Yasmina Khadra - The Angels Die

Miraculously, Babaye emerged from his cupboard and threw the drunk out.

Mekki looked reluctantly at the money the sailor at the café had given me. He wouldn’t even touch it. We were in his room. He had just finished his prayers when I held out the banknotes.

‘Where did you get this?’ he said, refraining from holding his nose.

‘I earned it.’

‘You mean you won it gambling?’

‘I worked for it.’

‘Even a bellboy at the Bastrana Casino wouldn’t earn as much as this.’

‘Do I ask you how you make your money?’

‘You’re perfectly entitled to know. The Mozabite keeps our accounts and you can check them. Not a penny that’s haram comes into this house. And now you hand me a wad of paper money from somewhere or other and ask me to believe you have a rich man’s salary. I won’t take your money. It doesn’t smell right.’

Disappointed, I grudgingly put the notes back in my pocket.

I was about to go to my mat to sleep when Mekki said, ‘Not so fast. You’re not sleeping here until you tell me what trouble you’re in.’

‘I wash dishes in a café.’

‘Not a luxury hotel? That’s the only place you can make that kind of money, and even then it’s not the right season.’

I shrugged my shoulders and walked out.

Mekki followed me out into the street and ordered me to explain myself. I hurried on, deaf to his summons, then, relieved I could no longer hear him grunting behind me, I slowed down. I was furious. I was working hard and I would have liked a little respect. It wasn’t fair.

After wandering around the alleys, cursing everything and kicking stones, I slept in the open air, on a bench in a park, the haunt of tramps risking the uncertainties of the night. It struck me that they and I were all practising the same self-denial.

It didn’t take Mekki long to solve the mystery. He must have followed me. A week later, I got home to find the family council on a war footing. There was Rokaya, confined to her bed, Nora, sitting apart but in agreement, and my mother and Mekki glaring at me. They were waiting stiffly for me in the main room, nostrils trembling with indignation.

‘You bring shame on our family, both the living and the dead,’ Mekki decreed, his switch firmly clasped in his hand. ‘First you choose to polish boots and, now, you wash dishes in a brothel. Well, if you have so little self-respect, I’m going to treat you like a dog until you learn to honour our absent ones.’

He raised his switch and brought it down on my shoulder. The pain made me see red. I didn’t care if he was the head of the family, I grabbed my uncle by the throat and pushed him up against the wall, while my mother looked on aghast.

‘You dare to raise your hand to me?’ my uncle thundered, stunned by this sacrilege.

‘I’m not a dog and you’re not my father.’

‘Your father? You talk to me about your father? He’s the one feeding you, is he? He’s the one sweating blood for this family? That wretch, your father? All right, let’s talk about your father while we’re about it!’

‘Mekki!’ my mother implored him.

‘He has to know,’ he retorted, his mouth glistening with flecks of foam. ‘Come on, you little brat, come with me. I’m going to show you what filth your pride is based on, my poor, vain, idiot nephew.’

He seized me by the neck and pushed me outside.

I followed him, curious to discover what lay behind his insinuations. The streets were baking in the sun. The air smelt of drains and overheated asphalt. Mekki kept walking straight ahead, bad-temperedly. He was inwardly seething with rage. I hurried behind him. We crossed Medina Jedida in the crushing heat, pushed our way through the crowds in the market, which no weather, however unbearable, ever seemed to discourage, came out on the avenue that led to Porte de Valmy and the grazing park before stopping outside the Jewish cemetery.

Mekki gave me a spiteful grin, pointed to the open gate leading to the rows of graves and motioned me with his head to precede him. ‘After you, as the Roumis say,’ he said with a cruel gleam in his eyes.

I had never seen my uncle, that twenty-year-old sage who had always been so pious, in such a state of contempt or so pleased at the harm he was about to inflict on me — I’d guessed that he hadn’t brought me here to remind me of my duties, but to punish me in such a way that the consequences would stay with me until the end of my days.

‘Why have you brought me here?’

‘You just have to go inside and you’ll know.’

‘Do you think my father is buried with the Jews?’

‘No, he just keeps an eye on their dead.’

Mekki pushed me into the cemetery, looked around and finally pointed to a man sitting cross-legged on the threshold of a sentry box, stuffing a piece of bread with slices of onion and tomato. Just as he was about to bite into his sandwich, he noticed our presence. I recognised him immediately. It was my broken-faced father, thinner than a scarecrow and in mismatched clothes. My heart beat so strongly in my chest that I shook from head to foot. The earth and the sky merged into one around me and I had to clutch my uncle’s arm to remain upright, my Adam’s apple stuck in my throat like a stone.

‘He should have died in his trench,’ my uncle said. ‘At least we would have had a medal to add some kind of pride to our loss.’

The caretaker stared at us with his rodent-like eyes. When he in turn recognised us, he bent low over his food. As if nothing had happened. As if we weren’t there. As if he didn’t know us from Adam.

If the ground had given way beneath my feet at that moment, I would have gladly let it swallow me up.

‘I hope you won’t go on about your father any more,’ Mekki said. ‘He’s alive and well, as you can see. He’s just a pathetic character who prefers to weed graves rather than sweep his own doorway. He chose the Jewish cemetery so as not to be found. He must have thought no Muslim would ever see him here. Let alone the family he abandoned.’

He took me by the arm and pushed me towards the gate. I couldn’t take my eyes off the man who was eating on the threshold of the sentry box. An unfathomable feeling spread through me like molten lead. I had a mad desire to burst into tears but managed neither to cry out nor to moan. I simply looked at that man who had been my father and my idol and was now a complete stranger to me. He was still ignoring us, intent on his food. The only thing that seemed to matter to him was his piece of bread, which he was eating with gusto. I hadn’t spotted either surprise or the slightest trace of emotion on his face. After that fleeting glimmer of recognition, his whole face had closed like a pool over a paving stone. I felt really sorry for him, even though I was very aware that of all the children on earth, I was to be pitied the most.

‘Let’s go,’ Mekki said. ‘You’ve had enough for today.’

My strength had given way. My uncle was almost dragging me.

We left the cemetery and I saw my father close the gate behind us. Without a glance. Without a shred of embarrassment …

A world had just ended, though I didn’t know which.

I turned round several times in the hope of seeing the cemetery gate open and my father come running out after me.

The gate was still closed.

I realised I had to go, to get away, to disappear.

My uncle was speaking to me. His voce faded before it reached me. All I could hear was the blood throbbing in my temples. The houses went by on either side in a haze. It was daytime and yet it seemed dark. My feet sank into the soft ground. My stomach felt tight with nausea and I was shivering in the sun.

I walked straight ahead like a sleepwalker, carried along by my pain. My uncle fell silent, then faded into the background. I reached Boulevard National without realising it and came out on Place d’Armes. There were too many people in the square, too many carriages, too many shoeshine boys yelling, too many pick-up artists, too many women with their pushchairs; there was too much agitation and too much noise. I needed space and silence. I carried on towards the seafront. There was a party in full swing at the Military Club. I skirted Château-Neuf, where the Zouaves were confined, and went down an embankment to the promenade of Létang. Here, loving couples talked in low voices all along the avenues, holding hands like children, elegant women wandered peacefully, their heads full of dreams beneath their parasols, and children frolicked on the lawn. Where did I fit in to all that? I didn’t, I was irrelevant, out of the picture.