Yasmina Khadra - The Angels Die

This was my world finding its bearings again, my people as they were before misfortune threw them off track. After so many exiles, so many shipwrecks, I was back in my element.

I was moved, reinvigorated and relieved, convinced that I could now grow up normally, safe from the Zanes and the perversity of the shanty towns, even though I was still hungry and had no nice clothes to wear.

1 Word coined by the author to indicate the unity of the Arab and Berber peoples.

In spite of Mekki’s disapproval, my mother had found a job. She had seen how the flats of the old Turkish woman and the Kabyle family were furnished and she too wanted mattresses, low tables for eating on, tableware, woollen blankets, eiderdowns, even a sideboard with a huge mirror in the middle. My uncle earned just enough to provide food and pay the rent. My mother was ambitious. She wanted a decent house where she could receive her neighbours without making them feel uncomfortable, a bed for her elder sister, whose health was deteriorating, and nice dresses for Nora, who was growing up. Yes, Nora had grown quickly, her features had become more defined and she was blossoming as her big black eyes opened to the world. I didn’t have the courage to admit it, but Nora had been occupying my thoughts a lot since I had caught her washing herself. Her adolescent body was starting to take shape and her white breasts adorned her chest like two twin suns. I had certainly seen her naked before, without it having much effect on me, but, since this last time, she’d just had to look at me to arouse me, and I was always the one who turned my head away first.

My mother did the cleaning and other housework for a widow who lived on Boulevard Mascara, not far from our house. I had to walk her there in the morning and bring her back in the evening because she got the houses and streets muddled up and was incapable of finding her way back once she had crossed the road. I would lead her to the door in question, knock and leave when the door was opened. Towards the end of the afternoon, I would pick her up from the same place. The day she got her wages, we would do the rounds of the bazaars and return home laden with iron buckets, funnels, samovars, braziers with bellows and all kinds of other items, sometimes of little use.

I was waiting for her on Boulevard Mascara when a fair-haired boy my age, neat and tidy without being dapper, stopped in front of me.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked me in Arabic.

There was no aggressiveness in his blue eyes. He seemed friendly, but the only memory I had of young Roumis was of that boy who had burst my dream like an abscess by pointing me out to the policeman in Sidi Bel Abbès. Instinctively, I checked to see if there was any uniform in the vicinity.

‘I didn’t ask you for anything,’ I grunted.

‘You’re sitting in our doorway,’ he said calmly.

‘I’m waiting for my mother. She’s cleaning in there.’

‘Do you want me to go up and see how far she’s got?’

His kindness made me uncomfortable. Was he softening me up before kicking me in the face?

‘I’d like that,’ I said cautiously. ‘I’m starting to get a headache because of the sun.’

The boy stepped over me, ran up a staircase and returned after a few minutes.

‘She’ll be another hour or so.’

‘What’s she doing in there? Redecorating the house or what?’

‘My name’s Gino, Gino Ramoun,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘My mother has a lot of good things to say about yours. It’s the first time she’s got along with a cleaner. We’ve had lots. Some cheated us and others stole things, not just food.’

‘We’re respectable people. Just because my mother works for yours doesn’t mean —’

‘No, no, I wasn’t implying anything like that. We’re not rich. My mother’s disabled. She never leaves her bed. She needs help, that’s all.’

I waved away his apologies.

He sat down next to me on the doorstep. I could see he was trying to redeem himself, but I didn’t encourage him. I’d had enough of polishing my backside on the step and watching others go about their business.

‘I’m a bit peckish,’ the Roumi said. ‘How about going for a bite to eat?’

I didn’t reply. I was broke.

‘It’s on me,’ he insisted. ‘Come on. If your mother can be friends with mine, why can’t we?’

I don’t know if it was out of boredom or hunger, but I accepted the invitation.

‘Do you like boiled chickpeas with cumin?’

‘Anything’s fine when you’re hungry.’

‘Well, then, what are we waiting for?’

Gino was a straightforward, uncomplicated, guileless boy. He seemed awkward and my company was a comfort to him. He didn’t mix with the other boys in the neighbourhood; they scared him. I got used to him, and within a few weeks we were as thick as thieves. There was something reassuring about him. His voice was soft and his eyes clear and wholesome. He worked in a garage on Place Sébastopol. We would meet up in the evenings on Boulevard Mascara. Sometimes, he’d walk with us to our house and, after dropping my mother off, we’d go and eat doughnuts in the Arab market or test our teeth on the torraicos that the Spaniards sold us in paper cones.

One day, he invited me to his home. He was determined to give me something. Gino’s flat was above a haberdasher’s. You reached it by a steep staircase that went straight up to the first floor. We climbed the stairs to a short L-shaped corridor that led to two large rooms on the right and a courtyard on the left. As we reached the hall, a voice cried out, ‘Open the windows. I’m melting.’

The voice had come in a weary breath from the bedroom. I looked in, but couldn’t see anything. Then something moved on the bed. Squinting, I made out a red-faced mass beneath a white sheet transparent with sweat. Actually, it wasn’t a sheet, but a huge blouse designed to look smart in spite of its size, with embroidery along the bottom and flowered braid on the collar. There was a blonde head on the pillow with a beautiful face trapped in a crimson mass of flesh too large to be considered a neck, above a body made up of disjointed slabs furrowed with deep, winding folds. The sight took my breath away. It took me a while to distinguish breasts of supernatural volume from arms so heavy they could barely move. Her stomach undulated with rolls of fat cascading onto her sides, and her elephantine legs rested on cushions like two marble columns. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that human bodies of that size could exist. It wasn’t so much a woman’s body as a phenomenal heap of flesh that covered almost the entire mattress, a mass of flabbiness scarlet with the heat, threatening to spread through the room in a gelatinous stream.

This was Gino’s mother, so monumentally obese, so suffocated by her own weight that she had difficulty breathing.

‘Sei Gino?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘Dove eri finito, angelo mio?’

‘You know perfectly well, Mother. I was at the garage.’

‘Hai mangiato?’

‘Yes, Mother, I’ve eaten.’

A silence, then his mother’s voice returned, calm now. ‘Chi è il ragazzo con te?’

‘This is Turambo, the son of Taos … of Madame Taos.’

She tried to turn towards us, but succeeded only in setting in motion an avalanche of shudders that went through her body like wavelets on the surface of a pond.

‘Digli di avvicinarsi, così posso vederlo più da vicino.’

Gino pushed me towards the bed.

His mother stared at me with her blue eyes. She had lovely dimples on her cheeks, and her smile was touchingly gentle. ‘Come a little closer.’

Embarrassed, I did as she said.