A Handful of Honey

by Annie Hawes

  Most of their wine goes to France in bulk, to boost up the strength and body of French wines, Khaled tells us as we skirt round the small plot of vines beyond the house. Because with the good climate here, the wines always come out fine and strong, thirteen per cent alcohol at least. So a bad vintage year for France, where the grapes don’t sweeten enough to bring French wines up to strength, is always a good one for Algeria!

  We are surprised, though, that there is no problem with producing wine here – doesn’t it clash with Islamic principles?

  They’ve had a bit of trouble, off and on, says Hamid, with idiots trying to tell them that theirs was an un-Islamic business. But nobody with enough power to actually put a spoke in their wheels – not so far, inshallah! It would be a terrible thing to see all these vineyards destroyed, after so many generations of loving care and hard work.

  Khaled wouldn’t be surprised, he says, if that starts up all over again now, since the Pouvoir seem set on arresting so many Islamists that they’re making heroes of them.

  Hamid agrees. All the young rebels, every last youth who can’t find a job and feels hard-done-by, will be rushing into the arms of the extremist hardcore. There’s a new radical imam preaching round here, very hot on Western decadence and corruption. He only needs to add the demon alcohol to his list of depravities and give the congregation a nudge and a wink in this direction, and there’ll be angry mobs at the gate again.

  Their worst moment here, though, Khaled says, was nothing to do with Islamic principle. It seemed the new Algerian government was about to decree that all the thousands of hectares of grapevines in the country must be grubbed up. Not for religion’s sake, but because Algeria would never be free of French influence, they said, as long as so much of her agriculture depended on selling to the old colonial power.

  Hamid laughs. A terrible time! France boycotted Algerian wine, because the FLN had told her to remove her nuclear testing facility down in the Sahara, and her naval bases on the Mediterranean. So in retaliation Algeria was left with millions of litres of unsold wine on her hands! Luckily the French soon realized that their own wine was worthless, in a bad year, without the southern Mediterranean contribution. The bases went, and, fortunately for both parties, Algeria is still keeping French wine up to strength to this day!

  The vines here certainly seem well ahead of the ones I just left in Italy, where the buds were only just opening. Here they are nearly in full leaf. The grapes will get plenty of time to sweeten. These vines just outside the house are Cinsault, says Hamid, giving us the guided tour; a breed brought here by the French. Up ahead are the Mataro and Grenache, bred in el-Andalus, and brought back by the Moorish refugees. The further vineyard is divided up into small plots separated by rows of beautifully pruned fruit trees still in pink-and-white blossom. These ones are Syrah, full-blooded Algerian vines, though people say the cultivar was developed in Persia originally, Iran, that is, back in the dawn of time. Our hosts have had visitors from Italy recently, from some university, cataloguing their ancient local breeds – a project to save the old cultivars hardly used in commercial production any more, in case some new disease comes and decimates all the weaker, more inbred modern varieties, like the phylloxera that caused havoc in the vineyards of Europe forty years ago. Luckily phylloxera can’t get a hold in the sandy soil here, and Algeria was safe.

  The Italians took a great interest in the vineyard round the front, Hamid says, which was here even before the house was built – and how right they were! Those are the grapes he and Khaled use, along with the Andalusian breeds, to make their own private blend of wine, which we’ll all have a little taste of when we get back inside! That is the only thing, he says, that tempts him about this new free-market-economy business. The Pouvoir has abolished the state collectives now – they always start their mad experiments on agriculture first! – and by next year there will be a market in land again. You just need to have run your agribusiness for five years, and it’s your own private property. How he would love to get into competition with Europe, bottle his own proper vintage wines, show them what Algeria can do.

  Khaled makes a sucked-a-lemon face. How likely is that to happen? Once they are drawn into the global market, who knows what new pressures will be upon them? They are just as likely to find they can only sell their grapes as raw material to the wholesalers. One of the big French wine companies has already been sniffing around, interested in buying up vineyards in the area when the privatization date comes, next year. So many lives lost to get rid of the colonists, Khaled says, and now they’re looking to come back in through the rear entrance – and give it to us dans le cul again.

  Another loud roaring noise from between the rows of vines announces the arrival of the two motorbike boys, testing out their repair.

  Hamid’s sons, he says, as we all shake hands.

  What was wrong with the bike, asks Guy. Did you get it fixed?

  The boys don’t understand what he’s said and ask him to repeat it.

  Bah! Don’t bother trying to talk French to those two, says their father. They hardly speak it at all, because of this stupid hukumat miki! Emotion having got the better of him, he leaves Khaled to translate this remark. It turns out to mean ‘Mickey Mouse government’.

  Yes, that’s it, Mickey Mouse! Hamid confirms. But nobody is listening. Guy is already off in the motorbike-repair zone, deep in socket-sets, oil, and mechanical conversation with the two sons who, by the look of it, aren’t so badly handicapped in French as their father thinks – not when it comes to motorbike parts, at any rate.

  Leaving Guy and the boys to it, the rest of us go off to see the caves, impressive barrel-vaulted cellars beneath the terrace, entered through a steep, narrow stone stairwell cut right into the earth. We select a couple of bottles of wine from the réserve privé des cousins and go off to see the flour-mill, which is tiny and turns out once to have been a water-mill – there’s a small river rushing through rocks only a hundred yards from the house, hidden in a deep bed, which once drove the massive water-wheel that still sits rusting on the outside of the wall. This strikes me as oddly ancient technology for a colonial enterprise, until I remember that the French got here in 1830. The grain hoppers and all the accoutrements are hand-made of wood, too – they must be the original ones, still going strong. The present owners grind their own corn in it and hire it out to other farmers for their harvests. The flour is all for local use, though, not a commercial enterprise like the wine.

  Heading for the house again, we spot Hamid’s sons and Guy still out among the vines. The taller of the sons seems to be trying on Guy’s burnous, his younger brother looking on while Guy drapes its folds becomingly, Farid-style, over his shoulders. The son is looking very pleased with himself. Interesting: could Guy’s cosmopolitan charisma succeed in relaunching the burnous as a fashion item once more, in its native land?

  Arriving at the house bearing our wine-booty, Guy following, we discover that the women are expecting us to eat with the family. They have already made extra lunch for us.

  I knew it. We’re never going to get away.

  But we’ll try the wine first, says Hamid, turning off the narrow corridor into one of the tiny rooms in the old servants’ quarters – the wine-tasting room, he says with a wink. More of a drinking den, we soon gather, as Khaled settles down into what is clearly his usual place on the piles of rugs and cushions on the floor, while Hamid produces a washing-up bowl full of peanuts in their shells. The peanuts come out of something I took for a freezer against the back wall; now, gazing abstractedly at the thing as I sip, it dawns on me that it’s not a fridge at all, but an ancient top-loading washing machine, just like the one my mother used to have, in brand-new condition. How come they use it for peanut-storage?

  Because that’s all it ever has been used for, according to Khaled. It’s good and mouse-proof and has always come in handy for storing dry goods the vermin would go after! The machine was brought here, it seems, when the patronne first
arrived – the patron having married a Frenchwoman from France. She didn’t realize that here there was no use for such a thing, that two poor widow women in the village depended upon the money they earned here doing the laundry by hand, in the concrete vat in the yard.

  Once Khaled’s mother had explained this carefully to her, he says the patronne never even got the thing plumbed in. Some French people, even though they were not Muslims, could understand that they had a duty to look after the poor.

  We polish off the two bottles of wine in a trice; a light, dry pale-red wine, cool and refreshing – and with a kick like a mule. Khaled and Hamid enjoy the Frenchmen’s reactions immensely. Aha! Now you’re tasting proper wine from a proper wine country! None of your French weaklings’ brew!

  More wine comes out from a second reserve in a larder in the corner, to go with the lunch: even stronger, says Hamid gleefully. Wait till you taste this!

  The sons join us back in the ballroom, along with a much older man – their grandfather, who does the Moroccan hand-on-the-heart handshake, unlike everyone we’ve met in Algeria so far. Hamid’s wife, whom we now know as Fatima, brings in the lunch, served on the low table by the sofas: the usual giant communal platter of couscous, this time with a deliciously savoury sauce of lamb and artichokes, peas and onions – oddly similar to one of my favourite Ligurian pasta sauces, give or take a pinch of cumin.

  Fatima does speak French, if not as fluently as her menfolk, but she is certainly not coming to sit down and eat with us! No indeed! She laughs in an amazed-and-horrified way at the very suggestion, and nips off like a startled faun to eat in the kitchen with the rest of the women. Next time Fatima comes out, it is with Khaled’s wife, Lamia – already giggling at the mere thought that we may ask her, too, to join us. She won’t meet our eye when we’re introduced, hiding her face in the folds of her headscarf.

  Looks as if my bold and simple cast-iron-frying-pan-to-the-head solution might not be the answer after all. You’d need to aim a few whacks at the women, too. Or even, who knows, come up with a more subtle approach.

  Fatima and Lamia clear away the platter and the bones, and bring in the fruit, a pile of absolutely enormous oranges and a plate of dried figs, dates and nuts. Now Lamia returns with the tea-making accoutrements. This time she is actually holding the edge of her headscarf in her teeth to make an impromptu half-veil, which I’m sorry to say makes me think she’s slightly mad, though I will soon learn that this is a normal thing for a woman to do here, when she’s feeling shy.

  Hamid is not making the tea yet, though. He opens a third bottle of wine and insists we drink more. His sons haven’t touched a drop so far. Now he starts insisting they take a glass, too. They refuse. He insists some more. They refuse some more.

  A short silence ensues. Now, having lost the battle on the alcohol front, their father starts having another go at them about their rubbish French.

  Another brilliant idea from the Pouvoir, he tells us. Stop teaching the children to speak French: that will make our nation more independent of the West! What foolishness! Why would only being able to speak one language make you more independent? Why turn a bilingual nation, where almost everyone speaks French, into one that only speaks Arabic? Anyone who trades abroad, like Hamid himself, needs a European language. Anyone who wants to keep up with science and technology, too – because where is the Iraqi research into vine cultivars? Where are the Saudi Arabian advances in viticulture?

  Hamid says that the Pouvoir were all educated in French-speaking schools anyway, they’re all bilingual, and he doesn’t believe for a moment that any of them sent their own kids off into their pointless Arabic-only education system! No, their children go to French lycées in Algiers. And to French-speaking university in liberal Tunis! They’ve foisted this Arabization business onto places where there was no decent schooling anyway, and this is their come-uppance – Islamist violence! They’ve made the Kabyle Berbers rise up against them, too, by ignoring their Tamazight language. The Pouvoir have created a stick for their own backs, because Hamid actually had to argue with his own son – that one there, he says, pointing at the taller son, the one who was trying on the burnous earlier and is now looking deeply mortified – to stop him voting for the Islamic Front!

  We don’t get the connection: is it the wine slowing down our already-overloaded brains?

  The Pouvoir, Khaled explains, had to import a lot of teachers from the eastern Arabic countries, the Mashriq, where the more puritanical and warlike versions of Islam are strong, to get its Arabic-speaking education launched. Algeria’s own teachers had all studied in the French language – they could hardly name an Arabic text on their own subject, never mind teach it in Arabic.

  And what happened? interrupts the irascible Hamid. He will tell us what! Big surprise – students who’d done their schooling in Arabic alone could hardly find a job! Nobody wanted them: French-speakers were more useful. The Arabized students had a great career ahead of them – as haitistes, as wall-proppers!

  The influence of those puritanical teachers, it seems, along with the lack of opportunities for Arabic-only graduates, has turned out an explosive combination.

  So you didn’t vote for the Islamic Front yourself, says Gérard, continuing his researches despite the wine.

  Hamid launches off again. Not only did he not vote for the Islamists, he is disgusted that theirs was recognized as a party at all and allowed to stand. Because, according to the Algerian constitution, parties based solely on religion are barred. It’s obvious – they’re supposed to be political parties, aren’t they, so they should be based on politics!

  Khaled takes his arm soothingly and begins giving his back a gentle, circular rub. The Islamists are so ignorant, Hamid is saying angrily, that they think wine was brought here by the French, that it’s some colonial imposition on their traditional teetotal culture! But Algerians have been making wine – in this very region – since before the Roman Empire! The very word ‘alcohol’ is Arabic – did we know that? Al-kohl: it means the pure substance, the sublimate, the essence. And even the Prophet Mohammed himself, peace be upon him, speaks of the wine of paradise, which will make you happy, but never inebriated! (This is certainly not the case with our hosts’ wine: my French is coming out all blurry. In fact, I may stop trying to speak at all.)

  Does this mean our hosts agree with the arrests, then?

  Khaled certainly does not. He thinks these first-ever multi-party elections were just a smoke-screen imposed by the foreign powers – especially your country, he says, fixing Gérard and Guy with a gimlet stare – who are blackmailing Algeria into giving up on socialism. It was the French economic advisors who encouraged the multi-party elections, and suggested legalizing the Front for Islamic Salvation so it could stand, too, just to confuse the issue. Everyone here’s a Muslim, after all, and any voter might hope that, if the government couldn’t solve the country’s problems, Allah would make a better job of it!

  Hamid agrees. They meant to divide the opposition, while they quietly sold off the country’s assets to the highest bidder. Unluckily for them, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams – the Islamist party has turned and bitten the hand that fed it!

  Khaled is disgusted at the West’s silence over the suspension of the elections, too. Of course they didn’t like the look of the probable winners. But why shouldn’t democracy be as binding here as in their own countries? If France, at least, had pressured the Pouvoir to accept the results, there could have been dialogue with the moderate Islamists – a lot of them are reasonable men. The extremists would have been left in limbo.

  And why would they do that? asks Hamid. Anything that weakens Algeria is good news to foreign investors. France’s love of democracy is only as deep as her businessmen’s pockets!

  The wives reappear now, expecting to remove the tea equipment, only to find that we haven’t even begun the tea course yet. Fatima begins berating Hamid in her own language – about his wine-drinking, I guess from the way s
he snatches up the empty bottles. The sons seize the chance to make their getaway, still on the moral high ground, not having touched a drop.

  I am confused, I say to Khaled, as we do our best to ignore the sotto voce tongue-lashing his friend is now receiving. The Front for National Liberation, when I first heard of them all those years ago, were great heroes, about to build a new Algeria with the nation’s oil money. But now they seem to be called the Pouvoir, and accused of everything from corruption and incompetence to being in cahoots with the country’s enemies?

  Simple, says Hamid, waving a dismissive hand at his wife, who now exits with a flounce, carrying the empty bottles. They listened to their French advisors!

  Khaled says they used the oil money to build massive factories: steelworks and stuff. Industrializing industries, they called them. Smaller factories were meant to grow up to supply them, farming would expand to feed their workers, well paid now; a generation with a good, state-run education would appear – and the economy would take off.

  French ideas! chips in Hamid. Did they put any money into agriculture? No! Now Algeria is importing food – where once she fed half of France!

  But the factories, Khaled continues, stoically ignoring Hamid, were white elephants – ran at half capacity, cost a fortune, and the only thing that took off was mass unemployment! While the bureaucrats who organized it all – or said they did! – paid themselves handsomely. Like the army, which still oversaw everything from behind the scenes. Both clans grew good and fat. And there you have it – the Pouvoir. Squabbling among themselves, snuggling up to their superior French experts, military or economic, and looking down their noses at the rest of us!

  Which isn’t to say, he adds, after a pause, that there aren’t still some good people in the FLN. But will their voices ever be heard?

  No, they won’t, says Hamid. Of course not! Why worry? Have some more wine! And he pours out another round.