Sirocco

by Danielle A. Dahl

  The dreamlike softness of his eyes made my heart quiver like harp strings. “The colors presaging Sirocco,” I said, “the Sahara wind that carries sand to the Mediterranée and, at times, across it all the way to Spain.”

  He dropped his cigarette and crushed it with the tip of his shoe then turned and framed my face with his hands, studying it as if learning the paths to a newly discovered land. He took my hand and moved us to the stoop of Pépé Honninger’s old tool shop.

  We sat, facing each other. His soft gray eyes captured mine as he caressed my hair. My heart beat a slow tattoo under his gentle touch, then raced to a chaotic drumbeat as his warm hand slid down my cheek, along my neck, over the front of my blouse, and cupped my breast.

  My gasp brought a slow smile to his lips and his thumb moved against my nipple. A tremor, at once painful and delicious, squeezed my lower belly and I moaned. He held my chin with his other hand and drew my face to his. My eyes closed at the immeasurable bliss of his lips prodding mine.

  My skin crawled as if I were in the throes of high fever. My bones turned to jelly and I leaned into him in total abandon.

  His moustache tickled the inside of my nose and a giggle bubbled up from deep inside my throat. A fleeting flashback to Zizou telling how yummy kisses were told me my reaction wasn’t normal.

  Dismissing the tickling hair in my nostril and the beard chafing my chin, I pressed my body against Albert’s and threw my arms around his neck. Eyelids shut tight, I surrendered my mouth to his probing tongue. His saliva mingled with mine—exactly like in Ma’s romance novels—but, instead of hearing bells and fireworks, I felt as if a large, warm, wet worm was slithering inside my mouth. I gagged.

  I shoved Albert away, shot to my feet and dashed around the side of the house, spitting with the same vigor I’d forced Zizou to spit after the toad squirted into her mouth.

  I took the stairs two at a time, raced the length of the corridor to the bathroom and past Ma’s bedroom, where she sat in bed, reading.

  I flipped on the bathroom switch and slammed the door shut. Grabbing my toothbrush, I squeezed a big squiggle of toothpaste. I brushed my teeth, my tongue, and the lining of my cheeks so hard they burned as if I had chomped on a can full of harissa.

  I peeked into the mirror and rubbed Nivea cream on my red chin and cheeks. Combed my hair. I opened the bathroom door, thinking my “payback” on Pa wasn’t as gratifying as I had planned when I heard, “Come here, Nanna.” Ma’s stern voice worried me. I walked no farther than her open door.

  “Oui, Ma?”

  “What is going on?”

  “Going on, Ma?”

  “Why this sudden rush to the bathroom and running water?”

  Oh, God, help me. “I … I—”

  Zizou strode pass the front door. “She ate something bad, Ma.”

  Our mother’s eyes moved from Zizou to me and back to Zizou.

  “I think I did too,” Zizou complained, a hand on her stomach.

  “I wonder why that is,” Maman mused. “Get an artichoke from the garden, boil it for ten minutes, and drink the water,” she said. “You’ll feel better soon,” she promised, and returned to her magazine.

  In our room Zizou held her stomach, laughing like an idiot as I explained why I ran out on Albert. “Never met anyone like you,” she cackled. “First Angelo, now Albert. What’s wrong with you?” Her eyes popped open wide as a car’s headlights. “Don’t tell me you prefer girls?”

  I felt miserable, inadequate, and angry at myself. A genuine misfit. But … girls?

  Naa. I’m sure I’d have liked Angelo’s kisses—if it had happened. I knew I’d have liked them. A lot. I felt it in my bones. But he was gone and I would never know for sure.

  Chapter Thirty

  To Go or Not to Go

  May, 1962

  What I knew for sure was that I’d be very embarrassed to face Albert after dumping him in the middle of a kiss. Princesse de Glace strikes again.

  I eventually bumped into Albert two days later as he watched my father measure and cut plywood at his outdoor workbench. “Now that the Accords d’Evian have set the date of Algeria’s independence,” Papa was saying, “The Pieds-Noirs have two choices: ‘La valise ou le cercueil.’ If we choose la valise, to go who knows where, we’ll have to leave with only the clothes on our backs—”

  Albert shook his head. “I don’t think this will happen. Les Accords will see to the safeguard of your property rights.”

  “Mon pauvre ami,” said Papa, with contempt. “How gullible you are.” He lit a cigarette and continued. “How do you think France will manage to enforce the accords to the letter once Algeria is independent with extremists at its helm?”

  Albert shrugged.

  “De Gaulle has already given up the Harkis,” Papa continued. “Not only has he ordered the army to disarm them but refuses them, as well as the over one million Muslims loyal to France, asylum in the Métropole.”

  Horrified by what I heard, I forgot my embarrassment vis-à-vis Albert. “But, Pa, if these people aren’t granted asylum in France, won’t the FLN slaughter them?”

  My father’s silence pitched me into a well of anguish. While we, Pieds-Noirs, could claim our birthrights and set down our valises on France’s shores, if we chose to, the Muslims who had cast their lot with mighty France would be left behind. For them, there was no choice. Only le cercueil. They would be massacred along with every single member of their families.

  The betrayal of these people was an even greater infamy than that suffered by the Pieds-Noirs. An indelible stain on France’s honor—my honor.

  Anguished, needing the warmth of human touch, I sidled up to Albert. He furtively reached for my hand—letting me know, “No hard feelings.”

  “And don’t even think the metropolitan French will welcome us with open arms—” Papa’s quick side glance warned me to watch my moves. “They won’t treat us as repatriates. They’ll treat us as archaic exploiters who ‘Ont fait suer le burnous.’ ” He displayed the rough palms of his hands and his farmer’s tan. “Are these the marks of a ‘slave driver’ or the marks of a man who works as hard as his Arab workers?”

  “I know you are not one of the exploiters,” Albert agreed.

  Papa’s voice held a sour note. “Tell me. How many ‘exploiters’ have you met since you’ve arrived?”

  Albert remained silent and Papa filled the gap. “You’ve been here long enough, my friend, to know that the big farms, factories, and mines are owned by the Grands Colons—mostly metropolitan French—and that the majority of Pieds-Noirs are blue-collar workers, government employees, small farmers, and business owners—simple people who only wish to make a living in peace alongside their Christian, Jewish, and Arab neighbors.”

  Albert nodded in sober agreement. Papa pulled the carpenter pencil from behind his ear, measured a new sheet of plywood and drew a line between two dots. His cigarette quivered on his lower lip as he pursued his earlier thoughts. “If we choose to stay here, we’ll be granted two options. One, become Algerian citizens, with the obligation to convert to Islam. Two, remain French nationals and lose all rights, including that of ownership ….” He set the smoldering cigarette on the side of the work bench. “That is, if we don’t end up in a cercueil amid the general hysteria of the first days of self-rule.”

  “Then it’s la valise for us. Hein, Pa?” I concluded, wondering how many thousands of others would make the same choice.

  The following Monday, after lunch at the lycée’s cafeteria, my friend Monique and I sat in a corner of the school yard. She had been unusually morose. Missing her pixie smile I asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, everything’s wrong,” she shrugged. “My father’s family in France wants us to move in with them. They say it’s getting even more dangerous here. They claim the earlier we go to France, the better chance my parents will have to find work before the rest of the Pieds-Noirs flood the job market.”

  I felt a little pinch at the very
edge of my heart. “When will you go away?”

  “Next week.” She smiled that shy, broken-toothed smile that made her so special.

  “Where in France?”

  “In Nice, sur la Côte d’Azure.”

  I had only seen the French Riviera on postcards and in movies. La Promenade des Anglais, Nice’s boardwalk, lined with the café terraces of luxurious hotels like the Negresco and rows of swaying palm trees—too posh for us to visit, let alone inhabit.

  “Will you give me your address there before you leave, Monique?”

  A few days later, we said tearful good-byes. Promised to write. And swore never to forget each other.

  Soon after Monique’s departure, people leaked out of the country a few at a time, like annoying drips from a faulty faucet. Drips grew into drops. Drops multiplied into an inexorable flow that also swept Susanne and her family away.

  My friends gone, the lycée became a desert.

  People moved to France, Corsica, Argentina, Australia …. Some took along their belongings. Others sold what they could, abandoning the rest. Locked up houses on our street and across town stood like sullen blind men with no place to go, yielding an emptiness eerie as a moonscape—too fantastic to grasp.

  Meanwhile, Papa fashioned cut-up plywood into suitcases. That was no fantasy.

  “Pa, why can’t we buy some real suitcases?” Zizou griped.

  “Because they’re all gone.”

  “Oui, but plywood, Pa?”

  “Trust me,” he said, “I went through the campaigns of Italy, France, and Germany and saw many refugees. You’ll do a lot of waiting around and will be happy to have these to sit on. Besides, unlike cardboard or leather, plywood is practically indestructible.”

  “But only two? How are we going to bring clothes for seven people in only two suitcases?” I cried out.

  “We don’t know what’s going to happen there or where we’ll end up. Two suitcases will be all we’ll want to lug around.”

  Always meticulous, he took his time, whistled one of his tuneless tunes and broke out the old paint brushes and paint. “Yellow, Papa?” Zizou, Mireille, and I concurred—yellow was beyond the pale. Even for plywood suitcases.

  “We’ll be the joke of the other Pieds-Noirs,” Zizou said.

  “And of the patos,” I added.

  Our father didn’t budge. “Yellow will make our suitcases easier to locate among thousands of others.”

  He attached a handle to a suitcase. “Now get off my ass. I’ve work to do.”

  He went on, building a small rusty-red square suitcase with a lock for the family papers, such as ownership of the house and cimetière, birth certificates, and school diplomas.

  We marked the impending departure of Yvette, Gilles, and little Jean Pierre with a couscous. We played games of loto, gin rummy, and family. Then came time to say good-bye. Yvette gave Maman their temporary address in France. Maman wouldn’t let go of her brother. “Make sure to let us know when your address changes. D’accord?”

  Tonton Gilles held her hand. “Of course, when we move, we’ll leave a forwarding address.”

  She wiped her tears. “You promise?”

  He nodded and we kissed and hugged and said lots of Aux revoirs and à bientôts, with squeaky voices and phony smiles.

  Les Carottes Sont Cuites

  One June afternoon after Yvette and Gilles left, Zizou and I took the bus to join the rest of the family at La Boule Tricolore and say farewell to more of my parents’ friends about to leave.

  Zizou and I climbed onboard the bus to Constantine and handed our fare to the Vatman sitting in the booth at the back of the bus. He wore a European suit and a Fez of red felt with long-fringed black tassels on top.

  * * *

  When I was a kid during the days of electric tramways and the poles at the back of the tram unhooked from the overhead electric lines, the tram stopped cold. Face glued to the back window, I would watch with renewed curiosity as the Vatman stepped out, grabbed the tram’s long, ungainly poles and, leaning back against their weight, maneuvered them with some difficulty to hook them back onto the electric lines. Then he climbed back onboard and the driver would restart us on our way.

  * * *

  Glad to be out of the baking June sun, my sister and I collapsed on the last two empty seats, facing the Vatman’s booth. Following the acquired reflex of checking my surroundings when in public places, I made a tally of the people and their bundles swaying in rhythm with the moving bus.

  Women draped in Constantine’s traditional black veils held down their white hayeks to keep their faces covered against the breeze blowing through the windows.

  Men wore white flowing gandourahs and heavy turbans or embroidered skullcaps. Their immovable faces—varying from light shade, to coffee, to dark chocolate complexions—sported luxuriant moustaches, and their dark eyes were outlined with kohl.

  A beardless man wearing a European suit over a collarless shirt clutched a straw basket that held a live chicken on his knees. The animal’s head jerked this way and that way, aiming a sharp, accusing eye at the world.

  An old barefaced woman with a small tattoo in the center of her forehead and a scarf over her hennaed hair sat next to two boys chewing roasted sunflower seeds. Across the aisle, a man with mint leaves stuck into his nostrils manipulated worry beads.

  Of the entire bus, my sister and I were the only Europeans.

  At the next stop, a woman swathed in black climbed in. Only her eyes and hands showed. Two bulky bags beneath her veil gave her the look of a bowling pin.

  She scanned the length of the full bus and plunked herself in front of us, setting her bags atop our feet, and held onto an overhead handle. The bus lurched forward and she swayed, staring down her nose at us, demanding that we stand up with a firm tilt of her chin.

  Zizou and I exchanged a to-hell-with-her look and didn’t budge but for the down on my forearms that rose to attention.

  Getting the message we would not concede our seats, the woman glared at the Vatman and gave a curt nod in our direction. Zizou and I swapped a blink. My guts tightened.

  From inside his booth the man glowered at us. “Cette dame wants to sit. Get up.”

  I pursed my lips, shook my head and, hoping nobody would see it shake, pointed a finger at the two kids sitting on one side of the aisle, then at the young man with the mint in his nose on the other.

  A few people cast dark looks our way. Others averted their eyes as if embarrassed by the Vatman’s offensive tone. But for the humming engine, an ominous silence settled inside the bus. A ‘pregnant pause,’ some would call it, I reflected, but my tongue-in-cheek flippancy did little to relieve the tightening in my guts.

  As the bus neared the next stop, Zizou whispered around the right corner of her mouth, “Should we get out?”

  “They’ll think we are scared,” I whispered around the left corner of my mouth.

  “Darn right we are.” She flicked a glance at the vatman. “But I don’t want him to know it.”

  We touched hands under the folds of our skirts.

  I mouthed, “We stay.”

  At the stop, several seats emptied and the woman sat down. Her eyes spewed venom at us. “Ignore her,” I suggested. “Let’s talk about something.”

  The bus restarted with a grinding of the stick shift. The tail pipe spewed an oily cloud of smoke that streamed in through the cranked down windows.

  My hands had stopped shaking, my guts, almost settled, when the Vatman’s voice rose, loud and bitter, “It doesn’t matter, anyway,” he blustered. “For you, les carottes sont cuites,” and he kissed the tips of his fingers, thanking Allah, “Hamdullah.”

  Everyone understood the expression, “The carrots are cooked,” the die is cast, no turning back the clock. He meant to stress the point that my sister and I were on the losing side and better bow to the victors.

  Although his comment was petulant and gratuitous, I understood the man’s motives. I understood his need
to have the last word, save face in front of the other Arabs. I understood that, during these times of transition and turmoil, everyone was weary of retributions from anybody and everybody. Everyone dreaded the vengeful finger-pointing for considered slights. The bone-picking, getting-even, that would be meted out after Independence Day. The same retribution, revenge, payback, that had systematically occurred among the Arab population along the years, the Harkis being the latest targets.

  I looked into the eyes of this man who had made change for our bus tickets from the time we were babes in our mother’s arms, through our growing years, and all the way to this moment, but found no recollection, on his part, of shared cordial experiences. Only the reflection of a consuming, unadulterated personal hatred I didn’t understand—hatred that seemed to seep from deep inside his soul, like pus from a pressed boil. An enmity that vaporized the regard and trust I had felt for him up to this moment.

  I lost all sense of self-preservation. “You are absolutely correct, monsieur, ‘Les carottes sont cuites.’ ” Then, using the imagery that is part of the Muslim speech, I went on, angry, scared, and breathless, “But while we are eating them warm—” Loud and clear, my voice filled the bus. “You, monsieur, will eat them cold.”

  Speechless, the man jerked his head the other way. Dismissing us. The tassel’s silken strands of his fez swayed wildly, a couple clinging to the red felt like squirming worms.

  Head high, I scanned the other passengers’ faces. A few, including the woman who had challenged us, cast scathing looks at Zizou and me. Most looked down at their bundles or glanced out the windows as if the exchange had not taken place.

  For the rest of the way, the Vatman and I made it a point to ignore each other.

  When we reached our stop, Zizou and I bounded off the bus steps like two mountain goats leaping over a gaping abyss.

  “Yaa, Nanna,” Zizou said. “Tu as vraiment poussé la Mémé dans les orties, cette fois et sans culotte, en plus.”