Assia Djebar - So Vast the Prison

He asked for my phone number. I wrote it down for him and said something friendly. Then I just said, “We’ll see each other again!”

That was the goodbye. I knew that right away as I walked off.

I go back to those days before the siesta, to those thirteen months. I do not know why I have drained these springs of self, with so many convolutions, in a disorder that is willfully not chronological, when I should have let them wither on the vine, or at least kept their growth in check.

And that man, who was neither foreign to me nor someone inside me, as if I had suddenly given birth to him, almost an adult; me suddenly trembling against his chest, me curled up between his shirt and his skin, me all of me close against the profile of his face tanned by the sun, me his voice vibrant within my neck, me his fingers on my face, me gazed upon by him and immediately afterward going to look at myself to see me through his eyes in the mirror, trying to catch sight of the face he had just seen, as he saw it, this “me” a stranger and another, becoming me for the first time in that very instant, precisely because of this translation through the vision of the other. He, neither foreign to me nor inside me, but so close, as close as possible to me, without touching me, but still wanting to reach me and taking the risk of touching me, the man became my closest relative, he moved into the primary vacancy laid waste around me by the women of the tribe, from the days of my childhood and before I reached nubility, while I took the first shaky step of my freedom.

Him, the one closest to me; my Beloved.

GOOD OLD THOMAS D’ARCOS! He is more than sixty years old and up to this point has led a rather pleasant life: Born in the somewhat troubled times of 1565 in La Ciotat, near Marseilles, when he is very young, he goes up to Paris, where he becomes secretary to the cardinal de Joyeuse, brother of the favorite of Henry III.

Suddenly, who knows why, he quits high society, returns to his sunny Provence, travels, learns languages, is seized with literary or scholarly ambitions: research on the history of Africa, a project to chronicle Ottoman customs (written in Spanish), as well as commentaries on Turkish and Moorish music. He is full of unmethodical but unflagging curiosity. He seduces women, of course, when he is young, then he straightens up and marries a local beauty in Sardinia. Does he mean to settle down there or in Marseilles, or in Carpentras?

Good old Thomas d’Arcos! Guess what! More than sixty years old and pirates from Tunis capture him aboard a sailboat. Thus in 1628 he finds himself in that city, a slave of the Turks.

Despite adversity he has unflagging energy. Does he not like oriental languages, antique coins and medals, rare objects, old books? He succeeds — no one knows how, probably by cashing in on his knowledge and gifts as an interpretor — yes, in two or three years he succeeds in putting together enough for his ransom. Free now, will he return to Marseilles or to the home of his wife in Sardinia? No; he settles in Tunis, where he will die.

That is when the story begins for us — after 1630. From Tunis he writes to a magistrate, an important local personage named Peiresc, who serves as counselor to the king at the parliament of Provence in Aix. (The famous Gassendi will later write a biography of this notable who was his friend.) He also corresponds with M. Aycard, a royal equerry and a friend of Peiresc’s as well, but above all a scholar living in Toulon, where, thanks to traffic with Smyrna, Constantinople, all of the Levant, and Barbary, he is the recipient of manuscripts, antique medals, cameos, foodstuffs, and exotic things.

Thomas d’Arcos goes back and forth throughout the Regency, the Muslim states of northwest Africa, and he seems happy. He must be engaging in trade or barter to live well; no doubt he likes this life in the sun, probably easier and less expensive! … Has his wife not forgotten him, as his friends at the court of France, the nobility of Joyeuse, had done before?

He must admit to himself that, as far as his peace and pleasure are concerned, he is better off among the “Turks,” the infidels, finishing this Relation de l’Afrique , his most important project, and after that his volume in Spanish. He is learning a lot here. He roams about and, even though he suffers from bad eyesight, he also writes. He teaches himself other languages. He is a scholar in Tunis, and certainly among the lower classes and perhaps among the notables, the foreign traders, the dragomans and celebrities who pass through, Thomas, good old Thomas d’Arcos, commands some respect here, enjoys some honors.

It is through his correspondence with Peiresc and Aycard that we can see into his days in Tunis: his schemes, his ambitions, his comfort, his pleasures as a well-read man, and sometimes his fears.

Then, gradually, quietly, a real drama unfolds for him. Persuaded that he will remain permanently, he complains about his bad eyesight to Peiresc; he can never find any eyeglasses that suit him and he would pay their “weight in gold” to have some. Then he adds sadly, “For more than five years I have been unable to read by candlelight with my regular ones!” To pay for them, he sends his correspondent some very warm slippers for both the magistrate and his wife, as well as couscous and the skins of vultures!

But one can guess that the ongoing drama that is causing his two correspondences to be interrupted is still brewing. Drama? Call it a passage, a shift — no, not a new passion for women or boys, nor for other realms of knowledge that might have opened up for him. Call it “an experience.”

Thomas, good old Thomas d’Arcos, sixty-two or sixty-three years old, with failing eyesight, but still energetic and full of bounce, leaving Tunis for the nearby villages, then adventuring east, far into the interior — Thomas, the former prisoner who has been free for some time, feeling he has been accepted by everyone and resigned to dying in Tunis — Thomas decides to become a Muslim!

A conversion in due form: first the circumcision, then the words of the chahadda and the assuming of an Islamic name. Thomas becomes Osmann.

This takes place apparently around 1631 or the beginning of 1632. No sooner has he “turned” than he is “renounced.” (He is not the only one to make this turnaround, or, one might say, this accommodation. Several of his friends who are younger and with different perspectives manage the transformation. There is a Provençal man like him who will take the name Chaabane, a young Fleming who will call himself Soliman, a very young Greek boy who will be Mami.) But as soon as he feels he is a “renegade,” he begins to doubt and suffer, and to think about his friends to the north.

In fact Peiresc waits more than a year before showing any signs of life. Thomas complains to Aycard, “The early characteristic of salvation given me by the Church will never be erased from my soul although my habit may be changed!” He goes on to conclude philosophically, “God sometimes allows evil so that he can draw some greater good from it.”

There he is, a middle-class man firmly attached to Tunis: he could almost hope to find some rather mature Tunisian lady with a warm heart and hospitable fortune to cuddle with in his old age! There he is, borrowing Islam — at least that is how he describes it to his friends in Provence, because, in the end, he refers to a double faith: the faith of necessity and the faith that, he assures them, he has never really denied, the faith of the faithful. But in Aix, Peiresc refuses to communicate, sits in judgment, and does not write.