Sirocco

by Danielle A. Dahl

  I shoved her arm, “You say that because you are jealous. Remember, he’s mine.”

  “He’s too old. I prefer the guys in my group.” Zizou turned her back on the shutters. “Come. Let’s help him get settled.”

  “We can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. It’s … not proper.”

  She shook her head and left. I remained behind, jealously watching her smile at Albert, shake his hand, and pick up a suitcase. Now, why can’t I do things like that?

  Papa Meets Albert

  “So, you’re a teacher.” Pa looked up from under the hood of his car as, the day after he moved in, Albert came out of his apartment.

  Zizou and I stopped washing Papa’s car for a moment and watched Albert carry a chair and books under the bower’s shade outside his door. He set his books on the chair and walked over to Papa with his hand extended. “Oui, monsieur. I am Albert Lacroix.”

  Papa ignored the hand. “My daughter mentioned you are a teacher?”

  Albert let his arm drop to his side. “Nice to meet you, monsieur. As a matter of fact, I am doing my military service as a teacher.”

  “Oh boy,” I whispered to Zizou, “Here it comes.”

  “‘Doing my military service as a teacher,’” Papa parroted. He tugged a rag out of his pants pocket and set his feet squarely apart. “Want to know what I think?”

  Albert smiled with a nod of goodwill. A cherub’s smile. A cherub whose wings would be pulled out one tender feather at a time. A cherub who’d be plucked, chewed, and spat out before he could say, “Mommy!”

  “I’ll tell you what I think.” Papa wiped his hand with his greasy rag. “I think you came here as a teacher because you don’t have the balls to put your life on the line to defend your country. That’s what I think.”

  Albert’s smile faded. “With all due respect, monsieur, Algeria is not my country. France is,” he answered, reasonably.

  “I see,” Pa said, his anger rising. “The Pieds-Noirs were considered French enough to give their lives for France and free you and your families’ asses from the krauts—twice—but we are not French enough for flat feet like you to help us keep what we earned during five generations of sweat and tears. Right?”

  Albert blinked under the onslaught. “You have to understand, monsieur, this is not the same situation. Here, as colonists, you are exploiting the Arabs. They have a right to seek autonomy. Moreover, no one could alter the movement of independence that is sweeping the globe.”

  Zizou and I ducked out of sight behind the car, bug-eyed. We pressed our hands across our mouths to stifle giggles over the chewing Albert had coming.

  “Ah. Now the truth’s coming out,” Pa triumphed. “Still wet behind the ears, but already espousing the communist propaganda that’s rotting France’s youth.” Papa’s stressed voice broke. He patted his breast pocket and extracted his pack of Gauloises. “Or is it that ….” He struck a match and lit a cigarette.

  “Yaa,” Zizou chuckled. “Not only isn’t he fighting for his country, but he also turns out to be a rotten ‘communist.’ ”

  “You should calm down, monsieur.” Albert extended a soothing hand toward Papa. “You don’t know what you are saying.”

  “Calm down? Don’t know what I am saying?” Papa sneered like a stalking hyena. “You are a young punk who’s been lapping up the lies that a bunch of communists have drilled into the metropolitan minds. Now, you’ll perpetuate the brainwashing and feed the same false information, disinformation, and lies to our children.”

  Eager to hear Albert’s repost, Zizou and I lent ears big as gramophone speakers, but were disappointed when he simply said, “I’m sorry you feel this way, monsieur. Have a good day,” and walked to his chair, carried it and the books into his apartment, and closed the door.

  Rooftops

  From then on, Albert sightings were rare. Once school started, he seemed consumed by his work and whenever he and Papa crossed paths, they exchanged stiff nods like old men engaged in an ongoing quarrel.

  Albert’s silent greetings seemed to indicate he didn’t hold Pa’s verbal abuse against him. “I think it’s because he wants Maman’s cooking to keep coming his way,” Zizou offered.

  “Whatever the reason, I’m glad he’s not mad at us,” I said.

  “You mean, not mad at you,” Zizou corrected.

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  My sister was right, I meant me. It would have been nice to form a relationship with someone from other climes. Someone who’d be a friend with no preconceived ideas of who I was or who I should be. Just a friend. And he was so gorgeous ….

  School, house chores, and cold weather relegated neighborly interactions to the back burner. Life went on with the usual shots popping now and again, blasts going off here and there, the usual yield of spilled blood, and crops of dead bodies.

  One early winter day, sounds of machine guns and sporadic explosions flapped the air like eagles riding a storm of fireworks.

  “Mesdemoiselles.” The teacher’s rod rapped her desk. “Fifteen minutes left.”

  The heads that had popped up at the first burst of gunshots returned to the English test before them.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from beyond our fourth-floor windows. European men I presumed to be OAS stood at the edge of rooftops across the street. I observed them with interest as they shouldered rifles aimed at apparently fast-moving targets and methodically pulled their triggers. I couldn’t see their marks down below, but easily guessed they were FLN challenging this mostly European neighborhood. My cold fear of the lycée being overrun by terrorists lasted the flash of a gunshot as I took a deep breath and relaxed against my seat. Thank you, God, for the OAS’ vigilance and protection—

  Another rap of the teacher’s ruler gave me a start, forcing me to refocus on the test.

  By the time I turned in my paper, the shooting had stopped and the paimpon paimpon of ambulances and police sirens nearly drowned the ring of the electric bell calling the end of class.

  Later that morning, the school’s PA relayed the news that a twelve-hour curfew would be in effect starting at four o’clock this afternoon and that we’d be let out early.

  My friend Monique’s mother arrived to pick her up on foot and invited me to go to their apartment, one block away and wait for my parents to pick me up.

  After my phone call, Maman showed up from the cemetery’s office in a taxi that drove us to the bus stop. We reached our house just as the siren signaled the start of curfew.

  That evening, as Maman served Papa his anisette, she asked, “Do you know what the shooting was about?”

  “The FLN rode trucks in an attempt to take over the Coudiat, but the OAS stopped them dead in their tracks.” Papa added water to his anisette. “The police radio reported about thirteen dead and thirty-seven wounded. No details on who the casualties were.”

  I frowned. “Dis-moi, Papa, how can the FLN keep on doing things like attacking the Coudiat or killing those people on Algiers’ beaches when they agreed to a truce during their negotiations with France?”

  My father took a sip of his drink. “To convince the French negotiators that the FLN is a tough force to be reckoned with so they will agree to more concessions. That’s all.”

  Negotiating, weighing what was good and bad for our family became our focus two weeks later.

  Lost

  Papa came home, dispirited, and dropped in a chair. Maman turned, holding the lid of her boiling pot. “What is wrong, chéri?”

  Papa lit a cigarette and let it smolder between his fingers before taking a drag. He filled his mouth with smoke and blew thoughtful rings into the air. Watched them undulate and slowly unravel.

  “What is wrong, Riri?” Ma’s anxiety drew us in a tight ring around our father’s chair.

  “You want to know what’s wrong? I’m going to tell you what’s wrong,” he said, his challenge the very image of the mythical Phoenix rising from i
ts ashes.

  He batted his mighty wings. “The fucking assholes at headquarters want to send me on special assignment in Tizi Ouzou.”

  “Tizi Ouzou?” Ma’s eyes grew as big as the lid in her hand.

  “Tizi Ouzou?” Zizou and I cried out.

  “Where’s that?” Yves asked.

  “En Grande Kabylie,” Papa said. “The north-central part of Algeria.”

  “But why?” Maman pressed. “That place is deadly.”

  “They say they need to replace their translator.” Papa tamped his half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. “I looked him up. The poor fucker got himself kidnapped by the fellagha.”

  “That’s one good reason why you shouldn’t go.” Ma’s already moist eyes lit up in alarm. “You have five children. They can’t do this to us.”

  “Well, it’s simple. I agree to go or I lose my job.” He lit a new cigarette. “I’d receive hazardous duty pay.” Maman didn’t look impressed. He added, “We could use the extra income.”

  Maman went back to her boiling pot. “No matter how much they’d pay, it wouldn’t be enough to make up for the loss of your life.” She turned off the burner and banged the lid on the pot. “You’re not going and that’s that.”

  Whoa. I had never heard Ma be so assertive with our father. I was impressed.

  “There isn’t enough work at the cemetery. What would we live on?” Papa sounded more like someone plumbing the depths of a well rather than one looking for water.

  “We’ll manage. That’s all.” Maman crossed her arms. “I’ll find a bookkeeping job somewhere and open the office at the cemetery only on Saturdays rather than the whole week.”

  “And during the summer,” I offered, “I can keep the office open during the week.”

  Zizou, Mireille, and the boys cried out, “Moi aussi, Moi aussi.”

  A smile flicked at the corners of Pa’s mouth, the smile that betrayed his secret pleasure. “What will happen to our workers at the shop?”

  “You’ll have to let go of the younger ones,” Ma suggested. “Keep Debbah and the older men like Moustache.”

  That sounded right to me. Papa needed Debbah as his right-hand man and Moustache had started working with Pépé Vincent as a young man. Also, during WWII, when I was a baby needing mineral supplements, Moustache had given his rations of chocolate to Pépé for me.

  Mireille put her hand on Papa’s shoulder. “You’re not going away. Right, Papa?”

  Zizou said, “We can do without the extra money, Pa. You can’t go.”

  After each of us except the boys had offered our two bits, Papa spread his hands on top of the table and pushed himself off his chair. “All right, I’ll hand in my resignation first thing tomorrow morning.”

  And Found

  Maman found part-time bookkeeping work in two small businesses downtown. I spent many summer afternoons at the cemetery office while Zizou took care of the kids and the house chores. Papa looked for new contracts in town and immediate surroundings and did maintenance jobs on existing monuments.

  Weeks of starved cows followed the months of fat cows when Pa had drawn his police department salary until, one late-winter afternoon, my parents came home early from work. Papa had a spring in his step and Maman, a bloom on her cheeks.

  Oh, Not again. I had seen these signs many times in the past—just before the advent of a new bundle of joy—with the distinction that my parents got the joy part and Zizou and I, the bundle. Thanks, Pa. Thanks, Ma.

  “We have great news,” Ma announced with a broad smile.

  I snorted.

  Zizou trumpeted, “We are getting a new baby.”

  “A new baby?” Yves didn’t seem thrilled to lose his last-born status.

  Mireille beamed, “What are we going to name her?”

  I guessed she wished for a little sister to lord over just as Zizou and I lorded over her.

  Riri didn’t seem to like or dislike the idea.

  Ma blushed.

  Hands hooked on hips, Pa inclined his head sideways as if his left ear ached then turned to my mother. “How did you manage to produce such asshole kids?”

  “Come, Riri, don’t be crass.”

  Maman’s mild reproach didn’t faze him. “If they only learned to listen instead of wagging their tongues—”

  She stopped him cold, “Your father found another job.”

  Five wagging tongues uttered, “A new job?” which, depending on who was doing the uttering, expressed curiosity concerning the new job or reeked of relief or disappointment that there would be no baby.

  Maman forged on with undisguised pride. “He is going to be a teacher.”

  “A teacher?” Bulging eyes and sagging mouths greeted the news. “What kind of a teacher?” I asked.

  Ma glanced at Pa, yielding him the floor. “They need a teacher at the vocational college in Constantine. I’ll be teaching building construction.”

  I was happy my father had found a new steady income but, notwithstanding his colorful language, didn’t believe he’d have the patience necessary to teach, or the credentials. “But, Pa, don’t you need a teaching diploma?”

  He shook his head. “My line of work more than qualifies me to instruct beginners,” then added with a dismissive wave of the hand, “Besides, with people leaving right and left there is a shortage of educators.”

  Ma announced, “We have to celebrate.”

  A chorus of voices exulted, “Yaa! Let’s celebrate.”

  She mused, “Let’s see. We’ll invite Yvette and Gilles.” She briefly glanced my way. “And we’ll ask Albert ….” She crossed her arms and tapped her lower lip with her finger. “We’ll have … des têtes de moutons au four—”

  “Têtes de moutons, Ma?” We loved sheeps’ heads. Split in halves. Roasted to golden brown and served with pommes de terre au four à la Elise. Ooh-la-la.

  We never dressed up when we were at home, even when we had guests. Pa frowned at the “Charleston” skirt Yvette had made for me for Easter—petrol blue and narrow with a wide pleated hem finished with a gros-grain flat bow—and at the light blue mohair top Ma had knitted to match the color of my eyes. It was a good thing she had made me wipe off the touches of lipstick, blush, and eyeliner I had put on. “Your father is going to explode if he sees you wearing makeup,” she had said in a panic.

  But she still arranged for Albert to sit next to me. Away from Pa who, once in a while, cast a probing glare in our direction, making sure our hands showed on each side of our plates. He didn’t seem to remember from his supposedly wild youth that knees and feet are also made for touching.

  As for the meal, it was a great success. Along with Maman’s roasted potatoes, we had white bean salad smothered in olive oil and lemon juice with plenty of garlic and parsley. But the têtes de moutons—half a head each—was the prize dish.

  Albert’s face turned a waxy shade of pale as he stared at the half tête staring back at him from his plate. His breathing speeded up and he pressed his napkin to his lips. Maman frowned. “I’m sorry, Albert. I should have thought …. Would you like a piece of cold chicken with some mayonnaise, instead?”

  Before Albert could respond, Papa intervened, his smile crafty. “What’s the matter Bebert?” That was what he called him now, as if they had become best buddies. “Can’t take our … ‘ethnic’ food?”

  Tonton Gilles said, “Albert needs time to get used to our ways. Leave him alone.”

  Yvette shook her head at Papa. “They eat brains in France, don’t they?” She smiled at Albert. “In black butter?”

  Albert nodded, set his napkin down on his knees then addressed a jaundiced smiled to Ma. “Non, merci, madame, I love to try new dishes.”

  Well said, mon ami, I mentally applauded.

  Papa raised the bottle of wine. “I see the man is beginning to grow balls, after all. Give him some more wine, Gilles.”

  Zizou winked at me.

  I pinched a smile and picked up my knife and fork.

 
; I liked to start with the brain. Dribble some lemon juice over its folds. Mash up a forkful in my mouth and let it coat my tongue like creamed butter—a luscious experience of fleeting duration, as sheep aren’t known for their big brains.

  Having finished his sheep’s brain, Albert hovered over his plate, knife and fork in hand, unsure of how to proceed. I gave him a furtive nod and turned the head over. I forked out the oven-crisp cheek meat—really the only fleshy part of the head—from its hollow. Then, still chewing, scraped off the crackling skin covering the bone before attacking the lips that curled away from the blackened, long, narrow teeth.

  When only the eye remained, I set my knife and fork down on my plate to signal Albert we were done. The eye was the only feature I made a point to not eat. Forked out of its socket, it looked like a spherical, small hard-boiled egg with the fogged black ring of the iris staring at you in congealed reproach …. “And the eye of Abel ….” I understood some relished popping the eyes in their mouths and crushing them like candy. I just couldn’t.

  Dessert was new to Albert, as he had never before eaten Arab pastries. Yvette had brought makrouds and zlabeiyas.

  As a child, second only to Pépé Vincent, I had loved the sweet-honey zlabeiyas more than anything in the world, but as I grew older the makrouds, with their date paste sandwiched between two thick layers of semolina flavored with rose water and coated with honey, had become my favorite.

  After dessert, the dishes done, the boys, Mireille, Zizou, and I played games of Lotto with Yvette and Albert, taking turns calling the numbers. I loved spending time with my uncle and aunt, but enjoyed my time with Yvette the most. We had lots of fun when she played games with us and even more when she taught Mireille, Zizou, and me new dances like the cha cha cha. To top it all off, she didn’t take any bull from Papa and that, in my eyes, was her most admirable trait. But that day, as Albert sat beside me, his knee brushing mine, I focused more on his handsome face than on the game or Yvette, and my face heated up as her eyes shifted from Albert to me with a knowing smile.