Harraga

Act II

Memory or Death

Reminiscence is another way

To live one’s life

To the full

To its best

Least painfully.

And loneliness is the way

To safely store in memory

What the clamour of things

Sweeps towards oblivion.

You have to let go one side

To hang on to the other.

From what is reborn from day to day

We fashion a new life

And time drifts by and dreams drift by

We journey only in ourselves.

A warning:

Let not sorrows distract you.

Let not emptiness dazzle you.

It is always by some oversight

That we lose life.

Days, weeks, months have passed and still I expect Chérifa to turn up at any minute. I leave the door unlocked, she has only to push. I have stopped looking for her, I’m too tired, I have turned the city upside down, I’ve searched every place where a few paper lanterns might dazzle a silly little goose, I’ve waded through the vast expanses of poverty where, in the dark dampness of slack days, the hopeless seek out shelter.

I set Mourad to work. He can’t refuse me anything. At heart, the man is like a St Bernard — he knows a thing or two about barrels — and besides he has a car, so he can work more quickly. The poor man has given up his job, he spends his days brooding, phoning, chasing down leads, drinking and paying people for any information they are prepared to give; he wears himself out rushing hither and thither then comes back here, half drunk and wholly sickened by the indifference of people, and cries on my shoulder. We review the situation and we sigh, we squabble, I tell him a few home truths and every time he comes out with the same terrible question: ‘Why the hell are you still looking for her?’ The blockhead reeks of cheap wine, why should I listen to him?

Is it wise to carry on when all is said and done? When the point of no return is passed, we brace ourselves and forge ahead. Chérifa will not come home of her own accord, I know that, I can feel it, and Mourad is too stupid to admit defeat.

But he’s right — why am I still searching for her? What can I say? That’s just the way it is.

I went back to the Association.

I found the building still standing, which might be a good sign or a bad sign, I don’t know, seismic shifts are so common here and the gap between immediate and delayed effect is not always important. Only when your back is to the wall do you find out. But there is a golden rule: hope for the best, prepare for the worst — that way you are ready for anything.

‘Well, well, would you look who it is!’

The way she said it, the spiteful government lackey! Like a sentry who spots a figure on the horizon and trumpets it from the rooftops. If she so much as mentions the word ‘database’, I’ll burn her alive, I thought as I said, ‘Hello, my dear!’ and added, ‘I’m afraid I have another little problem.’ She gave me a savage smile and I played the innocent and let the spiteful bitch walk all over me.

And then we chatted. Nothing new, the young people of Algeria are still draining away, the country is like a bathtub that’s sprung a leak. Where there’s life, there’s death and disappearances. According to the statistics, girls present a different, though no less serious, case to boys. Girls disappear inland while boys head out to sea.

‘Who would have thought sexism extended so far?’

‘Girls don’t have the same reasons for disappearing. They tend to run away from the parental home, they are looking to find freedom, to hide some mistake, to follow some forbidden love; boys are dreamers in search of some great adventure, they don’t believe that the country will give them the means to satisfy their dreams.’

‘Why do girls run away from the parental home when it is so open, so loving… do you know?’

‘It’s not simple.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘Love is never unconditional, it is underpinned by values… by princ—… um…’

‘You mean tradition, the whole Arabo-Islamic thing, the hijab, the whole kit and caboodle, family codes and racial laws?’

‘I wouldn’t… um… I wouldn’t put it like that exactly.’

‘But when the home is open, loving, accepting?’

‘Even then, it can still impose draconian restrictions that some girls simply can’t deal with…’

‘Then surely you talk, you find a compromise, that’s what mothers are for.’

‘Maybe, but there are brothers and uncles and cousins and neighbours. Talking involves… um… exposing oneself, young girls have been brought up to feel shame… while boys have been brought up with the most pernicious beliefs. Imagine a young man who suffers from a preference… um… how can I put this… um…’

‘Homosexual? You mean a queer?’

‘Well… if you like. Can you imagine him talking to his parents? Our society is… well, you know… um…’

‘Hypocritical and backward-thinking?’

‘Not at all, I would say that, I’d say… um…’

‘Tolerant and forward-thinking? I don’t think there’s a third option, except maybe embryonic and shambolic.’

‘No, I would say traditionalist… faced with the modern world in an… well, an unwholesome international context… yes, that’s it, unwholesome.’

‘If that’s the case, I would just have said: moronic.’

‘So, anyway, the boy runs away to Europe so he can live his life…’

‘Let’s focus on the girls.’

‘It’s the same thing. Contrary to popular opinion, they are less able than the boys to deal with authoritarian parents and society. The pressures on them are enormous. A girl could have her throat cut, while the worst that happens to the boys is they get a stern talking-to and then they’re flattered.’

‘Though it might not seem like it from my manner, I’m not authoritarian if that’s what you’re trying to say.’

‘Far be it from me… I’m just saying that talking is difficult for everyone, even parents find it difficult to broach certain subjects with their children…’

‘Let’s get back to Chérifa. She’s six months pregnant, she’s here in Algiers, ever since she was a little girl that was her dream. Where do girls in her situation go? Are there hostels, homes where they can go?’

‘I’m afraid not. They improvise, some move in with the first man they meet, some marry a rich man, some resort to begging, and then there are those who…’

‘Stop! Chérifa is not like that, she’s too proud.’

‘That’s the problem, it’s often the ones who are too proud who go down that road. The others go home eventually, regardless of what punishment awaits them.’

‘Chérifa will come back! I know it, I can feel it.’

‘…’

I wasn’t listening any more, I was watching her thick lips solemnly spouting her claptrap, her piggy little eyes rolling with dignified indignation. I pictured myself like this woman, my face contorted with po-faced piety looking scornfully at Chérifa, alone, struggling with her urges, trapped in her infantile world, it was horrible.

What was the terrible name I called her?

What was it?

‘Does that help?’

Who said that? Oh, the sad case from the Association.

Then suddenly I understood: the page has been turned. It is pointless to carry on looking. Algiers was designed to engulf people, and those lost within it never return, too many twists and turns, too many blind alleys, too many bottlenecks and closed doors and more complications than any soul could cope with, crowds tramping all over and everywhere, in the shadows and the sunlight, a tropical violence that shrieks and prowls and mauls, that stings and suffocates, intoxicates and leads astray. Chérifa is lost and I have cut off her retreat. I am a cruel, bitter, stupid old spinster. And a silly bitch besides.

We call off the search. Chérifa is out there somewhere, she is in some other place, some other life, some other plight, but none of the places where my legs blindly lead me. And my heartache comes not from the difficulties I meet along the way, but from within.

Maybe Chérifa was dead.

Or maybe I was. I was pale, my eyes ringed with blue, my lips black, I smelled like a sewer rat. Worry had been the death of me, pain had put me six feet under, yet here I was still pitifully shambling along. Passers-by stopped to stare at me with the solemn expression they reserve for the dead. The fact that they are still alive can only be because they are virtuous — that’s what the look means. ‘What are you looking at? Why don’t you just take a photo!’ I yelled at someone who clearly thought he was smarter than everyone else. Feeling sorry for others saves them from having to take a hard look at themselves. The pathetic fools can go hang, priggishness will be no consolation.

I shook myself and headed home.

Walking back through my neighbourhood, I stopped with the women who watch and wait so we could compare our sufferings. It is pitiful to see them, forever planted in their doorways, forever nailed into their slippers. They bide their time, neither frantic nor angry, just a little short of breath and a little misty-eyed. And probably a vicious twinge in the bowels, that’s something no one is spared. No, I don’t know a woman who doesn’t complain about her bowels. It’ll be my turn before long. Maybe like them I’ll park myself on my doorstep in an old pair of slippers, sit ramrod straight in my chair, plagued by an irritable bowel. The wind will bring me news of the world and I will listen and wait to discover my fate. And one day — why not? — I will see some miracle appear at the far end of the street. Is this the forlorn hope that gives these women such patience? What else could it be?

I shuffled from one woman to the next, hands clasped beneath my chin. From each I took a little of her suffering and to each I gave a little of my own. We suffer less when exposed to universal heartache, we see our misfortunes for what they are, mere commas in the immensity of human suffering. We have a duty to forget ourselves.

No, I’ll have no truck with their cut-price, off-the-shelf psychobabble. I don’t need to confuse myself any further, it’s impossible to be both honest and opportunistic. Only yesterday, I looked down on them or considered myself lower still, now here I am today putting myself on their level out of some sense of solidarity. Compassion bothers me, it’s not clear-cut. Taking on the misfortune of others and bearing it as some sort of cure amounts to drugging yourself while dosing others. Sorrow, like joy, is something that cannot be shared, I know that, certainly not through the magic of words.

Hold on, I need to sort myself out, to pick up my life from the moment when Chérifa first marched in to colonise me.

The Triple Function of Linear Time

I was

I am

I will be

Three stories to make you laugh, cry and blow your nose

I was

I am

I will be

Three times to sleep, wake and wash

I was

I am

I will be

Three words to say, to greet and disappear

A day

A year

A century

Three silent bars and four times three: zero

This is all I have managed to write in two weeks, and it’s rubbish.

It is impossible to return to old habits after leaving them behind. We don’t know how. Here I was, playing a role I knew by heart and botching it, faltering, overacting or underacting. I found myself stopping in mid-scene, repeating myself, flailing around for help. To be condemned to watch yourself live is a terrible thing, I found myself criticising every move, every word. I found myself ugly, I hated my voice, loathed the way I look, was sickened by my wounded-animal expression. I felt ill, I was stammering, I was thinking in black and white. Yes, that’s it, I was a robot, hypnotised by its reflection in the mirror.

In reality it was different, I was afraid, terribly afraid, I plunged back down into the solitude thirty-six floors below. It was too much, God Himself would have been unable to resist. I curled up in a corner, turned my back on the world. Then, suddenly, I leapt to my feet, threw open the windows and sucked in lungfuls of air. I was not about to bury myself alive. No, no, absolutely no way!

I needed a new life, I needed to extemporise, to bounce back, I needed a plan.

The first idea that occurred to me was to leave, to go abroad. I wouldn’t be the first or the last to go, and certainly not the only one to think about it. I toyed with the thought and then rejected it. Too complicated, it’s an obstacle course, a sea of paperwork, it’s humiliation at every turn. Passport, visa, black-market currency, residence permit or political refugee, finding accommodation, applying for social security, registering for this and that. Furtive meetings in corridors with bright sparks who’ve managed to pass the test. The endless waits, the rigorous screening process, the countless questionnaires, the suspicion you could cut with a knife, the smart-arse computers at every fingertip and in the end, when you finally think you might have reason to hope, the guillotine, the trap door, the categorical niet. And my heart stops. Or I end up killing the woman behind the counter, get branded a terrorist only to have the authorities go easy on me for fear of reprisals by some terrorist cell lurking in the suburbs while the newspapers rally to my cause for as long as I can hold their interest. Dear God, the things people think of. Here in Algeria, people would see me as a coward, a traitor, a girl looking for a good time; over there, they would see me as an interloper, a liar, a benefit scrounger and I don’t know what else, they would glare at me with my bundles and my hangdog expression. They would refuse to believe I was persecuted by the State and its religion. They would laugh in my face. No Muslim has the right to complain about religion, about petty tyrants; we are seen as collaborators, accomplices or willing victims, or worse, we are unassimilated Muslims who require close surveillance. I would go insane before I could work out what they thought of me.

Move to another neighbourhood, another town? Hah! On short journeys, your troubles and your griefs end up being packed into the removal van with you.

And besides, who said I’m prepared to leave my house? It would kill me: my house and I are bound by blood ties.

Silence was the only solution. No ideas, no noise.

Get yourself married and take each day as it comes! What? Who said that? Husband, hardship — any other bright ideas? A Zorro in my house, Muhammad and his whole family breathing down my neck and the imam keeping an eye on me from the minaret, no fear! Can you imagine me waiting around for a husband to cut my throat instead of shaving? Can you imagine me taking him by the hand and teaching him everything? The men of this country never really recover from their childhood, as you well know. I sometimes wonder if they’ve got all their teeth. I don’t understand their fixation with touching everything, with putting things in their mouths. And I’m telling you, I feel like grabbing a knife when I see them scratching their balls, picking their noses at the steering wheel, scratching their arses as they walk, spitting as often as breathing. Even Mourad, cultured as he is, is a good for nothing, he’s the last man I’d think of marrying. He can’t even find Chérifa for me.

I’m reminded of the film Not Without My Daughter. The satellite channels play it on a permanent loop. Will an Algerian TV station ever broadcast it? Not this century, certainly. It tells the story of an American woman married to an Iranian who, finding herself trapped in Teheran when her husband abducts their child, is forced to challenge the Islamic Republic of Iran, its men, its women, its Revolutionary Guards, its preposterous laws, if she is to be free. I’ve seen the movie ten times and I can’t understand how something so absurd could happen to an American.

It begins in the States. Our couple are cuddling in a dream house on the shores of a beautiful lake. A little girl, all dimples and giggles, is chasing after a ball of fur that yaps delightedly. The man — the Iranian — is trying to persuade his beloved to go with him to his home country for a two-week vacation with his family. He talks about it as a pilgrimage which will make their love stronger: ‘You’ll see, they’re charming, they’ll make you very welcome,’ and so on and so forth. The woman refuses point blank. The man insists, like any good son who longs to see his parents and to introduce them to his wonderful family. At the end of Act I, the miscreant has succeeded in his fiendish plan and we find ourselves in Teheran, in a Third World city in a profoundly deprived neighbourhood in a gloomy house. It’s like a descent into hell. The chador, the doors of the harem closing one by one, the increasing surveillance, the warnings, the glowering patriarch, his harpy of a wife constantly finding fault, the uncles criticising, the cousins gesticulating, the wives whispering and rolling their eyes in joyful submissiveness while outside the streets are teeming with Revolutionary Guards. What can she do now that the trap has been sprung? Will she lie down and die as we do? Will she weep and wail? Accept her subservience? No, she is a daughter of America and hence a woman of action. In the second part, we watch as the American woman plays a long game, she wears the chador, bows and scrapes to the men, huddles in dark corners with the women, washes the feet of her husband and of the patriarch, breathes discreetly, blindly obeys the harpy, smiles happily at her daughter who is also beginning to wither away (God, how beautiful she is in her little black shroud). She plays the happy Muslim wife in chains, uses oceans of purifying water, but whenever she can, she slips out of the house, she runs, she ferrets around, she phones people and, after almost superhuman effort, finds a route by which she and her daughter can leave Iran. And then, one sweltering afternoon, she snatches her daughter and flees. There is a chase sequence that takes us all the way to northern Iran, to the Turkish border at the foot of Mount Ararat. Her (by now ex-) husband and his clan stumble after them. Oh, the blind fury as they shriek at each other, tear at their djellabas, splutter with rage; they feel deeply humiliated. We are convinced that… and then suddenly we realise: they don’t want to kill her, THEY WANT TO BRING HER BACK TO THE HOUSE ALIVE! Oh no, dear God, anything but that! With a mixture of dread and relief we watch as our heroines trek the last few miles and, when they see the star-spangled banner fluttering above the American consulate in Turkey, I wept as only happiness can make us weep.

Oh, the terror and the pain of the hour I spent thinking that the way things are these days, it is insane to marry a Muslim and even more insane to follow him to his home country. I was angry at myself for thinking that, it’s nonsense, it’s shameful, but how can we ignore the reality stifling us, how can I forget my poor Louiza who has spent the past twenty years slowly dying in some godforsaken douar and all the women who, one fine morning, watched the sun go out? It’s awful to have to live in fear that some bout of depression might suddenly transform your loving Muslim husband into a slavering Salafist. Please God, let our husbands, our brothers, our sons be temperate in their faith.

So, perhaps I should forget about Chérifa? Perhaps, but it would be more accurate to say ‘cut myself off’, since forgetting is not always possible, you become accustomed to absence, conjure a desert island, a cocoon like Robinson Crusoe, you build a kingdom of odds and ends and commune with the wind, the sun, the rain, the pretty crabs, the shrieking gulls, with nights heart-wrenching in their poetry.

Ultimately, life offers few choices: leave, stay, forget, brood. It’s not a cheering thought. We prefer to think we can imagine, attempt the impossible, wipe the slate clean, bring the house down, move heaven and earth, found a new religion, liberate the masses, transform into a butterfly, play among the stars and I don’t know what else.

But the days are long and dreams are not easy. In the course of a life, you lose so much. You find yourself alone with tattered memories, dusty habits, worthless treasures, outmoded words, with dates that hang mindlessly on the pegs of time, with ghosts that merge with shadows, landmarks that have blurred, remote stories. You replace what you can, surround yourself with new bits and pieces, but your heart is no longer in it and that colours what little life remains.

What’s got into you, you old bat, are you senile, are you going gaga, do you want to die? No, I’m young, I’m a fighter, I’m in control, I’m going to pull myself together!

I took a bath, I got dressed and I made a pot of tea.

Tomorrow is another day, life will smile on me.

What is it that moves without moving?

That leaves without going or returning?

And covers its tracks?

What is it that flows without flowing?

That fills without emptying or filling?

And skews the results?

What is it that improves without improving?

That propels without accelerating or braking?

And cuts the ground beneath our feet?

What is it that says without saying?

That dictates without repeating or inventing?

And drives us mad?

What is it that heals without healing?

That guides without leading or forsaking?

And breaks our heart?

What is it that enriches without enriching?

That gives without adding or subtracting?

And fails us utterly?

What is all this, some flight of fancy? Time is time, it is anything and everything, I don’t care about that, all I want is to find Chérifa as soon as possible.

Everything is falling apart, I’m running a temperature, my head is splitting. And my bowels are giving me gyp. I don’t know what to do. We start to miss someone and everything tumbles into darkness. I’ve taken to wandering around the house, I talk to the walls, I question the objects, I find them ugly, I have to stop myself from smashing them. I function like a robot whose batteries have run down, I cook half-heartedly but the results are either mushy, chalky and disgusting, or glutinous, floury, horrible, I can’t tell, I throw everything to the ants and the cockroaches and watch as they feast, it keeps me entertained. A creepy crawlies’ banquet is something to behold. The house is gloomy, filthy, strange, worm-eaten and… my God, this can’t be happening! I think it’s falling down around me! Or maybe it’s me, I feel dizzy and faint, I have to hold on to the walls. I try to breathe but I can’t seem to, I feel panic welling inside me. I walk, I hum, I try to calm myself. I come upon the ghosts that haunt this house; like me, they are pacing the corridors. I hardly recognise them, shrouded as they are in a cloud of dust. The storm did not spare them. Come on, you need to keep your mind occupied, let’s have a little chat with these gentlemen from the past.

Here comes Mustafa, appearing from a dark alcove in baggy breeches, wearing a saraoul and a fez, his features mottled, one claw-like hand clutching an Aladdin’s lamp, the other a scimitar for decapitating elephants. This is how I see him, this is how he appears, that’s fine by me.

As-salam alaykum, Mustafa! What’s new since Algiers was captured by the Infidels?

‘…’

‘Well, yes, it’s had its low points.’

‘…’

‘Well, if you’d wanted to, you could have gone back to Turkey with the Dey. You might be haunting some palace on the Bosphorus instead of being bored stiff here in Rampe Valée, this place is the pits.’

‘…’

‘A disaster? Who are you telling? There’s no question I’d go home if Kabylia were a free and independent country — and if it had nuclear warheads to guarantee its safety from the Arab League.’

‘…?’

‘Sort of a cannonball that makes holes the size of the Mediterranean.’

‘…!…’

‘Hmm, yeah, it would take about two or three thousand mules to haul the bombard, but mules aren’t the only thing we’re short of.’

‘…………’

‘Oh, no, no, my friend, you’ve got that all wrong! The Ottoman Empire isn’t part of the Arab League or the European Union, it floats between heaven and earth, between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea! I should probably mention that there’s not much left of the empire, a couple of acres around the Bosphorus, your brothers have all left to go and work in Prussia just as ours went to France.’

‘…’

‘As you say, interesting times.’

‘…’

‘It’s true, exiles have an understanding, but don’t forget you died so my grandfather and I could live, I can’t tell you the trouble it caused. Bye then.’

I can’t believe the Turks! Here’s Mustafa, the ghost of a nineteenth-century colonial officer, trying to give me advice! ‘As long as the Sultan lives, be patient and pay all tributes on time,’ he told me. Actually, like any good Mussulman tickled by his moustaches, he can’t imagine a common woman getting involved in politics and military science.

Even so, we have fond memories of the Turks. We owe them the recipes for chorba, for dolmas, for shish kebabs and Turkish delight, thanks to which we acquit ourselves honourably during Ramadan, our month of widespread famine. We bear them no grudge for colonising us, oppressing us, fleecing us and leaving us the legacy of their barbarous customs: scheming, freebooting and a taste for extermination. Muslims have a deeply-held tradition of letting bygones be bygones, the principle being that faith inspires the same convictions and the same abnegations in everyone. Which is probably why their countries spend most of their time justifying themselves. In religion, time does not matter, only fervour counts.

Mustafa was clearly not hidebound by his faith. We have his travel diaries, we didn’t need to read them, he travelled all over the place, the swine. It doesn’t matter, he left us this confounded house, where he obviously did more than sleep. I don’t know why, but he designed it to be gloomy and byzantine, an immense whole that is the sum of minuscule parts, tortuous in layout, extravagant in ornamentation, absurd in appearance. It’s a pity we cannot fathom the mysteries that drive people. They’re devious, the Turks.

It goes without saying that no piece of modern furniture has any place in this house. It would be impossible to get it inside — the doorways and casements let in a gentle breeze, a ray of sunlight, but nothing more. We had a terrible time furnishing the place. Papa nailed up planks and shelves which Maman variously named wardrobe, sideboard, dresser, and two shelves in my room on which I set my small collection of books and my alarm clock. Later, it was Tonton Hocine’s turn to nail up timbers while I took over the naming of the planks. Everywhere in this vast house feels cramped.

As children, we loved it. Playing hide and seek and ‘you’re getting warmer!’ in such an intricate warren was heaven. You can easily end up lost. Louiza and I left the best of ourselves in its mazes and its alcoves. Those things we hid, our choicest secrets, are there to this day, shrivelled, irretrievably lost. Poor, dear Louiza, she was incapable of hiding anything, of finding anything, she trotted after every breeze, panting a little foolishly. ‘Can I put it here, lift me up so I can hide it here,’ she would say with a sigh, ‘… but don’t look!’ We made the most of this house. God, how I miss my beloved little Carrot Cake! How have I lived without her?

I spent the day in the attic, el groni, Papa called it — in his Kabyle accent, he spoke Arabic as if it were French and vice versa. This twofold solecism is the dialect we call pataouète. Here in the attic, two centuries of life lie piled beneath a shroud of thousand-year-old dust. I don’t remember whether we fought wars of attrition, or whether it was simple neglect, but the space has long since been overrun by the pitter-patter of mice. I always intend to go through everything, but I never find the time. Sometimes I come up and rummage through a trunk, a basket, a crate, I ferret around upsetting the mice, panicking the cockroaches, exasperating the spiders who hate to have their gymnastics disturbed. A mantle of fur and hair and glowing eyes suddenly skedaddles. Over there is an old daub, a full-length portrait depicting the master of the house in ceremonial regalia, I have summoned Colonel Louis-Joseph de la Buissière, alias Youssef the Moor, the Christian convert. His gaze speaks volumes about the dignity of imperial wars. I have to admit he’s a handsome man, tall, thin, with reddish hair and bushy sideburns one can guess are dear to his heart, a gold-rimmed monocle magnifies his right eye and a richly engraved sabre hangs by his side. A helmet adorned with feathers and a cockade. The pose is intended to be distinguished, the shoulders are thrown back, one hand is balled into a fist at the hip, the other grips the pommel of the sword. I have to confess this is the sort of escort with whom I would gladly have galloped through forests or boated on a lake under the watchful gaze of my chaperone. I can just see my red hair fluttering in the breeze making the crystal waters of the lake iridescent. In the background of the scene, dark forest that looks wet with dew and, hence, the silence, the scent of mildew, the play of shadows, the military bearing of the subject, you can picture a castle filled with State secrets nestled in a misty valley just beyond the horizon. In the canvas you can almost hear the whispered conversations, see the long marches far from safety where heroism is the concern of soldiers and property that of the men in tailcoats and opera hats. All at once I hear a revolutionary air and feel an urge to take on the hero. Let’s have it out, Viscount!

‘Tell me, Sire…’

‘…’

‘Oh, you know, I say Sire, but I could just as easily have said ‘‘you there’’, ‘‘monsieur’’ or ‘‘Toto’’.’

‘…?’

‘No, it’s not that I object to people correcting me, but never mind. So tell me, my dear neighbour, was it such a good idea to enlist in the army?’

‘…’

‘Really?’

‘…’

‘Just like here… imam or soldier, there’s no other choice.’

‘…’

‘You did both, did you not, colonel, you served in the 8th Dragoons and the 6th infantry regiment if my records — I mean your files — are accurate, only to become something of a holy man after your bizarre conversion?’

‘…?’

‘The way I see it, anything that can’t be explained is bizarre. In your shoes, I would have taken up music, it soothes the savage breast. No prophets, no preachers, no holy wars and hence no worries for the children.’

‘…’

‘Me, anti-Islam? Don’t be ridiculous! I am just weary of the Truth!’

‘…’

‘Sometimes you find yourself on the other side.’

‘…’

‘I’m nervous, Chérifa has left.’

‘…’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘…’

‘I gave her everything, I love her, I need her, I feel so alone…’

‘…’

‘Really? And why exactly would Allah will such a thing?’

‘…………’

‘Well if he carries on being mysterious and we determinedly carry on being patient and humble, where does it end, you tell me that?! Actually, you can explain it to me some other time, there’s no hurry. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go.’

I didn’t need a fatalistic philosopher, I needed someone prepared to weep courageously with me. At least Mustafa was good enough to suggest I mutiny. It’s not the answer I was looking for, but at least he was on my side. I’m hardly likely to spill my guts to a former Catholic — or Protestant — who converted to Turkish voodoo. I’m perfectly happy to be serious, but not when I’m suffering.

Next!

Daoud the Sephardi, whom I bumped into in a secret hiding place, listened to me at length, his face lined with grave concern, then, out of the blue, he suggests an amazing business deal: sell the house for ten times what it’s worth and buy it back a week later for next to nothing. I’m on board.

‘Interest. Quick, tell me how to go about swindling the sucker, I could do with some money!’

‘…………………….!…?’

‘Well, how do you like that!’

‘………’

‘It gets better and better.’

‘……!’

‘Let me see if I’ve got this straight: I spread a rumour that King Solomon’s treasure is hidden in the house, then, after I sell it, you haunt the new owner, terrify him so much he comes back and begs me to take it off his hands for peanuts?’

‘…………!’

‘Yes, yes, a lot of gold. And diamonds, too, we could say it was loot belonging to Mustafa’s cousin Barbarossa.’

‘…’

Carpatus, who was standing by the wall listening, understood the colonel’s pain. It was no accident that the real-estate market was bullish on the day he first set foot in Algiers. This was going to be a bumpy night. Let’s say no more about him.

In what once was the doctor’s surgery, I ran into the ghost of Doctor Montaldo busy treating an invisible patient. Still working his fingers to the bone, the good doctor, clearly his vocation did not end with death. Hardly had he spotted me than he said:

‘You’re clearly not a well woman! Just look at the bags under your eyes.’

These were the magic words, immediately I felt weak, exhausted, shattered. I tried to downplay things.

‘No, I’m fine… Just a little low…’

‘…?’

‘Sleep? Well I manage to get some sleep but…’

‘…?’

‘Actually, my tongue is a little furred.’

‘…?’

‘I brood, I blame myself… Chérifa…’

‘…’

‘I don’t think I could stomach any more herbal tea.’

‘…’

‘And where exactly am I supposed to find fresh air?’

‘…’

‘Really? That far?’

‘…’

‘Thank you, doctor. How much do I owe you?’

‘…’

‘That doesn’t matter, treatment is treatment even if it’s virtual.’

What can you expect of the dead? Vague advice, antiquated observations, a new hash of old broken dreams, pointless suggestions, out-of-date medications. I can’t help but be sceptical of such spirits.

I’m very fond of my ghosts, but only when everything’s fine. Right now, I find them tiresome. And upsetting. Not one of them asked about Chérifa, or barely. She is a stranger to this house, she has no roots within these walls, they cannot feel her presence and so on and so forth. Forty-two days she spent here, that’s two days more than the official period of mourning. One of these days I’ll call in the undertakers and good riddance to them all — bone idle, the lot of them. And chauvinist to boot! Where are their wives, their children, their sisters, their mistresses, the maids? Don’t they have the right to come back and haunt me too?

I rushed to Papa, to Maman, to Yacine. I opened up to them. Were they sympathetic? No, they blamed me for letting Sofiane leave and for taking in some girl off the streets. Papa doesn’t like the way I look at things, he’s a true Kabyle, meaning he’s obtuse. All Maman ever does is sigh, Papa speaks for both of them. And Yacine doesn’t give a damn, just like when he was alive. I reminded them how Maman used to take in stray cats, and always the ones with mange or consumption, how Papa was constantly searching for the comrades he’d lost during the war and afterwards, poring tearfully over the newspaper, how Yacine’s only love was a clapped-out old banger… It was a waste of breath, a streetwalker is a streetwalker.

I am alone; truly, horribly alone.

Dear God, what has become of Chérifa’s father? I suppose his witch of a wife has finally got him under her thumb, or turned him into a filthy Islamist. He probably doesn’t think any more. Poor man, he has lost his daughter, lost his dignity.

What was it that I said, what terrible name did I call her? I’m sorry, Chérifa… I love you… where are you?

I kept wondering whether our lives truly belong to us or whether they belong to others, to those who gave us life and those who have taken it from us. I don’t know, but I have a sort of answer: when we alone are truly masters of our lives, then we are truly alone. Or we are dead.

Three months passed like this in a kind of madness. I didn’t see it coming. Because I’m level-headed, or at least I was, I took on the world, I emancipated myself. It was as I thought I was exalted by suffering that I sank into delirium. Is solitude playing tricks on me? Perhaps nothing is happening but for the days passing and me muttering to the empty air.

You quickly fall apart when you lose the thread of time. Living is such a dangerous occupation.

Let not sorrow distract you.

Let not emptiness dazzle you.

It is always by some oversight

That we lose life.

To think that I wrote those lines!

I’m not a believer but I can’t help wondering what God is waiting for before coming to my aid.

The day was not like any other

The ground gaped

Or the sky blazed

The world turned upside down

The Hominids fled to improbable shelters

Followed by animals consumed by the flames.

And someone said:

‘God, what is all this?’

Thirty million years later,

We echo that mysterious cry

Each time the sky falls on us

Each time the ground gapes beneath our feet.

The only piece of news: God finally exists.

He has colonised the earth

The heavens have long since been his demesne.

And every day, he rips open our houses

Or has roofs collapse on our heads

For the pleasure of watching us beseech

As we flee for the shelters

And so, God: I BESEECH THEE!

Serendipity has now arrived, come to twist the knife in the wound. It appeared via Arte, a humanitarian television channel if ever there was one. Ever since Chérifa’s disappearance, I’d forgotten about my faithful friend the television which had become shrouded in dust, but on that particular evening our friendship was accidentally rekindled. A gust of wind and the television suddenly came on by itself, or as though it had something to tell me. From the very first image, I could see that the programme was about us, the landless, the harragas, the path-burners. As part of a series about Great World Suffering, Arte took us from an African village somewhere in the deserts of the Ténéré, across the sweeping plains of the Sahel all the way to Tamanrasset where the camera allowed itself a brief pause to flick through the criminal record of the Algerian government, a crucial link in the people-smuggling networks of Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa; from Tamanrasset, it zigzagged through the no-man’s-land of Algeria and Morocco, travelling by night, far from paved roads, heading steadily north-west until it arrived, scorched and weary, in Tarifa, Spain, a few kilometres from Gibraltar — which once was ‘Jabal Tāriq’ in another story — where the epilogue to this odyssey was played out. In Gibraltar we watched the policemen with their funny helmets fishing bodies out of the sea while, high up on the cliffs, a priest who supported the rights of the harragas, surrounded by tearful militants, prays with all his might to a God who refuses to listen to the poor. It is a magnificent scene. It reminded me of Roland Joffé’s film The Mission, with Robert De Niro as mercenary Rodrigo Mendoza who, after some terrible event, becomes a Jesuit. But rather than honouring God and conforming to the strict discipline of the order, Mendoza rebels and fights for the indigenous Guaraní doomed to annihilation because of some distant, nebulous issue between the Roman Catholic Church and the kings of Spain and Portugal. In the end, he is shot and killed and with him every last Guaraní tribesman while a sanctimonious new order is established all across South America. A harrowing tale filmed in majestic locations. And I thought of The Name of the Rose which depicts grim, boorish monks who go to insane lengths to orchestrate bizarre crimes in a monastery constructed like a pagan labyrinth. Do we really kill people simply because they have discovered that laughter exists? It’s appalling.

So, we were in Tarifa. Yes, among the corpses is a survivor, a young black woman several months pregnant, beautiful as the sun, no older than Chérifa but twice as tall. Her great eyes roll in her head like lottery balls in their glass cage. She doesn’t understand, she raves, she babbles, she trembles, she thrashes about, she tries to run but she barely has the strength to cling to the brigadier. A fat slob in military uniform acting on behalf of the gobernador says to the camera that the miraculous survivor will be sent back to her país as soon as she gives birth. Moron, do you even know if she has a país?

This is the end of the drama for the viewer, who can turn off the television and go to bed. But for the rest of us, for those with no country, the questions are only beginning.

I have never been so moved by a documentary, not just because it directly concerned me but because it managed to show the terrible ordeals that poverty inflicts on those who have the temerity to try to escape it. It’s never-ending: at every turn, they are hit hard enough to floor a rhinoceros. It’s rather like quicksand, once you step into it, you’re sucked down. You can struggle, scream for help or cross your fingers, but the end result is the same. The path-burners know this, they try to deny it, but gradually, as the going gets tougher, they are forced to accept it; they find they become sparing in their words, their gestures, probably even their thoughts. They trudge on like the living dead but still they keep the faith, still they head to where life is waiting: the promised land.

The dream is so beautiful, what can we do but follow it?

It begins in a tiny Ténéré village. The sun is high in the sky; in such hellish places it never sets. The camera does a quick tour of the village: a dozen shacks arranged according to some ancient order, a couple of grain silos that look like abandoned termite nests, a ramshackle paddock where a few skeletal beasts with horns chew the cud and a central building made of logs and adobe whose purpose is never mentioned (a place of worship, a village hall, an agora, a school?). Relaxed and noble in their nakedness, the women are grinding millet. Around them, feet in the sand, moping kids stick fingers in their belly buttons or into little pug noses crawling with flies as flea-ridden dogs stagger around or paw through the rubbish and on the outskirts of the village, lying beneath a scrawny tree, two wizened old men chat quietly while they wait to die. There is some desultory conversation between the camera and the women.

— Where are the men?

— Gone.

— Where?

— We don’t know.

— Why did they leave?

— They are looking for work.

— Where?

— We don’t know, in Africa, somewhere else.

— Why is the village so far from everywhere?

— We don’t know.

— Is that millet you’re grinding?

— Yes.

— Is it hard?

— No.

— Are you happy?

Silence. The camera pauses, then zooms insistently on the face of a woman of indeterminate age. Finally the answer comes: We don’t know.

The camera moves on, sweeping around to give an establishing shot of the village, an insidious way of showing the expanse of ignorance in a desert with no connection to the outside world.

The camera pans towards two young men, a rare sight in this village as old as the earth itself. Their only possessions are their white teeth, their threadbare jeans and a pair of espadrilles. And a few stray hairs on their chins, but it’s well known that black men are not very hirsute. The camera leads them away to a lean-to where they can spill their secrets. They stand in the silent stare of the lens. They feel strange, helpless, useless. The camera is unrelenting and they both speak simultaneously. They are ready for the great journey, for years they have saved, cent by cent, the smuggler is demanding a thousand dollars a head. The camera flinches. ‘A thousand dollars? Where on earth did you come up with that?’ it asks. They confess to poaching on the English reserve, but otherwise they have lived from hand to mouth. ‘But we have good grigris,’ they add, proud as punch of their own cunning. The trafficker is waiting on the Algerian border at Bordj Badji Mokhtar where they will be joined by illegal immigrants from other countries, other villages, other miseries; three thousand kilometres’ trekking, two thousand through Algeria where government bullets and Islamist groups lie in wait and a thousand more through Morocco where the chaouchs sleep with one eye open. You have to allow for baksheesh to bribe officials and for the slave traders who keep a close eye on the crossing points which they know as well as the smugglers. Then they have to cross the straits, the crossing is made on unseaworthy feluccas that cost five hundred dollars — as many as thirty people have to club together to come up with the fare. The Algerian trafficker hands over to a Moroccan trafficker who takes his cut as they embark and sends the signal to the Spanish trafficker waiting on the far coast.

— You know all this but you’re still going?

— Yes, we want to live (laughter).

— Are you scared?

— A bit (laughter).

— Can we follow you and film your odyssey?

— If you like (laughter).

I know all this, yet still I feel moved; images reinforce words. African society is pitifully fragmented and it has the memory of an elephant; it was ever thus. There is the world of women, one of confinement and of infinite patience, and the world of men which is focused on survival; there is the world of the young who sit around dreaming of the promised land and that of the authorities intent on plunder. These worlds never collide. To talk about democracy in our countries is to invoke the stuff of myth and legend, our witchdoctors are not likely to devise such a machine.

The camera was less than brilliant on this subject. Africa does not fall within the gravitational field of democracy, full stop. It is simply implied that a gulf spanning a thousand light-years cannot be forded like a drainage ditch. The ordinary viewer might easily come away thinking that things are as they are because that is how we want them, because we love famine and war. There are other factors: government, religion, traditions, the climate and more besides. All these things are oppressive. In Algeria, the camera was more blunt, it surveyed the terrain and it named some of the cruellest and most ridiculous overlords on the planet together with one of their henchmen, a certain hajj Saïd, aka Bouzahroun, aka ‘Le Chanceux’ — ‘Lucky’.

And so our two heroes — whose names are Ahmadou and Abu-Bakr — begin their journey for Tarifa, the gateway to the promised land. It is dawn, the desolate plains are still shivering from the nightmares of the waning darkness. Pale shadows gather in the lean-to shack. There is a whispered conversation. Suddenly, a spotlight rips the darkness. The camera captures the fateful moment. What is gripping about all great adventures is that at some point, whether anticipated or unexpected, everything topples into the unknown. The women pause as they pound millet, the children shake their heads to ward off sleep, the dogs stop in their tracks, the old men choke back their nostalgia, and everyone listens. We watch the shadows as they move off and disappear beyond the blinding dazzle of the horizon. There is not a word, not a gesture, not a sigh, but from the distance, from the far distance comes the otherworldly rumble of the African continent.

The first few kilometres move quickly. The Sahel, which spans several million square kilometres beneath the sun, remains unruffled. Further along, the group clambers aboard an antediluvian boneshaker that weaves its way between the gnus and the antelopes. It is filled to bursting and falling apart.

There is a stop for something to eat in a boui-boui in the middle of nowhere. They wolf down bucketsful of dust, they talk to lubricate their throats, they do their reckoning: a hundred kilometres lie behind them, ahead, in the blazing heat there are 3,900 kilometres, maybe more since it’s impossible to know in advance how often they will lose their way. They laugh because what they are attempting is insane, because failure is unthinkable. The barman spits and goes back to his calabashes. The group sets off again. The camera pans across the horizon. In the distance, near a herd of buffalo, a sandstorm blows up. The temperature rises to melting point. People cover their faces, they avoid breathing. It is a senseless futile precaution since the sand in the Sahel is wily, it gets everywhere. In an old issue of Science et Vie, I read that it can travel as far as the Amazon, which gives you some idea. They stop to rest in the shade of a rocky outcrop bizarrely sculpted by millennia of scorching sandstorms. Here they spend the night, they have nightmares, the whole savannah is a distant cry that comes from the bowels of the earth to be taken up by millions of hungry throats. Several days later, at daybreak, a caravanserai appears on the horizon. It is beautiful! Guided only by ancient mysteries, it is heading north. Our group joins the caravan. They chat with the cheikh over glasses of mint tea. He is a Kel Ghella, a nobleman who can trace his lineage back to ancient upheavals. His face is covered by his alasho, all that is visible are his glassy eyes which look as though they are inhabited by a large sandworm.

— Are you heading north?

— Yes, to Tamanrasset, the Assihar begins there at the next moon.

— Can we travel with you?

— This is our route, but the Sahara belongs to those who know it.

— So we can come?

— If that is the will of Allah.

— What is Assihar? asks the camera.

— It is a festival that takes place once a year for all the Tuareg peoples, the Azdjer, the Ahaggar, the Aouellimiden, the Mourines, the Imohaghs, from the seven corners of the earth they come, from Mauritania and Sudan, from Algeria and Senegal, from Libya, Niger, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina-Faso, from as far away as the distant empire of Tibesti!

— It must be magnificent!

— It is tradition, we barter, we talk, we celebrate our ancestors. We come from el djanoub, from the south, from Timbuktu, and you?

— From Mali.

— And you?

— From Paris.

— What do you have to barter?

— Nothing, a little hope, a little friendship whenever possible, we are going to Bordj Badji Mokhtar to visit a dear friend.

— Are your papers in order?

— Eh… why?

— The Algerians are wary of foreigners, they do not like us, they kill us whenever they can or else they demand twenty bales of rare documents and a king’s ransom.

— So what do you do, how do you manage?

— The Sahara is our home for as far as it extends beneath the sun, we need no papers, they are the ones who should have to tell us who they are, where they are from.

The caravan is making steady progress. The camels bray just for the pleasure of hearing their voices, the Sahara has long since ceased to amaze them. Travelling alongside them, our heroes become more confident, Ahmadou and Abu-Bakr regain their strength. They make friends with young lanky Tuareg men born on the move and hence unfamiliar with the changing world. They talk to them about Europe, about the pleasures of life, the joy of love and of things that an eternal nomad can scarcely imagine: about the métro, social security, sports cars, snow, cinemas, Christmas holidays, microchips. But they are talking simply for the pleasure of talking, no one needs to understand. Question: What do they barter over there, in Europe? Curious, the camera has drawn nearer. Answer: There, there is everything, you don’t want for anything.

At the Algerian border, our friends go their separate ways.

— You have arrived, my brothers, we must travel on to Tamanrasset.

— But we are going to Bordj Badji Mokhtar. Where is it? We can’t see anything.

— It is right before your eyes.

— But there is nothing here.

— It is a mere two days’ walk towards the west.

— Thank you, noble cheikh.

— If the soldiers challenge you, tell them you are going to meet hajj Saïd le Chanceux, they will escort you and give you food and drink.

Bordj Badji Mokhtar — or BBM as we northerners call it — is a large town which grew from nothing and grew too quickly. It is rampant chaos: houses half-finished or half-demolished, streets little better than rutted dirt tracks, ramshackle trucks, camels on their last legs, roving goats, rabid dogs, corrupt cops, all covered over with thick dust imported from the north.

The meeting point is a depot belonging to the aforementioned hajj Saïd, aka Bouzahroun, aka ‘Lucky’, a man who is never seen without his night-vision goggles and his state-of-the-art mobile phone. He reminds me of sidi Saïd Bouteflika — also nicknamed ‘Lucky’ — the brother and special adviser to the president of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, a man who is never seen without his ski goggles and his walkie-talkie, but I suppose it’s not a crime to look like someone else. The camera, which has been roving around the town, quickly finds out that the mega-rich tycoon is a former terrorist who plotted with the high command and, for his exceptional services, was awarded a monopoly on human trafficking from BBM as far as Bamako and Niamey. Sidi Saïd has a fleet of a hundred trucks, a private militia numbering a thousand pistoleros, and, in case of war, has the right to mobilise the army and the customs service. When he is planning a particularly big coup, he calls one of a list of numbers in Algiers until he reaches the top. The camera did not hesitate, it was determined to discover what was really going on. It got its answer from an old man sitting lazily at the foot of a half-built wall playing an imzad — a violin with a single string stretched across a turtle shell. The camera pulled no punches.

— Have you any idea what’s going on here?

— Go to Laoni and you will understand.

— Where is that?

— Three days’ walk, south-west of here.

— Laoni?

— Yes, Laoni, the gold mine.

— What about it?

— The gold extracted from the mine is transported to Tamanrasset and from there it’s sent on to Algiers.

— I don’t see the problem.

— The gold never arrives in Tamanrasset; your friend Saïd commandeers it for his friends in high places.

— Is this true?

— And that’s not the whole story: Algiers denies that there is a secret American military base in the area and so Saïd is told to supply it on the quiet. He has dollars coming out of his arse.

— How do you know all this? No one in Paris has heard anything about it.

— Why wouldn’t I know? I occasionally work as a guide for Saïd and the Americans.

Over the days that followed, other harragas arrived at Saïd’s place, and eventually there were a dozen of them. Ahmadou and Abu-Bakr lost their starring roles in the documentary. The camera fell upon the newcomers, beardless boys with big eyes, a Malian, a Nigerian, a Ghanaian, two kids from Togo, one a pregnant girl, a Sudanese boy, an Ivoirian, a Senegalese, a Congolese and a Guinean, the last three having travelled the same route via Gao, the second largest trafficking hub in the Sahel after Tamanrasset. They all told the same story, they were all looking for the promised land. The tragedy — though they did not yet know this — was that they have come too far to get there in this life.

While they waited for the people smuggler to arrive, Saïd set them to work for the customs inspector. They repaired his roof in exchange for some bread and a little water. ‘A man must earn his keep,’ Saïd says to the camera, a smiling Good Samaritan. The camera takes the opportunity to rile him a little.

— How much do you make on the transfers to Tarifa? They say you bleed these people dry and very few make it there alive.

— That’s just malicious gossip, I do this out of Muslim charity. They want to have a little fun, the little black bamboulas, so I help them out.

As he says this, the people smuggler jumps down from his Land Rover. He takes off his keffiyeh and drinks down mint tea. Oh, he looks evil! He is just back from an expedition he is reluctant to discuss. The camera insists. ‘I was on holiday with friends in Tamanrasset,’ he swears, looking greedily at his new clients. In the camp, there is much talk about a group of Ugandan mercenaries who have been turned over to Gaddafi who, bored as a dead rat, dreams of opening up a new route. It’s crazy how much goes on in the middle of the desert.

Dawn the next morning, the immigrants are woken with a boot, loaded on to the back of the truck, covered with a tarpaulin, then they’re off. The camera has rented an air-conditioned 4x4, a driver and a guide. The voiceover does not mention the fact, but it clearly belongs to Saïd. The Toyota drives behind or in front of the truck, as filming dictates. The little convoy raises clouds of dust. They take no precautions, they drive at top speed, they have no need to worry since everywhere within a five-hundred-kilometre radius is controlled by Saïd. At military checkpoints, they are greeted with honours. Further north, as they enter another private fiefdom the truck pulls off the road before it reaches the checkpoints. Regardless of the faction they’re allied to, truckers stick together and so oncoming trucks flash their headlights to warn of an upcoming roadblock. Once means danger is 1km ahead, twice means 2km ahead and so on. Sometimes they stop, regroup and draw up a plan of battle. After the first few deaths, they negotiate over a pot of mint tea. It is perfectly timed and the Toyota, pretending to be a tourist who has broken down, manages to film the magnificent jamboree that takes place around the fire in the shadow of a cave.

Every time the truck slows and leaves the road, the harragas huddle together. The government does not take kindly to foreign intruders. They are beaten and then killed after a period working as slave labour for an officer. This is one of the perks offered to ranking officers, all of whom have palm groves that need tending or roofs that need mending.

The convoy arrives at the oasis town of El Oued, the ‘City of a Thousand Domes’. In the desert, it stops to visit a famous marabout, a bizarre old man, a dwarf in rags named sidi Abdelaziz who stands on solid-gold stilts and calls himself ‘El Mahdi’ — the Guided One. The little bastard has considerable influence, he hawks his bullshit prophecies from douar to douar and the people lap it up. His fame has spread far and wide, all the way to New York where people wonder what it’s all about. To some, he is a great prodigy, to others a vulgar charlatan. He looks to me like a lunatic, I thought, the first time I saw him shimmying around his kubba jabbering bits of marabout gibberish. Time is short. A confab takes place between the people smuggler and the master of the house. They high five, El Mahdi clicks his fingers and from a deep well hidden among the cacti, soaked to the skin, frantic and half-blind, twelve puny little runts appear. These are boys from the area around the fields who protested against poverty and found themselves being hunted down by the police and the Americans. They were looking for work, waving banners outside the Hassi Messaoud oil base. They have endured terrible dangers in order to get here to the meeting point, they have nothing but the clothes on their backs. ‘We will continue on foot, steering clear of the main roads,’ announces the smuggler. Northern Algeria is tightly controlled, there are roadblocks everywhere, and everywhere there are spies, barons, emirs, armed factions, dishonest officials, brazen bounty hunters. Dear God, what a journey, what terrors they must face; it’s enough to break your heart.

They trudge on for two weeks — a century and a half in any normal country. Long funeral marches between two alerts, two watches. The straggling group looks barely human now, a ragman would reject them. I felt wretched and ashamed as I watched them founder, unable to do anything to help.

Finally, just beyond the horizon, the border looms. On the far side is Morocco — the Kingdom of the Alaouites as they say in high places here in Algeria to imply God knows what. It is the same land, the same sun, the same peoples practising the same religion, the same food; but there the air is different, there a man can breathe. The group feels a sense of relief, this is like stepping into a picture postcard, one of the hand-tinted photos of long ago so charmingly idyllic that tourists felt a sudden need to siesta in the shade of a palm tree, or saddle the nearest donkey. All along this uncertain line established in endless treaties, everyone is in the business of contraband and smuggling; under the watchful gaze of both armies, oil is exchanged for kif. The soldiers keep a friendly eye on each other, a state of war with no war; it is a godsend, everyone gets to line their pockets and no one gets hurt.

The harragas are making good progress. Like them, the viewers are eager to cross the finish line. Another hairpin bend or two and we find ourselves in a withered pine forest on the outskirts of the Spanish exclave Ceuta, which in a former life was the walled city of Abyla. Hundreds of harragas live here, some have been here for several years. They have clearly put down roots: tents and shacks have sprung up everywhere, pots and pans hanging from the branches tinkle among the pine trees. The camera does a sweep of the location. A quick interview with one person, then on to another. Endless tales of harragas. The camp is segregated according to skin colour, nationality, religion, dialect and tribe. This is old-fashioned racism; peoples live cheek by jowl without acknowledging each other. As the camera prowls the Algerian quarter, I keep my eyes peeled. Every boy there looks just like Sofiane, same age, same pathetic affected air, but of Sofiane himself, there is no sign. I felt both disappointed and relieved. Each group has its own territory, its own survival strategy, its plans for freedom. Some have their sights set on Ceuta itself, others are merely passing through, heading for Tangiers, the gateway to Tarifa. This was what Ahmadou and Abu-Bakr were planning. They have come too far to spend all eternity picnicking in a pine forest. The film’s epilogue was devoted to them. Having survived the sandstorms and the vastness of the desert, they died in the arms of the sea within swimming distance of the Spanish coast. Only a young Togolese girl, beautiful as the sun at noon, set foot upon the promised land. Death must have realised that taking two wretched lives for the price of one was too unfair.

They come from afar

Seeking the impossible

Bellies empty, bodies taut with truth.

As they advance

Time flees before them

And behind them the corpses pile higher.

The sun wheels in the sky

Not a soul must escape

All must die before nightfall.

And so they die in their shadows

The wind gathers their bones

And with the earth, so turns the millstone.

The film ends with a long pull-back shot of the Ténéré while a haunting threnody comes from the heavens, from the oppressive, boundless, ochre sky. A funeral lament. Eyes close and we hear a final prayer as the ad break arrives with tips on how to make money in the capital which reminds me of Jean Yanne’s film Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil, prophets come and go, but advertising is for ever.

I was exhausted, I felt dirty, tattered, lost in thoughts of Sofiane, of Ahmadou and Abu-Bakr, of the young Togolese girl with the pretty face, and all those flailing in the background. My mind was in turmoil, lightning flashes, waves of sand as high as the Himalayas, the stench of sweat and shit, the chattering of TV commercials, the screams of the insane. It is terrible how painful noise can be in a universe of silence. One must love life to suffer so much. One must love death to court it so assiduously. Where does evil come from? What goes on in our heads?

I spent the whole night fretting.

Sofiane had everything, he had a house, he had my affection, he had friends, he had a routine. What about the rest? You can’t live on love alone when you’re imprisoned. Try as I might, I can’t work it out, but it is not always possible to name the thing that kills. The daily hardship? The all-idiocy? Yes, these play a part, but there are more powerful reasons: corruption, religion, bureaucracy, the culture of crime, of violence, of clannishness, the veneration of death, the glorification of the tyrant, the love of ostentation, the passion for strident sermons. Is that all? There are those who set a bad example. It comes from the top, from a government that mistakes ignorance for a priceless diamond; barbarism for sophistication; shoddy policies for brilliant statesmanship misappropriation of funds for legitimate disbursements. Oh, the bastards; oh, the stink of corruption! What about the intelligentsia, what do they have to say? They’re not all dead. What do you want them to say? They’re in prison, begging for a blanket and a piece of bread like everyone else. What about the heroes, the veterans, the hard nuts who revelled in the war? Oh, you poor deluded fool — they’re fossils now, their memories belong to others who rake in lots of cash. So is that all? No, there are the walls collapsing, the disasters the government has signed us up for, and the fear, the dreadful fears of a static life. What is left when all routes are cut off?

Dying is no big deal

When living is possible.

One elsewhere is worth a thousand heres.

Misery for misery

Considering the effort of the journey

The pain of being wrenched away

And the fear of losing one’s way.

The pleasure of finally believing in tomorrow

Is well worth sacrificing one’s life.

Like the bird

Like the prophet

Let us spread our wings, shake dust from our sandals

And walk into the wind

Burn a path

Somewhere in the world is the promised land.

Suddenly, in my heart, I feel like a harraga.

My door did not go bang bang, it went knock knock. That sound our doors no longer know how to make came to me like a divine breath. No one visits me except the local moralisers, the gorgon from the rue Marengo, and mad Moussa. I listen to them carefully, but they don’t understand, they just talk all the more. Then there are the officials who arrive on fixed dates hoping to take me by surprise, the meter readers for the gas, the water, the electricity, but they don’t count, they silently take their readings looking at us as though we’re invalids. I never dare to ask them about the charges for services never provided. Sometimes, trudging from afar, shuffling pitifully, the local tom-cat Missing Parts comes round to see if Minnie Mouse has returned home. He never says anything, he simply sighs as his one remaining eye stares down at his orphaned leg. It’s pitiful to watch as he contorts himself like a man on a high wire, vainly trying to scratch his missing ear with the stump of an arm. I fear for his safety, one ill-timed sneeze and he’s ready for the scrapheap. I’ve tried explaining to him that it’s pointless, that it’s all virtual, that Phantom Limb Syndrome means that though a limb is gone, the feeling continues for a time, it is persistence of sensation, a recognised phenomenon, it’s nothing new. I try to explain that there are better ways of expressing his shyness than scratching his earlobe or the tip of his missing nose. But I know it’s not easy to change one’s habits. I thought about bringing him to the hospital and fitting him with prostheses but I gave up on the idea; he would have to be completely rebuilt at which point he’d be even more at a loss. With a hook attached to his stump, persistence of feeling could kill him. I remembered the corny old joke: Tramp goes up to a tourist. ‘Hey, monsieur, I would bet a hundred francs I can kiss my right eye.’ ‘You’re on!’ says the tourist and stands back to watch. The tramp takes out his glass eye and brings it to his lips. ‘And now I bet you a thousand that I can kiss my left eye.’ ‘Impossible,’ says the tourist, setting down the stake and stepping closer. At which point the tramp takes out his false teeth and brings them to his left eye. Missing Parts could earn a living making bets now that he can’t work as a porter any more.

Then there’s 235, who shows up once a week with his bus. He comes to ask if there’s any news, with a bus full of pilgrims in tow, furious to find themselves in the back of beyond. He’s really sweet, but he tends to forget himself and his passengers end up hanging around in the midday sun while he’s sipping lemonade and telling me for the umpteenth time about his saintly mother. He’s a good boy.

My dear friends phone about once a year, always with the same cutting remark: ‘So, what are you up to these days?’ I always retort: ‘What about yourself?’ firmly believing ‘least said, soonest offended’. It’s always the women who don’t give a damn who come nosing around. ‘Hi, how are you?’ and they’re off badmouthing everyone in the neighbourhood. God, but the women in this country have got sharp tongues, I don’t know where they get it from. You could cut their throats and they’d still be gossiping.

Knock knock! Knock knock!

My heart was racing. I yanked the door open so fast I nearly dislocated my arm. It wasn’t Chérifa.

A young woman. Twenty-two, twenty-three maybe. Dark hair, a slightly ‘so what’ air, jeans that fit her like a glove, her chest sags a little, she needs to rethink her bra. Dark eyes, lots of eyeliner, eyebrows like circumflexes. She’s clearly a worrier, she overthinks before she speaks. Sniff sniff. She smells good. Like me, she has her perfume sent from Paris in the diplomatic bag.

‘If you’re looking for Lamia, you’ve found her. And you are?’

‘Um… Scheherazade.’

‘Please don’t tell me you’ve come from Oran or Tangiers on the advice of my idiot brother Sofiane because, I swear, I’ll kill myself.’

‘Um… I’m from Algiers.’

A beautiful voice, warm, a little husky. The name suits her to a T. She is the Orient that exists only in fairytales.

‘So?’

‘Um… I was looking for Chérifa…’

‘What? Chérifa? My Chérifa?’

‘Um… yes.’

‘Get in here right now and explain yourself.’

From the moment my little runaway from Oran showed up, I was destined to meet people. Missing Parts and 235 were at the top of the list. It was because of Chérifa that Bluebeard lost his sense of mystery; these days I just think of him as one more neighbour to distrust. Now here is the beautiful Scheherazade come to tell me extraordinary tales. I’m up to my eyes in myths and legends. Scheherazade is practically a colleague, she’s a fourth-year biology student. She hails from Constantine, a town that died with the Jewish exodus in 1962, all that remains is a pile of stones and a few old men who lean against the crumbling walls pretending to dream of the beauties of the Mesozoic era and to know all there is to know about the charms of Andalucía in their grandfathers’ day. An earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale could not have done a better job. The few remaining women wear black feathers, she tells me, people call them crows. While Scheherazade describes her curious hometown, in my mind I am flicking through Yasmina Khadra’s novel The Swallows of Kabul. Her grandfather works in the rag trade, he imports fabric from the Sentier district in Paris.

‘Would you credit it? And why not buy from Medina or from Islamabad, after all they are our brothers?’

‘They’re old boyhood friends.’

‘I understand.’

A wise man is a wise man, what can you say? Scheherazade lives in the halls of residence at Ben-Aknoun University, she has a tiny room on the top floor, building 12, stairwell B, which, over time, she has managed to make cosy. This is against regulations but the elderly janitor doesn’t know her or has forgotten her. She cooks, stays at home, listens to modern music and invites her girlfriends — some of whom even dare to smoke!

‘I know all about caretakers, my dear, I’ve hoodwinked my fair share in my time. The janitors at the Hôpital Parnet are ruthless, but they’ve never caught me out. I turn up on time, I leave on time, my white coat is clean and I always give them a cheery salaam alaykum.’

‘At university we have to bribe the porters, they insist on a tip at the end of the month…’

‘That’s new. In my day, it was more about the sensual. They’d beg us to show them our knickers. If you hiked your dress up to your thigh, they’d lick your hand, you could send them off to run errands, they would even lie on your behalf if need be. It sounds like they’ve aged. So, where is Chérifa?’

‘Well, that’s the thing — I’m looking for her.’

‘You mean she ran away?’

‘That’s the least of it…’

‘Tell me everything.’

‘…’

We talked. For hours. Everything I feared had happened and more besides. I blame myself: by imagining the worst, I brought it about. And that idiot Mourad played on my fears at every opportunity: ‘Women are all the same!’ he’d say every time I got discouraged and gave in to despair. In this beautiful city, there will never be a shortage of men willing to speak ill of women.

On the fateful day when she left here, Chérifa went into the town centre. This is where waifs and strays converge, the illegal immigrants, the unemployed, the tramps and all the little creatures that the economic reforms have forced to turn tricks for 300 dinars an hour on the byroads off the straight and narrow. Here in the heart of the city, abject poverty meets garish luxury beneath the all-seeing eye of God and his representatives. There’s nothing to be done about it, even Hercules would wear himself down trying to understand the topography. In fact the place reminds me of Rachid Boudjedra’s novel Ideal Topography for an Aggravated Assault, the story of a Kabyle who arrives in Paris from a rocky peak in the Djurdjura and goes round and round and round on the métro, astonished by everything he sees in this never-ending tunnel only to finally succeed in getting himself murdered. He never manages to see the sun shine in Paris or enjoy the peace of its streets. Which in turn reminds me of Camus’s L’Étranger, which has Meursault going round and round and round in the luminous meanders of Algiers until he finally meets an Arab by a sand dune, can’t understand him, and kills him stone dead. The same tragedy, the same unfathomable humanity.

A hundred metres uphill is the seat of government, though that’s not really what has people flocking here. A hundred metres downhill is the harbour, with its tubby boats and an army of freight agents afflicted by facial tics. A hundred metres to the left is the Commissariat of Police with its army of informants. A hundred metres to the right is the Kasbah with its inscrutable mysteries. In the shadow of La Grande Poste, in the middle of the square, is the one and only entrance to the famous Algiers métro which has been a boon and a nightmare for five successive presidents, twenty governments and two thousand utterly insignificant deputés. Ten times it has been inaugurated, and each time we believed this was the one. The entrance is a fantasia of pink marble and anodised bronze used to great effect. It is possible to go down into the station but the tunnel leads nowhere, it simply trails off into the muddy depths and the prehistoric magma. It sometimes seems as though from the bottomless ventilation shaft, you can hear people whispering in Chinese. As it waits for its trains and its satisfied commuters who, we are assured, will arrive within six months, the passageways serve as a shopping arcade for the local fauna. One person’s loss is another person’s gain. Here, luxury items are sold, dope, guns, forged identity papers, counterfeit money, merchandise which arrives via the port, the Commissariat, the Government Annexe, the Kasbah, the post office.

There’s no need to look, everything is within reach. The place is teeming. Here the little people do their shopping far from laws and from harassment. From an aerial viewpoint, you’d swear they were free electrons, but no, they are controlled by gravitational force. The area attracts teenage runaways the way nectar attracts bees. They’ve been told that this is the gateway to a new life and that, as with any travel agency, there are endless choices of destination. Two hundred metres away, abutting the harbour walls in glorious confusion, stand the bus and train stations and between them, on a patch of waste ground, are the gypsy cabs, a riot of clapped-out rustbuckets, every one in perfect working order. ‘Direct from producer to consumer’ is a slogan from the socialist era, but it applies perfectly to the black market.

The elegant women of Algiers also frequent the square; it is the only place where they can find perfume from Paris imported from Taiwan via Dubai. People say that at customs the sniffer dogs are trained not to smell perfumes but that’s just a joke the kids tell; in fact in Algiers there are no sniffer dogs in customs — if there were all hell would break loose. The elegant ladies turn up here dressed like paupers hoping to pass unnoticed but their pale complexions and their strange lisping accent give them away and prices are hiked up.

‘She came up to me outside La Grande Poste. I… I buy imported perfume there… you can’t find anything in the shops.’

‘I get what I need from Tata Zahia who used to work at the Union. She runs a little shop from home. It’s all good stuff, and direct from Paris, too, if you please! She’s a genuine trafficker, honest, friendly, she’ll even have a little chat over a glass of mint tea. Sometimes there are fifty people there and we have a party. She has a cousin who’s a minister and he supplies her on the quiet. I’ll recommend you. So, what happened next?’

‘I brought her back to my rooms in the halls of residence… I felt sorry for her…’

‘Did she have her holdall?’

‘What?’

‘Her clothes, her gear.’

‘Um… yeah.’

‘So how is she? I mean the pregnancy… is she eating properly?’

‘Um… yes. I couldn’t let her move in with me, my room is tiny… besides I need peace and quiet to study… and anyway, it’s against the rules…’

‘So where does she sleep?’

‘Sometimes my room, sometimes one of the other girls… we organised a rota… whenever she needs to move, we distract the caretaker. During the day, she goes for a walk in the city, and…’

‘And?’

‘…’

Chérifa is slippery as an eel. After a week of doing nothing, of strolling in the sunshine, she hooked up with a homeless man who smelled of damp straw, he was succeeded by some useless cop, then an incompetent journalist and now, apparently, she’s run off with an airline pilot we don’t know the first thing about beyond the fact that he dresses too well to be honest.

‘We’re worried. She’s been gone a week now. The girls are really fond of her, she’s so happy-go-lucky but she… um… well she’s due any day now so she shouldn’t be…’

They’ve clearly been charmed by the siren song of my Lolita.

‘I know, I know.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘Track down the pilot, it can’t be that difficult, there’s only one airline in this country last time I checked. It’s called Air Algérie, right? We’ll just wait until he ejects from his glider.’

‘I… um… I don’t want any trouble…’

‘I’ll deal with everything. I’ll pop in and see him unexpectedly, the same way you came to see me. Did Chérifa give you my address?’

‘Not exactly… I had to search. She talked about you all the time, about Rampe Valée, the Turk’s palace, the Frenchman’s castle, the Jew’s shack, the Kabyle’s cave… I… um… I couldn’t understand why the house had so many names.’

‘It’s history, it’s complicated. So, what then?’

‘She mentioned the Hôpital Parnet, she talked about your friends, about Mourad, Sofiane, Monsieur 236.’

‘235! I’m not intimate with every driver who works for GAUTA!’

‘Sorry, Monsieur 235… Missing Parts and Bluebeard, the gorgon from the rue Marengo… and… well… your ghosts… the ones in the house, I mean.’

‘Well how do you like that? A veritable menagerie!’

‘She’s very fond of you, and she really is very sorry. One day she actually went to see you at the hospital and she came back so upset… You were in a terrible mood and she didn’t dare talk to you.’

‘Let’s dispense with sentimentality for the moment, just give me the facts. So what happened next?’

‘…’

I choked back my tears, I would have to hear this drama out to the bitter end if I was to understand.

So, she had met some peasant in the woods next to the university campus. It’s the sort of place that attracts lovers trying to get away from prying eyes and radical preachers. Our two country bumpkins meet and realise they are kindred souls and before you know it they’re embroiled in some vegetarian discussion. They pretend they’re living in a commune, they draw up a list, life is beautiful. Their little game lasts a week before things turn sour. ‘He’s as much fun as a lizard,’ she said. That’s Chérifa all over, the minute she’s bored, she’s off.

The next day, some other freak was trailing her back to the halls of residence. No need for binoculars to spot this one, the other girls knew immediately where this nasty piece of work came from. The dark glasses, the walkie-talkie glued to the ear, that swagger like a boat putting out to sea, that arrogance that says you have the world at your feet and a Colt 45 swinging by your side, these are the hallmarks of an institution, the most important institution in this country: the police.

Her new companion offered Chérifa a season ticket to the seediest parts of Algiers which, if Mourad is to be believed, are among the most stomach-turning in the solar system. Things move at a break-neck pace, Chérifa learns to smoke, to drink, to fight, to strike a pose and she also learns a new vocabulary. The other girls stop their ears and listen, the little fool dropped words like bombs. She would go out at ridiculous hours, come back at all hours without so much as a by-your-leave. The girls at the halls of residence couldn’t handle it, one by one they closed their doors to her. Young women from good families are more terrified by a whiff of scandal than they are by terrorism. The caretakers started to grumble openly, the rumours spread. Attracted by the scent, dubious cars began showing up on the campus. Before long the sticklers came out of the woodwork claiming that stranglers were operating in the area. I suspect this means the sermonisers and the Defenders of Truth. It’s high time we standardised the vocabulary, we can’t go on using different words for the same things. The problem is people stammer and shift and shilly-shally about anything to do with Islam. It’s like the Tower of Babel, people say stickler, strangler, cut-throat, Islamist, lunatic, fanatic, fundamentalist, terrorist, suicide bomber, jihadist, Wahhabi, Salafist, Djazarist, Taliban, Tango, Zarqaouist, Afghani, born in the banlieue, member of al-Qaeda and I don’t know what else — it’s like these people had nothing to do with Islam. But they’re all basically the same person with different clothes and different beliefs. The specialists should at least agree on their terms, that way we would be able to have a frank discussion about the problem, but let’s be honest, if Islam is responsible for anything, it’s producing Muslims, there’s no way of knowing how they will turn out later, and there’s no after-sales service. For crying out loud, if people have children, they should keep them under control.

Chérifa imposed herself on Scheherazade, a seven-month swollen belly commands respect. But Chérifa did not change her ways. A few days later, she showed up with a clueless journalist who had a pen tucked behind his ear and a newspaper tucked under his arm. Scheherazade, who has a mouthful of peculiar expressions from her part of the country, dispatched him quickly: ‘A skinny little runt who wouldn’t need to catch a sheep to play knucklebones.’ The handover between policeman and journalist did not go well, there was a punch-up and the newshound found himself in hospital with cuts and contusions. The following day, the front-page story in his newspaper read: Our star reporter K.M. suffered a savage beating from police officers as a result of his hard-hitting investigation into the misconduct of Inspector H.B., who has been implicated in a major arms-dealing racket with the Islamist maquis. Scheherazade showed me a press clipping. What a story!

The authorities’ response came the following day via the pages of the government daily El Moudjahid (The Holy Warrior), from which Truth spills out over the country. Under the banner headline there is journalism and then there is journalism, it reads: It has been discovered that Monsieur K.M., a disgrace to a profession that has done so much for democracy, is involved in drug trafficking on a vast scale in collaboration with a certain sister country whose hatred for our homeland is matched only by its vicious oppression of the heroic Saharan people engaged in a legitimate struggle for independence recognised by the international community, and with certain groups in Algiers known for their pathological greed and their contempt for the extraordinarily progressive policy initiated by the President of the Republic. When challenged by the heroic Inspector H.B., the suspect attempted to corrupt the officer, offering him the services of a prostitute known to the police, a certain C.D., however the gallant officer, a man of irreproachable morals, flatly refused. Concerned by the seriousness of the facts alleged, and alarmed at the effects on law and order, the Public Prosecutor immediately issued a warrant for the arrest of Monsieur K.M. and ordered a search of the newspaper’s offices. The case continues.

What has Morocco got to do with any of this? And what, precisely, has the President’s policy achieved? God, how these people love things to be complicated!

The university campus witnessed a brief war of attrition between the press and the police, and then everything went back to normal, the journalist vanished without trace, the newspaper was shut down, the offices auctioned off and the editor got two years’ hard labour. While they were about it, the police interrogated and tortured a few other journalists as a precaution. The inspector was not forgotten in all this chaos: he received a promotion.

Chérifa, having brought disgrace on the university halls of residence, was formally requested to leave the premises. There was nothing else the girls could do, their exams were looming, their parents were panicking and visiting more often. This was no time for jokes.

Chérifa wandered the city for a while before hooking up with the pilot in a café next door to the offices of Air Algérie. Scheherazade caught a glimpse of him behind the wheel of his magnificent car when the runaway returned to campus to collect her belongings. Fortysomething and with a little paunch, the pilot looked quite dapper and seemed to be a cheerful character. Scheherazade thought she heard the shameless hussy refer to him as ‘Rachid’.

Their goodbyes were minimal, since the little madam is incapable of saying good morning or goodnight.

Since then, there had been no news. Had she taken the train? Had she gone back to Oran? Is she somewhere else and, if so, where?

Curtain. End of drama. Now, I could let myself weep.

Who would have believed that I, Lamia, a paediatrician, a strong-minded, intelligent woman, oblivious to everyday contingencies and immune to sentimentality, would be turning my life upside down for the sake of a little country girl who’s become a scarlet woman! I was filled with a curious feeling. Guilt? That’s certainly part of it, I smothered her and she ran away. Telling her she needed to be educated was another mistake, it made her feel a fool, cut off from the world. Anger, the resentment that comes from failure, from…? Not just that, rage, a desire to… It’s envy, pure mother-daughter envy! Yes, I suppose. Chérifa is happy to give her all to the first man who comes along, and yet I love her, I offered her my life, my home, and she refuses even to grace me with her presence. Not a single visit, not a phone call, not even a message. It’s stupid, it’s pathetic to get involved in such idiotic relationships.

What was it that I called her, what was the word I spat in her face when all she wanted was a smile, a glance, a hug?

I give up. I’ve already given her everything I had to give!

Louiza and Sofiane left me with deep scars, Chérifa ripped my heart out. It’s not fair. I’m done with it, I need to move on. I am not going to let this haunt me to my dying day.

‘So, tell me, my dear Scheherazade, do you really miss that lunatic so much that you’ve come all the way to Rampe Valée? Isn’t that a little like something out of a fairytale?’

‘We’re very fond of her… um… we…’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, um…’

‘I get it.’

We’re all in the same boat; like me, the girls at the university are filling an emptiness in their lives. Apart from their textbooks and their notebooks, they have nothing that makes them feel human. Their lives at the university felt hollow, formless, a prelude to their lives as women, a shadowgraph, a mere outline; they were hardworking, diligent, dutiful, submissive, slaves to timetables and rituals, and Chérifa, naive and happy-go-lucky, came along and challenged everything. In discovering our innermost dreams, we do not emerge unscathed. And, being women, we have too many dreams.

Scheherazade abruptly got to her feet. The night porter was about to begin his shift and would discover she was absent at roll-call. After six pm, the price of his silence is exorbitant.

She promised to come back and see me.

Algiers airport is unlike any in the world. All the dangerous contraptions the commercial aviation industry has devised ever since Icarus first flew too close to the sun are to be found there. With all its junk and all its gaping wounds I can’t understand how it’s still standing. The building is all splints and plasters. It’s a miracle the planes still remember how to fly. I had a knot in my stomach as I stepped inside this beleaguered world that looks like a national disaster and where a sizeable subset of humanity rushes, shrieks, weeps, jostles and gesticulates. After several collisions and copious sweating, I found myself standing in front of a breeze-block barrier next to the public lavatories, a mouldering area where the ambient temperature was several hundred degrees. Above the low wall a cardboard sign suspended from the ceiling was emblazoned in red with the words Bienvenu, Information in twelve different languages (or simply repeated twelve times). I stepped forward. Behind the counter, a phalanx of bungling idiots were playing a game a little like ‘Battleships’. The aim is to destroy the maximum number of planes with the minimum number of bombs in the shortest possible time. Brazenly, I addressed them, but they spoke a language I could not quite place, something gruff, halting, punctuated by sprays of black spittle and accompanied by threatening gestures. Nearby, sitting cross-legged on blocks of wood, girls wearing pagnes and bonnets were shelling peas, grinding millet or knitting mittens. They were not happy, something is bothering them so they adopt the pose of scorned lovers. I often prefer to view things and people through a distorting prism, I find it makes them easier to understand, they prove to be different to how they appear. The leader of this tribe, easily identifiable by her headdress, her sceptre and a fine collection of pendants dangling from her neck, her ears, even her navel, looked daggers at me, but when I explained that I had not come to disturb their glorious rituals but to see my cousin Rachid, a pilot, about a family matter of the utmost importance, she flashed me a lewd smile. I was treated to a volley of crude sniggers and a barrage of innuendo. Rachid clearly has something of a reputation among his fellow pilots who envy him and covet his many ‘cousins’. I squeezed my eyes closed and imagined them all being strangled by King Kong and, emerging from this therapy, I found myself face to face with a man in his priestly garb, a sort of evangelical minister with a firm but gentle voice. He had appeared from a hut behind the stockade. Beneath his penetrating gaze, I felt childish and naive.

‘What do you want, woman?’

I was safe, this fellow spoke my dialect of Latin. I explained myself again, employing broken Arabic the better to flatter his eloquence and get the information I needed at a bargain price. The minister gazed at me for a long time, peered searchingly into my eyes until he could see the colour of my knickers, then he nodded, shrugged, bustled about behind his pulpit, scribed a few hieroglyphics with the aid of a golden flint, mumbled some incantations into a handset and in the time it takes to roast a lizard over a slow flame, a knight from an operetta appeared in full regalia whom I immediately recognised: fortysomething, pot-bellied, a cheery fellow, he went by the name of Rachid. When he saw me, impeccably dressed in my immaculate chasuble, he unsheathed the smile reserved for fine ladies, a solemn, sophisticated, nonchalant rictus that twitched at the corners of his mouth. Scheherazade was right, the handsome hunk was a miserable loser.

I needed to quickly befriend him if I was to achieve my goal: to find Chérifa safe and sound.

True to the dictates of his shallow, callous nature, he immediately attempted to seduce me. Usually, I am brutal with self-styled Lotharios who try to chat me up, but in this case I decided to be tactful:

‘I’m in a relationship with a sort of Bluebeard who’s planning to cut my throat, but if you want to try your luck in twenty or thirty years’ time, and assuming I’m still up to it, I’ll willingly give myself to you for free.’

The man’s a chancer. He said, ‘You’re on.’

Via a rickety metal fire escape, we headed down to the terrace café like a couple of travellers each with his own map. Panoramic views of the hinterland, lifeless suburbs sporting a shock of state-of-the-art satellite dishes, abandoned building sites with girders soaring into empty space and cranes slowly rusting, the motorway sweeping impetuously away with its miscellaneous cars and vehicles and, in the distant mountains, a raging forest fire. This is the ravaged, windswept landscape of Dinotopia, where bellowing pterodactyls take wing and tyrannosaurs breathe fire. The magic of the IMF has done its work here and we have been sent back to the Middle Ages filled with fearsome djinns and comical mendicants. Below us sprawled the airport, the hangars, the ramshackle planes lined up with their noses to the wind, the runway with its puddles, its potholes, its airstairs, its windsocks; the ballet of baggage handlers. I can’t begin to describe the strange things that were happening on the ground, light-fingers were fluttering and filching and in broad daylight. Oh, yes, and there were policemen, dozens of them everywhere.

‘I’m listening,’ I said, before he forgot himself.

Though I know it all too well, as I listened to him regale me with tales of his conquests, I was reminded how intelligent imbecility needs to sound if it is to prosper. I’ve never heard the like. He’d met Chérifa in the café next to Air Algérie downtown. His heart had skipped a beat, the sight of a Lolita in distress moved our gallant hero. He had qualms, but he did what he felt was his duty. He is prepared to try anything once, and he likes to show off his trophies. He felt particularly proud of this catch: a pregnant, abandoned girl — what better? Good lord, he paraded her around the Great South, flying her in his rusty crate to Tamanrasset, Djanet, Timimoun, Illizi, tourist destinations for those of us from the Great North, sand upon sand in millions of tonnes, heat capable of melting stones, clumps of palm trees here and there to indicate areas of human habitation surrounded by the vast immensity and by silver-tongued men with sombreros and Toyotas who pretend that they have a timetable to respect. That little wretch Chérifa manages to commandeer bus drivers, pilots and army officers, while I’m having trouble making ends meet! Chérifa, of course, was delighted; she laughed at everything, marvelled at everything, was thrilled to see the white-hot sky floating above the boundless, white-hot sands and, between the two, the Blue Men, those magnificent nomads, trailed by gentle, gallant dromedaries across the rolling dunes. Dear God, I picture her there and I feel distraught, how could she have thought life in the desert would be fun? Then, of course, she started having pains, vomiting, thrashing about.

‘I can guess what comes next! You tossed her aside in a region so vast that people get lost inside their own homes.’

‘How dare you suggest such a thing! She left of her own accord… I…’

‘She’s not even seventeen years old, she knows nothing about life, she still believes in fairies, she’ll swallow any nonsense, but even she realised that you were the biggest cretin of all time. I’m just dumbfounded that it took her a couple of days to tell it to you straight.’

‘I… I…’

‘Go to hell!’

Going to court is out of the question, Chérifa is known to the police as a prostitute and she would probably be blamed for the battle between press and police at the university halls of residence. As a woman, she has no rights, as a prostitute she has a lot of explaining to do, as an unmarried teenage mother, she deserves the death penalty. Godforsaken ignorant fucking bled! Besides, what judge would listen to me? I’m a woman, I’m a spinster, a troublemaker, I don’t wear the veil, I don’t own a burka, I walk with my head held high, I give as good as I get, and in the eyes of their infernal laws Chérifa is nothing to me. And I have no one to sign for me.

I crawled home. Emptiness, which after all is my universe, exploded inside my head; I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t breathe. I ceased to exist. Everything I loved, everything I had dreamed about with all my heart, everything I missed to the point that I turned myself into a nunlike automaton had miraculously come to life in the form of that uneducated, ungrateful, emotionally unstable girl. Life tore through me like a tornado through a cave. I gave her everything, she rejected everything and the breath of life that her presence inspired in me has leaked away like air from a burst tyre. I was angry with myself. I was angry with her, but I also saw a kind of fulfilment in that fundamental imbalance, I felt both uplifted and reduced to nothing, a nebulous middle ground between the happiness I had finally glimpsed and the perpetual, unending sadness of our life.

Where are you Chérifa? How far can your life take you when there is nothing to hold you back? Wherever you are, if you can read my thoughts, you should know that Rampe Valée, the haunted house and the heart of Lamia will always be open to you.

It’s time to go home and get ready to wait; eternity is a long time.

A bird is a thing of beauty

But, alas, a bird has wings

Which, just as they serve to alight

So too they serve to take flight.

That is the tragedy of birds.

I was inspired when I wrote those words.