Harraga: A Novel

To the memory of Daniel Bernard

Contents

To the Reader

Act I

Act II

Act III

Act IV

Epilogue

A Note on the Author

By the Same Author

A Note on the Translator

To the Reader

How beautiful it would be if this story were purely the fruit of my imagination. It would read like a retelling of the parable of the grain of wheat, it would speak of love, of death and resurrection. And there are enchanting ghosts on every page, and characters so colourful you could wear them as a scarf.

But it is a true story, true from beginning to end, the characters, the names, the dates, the places are real and so it speaks only of the wretchedness of a world which no longer has faith, or values, which can only trumpet its transgression and its disgrace.

The reader is free to take it as either or indeed as both since even the people in this book are incapable of telling the real from the imaginary.

What follows is the story of Lamia. Driven to abject solitude by the vagaries of life, like the grain of wheat that falls on rocky ground, she is dying, until one miraculous day in summer, something within her blossoms, something as profoundly real as it is utterly fantastical: love.

The best thing to do is to listen as she tells her story which, like the seasons, unfolds over four acts with an epilogue that leaves open a window onto the future.

Act I

Bonjour, Oiseau!

Even as my life was leaching away

As sand was slipping through my fingers

As silence numbed my soul

For always

A bird landed on my shoulder.

‘Cheep cheep, cheep cheep . . .!’

He chirruped in my ear

As he fluttered and frolicked.

I did not understand.

But when one is lonely

A single word brings joy

And so I threw away my rosary

And I danced.

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.

My door is making a worrying sound. It doesn’t go knock knock, it goes bang bang. It’s reinforced steel, which I suppose might explain the racket, but with things the way they are these days, I can’t help but think of other reasons.

I open it, staying pressed against the doorjamb for protection. A reflex. ‘Chkoun? Who’s there?’ It’s not the patrol, nor some sermoniser nor the Defenders of Truth, it’s not my neighbour from the rue Marengo, a chubby-faced old gorgon of a woman who’s forever popping round for a gossip and believes in a hundred clichéd theories, none of which are desperately interesting. Thankfully it’s not old Moussa our postman, the fearless factotum of the Rampe Valée, an old warhorse who’s constantly banging on about something and who, day after day – excepting riots and strikes – leaves a paper trail of panic and contagion in his wake. No, it’s some funny-looking slip of a girl. ‘It’s me!’ she says. I’ve no idea who ‘me’ is. Skinny, dressed in a get-up cobbled together from shreds and patches that looks like something off X Factor. Whether it’s a fashion faux-pas or a flash of ­inspiration, all these flounces and frills make it look like a drag outfit for a family of screaming queens. She could probably pull it off, were it not for the clashing colours. Her hair is a mix-and-match of everything from historic styles to the latest fashions. Her face is plastered with make-up, her eyes – black, white and twinkling – are bobbing in a pool of eyeliner surrounded by a lush meadow of green eyeshadow. All she needs is a blade of wheat behind her ear to know she comes from the back end of nowhere. The acrid cloud of her perfume could rival the fallout from Chernobyl. She’s a walking scandal who has somehow inexplicably escaped the wrath of Allah. A battered holdall lies at her feet like a recently shed snakeskin, completing the ‘look’ of this sixteen- or seventeen-year-old globetrotter. Her full, perfect lips are set in a blood-red pout pitched somewhere between impatience and bewilderment. It’s clear that behind her regal smile, she’s got some nerve. To cap it all, she’s several months pregnant and her belly button is on display for all the world to see.

‘Tata Lamia?’ she says bravely, drawing herself up to her full five feet nothing.

‘Well . . . that depends.’

‘I’m Chérifa!’

‘Good for you . . . and?’

‘Sofiane sent me. I’ve come from Oran.’

‘What?!!’

‘He didn’t phone you?’

‘Er . . . no.’

‘Can I come in?’

‘Um . . . I suppose.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘It’s weird, your place.’

‘You said it.’

This is how a whirlwind sweeps into your life. Nothing, absolutely nothing in my past led me to suppose that one day I would open up my door, open up my life, to such mayhem. I opened the door because that’s what you do when someone knocks, you answer. You might worry that it will be some hoodlum – and Lord knows the neighbourhood has its fair share of thugs – or more likely a sermoniser, a rapist or the cops, and you’re thinking ‘these people, they’ve got no consideration, no manners’, but to set your mind at rest, and perhaps even in some surge of hope, you open the door anyway, thinking maybe this is the promised miracle, maybe this is fate bringing the good things we’re told come to those who wait, you think of all the happy things a gloomy life conjures in the mind.

There is also the premonition, the primal impulse, the subtle power of things unseen, the call of another world, the sudden longing to brave the mystery. All these things urge on more powerfully than fear holds back.

Truth be told, I just opened the door without thinking. What can I say? I’m an impulsive woman. Maybe not entirely without thinking: I have never given up hope that I might see my little brother again, might hear him knock at my door. Every sound rekindles that hope. It’s a constant torment. I know that Sofiane is gone, I know that he is never coming back.

A good upbringing is a terrible handicap. You end up being a well-bred little chick in a nest filled with cuckoos. One polite gesture led to another: I offered this interloper a glass of lemonade, then some supper – an egg and an orange – and stoically I listened, all ears, to her endless chatter. Could I refuse her a bed for the night? The duty of hospitality does not stop at the bedroom door. As it turned out, she didn’t wait to be asked; while I was clearing the table the cheeky little thing put on her nightie. What could I do? I gave her a pillow and some clean sheets, I favoured her with a sing-song ‘goodnight’, something she took as an invitation. She laughed so hard and talked so much about this and that, about everything and nothing, about Raï music and Les Chebs, about things that even Scheherazade, that incomparable insomniac, never told of in her tales. The moment she opened her mouth, I was completely lost.

In all honesty, I wasn’t really listening, though, out of politeness, I feigned interest. Her shrill falsetto irritated me. I thought about Louiza, my gentle, sweet Louiza. God, how I miss her. About what had become of all our promises.

Three am and night drags on. The old clock that stands sentry in the hall hasn’t chimed since its first owner died – something I can relate to – but it still clanks and grates at regular intervals out of habit. Three times, it struggled bravely to toll the passing hour. The endless witterings of the damsel grew fainter until it was just a vague cloud hovering above our heads, then it faded into the ether. In this silence, this true mineral silence, the house began to give voice to its aches and pains, to creaks and groans fit to rouse a poltergeist. We had reached that hour that does not truly belong to us, when only a silver thread connects soul to body. Finally, she fell asleep, sinking down into the sofa and the multicoloured cushions. She slumped back, her arms folded, her mouth wide open – to say nothing of her legs – leaving my head still spinning with her twaddle. Sprawled there as she was, she might have appeared indecent were she not so innocent. In sleep, she looked every bit as outlandish as she did awake and it was clear that inside her was a world very different from the one in which we live, a world of fairies and Prince Charmings in which everyone else – the supporting cast, the minor players, the evil witches and wicked stepmothers – exist only so they can be foiled by the good, by the dreamers.

I thought I knew all there was to know about long nights dedicated to silence and the endless game of introspection and now, suddenly, I no longer knew where I was, what I felt, I didn’t know what to think, what to do, I had lost the measured tempo of those who are solitary by nature. I felt flustered, my natural rhythms thrown out of kilter. I felt restive. By which I mean consumed by curiosity. Such a strange feeling! This is the danger that stalks the misanthrope: the world encroaching on one’s cocoon.

Never mind, I’ll read for a bit, or turn on the TV and channel surf, I’m sure I’ll find something to send me to sleep. At this hour, everything makes you want to kick the bucket. First thing tomorrow, as soon as she bounds out of bed, my little damsel will have to set me straight on three things:

First: Who is she?

Second: Where is she from?

Third: Where is she going?

I can’t think of anything else to say, that’s how it happened. To say more, to relate the details, the impressions, the misgivings, the repetitions, the hesitant silences, would add nothing. On the contrary, it would take away from the incident, which, in and of itself, was curiously moving: Sofiane has finally made contact and the means he has chosen is this strange little girl.

That day, a trite grey day like every other, a day of nagging doubts, I could not have guessed what upheavals lay in store for me. Worse still, I couldn’t think how to get rid of the silly little goose. Did I really want to be rid of her? It hardly matters, the presence of this giddy girl is the bombshell that will shake my defences to the core. Already I sensed this, I knew it was inevitable, another life had grafted itself on to mine and would consume it from within, engulf it, twist it off course.

To what extent, my God, are our lives really our own?

I spent a long time watching the intruder. She slept the sleep of the fairies. A fine-looking girl with the face of a spoiled child. The colours of the cushions, the soft light, the deep silence, the familiar rumblings from the depths, the delicacy of the sheen, all these add to the aura of enchantment. The image of happiness, that serene happiness that makes us beautiful and gentle. If angels slumber, this surely is how they look, like Chérifa adrift in her dreams. And if demons surrender to sleep, surely they too look like this. There is no reason to think that the good and the wicked do not take equal pleasure in their natural urges.

I don’t know how it happened. Hardly was she out of bed than my interloper had ploughed up the whole house and scattered her belongings like seeds. Some people don’t need to move in to feel at home. The bathroom, my bathroom, had suffered a complete makeover. ‘What’s all this mess?’ I shouted finally. Never in the depths of my depression had I wreaked such havoc on my old dwelling place. The silly goose never stopped but she started, I could see her slight frame rushing round, turning on lamps, torturing the radio, flicking through the television channels, rummaging through my chest of drawers, delving into nooks and crannies, then reappearing looking like a package tourist at the end of a tour realising they’ve missed out on everything. She batted it back to me when she said ‘What mess?’: I was a stranger in my own house. She was eyeing me up the way you might a greengrocer out of season. Following her lead, I ate a breakfast of biscuits standing up in front of the fridge and brushed crumbs from my clothes without worrying about ants coming in from the garden. Just yesterday, ants were my worst nightmare, I could keep them at bay on the other side of the kitchen door only by sheer force, cleanliness . . . and a healthy dose of pesticide. The ancient scents and smells so deeply rooted in my memory yielded before the radioactive perfume of this little strumpet and the irritating odour of youth metamorphosing uncontrollably. I was absolutely furious, disgusted by my own passivity and, unless I’m very much mistaken, thrilled by her presence. I felt like a big sister reprimanding her naughty little sibling.

Novelty has its charms, but it also shocks in that it forces us to change. I was alarmed and, at the same time, I was spellbound. Our beliefs, our habits, after all, are what they have always been: a stopgap. To suddenly discover that she is an old maid is a terrible thing for a woman. Chérifa terrorised me by her dissoluteness and charmed me by her untidiness.

But while there is a time to be soft-hearted, there are many more when it is best to be hard-bitten.

‘Listen, little girl, it’s all very well letting yourself go, but it helps to know where you’re headed! Who are you, where have you come from and where are you going in that condition? You can start by telling me how you know my idiot brother and what he has to do with that big belly of yours. And don’t think your little Lolita act will save you!’

‘But, Tata, why are you angry with me?’

‘What’s with this Tata? I’m not your auntie! And I’m not your mother!’

‘What can I call you, then?’

‘Well, really! You don’t call me anything, you address me as mademoiselle.’

‘Aren’t you a bit old to be a mademoiselle?’

‘Well, really!’

Anyway, I’m not about to give chapter and verse of such an inane conversation, especially one that hardly portrays me in a flattering light.

With simpletons, everything is simple, the trick is not to overcomplicate things. Seen in this light, the problem seems pitifully banal. Somehow, in Oran, Chérifa, one of so many lost girls, encountered my idiot brother who was also on the road to ruin. In their misery, they exchanged ideas, no doubt kisses, and all the calamities that this entails. The little damsel is not backward in coming forward, though she has clearly retained some sense of propriety, since she makes no mention of her belly. Did she conceive by the Holy Spirit? Well, all that matters is the result. At a guess, I’d say she’s five months gone. Beware, there’s trouble brewing, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this girl is the kind that attracts problems. Well, I’m telling you right now, she can go bake that bun in her oven somewhere else!

Knowing the silver tongue Sofiane has, and the gullibility of silly little geese, I assume that their goodbyes went something like this:

‘Chérifa, my destiny is not to stay here in Oran but to continue on my way. I must find freedom and fulfilment. Those who went before us swear by Allah that such things are only to be found over there in the West.’

‘All I want is to get as far as Algiers, the capital, a girl can live there like a queen. All my friends back in the village dream of going there. Look at my belly . . . I’m starting to show, aren’t I? If I go back to the douar with a baby in tow, they’ll cut my throat.’

‘Go to my sister Lamia. She has a big house, there’ll be a room for you and a cot for the baby. She’s a doctor, so you won’t lack for medicine. She’s old and she’s prickly as a cactus, but that will be good for the child, it will keep him on the straight and narrow. I’m off to Tangier to look for a ship.’

This is how they talk, the children who have strayed from the path.

But, humbled by age and by wisdom, how are we supposed to talk to them – especially when life has long since taught us to bite our tongues and pretend we still believe?

Unable to talk to her, I tormented her. My questions came so thick and fast that she was paralysed, she did not understand what they meant nor why they were so urgent. There I was expecting the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but she started blubbering and hiccuping like a barking seal. Her eyeliner trickled miserably down her face. Then, hup, she leapt to her feet and rushed out, slamming the door behind her. For minutes afterwards, the walls of the house shuddered from the bang. When it finally finished sundering, my heart was left in pieces and I cried my eyes out.

She came back at midnight, on the twelfth stroke. Or thereabouts. This was the time limit I had set before hanging myself. I was guilty. Past midnight, only corpses and their killers roam the streets of this city. I had allowed her to go out, alone, after dark, in a neighbourhood where even ­murderers are scared of their own shadows. I rushed to open the door, expecting to meet with a violent death. Whew! It was her, with her holdall and her regal airs. She went straight into the living room – her bedroom – without so much as looking at me. I fought the urge to bump her off myself, right there in the hall. Next time, I’ll kill her and I won’t lose any sleep. A woman has a right to a little respect in her own home. As I closed the door, I thought I saw among the shifting shadows of the poplar trees that guard the neighbourhood, the figure of a man disappearing into the darkness.

One more worry. And a major one.

Day, night,

Within, without,

The rough beast

Waits

With dagger drawn.

Against all faith

Against all laws

The rough beast

Strikes

With burning hook.

Beware, woman

Beware, child,

The rough beast

Runs

With tail erect.

Cowering

Contented

Man awaits

His beloved beast

HIS FEAR.

I’m not sure whether I miss my former solitude, those long, leisurely evenings, the weekends spent like a worker bee on strike, the wanton wildness and the associated absences, the curious habits of a confirmed spinster which, though unrewarding, are familiar, the delicious thrill of fear in the darkness and my heroic rebellions against the ghosts who share with me the mysteries of the past and the murmuring of walls steeped in forgotten stories. No, I have no regrets, only fond memories. I enjoyed my rootless solitude, enjoyed shutting myself away in this house which, for more than two centuries, has seen so many people come and go, taking on the wrinkles, the wilful habits and the curious odours of those who came before us, the janissaries, the hookah smokers, by their own intrigues or by some insidious illness; a high-ranking Turk – an officer in the Sultan’s guard – built this house as a weekend retreat; after him came a viscount, a blue-blooded Frenchman, part soldier, part naturalist, who, in time, put down roots in the medina, embracing Islam and one of its daughters; next came a Jew whose ancestors it seems arrived on the Barbary Coast before the upheavals began; he was followed by a succession of pieds-noirs who arrived in wretched hordes from Navarre and Galilee and are now exiled to the north pole; then, shortly after independence, it was my parents’ turn. They came down from the mountains of Greater Kabylia, and for a while they housed friends and allies and, during the ‘Years of Lead’ that followed when honour was at a low ebb, they took in furtive strangers who showed up with their secrets and left before we could discover what they were. How we tried to eavesdrop on those whispered conversations! But this house is big, we were small, inexperienced, and much went over our heads.

I enjoyed my forays into impenetrable silences, and all the questions that