Assia Djebar - So Vast the Prison

I pick the little girl up and put her down between the white sheets. I tuck her in and softly whisper a word or two. She will be able to try to sleep now for an hour, and when we decide to stop at midnight, just before turning off the spotlights, it is true that we will wake her up.

This is how — eyes in the darkness and in the dazzling lights — she stole in among us … And it was also how I approached the work of images and sound. First with my eyes shut, to grasp the rhythm, the noises from submerged depths believed lost, then rising back to the surface again where finally, eyes washed clean, I see everything lit by dawn.

Four days later, full of fire, Ferial, the daughter of a colleague at the university, came on the set. (Aichoucha had preceded her the night before like her lady’s maid.) A prodigal child, a super-sophisticated child of the studio with all the ease, naturalness, vitality, and instinctual intelligence … She was truly the “star” in this fictional universe that in these first days was stumbling forward in an attempt to come to terms with itself, a miraculous “star” in the eyes of the inhabitants of the farm. For them Ferial became the child-king.

She strongly believed in “cinema,” and the sweet pride that she showed made it impossible that the artificial nature of the fiction — magnified like this through the brilliance of a child’s dream — be reduced to the cramped measurements and under-developed technique that was otherwise unavoidable.

And so, I thought calmly, when this child steps onto the scene in this room, the trio becomes balanced: Lila — my friend — radiates true poetry, the actor husband has good instincts, now finally here is the glowing, magical exuberance of their child. Aicha, nonetheless, still represents the real life, showing us the heels of the future in the frozen present of the couple exposed thus before us.

The first scene was acted by the mother in bed with the child. The director of photography, whose impressive bearing gave him the nickname “John Wayne of Belcourt,” was tall and kind-hearted, but impatient, father of five children himself, but impatient, this photo director whose lights had been ready for some time, now mutters a question to me: “How old is that child?”

“Five, Sheik.”

“By the time we get through this scene, she will certainly be twelve!”

“You have to be patient, Sheik!”

I am delighted. Ferial is not only the first one to play the star but, in her own way, also the first to put “feminism” into practice.

“Your film is about women?” she asks me.

“Of course,” I say … “You have your mother, really your pretend mother; you two are in bed and you play together … whatever you want to play!”

That suits her, but it does not suit her to get undressed in front of the others. I take her somewhere else — into the room of the Madonna, who smiles at her in silence.

“Is that your friend?”

“That is my friend.”

She makes an appearance in a fancy nightgown … Okay, it suits her to cavort about and play on the bed with Lila and listen to stories, okay. I watch first the pretend mother, then the real one who is watching somewhat anxiously not far away.

“Leave!” Ferial says firmly, speaking to the technical crew (I can feel that she is about to add “They are men,” as if all of a sudden we had returned to a traditional childhood of marble patios and fountains …) “Tell them all to leave!”

“Leave!” I said, feigning resignation.

They leave.

“Even me?” asks Sheik, who this time must have adopted some vaguely Valentino-style manner.

Ferial, the flirt, says, “Okay, you, you stay …”

Once she begins her cavorting about, some of the technical crew will be able to sneak back onto the set. The child-king plays, laughs, imagines her present as she goes along, in spite of the spotlights, and now, despite the people watching. Lila, with her caresses, begins to be the element of stability in this exuberance. Ferial laughs.

The camera, ravenous, catches it.

“Ferial, go closer to your mother!”

I almost destroy the spell.

“Not my mother,” shouts Ferial instantly in a temper, “my pretend mother. My mother is right there next to you!”

And I, made patient by the little game, I say “Yes,” of course, “your pretend mother.” Why not play games when one is happy? Real life is also an illusion, the illusion of childhood given free rein …

Ferial expends great energy, Ferial jumps, Ferial is always on the move. The camera, poor thing, dragging its crew behind it, has trouble keeping up with the expression of so much life.

It resembles a dance. Lila, like a good partner, picks things up when they die down, keeps the bursts of rhythm contained. Flares of laughter spark and soar. Ferial is in charge, she knows she is in charge. Suddenly she does not care that the whole technical crew is there, congregated as if to watch the show. She knows she is the star, she can do whatever she wants, she does whatever she wants, and it is still grace and pure joy, and life, unrestricted, following its life line. But the camera is no longer following …

“We’re filming! We’re still filming …”

Now film Ferial’s fatigue, let her laze around on the big bed: she knows she is sleepy; she would rather have her real mother beside her. I beg her and try to trick her too. “They will forget about you …”

“I’m sleepy,” she pouts.

“What about this bed?”

“No, I want my own bed.”

I argue with her, discovering great stores of diplomacy within myself: “No, not your bed in Algiers; very soon you will be sleeping with me in my hotel room, we agreed on that, didn’t we?” She agrees. “Now rest a little, no one will pay any attention to you now.” Finally I get what I was vaguely after: her languid, indolent movements — the little girl lying on her back and the slender leg bending, raising. The camera takes the last pictures of the night: childish sensuality, within a hair’s breadth of entering the secret kingdom, that we will leave in shadow for the young mother of the story.

THE DANCE ON THE PATIO: I was slightly more than thirteen, not yet fourteen … Why does this wedding of my first cousin, the third of them, come back to me? Perhaps because of a summer dress: I remember perfectly the black fabric sprinkled with purple flowers. I had dared ask the seamstress to make it so that my back, as well as my arms and shoulders, were left completely bare.

“In short, practically a beach dress,” the lady remarked as she smilingly listened to me insist on an extraordinarily full skirt.

I was happily surprised to find that my mother agreed, on condition that the seamstress add a bolero with little sleeves that would cover me up when I went outside.

“For a wedding, just among women,” she said, “why should she not have a low-cut dress?”

Still it seemed to me that my mother was suddenly allowing an astonishing bit of daring—“because among women!”

Was it because I wore this dress that I still remember with something of an adolescent’s strong sense of style my first real dress, that I had the courage to accept the invitation? At the height of the festivities, deep inside the house where Soliman’s daughters lived, a house full to bursting with a crowd of guests, in front of the band composed of the town’s women musicians, yes, I agreed to stand up. And then in a few minutes forgetting myself, right in front of everyone, my back and arms bare, I was riding astride the rhythm and discovering the new pleasure of my body, despite the spectators and their eyes, in this most ancient of homes where long ago the grandmother made her entrance as a young bride (while I accentuate the twists and turns of my hips, my shoulders, and the fluid freedom of my arms like vines), yes, disregarding the kinswomen, all those spectators turning into a single multiple being, voracious, buzzing …