Hassan was happy that doors so rarely open to the common people were finally opening for him, that he had been invited to the wedding, which he would now be able to talk about for weeks with his friends, describing the guests, the food and what the bride was wearing to those who asked.
His wife could also forget that she had borrowed the clothes and jewels she had worn to the wedding from neighbours and relatives. She in turn could start boasting to everyone about the opulence she had seen, as if she had suddenly become part of it just because she had been invited to gawp at the wealth of others.
Suddenly he said, ‘Si Sharif has invited us for lunch tomorrow. Don’t forget to be home around noon so we can go together.’
In an absent voice I said to him, ‘I’m going back to Paris tomorrow.’
He cried, ‘How can you go back tomorrow? You must stay at least another week with us. What’s waiting for you there?’
I tried to make him believe I had a number of commitments and had begun to tire of my stay in Constantine.
But he pressed, ‘That’s wrong, brother. At least stay for lunch with Si Sharif tomorrow and then leave.’
I replied in a firm tone that he didn’t understand, ‘It’s finished. I’m going tomorrow.’
I liked to talk to him in the accent of Constantine. With every word, I felt that a long time would pass until I might say it again.
As though convincing me of the need not to refuse the invitation, Hassan said, ‘I swear, Si Sharif is a good guy. Despite his position, he’s still true to our old friendship. You know that some people here say he might become a minister. Perhaps God will grant us some relief through him that day.’
Hassan said the last sentence in a barely audible voice, as though to himself.
Poor Hassan! My poor brother to whom God gave no relief after that. Was it just naivety that made him ignorant of the fact that the wedding was nothing more than a deal, that Si Sharif would have to get something in return? We wouldn’t marry our daughters to high-ranking officers without prior intentions.
Any benefit Hassan might derive from Si Sharif’s prospective post was simply an illusion. The believer starts with himself, and years might pass before he got around to giving a few crumbs to Hassan.
I asked him in fun, ‘Have you also started dreaming about becoming an ambassador?’
As though the question had somehow hurt him, he said, ‘What misery, man! Too late for that. All I want is to get out of teaching and land a decent job in any cultural or media organisation. A job to support me and my family in a half-normal way. How do you expect the eight of us to survive on my salary? I can’t even afford to buy a car. Where would I get the millions to buy one? When I think about the luxury cars lined up at the wedding yesterday, I feel sick and lose the desire to teach. I’m tired of that profession; there are no material or moral rewards. The times of “the teacher almost being a prophet” have changed. Today, as one of my colleagues puts it, “the teacher’s no more than a rag”.
‘We’ve become everyone’s rag. The teacher goes on the bus just like his pupils. He has to insert his ticket and stamp it just like them. People curse him in front of them. Then he goes home, like that colleague, to prepare his classes and correct homework in a two-room flat that eight or more people live in.
‘At the same time there are people who own two or three flats thanks to their job or connections. He can meet his mistresses in them or lend the keys to someone who’ll open other doors for him.
‘Good for you, Khaled, that you live far from these worries in your high-class neighbourhood in Paris. You don’t have to worry about what’s happening in the world!’
Ah, Hassan, when I remember our conversation that day, the bitterness congeals in my throat. It becomes a raw wound, tears of regret and grief.
I could have helped you more, Hassan, that’s true.
He would say, ‘Ask for something, Khaled, while you’re here. Weren’t you a fighter? Didn’t you lose your arm in the war? Ask for a shop, a piece of land or a van. They won’t turn you down. It’s your right. Give it to me, if you want, to support myself and the kids. You’re known and respected. No one knows me. It’s crazy for you not to take what’s rightfully yours from this nation. It’s not charity they’re giving you. Plenty of people can prove they were fighters, but they did nothing during the Revolution. Your body is your proof.’
Yes, Hassan. You didn’t understand that that was the only difference between them and me. You didn’t understand that it was no longer possible, after all these years and all the suffering, for me to bow my head to anyone, even if in exchange for a patriotic gift. I might have done that right after independence, but today it was impossible.
There’s not long left now, my brother. Not long left now for me to bow my head before I die.
I want to remain like that before them, plunged like a dagger in their consciences. I want them to be ashamed when they meet me. For them to lower their heads and ask how I am, in the knowledge that I know all about them and am a witness to their baseness.
Ah, if only you knew, Hassan! If only you knew the pleasure of walking the streets with your head held high, to be able to meet anyone, an ordinary person or a VIP, without feeling shame.
Today there are people who can’t walk the streets, when before, all the streets were reserved for them and their convoys of official cars.
I said nothing to Hassan. I just promised, as a preliminary step, that I’d buy him a car. I said, ‘Come with me and choose a car that suits you. Take it with you from France. I don’t want you to live feeling like this any more.’
Hassan was as happy as a child that day. I felt that was his great dream, one that he had been unable to fulfil and unable to request from me. But how could I have known that, as I hadn’t visited him for years?
When I remember Hassan today, only that gesture brings a little joy to my heart, because I made him briefly happy and gave him respite for a few years. A few years I never imagined would be the last ones.
Hassan returned to the subject. ‘Do you really insist on going tomorrow?’
I said, ‘Yes. It’s wiser that I go tomorrow.’
‘Then you must call Si Sharif today and apologise to him. He might misinterpret your leaving and get upset.’
I thought a little and found he was right. I said to Hassan, ‘Call Si Sharif for me and I’ll apologise to him.’
I expected that would be that, but Si Sharif was welcoming and embarrassed me with his kindness. He insisted I come and visit him, even if right then.
He said, ‘Come and have lunch with us today, then. What matters is seeing you before you go. Plus you can give your present to the newly-weds yourself this evening before you leave.’
There was no way out of it. Once again I had to face my fate with you. And I had decided to hasten my departure so as to escape an atmosphere which, in one way or another, centred around you.
There I was, once again putting on my black suit and carrying a painting that you stood before one day and that became the reason for all that happened to me afterwards. I went to the lunch with Hassan.
My legs carried me, once again, towards you. I knew I would meet you that time. I had an intuition that we wouldn’t miss that date.
What did Si Sharif say that day? What did I say, and whom did I meet? What was put in front of us to eat? I no longer remember.
I was living the last moments of loving you. Nothing interested me right then but seeing you and ending it with you at the same time. But I feared your love. I feared it would reignite from the ashes once more. Grand passion remains frightening and risky even in its death throes.
You arrived.
The most painful, the most crazy, the most ironic moments were those when I stood to say hello and give you two innocent pecks on the cheek. I congratulated you on your marriage using all the right words for such an incredible situation.
How much strength I needed, how much patience and dissimulation, to make the othe
rs imagine that I had not met you before, other than one passing encounter, and that you weren’t the woman who had turned my life upside down. The woman who had shared my empty bed for several months, and who had – until the previous day – been mine!
How good an actor I had to be to give you that painting without any further comment, without any explanation, as if it wasn’t the painting that marked the start of my affair with you, twenty-five years ago.
You gave an admirable performance too as you unwrapped it and looked at it in wonder, as if seeing it for the first time. I could only ask in the secret complicity that had once joined us, ‘Do you like bridges?’
A brief silence enveloped us, which seemed as long to me as the wait for a death sentence or a pardon. Then you lifted your eyes towards me to pronounce judgement. ‘Yes. I love them!’
How much happiness you gave me at that moment with your words. I felt you were sending me the last sign of love. I felt you were giving me ideas for future paintings and nights of fantasy and that, despite everything, you would remain faithful to our shared memory and to a city that was complicit with us and extended all these bridges to bring us together.
But were you really my beloved? At that moment another man was next to you, devouring you with two eyes not sated from a whole night of making love. At that moment when all the talk was about the cities you would visit on your honeymoon, I said my farewells in silence for your final departure from my heart.
That was your first defeat with me. So, everything was over. I had finally met you, but had the meeting been worth the wait and the pain?
My dreams of it had been so beautiful. Yet, that day, incredibly, it fell flat. So full of waiting for you had it been, that in your presence it proved hollow, painful.
Was the half-glance we exchanged worth all that pain, longing and madness?
You wanted to say something to me and words failed. Looks failed.
Your eyes had forgotten how to talk to me. I no longer knew how to decipher your hieroglyphs.
Had we reverted to being strangers that day without realising?
We had separated.
Two final kisses on your cheeks, a glance or two, lots of pretence and a secret, voiceless pain.
We all exchanged polite words of congratulation and a final thank you.
We swapped addresses after your husband insisted on giving me his phone number at home and in the office in case I should need anything.
We went our separate ways, each with their own illusions and mind made up.
When I arrived back at the house, I stared a long time at the card that I had handled all the way in shock and with a funny taste of bitterness. It was as if you had moved from my heart to my pocket under a new name and telephone number.
Without much hesitation or deep thought I decided to rip it up right away while I still had strength to do so and while I still had the resolve to end everything there in Constantine, as you had once wanted and as I had come to want that day.
What did you want that evening when you called out of the blue and pulled me out of the blur of my contradictory thoughts and feelings?
When Hassan passed me the telephone saying, ‘It’s a woman who wants to talk to you,’ you were the last thing I expected.
‘Haven’t you left yet?’ I asked.
You said, ‘We’re leaving in an hour. I wanted to thank you for the painting. It made me unexpectedly happy.’
‘I didn’t give you anything,’ I said. ‘I returned a painting ready for you for twenty-five years. It’s the gift of our fates that crossed one day. I have a different present for you that I expect you will like. I’ll give it to you some day in the future.’
As though you were afraid someone might hear you or steal that present, you spoke in a low voice. ‘What will you give me?’
I said, ‘It’s a surprise. Let’s assume I’ll give you a gazelle.’
Surprised you said, ‘It’s the title of a book!’
‘I know,’ I replied, ‘because I will give you a book. When we love a girl we give her our name. When we love a woman we give her a child. When we love a writer we give her a book. I shall write a novel for you.’
I sensed joy and confusion in your voice, amazement and vague sadness. Then you suddenly said in a voice full of desire that I wasn’t used to from you. ‘Khaled, I love you. Do you know that?’
Your voice suddenly cut off and fused with my silence and sadness. We remained speechless for a few moments before you added with a touch of hope, ‘Khaled, say something. Why don’t you answer?’
In bitter irony I said to you, ‘The pavement of flowers no longer responds.’
‘Do you mean you no longer love me?’
In an absent voice I answered, ‘I don’t mean anything in particular. It’s the title of another book by the same novelist!’ What I said after that I don’t remember. Most likely that was the last thing I said to you before hanging up. We separated for several years.
‘Don’t keep knocking at the door. I’m not here any more,’ Malek Haddad wrote.
Don’t try and come back to me via the back doors and holes in memory, the folds in dreams, the windows blown open by storms.
Don’t even try.
I abandoned my memory the day I made a shocking discovery: it was not my memory, but one I shared with you. Each of us had a copy of it even before we met.
My lady, don’t keep knocking at the door. I no longer have a door.
Walls dropped on me the day I dropped you. The ceiling fell in on me as I tried to smuggle out my possessions that were scattered in your wake. Don’t circle like that around what was my house. Don’t look for a window to climb through like a thief. You’ve stolen all I have and there’s nothing left worth venturing.
Don’t keep knocking so painfully at the door.
Your phone call rings in the caves of memory, empty without you, and the echo resounds painfully and fearfully.
Don’t you know that after you I live in this valley like the stones live at the bottom of Wadi Rummal?
So, easy now, my lady. Easy now as you cross Constantine’s bridges. Any slip of the foot will send me down in a landslide of rocks, and any inadvertence on your part will send you down to be crushed with me.
Woman disguised in my mother’s clothing and perfume and her fear for me, I am as tired as the bridges of Constantine. I am suspended like them between two rocks and two paths.
Why all this pain? And why are you the most lying of mothers and why am I the most idiotic of lovers?
Don’t knock on Constantine’s doors one after another. I don’t live in this city. She lives in me.
Don’t seek me on her bridges. They never once supported me. On my own I supported them.
Don’t look for me in her songs, and come rushing to me with old-new news, and a song for sadness now sung in joy:
The Arabs said, they said:
We didn’t give Saleh money.
The Arabs said, look:
We made Saleh Bey of Beys.
I know by heart what the Arabs said, and what today they dare not say.
I know that Saleh was your first mourning garb, even before you were born. He was the last bey of Constantine, and I was his last testament: ‘Ah, Hamouda, ah, my child, take care of the home for me.’
Which house, Saleh? Which house do you mean?
I visited the Asr market and saw Saleh’s house, empty of memory. Even its stones and iron windows had been stolen. They had destroyed its passages and ruined its inscriptions. Yet it still stood, a yellowing skeleton where drunks and tramps pissed on its walls.
What nation is this where they piss on its memory, Saleh?
What homeland is this?
Here is a city that donned mourning for a man whose name it had forgotten. Here you are, a little girl whose kinship with these bridges remained unknown.
Take off your shawl after today. Lift the veil from your face and don’t keep knocking at the door.
Saleh is n
o longer here and neither am I.
So we had split up.
Those who say that love never dies are wrong.
Those who write love stories with happy endings, to fool us into thinking that Majnoun, the crazed lover of Laila was an emotional exception, know nothing of the rules of the heart.
They didn’t write love, they only wrote literature.
Passion can only be born in the middle of minefields, in danger zones. For that reason the triumph of desire doesn’t always mean a sedate and happy ending. It dies as it is born, in beautiful destruction.
So we had split up.
Farewell, my beautiful destruction. Farewell, volcanic rose, jasmine sprouting from the fire.
O, daughter of earthquakes and cracks in the ground, your destruction was the most beautiful, madam. Your destruction was the most horrific.
You killed an entire homeland within me. You slipped into the recesses of my memory and blew it all up with a single match.
Who taught you to play with fragments of memory? Answer!
Where have you come from this time, yet again, with all these burning waves of fire. From where have you brought all the devastation that has come since that day?
So we had split up.
You didn’t lie to me, or really tell the truth. You weren’t a lover, or a cheat really. You weren’t my daughter, or really my mother.
You were just like this homeland, the thing and its opposite.
Do you remember that distant, early time when you loved me and searched me for a copy of your father?
You once said, ‘I’ve been waiting a long time for you. I’ve waited so much, like we wait for the holy saints, or the prophets. Don’t be a false prophet, Khaled. I need you!’
At the time I noticed that you didn’t say, ‘I love you.’ You just said, ‘I need you.’
We don’t necessarily love the prophets. We just need them, at all times.
I replied, ‘I haven’t chosen to be a prophet.’
You said as a joke, ‘Prophets don’t choose their mission, they just carry it out!’
The Bridges of Constantine Page 26
