Boualem Sansal: Harraga

How beautiful it would be if this story were purely the fruit of my imagination. It would read like a retelling of the parable of the grain of wheat, it would speak of love, of death and resurrection. And there are enchanting ghosts on every page, and characters so colourful you could wear them as a scarf.

But it is a true story, true from beginning to end, the characters, the names, the dates, the places are real and so it speaks only of the wretchedness of a world which no longer has faith, or values, which can only trumpet its transgression and its disgrace.

The reader is free to take it as either or indeed as both since even the people in this book are incapable of telling the real from the imaginary.

What follows is the story of Lamia. Driven to abject solitude by the vagaries of life, like the grain of wheat that falls on rocky ground, she is dying, until one miraculous day in summer, something within her blossoms, something as profoundly real as it is utterly fantastical: love.

The best thing to do is to listen as she tells her story which, like the seasons, unfolds over four acts with an epilogue that leaves open a window onto the future.

Bonjour, Oiseau!

Even as my life was leaching away

As sand was slipping through my fingers

As silence numbed my soul

For always

A bird landed on my shoulder.

‘Cheep cheep, cheep cheep…!’

He chirruped in my ear

As he fluttered and frolicked.

I did not understand.

But when one is lonely

A single word brings joy

And so I threw away my rosary

And I danced.

A bird is a thing of beauty

But, alas, a bird has wings

Which, just as they serve to alight ,

So too they serve to take flight.

That is the tragedy of birds.

My door is making a worrying sound. It doesn’t go knock knock, it goes bang bang . It’s reinforced steel, which I suppose might explain the racket, but with things the way they are these days, I can’t help but think of other reasons.

I open it, staying pressed against the doorjamb for protection. A reflex. ‘ Chkoun? Who’s there?’ It’s not the patrol, nor some sermoniser nor the Defenders of Truth, it’s not my neighbour from the rue Marengo, a chubby-faced old gorgon of a woman who’s forever popping round for a gossip and believes in a hundred clichéd theories, none of which are desperately interesting. Thankfully it’s not old Moussa our postman, the fearless factotum of the Rampe Valée, an old warhorse who’s constantly banging on about something and who, day after day — excepting riots and strikes — leaves a paper trail of panic and contagion in his wake. No, it’s some funny-looking slip of a girl. ‘It’s me!’ she says. I’ve no idea who ‘me’ is. Skinny, dressed in a get-up cobbled together from shreds and patches that looks like something off X Factor . Whether it’s a fashion faux-pas or a flash of inspiration, all these flounces and frills make it look like a drag outfit for a family of screaming queens. She could probably pull it off, were it not for the clashing colours. Her hair is a mix-and-match of everything from historic styles to the latest fashions. Her face is plastered with make-up, her eyes — black, white and twinkling — are bobbing in a pool of eyeliner surrounded by a lush meadow of green eyeshadow. All she needs is a blade of wheat behind her ear to know she comes from the back end of nowhere. The acrid cloud of her perfume could rival the fallout from Chernobyl. She’s a walking scandal who has somehow inexplicably escaped the wrath of Allah. A battered holdall lies at her feet like a recently shed snakeskin, completing the ‘look’ of this sixteen- or seventeen-year-old globetrotter. Her full, perfect lips are set in a blood-red pout pitched somewhere between impatience and bewilderment. It’s clear that behind her regal smile, she’s got some nerve. To cap it all, she’s several months pregnant and her belly button is on display for all the world to see.

‘Tata Lamia?’ she says bravely, drawing herself up to her full five feet nothing.

‘Well… that depends.’

‘I’m Chérifa!’

‘Good for you… and?’

‘Sofiane sent me. I’ve come from Oran.’

‘What?!!’

‘He didn’t phone you?’

‘Er… no.’

‘Can I come in?’

‘Um… I suppose.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘It’s weird, your place.’

‘You said it.’

This is how a whirlwind sweeps into your life. Nothing, absolutely nothing in my past led me to suppose that one day I would open up my door, open up my life, to such mayhem. I opened the door because that’s what you do when someone knocks, you answer. You might worry that it will be some hoodlum — and Lord knows the neighbourhood has its fair share of thugs — or more likely a sermoniser, a rapist or the cops, and you’re thinking ‘these people, they’ve got no consideration, no manners’, but to set your mind at rest, and perhaps even in some surge of hope, you open the door anyway, thinking maybe this is the promised miracle, maybe this is fate bringing the good things we’re told come to those who wait, you think of all the happy things a gloomy life conjures in the mind.

There is also the premonition, the primal impulse, the subtle power of things unseen, the call of another world, the sudden longing to brave the mystery. All these things urge on more powerfully than fear holds back.

Truth be told, I just opened the door without thinking. What can I say? I’m an impulsive woman. Maybe not entirely without thinking: I have never given up hope that I might see my little brother again, might hear him knock at my door. Every sound rekindles that hope. It’s a constant torment. I know that Sofiane is gone, I know that he is never coming back.

A good upbringing is a terrible handicap. You end up being a well-bred little chick in a nest filled with cuckoos. One polite gesture led to another: I offered this interloper a glass of lemonade, then some supper — an egg and an orange — and stoically I listened, all ears, to her endless chatter. Could I refuse her a bed for the night? The duty of hospitality does not stop at the bedroom door. As it turned out, she didn’t wait to be asked; while I was clearing the table the cheeky little thing put on her nightie. What could I do? I gave her a pillow and some clean sheets, I favoured her with a sing-song ‘ goodnight ’, something she took as an invitation. She laughed so hard and talked so much about this and that, about everything and nothing, about Raï music and Les Chebs, about things that even Scheherazade, that incomparable insomniac, never told of in her tales. The moment she opened her mouth, I was completely lost.

In all honesty, I wasn’t really listening, though, out of politeness, I feigned interest. Her shrill falsetto irritated me. I thought about Louiza, my gentle, sweet Louiza. God, how I miss her. About what had become of all our promises.

Three am and night drags on. The old clock that stands sentry in the hall hasn’t chimed since its first owner died — something I can relate to — but it still clanks and grates at regular intervals out of habit. Three times, it struggled bravely to toll the passing hour. The endless witterings of the damsel grew fainter until it was just a vague cloud hovering above our heads, then it faded into the ether. In this silence, this true mineral silence, the house began to give voice to its aches and pains, to creaks and groans fit to rouse a poltergeist. We had reached that hour that does not truly belong to us, when only a silver thread connects soul to body. Finally, she fell asleep, sinking down into the sofa and the multicoloured cushions. She slumped back, her arms folded, her mouth wide open — to say nothing of her legs — leaving my head still spinning with her twaddle. Sprawled there as she was, she might have appeared indecent were she not so innocent. In sleep, she looked every bit as outlandish as she did awake and it was clear that inside her was a world very different from the one in which we live, a world of fairies and Prince Charmings in which everyone else — the supporting cast, the minor players, the evil witches and wicked stepmothers — exist only so they can be foiled by the good, by the dreamers.