A Country for Dying

by Abdellah Taïa

  “No, Aziz . . . No . . . Don’t go . . . Stay a little longer.”

  “To do what? Let me go somewhere else, find another life to cohabit. Let me leave you. Don’t argue . . . Set me free . . .”

  “Do you remember Isabelle Adjani?”

  “Yes. As a little boy, I used to adore that actress.”

  “Then you forgot about her.”

  “What are you getting at, Zannouba?”

  “Before leaving for good, before abandoning me, let me tell you the story of Isabelle Adjani.”

  “Tell me what about her? I don’t understand.”

  “Do you want to hear? . . . Do you, Aziz? . . .”

  “Go on! Do your Scheherazade thing, Zannouba . . . I don’t have a lot of time but I’m listening.”

  isabelle adjani

  She is Algerian like you and me.

  She appears. She disappears. She reappears. She is here. She is no longer here. We search for her. We thought we had forgotten her. But she is always somewhere. She hides. She sleeps. She forgets herself. She loves. She goes far. Very far. I think she frequently leaves this world, what we call the world: the round earth, the blue and black sky.

  I’m convinced: Isabelle Adjani is not like the rest of us. She is not made of flesh and blood. There is only water in her body. This woman carries in her something we don’t know yet. The future? The future as it’s depicted in science fiction movies? Better. Much better than that. Man and woman reunited in another time. Not the present. Not the past. But what will come, that sublime explosion that never stops expanding and whose first echo we sometimes hear at night.

  Isabelle Adjani was born then, in that moment. Precisely. I think we call it the Big Bang. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Booommm! Everything begins. Life. Not life as we know it today. No. Life in a mad rhythm, a hellish but completely bearable heat. A cosmic conscience. There are not yet human beings, other beings, other creatures, other intelligences. But Isabelle Adjani. So white. So black. So blue. Nude, of course. Carrying in her all the lives. Speaking all the languages. Mastering all the signs.

  She is not a goddess. She is the spark. Her fire captured us. Humankind is forever attached to her. In fear. In ecstasy. We listen through her. We hear what happens in her. The voices of All the World. We exist to follow her, love her, adore her, venerate her. Wait for her.

  Is she coming? Is she here? Not yet? Not yet.

  In fact, she is already here. In us. In you. In me.

  This world, today, doesn’t understand Isabelle Adjani. Doesn’t love her the way she deserves. Men see her only as a very talented and very temperamental actress. They’re wrong. Ten thousand times wrong. Isabelle Adjani, the actress, cannot be defined by the idea of a career. She is beyond that, that modern triviality. To say that she is making a career is an insult to someone like her. That woman invents and acts out things that are much more modern than we could imagine. Incarnations and interpretations that tell us everything. Absolutely everything.

  Do you understand, Aziz? Are you following me? I know that you love Isabelle Adjani just as I do. Remember how the two of us were swept away by The Story of Adèle H? Do you remember that movie? We watched it one sad afternoon on Algerian television.

  Do you remember what she says near the end?

  “That unbelievable thing, for a young girl to walk on water, cross from the ancient to the new world to join her lover, that thing will I do.”

  That’s what she said, isn’t it? She’s the one who said it, not the character.

  It’s possible I’ve mixed up her words. It doesn’t matter. Those words convinced us that this woman was indeed from our home country, Algeria in shambles, and also from the other world. Her conviction and her fervor sent unforgettable shivers down our spines, gave us memories that would last forever.

  You and I tried to learn by heart the sacred words she spoke in the film. We might have invented them, reinvented them.

  The film entered, once and for all, into our eternal memory.

  The face of Isabelle Adjani who loves. Who suffers. Who cries. Who yells. Who runs. Who jumps. Who falls. A haunted face, inhabited by all of us. One face and only one face. And nothing else.

  We never grew tired of it, did we, that dear and tortured face, madly in love, courageous and alone, in writing, in clairvoyance, in the beyond.

  Isabelle Adjani is also a clairvoyant. In the proper sense of the term. She sees. Here. Beyond. The man who made this film truly understood her. He placed Adjani in situations where the world ceases to be the world. The world ends. Adjani continues.

  For weeks and weeks, every day we cried thinking about that film, that body in love, that wandering, that distress, that sadness, that absolute solitude, embraced.

  And when we learned that this woman was Algerian, do you remember what we did, Aziz?

  We went to the hammam.

  You went to the hammam, Aziz, and you tenderly made love with three men at the same time. That was your way of being in love and in recognition. You understood then the reason for that mysterious and miraculous attachment to Isabelle Adjani.

  She was better than Algerian. Within her flowed something that you too had, and that you recognized so clearly in her.

  You weren’t wrong. No. No. Adjani was from another world. Yours. You saw in her your idea of possession: how one takes within oneself the entire universe, before and after, how one adorns oneself in it, how one dances and cries in it.

  Isabelle Adjani was exactly that: the truth according to you. Beauty as seen through your eyes gazing at the world, and what they had captured, stolen.

  You know why I wanted to come to Paris so badly? You know why Zahira is my only sister in France?

  Like us, she worships Isabelle Adjani. Like us, she believes only in her.

  Zahira said: “Isabelle Adjani is a saint.” I can’t help but agree with her. And you do, too, I know. Saints are neither pure nor chaste nor kind. They have needs. Zahira and I, we have honored Isabelle Adjani countless times. Several Lila. Several magical Nights.

  An entire night to satisfy those who inhabit the body of that woman, those who inhabit us. Whether they be jinns, spirits, the living dead, the wounded lovers, fathers and mothers on another voyage.

  We closed the windows to Zahira’s studio. We burned rare incense. We wore green caftans. And we started to watch a film. The Film. Possession. Isabelle Adjani speaks English in it. In cold, foreign places, far from us, but because she was in the very heart of these places, we accepted those images and we awaited the moment. The Moment. Something unique. Never before seen, in the cinema or elsewhere.

  Adjani is in blue. Her skin is whiter than ever. Her lips are bloodied, incredibly red. She leaves the subway. The yellow train. She climbs the unending staircase. There is no one. The hallways of the subway station are no longer hallways. Zahira and I, we know what’s going to happen. But we forget every time that we are the ones who have organized this ceremony.

  Adjani doesn’t act. That’s her great strength. She is incapable of acting. She is. She is. We know that. We understand it. We take her hand. We are with her. In her. The world will soon fall into a trance. The superseding of every limit.

  Adjani has freed herself from every burden. She outdoes herself. She overflows. She yells. She shouts. She laughs. She falls. She drags herself along the ground. She flows. She flutters. Levitates. Kneels. Turns her head as quickly as possible and in every direction.

  She frees herself. She comes back to the center.

  She waves her hands. The visible. The invisible. She is no longer named Isabelle nor Adjani.

  Some people, faced with these images, might be afraid. Others would make fun. And still others would analyze them too intellectually. Zahira and I, we don’t need to study what Adjani did. We are exactly like Isabelle Adjani, in the same state as her. We breathe in her
gestures. We reenact her choreography.

  We stop the film. We rewind. To the moment when she leaves the subway.

  Play it again.

  Zahira is standing in her studio. I’m next to her. Isabelle Adjani turns around. Towards us. She sees us. She welcomes us. We rush forward. We enter the screen. Our bodies are frantic. Already in recognition. We follow the path.

  The fire is blue. Adjani, like the world, is its exact reflection. Through love, through submission, Zahira and I, we become blue. Us too. We fall under the eternal trance.

  Do you remember all this, Aziz? No? Were you still with me then? Or had you already planned your voluntary departure, even before I made the appointment with Dr. Johansson?

  No answer?

  Where are you?

  Don’t leave me alone, Aziz. I just arrived in this new world of women. Don’t leave, please. It’s too soon. You are my heart, my shadow, my secret soul. My past still flowing through my veins. Don’t leave.

  Are you coming back, Aziz? Are you listening, Aziz? What am I going to do without you? Where do I go? What direction do I take? Zahira, again? Zahira, always? Come back . . . Come back . . . Aziz . . . Aziz . . . Aziz . . . Don’t leave . . . Don’t leave me. Paris has turned cold, unresponsive, sad, indifferent. Racist. Paris will kill me. I need you. The little hand of a carefree boy who dances and sings. I need your forever-free soul. I need it.

  Come back. Come back. Come back.

  Don’t die, my little brother. Come back. Paris is a black hole. Come back and save me. Come back and love me, wash me, carry me to my deepest desire, my last breath. Come back. I’m nothing without you.

  Nothing.

  2. Green Everywhere

  Mojtaba. That’s his name.

  He fled his country, Iran. A year ago.

  He had always dreamed of going to France to visit the Jardin du Luxembourg. And to do so, he had to go to Paris.

  Mojtaba wants to live in London or Stockholm. He doesn’t know yet which of those two cities to choose. But he must make a final decision in a few days. Between now and the end of the month of Ramadan.

  Mojtaba was lost near the Couronnes metro stop when I met him. He was standing at the station exit. He looked completely disoriented, in a huge panic. All around him, nothing but Arabs who had come to that neighborhood, the night before the beginning of the sacred month, to buy the necessary provisions: dates, dried fruit, honey cakes, little bottles of orange blossom water, special herbs, essences, oils, and countless other things. Like everyone else, I had also come to do some grocery shopping, pretend, convince myself for no reason that Ramadan in Paris had meaning, was worthwhile. I was lying to myself, of course. But by now it had been a long time since that bothered me.

  I don’t know why I walked towards Mojtaba. A need to do good? To save someone? Perhaps.

  I planted myself in front of him. I looked at him. He lifted his eyes towards me. And then, I saw what he really looked like. In a word: he was sublime. A magnificent young man. And, clearly, lost.

  I could tell right away that he wasn’t Arab. Muslim, yes, but not Arab. He was also tender, sweet, melancholic. That was obvious immediately. Something in him was similar to me, familiar.

  It wasn’t love at first sight.

  Compelled by some kind of fraternal sentiment, I moved towards him. I had no control over it.

  His eyes were tired, his cheeks very hollow. He had a soft beard that asked to be caressed. His limbs were weary. He seemed to be beyond exhaustion. It was clear he was going to fall over, faint, any second now.

  Mojtaba kept looking at me.

  I grasped every part of his soul. I watched his destiny unfurl entirely in front of me.

  He comes from far away, this boy, very far away. He’s been wandering for a long time. He sets off. He moves around permanently. He no longer has a center. He no longer knows where to find the energy that will keep him alive.

  I drew closer to him. I linked my arm through his. He needed it. He asked me a question, in broken, charming French:

  “Is Barbès far?”

  I answered with a big smile:

  “Not really. A little farther on the 2 line.”

  He didn’t have time to hear my response. He lost consciousness.

  Outside of a moment of sexual ecstasy, I had never seen that before. A fainting man who loses control of his body, his mind, his energy. A falling man.

  I fell with him, trying to hold him up, to slow the downward momentum of his body. I succeeded.

  Now my butt was on the ground and the young man in my arms. People started to crowd around us. Normally indifferent, they were suddenly kind.

  “What can we do to help, ma’am? Tell us . . . Tell us . . .”

  I asked them to hail me a taxi.

  Of course, as always in Paris, it was impossible to find one that was free.

  After fifteen minutes, a woman passing by thought to call a car on her cell phone. She had the number for a service.

  I’ve lived through a lot of dramas and tragedies in Paris. I’ve known the dirty, the rotten, the sordid, the unspeakable. Nothing surprises me anymore. Nothing affects me anymore. Only my mad love for Iqbal guides me, serves as my compass. I’ve seen it all. And I’ve survived it all.

  In my entire life I had never witnessed anything more beautiful than that encounter with the boy from far away who fainted in my arms.

  I didn’t try to wake him up there. I just made sure he was still breathing, and brought his head to lie near my breasts. If I’d been able, I would have breast-fed him.

  I know Parisians. And I know Arabs in Paris. They rarely help each other. Every man for himself. Everyone in his bubble. His cell. Especially in the streets. The metro. The buses.

  Mojtaba inverted, reversed, that well-established order. At the moment when everything was going very badly, when the paths of our dishonest lives were leading nowhere, there was a moment of grace. Everyone ran over to save this young man who had fainted. Bring him back to life. Take his hand. Give him warmth.

  “What’s wrong with him, ma’am? What’s happening to him? What can we do?”

  “We can’t let him die. He’s so young. So handsome . . .”

  “Put this small lump of sugar in his mouth!”

  “Read a short sura from the Quran! Go on! Go on!”

  I did it all. I followed their advice.

  I cried. I wasn’t the only one.

  I prayed. I wasn’t the only one to do that, either.

  No one thought to ask me the indecent question of what was my relationship with Mojtaba. They must all have sensed, seen, the clear thread that connected us. Even the taxi driver was touched. He refused payment and helped me carry the young man into my apartment.

  That night, I refused all my clients. I turned off my cell phone. And I watched over Mojtaba.

  I heated up some milk with thyme. I poured it into a large bowl. I added a lot of sugar. And I made a date pastry.

  I gave all of it to Mojtaba while he was still asleep. It took a lot of time. I opened his mouth and slid a spoonful of very sweet hot milk inside. I withdrew. And I started again.

  I waited near his body for two hours.

  I took off his jacket. His shoes. I covered him in a green floral sheet. Then I turned to his large traveling bag. I opened it. Took out his clothes. They were all dirty. I washed them by hand. I hung them all around the apartment to dry.

  I took a white towel and dampened it with hot water. I took off Mojtaba’s socks and, with the help of the hot towel, set about wiping and warming up his feet.

  It was this heat that brought him back to the world. He opened his eyes. He looked at me. A bit shocked. I looked at him. He recognized me. He wasn’t afraid. And he spoke, in a language I didn’t understand. He began again, in hesitant French:

  “Merci . . . M
erci . . . Merci beaucoup. Je m’appelle Mojtaba.”

  I answered, with a softness that was new to me:

  “Welcome to my home . . . I’m Zahira . . . I’m Moroccan . . . And you?”

  He looked at me for a few long seconds.

  “I’m Iranian.”

  I have to admit that I was a bit surprised. Before he revealed his nationality to me, I would absolutely not have guessed his home country.

  Before I met him, I had never heard a first name like his.

  Mojtaba.

  In a vague, intuitive way, I understood and invented a meaning for that word, for that Persian name. Something like “He who aspires to . . .” “He who answers to . . .” “He who moves towards . . .” “He who goes . . .”

  Maybe I was wrong.

  Mojtaba took his arm out from under the green sheet and extended his hand to me. I extended mine. Our hands met. Each shook the other. For a long time. No ambiguity. No malevolence. No false sentiment. Eventually I lowered my eyes. I had become timid again as though I were a pure little girl. I let go of his hand. I got up and went to the kitchen to prepare something for him to eat. His voice followed me. It asked me a question:

  “Is tomorrow Ramazan in France?”

  Ramazan! What was he talking about? After a few seconds, I finally understood that he was talking about Ramadan.

  I turned back towards him.

  “Yes, tomorrow is the beginning of Ramazan in Paris.”

  He asked another question, a bit disconcerting:

  “Do you fast?”

  His question told me that he did, he fasted. So I lied:

  “Yes, I do.”

  Without hesitating, he proposed the following, this voyage through time:

  “Let’s fast together?”

  I didn’t hesitate.

  “Okay, Mojtaba. We’ll fast together . . . Okay . . .”

  From a distance, I could see that he was smiling. I went back to preparing my dish and I too was smiling. I was delighted. Mojtaba would be staying with me for an entire month.