Harraga

Act IV

Life is a fairytale

By dint of suffering, we forget.

We do not only grow through pain

Joy is a more powerful fertiliser.

It is enough that God should will it

And spring should come.

And God had willed it.

And spring had long since come.

And still I would have to drain this bitter cup to the dregs.

On the seventh day after what I had calculated to be Chérifa’s due date, the message came by telephone. It was early in the morning on 29 May and I was getting ready to go to the hospital. I still work there sometimes as a doctor, but more and more often I go as a patient eaten away by some deep-rooted disease. When the phone rang — though I had probably already been warned, in a dream or by some other means — I realised that the end of my long ordeal was on the other end of the line. When flustered, I find it difficult to control my actions, foolishly I smoothed my hair, rubbed my hands on my thighs and even more foolishly I glanced around, searching for some help, some pretext, before nervously lifting the receiver as though angry at myself for behaving like a cornered animal.

To my dying day I will remember that conversation: every word, every inflection and every ache in my head, in my body, in every fibre of my being. A few brief, banal phrases, a few simple words, a few unexpected, awkward pauses that succeeded in conveying extraordinary things. True, the turmoil of the past few weeks had heightened my senses to the point where the slightest thing seemed a sign of tragedy, farce and madness waiting to explode.

‘Hello?’

‘Mademoiselle Lamia?’

‘Um… maybe… yes.’

‘Hello, my name is Anne…’

‘Sorry… Hanna?’

‘No, Anne, but it doesn’t matter. I’m calling you about…’

No! Dear God no, not that! I can guess… she… she’s going to tell me… It… it will kill me… I’ll scream until the end of my days.

‘Please, madame, not that… For pity’s sake, please.’

‘I’m sorry… I truly am sorry. We need to meet.’

‘Why? What’s the point?’

‘It was Chérifa’s wish…’

‘What?… Dear God.’

‘I can’t tell you anything over the phone. Please come and see me.’

‘Where?’

‘Blida, the convent of Notre Dame des Pauvres. It’s on the outskirts of the village, on the road to Chréa. Ask anyone, they’ll know the way. I’ll be waiting.’

I had considered every scenario, the impossible and the improbable — a commonplace in a country at war with itself — fate standing on a street corner and something that happens once in a thousand years, only once, a miracle so to speak, but this was something I had not considered, an intercession by the Church. I thought that this country was completely controlled from the mosque.

I jumped into a taxi, a rusty old heap painted New York yellow driven by an elderly man as fat and hairy as a walrus who for some reason was trawling round the neighbourhood. The people here in Rampe Valée never go anywhere, or if we do, we walk down the hill to catch the bus, praying to heaven that the GAUTA is running today. Was it mektoub that brought him to me? I refuse to believe it. Both man and machine were old and clapped out, which meant they would know every lane and byroad within a thousand-kilometre radius and since Blida’s only fifty klicks from here, they could get there with their eyes closed. Sobbing into a hankie, I sat wringing my hands and trembling. The driver was sympathetic, he chatted away mostly to himself, a lone windmill turning in a gale. I offered monosyllabic answers as grist to his mill. It took my mind off things, I couldn’t bear to stare out at careening carts and old nags fit only for the knacker’s yard. Panic pounded in my temples and my heart was fit to burst.

‘Did your husband beat you?’

‘Snff… snff… yes.’

‘So where are you headed now… to your parents?’

‘Snff… snff… yes.’

‘Did you defy him?’

‘Snff… snff… I think so.’

‘You have the look of a good woman about you. I suppose it was the devil led you astray?’

‘Snff… snff… yes.’

‘And this man who claims to be a Muslim is letting you travel all on your own without a veil?’

‘Snff… snff… yes.’

‘Back in my day, it would have been a disgrace!’

‘Snff… snff… yes.’

‘…’

I felt tempted to upbraid him, we had inherited ‘his day’ a hundredfold, but given his age and the state of his car, I worried that his heart might burst or the fan belt of his jalopy might snap. I would be to blame for their deaths, for the martyrdom of a devout Muslim and the demise of an ancient rustbucket hallowed by the hundreds of pilgrims and who knew how many imams who had parked their posteriors on these seats. And besides, I wasn’t really listening to him, I had no wish to add to my sorrows the ravings of some oddball about how the female of the species likes to cavort with the devil.

On the second leg of the journey, he broached the subject of the punishments to be inflicted on wives according to the faults committed by them, their sisters, their daughters and their confidantes. A personal and a collective scale underpinned by an absolutist rhetoric. Guilty or not, they deserved to be punished, that was the gist of it. He talked about the talaq, but he seemed to think repudiation was a convoluted process suitable only as a last resort. What, did I hear right? I was about to demand that he explain what, exactly, was convoluted about a man throwing his wife out into the street or breaking her neck, and what precisely qualified as a ‘last resort’, but he didn’t wait, he had already launched into a comparative analysis of flogging and stoning before moving on to his favourite method of chastisement: having the woman clapped in irons and tossed into the bottom of a well for seven days and seven nights after which, with feverish devotion, the well is filled in. He talked at length about this authentically corrective ritual, largely forgotten these days probably because most wells are dry. He went on to discuss cremation, throat-cutting, quartering, the boiling of all or parts of the body, pouring molten lead into the ears or the nostrils and who knows what all — the Muslim world being as broad as it is rich in such pièces de résistance, he cast a wide net. It all sounded rather old-fashioned and ignorant of state-of-the-art techniques. Good God, they could simply put women in factories, gas them, electrocute them by the dozen, by the thousand, dissolve them in acid — what else? — turn them into candles, into polish. Better yet, melt them down and turn them into some revolutionary alloy, use them as fertiliser, or maybe for road resurfacing — they would provide a much more flexible surface. But I wasn’t really listening, I wasn’t really looking; we would soon be arriving at the convent and my heart was hammering. I decided I would send him away and tell him to come back in about an hour. I would give him some money and suggest he unwind in a nearby café maure — that mysterious space where never within the memory of man has woman set foot. He rolled his eyes, he could not understand what a creature who had defied Qur’anic law was doing at a Christian refuge.

The convent of Notre Dame des Pauvres is a squat building covered with wild vines set well back from the road that connects Blida to Chréa next to an overgrown path that smells sweetly of the Mediterranean. Everything about the place seems to smile, but it would be unwise to trust to appearances; there is a microclimate that exists in the mountains that look out towards the sea, it is a whimsical place where grass yellows before turning green and the blue of the sky can veer unexpectedly from white to red. No barometer on earth can comprehend its neuroses, it changes its mantle of cloud the way a person changes their shirt. Clouds scud past, heedless to the prayers of empty rain barrels, they linger for a moment in the heavens before heading for the sea there to surrender to the splendours of the water-cycle. How remote the sordid streets of Algiers seem, how strange the sky! The taxi slipped into first gear and climbed slowly between hedgerows of whispering spikes and thorns. It valiantly juddered along, strewing bolts and washers and, at every hairpin bend, another cog fell off the chassis. Under my breath, I recited a pious rosary of heave-hos. There is no shortage of cicadas, they are all one can hear. After a few scant minutes it feels as though, but for cicadas on earth and God in His heaven, nothing else exists. Blazing sunshine is guaranteed year round, but for the turning of the season when there is one whole week of actual snow, something skiing buffs in the days before the troubles spoke of as though it lasted twelve months of the year. Once more I thought of Camus, a son of the soil; he had spent time here among the crickets and the olive groves before exiling himself to the north pole, to the grim absurdities that dog us from birth to death. I think about Rachid Mimouni, another son of the soil who people say spent time here before becoming a harraga and leaving to die over there, in Tangiers the magnificent, gateway to every destination. It is piteous to be so impoverished. From our native soil we expect abundance and joy, not exile and death. Who tumbles into darkness lapses into violence is a saying that well expresses the descent into hell, but up in these mountains, ringed by radiant light and serenaded by homoptera, how could anyone be malicious or miserable without feeling ashamed? Absurdity again, madness again.

The door is sturdy, carved from solid wood and set on ancient iron hinges. Beyond it, well protected, silence reigns. It conjures a world of timeless mysteries, of lives lived plagued by worries and thorny questions, crippled or exalted by doubts and surely denied happiness — the elixir we poor wretched, helpless creatures do our utmost to filch where we can to avoid annihilation — or quite the reverse, spared the terrible misery that keeps the rest of us clinging to life like a buoy in spite of everything. I don’t know what to think about it, personally, I live in utter solitude in a ramshackle mansion surrounded by a vast prison that is falling down about our ears and taking us all with it.

On the façade, the name of the institution was carved in relief above the lintel, a single slab of pink marble: Convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Poor. The faint air of neglect hinted that the members of the order could probably be counted on the fingers of half a hand. Where are the beggars, Lord of the poor? Where are the nuns, the churchwardens and the donors rubbing their hands with glee to see their money so wisely used? Where are the processions, the saint’s-day celebrations, where is the smell of warm bread broken in the spirit of fraternity? Everything is in ruins, all our possessions and those of our friends, all our good wishes for happiness have been swept away.

The door made no sound and I had only my fists to make myself heard. What could I do?

An old woman sitting on a hillock, a basket at her feet, a bundle of firewood on her head, was struggling to catch her breath before continuing her journey into the unknown. Her wrinkled face suddenly came to life, she stared at me as though I were a freak of nature and spoke to me: ‘Where’d you spring from, you? The great door is for religion, if it’s healing you want, it’s round the other side — a white door with a green cross, you’ll see.’

She said the words as though speaking some great, evident truth, the care of the body is not that of the soul. Was she right or wrong? I thanked her with a blink, it was the best I could do, I had a lump in my throat and the rest of my being refused to respond. I needed only to hear Sister Anne say the last word to fall silent for ever. I knew, I could feel it, when I left the convent my life would be over.

Everything happened very fast although my nerves crackled with unbearably slow suspense. I was ushered inside by a vague young woman, a local peasant girl who had taken up medicine. Though her white coat was genuine, she wore it like a costume at a village fête. I remember my first white coat, I was so proud, I wore it like a wedding dress, sunlight shimmered on it and the air moved deliciously over its curves. Later I cut it up to make dusters. The girl’s unduly careful movements clearly signalled a fresh graduate. It probably takes her two hours to plunge a needle in, a slow death for her patients, but given time she will learn to look the part, to jab a patient faster than her shadow. She spoke the way she moved, groping for words, taking time to weigh up their solidity and only reluctantly pronouncing them. I pictured her as a tortoise afraid of tumbling into the void. She probably believes that the modern world is all prudence and precision whereas actually it’s quite the opposite, we make do and mend as fast as we can without troubling ourselves about old-fashioned considerations. She knew who I was, someone had told her I was a toubib, a doctor, she gave me a deferential smile and greeted me with a salaam. What more can a pilgrim wish for than to be expected? It’s pleasant. At Parnet, visitors are never welcome, the matrons and the porters ignore them until they pathetically turn tail and leave. The girl rubbed her hands together, then, shuffling away in her harem clogs, I mean her wooden-soled flip-flops, she led me to the Mother Superior whom she referred to as Lalla — mistress — via a vaulted maze that sprawled and coiled endlessly. It seemed to me only reasonable that it should require some effort to reach the saint of the sanctuary. I busied myself with such pointless thoughts to keep my mind occupied, I knew what was coming next. In front of us, a door opened and… yes, there could be no doubt, this was Sister Anne. The moment had arrived, my heart was fluttering. She was expecting me. Slim and scarcely taller than her white, starched wimple, utterly radiant and dressed in harsh grey. She was ageless, in the way that nuns so often seem to be, but she had certainly seen forty Lenten fasts. She smiled warmly at me and, in a sudden surge of heathen feeling, hugged me hard and kissed me. It was nice, she smelled of lavender, of soap and incense and the fine rich loam of the kitchen garden.

‘Come, my child, enter… You are exactly as I foresaw. Come, Lamia, sit by me… Here is a glass of cool water; take, drink…’

She spoke just like the Bible: take, eat; for this is my body; drink, for this is my blood.

She exuded an extraordinary sense of strength and gentleness which immediately calmed me. It is precisely the attitude I would like to adopt in my dealings with people though I realise I am merely a would-be virago trying to hold her own against the harshness of her Muslim brothers rather than a true saint capable of soothing lions with a luminous glance. For me, force of circumstance has always worked in the negative, I am contaminated, embittered, intolerant, spiteful, quarrelsome, impulsive and I don’t know what. I hate myself. I have been spared plague and cholera, which I suppose is a good thing, though for how much longer remains to be seen! And yet, I’m also a romantic, I write poetry, I believe in simple things and above all I cherish truth over sentiment. I was spellbound by Sister Anne, prepared to accept whatever she had to offer, whether grace or coup de grâce. She went on speaking in a distant, barely audible voice.

‘Chérifa came to us three weeks ago. She was in a piteous state. She had been wandering the streets of Algiers when a charitable soul, a friend of the order, noticed her. She brought Chérifa here, thinking it was the best thing to do. And in all conscience, I believe it was, though ordinarily our standing and our means make us ill-equipped to deal with such requests. We are tolerated here, no more than that. We offer some small service to the local people, they are so poor they dare not go into the city. I thought long and hard, it is a great responsibility, but given her circumstances, I took her in. I don’t know whether a hospital would have admitted her, she is… she was a minor, unmarried, pregnant and… bizarrely attired, hee! hee! Blida is an extremely conservative town, ruled by the Islamists. I was frightened for her, they can be so… so…’

‘If they were just evil, spiteful, vile and satanic, I wouldn’t mind, but they’re narrow-minded and stupid too,’ I said, to help her out.

‘You should not say such things, they are very dangerous. If they should hear you…’

‘There’s no fear of that, they’re deaf to all things human.’

‘I called upon a doctor who is a friend of the convent, Doctor Salem, it has been a long time since he practised, but he still has his wits. He took care of her and she quickly recuperated somewhat. I have a number of useful skills myself. We therefore felt she would be able to give birth here in the convent… She was so endearing, with her belly button almost touching her chin and that fearless air of hers!’

‘Did she have her holdall?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Her clothes, her belongings, the baby clothes.’

‘Her bag? Oh yes, she dragged it behind her by the strap, it looked like a puppy refusing to walk, hee! hee! hee!’

The slightest thing made the Mother Superior giggle. But she quickly became grave and abstracted. She sat for a moment, silent, thoughtful, staring into the distance, glancing here and there, at the ceiling, at her pale, slender hands clasped in her lap, at the crucifix hanging on the wall or a particular book on the shelves. This, to me, is what religion should mean: to silently contemplate the world, alert to its every murmur, its every tremor. There should be no need for troops and cannons. Words, sighs, glances, they are sufficient. Sister Anne’s eyes radiated the sort of awed apprehensiveness that clearly came from constant prayer. And from penitence, I imagine. Though they live isolated from the world of men, and in close proximity to the Lord, every day the Sisters here must find some minor sin to be erased. I would not be at all surprised to discover she experiences ecstatic visions. There are places such as this, austere, modest, where dream and reality become one as prayers are said. My old house is a little like that; ringing as it is with myth and mysteries and with the echo of unanswered prayers, I don’t know whether I am more enthralled by image or by shadow, nor why I spend my time talking to the dead, or rather to their ghosts. I thought about Maman who had the same habit of searching around whenever she began recounting one of our old family stories. It was as though, rummaging through a cluttered past, she chanced upon it by accident. At some point in this ritual, her eyes would suddenly light up. Something that had baffled her a little she could now see clearly, see the thread of the story amid the confusion of sundry images, she could draw it towards her and reveal its warp and weft, its magical design. In fits and starts of ‘Um… Oh, that’s right… ah yes, I remember now… let me just think,’ she would beat this carpet, dust off the cobwebs then, not quite herself, she would gently tease it out, as though fearful that, if she brought it too quickly from her memory, it might break or that our family secrets might come into contact with the poisoned air of the present, might wither before they could be known. We would wait with bated breath, ready to draw near the better to take in the apparition. I still have her words in my ear; one by one I took them in, treasured them, stored them in the hollow of my memory, more to reassure her than to hear them. She told us these wondrous stories so many times that we scarcely thought about them. I am obsessed by the tale of Tata Houria which is fascinating and terrible. I often think about Tata Houria, one of Maman’s cousins, about what part love played in her odyssey and what part madness. Because to do what she did, for as long as she did, there had to be something going on in her head. In those unfathomable and uncertain days back in the douar, where there was no thought of deliverance, people lived and died as Adam had done. Firstly, Tata Houria refused to mourn her husband and allow herself to be remarried. Then, she died far from the douar, something no woman had ever done before her — indeed so far from the douar that no one knows quite where — in India, Guatemala, America, Poland or elsewhere. Maman could not remember the name of the country, the poor thing had no notion of geography, she knew the village where she had grown up and Rampe Valée and nothing beyond. She vaguely knew the Kasbah, where she would go once a month with her old friend Zineb to drink mint tea and discuss all the misfortunes in the world since Adam and Eve, talk a little about magic to steel themselves, then, all keyed up, they would rush around visiting the shrines and the mausoleums. Beyond these frontiers, all the world was darkness. Houria’s odyssey began during the Second World War and ended thirty years later in obscurity and legend. Scarcely had Tata Houria been wed than her young husband was called up and sent to war. She waited for his return as women have long learned to wait, praying and weeping in secret. Then one day came the marvellous, unexpected news: all over the planet, people were celebrating the end of the war. One by one survivors trudged home, scrawny, haggard, crippled, but not her husband. ‘Missing, presumed dead,’ according to the government letter read out to the villagers gathered around the local schoolteacher. ‘Wait and see,’ was the unanimous conclusion as everyone returned to their own preoccupations. The post-war years brought famine and unleashed great anger.

For several years Tata Houria waited in her tumbledown hovel as the days trickled past; she moved to Algiers where she waited a few years more then left for France where in this town or that she continued her wait. When nothing came, she moved to Germany — a country where disappearing was commonplace in the years after the Apocalypse. There, in one city or another, she waited a few years more in the company of others who had come from far-flung places in order to wait. As the circle rippled out, she waited all over the world. One day, a scrawled letter arrived in the douar announcing her death. The schoolteacher — a different one, a young man freshly graduated from university — was unable to read it and asked around until finally one day he appeared in the tiny village square, brandishing the letter to announce the results of his research: the letter, dated 22 June 1966 and written in pidgin French, had come from the far side of the world and was signed simply Rosita. This good soul said that it was she who had closed the eyes of Tata Houria, having taken her in and cared for her. She had found her by the roadside waiting to die. But by then the douar was no longer as it had been; the children had left never to return and the old people no longer remembered anything. The story was forgotten by everyone but Maman, who would tell it to us every time it rained on the city and every time it rained in her head. Poor, wonderful Houria, she died without ever giving up hope that she might find the man she had loved as a girl. Like Maman I would like to believe that in the next world, her husband had been waiting for her just as lovingly from the very moment he lost his way and his life. It’s true, this story haunts me.

The Mother Superior spoke to me at length after her fashion, using few words and long silences. Chérifa made herself at home in the convent precisely as she had in my house and at the university halls of residence. I’d describe it as an invasion followed by a systematic obliteration of the inhabitants’ frame of reference at the cost of great sacrifice. Her blood pressure was dangerously low, she was nine months pregnant, all skin and bone, yet in a few short days she managed to turn a tranquil convent into a railway station at rush hour. Her laundry fluttered from every window, every arrow-slit, her radioactive perfume drowned out the scents of incense and soot which had good reason to linger. The nuns rushed around trying to keep up with her, they could not possibly catch her. They’re all ancient and they have no flair for competition. Eventually, she came to a stop in mid-dash, overcome by an inexplicable spasm. And then her waters broke. She was running a high temperature, she visibly paled. Everything happened quickly, the contractions, a last gleam shone in her eyes, a last word trembled on her lips. ‘We were confused, we were helpless, we prayed harder than we had ever done in our lives. This calmed her, the pain subsided or she found it easier to bear.’ Sister Anne’s voice was heavy with remorse. I know the feeling: at Parnet, we are constantly dealing with emergencies and, not having the resources, we suddenly panic and we appeal to God, implore any name that comes to our lips, and then, abruptly, comes the silence and the cold that sends us back to our corners, pale, dazed, clammy, and overcome by guilt once more.

‘She died peacefully… she was smiling, her mouth was open,’ the Mother Superior whispered tenderly.

‘Yes. That’s how she always slept, her mouth open, her eyes half-closed, her arms crossed… and her legs.’

‘Yes, she had her peculiar little ways.’

‘She had her peculiar little ways in everything she did. I mean, she decided to die in a convent while giving birth, which says a lot.’

‘It’s cruel to say such things.’

‘I apologise. Like her, I have my little ways of being stupid and cruel.’

‘She talked about you all the time. Lamia, Lamia, Lamia… Just before she passed away, she whispered Where’s Maman Lamia? Please tell her to come.

‘Ma… Maman?’

There are words like this, words that express all the happiness in the world. I have spent so many years longing to hear that word. I felt myself melt inside while an electric current trilled through me and every hair on my body stood on end. I could no longer contain my tears, nor could Sister Anne.

‘Yes… Maman.’

‘I suppose I was her mother and I didn’t realise it… or she didn’t realise it. We somehow kept missing each other…’

‘God willed it so, my child.’

‘You believe that He willed it so?’

‘I do.’

‘I wish some things were in our control, at least that way we’d know why we make each other miserable. But I suppose if I am here it is because God wills it.’

‘No doubt, no doubt.’

The ensuing silence seemed the only possible answer to these delicate questions. I did not dare to break it. Realising this, Sister Anne continued in a lighter tone.

‘She told stories about you and she mimicked the phrases you use: “Would you credit it! Did you ever hear the like? And I don’t know what else!” She could be difficult… but it was just that she liked to poke fun.’

‘Oh, she could be absolutely unbearable.’

‘Now she’s with God, she’ll calm down, depend on it.’

‘Hmm… maybe… maybe you’re right.’

‘After the birth, she regained consciousness just long enough to see the baby, she smiled down at that little face and explained the great plans she had. It was so funny! She…’

Something had clicked. Some vast, incredible piece of news had fallen into place.

‘Say that again…’ I spluttered.

‘It looked like she was going to pull through, but two days later…’

‘No, what you said just before.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t… What’s the matter?’

‘The baby — it’s alive?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?’

‘I… I’m sorry… I wanted to, but I’m in a delicate position, you can’t just hand over a baby without some assurances, surely you can understand my misgivings, dear Lamia?’

‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’

‘Chérifa used to say, “My little baby will drive Tata Lamia mad.” I think now I understand why.’

‘My dear God, our baby is alive… my baby is alive!’

‘I’m not asking you to take care…’

‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’

‘An adorable baby, the spitting image of its mother. She named the little mite Louiza…’

‘Louiza? It’s a girl? Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’

‘We’ve grown very fond of her, in fact I don’t know how we will manage to live without her.’

‘Thank you… thank you from the bottom of my heart.’

‘May God forgive me, but I could not bear to think of that baby being taken into care, Child Services simply don’t have the means, this whole wretched country is sinking into… into…’

‘If it was just the poverty, the corruption and the brutality, I wouldn’t mind, but when the idiots are in power, what’s to be done, you tell me that!’

‘She’ll be happy with you, I can tell. All I ask is that you bring her to visit from time to time, it would make us so happy.’

‘I owe you my life… I’ll never forget that.’

‘But I implore you, be more careful when you speak. You’re so forthright, it could land you in trouble.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll play the hypocrite with the imbeciles.’

‘I’ll leave it to you to decide what to do about Chérifa’s parents. Duty would dictate that they be informed and the child given into their care. That was not what Chérifa wanted. She pleaded with me. “Don’t do it, please… to them my baby is nothing but a bastard, they’ll suffocate her and toss her out with the rubbish.” ’

‘They’re simple people. Weighed down by tradition and the pressure of other people, they would do precisely that with a clear conscience.’

‘We can’t know that… we are in no position to judge.’

Oh, please, not that! Anything but that! It was on the tip of my tongue to say that it’s precisely because we refused to judge when there was still time that we are in the mess we are in today. We accepted barefaced lies as honest truths, traded fine promises for utter madness and we have ceased to try to find our way. Islam lapsed into Islamism and authority into authoritarianism and still we felt we had no right to judge. I wanted to tell her that it’s one thing to stare at the pretty flames through the window of a stove, but to be bound hand and foot and tossed into an incinerator is a very different matter. I was tempted to tell her that we judge not like judges or policemen, but like human beings who do not understand and yet recognise those things that hurt, that kill, that demean. Judging is like breathing, a power bestowed by God that we must not give up, it is the very essence of our humanity, it must not be sub-contracted or scattered to the first wind whipped up who knows how by who knows whom. To hell with tolerance when it goes hand in hand with cowardice!

I responded with an all-purpose platitude, I can’t remember what exactly: ‘You’re absolutely right’, ‘Maybe, maybe not’, or something more heartfelt, something more my style: ‘We know all we need to know, they would toss the baby out with the garbage because that’s how these things go. There are days when the Algiers rubbish tip is like a nursery crawling with kids, these days they’re tossed away alive, no one takes the trouble to suffocate them. Call it tradition, murder, madness, governance, it’s all the same.’ Thinking about it now, I believe I was silent, I just sighed, we were operating on different levels, she was considering the question from a transcendent viewpoint while I, being caught up in the bedlam of everyday life, relate everything to the abject folly of men.