by Faïza Guène
And easy enough to spot.
Most of the time they spit-roast their knees on the benches along Promenade des Anglais, flaunting outsize Dior glasses and hideous platinum blond hair that’s been backcombed and scraped into a chignon. You often see them trailing a scrawny mutt on a leather leash and wearing garish colours that clash with their age.
They helped me to realise, no matter how wealthy you are, money can’t buy you taste.
The ambulance was speeding across town. My mother gripped Big Baba’s hand and kept asking him if he could feel anything. The atmosphere was out of sync with the frivolous mood outside in the street, where tourists were strolling in breathable sandals.
Big Baba lay on his stretcher, staring out of the window. He could glimpse a patch of blue sky and a few palm branches dancing to the rhythm of the siren and the revolving light. From that angle, he could have been taking in the sea front in Algiers.
Surprise, surprise, Peplinski had been re-elected, and the faded posters still clung to nearly every traffic light post. My sister had been put in charge of Youth Services at Nice City Council. In any other city, this would have been a great opportunity, but in Nice… youth? What youth?
Nice is the only city in the world where I’ve heard people talk about ‘a young person of 50-something’.
We were approaching Nice University Hospital, closely followed by Jalil in the grey Renault Scenic. When Big Baba was admitted to the Neurovascular Unit, my mother went into shock. She kept readjusting her headscarf as we followed the two male nurses who had taken over from the paramedics. They carefully transferred Big Baba onto a trolley. One of them was wearing an earring in the shape of Guadeloupe.
We rushed down a long corridor punctuated by several swing doors with porthole windows. It all felt strangely familiar. I’d watched this scene hundreds of times before, in umpteen hospital dramas on countless TV repeats.
The shaved head of the other nurse was covered in beads of sweat and he kept saying: ‘Mind out!’ to anyone in the way of our convoy.
A young doctor ran up to join us from behind. He wore a ponytail and fluorescent sandals and his eyebrows met in the middle, which gave him a disturbing look. He wanted to understand what had happened and began to barrage us with stress-inducing questions. We could have been participating in a TV family quiz show; all that was missing was the red buzzer and the weekend-for-two somewhere you’ve never even heard of.
His badge informed me that he was called Doctor Freddy Gerard.
Things were not looking good. In just a few hours Big Baba’s entire right side, including his face, had become paralysed. His mouth sagged and his eyelid drooped until it was almost shut. It was a scary sight.
The blurred vision and speech loss observed on admission, however, hadn’t persisted. On that front, Freddy was reassuring.
After hours of waiting, and very few updates on Big Baba’s condition, we were all jittery.
In the reception area, I emptied the grubby coffee machine of its tar juice, while Jalil kept the children busy with a game of dominos he’d found in the glove compartment of his car. My mother was crying and her khol eyeliner was running. Mina was crying and her khol eyeliner was running too. ‘Is Pépé dead?’ Khadija asked.
On the metal seats opposite us in the waiting room, a skinny teenage girl sat tightly wedged between her parents; the three of them reminded me of the expression ‘joined at the hip’.
We saw a bunch of white coats go past, followed by figures in blue, pink and green. Some were heading outside to smoke, while others were just passing through.
A patient with facial burns wandered around the reception area looking distraught. He came up to me and said, ‘I’d have become an artist, if it weren’t for these ten bone idle fingers!’ I made a mental note to remember that line.
At last, Doctor Freddy came back to see us, with his toolkit of complicated medical terms. Words so technical they appeared to float in front of my mother’s face.
‘I’m sorry, but we didn’t bring a dictionary with us, and none of us has a PhD…’ said Mina, running out of patience. ‘So, could you talk normally, please? Using simple words!’
We were allowed to go and see Big Baba. Two at a time. Room 314.
My mother and I opened the door and were assailed by a noxious odour: the stench of urine mingling with the whiff of sanitizing gel. This played out against a soundtrack of electrocardiograms and nurses’ clogs on clean lino.
Seeing Big Baba frail and flat on his back, I couldn’t help picturing him dead. Just thinking about it gave me a sharp pain in my chest.
I immediately banished the idea.
Instead, I found myself asking the stupid question you ask anyway:
‘Are you okay?’
He blinked slowly. Only one of his eyes closed shut. I took this to mean yes.
Youth and Health
Big Baba was only half alive. Hemiplegic, to use the medical term.
A month had gone by since his stroke and he had just been transferred to the hospital’s ‘Neuro Rehab’ unit. There were no obvious signs of progress, but he was still here. Half was good enough for us.
Nice was in the grip of a heatwave. On some days, the temperature soared to 41 degrees. I was on three showers a day, minimum.
‘Hey! Mourad! The water in the bathroom isn’t for free, you know! It doesn’t just fall out of the sky!’
‘Oh yes it does, Maman.’
‘I suppose you think you’re funny? Tfffou!’
The days ticked by, but the heart had gone out of our home.
We no longer ate our evening meal at eight o’clock on the dot. There was no fruit in the glass dish on the living room table, and the neighbourhood cats had stopped roaming in our garden now their doting benefactor was no longer around to feed them.
I was finally allocated my first teaching job. The wait was over. As I had suspected, I would be working as a newly qualified teacher in the Paris region. In Montreuil, to be specific, east of the city, in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, at the Collège Gustave-Courbet. When I read the name of the school in my posting letter, it immediately conjured embarrassing images of that close-up on female intimacy in Gustave Courbet’s famous painting: The Origins of the World.
But I had a more serious problem on my hands: finding somewhere to stay. With less than a month to go.
It was Maman’s idea to telephone cousin Miloud.
After arriving in Paris two or three years earlier, with a student visa and a place at Paris-XIII University, Miloud had decided to stay on despite his provisional residence permit expiring.
Mina was against it. As were the authorities.
‘Are you serious? You’re talking about Miloud? Miloud the glue-sniffer?’
‘Why do you have to bring that up, Mina? He didn’t know what he was doing back then, he was a child, meskine!’
‘What d’you mean, poor thing? You’re defending him now! So, you’re saying he was a child when he went to prison for pimping a 16-year-old girl in the suburbs of Algiers, on the pavements of Chéraga, right?’
‘We don’t know the whole story! And anyway, he’s changed! He’s taken up studying again, and he came to France for a new life… You don’t spare anybody, do you?’
‘You can’t mean that, Maman? Pfff. The guy’s a piece of scum. He’s a hobo! He disgusts me.’
‘We’re not asking him to raise your brother! We just want him to put a roof over Mourad’s head for two or three weeks until he finds his own studio.’
‘Have you signed up online, Mourad?’
‘I’ve taken a fine tooth-comb to the Internet, but from what I can see everything’s too expensive.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll help you out. What about sharing?’
‘I’m still looking.’
‘That’s why we said… in the meantime, there’s always Miloud.’
‘No, Maman! Not Miloud!’
My posting was taking up all our headspace. As a result, w
e were less preoccupied with Big Baba. We took it in turns with the hospital visits. Although he was glad to see me, I always left on a low. He had no idea how serious his condition was, and I was endlessly rewinding the same cassette.
‘I don’t know what’s going on with this leg. I can’t move it!’
‘That’s what happens when your right side is paralysed, Papa. Don’t worry, the physio will sort it out.’
‘And my arm as well! Look! I can’t even lift it. It feels like someone’s pinning me down!’
‘Don’t worry, Papa.’
‘How long is all this going to last?’
‘We don’t know. The team here is doing everything it can to help you.’
‘Perhaps I slept in the wrong position.’
‘No, Papa, that’s got nothing to do with it. It’s because of your stroke. It paralysed your limbs.’
‘But why can’t I lift my leg?’
‘It’ll be okay. Don’t worry. What matters is there are signs of progress; the doctor told me you’ve got some feeling in your fingers now…’
‘What’s my room number?’
‘419.’
‘Which floor?’
‘Fourth. As in 4:19.’
‘Look! My leg won’t move…’
Then his eyes would cloud with sadness.
‘My son, I don’t want the nurses to clean me.’
I could picture my grandfather, Sidi Ahmed Chennoun, saying: ‘There are only two things we appreciate when we no longer have them: youth and health!’
I’d seen a library signposted on the same floor, and it occurred to me that Big Baba might enjoy it if I read to him.
The library smelled as fusty as a second-hand bookseller (elderly bachelor variety) and consisted of two rickety shelves overrun with yellowed books. There were also a few car magazines with photos of models you would only see in a toyshop window display these days, as collectible miniatures. The educational books and novels must have dated from back when the hospital was still treating patients for the plague.
Oliver Twist was at one dusty end. Oddly enough, when I stared at Dickens from a certain angle, I could detect a faint likeness to Big Baba. The moustache, the serious expression, the slightly anxious gaze, yes, there was something …
On the shelf below, I spotted the inevitable Harlequin romances… The adrenaline of torrid nights in retirement homes. Authors with white American brush-and-blow-dry names, like Perry Williams or Andrew Richardson. I imagined them as writing stars in Arkansas, collectors of old-fashioned typewriters, divorcees with a weakness for brandy. I could see them, driving their pick-up along a deserted road as they hatched the plot for their next raunchy novel.
I remember writing a school assignment about the role of women in so-called ‘romance’ literature. I chose The Captive Mistress. The title spoke volumes. As did the suggestive cover.
No question of reading anything like that to Big Baba. So, I opted for the Dickens.
The healthcare assistant came to change my father. As I waited in the corridor, I thought about his sense of modesty; I thought about how much a man can suffer on becoming a baby again.
‘Chapter One. Treats of the place where Oliver Twist was born, and of the circumstances attending his birth.’
‘Don’t forget to read it in a journalist’s voice…’
Making Contact
My timetable was as regular as sheet music. In the mornings I lurked online, on the prowl for any friendly-sounding apartment shares, to avoid rooming with my cousin Miloud in some migrant workers’ hostel. Or, worse, being accused of aiding and abetting in one of his sex scandals. There was always the option of a damp garret, with a shared toilet on the landing: 800 euros a month, bills not included.
For me, moving to Paris wasn’t a dream come true. It simply meant leaving Nice.
In the afternoons, I visited Big Baba. On the menu: a game of Crazy Eights and one rancid cappuccino between the two of us. I always let him win. After all, he could only hold the cards in one hand.
Sometimes, he would turn his head and give a long sigh, before checking everything was running smoothly at home without him.
‘Has anyone fixed the leak in the bathroom?’
‘You fixed it yourself, Papa… last year.’
‘I did?’
‘Mourad?’ he finally asked, one day.
‘Yes, Papa?’
‘I want to see my daughter again, before I die.’
‘What makes you say that? You’re not going to die!’
‘Of course, I’m going to die. And I haven’t even made my Hajj!’
‘Insha’Allah, you’ll make a good recovery, Papa. And we’ll go to Mecca together. We’ll both make our Hajj!’
‘I’m starting to forget things. That frightens me. I must see my daughter. I have to see my daughter before I die.’
I can’t say it hadn’t occurred to me. I’d thought about it every day since Big Baba’s stroke. Dounia should know what was going on. Even if Mina and my mother made an impressive show of business as usual, I was sure they’d had the same idea too. You can’t simply Tippex someone out of the family album.
Big Baba had swallowed his pride. It was time to grab the opportunity before he changed his mind. I resolved not to talk about it to Maman or Mina for the time being.
On the way back from the hospital, I decided to stop off at the town hall. I guess I was acting in the spirit of that expression ‘to take potluck’.
I braced myself and parked Big Baba’s R11 Turbo in the visitors’ car park, before making for the reception where three switchboard operators were in mid-action. Arms flailing, and with the twisted wires of their handsets all tangled up, they looked like they were fronting the office for disorganised octopuses.
The operators smelled like those citrus-scented hand wipes they give you in aeroplanes.
‘Hello! Are you here for the job interview?’
‘No. I was wondering if… Actually, I’ve come to see Madame Chennoun.’
‘Who should I say is here?’
Mourad Chennoun, I wanted to reply, son of Abdelkader Chennoun, shoemaker of repute, himself the son of Sidi Ahmed Chennoun, poet and shepherd of our mountains to the West.
‘Her brother, Mourad.’
That upbeat expression suddenly drained from the operator’s face.
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘No.’
‘Aha! Because she only sees visitors by appointment.’
She had said ‘Aha!’ conclusively. Meaning, You stand no chance of seeing her. I felt like an idiot who had tried ringing Madonna’s doorbell on the off-chance.
‘It’s important.’
‘Aha! Did she know you’d be dropping by?’
‘No, could you let her know I’m here, please.’
‘One moment.’
I detected scorn in the operator’s eyes. She had one eyebrow raised in a circumflex while the other sloped in a frown. Just like my mother. Talk about identical scowls. She was wearing blue mascara to match her uniform and, when she dialled, her nails, which were too long to be real, went clickety-clack on the keyboard.
‘Hello, Dounia? Your brother’s here…’
A long silence and then the operator said ‘Aha!’ again, before replacing the handset.
‘I’m sorry, she can’t see you.’
I stood there staring at her and waiting for her to offer me an alternative solution.
‘Okay. So what do I do now?’
‘Right, well… leave your number, and she’ll call you back later.’
What a numbskull! I should have realised it wouldn’t be so easy. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t read enough novels in my time.
Dounia was probably still deeply bitter about everything. How could I have forgotten her level of stubbornness?
I scribbled a note on a small yellow Post-It that had been handed to me by the snippy operator. My message was as spontaneous as it was stupid.
Call me please. M
ourad.
After ten years of separation, getting back in touch with a Post-It note was kind of farcical.
‘She’s got your number, has she?’
The ironic tone led me to suspect that even random switchboard operators wearing citrus-scented perfume knew about our family history. ‘Aha, she must have been thinking, so here’s the evil brother from the evil Arab family that threw Dounia out!’
I added my mobile number for my sister’s benefit.
I didn’t write anything about Big Baba’s health, or about us. That would have been challenging, on a piece of self-adhesive paper measuring 76 millimetres by 76.
I felt disheartened, but I wasn’t ready to leave. For no particular reason, other than to digest my failed attempt at making contact, I stopped in front of the main display area. There was a poster with a Freefone number for victims to speak out against domestic violence. The slogan was striking, to say the least: ‘Kill silence, before it kills you.’
It was a campaign by SOS! – the ‘Speak Out Sister!’ collective headed up by Dounia. SOS! specialised in headline-grabbing slogans, and events that secured maximum media coverage. Ever since we’d picked up the trail of my sister again, I followed SOS! more closely.
Recently, they had even demonstrated in front of the National Assembly to drive home their message and raise awareness amongst politicians. Some of the women had turned up gagged and handcuffed. Others sported bruised faces and black eyes, with bandages wrapped around their heads. A few wore burkas.
On the poster, my sister and the other leaders proudly displayed their banners in red letters with, ‘We Won’t Be Silenced, For Women’s Sake!’