment, Mathieu suppressed a smile.
“And shit too!”
His eyes were riveted to the ground; the man seemed to be reliving a scene he couldn’t tear himself away from.
“I think I killed two people up on that peak… The first was a peasant, whom I shot in panic because my platoon commander was furious at my hesitation and thumped me on the shoulder with an order to fire into the crowd. All I could see of that poor civilian was his chèche. I was taken aback by the bland, warm smell of the blood running past our feet, the axes, the flames from the burning shacks, the screams of pain, the cries for mercy from women lacerating their faces, the insults from officers as they yelled in our ears that traitors were worse than the French soldiers. It was horrible; I noticed how incredibly enthusiastic some of my companions were…”
He pinched his bottom lip between two fingers for a long time, as if punishing it for the horrors he was uttering.
“I asked God for help, but around me some were shouting ‘Allah, save us!’ and others ‘Allah, help us kill them!’My prayer was grotesque; God seemed to me like a spectator who wouldn’t dream of helping anyone. I fell silent and carried on shaking. My second victim was an old man my father’s age. One of our back-up men chased after a young boy and sent him sprawling with a kick in the backside. Lying on the ground, the teenager started to yell in terror at the sight of the pickaxe raised above him. His father, the old man, had managed to escape from the main group of prisoners. Amid the hail of bullets and the unbearable moans of men having their throats slit he was yelping, ‘Don’t kill my son, he’s too young, he knows nothing about politics. Oh mercy – God will reward you!’ The guy with the pickaxe hadn’t heard or seen him approaching. The old man was getting ready to batter him to death with an iron bar. I reacted without thinking: I fired a shot, killing the old man instantly. Our man turned round, scared out of his wits. He was a kid of about twenty whose good humour and helpfulness had caught my attention. Throughout the negotiations with the dignitaries from the mosque, he hadn’t stopped serving tea and biscuits to our group of djounoud. The bloke caught sight of the body stretched out behind him first, then me with my rifle still pointing at the dead man. A broad relieved smile spread across his face. A second later, just as cheerfully, he stove in the kid’s skull with a single blow of his pickaxe. A mixture of blood and brain spurted as far as my boots.”
Tahar hunched up, as though this memory had struck him dumb.
“That pickaxe blew the boy’s head apart and shattered my heart into a thousand pieces. I wanted independence – but not at that price. Since then I’ve been like a dead man. I didn’t join the rebels to kill a father defending his son… My brother had been killed for trying to protect an old man. So I disobeyed and ran away. I roamed like a madman, but I knew I never wanted to go back to the mujahideen. I thought of suicide, but I wasn’t brave enough.”
He cackled with a kind of wicked delight.
“I let myself be captured by the French military because I was convinced you would execute me on the spot. It would have all been over in one go: my cowardice, my stain, this war I no longer understand… Seems I was wrong. I hadn’t reckoned with people like you…”
“Just to get this straight,” Aziz interrupted him with a contemptuous gesture, “you became friends because you were like each other: one tortured rebels, the other killed civilians.”
“No, please don’t say that about Tahar!” Mathieu protested in a cracked voice. “I’m a real bastard, but he was just a killer. Or, in any case, a reluctant killer… Listen to me, Aziz…”
“No, you listen to me, Mathieu. And you’d better open your ears wide.”
Mathieu thought that Aziz would have less trouble agreeing to the kidnapper’s demands after hearing these revelations.
“I couldn’t give a damn how you justify your vile stories from half a century ago. All I can think of is my daughter being cut up into bits. Tell me one thing: what did the man who swore to take revenge on Tahar look like? Can you describe him? His face? Anything particular that might help us recognise him?”
Mathieu shrugged. A far-off commentator at the back of his mind replied exasperatedly: “How’s a muttonhead like me supposed to remember an Arab I glimpsed for a few minutes over fifty years ago? You all looked the same to me back then…”
“No, nothing specific,” the old man finally sighed, “…except that he was a redhead… So damn red it was a shock and you forgot his face.”
“Great clue, that! The nutter must be so old now that his hair’s had all the time in the world to go white. Look at yours. Who knows, he might even be bald!”
His voice grew evermore high-pitched, both beseeching and menacing at the same time.
“Nothing else comes to mind? What language did he speak in, Arabic or Kabyle? Think harder: some detail… a scar… I don’t know… a name? Something that slipped out during his confrontation with Tahar?”
The old man gazed at the utterly distraught individual as he searched vainly for some meaning in the disaster engulfing him. How alike all sufferers look! he thought. He recalled the frantic pupils of Tahar’s eyes, the same futile revolt.
He moved his hand and placed it over Aziz’s. The father was startled by this unexpected familiarity – and then his body froze, suddenly alert.
“You remember something?”
“The first name, Aziz.”
“His first name… his?” the Algerian managed, his voice quivering with hope, however tiny.
“No. Not his.”
Mathieu felt like an icy stone was swelling up in his stomach. And that soon, by some terrible miracle, it would cr
ush his exhausted heart.
“I never agreed with Tahar on this. I begged him not to do it. But he was as stubborn as a mule when he decided to be.”
Aziz didn’t give him time to explain why he loved Tahar more than the brother he never had. There is too little time left until the fateful dawn. Will no one ever know? Mathieu entwines and untwines his fingers again and again, as if picking apart the strands of the tragedy. For the first time in a very long while, he asks for help from ‘L’il Robert’. A tiny part of his soul manages a smile. That pigheaded Tahar loved you, maybe not as much as the brother he lost, but for you it was something at least! And then, don’t forget, he saved you; not your life – yours wasn’t worth a curse – but something more precious than that…
When the mujahideen appeared in the clearing at the end of that morning, they found the two men sitting facing each other in silence, Mathieu still shocked at his release. A moment earlier, Tahar had climbed a tree after a bird alerted them by suddenly taking flight. He had come back down looking tense and unsure of what action to take. Then, aiming one last passing kick at his prisoner, he set him free.
“Put your belt on and your laces back in. Tell them you’re a deserter who’s been tortured by your own side because they suspected you of treachery. They’re distrustful and they’ll give you a hard time, so make sure your story’s credible. They’ll kill you if they think you might have belonged to the DOP. Pray that none of them passed through your hands.”
He concluded with a snigger: “You can add that you helped me to escape. With a little luck, the maquisards will soon think you’re a hero.”
“Why are you saving my life?”
“You saved mine, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but first I…”
“Tortured me, you mean?”
He made only a vague gesture by way of reply.