Chaos of the Senses

by Ahlem Mosteghanemi

  I’d see caravans of refugees fleeing in trucks from one Arab country to another, leaving everything behind after a life of misery and without understanding why.

  I’d see Kuwaitis dancing in the streets, waving US flags, kissing pictures of Bush and offering General Schwarzkopf a handful of Kuwaiti soil, and wonder how we’d come to this.

  A man who couldn’t have cared less about us, who’d never lost a loved one in any of the wars he’d improvised or lost an ounce of his weight during any of the world’s famines, would appear on our television screens in swimming trunks and casually promise us more victories.

  During that entire time I couldn’t stop thinking about committing suicide, and the only thing that kept me from it was the grief I knew it would cause my mother.

  As a matter of fact, I’d dreamed of some sort of big, showy death. I didn’t want to die like Khalil Hawi, who’d shot himself in the forehead with a nondescript hunting rifle. As his brothers and neighbours looked on, he’d killed himself on 7 June 1982 in protest against Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Before pulling the trigger he’d said, ‘What’s become of this nation of ours? After this pitiful show of weakness, I’m ashamed to call myself an Arab.’

  If I had killed myself, I would have wanted to do it in a way that did justice to the grief I felt. I would have wanted my death to be something in the order of the suicide carried out by Japanese writer Yukio Mishima who, shortly after delivering to his publishers the fourth and final book of his Sea of Fertility tetralogy, headed out one Sunday morning to complete the final chapter of his life according to a carefully thought-out plan. He’d decided to commit ritual suicide in protest against Japan’s humiliating defeat by the United States in World War II and the loss of its national identity in the face of Western supremacy.

  Mishima had prepared for his death ahead of time. He’d taken private lessons in wrestling, equestrianism and body-building, which helped to prepare him for a coup attempt in the course of which he went to the Tokyo command of Japan’s Ground Self-defence Forces and, together with four of his followers, took its commandant captive. He then delivered a heartfelt speech to more than a thousand Japanese soldiers gathered there, urging them to reject the post-World War II constitution that prohibits war and forbids Japan to form an army.

  When his words failed to meet with the hoped-for response, Mishima went back to the room where he and his four followers had barricaded themselves. He donned a traditional Japanese garment, tying its sashes and securing its buttons with perfect self-composure. He then invited photographers to take pictures of him together with the four chosen members of the small, one-hundred-man militia he’d trained to defend the greatness of Japan. With the photographers still looking on, he stood grasping his banned samurai sword in preparation to commit hara-kiri before kneeling to commit the gruesome deed. He was then decapitated by one of his followers.

  I tip my hat to you, Mishima!

  Wherever you are, friend, I kiss the brow of your severed head, cast at the feet of your homeland in November 1970 in undying rejection of the ignominy of bowing before America’s might.

  And I still wonder: Were we being optimistic, or just plain naïve, to ally ourselves with a people so stubbornly determined to go on being defeated that they would achieve one stunning failure after another?

  During those days I needed to see Nasser every day if I was to maintain my commitment to Arabdom. He would challenge everything I said, and he refused to let me badmouth any particular Arab regime. His rule was: Either you badmouth all of them, one after another (for reasons he was quite willing to recite to me in great detail, at great length, and ever so persuasively), or you keep your mouth shut! As far as he was concerned, lambasting one of them and not another was a worse offence than not saying anything at all.

  Sometimes he would pass by and spend time with me. Then he would take off, saying, ‘God help this people. Half its leaders are collaborators, and the other half are crazy.’ Then, as an afterthought, he’d add, ‘Of course, it would be even worse if they were collaborators, and crazy, too!’

  Then suddenly Nasser changed.

  He stopped talking to me about the 26 billion dinars that had disappeared from the Algerian state treasury. He stopped talking to me about his friends who, like thousands of students and other young people of Constantine, were prepared to suffer martyrdom in defence of the Iraqi flag. (After the Gulf War began, the phrase Allahu akbar, ‘God is greater’, had been added to Iraq’s flag. This had prompted certain sceptics to suggest that we add the phrase Allahu ghalib, ‘God is victor’, to the Algerian flag, meaning, in effect, ‘We can’t do a thing for you’!) Nor did he talk to me any more about rumours to the effect that Israel had obtained a missile that could reach Algeria, and that it was getting ready to attack Constantine.

  The rumour had gained such credence, in fact, that for nearly a month people were poised for war as though they actually hoped it would happen, whether for the satisfaction of fighting for a just cause, or out of a passion for martyrdom.

  I don’t know whether he’d lost his appetite for conversation, or whether I’d lost my enthusiasm for causes in general, having got to the point where I didn’t know what to do with myself.

  Given his disappointments on the national level and his disillusionment with pan-Arabism, Nasser had washed his hands of Arabdom, or rather, he’d found his new cause in Islamic fundamentalism, which meant washing his hands five times a day as part of ritual ablutions.

  I, who’d always been one cause behind him, couldn’t figure out what was happening to him. But every time we saw each other he seemed more distant than the time before, to the point where he seemed like a complete stranger.

  I didn’t dare laugh or joke with him the way I’d done before. I didn’t even dare disagree with him for fear that he’d start debating with me based on a logic I didn’t know how to respond to.

  Hoping to draw him into a conversation, I said, ‘You saved the day by coming by just now. I can’t stand women like this!’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it was your choice to join this club, so you might as well get used to it.’

  I nearly exploded in his face. But instead I said pitifully, ‘Nasser, you know very well that this atmosphere doesn’t suit me, and I don’t want to go into this again. I’m worn out. Uncle Ahmad died before my very eyes just a few days ago. What happened to him was horrible, beyond belief.’

  I expected him to say something comforting, or to call down God’s mercy on Uncle Ahmad’s soul. But he didn’t say anything at all. Was it because he was so overcome with emotion? Because he didn’t care? I had no idea.

  My thoughts wandered away with me, and for a moment I started imagining the craziest scenarios. I had a sudden flashback of my exchange with the police officer who’d questioned me after Uncle Ahmad’s murder: ‘And your brother? Is he aware of your comings and goings?’ ‘My brother?’ I said. ‘He doesn’t live with me.’ ‘I know.’

  After a long silence, Nasser’s voice broke in, saving me from a near heart attack: ‘May he rest in peace. He was a nice man.’

  I was so relieved I nearly thanked him for what he’d said, and before I knew it I’d flung myself at him, sobbing, and begun showering him with kisses. As for him, all he could do was take me in his arms.

  Wet with my tears, his beard clung to my cheek. It felt strange, as though he were my father rather than the son he’d always been to me.

  Still holding me, he asked, ‘What’s wrong, Hayat?’

  I didn’t answer. I was enjoying his embrace, his unanticipated affection. Suddenly I realized how much I’d needed affection without knowing it, and that it had been years since anyone had held me with tenderness – just plain tenderness, untainted by lust or desire.

  ‘Nasser,’ I said to him through my tears, ‘treat me with affection. Does your religious law allow that? You’re all I have in this world. Don’t be on my side if you don’t want to. But don’t be against me. It’s too painful. You
’re always letting Baba’s death come between us, and you try to outdo everybody else in glorifying our martyrs. But Baba would never have wanted things to be this way. I don’t want the day to come when we’re enemies just because we don’t think the same way.’

  Which of us was crying at that moment? I don’t know.

  All I know is that I could hear laughter coming from the other room where the other women chattered happily away, awaited outside by a driver who hadn’t died yet, and that I’d decided to leave without telling them goodbye.

  I don’t remember any more exactly which event it was that caused me to collapse and robbed me of my appetite for life.

  Nothing held any attraction for me, nor did my life matter to anybody.

  My mother was too preoccupied with her pilgrimage to be thinking about me, my husband was distracted by his responsibilities, my brother was busy with his cause, and the country was absorbed in its confrontations. And when I’d tried to find an illusory man for myself, somebody had come along and shot my illusions to death.

  This city isn’t content to kill you day after day. It also kills your dreams, sending you off to a police station to give your testimony about a crime in which you’ve been implicated by the act of writing.

  My husband, who didn’t have time to try to understand me and who didn’t know what to do with me when he saw me closing up like an oyster, decided to send me to the capital to rest for a while near the sea until the storm had blown over.

  It was the nicest idea he’d had for a long time, and an unexpected gift from Fate.

  Chapter Three

  Of course

  THE JOYS WE WAIT for rarely arrive, and rarely would it happen that, when we have an appointment with someone, Fate would cause either him or us to miss it.

  Consequently, I started living without an engagement diary, hoping in this way to save myself a lot of pointless waiting.

  But after I decided that no lover was worth waiting for, love stationed itself at my door. In fact, love itself became a door that opened automatically the moment I approached it, and over time I’ve learned to be amused at love’s droll counter-logic!

  I’d come to the capital without plans and with hardly any luggage. I’d packed my suitcase with a few clothes that I’d chosen more or less at random as a way of convincing myself that nothing but the sea awaited me. The sea had an indisputable right to see me scantily clad. Consequently, I’d brought the scantiest items I owned and, I admit, a bit of unspoken collusion, since I didn’t know whether I’d really come for the sea’s sake.

  When we take a trip, we’re always running away from something we know. However, we don’t necessarily know what we’ve come looking for.

  I flung my suitcase on to an enormous bed that no one but I would be occupying and went to explore the house where I’d be spending the next week or two. Actually, I wanted to gauge the place’s mood, its vibrations.

  I loved the house. I loved its architectural design and the garden at the back. The garden was dotted with orange and lemon trees that beckoned me to sit on a stone bench shaded by a blossom-laden jasmine vine. So I took a seat and gave myself over to daydreams.

  Like people, there are houses that you love at first sight, and others that you’ll never love even if you live with them for years on end. There are houses that open their hearts to you the minute you walk in the door, and others that are darkened, closed in on their secrets. They’re abodes to which you’ll remain a stranger even if they belong to you.

  This particular house was a lot like me. Its windows didn’t open out on to any neighbours’ yards, its furniture hadn’t been chosen with the intention of dazzling anyone, and it had no secrets to hide. Everywhere I turned, it was light and spacious, bounded by nothing but the greenness of the trees and the blueness of the sea and the sky.

  It was a house that invited you to do nothing but love, lounge and, just possibly, write.

  As I sat there pondering the house, I wondered who had furnished it and taken such good care of its grounds over the last quarter of a century or more. It was easy to see that it dated back to the days of the French occupation, when powerful French feudalists had built opulent summer residences along Algeria’s coastline not far from the plains and agricultural lands they owned.

  After independence the Algerian government took over the vacant properties French builders had abandoned and made them into summer headquarters for its senior officers and officials, who now had a legitimate and permanent presence on the shores of Moretti, Sidi Fredj and Club des Pins. This villa, I surmised, was among the properties that Algerian officers had taken turns occupying each summer until someone had come along and reserved it for himself based on either his military rank or his political influence. And, thanks to a certain new law, this person would have been able to buy the house for nothing – amazingly – but a token dinar.

  When had my husband acquired this villa? And how? They were questions I didn’t care about the answers to. However, they brought my husband to mind, and suddenly I remembered that I hadn’t called him to let him know we’d arrived safely as he’d asked me to do as soon as we got there.

  It would actually have been more comfortable and convenient for Farida and me to have travelled by air. However, my husband had insisted that the chauffeur drive us up so that he could be at our service and guard the large house, where it would have been unthinkable for us to stay alone while we waited for other family members to join us.

  I had a few days ahead of me before other people arrived, and I didn’t know how to spend them. In any case, I decided to start by taking a warm bath and going to bed in celebration of my freedom.

  *

  I was in a hurry to fall asleep, but without falling into the trap of dreams. There are rooms that are so beautiful they seem to border on melancholy, and whose beds punish you by making you dream!

  Even so, by the following morning I still hadn’t escaped from my body. When I woke, desire woke with me. Enveloped by the scent of my craving, I stayed for a while, scattered, under the sheet, not wanting my lazy woman’s slumber to come to an end.

  An unexpected, pleasant sensation tempted me to stay where I was. I hadn’t sought it out. Rather, the sea had brought it to me serendipitously as I lay in bed.

  I’d wakened unusually early that morning, as though I wanted to make the most of every drop of this freedom that might suddenly be taken from me.

  Then all of a sudden I was smitten by an irresistible morning hunger. My appetite for life seemed to have grown exponentially in this new venue. So I sent the driver out to get what we needed for breakfast while I stayed to look at the sea. After a whole night of ebbing and flowing, its salty fragrance crept towards me like a wild animal stalking its prey, inflaming my senses with a subtle craving for love.

  I ignored its scandalous confession to having spent a night of love right next to me, busily taming its waves while I was busily taming my senses and running away from the worries that had been trailing me in my slumber.

  Nevertheless, I’d slept more soundly that night than I had in days. I’d experienced such complete tranquillity, it was as though I’d left everything behind and flung myself on to a vast bed that had no memory. And now the only thing I wanted to do was to have breakfast and go on a walk with Farida to explore the neighbourhood.

  *

  Even before Sidi Fredj’s marina drew me in with its tourist attractions and yachts, I was astounded by the way I always seemed to end up coincidentally in places so steeped in history, the types of places that brandish their memories in your face at every turn.

  After all, Sidi Fredj isn’t just the name of a saint whose tomb people visit to this day in search of his blessing but, in addition, the name of the port at which France first entered Algeria. It was here that France’s warships set down anchor on 5 July 1830 after crushing all the humble defences that had been set up in the Sidi Fredj mosque and turning the mosque into a command centre for its military personnel.
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  By the will of Fate – or, rather, of the Algerian negotiators – France left Algeria on this very day a hundred and thirty years later, and 5 July also became its independence day.

  Indeed, there was a time when Algerians insisted on writing history with their egos! The legendary incident in which Hussein Dey, Ottoman ruler of Algiers, slapped the French consul with his fan – and which France used as a pretext for going into Algeria to restore the French honour after being so rudely insulted – bears eloquent testimony to our pride and our fanatic zeal for our dignity, not to mention our innate insanity.

  Possibly as a way of thumbing their noses at history, the Algerians displayed consummate artistry in designing the Sidi Fredj port following independence. To wit, they constructed it in the form of a modern-day fortress, with a tower and lighthouse so high, one suspects there were still people who thought an enemy would approach from the sea. Since that time, however, no enemy has approached from the sea, nor even necessarily from outside the country!

  *

  One day I went on a morning outing that did my spirits good. I took off walking without any particular destination in mind, starry-eyed as though I were discovering the world for the first time. Then Farida and I came back to the house with the things we’d bought, each of us cherishing her own dreams.

  I felt as though I’d made a little dream of my own come true. It was a dream that, simple as it was, hadn’t seemed within my grasp before, and which consisted of nothing more than walking down a street with peace of mind.

  Farida and I began settling into a rhythm suited to life in a summer getaway, and the days we spent in the villa were more peaceful than any I’d ever known before.

  Despite our previous disagreements and the difference in our ages, cultures and tastes, we were happy to be together. We’d become co-conspirators in the enjoyment of the momentary freedom that had descended upon us even though, under the circumstances in which we found ourselves, it meant different things to each of us.