Behold the man . . .
It wasn’t his feet that kissed the soil of the homeland at every step. Rather, it was the soil of Algeria herself that celebrated his every step and kissed the soles of his shoes. Meanwhile, people’s hearts cried, ‘Stop, history! One of your men has come to us!’
January 14, 1992 was exceptional even in its weather. The rain that had been falling in torrents for days suddenly stopped, and out came the sun. It was as though Nature was herself in harmony with what Algerians were feeling, or as though she wanted to conspire with history to give Boudiaf the best day of his life.
All afternoon Algerians’ eyes were glued to their television screens. They wanted to see and hear this man who had entered the Silence Party thirty years before. What would he say?
Everyone wanted, if only with their eyes, to kiss this man whose comrades affectionately dubbed him ‘Mr Kindness and Patriotism’ and whom all of us revered in our hearts as a father. Since Boumédienne’s death, we had been orphans, suffering an emotional bankruptcy that surpassed the bankruptcy of our economy, and a national deficit of love even greater than the deficit in our budget.
We were looking for a man with the stature of Abdel Nasser, the eloquence of Boumédienne, and the integrity of Boudiaf. We were looking for a man who was as simple as we were, who would run his hand over our heads, pat us on the shoulder, tell us simple things we could believe, and promise us dreams that we knew he could make come true. We were looking for a man who would cry with us for everyone who had died without scrutinizing their political or religious affiliations, a man who would apologize to the living for those who had died, and to the dead for the assassination of their dreams.
We were looking for a man who, from the moment he stepped off the plane, would declare war on those who had assaulted our future and achieved glory for themselves by humiliating an entire nation. We were looking for a man who would say, ‘Algeria first!’ and awaken our pride, and whose simple words would become a motto to live by.
We, of course, had been waiting for Boudiaf for as long as we could remember, yet without knowing it. But he, what had he been waiting for? One day he had said to his wife, ‘Even all this fanfare can’t keep them from assassinating me. I don’t trust them.’ When she asked him if he had come with the intention of committing suicide, he replied – like someone who knows his fate is inescapable, ‘It’s my duty. My only hope is that they’ll give me some time.’
* * *
The next day the city woke up in the mood for a good debate, and I woke up in the mood to write. I couldn’t see any better way to celebrate Boudiaf ’s return than to go back to that notebook of mine.
I opened it at the place where, during a kiss four months earlier, both love and ink had run out on me.
My intention had been to write something about the present, to describe my wonder at the sight of Boudiaf. But my emotions turned my pen back to the past, awakening within me another man, a man who was bound to appear whenever I opened this notebook. It was a man who had once said to me, ‘I thought about how, if kisses die the way we do, the best time to die would be during a kiss.’ Then he had left.
Ever since that day I had been nurturing memory with his feverish words lest the fires of love be extinguished while I waited for him.
Was it desire? The need to write? Or a kind of fate that makes every individual story parallel to some communal story, though we never know which of them is writing the other?
Otherwise, how is one to explain the surprise that was waiting for me three weeks after Boudiaf ’s return? Never once had I stopped feeling that I was going to meet him in some public place or other. Instead, however, I stumbled across him where I had least expected him to be: in my own home, on the pages of a newspaper lying neglected on the floor next to my husband’s desk!
I love those presents that life gives you without any particular occasion, the kind that turn your life upside down with a simple coincidence. There are some that it flings on the ground in front of you so that when you bend down gratefully to pick them up, you realize you’ve stumbled serendipitously upon love!
And what if you’ve stumbled upon something else? After all, I don’t think love has ever been in such close proximity to politics!
* * *
In a photo of Boudiaf with members of the National Assembly, I saw him, and could hardly believe my eyes. I fixed my gaze on his face in particular. I knew those features perfectly. That absent look was the same one that had given me pause on the day when he took off his shades to kiss me. The hair, the mouth, everything, I recognized it all. It was him!
I quickly reread the article under the photograph. Then I read it again slowly in hopes of finding some explanation for this man’s presence in the picture.
I understood from the article that Boudiaf had decided to form the National Consultative Council, a body that would include numerous politicians who, known for their integrity and patriotism, hadn’t been associated with any previous regime, to help him bring Algeria out of its political and legislative quagmire. I continued reading the article on the third page, which included a number of photographs with captions identifying some of the council members. I was impressed by the number of writers and thinkers who had been appointed to the Council, noting that one of the individuals who had headed the Council on a periodic basis was none other than the renowned Abdelhamid Ben Hadouga, and that its membership included numerous women intellectuals, university professors and journalists in a country in which neither intellectuals nor women had ever been asked their opinion.
I looked over all the names and professions, and found not a single artist among them. I almost began to think I was deluded and that I was hallucinating his picture wherever I went, especially since I knew he was in Paris at the time. This being the case, it was highly unlikely that he would be taking part in a gathering of this nature unless he had returned from his trip.
Suddenly I thought of a way to put my doubts to rest. I headed for the telephone and dialled the number that my hand still knew by heart (or that my heart still knew by hand).
It was nine o’clock in the morning. I didn’t stop to wonder whether it was an appropriate time to call, or if he would be the person to answer the phone. I didn’t even stop to think about whether the number I was dialling with a trembling hand and a racing heart was right or not.
I wanted to hear him. At the very least, I wanted to hear the telephone ringing in the house where I had experienced love. I wanted it to wake up its furniture and bring its memory to life. On the second ring someone picked up the receiver, and my heart nearly pounded out of my chest.
I almost said something, but decided to wait for the person on the other end to speak first. After a short silence, I heard the voice I’d waited for for so long that I no longer expected to hear it.
As if he had recognized me from my breathing, he asked me, ‘How are you?’
I could hardly believe what was happening to me.
‘Is that you?’ I said.
Then, in the same tone of amazement, I asked, ‘How did you recognize me?’
‘From your silence,’ he said with that endearing sarcasm of his. ‘Silence is our password.’
The only reply I could make was a stream of feverish words that I blurted out however they happened to come: ‘I’ve missed you! How could you have abandoned me and given me over to this crazy city? I want to see you. How can I see you? Answer me. Don’t you know that my life is worth nothing without you? What have you done to me to make me love you this way?’
He made no reply, as though my words hadn’t reached him. He only asked me, ‘Where are you calling from?’
‘From Constantine.’
‘Where exactly in Constantine?’
‘From home.’
‘Call me from somewhere else,’ he told me.
‘Why?’ I asked.
He didn’t answer.
‘When?’
‘Whenever you’d like. I’ll be home al
l morning.’
Then he hung up. All of this had happened within minutes, and all it had taken was those few minutes for me to go back to being the woman I had been several months before.
I’d been drawn back into the same vortex of joy, fear, trepidation, hope, and uncertainty.
Why did this man always have to come back just when I’d stopped waiting for him? And why did his arrival always coincide with major political events? Why hadn’t he given me some forewarning if he had been planning to come back from France? Why did he want to know exactly where I was calling from? And why was it that I always seemed to be drawn towards him by a raging stream of desire that sent me down towering waterfalls of madness? Carrying me along from one gasp to another, his love drew me on to destinations unknown.
Something lovely was happening to me on this particular morning. It was like waking up after a winter sleep, lazily pulling back the curtains with the curiosity of someone who wants to know what’s happened in the world since the last time she was awake, only to find love reading a newspaper on a chair in her back yard and waiting for her!
There was nothing between us but a wet windowpane and a season. But wherever you are, you’re bound to wake up to a love that has nothing to do with the seasons.
The rain wasn’t going to keep me from leaving the house, since on this particular morning I had my own private weather forecast to respond to. Within half an hour I had put on my clothes and was ready to go out.
My mother was surprised to see me at an hour when I would usually still be in bed. However, she proceeded to make the most of my visit – which she could find no explanation for other than the fact that I was bored and that I missed her – by sitting me down with a cup of coffee and treating me to a litany of her health problems and other woes.
I listened to her with all the patience I could muster. As she spoke, I came up with a quick fix for her problems that was tailor-made for me: for the two of us to go to the capital for a little holiday!
Of course my mother took to the idea right away. In addition to the fact that there were all sorts of friends and relations she could visit while she was there, it would give her the chance to have me all to herself under one roof for several days. This was what my mother referred to as ‘a change of atmosphere’.
The adventure I had just proposed had an energizing effect on my mother, who went to the kitchen and made me lunch in honour of my surprise visit and our impromptu journey.
As for me, I headed nervously for the telephone with a joyful anticipation to dial the same number I had dialled from home.
As calmly as it had before, the voice came, ‘How are you?’
‘Only now can I say that I’m all right,’ I said dreamily.
‘So how were you before?’
‘I felt as though my whole life was a vacuum.’
‘Beware of vacuums. They make people wicked. Like they say, “The empty mind is Satan’s workshop.” ’
‘Well, the times we’re living in are wicked anyway.’
‘Things might get better. We just have to trust.’
‘You yourself once said that you didn’t trust anything any more. Do you remember? You said that the day we met at the newspaper stand.’
‘Yes, I remember. But there’s a certain man I trust, and because he’s come back, my confidence in Fate has been restored.’
‘Did you come back on his account, or . . . ?’
I fell silent, wanting to give him the chance to make some sort of romantic confession.
Ignoring my hint, he said, ‘Yes, I did.’
‘So, what about me?’
He sank into another silence.
‘The day we met at the newsstand, you advised me not to read any newspapers, and I haven’t read one since. If I hadn’t happened to leaf through a newspaper this morning, I wouldn’t have known you were here. How could you have come back without telling me?’
‘But I did tell you. Do you really think you came across that newspaper by accident? Nothing ever happens by accident. There are things that we want so badly that they actually happen, and when we look back on them, it seems as though we had planned them out in one way or another.’
‘But you seem so cold towards me, as though you haven’t missed me!’
‘Actually,’ he replied sardonically, ‘I’ve missed you with a passion, but . . .’
‘But what?’
‘But your home phone is under surveillance. In fact, this one might be under surveillance also. Avoid calling me from home. I would prefer you to come to the capital. That would be better.’
‘I will,’ I said confidently.
Then, before hanging up the receiver, I added, ‘Of course.’
* * *
If women, like the peoples of the world, truly desire life for themselves, then Fate is bound to let them have their way even if the one who appears to be controlling their destinies is a high-ranking officer or a petty dictator in the form of a husband.
Speaking of husbands, I still don’t know how I managed to persuade mine to let me travel to the capital for a holiday on the beach in the dead of winter.
How could he have failed to be suspicious of such a request?
It makes me think of a sarcastic quip I once heard to the effect that, ‘There are two types of idiots: the ones who suspect everything, and the ones who don’t suspect anything.’
My husband, a good military man who has enough professional savvy always to be on guard, started out his married life with me by spying, making inquiries, and being suspicious of everything.
When he came up with a lack of evidence, he gave me a surprising amount of freedom. At the very least, it gave him enough time to do the things he needed to do, confident that the stars on his uniform would keep me under his thumb.
In this particular case he was probably too busy with political developments to go spying on my womanly preoccupations, which had thus far given him no reason for concern, and in relation to which I had nothing to hide. My problem now was with other people who, instead of eavesdropping on terrorists, spent their time eavesdropping on lovers’ phone conversations.
A mere hour on an aeroplane, and I was hundreds of kilometres away from my shackles, back in the same house I’d come to four months earlier with Farida. I called it the ‘dream house’, because it was a place where everything became possible, just as in one’s dreams.
As soon as I arrived and put things around me in some semblance of order, I rushed to the telephone. The voice was warm this time, assuring me that I wasn’t dreaming.
‘You finally got here! If you only knew how much I’ve missed you! I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, right?’
Just a few words and a question, and the whole world seemed brighter. There were bigger questions as well, of course, but I had no time to answer them. I was too busy being infatuated to distraction. The infatuation also robbed me of sleep.
A certain saying of Baudelaire kept me awake: ‘Everyone worthy of the name human has a yellow adder crouching on his chest that says, “No,” whenever he says, “I want.”’
I spent the entire night trying to kill that adder. As dawn drew near, I realized that this adder’s ‘No’ has seven heads, and that whenever you kill one of them, another one appears, thrusting this or that warning or negative imperative in your face. Nevertheless, I dozed off munching on the apple of forbidden desire while those seven heads looked on.
I had a date with ‘Yes’, and everything inside me was in agreement on that fact. Good morning to ‘Yes’! Good morning to love! Contrary to custom, the entire universe had woken up beautiful, and I couldn’t help but wonder who had told it my news.
It was as if all the songs being played on the radio that morning knew what had happened to me, and in my mind I saw visions of tree-lined streets that led into my heart, pavement cafés on a winter’s day awaiting their lovers’ arrival, and unmade beds awaiting their consummation in the cities of ‘yes’.
The previous evening’s �
��maybe’ had been followed the next morning with a resounding ‘yes’, and all of its ‘nos’ had been swallowed up in the morning light.
Given the battle I’d fought with my yellow adder, I felt as though I’d spent the night sailing a stormy winter sea. Then my morning was booby-trapped by my mother’s questions and projects. However, I managed to foil all her plans for joint outings and embarked instead on a private, and much preferred, venture of my own.
The car set off with me at noon down the same road it had travelled on the way to my first love tryst. It seemed longer this time despite the driver’s speed, the light traffic, and the absence of checkpoints.
Reassured to see that the streets had gone back to normal, being empty now of demonstrators and bearded men, placards and shouted slogans, I got out at Emir Abdelkader Square and went the rest of the way on foot.
One number, two numbers, one building, two buildings, and I had arrived. Propelled forward by longing and a racing heart, I ascended the four flights of stairs with a burglar’s haste and a lover’s breathless enthusiasm.
A door opened at the first knock and closed behind me. It was a door that separated me from the city of ‘no’ and ushered me into the world of ‘yes’.
There I was awaited by a nameless man who, his eyes fixed upon me, folded me in his arms, and a kiss behind the door that had been closed upon my joyous exhilaration pinned me between two worlds.
As I caught my breath he asked me, ‘Did you have trouble getting here this time?’
I said, ‘The hardest thing every time is getting through that door!’
After a pause, I continued, ‘Both on the way in and on the way out!’
‘So,’ he quipped, ‘just stay here!’
I flung myself, exhausted, on to the sofa and said, ‘Take me hostage. Would that be possible?’
‘All of us are hostages,’ he returned sardonically.
‘Whose hostages?’ I wanted to know.
I had expected him to say, ‘Hostages of love.’ Instead he said, ‘Hostages of the homeland.’
‘Please,’ I said a bit irritably, ‘spare me the politics! I didn’t come here to talk about the homeland. You have no idea what a risk I take to come here, just to experience a moment of love.’
Chaos of the Senses Page 18