Yasmina Khadra - What the day owes the nigth

Two days later, as I sat by my uncle’s bed, I heard a voice outside, calling me. I went to the window and saw a figure crouching in the shadows. It was Jelloul, André’s manservant. I went outside, and as I crossed the path separ ating the house from the vineyard, Jelloul came out from his hiding place.

‘My God!’ I said.

Jelloul was limping. His face was swollen, his lip split; he had a black eye and his shirt was lashed with red stripes, clearly whip marks.

‘Who did this to you?’

Jelloul glanced around, as though afraid someone would hear, then said:

‘André.’

‘Why? What did you do wrong?’

He smiled at what was clearly a preposterous question.

‘I don’t need to do anything wrong. André always finds some excuse. This time it was the Muslim unrest in the Aurès. André doesn’t trust Arabs any more. When he got back from town drunk last night, he laid into me.’

He lifted his shirt and showed me the welts on his back. André had not pulled his punches. Jelloul turned back to face me, pushing his shirt tails back into his dusty trousers. He sniffed loudly and then said:

‘He told me it was a warning, that he didn’t want me getting any ideas. Said I needed to get it into my head that he was the boss, and he wasn’t going to tolerate insubordination from the hired help.’

Jelloul was clearly waiting for something, but I did not know what. He took off his fez and began twisting it in his grubby hands.

‘Jonas, I didn’t come here to tell you my life story. André threw me out without a penny. I can’t go back to my family with no money. If I don’t earn, my family will starve.’

‘How much do you need?’

‘Just enough to feed us for a couple of days.’

‘Give me two minutes.’

I went up to my room and came back with two fifty-franc notes. Jelloul reluctantly took them, turning them over in his hands.

‘It’s too much . . . I could never pay you back.’

‘You don’t need to pay me back.’

He looked at me and shook his head, thinking. Then, flushed and embarrassed, he said:

‘In that case, fifty francs is enough.’

‘Take the hundred francs, please,’ I said. ‘I’m only too happy to give it.’

‘I believe you, but it’s not necessary.’

‘Have you got work lined up?’

‘No.’ Jelloul suddenly gave a mysterious smile. ‘But André can’t survive without me. He’ll send for me before the end of the week. He won’t find a better dog than me.’

‘Why do you call yourself a dog?’

‘You wouldn’t understand . . . You’re one of us, but you live like one of them. When your whole family depends on you for money, when you have to support a half-crazed mother, a father who had both arms amputated, six brothers and sisters, a grandmother, two aunts disowned by their families and a sickly uncle, you are no longer a human being. You are a dog or a jackal, and every dog seeks out a master.’

Jelloul’s words unsettled me, and I realised that though he was not yet twenty, he had an inner strength, a maturity. The young man who stood before me that morning was not the lackey we had long thought him. He even looked different: he had a quiet dignity I had not noticed, a handsome face, high cheekbones, and eyes that were perceptive and unnerving.

‘Thank you, Jonas,’ he said. ‘I’ll make it up to you some day.’

He turned and began to hobble away.

‘Wait,’ I called after him. ‘You’re not going to get far on that foot.’

‘I got this far, didn’t I?’

‘Maybe, but you’re only going to make it worse . . . Where do you live?’

‘It’s not far, honestly. It’s just the other side of the marabout’s hill. I’ll manage.’

‘I won’t hear of it. Wait there, I’ll get my bicycle and drop you off.’

‘No, Jonas, it’s all right. You have better things to do.’

‘I insist.’

I thought that I had seen poverty in Jenane Jato; I was wrong. The shanty town where Jelloul and his family lived was beyond anything I had ever imagined. The douar was made up of a dozen squalid hovels on the banks of a dried-up riverbed. A few scrawny goats ambled around. The place smelled so foul I found it difficult to imagine how anyone could spend two days here. When the path petered out, I left the bike on the slopes and helped Jelloul down the hill. The marabout’s hill was only a few kilometres from Río Salado, but I could not remember ever having passed this way. People shunned the place, as though it were cursed. Suddenly the simple fact that I was on the far side of the hill terrified me. I was scared something might happen to me, and I knew that if anything did, no one would think to come looking for me here. It was ridiculous, but the fear was all too real. I felt a mortal dread at being in this douar of ramshackle huts pervaded by the stench of rotting flesh.

‘Come,’ Jelloul said. ‘Come in and meet my father.’

‘No,’ I almost screamed, petrified. ‘I have to get back to my uncle. He’s very ill.’

A group of naked children were playing in the dust, their bellies swollen, flies crawling on their faces. Then I realised that it was not simply the stench; it was the drone of the flies, incessant, voracious, filling the foul air like some baleful supplication, like the breath of some demon that lowered over human misery, a sound as old as time itself. At the foot of a low toube wall, a group of old men lay dozing, mouths open, huddled beside a sleeping donkey. A madman, arms raised to the heavens, stood babbling wildly beneath a marabout tree from which hung talismans, coloured ribbons and candle wax. There was no one else: it was as though the douar had been abandoned to feral children and dying men.

A pack of dogs ran towards me, growling. Jelloul picked up a stone and drove them off. There was silence again. He turned and gave me a strange smile.

‘This is how our people live, Jonas; my people and your people too. Here, nothing ever changes, while you go on living like a prince . . . What’s the matter? Why don’t you say something? You’re shocked; you can’t believe it, can you? Maybe now you know why I call myself a dog. Even a dog would not live like this.’

I stood, speechless; the stench and filth turned my stomach, the piercing drone of the flies drilled into my brain. I wanted to vomit, but I was afraid that Jelloul would get the wrong impression.

He sniggered, amused by my awkwardness, then showed me around the douar.

‘Look at this godforsaken slum. This is our place in this country, the country of our ancestors. Take a good look, Jonas. God himself would not set foot here.’

‘Why are you saying these terrible things?’

‘Because I believe them. Because they’re true.’

Suddenly, I felt more afraid, but now it was Jelloul, his furious stare, his sardonic smile, that terrified me.

‘That’s right, Younes. Turn your back on the truth, on your people, run back to your friends . . . Younes . . . You do still remember your name? Hey, Younes . . . Thanks for the money. I’ll pay you back some day soon, I promise. The world is changing, or hadn’t you noticed?’

I rode away, pedalling like a madman, Jelloul’s catcalls like rifle shots whistling past my ears.

Jelloul was right. Things were changing, but to me it was as though these changes were happening in some parallel world. I sat on the fence, torn between loyalty to my friends and solidarity with my people. After the massacre in the Constantine province, the dawning awareness of the Muslim majority, I knew that I had to choose, but still I refused to take sides. In the end, events would make my decision for me.

There was a fierce rage in the air; it bubbled up from the maquis in the scrubland where militants met in secret, it spilled into the streets, seeped into the poor neighbourhoods, trickled out into the villages nègres and isolated douars.