by Faïza Guène
Now I came to think about it, Big Baba had never raised his hand against any of us. He settled for words, even when he was furious.
‘In any case, school is compulsory until next year.’
‘Even if I give him permission to leave?’
‘Even so. We’ll make an appointment with the careers’ advisor,’ I suggested, calculating that my first port of call should be the safeguarding officer. ‘And that will enable us to discuss what the options might be for next year…. Does that sound okay, Mehdi…?’
Mehdi nodded unenthusiastically, but his eyes betrayed what he was really thinking: ‘Like, do I even givva-shit?’
I had gathered up my belongings and Miloud had taken his clippers to my hair.
A proper cut from the old country, blédard-style.
‘You don’t know about these things!’ he protested, when I suggested he remove the small bird’s nest he’d left on top. ‘You look good like that! It’s ‘fashun’ – trust me, cuz.’
You’ve got to hand it to Mario. He’d made a special batch of rhubarb brioches for me to take back to Nice. Not only was he 100 percent reliable and clean-cut, but he showered us with small acts of kindness.
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘Mario, you’re like a mother to me.’
Would he have taken it the right way?
Just as for my arrival, my dear cousin Miloud drove me to Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport, and, just as for my arrival, I was enjoying the extra legroom in his Mercedes C-Class while he blasted out the raï.
In the plane, there were more safety instructions delivered by a ditzy air hostess.
Dounia was engrossed in her Blackberry, her thumb hovering above the keys as she read her e-mails.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve switched it to airplane mode.’
My neighbour, this time, was a retired man. He was fast asleep with his mouth wide open and his nose whistling a tune. The sideways view revealed a slender thread of dribble and, in his ear, a hearing aid tangled up in long white hairs. Each time I notice an old person’s ears, I think, Ears of that age must have heard so much nonsense in their time.
It felt like an assignment for Scotland Yard.
Our plane landed at 4.45pm, but I’d told Maman I was arriving into Nice at 7pm. I hoped that would give me enough time to get to the hospital with Dounia, see Big Baba, make my way back to the airport with my suitcase and feign the expression of someone who’d just landed: fatigue, jetlag, all that.
‘What if he’s changed his mind? Maybe he doesn’t want to see me anymore.’
‘Stop talking rubbish.’
‘I’m petrified.’
‘Take it easy. Don’t think about it too much. It’ll be fine.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Dounia?’
‘Yes?’
‘How much d’you weigh?’
‘What kind of a question is that?’
‘Dunno. It’s just you’re so skinny.’
‘There are some things you shouldn’t ask a person! Like their age!’
‘Okay… I didn’t mean to get your back up, sorry.’
‘You have the strangest ideas, sometimes…’
Dounia had picked like a sparrow at her meal tray before heading straight for the toilet afterwards.
Thinking back on it, she had gone to the toilet the day we ate lunch at café Flore too, and she’d stayed in there a while. At the time, I’d put it down to the raw meat.
Same thing at the Swedish embassy. What’s she doing in there? I’d mused, Power-napping?
Does Dounia push her fingers down her throat?
It reminded me of those TV reports where vacant, emaciated, exhausted girls stare sadly at their plates, pushing a bit of tomato around with the tines of their fork.
Perhaps she despises herself? Perhaps she’s ashamed of her body? Perhaps she doesn’t see herself the way she really is? (Meaning skinny.)
So now I’m looking at Dounia and I’m picturing her throwing up.
The Finishing Line
I’m fascinated by athletes, their capacity to see something all the way through, to surpass themselves, to redefine their limits.
There’s a whole ritual around big, televised athletics championships: the results table, the look in the eye of the athlete making a supreme effort, victory and close-up on the gold medal.
I feel nostalgic for the male comradery I used to share with Big Baba in front of the television set.
I can still see the face of Noureddine Morceli winning the 1500m final at the Olympic Games in Atlanta.
Big Baba wept that day. I swear. I’m sure I saw him crying, even if he claimed otherwise; flat denial, accompanied by loud sniffing.
‘Have you taken leave of your senses? This is sinusitis!’
‘Yeeeesss! Yeeeesss! Morceliiiiiii! Morceliiii!’ screamed the Algerian commentator, who had no scruples about crying. ‘Olympic gold for Algeria!!!! In three minutes and thirty-five point seven five seconds!’
The Moroccan, Hicham El Guerrouj, had been hotly tipped. He was in the leading pack when the poor man fell catastrophically on the final lap. They showed the scene in slow-motion several times on Canal Algeria. As well as the close-up on El Guerrouj collapsing in tears.
I’ll never forget that moment. Noureddine Morceli looking incredulous as he caught his breath, the Algerian national anthem ringing out around the stadium, Big Baba’s ‘sinusitis,’ and the flag that billowed on both their shoulders, the one in Atlanta and the other in our living room in Nice.
Dounia suggested we rent a car on our arrival at the airport.
With Europcar, you rent a lot more than a car.
So what does that mean, apart from the keys and a full tank?
‘All I’ve got left is a three-door Twingo,’ explained the rental assistant. ‘Will that do?’
‘I leave that to your better judgement!’ said Dounia.
Wow! I reckoned it was the first time I’d heard someone say the words ‘I leave that to your better judgement!’ in real life.
It was only a ten-kilometre drive to the hospital.
Dounia drove nervously, clinging to the steering wheel with her bony hands, so the car jolted, and the back of my head kept banging against the headrest.
‘I haven’t driven in yonks! I always take taxis in Paris!’
As we turned the bend on a road overlooking the city, we glimpsed the Mediterranean.
I thought about Mehdi Mazouani and reflected that growing up beside the sea is a stroke of luck.
I pictured my mother busily preparing a gargantuan dinner. The table would be heaving with food by now, including the following as a minimum spread: matlou flatbreads, avocado milkshakes, grilled peppers, salad, fried aubergines, lamb tajine with prunes and almonds, spit-roasted saffron chicken and sautéed potatoes.
‘You’ve eaten nothing, my son!’ Maman would complain, after watching me stuff my face to the point of clogging my arteries. ‘What’s the matter? Are you sick? Perhaps you’re running a fever?’
Mina would have cleaned the house like a fanatic, disinfecting the toilets and mopping everywhere in sight. The smell of bleach and lemon-scented Saint-Marc all-surface cleaner would tickle my nostrils as I crossed the threshold.
The children would have grown, and they’d jump all over me shouting: ‘Tonton! Tonton! You’re back!’
I’d feel emotional as I glanced at our certificates framed with pride by Big Baba on the living room wall.
I’ve missed home.
Dounia would be on her own in her small Niçois apartment, chain-smoking on the balcony, filling her empty belly with smoke while checking her e-mails and waiting on the phonecall from Tartois, who’d be busy with his cronies in the National Assembly.
‘I feel like I’m hallucinating,’ Dounia remarked, as we walked into the neuro rehab unit, ‘and my knees have gone all wobbly.’
Big Baba had his back to us. He was facing the window and watching the day’s first drops of rain. He had al
ways loved the rain and used to go outside into his garden just to breathe in the smell of damp earth, every time it rained.
The shutters were half-closed, and we could just make out that his roommate was an elderly Indian gentleman who sat stock-still, staring at us.
Big Baba’s shoulders looked hunched in his hospital gown, and his temples seemed to have turned even whiter.
Dounia put both hands to her mouth, as if to stifle a cry; her eyes brimmed with tears, reminding me of a river after an unexpected flood.
‘Papa!’ I called out.
He turned around, slowly, and his wheelchair squeaked on the green linoleum floor. I went over to kiss him on his cheeks and forehead.
‘How are you, my boy?!’ he asked softly.
Then, pointing to a leaflet on his bedside table, he added: ‘I was waiting for you to read that to me in a journalist’s voice…’
Hiding behind me, Dounia put her hand on his shoulder. She was trembling all over and her cheeks were covered in the salt from her tears, like a sadness archived inside her for more than ten years.
It took a few seconds before Big Baba finally recognised her. His expression was one of joy and incomprehension, just like Noureddine Morceli in 1996, at the finishing line.
His face puckered and he began to cry, putting aside his emotional reserve, releasing his innermost feelings and breaking with his own commandment: Men Don’t Cry. His brow was furrowed as he wept into his daughter’s chest, his face against her breastbone. Sickness, death and the solemnity of life make us temporarily forget our old resentments.
A few minutes later, Big Baba was staring obsessively at his neighbour’s bedside table, as he pointed out a small statue to us.
‘Tell him to remove it! I want him to remove it!’
The elderly Indian gentleman began to scowl and shout as he grabbed his statue and clutched it to his chest.
‘Is Ganesh! Not touch! Is Ganesh!’
‘Just wait for him to doze off,’ Big Baba told Dounia. ‘I’m going to take that cursed statue of his and I’m going to smash it against the wall!’
‘Don’t work yourself up, Papa. Perhaps he needs it…’ Dounia murmured, stroking his wrist.
Big Baba shook his head.
‘What does he need a statue for, eh? His elephant will stop the angels from visiting my room! That’s why he’s keeping his eyes wide open, and he’s burst all his blood vessels as a result, just look at him! He hasn’t dared sleep in two days because he knows I’m going to smash that stupid statue of his!’
The Indian gentleman’s eyes bulged as he continued to cradle his Ganesh close to his heart.
‘Haaaaaaaaa! Is Ganesh! Is Ganesh! Not touch!’ he insisted, while bobbling his head from right to left with uncanny regularity. Shades of the parents of young Murugan Urvashi a few days earlier.
The commotion had rallied the entire care team.
‘Well, good afternoon, everybody…’ said a young nurse who had entered the room and was standing, hand on hip. ‘Goodness me! What seems to be the matter, Monsieur Chennoun?!’
‘He started it! The Hindu! He’s the one who started it!’
‘Excuse me! Our friend has a name, doesn’t he? Monsieur Ishana may not speak much French, but he understands it perfectly well!’
The elderly Indian gentleman’s eyes bulged further on hearing his name.
‘I don’t want to know his name! I’m not in the least bit interested in his name!’
‘Why are you arguing like this?! We thought you’d enjoy having a roommate, making a new friend!’
‘I don’t need a friend!’
The Indian gentleman kissed his statue of Ganesh while watching my father, his eyes injected with blood.
‘Did you see that, Mourad? Eh? You saw that! He did it on purpose! Devil’s accomplice! He’s provoking me! You wait until I start walking again! I’ll skin you alive!’
Big Baba was like a child.
‘I didn’t realise it had come to this!’ Dounia confided in me. She looked overwhelmed but happy to see Big Baba again.
‘Ah, here you are! You’ve returned! I can die in peace!’
Dounia stroked Big Baba’s lifeless arm, unable to offer a reply except to whisper: ‘I’m sorry, Papa…’
The Final Destination
A fresh rain began to fall. That reassuring smell of damp earth and humidity, combined with an astonishing silence.
The water fell on our heads, it weighed down the branches of the olive trees and carried off the refuse from the town in rivulets.
When I turned around, there, a few metres behind Mina, my mother, and my aunts, I could see Dounia drying her tears in her scarf. Her over-long djellaba trailing in the mud. My mother held out her hand and drew her eldest daughter close. Yes, sickness, death and the solemnity of life make us temporarily forget our old resentments.
On our arrival, one of Big Baba’s sisters was crying so hard she ended up biting her own hand.
‘You’re bringing him back to us in a box!’ she gasped, between sobs. ‘You’re returning him to us laid out in a box.’
If we hadn’t held her back, she’d have thrown herself on top of the coffin.
The women didn’t follow us for the committal but swept into the house, where I thought I could glimpse 1000 silhouettes comforting one another.
As for the men, we made our way solemnly towards the cemetery. At the head of the cortège, the coffin carried by the honourable volunteers.
We followed.
And we will follow next. Yes, the same thought preoccupies us all: ‘The cemetery is our final destination.’
The clouds were swelling before our eyes, in infinite hues of grey. I had never seen the Algerian sky outside of summertime before.
A street hawker was pushing his wooden cart arrayed with the sardines he had caught that morning at Beni Saf. On encountering our procession, he stopped running for a few metres as a sign of respect.
There were at least 200 mourners in the cortège, all walking with their heads down, as if their necks had crumpled under the weight of the sky.
You wouldn’t think so but clouds weigh tonnes.
Naturally, I was inspecting everyone’s shoes, and if you counted them by unit rather than pairs, that made for at least 400. Once a cobbler’s son, always a cobbler’s son.
‘We belong to Allah and to Him shall we return,’ people kept saying to me. It didn’t matter that I didn’t recognise who half of them were. At the mosque in Nice, on the eve of our departure, plenty of men I’d never met before came to join me in praying over Big Baba, and so they became my brothers. I who had grown up with none.
Big Baba’s corpse in the coffin was a reminder to us all, for me as his son, just as it was for the men closing the ranks of the funeral prayer. There was no escaping that one day it would be our turn to lie in a coffin.
In the funeral parlour, when I had kissed his icy forehead, I reflected that Big Baba was merely ahead of the rest of us in leaving the prison of this world, and that one day we would be reunited, if God wills it.
His face seemed luminous to me. After the ritual washing, he had been anointed with musk while rose petals had been scattered in his coffin. Wrapped in his shroud, he looked like a prince.
I kept thinking that, at any second, I might turn around and see him in the crowd, standing by the grave of the dead person, a dead person who wasn’t him but someone else, whose loss would make us feel sad, and nothing more. In any event, it wouldn’t hurt so much.
A coronary thrombosis, in the middle of the night, towards 3am. A male nurse delivering the news over the telephone, my tears streaming down the touch-sensitive screen, a flood of tears, and that question I couldn’t help asking myself: ‘Why don’t men cry?’
He left without giving me a chance to ask him.
I received messages of condolence from Liliane, Miloud and even Hélène. But what was I meant to do with other people’s compassion? It seemed pointless to me.
If I
had to say one last thing about my father, I would do so in a journalist’s voice: Big Baba may have been illiterate, but he knew how to read me better than anyone.
From now on, we have got to start again from zero.
But it’s always the same old refrain: no one ever starts again from zero, not even the Arabs who invented it, as Big Baba used to say.
Acknowledgements
The translator would like to thank:
Bel Parker, for her invaluable and inspired assistance at an early stage of the manuscript, especially with the representation of Algerian Arabic in English, her suggestion to move the Tsunami chapter, and for helping to voice Cindy in chapter 11. Also, for her energetic eye and brilliant wit.
Rohan Ayinde for his wisdom in advising on the voice of Mehdi Mazouani in freestyle dialogue, so that distilling some of the rhythm and vibrancy and texture of French backslang spoken by a young man of Algerian heritage – and reimagining it riffing off multiethnic urban English – holds true as an act affection.
Bibi Bakare-Yusuf for believing passionately in this book’s journey into the English language for readers from Abuja to Brixton and far beyond.
Mathias Rambaud and Louise Cambau for generously facilitating a short stay at the Institut Français in London to finish the first draft of this translation – gifting me with no worldly responsibilities and only a guinea pig for company.
