by Simon Pare
“What took you so long?”
Her hair was totally dishevelled. Grief and worry had made her ugly overnight. My throat tight, I had a kind of dark, hare-brained revelation of the boundless love I felt for this woman: “It doesn’t matter whether you’re beautiful or ugly, Meriem, it’ll take a whole lot more than that for me to tire of your love-bites!”
Inside that sorrow-laden car, I wanted to confess this epiphany to her – that it was vital that together we form a wall of steel against the disaster that was threatening to engulf our family. But immediately the words had formed in my mind, they seemed ridiculous and with an aching heart, I stifled the urge.
She was twisting her handkerchief around her fingers.
“He… He rang me again. He said he’d kill her if… What are we going to do, Aziz?”
Meriem interpreted my silence as a reproach. She averted her eyes towards the windscreen.
“I’ve been trying to tell myself since this morning that I’m going to be no use to my daughter if I keep crying. I stop crying, I think I’ve summoned up enough courage, and then… this bastard calls and whispers into my ear that he’ll cut Shehera’s head off if he feels like it…”
I made no move to console her: I was too scared that my body might disintegrate if our two despairs should touch.
She jumped as if she’d just been bitten by a poisonous animal.
“Oh no… not again… the phone! Your phone!”
I read the inevitable ‘Caller unknown’ message on the screen before raising it cautiously to my ear. With dark irony, I thought that I would have handled radioactive material the same way.
“Where are you?”
“In the car with my wife.”
“Did you convince the police?”
“Yes… I think so.”
“All right, let’s move on to more serious matters. Get out of your car now. If you’re driving, pull over.”
I did as he said, asking Meriem to wait for me inside the vehicle. The tension was exhausting me; for a second I felt like an athlete sentenced to run the hundred metres over and over again under pain of death. The memory of a cigarette tickled my tongue. With an intense feeling of nostalgia, I thought, “Ah, a drag of some nice pungent grey tobacco and I’d cope with this better…” It’d been ten years since I’d stubbed out my last fag butt. I promised myself that I would treat myself to a packet of unfiltered cigarettes before the morning was out. A second train of thoughts, just as out of place as the first, had wormed its way into my brain.
The voice, terribly familiar now, brought me back to my surroundings. I tensed my muscles to ward off goose pimples. I also recognised, somewhere in the background of my sensations, an urge to vomit after another fit of panic.
“What I’m about to ask you is strictly between the two of us. Even your wife mustn’t suspect anything. There’s no one next to you? No cheating – that would have disastrous consequences for you know who!”
“No, there’s nobody. My wife’s in the car. How is my daughter?”
“Fine. Now, our deal is simple, Aziz: she will be fine as long as you obey me. Any pranks and – she croaks! Now, open your ears wide and keep calm. Are you calm?”
The man’s inflexion had changed: more excited, with a hint of – how would you say? – childish enjoyment. It was this cheerfulness that made me feel with awful certainty that the worst was yet to come.
“I’m calm.”
“Do you have enough imagination, Aziz?”
“What’s imagination got to do with it?”
“You’ll need some, because you’re going to have to kill someone for me.”
“Kill someone for you? Are you mad?”
There followed a few seconds of silence – enough time for me to bite my lip at my own stupidity: I had mentioned madness to a madman! Something slimy slithered into my mind: Hey! Don’t act so surprised. Everything’s been mad since yesterday. Why would what this guy’s asking you to do be any less mad? I raised my eyes to the skies in search of help; the blanket of cloud, impassive as ever, looked like a badly cleaned zinc bar counter.
The voice articulated its words slowly. “‘Mad’, eh? You’re going to pay a heavy price for that insult. The generous time limit of forty-eight hours I was going to offer you is reduced to twenty-four, meaning by 8 o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“I…”
“Every time you protest, the time limit will be halved. You don’t have to obey me, Aziz. But if you don’t, your daughter will die in a very unpleasant fashion when time runs out. Unlike many people in this country, I’m honest – I always keep my word.”
The crackpot was deadly serious – he really did want me to kill someone for him.
“And who am I supposed to…” I said, taken aback.
Meriem was watching me through the windscreen. Quite obviously, my gestures were not sufficient to keep her still any longer.
“Go to work,” the kidnapper ordered. “I shall call the zoo in the morning to check you’re following my instructions. I shall give you the name of the person. I shall also make sure that you have no reason to doubt the seriousness of my demands. I repeat: no one must know about our little agreement. Your safety depends on that too, you nitwit; by tomorrow, God willing, you will be a murderer. Dear Lord, grant long life to those who revere You even at the cost of their own lives… and the lives of unbelievers!”
And he ended his prayer with a burst of laughter that sounded almost like a bark. He had hung up by the time my stunned mind had finally succeeded in formulating a question: But how can you order me, you fucking terrorist devil, to do something that I will never do?
I got back into the car in a daze. I had already turned the key in the ignition when I felt Meriem’s mouth right by my ear.
“… So what did he say to you, for God’s sake?”
I managed to shake myself out of my mindless state. I decided not to hide anything from her (how could I keep that to myself!) and I whispered (because of course it was impossible to inflict such horror on her!), “He spoke of… (I took a big gulp of air, too big, scrabbling desperately for a credible lie.) Erm, nothing specific… He’ll phone me later with instructions. He insists I go to work first.”
“So what does he want? A ransom?”
“Maybe that’s what he’d like… but I’m not sure, Meriem.”
“And our daughter… Is she OK?”
I ventured a smile.
“He assured me she was.”
The careworn face studied me suspiciously, ready to detect any attempt to deceive her on compassionate grounds.
“If he demands a ransom, tell him we’re ready to sell the house, the car, everything we own. So are my mother and her husband. We’ll borrow if need be. Do you think the bank will lend us money?”
“Of course, Meriem.”
“Who is this man? Why us? We’re not rich…”
Her voice was so wretched that I leaned over and kissed her lightly on the mouth.
“I’ve no idea, but we’ll find a solution. And we’ll get our daughter back safe and sound, I promise you.”
“Are you sure?”
To avoid answering – and what would I have answered? – I placed another kiss on the corner of her lips, which were moist with tears. I felt defiled by sharing a secret with the kidnapper and concealing it from the woman I was kissing.
A man with a nasty expression on his face tapped on the car window.
“Go and snog your bird somewhere else, mate, or I’ll call the police. This isn’t Pigalle. This is a respectable neighbourhood.”
The well-dressed sixty-year-old who was eyeing us with disgust displayed none of the presumed attributes of an Islamic fundamentalist. I drove off without even giving him the satisfaction of reacting to his provocation. Inside my head, a multitude of frightened voices were screaming at the same time, each vying to offer an opinion, some of them trying over and over again to convince me that the man on the telephone was only making fun of me, si
nce the GIA’s men had amply demonstrated that they had the necessary clout to murder whoever and whenever they wanted without resorting to such a tortuous mechanism!
I took Meriem to her secondary school. The thing she was most afraid of, she confessed to me, was going in to teach as though nothing was wrong, even as her daughter’s life was hanging by a thread. I reminded her that we hardly had any choice since the kidnapper had made this a specific condition.
“He’ll probably ring your administration under some pretext or other to check. But we’ll stay in touch all day, you and I. As soon as one of us hears something, they should tell the other straight away.”
I double-parked in front of the gates of her school. Before leaving she had one last doubt.
“What if we were wrong not to tell the police? What if we were condemning Shehera by keeping quiet?”
I held her gaze.
“I don’t know. All I can tell you is that I sense he’ll kill her if we put a foot wrong… Even though I think…”
I broke off, shocked at my own discovery (I was thinking: “… though I think he’ll drag out this game for as long as possible. This sadist is toying with our lives. That’s right; he’s laughing his head off and he’s in no hurry to let go of his new playthings!”) I leaned over to her side to open the car door.
“Yes? You think…?”
She looked me up and down with mistrust. I must have blushed. As I leant over, I’d touched her thighs. She pushed me away unkindly and repeated, “Yes?”
“No, nothing. Quick, we’re going to be late.”
“Are you hiding something from me? You wouldn’t dare hide anything to do with this from me, would you? He talked to you on the phone for a long time…”
I protested a bit too fiercely. The window of the passenger door was open. A passer-by looked round. He smiled, the unwitting witness, he imagined, to just another domestic quarrel in this city whose inhabitants were permanently on edge.
“What are you leading up to?”
Meriem got out without kissing me. She walked away quickly. Her figure, sorrowful and resentful towards me, soon disappeared behind the heavy iron gates that were like a barracks’ and had been installed two years earlier after a failed assassination attempt on the previous headmaster. I drove on through the Algiers traffic jams, still in shock at my wife’s attitude as she proclaimed, with the staggering dishonesty of a suffering mother: “My daughter’s been kidnapped and, look, the only way my wimp of a husband can think of to free her is to toe the line drawn by the man who took her from us!”
At a crossroads a driver swore at me with a vicious smile. “Hey, when did you get your driving licence? When you came out of your aunt’s vagina?” I had a searing, almost paralysing pang of nostalgia for that wonderful time – less than twenty-four hours previously – when I would have felt gravely offended and when my only concern would have been to come up with a retort worthy of the driver’s wholly paradoxical obscenity. I realised that heaven did indeed exist – even though its irremissible drawback was that it existed only in the past. The previous morning Meriem, Shehera and I still led a ‘normal’ life, our sole cares those of a ‘normal’ life: bad marks, relationship problems, petty rivalries at work. We had been living in heaven because no member of our little family was threatened with death, rape, or both of those things at once.
But we didn’t know that then! However, what we had learnt to our cost in the space of one short night was that, although heaven’s delights often pass our ungrateful senses by, hell is immediately recognisable. Our bodies do not generally burn there, as holy scripture would have it; but our souls do. And far more cruelly.
Walking past the bonobo enclosure, I realised that I’d forgotten to pass on my boss’s orders to the zoo employees. All the apes, both male and female, were outdoors, trying to keep themselves warm under the grey sky. I greeted Lucy and her baby, poor Shehera’s favourite. The mother came over to the wire fence making a sort of yapping noise that I chose to interpret as meaning “Hello. How are you doing?” I whispered back, “Badly, friend, worse than you could possibly imagine… A kidnapping, but then you know what that’s like…”
Right then I could easily have stepped into the enclosure and curled up against the bosom of the female bonobo, snuggled up to her baby and begged for a little consolation. Yet maybe she would have ‘said’ to me – or at least ‘thought’ –with biting sarcasm, “Hang on, since when have bloody jailers taken to seeking solace from their prisoners?”
With a heavy step I reached the zoo’s administrative building. There was an unusual bustle in the staircases. The Director, Hajji Sadok, was waiting for me in the doorway to his office with a morose look on his face.
“It can’t be said that you’re the king of punctuality, Aziz.”
“It wasn’t me who invented Algiers’ traffic jams,” I retorted curtly.
I saw my acting Director’s eyes harden in surprise. He looked round to check that no one had heard me.
“You should have taken precautions and left home earlier on a day like this!” he hissed through his teeth as he turned back into his office. “Fine, fine… Let’s talk about the visit by the delegation. For my part, I’ve been in touch with a few people. How about you?”
I cleared my throat, hoping to find a less aggressive tone of voice. The acting Director studied me closely.
“Tell me, Aziz, do you feel all right? Has something… happened to you? You don’t seem… too well… You look… (he hesitated over the word) shattered.”
I tried to smile.
“No, you’re exaggerating… It’s just that… that I’ve had a stomach ache since yesterday, a bit of trouble digesting some food.”
Not very convinced, Hajji Sadok shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, whatever your problem, make an effort to be friendly until the end of the visit. Otherwise neither you nor I will be in a job for much longer. Especially you, by the way… It’s not so bad for me. I’m the incumbent. At the worst, I’ll find myself in a different department, but that’s not the case for a contract worker like you. Is that clear?”
I had understood the threat perfectly. He signalled with a gesture that the conversation was over.
“Ask the driver to prepare the minibus for the visit, then make sure that everything is ready: the press kits, the prospectuses, a Thermos of coffee, mineral water, lunch at the restaurant. And tidy your hair, Aziz.”
I returned to my office, already exhausted by the docile act I was going to have put on all day long. I checked that the phone was working, before trying to concentrate on the visit by the apparatchiks from the ministry. I made a few phone calls to the relevant colleagues, using my mobile so as to leave the landline free. The accountant was amazed I was calling when his office was at the other end of the corridor. I kept the conversation short, before skimming through the extravagant and fairly false argument that old Hajji Sadok and I had drawn up.
All of a sudden my brain rebelled, refusing point blank to take any further interest in the visit, which just a day earlier had seemed absolutely vital to my future and to my family’s. I held my head in my hands like someone grappling with a foreign body. Inside that ball of bone, blood and soft, grey flesh, thoughts were fighting like rabid dogs that would have me screaming in pain if I removed their muzzles. I shut my eyes, waiting for the call from the stranger who had become, to me, the most important human being since our nasty species’ appearance on earth.
It was in this mental state that I saw the Director walk into my office.
“Feeling up to the visit?”
“Erm, yes… Sure.”
“Doesn’t look like it,” said Hajji Sadok, raising an eyebrow. “You could have chosen a different day to fall ill. Come on, get a move on, they’ll be here in quarter of an hour.”
Suddenly the landline phone rang.
“Well, pick it up,” grumbled the Director, noticing my hesitation. And as it lasted too long for his taste, Hajji Sadok picke
d up the phone. He listened without a word, then handed me the receiver.
“Private, it would seem.”
A malicious smile playing on his lips, he remarked loud enough for my correspondent not to miss a word, “Remind your friend that private calls are not to go through office reception. I want you downstairs in five minutes, with the press kits.”
“Your boss is a tough cookie… and not very polite, is he? Remind your boss that I’ve become crucial to you, and maybe to him, if I felt like it. Hey, are you listening?”
The voice tut-tuted, as though reprimanding a child.
“Not answering me, Aziz? Weren’t you looking forward to my call?”
“Yes… I…”
“You are at the office and I appreciate the fact that you obeyed me. Anyway, here are some details about my request: “Anyone you like!”’
“What do you mean?”
“I repeat: ‘Anyone you like!’ Didn’t you get that?”
I replied, quite honestly, “No… not really…”
“Don’t act more stupid than you are. Here’s my proposal. Kill anyone you like, but I want a nice fresh corpse by tomorrow morning. By way of proof, you will take a photo of the corpse with your mobile phone and send it to the number I’ll give you. Don’t get any ideas. The chip for the number will only be used once, so there’s no point in trying to trace it back. You’d better get a telephone with a camera as soon as possible. And…”
He continued in the same tone, half cordial, half technical.
“…I’ll ring you on your mobile in a few minutes so you’ve got time to think it over. You’ll tell me your decision next time we speak. Should you refuse, I will be forced to cut off your daughter’s fingers one by one until you give me a total and unreserved yes. Goodbye, my friend.”
I clung to the banister as I walked down the stairs. On the bottom step I almost fell over Lounes, the vet. His smile faded when he saw my face.
“If you’re drunk, Aziz, then you’re very unwise to declare your fondness for a tipple on the day of the ministerial inspection. (He shamelessly held his nose up to my mouth.) No, you’re not. Are you ill, Aziz? You’re very pale…”
