You Changed My Life

by Abdel Sellou

  “Abdel, you don’t put clients in the trunk,” Monsieur explains after getting me out.

  The guy in question had rented a car and refused to give it back. I went to get him myself with Yacine. We only wanted to teach the thief a little lesson. By the way, he recognized that he was wrong because he didn’t press charges.

  “Abdel, this can’t go on any longer. This company isn’t Téléloc, it’s Téléshock! Do you realize we’re going to have to liquidate?”

  This Godfather is the big boss. He never threatens, never asks to see the books.

  “Monsieur Pozzo, should we try something else?”

  He’s a gambler, maybe more so than me.

  “Do you have an idea, Abdel?”

  “Well . . . the auctions, there’s money in it, right?”

  “Oh, not cars again!”

  “No, I was thinking more about real estate auctions . . . Candle auctions.”

  You had to find run-down apartments, renovate them, and sell them fast, pocketing the added value in the process. In the United States, they call it “flipping.” Unfortunately, Alberto, Driss, Yacine, Youssef, and his pit bulls were no more talented in plumbing and painting than they’d been in driving. Monsieur Pozzo quickly reoriented me toward an activity in which we could rely on just our own two skill sets. He also had another objective: a change of climate.

  “Abdel, Paris doesn’t suit me anymore. Too cold, too damp . . . you wouldn’t happen to have a sunnier destination to propose, would you?”

  “There’s plenty of that. The West Indies? La Réunion? Brazil? Oh yeaaahhh . . . Brazil . . .”

  I can see myself sipping a guava juice on a perfect beach surround by girls in thongs.

  “Brazil is a bit far, Abdel. My children are grown, but I’d like to stay two or three hours away by plane, maximum. Say, what if we go and see what we could do in Morocco?”

  “Morocco? Great, I love Morocco!”

  It’s true. I always preferred the couscous at Brahim’s mother’s place.

  37

  Monsieur Pozzo and I land in Marrakech. A mild breeze envelops us as we get off of the plane. We can already see the palm trees.

  “That’s good! Right, Monsieur Pozzo?”

  “A limousine is waiting for us. Magnificent.”

  “That’s nice! Right, Monsieur Pozzo?”

  We go to the address my friend gave . . . a riad, a type of home with a garden or courtyard in the middle. It’s locked, and I don’t have the key.

  “That’s stupid! Right, Abdel?”

  No problem. I know a place. Another riad in the Medina. The limousine drops us off at Jemaa-el-Fna plaza. The snake charmers back up when they see the wheelchair I’m dragging, more than pushing, over to the street. The ground is dirt. Pedestrians walk clinging to the wall on the right, bicycles race down the left lane, and we go right down the middle. We zigzag between chicken nests. Monsieur Pozzo is already regretting the trip. He regrets it even more when he realizes that the only room on the ground floor of the riad opens onto the patio and has no heating. I use my favorite joke:

  “Don’t move. I’m going to go get some electric heaters.”

  “I’m not moving Abdel, I’m not moving.”

  Turns out that I have a little mishap. It has to do with a fist—one of mine—thrown in the face of a not-so-helpful parking lot security guard. But when I finally come back, I’ve got what we need to transform the place into an oven. It’s an emergency. Monsieur Pozzo’s entire body is shaking.

  “Well, you see, you’re still moving!”

  First thing the next day, we set out on a trek around the country. My driving talents are really put to the test. We get lost several times, but it’s never my fault: we’re not the ones who put so much snow in the Atlas and so much sand in the desert. Finally, we stop at Saïdia, otherwise known as “the blue pearl of the Mediterranean,” in the extreme northeastern part of the country, just next to my native Algeria. A gorgeous beach, dozens of giant hotels, what else could you put here? Everything! We plan on creating an amusement park for tourists. We have to find the land and get the necessary authorization from the local governor, who is really hard to get in touch with. The days stretch out and not so effectively.

  There’s a very pretty young girl at the hotel where we’re staying. When our eyes meet, something happens. Something new. Something that stops me. Right there. I am speechless. It reminds me now of the uneasiness I felt when I first showed up at Philippe Pozzo di Borgo’s house.

  I get a hold of myself. We’re just passing through here.

  “Abdel, you were just passing through on the avenue Léopold II, remember?” snickers the Jiminy Cricket in me. I shut him out, telling him to go bother Pinocchio. I must have been thinking out loud. The beautiful receptionist stares at me and bursts out laughing. She thinks I’m nuts. That’s a bad start.

  Monsieur Pozzo and I take our project very seriously, but it quickly becomes clear to us that it’ll take months to get this started. We go back to Paris and bring Laurence into the project (once again, for anything that requires two capable hands and a brain). We multiply our round trips. We always stay at the same hotel, of course. Every time, the beautiful girl at reception smiles at me, attentive, distant, mysterious. I’m a total idiot around her.

  She tells me, “I like you, Abdel Yamine.”

  And then: “I like you a lot, Abdel Yamine.”

  And finally: “If you want me, Abdel Yamine, you have to marry me.”

  There’s something else . . . she’s one of a gaggle of sisters. She’s never had a big brother to shut her up; she lives her life as she pleases; she makes her own choices.

  She asks Monsieur Pozzo: “Do you think it’s a good idea for me to marry Abdel Yamine?”

  He gives her his blessing like a father. But whose father? Hers or mine?

  The beautiful girl’s name is Amal. We have three children: Abdel Malek was born in 2005. I consider him the intellectual of the family: always well behaved, does well at school, and doesn’t hit the younger ones too much. Our second son, Salaheddine, came a year later. He had serious health problems at birth, had to have several serious operations, but he’s a fighter. At home, we call him Didine, but he’s more like Rocky Balboa. I see myself in him. I promise him a great career as a crook, which makes his mother crazy. Finally our daughter, Keltoum, came along in 2007. She has beautiful curly hair, is clever like a fox; she’s charm and mischief all at once. I could have named her Candy. For now, Amal has decided we’re stopping there. She calls the shots.

  During a trip to Marrakech, Monsieur Pozzo met a rare pearl named Khadija. They live together in Essaouira, on the coast where it’s never too hot or cold. They’re raising two little girls whom they adopted. They’re doing well. I go to see them a lot during vacation, either alone or with my family. All of the kids play together in the swimming pool; the house is filled with their screams and laughter. There’s joy, there’s life. If I drive on the Moroccan roads, I never drive very fast . . .

  Our project for the amusement park in Saïdia never happened, but who cares.

  38

  I said enough to Monsieur Pozzo when I had my accident. I wasn’t his employee anymore. I was still by his side. I still drove him wherever he needed to go. Every day I did all the things I had had to do over the preceding years, but I was no longer his life auxiliary. I was just in his life.

  In October 1997, at the beginning of the November vacation, he asked me to take his son Robert-Jean to his grandmother’s in Normandy. The kid got into the backseat, as quiet and nice as ever. Yacine wanted to get some air, so he sat next to me. I got behind the wheel of the Safrane, my Safrane. We didn’t get very far: by Porte Maillot, just at the tunnel exit going toward La Défense, the car just quit. Engine failure, just like that, with no warning, right in the middle lane. I put on the hazards. At first the other cars honked at us before figuring out that we weren’t trying to ruin their lives, then they drove around us in the right and l
eft lanes. A highway safety truck got there fast. Two men in fluorescent jumpsuits set up the roadblocks around the Safrane to guide traffic. Now we just had to wait.

  Yacine and Robert-Jean stayed in the car. I leaned against the driver’s side door and looked out for the tow truck. I wasn’t worried; I didn’t think I was in danger. For a good ten minutes, I watched the cars passing to the left a good eight feet in front of me, just beyond the bright orange cones showing them the way. Then I saw a semi also going around us on the left. Well, I saw the back of the truck that was approaching the Safrane and me. The driver turned a little too soon. I was sandwiched between his trailer and the Safrane. I just had time to shout. I sprawled out on the ground and lost consciousness for a moment.

  I vaguely remember getting loaded into an ambulance. I felt an excruciating pain when they lifted me onto the gurney and I passed out again. I woke up at the hospital in Neuilly with the promise of surgery the next day. Philippe Pozzo di Borgo quickly dredged up a new life auxiliary. I can imagine how the poor guy must have felt being welcomed into his new job! His boss was asking him to drive him to the hospital to keep his predecessor company. They sent him in search of chocolate in the cafeteria to get rid of him.

  “So how’s the new guy?”

  “He’s . . . professional.”

  “He’s not the king of bullshit, huh . . .”

  “And you, Abdel, you’re becoming the king of expressions!”

  “Oh yeah . . . and who’s the best?”

  “You are, Abdel. You, when you’re standing up!”

  A hospital that doesn’t give a shit about charity . . . you had to see it. The aristocratic tetraplegic and the little Arab with his hip in pieces, side by side in their wheelchairs checking out the nurses . . .

  “How long will it be, Abdel?”

  “A few weeks, at least. The doctors aren’t sure the outcome will last very long. I don’t need a prosthetic for now, but there’s some problem with the ligament or something . . .”

  “You’re always welcome at home, you know that?”

  “Of course, I’m the best!”

  It’s not always so easy to say thank you . . .

  I got back to work, or back to my partnership with Monsieur Pozzo, a few months after the accident. That’s when we started Téléloc, then the candle auction apartments, and finally the project in Morocco. During that period, I had to stop several times for surgery, not to mention weeks of physical rehabilitation. I wasn’t even thirty yet. I thought I was a little young to be a part of the second class invalids, just one rank below Monsieur Pozzo. Social Security told me I wasn’t allowed to work—too dangerous for my health! I thought that was a little extreme . . . that was proof that I’d already changed. But I never would have admitted it. As usual, I talked the talk without thinking about what I was saying.

  “No more messing around, Abdel. You’re going to find out what life is all about,” Monsieur Pozzo told me.

  “You’re right, and I’m going to get all I can out of it! Now that I’m all broken, I’m going to get paid for doing nothing. The good life, here I come!”

  He did everything he could to try to get me to pull it together. I tried hard to make him think he wasn’t succeeding. Being paid to stay at home was already boring to me: I couldn’t sit still!

  Monsieur Pozzo talked to me like a father would, an advisor, a sage. He tried to teach me order and morality, values that had always been completely foreign to me. He did it gently, with intelligence, so as not to put me on the defensive as I was with the teachers, the police, and the judges. He talked to me with kindness and detachment at the same time. He wanted me to obey the rules. It was surely partly to protect society, but mostly to protect me from it. He was afraid I’d put myself in danger, that I’d expose myself to the law again, to prison and also to my own violence. When I told him that I’d done time at Fleury-Mérogis it was in a moment of weakness or to show off. I don’t know if he believed me or not, but he didn’t question me about it. Ever since we first met, he’d known that I either didn’t answer questions or gave ridiculous answers. He knew that you had to let me come forward on my own, and that I wouldn’t necessarily do that anyway. He knew that I was uncontrollable, but he kept me on the tracks of acceptability. In his immobile hands, I was the puppet, the toy, the animal, the doll. Abdel Yamine Sellou, the first remote-control GI Joe in history.

  39

  When I talk about myself, I say what I want, when I want, if I want. One truth hides a lie. Another truth seems so huge that it seems like a lie. The lies add up and are so huge that you end up wondering if they aren’t hiding a certain truth . . . I tell the truth, I tell a lie, you’ve got to be pretty smart to make out the difference and hats off to the one who does. But sometimes I get tricked. The journalists who interviewed me for Mireille Dumas’s show didn’t get all the answers to their questions but they knew how to get around the barrier created by my stubbornness. They filmed my silences. They did close-ups on my face. They caught a look directed at Monsieur Pozzo. And these images alone said a lot. A lot more than I would have admitted in words.

  When I accepted the proposal to do this book, I naïvely thought I could continue along the same road I’d always taken: no cameras, no microphones this time. I say what I want, but I shut up if I want! Before starting this exercise, I didn’t realize I was ready to talk. To explain to other people—the readers, as it happens—what I’d still never explained to myself. Once again, I’m talking about explaining, not “justifying.” You understand by now that I’m all too happy to talk for self-satisfaction, but not for self-pity. I can’t stand this fascination the French have with analyzing everything and forgiving everything, even the unforgivable, on the pretext of another culture, of a problem in upbringing, an unhappy childhood. I didn’t have an unhappy childhood, on the contrary! I grew up like a lion in the savanna. I was the king. The strongest, most intelligent, and most seductive. When I let the gazelle drink at the watering hole, it was because I wasn’t hungry. But when I was, I pounced on it. As a child, I wasn’t scolded for being violent any more than a lion cub would be for his hunting instincts. Is that an unhappy childhood?

  It was simply a childhood that didn’t prepare me for becoming an adult. I wasn’t aware of it and neither were my parents. Nobody’s to blame.

  I never talked about my past with Monsieur Pozzo. He tried, delicately, to get me to talk about it, but I’d launch into a joke. What he rightly heard was me refusing any kind of introspection, and he let it go. He was giving me chances without my knowing.

  “Go back home and see your family.”

  “Get back in touch with the people who fed you.”

  “Go visit your native country.”

  And the most recent:

  “Accept this proposal to write a book. It’s an opportunity to take stock of your situation. It’s worth it, you’ll see!”

  He knew what he was talking about. Before his accident, he had raced forward at two hundred miles an hour without ever looking back. Then from one day to the next, he was paralyzed, subjected to eighteen months of physical rehabilitation in a specialized center, surrounded by men and women just as unhappy as he was—and sometimes younger—and he took stock. He discovered who he really was deep down and learned to observe the Other—with a capital letter, as he says—he had not taken the time to see until then.

  In my silence and in my jokes, Philippe Pozzo saw my refusal to slow down. He kept on encouraging me.

  It took circumstances beyond my control to make me listen to his advice.

  For starters, I went home to see my family. I visited my country.

  40

  I know the king in Morocco. I’m talking about Abdel Moula I, king of turkeys. We’re pretty close; we’ve helped each other out before. We met under strange circumstances in the streets of Paris. Life in his native country suits him much better.

  Abdel Moula made me a golden offer. “You should get into chicken! There’s still room here
in the poultry game.”

  He was ready to share his territory with me. I couldn’t accept. All feathered animals were the same to me, and I didn’t see myself being number two. Number one or nothing. Up until then, I’d mostly been nothing at all—that had to change. I also didn’t see myself taking the place of a friend who’d welcomed me so generously. I simply didn’t see myself in Morocco, by the way: I was convinced that if the amusement park project in Saïdia didn’t work out, it would be due in large part to my origins. Algerians and Moroccans don’t like each other very much. Algerians think the Moroccans consider themselves the princes of North Africa, full of their culture and riches. The Moroccans think the Algerians are cowardly, lazy, rough. The Moroccan administration found every possible obstacle to stop me from marrying Amal. I had to bring her to France on a tourist visa to pull her out of her country’s claws. Morocco wanted to keep Amal, but they didn’t want me.

  It quickly dawned on me that everything would be easier in Algeria and at least there, I wasn’t betraying anyone. Abdel Moula offered to train me in poultry farming. From building construction to the choice of feed, he taught me everything. Monsieur Pozzo played the role of the banker. A very special banker who never counts. And I went to my native country to find a place to settle down.

  It had been over thirty years since I set foot in Algeria. I’d forgotten all about its colors, its odors, and its sounds. But this wasn’t some big “rediscovery.” I had the impression of never having known the place. It was an introduction more than a reintroduction, and I was going there reluctantly.

  Ever pragmatic, I stayed faithful to my creed: take advantage. I told myself that in France, everything had already been done, that the administrative formalities were very complicated, that banks didn’t lend money (and definitely not to young Arabs with criminal records), that employer contributions were hefty even for start-ups . . . Take advantage, Abdel, take advantage. You still have an Algerian passport, your country that you don’t know is opening its arms, it’s exempting you from contributions, income taxes, sales tax, and import costs for fifteen years.