The Bridges of Constantine

by Ahlem Mosteghanemi

  I didn’t say anything to him that day. For an obscure reason, I felt that I had been orphaned again. A tear froze in each eye. I was bleeding, and the pain in my arm was gradually spreading to my whole body. It settled in my throat as a lump of pain, disappointment and fear of the unknown.

  Events were racing past me and my fate took a new turn every hour. Only the voice of Si Taher giving final orders reached me. It formed my only connection with the world.

  Even so, I still remember perfectly his coming to inspect me an hour before my departure. He put a piece of paper and a few banknotes in my pocket, bent over me and said, as if telling me a secret, ‘I’ve left my family’s address in Tunis in your pocket, and a little money.’ Then he mumbled, ‘If you make it there, I hope you’ll visit them when you’ve recovered. Give the money to Amma to buy a present for the little girl. I’d also like you to register her birth if you can. It may be a long time before I can visit them.’

  A few moments later, as though he had forgotten something, he added, half embarrassed as he uttered it for the first time, ‘I am naming her — —. Register her when you can, and kiss her for me. And send Amma all my regards.’

  That was the first time I heard your name. Bleeding between life and death, I heard it. In my coma I fixated on its letters, like someone delirious from fever might fixate on a word. Like a prophet grasps a commandment he fears he might lose. Like a drowning man grasps at a lifeline. Between the letter A (for agony) and the letter M (for pleasure) your name was spelled out. Dividing them was the letter H (for heat) and the letters L and A, the Arabic word la (for warning). I failed to heed the warning of your name, born as a small flame in the first fires of the war. I failed to heed the warning of a name that starts with ‘ah’, the antonymic cry of both pleasure and pain. I failed to heed the warning of this noun, which means ‘dreams’, both singular and plural, like the name of this country, which means ‘islands’, and realise from the beginning that plurals are always created to be split up.

  Today, between smiling and sadness, I recall that commandment, ‘Kiss her for me,’ and I laugh at fate, at myself and at strange coincidences. Then I’m shamed by the gravity of his voice, and the rare sign of weakness surrounding his words. He always wanted to seem imposing to us, unconcerned by anything except the nation, and with no family but his men. But he had confessed his weakness to me. He pined and longed, and maybe even cried, but within the limits of decency and always in secret. Symbols have no right to cry from longing. He did not talk much about your mother, for example. Didn’t he miss her? A bride whom he had enjoyed for a few stolen months and whom he had left pregnant.

  Why the sudden haste? Why didn’t he wait a little while, arrange a few days’ leave and register you himself? He had waited six months, why not a few weeks more? And why me? What twist of fate brought me together with you? Whenever I asked myself these questions, I was confounded and found myself believing in destiny.

  Despite his responsibilities, Si Taher could have escaped to Tunis for a day or two. Crossing the well-guarded border with its patrols and checkpoints wouldn’t have frightened him. Nor would breaching the electrified and landmined Morice Line that stretched the length of the border between Algeria and Tunisia, from the coast to the desert, which he subsequently crossed three times – a record number, given the dozens of corpses of fighters left strewn along it.

  Was it Si Taher’s love of discipline and respect for rules that made him feel so anxious after you were born? He’d discovered that he’d been a father for months, and the child was still unregistered, officially nameless. Having awaited you for so long, was he worried that he might lose you if he didn’t have your existence and affiliation to him officially signed and sealed? Did he have a bad feeling about your legal status, and want to register his ahlam – his dreams – at the town hall to ensure her reality? So that fate wouldn’t come and snatch her away. Ultimately, after a first failed, childless marriage, he dreamed of being a father like other men.

  I don’t know if, deep down, Si Taher wouldn’t have preferred a baby boy. But I did learn later that he had tried to outwit fate and had chosen a boy’s name before his departure – ignoring the possibility of a girl. Maybe this was the unconscious result of a military mindset and nationalist obsession. I often heard him begin his military speeches and plans with, ‘We need men.’

  So Si Taher seemed happy and optimistic about everything in that period. The hard man suddenly changed. He became less rigid and more fun when off duty. Something inside him was changing, bringing him closer to others, more sympathetic to their personal circumstances. He granted passes more readily for snatched home visits, yet denied himself one. Late fatherhood, a ready symbol for a brighter future, changed him.

  A small miracle of hope. That was you.

  Morning dawns.

  The day surprises me with its usual din. Against my will, the sudden sunshine floods me with light. I feel it stealing something from me. At that instant I hate the inquisitive, shaming aspect of the sun. I want to write about you in darkness. My story with you was like undeveloped film. I am scared that light will expose it and ruin it, because you are a woman who flowered in a secret part of me and whom I possessed with the legitimacy of secrecy. I should only write about you after drawing all the curtains and shutting the windows of my room.

  Even so, I’m happy at the sight of the paper stacked in front of me. I filled the sheets in a night of frenzy. With a tasteful cover, I might dedicate them to you as a book. I know, I know you hate overly tasteful things, and that you’re very selfish. In the end, you care for nothing outside of yourself and your body.

  A little patience, madam.

  In a few more pages I’ll have laid my other memory naked before you. A few more pages are needed before, in vanity and desire, regret and madness, I’ll fill you out. Like love’s feasts, books also need starters. Although I admit that writing the foreword is not as immediate a problem as finding where the story starts.

  Where do I begin my story with you when your story with me had so many beginnings? It began with unexpected endings and upheavals of fate.

  When I speak about you, whom do you think I am talking about? The baby who once crawled at my feet; the young woman who twenty-five years later turned my life upside down; the woman on the stylish cover of a book entitled The Curve of Forgetting whose scant resemblance to you makes me wonder if it really is you?

  What name should I give you?

  Maybe the one your father wanted, the one I myself registered in his stead at the town hall. Or your original name – Hayat – the one you bore for six months while awaiting another legal name. That’s what I’ll call you. It is just one of your names but it is the name I will use for you, as it was the name I knew you by, the name that only I know. The name that is not on people’s tongues, not written down on the pages of books and magazines, nor in any official register.

  The name you were granted so that you might live – God grant you long life. The name I killed one day when I gave you another, official name. It is my right to bring the other back to life, because it is mine, not used by any man before me. Your name as a child lingers on my tongue, as though you were still the you of decades ago. Whenever I say it, you come back as a child sitting on my knees, playing with my things, saying words I don’t understand. At that moment I forgive all your sins. Whenever I say it, I slide back to the past and you come back as tiny as a doll. As my daughter.

  Should I read your book to know how this little girl became a woman? But I already know you’ll never write about your childhood, your early years. You fill the empty holes in memory with words. You get over the wounds with lies. Perhaps that was the secret of your attachment to me. For I know the missing links in your life. I knew the father you only saw a few times in your life, and know the city where you lived but that does not live in you – whose alleyways you treat without affection, trampling over its memory without paying attention.

  You grew attached
to me to discover what you didn’t know. I grew attached to you to forget what I did know. Could our love last?

  Si Taher was a third character in our story from the outset, even when we didn’t talk about him. Though absent, he was present between us. Did I need to kill him again to be alone with you? If only you knew how heavy the burden of a last wish had been, even after a quarter of a century. How painful a desire confronted by its impossibility and by principles that ultimately only make it more appealing.

  From the very beginning the question was how I would erase Si Taher from my memory, his life from mine, to give our love the chance for a natural birth. But what would be left if I excised you from our shared memory and turned you into an ordinary girl?

  Your father was an exceptional comrade and an exceptional leader. He was exceptional in life and in death. Could I forget that?

  He wasn’t one of the fighters of the last battles of 1962 who, to guarantee their futures, joined the last wave. He wasn’t an accidental shahid, surprised by death during carpet bombing or hit by a stray bullet. He was made of the same stuff as Didouche Mourad, Larbi Ben M’hidi and Mostefa Ben Boulaïd. They sought death instead of waiting for it to come to them.

  Could I forget that he was your father when your constant questions restored his glory, in life and in death?

  The heart that loved you to the point of madness has grown confused. The echo of your request remains present: ‘Tell me about him . . .’

  I will tell you about him, my darling. There is nothing easier than talking about martyrs. Their history is ready-made and known in advance, like their finale. Their ending absolves them of any sins they might have committed.

  I will tell you about Si Taher.

  Only the history of shahids can be written. Another history follows, appropriated by the living. This will be written by a generation that doesn’t know the truth, but will deduce it of its own accord. Some signs cannot be misread.

  Si Taher died taher, pure, at the threshold of independence. He had nothing in his hands but his weapon, nothing in his pockets but a few worthless notes, nothing round his neck but the honour of martyrdom. Symbols acquire their value at their death. Those who act on their behalf acquire their value from ranks and medals, and quickly line their pockets with the proceeds of secret accounts.

  His murderers carpet-bombed the besieged town of Dachra for six hours so that they could put a photograph of one of the rebels France had vowed to destroy on the front page of the next day’s papers, as proof of their crushing victory. Was the death of this simple man really a victory for a great power which, in a matter of months, would lose all of Algeria?

  He was martyred in the summer of 1960 and did not enjoy the fruits of victory. He gave everything for Algeria, which did not even give him the chance to see his son walking beside him. Or see you fulfil his dream and become a doctor or teacher.

  That man loved you so much! With the passion of a father at forty. With the great tenderness of one whose severity concealed much tenderness. With the dreams of one whose dreams had been confiscated. With the pride of a fighter who, when he sees his firstborn, realises that he will never completely die.

  I still remember the few occasions he stole visits to you all in Tunis for a day or two. I would race to see him, desperate to hear the latest news from the Front. At the same time, I would restrain myself so as not to steal the few precious hours that he had risked his life for, so that he could spend them with his small family.

  I discovered a different man from the one I knew. A man in different clothes, with a different smile and words. He sat so you could easily sit in his lap for him to play with. He lived every second to the full as though he were squeezing every drop of happiness from the meanness of time, stealing in advance hours of life that he knew would be few, and giving you in advance a lifetime’s supply of tenderness.

  I saw him for the last time in January 1960. He had come to witness the most important event in his life and meet Nasser, his second-born child. It was a secret wish of his to be blessed with a boy. That day, for some reason, I studied him closely, but spoke little. I preferred to leave him to his delight and his stolen happiness. When I went back the following day, I was told he had returned to the Front in a hurry, saying he’d definitely be back soon for longer.

  He didn’t come back.

  The generosity of that miser fate came to an end. Si Taher was killed a few months later without seeing his son again. Nasser was eight months old at the time, and you had just turned four.

  In the summer of 1960 the nation was a volcano, dying and being born every day. More than one story crosses paths with its death and its birth, some painful and some amazing. Some came late, like my story that one day crossed paths with you. An offshoot of a story, written in advance, that changed the course of my life after a whole one had ended, by the action of what might be called fate or mad passion. It came out of the blue, surprising us both and overwhelming our principles and values. It came later on, when we were no longer expecting anything, but it turned everything in us upside down.

  Today, now that time has burned the bridges of communication, can I resist the insane desire to combine these two stories together in writing, just as I lived them, with you and without you, desiring, loving, dreaming, hating, jealous, disappointed and with tragedies to the point of death?

  You loved listening to me, turning me over and over like an old notebook full of surprises.

  I have to write this book for your sake, to tell you what I didn’t find the years to say. To tell you about those who, for various reasons, loved you and whom, for other reasons, you betrayed. Even to tell you about Ziyad. You wouldn’t admit it, but how you loved talking about him. There is no need for evasion any more. Each of us has chosen our fate. I’ll tell you about this city that was a party to our love, and that went on to become a reason why we split up and where the beautiful scene of our destruction played out.

  What would you have talked about? Which man did you write about? Which one of us did you love? Which one of us would you have killed? To whom were you faithful? You who exchanged one love for another, one memory for another, one impossibility for another.

  Where do I rank on the list of your loves and your victims? Perhaps I’m in first place, because I’m closest to the original version. Perhaps I’m the fake copy of Si Taher, one not transformed by martyrdom into a replica. Perhaps I’m a fake father figure, or a fake lover. You – like this nation – are the expert in faking and turning the tables without effort.

  Henry de Montherlant said, ‘If you are unable to kill someone you claim to hate, don’t say you hate him. That is to prostitute the word.’

  Let me admit that right now I hate you and that I write this book to kill you. Let me try out your own weapon. Perhaps you were right, novels are just pistols loaded with words. And the words are bullets. But I won’t use a silencer as you do. A man who’s carrying a gun at my age can’t take so many precautions. I want your death to resound as much as possible. I’m killing more than one person along with you. Someone had to be daring enough to shoot them one day.

  Read this book to the end. Afterwards, you might stop writing fake novels. Review our story afresh. One shock after another, one wound after another. Our meagre literature has known no greater story, nor witnessed a more beautiful ruin.

  Chapter Two

  The day we met was extraordinary.

  Fate was no extra. Right from the beginning it played the lead. Didn’t it bring us together from different cities, from another time and another memory, for the opening of an art exhibition in Paris?

  I was the artist that day; you were a visitor, curious in more ways than one. You weren’t exactly a young art lover, nor was I a man who felt threatened by younger women. What brought you there that day? What made me stare at your face? Admittedly, I was drawn to faces, because only our faces reveal us and give us away. I could love or hate because of a face.

  Even so, I am not fool enoug
h to say I fell in love with you at first sight. Let’s say I was in love with you before first sight. There was something familiar about you, something that attracted me to your features. I was already disposed to love them, as if I had once loved a woman who looked like you, or had always been ready to love a woman just like you.

  Out of all the other faces, yours haunted me. As your white dress moved from picture to picture, my incredulity and curiosity also turned white. The gallery, filled with visitors and colours, became completely white.

  Could love be born from a colour we have not necessarily loved?

  White suddenly drew near and started talking in French with another young woman I hadn’t noticed before. Perhaps when white has long black hair, it obscures other shades.

  Looking at one of the paintings, White said, ‘I prefer abstract art.’

  The colourless one replied, ‘Personally, I prefer to understand what I’m looking at.’

  In preferring to understand all she saw, the stupidity of the colourless one didn’t surprise me. Only White surprised me – how uncharacteristic to prefer the obscure!

  Before that day, I had never been partial towards the colour white. It had never been my favourite colour. I disliked categorical colours. But at that moment, I inclined towards you without thinking and found myself saying to that young woman, as though continuing a sentence you had begun, ‘Art is not necessarily what we understand. It is what stirs us.’

  The two of you looked at me in surprise. Snatching a glance before you said anything, you spotted the empty sleeve of my jacket, the cuff tucked into the pocket in shame. It was my card, my identity papers.

  You stretched out a hand in greeting and said with a warmth that took me aback, ‘I’d like to congratulate you on the exhibition.’