Yasmina Khadra - The Angels Die

I had the feeling I was dealing with a pyromaniac.

Sid had chosen a path that wasn’t mine. He scared me. One evening, he actually dressed up as a girl (he had put on a haïk) and slipped into a hammam to ogle the naked women. After getting his fill of that, he started running round the building, looking for a virgin to lay in the laundry room. It was pure madness. He could have been killed in a stairwell. In Medina Jedida, you could get yourself killed for even minor sins. But Sid Roho refused to calm down. The air of the city had gone to his head like a blast of opium, except that he never sobered up. He saw everything from the point of view of his ‘exploits’, thus putting the theft of a piece of fruit and the honour of races on the same level. His morbid self-confidence blinded him to the point where the closer he came to disaster, the more he clamoured for it. He drank where he shouldn’t, which was an offence according to Muslim custom, stole in full view and full knowledge of everyone, and dared to go hunting for women in neighbourhoods where they didn’t take kindly to strangers. He was bitter and suicidal, and was constantly putting himself in danger. I wondered if Rachida, her cousin and the wholesaler were merely excuses he’d made up, big stones he’d tied to his feet so as to sink as deep as possible and never come up again. He seemed comfortable in his descent into hell, as if he felt a wicked pleasure in taking revenge on himself and bringing about his own misfortune. Obviously, he had plenty of reasons to behave the way he did, but what is a reason if not, sometimes, a wrong that suits us?

Not wanting to be a witness to his eventual lynching, certain that sooner or later he’d fall into his own trap, I started declining his ‘invitations’ and saw him less often.

It didn’t take him long to notice.

One morning, he waylaid me near the girls’ school. I’d have bet anything that he wasn’t there by chance.

‘Well, well, Turambo!’ he said, pretending to be surprised. ‘I was just thinking about you.’

‘I have an appointment with the boss of a warehouse. He’s going to give me a trial. Gino is already there to introduce me.’

‘Mind if I walk with you?’

‘As long as you don’t slow me down. I’m late.’

We hurried to Place de la Synagogue. Sid Roho was looking at me out of the corner of his eye. My pace and my silence were bothering him.

Just outside a haberdasher’s on Place Hoche, he stopped me with his hand. ‘Are you upset with me about something, Turambo?’

‘Why do you ask me that?’

‘You’ve been doing your best to avoid me for weeks now.’

‘You’re imagining things,’ I lied. ‘I’ve been looking for work, that’s all.’

‘That’s no reason. We’re friends, aren’t we?’

‘You’ll always be my friend, Sid. But I have a family and I’m ashamed to be sponging off them. I’m nearly twenty-two, don’t you see?’

‘I see.’

‘I’m late.’

He nodded and took his hand off my shoulder.

Under the statue of the general, a blind man was playing a barrel organ. His music made my friend’s distress seem somehow irreversible.

A little further on, again bothered by my silence, Sid said, ‘I’m sure you’re upset with me, Turambo. I want to know why.’

I looked him straight in the eye. He seemed disconcerted. ‘You want the truth, Sid? You’re really not with it these days.’

‘I’ve always been like this.’

‘Precisely. You don’t seem to realise.’

‘Realise what?’

‘That it’s time for you to settle down.’

‘Why work when you can help yourself, Turambo? I have everything I need. I just have to reach out my hand.’

‘Someone will cut it off in the end.’

‘I’ll get an artificial one.’

‘I see you have an answer for everything.’

‘You just have to ask.’

‘My mother says that when we have an answer for everything, we might as well die.’

‘My father said more or less the same thing, except that he died without finding an answer for anything.’

‘Apparently, I’m wasting my breath. You won’t listen. I really have to meet Gino now.’

‘Gino, Gino … What’s so interesting about this Gino? The bastard isn’t even funny, and he blushes when he accidentally looks at a whore’s arse.’

‘Gino’s a good person.’

‘That doesn’t stop him being a bore.’

‘Drop it, Sid. A friend doesn’t have to act like an idiot to earn the right to be considered a friend.’

‘You think that’s why I’m acting like an idiot?’

‘I didn’t say that. Gino has helped me a lot. Friends like him are a rare commodity and I want to keep him.’

‘Hey, I’m not setting you against him!’

‘I don’t doubt that for a second, Sid, not for a single second. Nobody could set me against Gino.’

He stopped dead.

I went on my way, without turning round. I was far from suspecting that this would be the last time I saw him.

I suddenly felt uneasy. In trying to reason with Sid, I had hurt him. I realised it as I walked away. I caught myself slowing down every ten metres, then stopping at the corner of the street. We shouldn’t have parted on a sour note, I told myself. Sid had never refused me anything; he’d always been there for me.

I ran back to where we’d parted company …

The Blue Jinn had vanished into thin air.

*

I looked for Sid in Jenane Jato and Medina Jedida, in the bars where he was a regular, but without success.

After a week, I gave up. Sid Roho must have been playing the fool somewhere, in no way affected by what I’d said. He couldn’t bear a grudge against anyone, let alone a friend. He’d show up eventually, and even if it wasn’t what he would have wanted, I’d ask him to forgive me. He’d brush aside my apologies with a sweep of his hand and, still unrepentant, drag me with him on a thousand dreadful escapades.

But things didn’t work out that way.

I learnt later that I wasn’t the cause of his disappearance. Someone had challenged him and Sid had taken up the challenge. He had vowed to steal El Moro’s dagger in broad daylight, right there in the middle of the souk. The former convict loved to strut around in public with his dagger under his belt, flaunting it like a trophy. And Sid dreamt of getting it off him.

He was caught with his hand on the hilt.

He was first beaten to within an inch of his life, then dragged behind a thicket and raped in turn by El Moro and three of his henchmen.

At that time, a man’s honour was like a girl’s virginity: once you lost it, you couldn’t get it back.

Nobody ever saw Sid again.

We were in the cubicle, talking about my next fight, when Tobias opened the little door. He didn’t have time to announce the visitors before they pushed him aside and came in. There were two of them, both dressed to the nines.

‘Are you De Stefano?’ the taller of the two asked.

De Stefano took his feet off the desk to look more businesslike. The visitors said nothing, but it was clear they weren’t just anybody. The tall man must have been in his fifties. He was thin, with a face like a knife blade and cold eyes. The other, who was short, seemed on the verge of bursting out of his grand suit; he wore a huge signet ring on his finger and was puffing at an impressive cigar.

‘What can I do for you?’ De Stefano asked.

‘Forget it,’ grunted the man with the cigar. ‘It’s usually me being asked for help.’

‘And you’re Monsieur …?’

‘You can call me God if you want to. I fear that may not be enough to absolve you of your sins.’

‘God is merciful.’

‘Only the Muslim God.’