Assia Djebar - So Vast the Prison

Surrounded by the sultan’s guards who are waiting for the old man to tear himself away from his disciples, he is ready to go; he seems serene. Suddenly he makes a prediction: “Obeying the sultan,” he begins, “I obey God, glory be to Him! But I shall not reach the sultan; I shall die along the way, in front of Tlemcen!”

“Then mysteriously, they say, he whispered (was this meant for the ruler of Marrakech? like a statement of the obvious) ‘He, moreover, will follow me shortly!’ ”

I had only been to Tlemcen once. Striding along with the flow of honking automobiles and crowded buses, I kept my face turned toward the espaliered slopes. Small houses from the beginning of the century were interspersed with apartment buildings that were too high and full of people, and here and there a vaguely Byzantine chapel or an ancient mosque stood next to a vacant lot full of garbage but also full of bunches of children tormenting a cat or playing soccer. I skimmed lightly through the shocks of the present. I kept on going, living far back in the past, this time there for the arrival of the saint in the area surrounding Tlemcen. At the entrance of a modest town, Abou Madyan faints, people come running from all over: “The great Abou Madyan is going to die! … He is dying! May the salvation of God …” Decades later, centuries later, the faithful will flock to this place of pilgrimage, and do so still! I feel tired, I look for a public square, a bench, and end up sitting down for five minutes in a men’s cafe, just enough time to have some mint tea. I am sad that I have to suspend my daydream because I am no longer walking, because my feet are dragging. Then, suddenly, my torment returns, like an abscess only half anesthetized, erupting now again.

I set off once more. The sun dims; I have to get up there and reach home before nightfall. In vain I look for a taxi.

And along the way I lost the accompanying shadow of the saint of Béjaia, dead at the entrance to Tlemcen and shortly followed, as he predicted, by the sultan who died at the height of his powers … I am no longer protected by my ghosts; they are replaced by my own sense of loss, which crops up again, harsh, pointed, sharpened, this severing I have borne for weeks. It is simultaneously a hardening that bolsters me and the latent danger of falling; how can I just find “him,” even at a distance? Even in secret? No, I won’t go where he works. I could find a hundred pretexts. No, I won’t take any of them! Luck is what I need, and I don’t have it. And he, how can he live like this, how has he gotten used to not seeing me anymore, how … Already I am inventing an imaginary argument, a lovers’ quarrel, suddenly paying no attention to the fact that nothing has happened, that the attraction has remained implied, scarcely begun, that my cool façade finally seemed to have taken flawless control of me. My eyes search the crowd; I begin to watch all the cars — usually just boxes to me. I am only looking for one color — a particular dirty blue and a chassis rather rarely seen here. Even though I cannot recall any of the makes of cars, I would recognize his immediately, I’m sure of it.

Twice, in a trivial conversation this summer, my Beloved, or his friend, had mentioned the make of the car I was looking for now, whose name at least I was trying to remember; this car that had driven me home two or three nights — if it went by I would recognize it … But then, would he even see me making my way through this crowd of passersby?

The next day at home, stretched out, inactive, I was so devoured by the pain of absence that I did not even feel strong enough to stand up — how much I would have preferred having a toothache, a sneaky, low-level one or the kind that paralyzes your face with its intensity, at least there would be some anesthetic that would do some good! Would I be able to go to my classes tomorrow? Going down into the center city to work for my own pleasure seemed uncalled for, a dismal sham concocted for myself. I ended up hanging around in the empty apartment: like in the theater, where time is suspended while you await a fate decided in advance.

I realized that I was the one who had straight away cut short yesterday’s rhythm. Suppose I started working there again, in the place where my Beloved existed, imagining perhaps a necessary breathing space for myself. I was “in withdrawal” from the sight of him. What inquisitor could reproach me for granting myself a slight indulgence? I would make a show of my cool absentmindedness just as I had in the past; there would be a languid quality extending my reserve; he would never suspect I might return for his sake — just to see him, his silhouette leaving the elevator. I promised myself somberly, No more conspiratorial conversations in the dark on the phone! I debated this possibility within myself as if bargaining with my conscience and then began to breathe more deeply again; but suddenly I put an end to this future. I killed the temptation; some hidden instinct made me want to act against the fever inside. Had I not foreseen that the painful but exciting gnawing produced by our being together at work was an imperceptible slope down which I would plunge? Did I not fear the fall?

No. I would not go back there again. No, I would not create any such easily discoverable pretext! All the torment that I inflicted on myself by this separation could not weaken my lucidity. The illness possessing me since, at least, the end of summer had taught me something; I could no longer fool myself, I had to keep from slipping into some unpredictable state. No, I concluded with a seriousness that provided a brief burst of new strength, caution was my saving grace and the absence I had imposed the only remedy. I would not go back there again!

I wandered around the house. If only, I thought, groping down the hallways, drinking innumerable glasses of water, abandoned to strange bouts of nausea, if only I could find some short-lived balm! What would console me, besides my walks through the city, my escapes to the sun? What else was left?

I got dressed. I wanted at least to see the car, “his” car; that way I would know if he was there, at work. I remembered the outside parking lot, reserved for technicians, right next to a pine grove. Let me at least go and check on the shadow of a shadow: I would become calmer. I would know he exists, that therefore I exist, my only problem is that I am languishing.

Twice I think, preoccupied in this manner, I go down into the city. Fifteen minutes later I arrive at the ramp above the parking lot. I lean on the railing, pretending to admire the famous view: the sunlit bay, proud as a favored lover; in the distance any number of boats and cargo ships wait because the port is crowded. At my feet, a hundred yards or so down, there is a stretch of parking lot laid out in a small triangle, enough for a few dozen ordinary cars. Eagerly my eye seeks out the characteristic shape and dirty blue of the car I know.

Relief comes over me, relaxation that is almost muscular. “He is definitely there!” Ten minutes away. I could go to the receptionist and have him called. Then suggest that we go sit down in the bar at the luxury hotel across the street. “Let’s have coffee together. I was just passing by and wanted to hear how you were doing!” And the whole time I cheerfully spouted these banalities, my eyes, oh yes, and with a hunger whose ardor I would filter out, my eyes would devour his face, his features, the color of his eyes, right down to the defects I would find once more. Perhaps he too had grown thinner, perhaps, on the contrary …

I muse over what I should do. I stare at the blue car — his. I am no longer enduring the acute strain of suffering; now there is only the dull void of separation, that I could do away with in a second. This is so close to where I live … Humbled, after the desert I have crossed, I am enjoying the feeling of pain. I breathe deeply: I almost relish the eternity of this landscape.