Boualem Sansal - Harraga

The days lose their dread the moment you cease to count them.

What else is there to say? Nothing. Nothing happens here in Rampe Valée. And nothing happens here in Algiers. Like a cemetery on an autumn day in a dying year in a deserted village in a godforsaken region of a country lost in a misbegotten world. I think about it, but then I realise that thinking changes nothing, something either happens or it does not happen. In the desert, it hardly matters, in fact it is probably more futile to do than not to do. How dull is life, how insipid misery and death when they are stripped of meaning. What I mean is that without love and its torments, living is a waste of time. Of course people seek out what is best for them, and so they may delude themselves and even feel pleased with themselves. Me, I’ve ceased to believe and I cannot understand how I continue to exist. From time to time, between bouts of spring-cleaning, there comes a little shudder, I surrender to it, still in control, I find myself hallucinating. I imagine myself fulfilled, having given all the love, the truth I have to give. I picture myself in a better world, not one where I can take it easy, but one where I can get rid of the deadwood, weed out the rabble-rousers. I would have done a thousand things because I knew they were possible, because I knew I had the strength to do them. I would have brought charges against the loathsome minister: statutory rape, child abandonment, breach of trust and, of course, misappropriation of public funds. I would have prosecuted the Association and its Ladies Bountiful, Parnet and its Pasha, the State and its imams, the police and the judges, the army and the President, El Moudjahid and its henchmen, and every Saïd, whether from north or south, whether hajj or sidi. I would have moved heaven and earth to make the world better still. And I would ask for nothing but the chance to watch people come and go in peace. Dear God, I would have made the most of such a life to visit every restaurant, every dancehall, every cinema, to fall head over heels fifty times a day! Yet in a country where nothing happens but for the sand shifting beneath our feet, the wind whistling above our heads, what can I do?

Since we are all masters in our own homes, I have decided to change everything in this house. As I said before, I’m not one to sit around with my arms folded and I can’t bear people feeling sorry for themselves before they’re dead and buried. I set about it with a vengeance, my ghosts were completely flummoxed! A sort of madness came over me, I went overboard, I emptied my piggybank, scraped together every santeem I could find, rushed into town and bought everything in sight. It was all just as shoddy and illicit as ever, but I didn’t care, I paid them with the money I was paid and rather than feeling cheated, I felt as though I was cheating them at their own game. I set a few past masters to work, those with golden fingers and modest appetites like Tonton Hocine and conman-cum-bus driver Monsieur 235, to clear out the warehouses then, shut away in my cosy house, I sewed and knitted, embroidered and ironed and I don’t know what else. Late into the night I was on a war footing. Following the example of Fantine, I got ready to breathe my last, crippled with pain, eaten away by tuberculosis. I got very emotional as I thought about it, mothers are extraordinary when it comes to laying down their lives for their children. Would Chérifa have the same chance as Cosette?

And then, one day, feeling my work was finished, I slowed my pace. It was time to survey my magnum opus. Hmm… not bad, not bad at all. I had created the most magical nursery in the world. If Chérifa and our little baby could see what I had fashioned, they would rush home at the double.

There is no message

And certainly no moral.

There is no joy

And certainly no bliss.

There is no truth

And certainly no clarity.

There is no hope

And certainly no faith.

There is nothing

But what exists inside our heads

This clot of madness.

It is from here we must set out

And the path is steep.

La la li la laa!

La la li la laaaaa!

Life is a fairytale

By dint of suffering, we forget.

We do not only grow through pain

Joy is a more powerful fertiliser.

It is enough that God should will it

And spring should come.

And God had willed it.

And spring had long since come.

And still I would have to drain this bitter cup to the dregs.

On the seventh day after what I had calculated to be Chérifa’s due date, the message came by telephone. It was early in the morning on 29 May and I was getting ready to go to the hospital. I still work there sometimes as a doctor, but more and more often I go as a patient eaten away by some deep-rooted disease. When the phone rang — though I had probably already been warned, in a dream or by some other means — I realised that the end of my long ordeal was on the other end of the line. When flustered, I find it difficult to control my actions, foolishly I smoothed my hair, rubbed my hands on my thighs and even more foolishly I glanced around, searching for some help, some pretext, before nervously lifting the receiver as though angry at myself for behaving like a cornered animal.

To my dying day I will remember that conversation: every word, every inflection and every ache in my head, in my body, in every fibre of my being. A few brief, banal phrases, a few simple words, a few unexpected, awkward pauses that succeeded in conveying extraordinary things. True, the turmoil of the past few weeks had heightened my senses to the point where the slightest thing seemed a sign of tragedy, farce and madness waiting to explode.

‘Hello?’

‘Mademoiselle Lamia?’

‘Um… maybe… yes.’

‘Hello, my name is Anne…’

‘Sorry… Hanna?’

‘No, Anne, but it doesn’t matter. I’m calling you about…’

No! Dear God no, not that! I can guess… she… she’s going to tell me… It… it will kill me… I’ll scream until the end of my days.

‘Please, madame, not that… For pity’s sake, please.’

‘I’m sorry… I truly am sorry. We need to meet.’

‘Why? What’s the point?’

‘It was Chérifa’s wish…’

‘What?… Dear God.’

‘I can’t tell you anything over the phone. Please come and see me.’

‘Where?’

‘Blida, the convent of Notre Dame des Pauvres. It’s on the outskirts of the village, on the road to Chréa. Ask anyone, they’ll know the way. I’ll be waiting.’

I had considered every scenario, the impossible and the improbable — a commonplace in a country at war with itself — fate standing on a street corner and something that happens once in a thousand years, only once, a miracle so to speak, but this was something I had not considered, an intercession by the Church. I thought that this country was completely controlled from the mosque.

I jumped into a taxi, a rusty old heap painted New York yellow driven by an elderly man as fat and hairy as a walrus who for some reason was trawling round the neighbourhood. The people here in Rampe Valée never go anywhere, or if we do, we walk down the hill to catch the bus, praying to heaven that the GAUTA is running today. Was it mektoub that brought him to me? I refuse to believe it. Both man and machine were old and clapped out, which meant they would know every lane and byroad within a thousand-kilometre radius and since Blida’s only fifty klicks from here, they could get there with their eyes closed. Sobbing into a hankie, I sat wringing my hands and trembling. The driver was sympathetic, he chatted away mostly to himself, a lone windmill turning in a gale. I offered monosyllabic answers as grist to his mill. It took my mind off things, I couldn’t bear to stare out at careening carts and old nags fit only for the knacker’s yard. Panic pounded in my temples and my heart was fit to burst.