The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry

by Assia Djebar

  Turning her head, Marie looks for support among some of the others. Even Noureddine doesn’t dare give in.

  Karim quickly puts an end to this first dilemma. “You’re reasoning based on you, and not on Mman’s point of view! If she were consulted here and now among us, what would she choose? Go ahead, imagine the situation, you all know her tastes, her wishes. Use a little common sense, okay?”

  Everyone is bewildered by the eldest son’s vehemence.

  “To be buried next to her husband, naturally! Fifty years of marriage entitles them to that, right?”

  It’s Khellil, from Bordeaux, who timidly interjects, “To bury her, a French woman, at the present time in Algeria . . . that’ll be complicated enough!” Then he adds, a little lower, “It’ll be much more expensive, too!”

  “We’ll vote,” interjects Karim. “As for the costs, how many of us are there?” He points at everyone, grouping Noureddine and his mother as one. “You, that makes four, and the one in Oran by phone, five. And me, six! Let’s say five thousand francs each, and if it’s more than that, we’ll let each other know.”

  It’s Noureddine’s turn to jump into the discussion, his voice still a little bit choked with emotion. Addressing his uncle Karim, he quickly steadies his tone. “You counted me with my mother! I don’t agree. I want to participate myself, individually. Five thousand francs. What a coincidence. Grandma advanced me this amount when I left Oran to move here. I insist on paying this amount—it’s what I owe. But maybe I won’t be able to, with just my education stipend . . .”

  Karim stares at him briefly, acquiesces with his chin, then promptly leads the discussion. With a semblance of a vote, they agree.

  “And there’s also the ‘reverend’ standing by. Call him!”

  Marie complies, but he can’t be reached. At this hour the lines are jammed between Oran and Paris. It’s Younès’s turn to continue. “Karim, you have to declare your mother Muslim if you want her to be next to her husband over there!”

  “Félicie, Muslim? Are you kidding?”

  “Otherwise, in Beni-Rached, where there’s only one cemetery, don’t count on it! Until now, there hasn’t been one dead Christian or Jew buried there. There were some who lived there way back when, but they all left three decades ago. You know all of this! Just consider Félicie being Muslim as a simple formality . . . If she were alive, and you’d said, ‘Pronounce the fatiha, and you’ll be buried with your husband!’ how would she have answered?”

  Ourdia, blowing her nose, murmurs, “My mother, who did only good, had the heart of a Muslim!”

  “Okay,” Karim dryly replies, “with your Islam! Mman, she had a Catholic heart, with the Virgin and the baby Jesus . . . that’s just as good, isn’t it?”

  Marie stands up and says sharply, “Me, my name is Marie and I’ll no longer answer to ‘Khadidja’, thank God . . . Do you know what Mary and the baby Jesus meant to her?” She turns to Armand/Karim. “Okay, you went to church with her on Sundays. Before getting married, she was French for eighteen years. Later, in Oran, it was only at Mass that she met up with other French people . . . She was married to an Arab, a lord in Beni-Rached but to all of these people, he was, after all, just a simple tribunal attendant. He was resented by his compatriots, that’s for sure. Maman got to strut when she went to the cathedral with you, such a handsome boy!”

  “Have you finished thinking for her?” Karim’s tone is increasingly vehement. “As for the French of Oran, she’s the one who loved to be alone, far from them!”

  “We’re here to make decisions about her body,” Younès whispers softly.

  “Yes, Félicie’s body!” Karim resumes, in a reverie.

  Younès exercises his diplomatic skills. “Everything starts with this point: our mother (may God keep her in his mercy), did she pass away as a Muslim, yes or no?”

  “Catholic all her life and Muslim the final hour, wait . . . the last minute, right?” It’s Karim again, and he’s fulminating. “Mman didn’t betray her primary faith!”

  “Then let’s bury her here in Paris,” Younès resumes serenely. “Or even in Rouen. Call together her brothers and sisters . . . However, you’re the one who initially said she had to rest next to her husband!”

  “When he went to bed with her, he didn’t ask her for the chahadda, not on the first night and not on the last!”

  Karim suddenly has a smile; Ourdia, whose eyes are raised to him, restrains herself from exclaiming, “But who was it, exactly, who pronounced the chahadda when she passed away?”

  With ironclad patience, Younès resumes. “The problem is this: we’re dealing with the body of Félicie, wife of Miloudi. In order for her to be interred next to Mohammed Miloudi, this body has to be decreed Muslim . . .”

  “And this will translate to what?” It is Khellil, with his hesitant manner, who asks.

  “By changing her first name, that’s the only concession! . . .” Younès turns toward Karim, looking him almost straight in the face. “If she were alive, what Muslim name would your mother have chosen?”

  “Oh, she would have hesitated. It seems that when she gave birth to boys, Father would rush to suggest a name first: Karim, Kader, Khellil . . . bizarre, always a k, right . . . But when the girls arrived, it was all the same to him. He told Mman, ‘It’s up to you!’ The first in Rouen, her name was Marie; she could have named her Jeanne d’Arc, for all he cared!”

  A silence settles in. Karim calms down. Younès turns to Marie, then to Ourdia. “It’s always up to the daughters to understand their mother. So, both of you, tell me, what name Félicie would have chosen for herself?”

  And Armand/Karim again rushes in. “I’m going through the first names of the women I’ve loved—not a single one with a Muslim first name! All were Jewish, Christian, or atheists, but with names from the Christian calendar . . . One,” he mused, “had a Catholic first name . . . A beautiful Malian, Aminata . . . so, Amina!” and Titi laughed.

  And so he’s searching among the first names of the women he’s “loved” when Ourdia dares to say, her voice somber, “As for me, in any case, I never liked this ‘Louise’ that I was saddled with! God knows how much I reproached Maman for it!”

  With eyes that were suddenly laughing, Younès asks, “And what first name would you have chosen for yourself?”

  “Yasmina,” Ourdia shoots back energetically. “I like this first name, which means jasmine! I also like white.”

  Noureddine adds earnestly, “Plus, it’s fashionable in Hollywood now.”

  “Really?” asks Karim.

  “You didn’t know? Yasmine, she’s a beautiful film star. I think she’s even of American stock!”

  Younès gets up. “Very well then, dear Ourdia, my little sister, you’re the one who’s settled it! From now on, Mother will be called Yasmina.”

  Karim turns around. “Please, she’ll remain Félicie so long as the body hasn’t left French territory.”

  “Well,” the young Noureddine interjects calmly, “my grandmother will finally be like all of her children. Now she has a first name that is Muslim, another that’s Christian, and she can choose between the two, depending on her mood!”

  “It’s her body, once it’s been transported, that will decide. Because everything depends on the place! If she’s washed according to Islamic liturgy, her name will be Yasmina.”

  “Well, no washer or any of this religious salaaming,” Titi protests, less vigorously.

  With his unflappable patience, Younès responds, “The washer comes in to wash her; we pay him. We ourselves could perhaps do without it, but the mosque he belongs to will issue the certificate.”

  “The certificate?”

  “Exactly, the first document we need for the file! It will be confirmed in beautiful Arabic and with the Koranic formulas that the deceased—here, the deceased woman, named Yasmina Miloudi—has been washed according to the Malekite Sunni rite by such and such representative of the imam, such and such mosque . . .”

&
nbsp; The women look at each other. With an orator’s enthusiasm, Younès continues, “And then you pay! You choose your mosque. They’ll all want to issue this authorization.”

  “I don’t want to know,” Karim murmurs, standing up. He turns to Younès. “Younès, with your beard, your beautiful Arabic, and especially your experience in business, you choose the mosque that you want, the washer who will show up, the prayers that you know better than I do! Above all, above all, you’ll get this paper for us for tomorrow night, if possible!”

  He finishes off on a somewhat weary tone, but Ourdia, watching him, assesses that it is “heroic, all the same.” “If I have this paper tomorrow night, I’ll have just enough time to take the necessary steps at the consulate!”

  Marie sighs, “I have to tell all of this to Kader, who’s waiting by the phone!”

  “Yes, call Kader! He in turn will be in charge of Mman when she reaches Oran. From Oran to Beni-Rached, there will definitely be a lot to do!”

  Younès, Noureddine, and Ourdia, of course, remember that they’ll be traveling in the plane to bring Félicie.

  “Félicie, in her casket, will be in the baggage compartment!” Karim muses bitterly.

  He leaves hastily without even saying good-bye.

  IV. KARIM/ARMAND

  1

  Honored Consul, this is a joke! It was only after three days of pestering that I could finally get into your office, that you finally received me with a politeness, stiff at first. You were rather visibly on edge! So three days of storming, making threats, and blockading the entryway, including the one on your floor, which I reached with such difficulty.

  I was sarcastic about the carelessness, the hesitations, the spinelessness of your little staff . . . It seems that you were told that I must have been a “fundamentalist.” Indeed, I’ve started to let my beard grow as a sign of mourning for my mother. In my father’s village, men wear beards for a full year in honor of a departed loved one!

  It would have also been alleged to you that I was “with the Secret Service,” what with my double French and Arabic first name, my car—too nice—and my tendency to make rather simplistic jokes for any pretty girl I came across. As it so happens, there are beautiful girls on your staff, and they still don’t cover their hair with chadors, thank God!

  Anyway, in Algiers, I’d have had easier access to a minister’s office—at least yours (a kid who comes from my region, whom I would have approached through the brother-in-law to some uncle’s cousin)—while in Paris you’re evasive, you go out by the emergency exit. I seemed like an unpredictable danger. To top it off, you were told that I was dragging along some journalist from the Algerian opposition, or from the French right, or who knows, one or two TV cameramen, undoubtedly nostalgic pied-noirs or the sons of vengeful harkis . . . And then you imagined multiple plots that must have poisoned the regular tranquility that you enjoy as a blasé diplomat.

  For three nights, I prevented you from sleeping serenely among your family members, probably numerous . . . but now I’ve learned that you live as a bachelor—so I can imagine the cushy circles of Arabic businessmen that you run in, here in Paris!

  As soon as the office opened on this fourth day, I sprang up and announced very loudly in the waiting room, “I won’t be driven away from here any more. A hearse is parked outside on the sidewalk, and my mother’s casket and her body are inside! The driver is staying here; I paid him handsomely to wait for the time it takes, for as long as I don’t have your damned authorization to bury my mother in Algeria. The police are sure to come at six o’clock tonight, and this will be settled between the Algerian authorities and the French cops!

  “Now, tell your invisible boss that it’s definitely a plot! I’m the plotter, the schemer, the troublemaker, and even if I end up the victim, my mother will not budge from this hearse. At six o’clock, if the cops get me, too bad! The French can throw me out! No matter what, I’m taking my mother with me, even if I have to chain myself to her body, to her coffin!” I added, very pleased with this opportune lie that came to me, “A friend of mine, formerly from Oran, is a photographer for an important news agency; he’ll take my photo at six, and tomorrow, the world will know that the mother of eight Algerians doesn’t have the right to be buried among her own people!”

  Shortly after, I heard the most voluptuous of the secretaries exclaim, “He’s surely out of his mind! Out of his mind or on drugs! It’s been checked out, the funeral car is parked right here, just across the way!”

  A whispering voice interjected, “Maybe the bomb squad should be warned, just in case there are explosives in the hearse?”

  I smiled at the first secretary. I started to take pleasure in the game, despite my exasperation. For an instant, I even imagined that Félicie was laughing with me in her casket!

  It was then that the beautiful employee, who had disappeared for a moment, rematerialized. She approached calmly, with a delicious smile. She whispered, “The honorable Consul agrees to receive you! Kindly follow me, sir.”

  And it’s behind this young woman’s tall form that I come in to see you, honorable Consul, that I sit down, a gesture of your hand inviting me to take a seat across from you in a comfortable armchair.

  “I know that you’re troubled by your mother’s death. We all love our parents, we all go through this painful experience. But that’s still no reason . . .”

  You start in Arabic, in what you’d call the “national language.” I answer in my—my father’s—intricate Oranian Arabic. We exchange our arguments fiercely. I start by making sarcastic comments about the evasive methods of your frightened staff, then come close to having an outburst of rage, arguing, “Will this ever change for our ‘representatives’ abroad? And there’s still this smugness, especially toward emigrants when they don’t come with a recommendation!” I don’t let out the word “loathing,” but I maintain that discrimination “toward our own” is often greatest when they are confronted with latent or overt racism at French immigration offices.

  Then you lose your temper. I’ve exaggerated, of course, and with a certain distance I watch you lose your composure. I almost forget that Félicie’s coffin is waiting beneath your windows.

  I don’t know when exactly we start to exchange our platitudes in French, you with your propensity of strongly rolling your rs, and me with an average Frenchman’s uninteresting way of speaking. Anyway, the conversation suddenly calms down, becomes more relaxed, almost cordial—reasonable, at any rate. With silences and pauses. And your eyes! I would have noticed them from the beginning—you get as swept up as I do by our words. But there’s your look, lurking beneath thick black eyebrows in a heavy face with large cheeks: bright eyes, stationary or prowling, as if you were using two methods of communication, and this latter one kept control . . .

  And I happen to notice that you’ve fallen silent after having observed my gestures, the bursts of my voice, my edginess. When you argue that you’d have to spend at least five thousand French francs in telephone fees for Algiers, for Oran, and for the municipality of Beni-Rached, I counter immediately by pulling a bunch of bills out of my pocket. “Here are your five thousand francs. I’ll reimburse you! What do you think? My mother deserves even more. I’ll pay! I don’t want to owe you anything . . . not you, not the state of Algeria!”

  You don’t bat an eye; you smile slightly. Calmly, you pull out a mahogany box and in a jovial tone you retort, “Look, let’s make peace. Take back your money! I’m going to light my last cigar, a Cuban cigar!”

  On a roll, I shrug my shoulders. “If you have problems with your supply”—this original product is rare to find in Paris—“as soon as my mother is taken to the airport, I’ll come back to you in three or four days with as many of these famous cigars as you want, directly from Cuba!”

  You smile, honorable Consul, take me for a braggart. It’s only a coincidence; just before Félicie’s death, one of my best clients, whose Cuban mistress comes and goes between her island and Paris,
had promised me several boxes of cigars by the most renowned maker.

  You resume, “Let’s be satisfied with first obtaining authorization by fax, so that your mother’s body is not detained at the Oran airport. Here, tonight, I will have the OK from Algiers—the necessary paper will be ready!”

  Leaving your office, we seem like two friends: me, the whiner, the eccentric, and you, the “apparatchik,” as impersonal and cold as so many others at first glance. Actually, you’re a former “militant” worker from Citroën from the time of the Algerian War, a self-made man once forged by political struggle who has been softened by two decades of diplomatic representation.

  Remaining a bon vivant, honorable Consul, saves you from becoming a bourgeois. In any case, after two hours of deliberations over the phone with Algeria, you assure me that I can have my mother sent off first thing tomorrow morning.

  The hearse can drive off. Another two hours and the police would have come to draw up a report, and I would have been detained at the station, liable for fines for “public disturbance,” and Félicie’s body would have been returned, alas, to the morgue.

  But you, honorable Consul, despite the suspicions among your entourage for all these days, you explain that, “as a matter of principle,” and no matter how insane one of your raging compatriots may be (these turn up, sometimes), you can’t bear to call in the cops because of your years in prison when you were young!

  You accompany me up to the hearse. I wave to you. “Call me Karim,” I say. “You’ll see, in two or three days, I’ll show up at your place . . . for a surprise! Not to whine!”

  You smile without adding anything. Later . . . much later, you come to my antique shop one night; I had given you my card.

  You announce that you’ve suddenly been transferred to South Africa. Two boxes of the famous cigars, deposited the day before by my client, seem to be waiting for you. I’d hesitated to bring them to you, for fear of being accused of “attempted bribery.”