What the day owes the nigth

by Yasmina Khadra

  He did not finish the sentence. His disquiet turned to anger; his knuckles were white.

  ‘De Gaulle doesn’t understand a fucking thing about our suffering,’ he said, referring to the General’s famous statement to the Algerians on 4 June 1958 – ‘I have understood you’ – which had stirred up the crowds and given their illusions a stay of execution.

  A week later, on 9 December 1960, the whole population of Río Salado went to the neighbouring village of Aïn Trémouchent, where the General was holding a meeting that the parish priest called the ‘last prayer mass’. The rumours circulating had prepared people for the worst, but they were not to be persuaded. They were united by fear and so blinkered they would not see the harsh truths bearing down on them. I had heard them, at dawn, taking their cars out of the garages, forming a convoy, joking and laughing to each other, shouting to drown out the insistent voice that would not let them sleep, the voice that said endlessly, relentlessly, that the die was cast. They laughed, they argued, they pretended they still had some say in the matter. But they no longer believed it; their brash self-assurance was belied by their bewildered faces. They hoped that by keeping their spirits up, by keeping up appearances, they might compel destiny to see reason, force its hand, produce a miracle. They had forgotten that the countdown had already begun, that there was nothing left to salvage. Only a blind man would have carried on walking through their dark Utopia, waiting for a day that had already dawned on a new era; an era in which they were to play no part.

  I went out and wandered the deserted streets. Then I headed out past the Jewish cemetery to see the charred ruins of the house where, in a fleeting moment, I had had my first sexual experience. A horse stood grazing next to the old stables, indifferent to the shifting fortunes of men. I sat on a low wall; sat there until noon, trying to picture Madame Cazenave. All I could see was Simon’s car in flames, and Émilie, half naked, clutching her child.

  The cars came back from Aïn Trémouchent. They had left Río Salado that morning in a fanfare of horns, waving the tricolour; they returned like a funeral cortège, their flags at half-mast. A pall fell over the village. Every face bore the signs of mourning for a hope long since doomed, a dream they had tried to keep alive with prayers and incense. Algeria was to be Algerian.

  The following morning, on the front of one of the winemaker’s cellars, someone had had daubed in red paint the letters FLN.

  In the spring of 1962, Oran held its breath. I was looking for Émilie. I feared for her. I needed her. I loved her and had come back to tell her so. I felt ready to brave hurricanes and thunderbolts, to flout every sacrilege, every blasphemy. I could not bear to go on longing for her, reaching out to touch her only to feel her absence in my fingertips. I told myself, she will turn you away, she will say terrible things, she will bring your world crashing down around you, but still I went. I was no longer afraid of breaking the oath I had made, of crushing my soul in my fist; I was no longer afraid of offending the gods, of living in infamy to the end of my days. At the bookshop, someone told me that Émilie had left work as usual one night and that they had not heard a word from her since. I remembered the number of the tram she had taken the last time I had come here. At every stop I got off and scoured the nearby streets. I thought I recognised her in every woman I passed on the street, in every shadow disappearing round a corner or into a doorway. I asked for her in grocers’ shops and police stations; I asked the postmen and although I came back empty-handed every night, never for a moment did I feel I was wasting my time. How could I hope to find her in a city under siege, in this midst of the chaos, the fury of men? Algerian Algeria was being delivered by forceps in a torrent of tears and blood as French Algeria lay bleeding to death. And even after seven years of war and horror, though both were on the brink of exhaustion, they still found the strength to go on slaughtering one other.

  The week in January 1960 in which pieds-noirs erected barricades and seized government buildings in Algiers had done nothing to stop the inexorable march of history. The putsch in April 1961, a failed coup d’état instigated by a quartet of generals intent on forming a breakaway republic, served only to propel the people into even greater torment. The military were overtaken by events; they fired indiscriminately on civilians, fighting off one community only to be attacked by another. Those who felt they had been sold out by the machinations in Paris – that is, those who supported a complete break from the mother country – took up arms and vowed to reclaim the Algeria being taken from them piece by piece. Towns and villages where plunged into a horrifying nightmare. There were attacks and counterattacks, executions and reprisals, kidnappings and military raids. A European seen fraternising with a Muslim or any Muslim seen with a European risked his life. Demarcation lines divided towns and villages into isolated communities who banded together, anxiously policed their borders and did not hesitate to lynch an unwary passer-by who got the wrong address. Every morning there were broken bodies in the street; every night ghosts fought pitched battles. The graffiti on the walls was like epitaphs – amid the scrawls that read ‘Vote Yes’, ‘FLN’ and ‘Long Live French Algeria’, suddenly the three letters that signalled the apocalypse began to appear: OAS. The Organisation Armée Secrète, born of the anguish of the colonists, of their refusal to face facts, was determined to go on digging its own grave until it reached the pit of hell.

  Émilie had disappeared, but I was prepared to bring her back from the underworld itself. I sensed that she was close by, almost within reach; I truly believed that I had only to pull back a screen, open a door, push past a bystander and I would find her. It was as if I were mad. I didn’t notice the pools of blood on the pavements, the pockmarks left by bullets on the walls. I was indifferent to the suspicion of others: their hostility, their contempt, their insults went over my head and never for a moment slowed my search. I could think only of her; had eyes only for her; Émilie was the destiny I had chosen and I cared nothing about anything else.

  Fabrice Scamaroni came upon me stumbling around this city that reeked of hate and death. He stopped his car, shouted for me to get in, then drove off at top speed. ‘Are you insane?’ he said. ‘You could get your throat cut round here.’ ‘I’m looking for Émilie.’ ‘And how exactly do you plan to find her when you don’t even know what sort of shithole you’re in – I swear this area is worse than a minefield.’

  Fabrice had no idea where Émilie was. She had never come to see him at the newspaper. He had run into her once in Choupot, but that had been months ago. He promised he would see what he could find out.

  In Choupot I was directed to a building on the Boulevard Laurent-Guerrero. The concierge informed me that the lady in question had indeed been staying in an apartment on the second floor, but had moved out after an attack in the neighbourhood.

  ‘Did she leave a forwarding address?’

  ‘No . . . But if I remember rightly, I think she told the movers to take her to Saint-Hubert.’

  I knocked on every door in Saint-Hubert without success. The city was in chaos. The ceasefire declared on 19 March 1962 had sparked off the last pockets of resistance. Knives were pitted against machine guns, grenades against bombs, bystanders were killed by stray bullets. And as I advanced through the horror and the stench of death, Émilie seemed to move farther away. Had she been killed in a bomb blast, by a stray bullet; had she been stabbed and left to bleed to death in a deserted stairwell? Oran spared no one: not the young or the old, not women or the simple-minded who stumbled through these horrors. I was in Tahtaha when two car bombs went off leaving a hundred dead and dozens of the Muslim population of Medina J’dida injured; I was at Petit Lac when the bodies of a dozen Europeans were fished from the polluted waters; I was at the city prison when an OAS unit stormed the building, dragged FLN prisoners into the street and executed them as crowds of people watched; I was on the seafront when saboteurs blew up the fuel depots on the port, cloaking the area in clouds of thick, oily smoke for days. Émilie heard the sa
me explosions I did, I told myself, witnessed the same havoc, suffered the same terrors. I could not understand why our paths had not crossed, why chance, why fate, why providence did not bring us together in this seething mass of evil. I was furious as the days slipped away and brought me no closer to finding her; furious as I stumbled through firing squads, no-go areas, scenes of slaughter and carnage, finding no trace nor even the illusion of a trace that might lead me to her; furious to think she was still in this world as panic gripped every European in the country. A parcel in their letter box could send a family into paroxysms of fear. This was the season of ‘the suitcase or the coffin’. The first waves of emigration were anarchy. Cars laden with suitcases and sobbing people besieged the ports and the airports, while others headed for Morocco. Latecomers sold everything they possessed – shops, houses, cars, factories, concessions – for next to nothing; some did not wait to find buyers. They barely had time to pack their cases.

  In Río Salado, houses stood empty, shutters banging, windows dark, and great piles of clothes and chattels lay piled up in the street. Most of the villagers had left; those who stayed behind did not know which way to turn. An old man, crippled by arthritis, keeled over on the porch of his house. A young man helped him to his feet and tried to get him to walk, while the rest of his family waited impatiently by a van filled to bursting. ‘They could have waited until I died,’ the old man whimpered. ‘Where am I going to die now?’ On the main street, trucks, cars, carts stood lined up waiting to take people into exile. At the train station, a bewildered crowd waited for a late train, agonising as the minutes passed. People ran about, confused, their eyes glazed, forsaken by their saints, their guardian angels. Madness, fear, grief, ruin, tragedy had but one face: it was theirs.

  Germaine was sitting on the steps of the pharmacy, her head in her hands. Our neighbours had all left; in the gardens abandoned dogs paced and whined.

  ‘What should I do?’ she asked me.

  ‘You should stay here,’ I said. ‘No one will raise a hand to you.’

  I took her in my arms. She seemed so small it felt as though I could have held her in the hollow of my hand. She was distraught and confused, baffled and exhausted, beaten and uncertain. Her eyes were red from crying. I kissed the cheeks streaked with tears, the forehead lined with wrinkles; my hands cradled her head, troubled with all the worries of the world. I led her upstairs to her room, then went outside again. ‘Where can I go?’ Madame Lambert stood ranting in the street, hands raised to heaven. ‘Where am I supposed to go? I have no children, no family anywhere.’ I told her to go home. She did not hear me; she went on raving. At the far end of the street, the Ravirez family were racing around carrying suitcases. On the square outside the town hall, families stood surrounded by their luggage, begging for cars so they could leave. The mayor tried in vain to calm them. Pépé Rucillio told them to go back to their houses and wait for things to settle down. ‘This is our home,’ he said. ‘We’re not going anywhere.’ No one was listening.

  André Sosa was alone in the diner amid the broken tables, the ruined bar, the shattered mirrors. The floor glittered with broken glass and crockery. The lamps still dangled forlornly over the devastation, their bulbs shattered. André was playing pool. He did not seen to notice me; he didn’t seem to notice anything. He chalked his cue, leaned over the table and took aim. There were no balls on the table; the baize had been ripped away. André didn’t care. He aimed at a ball that he alone could see, took his shot and watched and waited. Then he raised a triumphant fist, and moved to the other side of the table to line up his next shot. From time to time he went over to the bar, took a drag of his cigarette, then went back to his game.

  ‘Dédé,’ I said. ‘You can’t stay here.’

  ‘This is my home,’ he grumbled, lining up another shot.

  ‘I saw farms burning when I was coming back from Oran just now.’

  ‘I’m not leaving. I’m waiting for them.’

  ‘That’s madness and you know it.’

  ‘I told you, I’m not going anywhere.’

  He went on playing, ignoring me. He stubbed out his cigarette, lit another and another and another, until finally he crumpled the empty pack. The sun was setting, and darkness began to steal into the diner. André played another game, and another, before finally setting down the cue and going to sit at the bar. He drew his knees up, buried his face between them, clasped his hands behind his neck and sat like that for a long time, until finally there was a wail. André cried until he could cry no more. Then he wiped his face with his shirt tail and got to his feet. He went out into the courtyard and found a couple of jerry cans of petrol, doused the bar, the tables, the walls, the floor, then struck a match and watched as flames engulfed the room. I grabbed his elbow and dragged him outside. He stood on the terrace, watching spellbound as the diner burned.

  When the flames began to lick at the roof, André went back to his car. Without a word, without even looking at me, he turned the ignition, released the handbrake and drove slowly back towards the village.

  On 4 July 1962, a Peugeot 203 stopped in front of the pharmacy. Two men in suits and dark glasses ordered me to come with them. ‘It’s just a formality,’ one of them said in Arabic, with a strong Kabylia accent. Germaine was ill and in bed. ‘It won’t take long,’ the driver promised me. I climbed into the back seat, the car made a U-turn and I let my head fall back against the seat. I had spent the whole night at Germaine’s bedside, and I was exhausted.

  Río Salado looked like the end of an era, drained of its essence, delivered up to some new destiny. The French tricolour that had flown outside the town hall had been taken down. On the village square, a crowd of people in turbans stood listening to a speaker perched on the coping of the fountain. He was addressing them in Arabic and they were hanging on his every word. A few Europeans moved through the shadows, those who had been unable to leave behind their lands, their cemeteries, their houses, the cafés where their friendships had been forged, their projects; in sum, the small piece of their homeland that was their reason for living.

  It was a beautiful day, the sun as big as the sadness of those leaving, as vast as the joy of those returning. The vines seemed to ripple in the sun and the heat haze in the distance looked like the ocean. Here and there, farms were burning. The silence that weighed heavy on the street seemed to be brooding. The men in front of me did not say a word. I could see nothing but the backs of their necks, the driver’s hands on the steering wheel and the watch glittering on the wrist of the man next to him. We drove through Lourmel as though through some strange dream. Here, too, crowds were gathered about inspired orators. Green and white flags with a red crescent and a star bore witness to the birth of the new republic, to an Algeria that had been returned to its own.

  As we approached Oran, abandoned cars lined the sides of the road, some burned out, others looted, the doors ripped off and the boot open. Bags and trunks and suitcases were strewn everywhere, torn open; clothes hung in the bushes, belongings lay on the road. There were signs of violence too: blood in the dust, windscreens shattered by iron bars. Many fleeing families were captured and butchered; others escaped through the orange groves and tried to reach the city on foot.

  Oran was in turmoil. Thousands of children ran through the patches of waste ground, hurling stones at passing cars, shouting and singing. The streets were teeming with joyful crowds. The buildings shook to the screams of women wearing their veils like banners, rang with the sound of bendirs, drums, darboukas, the blare of car horns and patriotic songs.

  The Peugeot drove into the barracks at Magent, where the National Liberation Army, who had recently taken the city, had set up its headquarters. It parked in front of a building. The driver leaned out and asked the guard to tell the lieutenant that his ‘guest’ had arrived.

  The parade ground was teeming with men in combat uniform, old men wearing djellabas, and civilians.

  ‘Jonas, my old friend Jonas, it’s so good to see
you again.’

  Standing at the top of the steps, Jelloul spread his arms wide. He was the lieutenant. He was wearing a paratrooper’s uniform, a safari hat, a pair of sunglasses but no stripes.

  He hugged me hard enough to choke me, then held me at arm’s length and looked me up and down.

  ‘You’ve got thin,’ he said. ‘What have you been up to? I’ve been thinking about you a lot recently. You’re an educated man, you responded when your country called, and I wondered whether you might like to put your education and your diplomas at the service of the new republic. You don’t have to give me an answer right away. In fact, that’s not why I had you brought here. I owe you something, and I want to repay you today, because tomorrow is another day and I intend to begin my new life with all my debts washed away. How can I enjoy untrammelled freedom if I’ve got debtors on my heels?’

  ‘You don’t owe me anything, Jelloul.’

  ‘That’s kind of you, but I want to be in your debt. I’ve never forgotten the day you gave me money and took me back to my village on your bicycle. For you, I suppose, it meant nothing; for me it was a revelation: I discovered that the Arab, the good Arab, the noble, generous Arab was not a mythical figure, nor was he what the colonist had made him . . . I’m not educated, I don’t have the words to explain what I felt, but it changed my life.’

  He caught me by the arm.

  ‘Come with me.’

  He led me to a building lined with metal doors, which I realised were jail cells. He slipped a key into one of the doors, shot back the lock and said:

  ‘He was a ferocious militant in the OAS and implicated in dozens of terrorist attacks. I had to move heaven and earth to stop him being executed. I leave him to you. This way I will have paid my debt . . . Go on, open the door and tell him he’s a free man, that he can go anywhere he likes, anywhere but my country, he’s not welcome here.’