To sit before an expanse ripe for creation meant being a god or else finding another vocation. Could I have been a god? Me, whom your love turned into a ruined Greek city of tall, weathered columns?
Was my arrogance of any use while every day your love was causing me to crumble from the inside? Two months and nothing but an impossible phone number and parting words that had dried up my brushes.
Silence had become my favourite colour.
I understood the opposition between painting and your form of writing. You emptied yourself of things when you wrote about them, as though killing them with words. When I painted I became fuller, as though investigating life through forgotten details. I would grow more attached to them and re-hang them on the walls of memory.
After I’d settled you in my heart, wouldn’t painting you mean installing you in the rooms of my house, too? That was a mistake I decided from the outset not to make. But night after night I discovered the futility of my decision.
Why was night my undoing? Because whenever I was alone with myself, I was alone with you? Or because art has secret rituals of longing, born mostly at timeless, lawless night?
Teetering on the edge of reason and madness, on the divide between the possible and the impossible that is blacked out by darkness, I committed the sin of you.
With my lips I drew the boundaries of your body.
With my manhood I drew the boundaries of your femininity.
With my fingers I drew where the brush could not reach.
With one arm I embraced you. I planted you and harvested. I stripped you naked and clothed you. I changed the contours of your body to meet my ideals.
Woman in the guise of nation, give me another chance at heroism. Let my one arm change your ideals of manhood, love and pleasure. How many arms have embraced you without warmth? How many hands have run over you, leaving scratches on your neck and a signature beneath your wounds? They loved you and they hurt you, but it was wrong.
Thieves, pirates and bandits loved you. But their hands were not cut off. Only those who loved you selflessly became handicapped. They had it all; I had only you.
That night, like every night, you were mine. Who would take your vision away from me, ban your body from my bed, steal your perfume from my senses, prevent me restoring you with my other hand? You were my secret pleasure, my secret obsession, my secret attempt to overthrow logic.
Every night your fortresses fell into my hand and your guards surrendered. You came in your nightdress and stretched out next to me. I ran my hand through your long black hair flowing over my pillow. You trembled like a bird drenched by the rain, and your sleeping body responded.
How did this happen? What led me to lose my mind? Perhaps it was your voice that I grew addicted to, that cascaded love and music and sprinkled droplets of pleasure over me.
Your love was a caller asking, ‘Washik?’ A phone that wrapped me at night in a blanket of kisses, that left its eyes as a lamp of passion next to me when the lights went out. It was afraid for me from the dark. It was afraid for me from my loneliness and old age. It took me back to my childhood without consulting me. It told me bedtime stories believed by children, and sang me lullabies. Was it lying? Would a mother lie? No child would ever believe that!
What brought me to the brink of derangement? Perhaps the impossible kiss I stole from you. But could kisses have caused all of that?
I remembered reading about kisses that changed lives, but I never believed it.
How could Nietzsche, the philosopher of power, who spent years investigating might and superiority, be bowled over by a single kiss? A kiss stolen by chance on an outing to a temple in the company of Lou, the woman he loved more than any other writer or poet of the time. These included Apollinaire, who long courted her and wept over her on this very Pont Mirabeau. Because her name sounded like loup – ‘wolf’ in French – this was, to him, decisive proof of his fate with her.
Nietzsche said, ‘When you visit a woman, do not forget to bring a stick.’ But before Lou he was a crushed, weak man, lacking will. His mother even said, ‘That woman only left my son three choices: marry her, kill himself or go mad!’
Such was Nietzsche’s fate when he loved. Should I have been ashamed of my weakness before you, when I wasn’t the philosopher of power or Samson, who lost his hair and his legendary strength because of a kiss?
Was I ashamed of your kiss? Did I regret it? Me, whose life began on your lips?
I don’t know how Nietzsche got over the woman he didn’t marry. Did he commit suicide or go mad? All I know was that I spent two months in mental turmoil, during which I almost touched the point of insanity – the kind of insanity that seduced you and that you often praised, as you believed it was the only proof of an artist’s genius.
So be it. After all these years, I will confess to you that I did reach the fearsome limits of irrationality.
Was it simply passion, or an unconscious wish to give you the plaything you had yet to acquire: the madman you dreamed of?
At that time I often went over my story with you, chapter by chapter. Each time I reached opposite conclusions. Sometimes your love seemed to be a myth too big for you and me. Something predestined perhaps centuries before, at a time when Constantine was called Cirta.
At times I would ask myself whether I was a man whose memory had struck you and whose madness had seduced you to start a story. Or whether I was just the victim of a literary crime you dreamed of committing in a future book. Then your childhood would suddenly outweigh the ‘criminal’ in you. I would remember that I was also a copy of your father, and that because of a foolish kiss I had for ever blown up the secret bridge between us.
I decided to apologise to you. I would wake up and go into my studio. I would sit for ages in front of your blank portrait and ask myself where I would start you.
I would contemplate your photograph for a long time – the one on the back of your novel, which you gave me without a dedication. Your face seemed to have no connection with the photo. How would I fix an age for your face, both old and new together? How to make a copy of you without betraying you?
In the midst of my confusion I remembered Leonardo da Vinci, who could draw equally skilfully with both his right and left hand. Which hand did he use to paint and immortalise the Mona Lisa? With which hand would I have to paint you?
What if you were a woman who could only be drawn with the left hand, my missing one?
It once occurred to me to paint you upside down and then sit and look at you in the hope of finally uncovering your secret. Perhaps that would be the only way to understand you. I even considered the possibility of exhibiting that painting upside down. It would be called You. Many people would stop in front of it. They might think it impressive without completely knowing you. Wasn’t that what you wanted, in the end?
More than a week, and several weather reports, passed before your voice came without introduction one morning.
‘How are you?’
My heart, not expecting such a morning gift, got a shock. Speech tangled. ‘Where are you?’
Your voice sounded close, or so I imagined. But you answered with a diversionary laugh. ‘Try and guess!’
Like one dreaming, I answered, ‘Have you come back to Paris?’
You laughed and said, ‘What do you mean, Paris! I’m in Constantine. I arrived a week ago for a relative’s wedding. I thought I must call you from here. Tell me what you’re doing with the summer. Haven’t you gone anywhere?’
I abbreviated my suffering with a few words. ‘I’m tired,’ I said, ‘really tired. Why didn’t you call before?’
As if you were a doctor writing a prescription, or a sheikh who’s been asked to write an amulet or magic spell, you said, ‘I’ll write to you. I swear I’ll write soon. You have to forgive me. You don’t know how annoying and difficult life is here. You never have a moment to yourself in this city. Even talking on the phone is a detective story.’
‘What are you doin
g?’
‘Nothing. I go from one house to another, from one invitation to another. I don’t even wander round the city on foot. I’ve just seen it from a car.’ As if you’d remembered something important you added, ‘You know what? You’re right. The most beautiful thing in Constantine is its bridges. I remembered you as I went over them.’
At that moment I wanted to ask you if you loved me, but stupidly I asked, ‘Do you love them?’
After a brief silence, as if I’d put a question that merited some thought, you answered, ‘Perhaps I’ve started to love them.’
‘Thank you.’
You laughed, and to end the conversation you said, ‘You idiot! You’ll never change.’
‘You open your window to look outside. You open your eyes to look inwards. Looking is only the scaling of the wall separating you from freedom,’ wrote Malek Haddad.
That morning I lit an early cigarette, which wasn’t my habit. I sat on the balcony with a cup of coffee contemplating the Seine flowing slowly beneath Pont Mirabeau. Its beautiful summer blue annoyed me that morning, for no reason. It suddenly reminded me of blue eyes, which I didn’t like. Perhaps its not being a river in Constantine made me hostile. I stood up without finishing my cigarette. I was suddenly in a hurry.
So be it. Forgive me, river of civilisation. Forgive me, bridge of history. Forgive me, Apollinaire, my friend. I’m going to paint a different bridge this time, too.
I was bursting with you and your voice coming from over there to rouse that city within me. I hadn’t picked up a brush for three months. All the conflicting emotions and sensations I had experienced before and after you left had built up into an internal time bomb, in one way or another about to explode.
I had to paint to relax at last.
I painted with my whole hand, with all my fingers, with the hand that was there and with the one that was missing. I painted with all my turmoil and contradiction, with my reason, my memory and my oblivion, so as not to die – that summer in a city empty except for tourists and pigeons – a despairing death.
That morning I began to paint a new bridge, the viaduct of Sidi Rachid.
When I started, I didn’t anticipate that I was embarking on my strangest ever experience of painting. It would be the beginning of ten other paintings, done in six weeks without a break except for a few snatched hours of sleep. Even then, I would mostly wake up seized with a crazed desire to paint.
The colours suddenly acquired the tones of my memory, and became an unstoppable flow. No sooner had I finished one painting than another was conceived. No sooner had I finished with one neighbourhood than another awoke. I had barely finished one bridge when another would rise inside.
I wanted to satisfy Constantine, stone by stone, bridge by bridge, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, as a lover satisfies the body of a woman no longer his. I went over her, backwards and forwards, with my brush, as if with my lips. I kissed her soil, her stones, her trees and her valleys. I spread my desire over her in coloured kisses. I splashed her with longing and love till the sweat flowed.
I was happy when my shirt stuck to me after hours being fused to her. Sweat is the body’s tears. When we make love, like when we paint, we don’t make our bodies cry for any old woman, or for any old painting. The body chooses for whom to sweat.
I was happy that Constantine should be the painting for which my body wept.
In that last month of summer, I was still waiting for a letter from you. It would restore part of the strength and enthusiasm I had lost in the two months you had been away. A letter from Ziyad took me by surprise.
His letters from Beirut always amazed me, even before I opened them. Each time I asked myself how it had managed to arrive. Under which collapsed roof in which camp or at which front had he written it? Which postbox had he mailed it from, and how many postmen had handled it before it reached my mailbox here in the sixteenth arrondissement?
I always treated them with particular love. They reminded me of the war of liberation, when letters to our families would be smuggled under clothes. Many letters didn’t arrive, but died with their writers. Many letters arrived too late. Stories good enough for novels.
Ziyad would write for no particular reason. Long letters at times, short at others, which he called ‘life notices’. I laughed at the name. He just meant he was telling me he was still alive. Then I became frightened at his long silences and his letters’ stopping. To me this meant the chance of another kind of notice.
In Ziyad’s latest letter he wanted to let me know he would be in Paris at the beginning of September. He was expecting a quick reply from me to make sure I would be there. His letter surprised, delighted and threw me.
My thoughts turned to you and I said, ‘This man has a charmed life. I just mentioned him to you and here he is.’ Then I wondered whether you had read his poems, and whether you had liked them. What would your reaction be if I told you he was coming to Paris? After all, you had feared he was dead and expressed interest in his story.
Summer was gradually receding, and I was gradually restoring my equilibrium.
The paintings had saved me from a breakdown. I had to paint them to get away from the jolts of madness you had caused.
I had lost a lot of weight. But that didn’t matter to me, or perhaps at the time I hadn’t noticed. I only looked at the paintings and forgot to look at myself in the mirror. I believed that the weight I lost I would gain in eternal glory. For this reason I found it gratifying to contemplate the haemorrhaging of my madness hanging before me – eleven paintings, too many for the walls of my flat.
Perhaps I was also attached to them because I knew as I added the final brushstroke that a few months might pass before I once again had a desire to paint. In one go I had emptied my memory. I relaxed.
September was approaching and I was happy, or in a state anticipating happiness. You would return at last. I awaited autumn as I never had before. Winter clothes in shop windows and school supplies filling stationers’ shelves announced your return. The wind, the orange sky, the changeable weather all carried your suitcases. You were coming back. With autumnal gales, reddening leaves and pencil cases. You were coming back. With children returning to school, with traffic, strikes and Paris’s return to its bustle. With vague sadness, with rain. With the onset of winter, with the ending of insanity. You would come back to me, my winter coat, my confidence for a tired life, my firewood for frozen nights.
Was I dreaming? How could I forget that wonderful remark of André Gide: ‘Don’t prepare your joys!’ How could I forget such advice?
In reality, you were a tempest of a woman who came and went in storm and destruction. You were another’s overcoat and my cold. You were the firewood that burned me instead of keeping me warm. You were you.
I waited for September then, for your return so we could finally say the absolute truth. What exactly did you want from me? Who would I be for you? What would we call our story?
I was wrong again. It wasn’t time for questions and answers. It was time for a different lunacy. I was waiting for security, and you came. One tempest colliding with another called Ziyad.
And then there were hurricanes.
Ziyad hadn’t changed since the last time I’d seen him, in Paris five years before. Perhaps he had filled out a little, become a little more masculine compared with the tall, slim young man with fewer worries who had first visited my office in Algeria in 1972.
His hair was still a polite mess. His shirt, tieless and unbuttoned at the collar, was still that of a rebel. His distinctive voice still had the same warmth and sadness. It made one imagine he was reciting poetry even when saying mundane things. He seemed like a poet who had lost his way and had found himself where he was by mistake.
In every city that I met him, I felt he had yet to reach his final destination. He was always on the point of departure. Even when sitting on a chair, he seemed to be sitting on a suitcase. He was never relaxed where he was, as though the cities he lived i
n were stations where he was waiting for a train whose time of arrival was unknown.
He was as I had left him, surrounded by his few things and laden with memories, wearing the same pair of jeans, as though they were his other identity.
Ziyad resembled the cities he passed through. There was something of Gaza, Amman, Beirut and Moscow about him, of Algiers and Athens. He resembled all those he had loved, and had something of Pushkin, Al-Sayyab, Hallaj, Mishima, Ghassan Kanafani, Lorca and Theodorakis.
Because I often shared Ziyad’s memories, it meant that I loved everything and everyone he loved without realising.
I needed him those days. When I welcomed him, I realised that I had missed him all those years without knowing it, that I had never met someone else to call a friend.
Time and geography had taken him far away. But our old convictions kept us close. That’s why he had not faded from my heart or lost my respect over all those years. Wasn’t that a rare thing?
Ziyad arrived, and the apartment that for two months had been shut to others – even Catherine – came to life. He filled it with his presence, his stuff and his mess, and his raucous laugh sometimes. His vaguely furtive presence was a constant. I almost thanked him simply for opening the windows and taking one of the rooms, perhaps the whole house, even.
We spontaneously reverted to the routine of his first visit to me in Paris five years before. We went to virtually the same restaurants. We sat and talked about virtually the same subjects, for nothing had changed. Not one Arab regime that Ziyad was counting on falling since I met him had fallen. No political earthquake here or there had changed the nation’s map.
Only Lebanon had become a homeland for earthquakes and shifting sands. But who would be swallowed up in the end? That outcome we tried variously to predict. The discussion would always flow into the question of Palestine: factional splits, battles between partisans in Lebanon, assassinations and their toll of Palestinian figures abroad.
The Bridges of Constantine Page 13