Yasmina Khadra - The Angels Die

The only thing I remember about Marseilles is a remote camp, massive trials, days as strict as a prison regime, relentless sparring partners and cold nights howling with mistral. That was enough to develop my aggressiveness. I was treated like an animal that’s starved in order to prepare it for a most gruesome slaughter. I thought more about Pascal Bonnot than Irène; I was only waiting for the moment I’d meet him in the ring and reduce him to a pulp. I hated my new trainers, their rough manners, their arrogance; they were obtuse, sinister, conceited people; they didn’t speak, they yelled, convinced that anyone from the colonies was a savage picked straight from a baobab tree. From the start, I sensed that things were going to work out badly. I hated being sprayed with spittle when I was yelled at. I came to blows with a stunted, swollen-headed assistant who kept making racist remarks about Arabs. Later, I realised that these provocations and hostilities were a tactic. They were driving me mad with hatred with the clear aim of making my next opponent, Pascal Bonnot, a walkover.

I returned to Oran transformed, thin-skinned, sensitive. My interactions with my former friends in Rue Wagram were limited to good morning and good night. Nothing was the way it had been before. Apart from Tobias, all the others got me down. The laughter that had once echoed round the gym had given way to cold formality. De Stefano was unhappy. Whenever he started a conversation with me, I quickly climbed into the ring. My attitude saddened him, but he realised that it was what I wanted. I’d become embittered, unpleasant, taciturn, even arrogant. Even Irène had noticed that I almost never smiled now, that I lost my temper over nothing, that I enjoyed nights on the town and cinema trips less and less. She still didn’t know where I had been during those three horrible weeks and didn’t ask me. I might have changed, but I was back, and that was all that mattered to her. In truth, I was asking myself a lot of questions. At night, I would wake up with my head in a vice and go out into the courtyard to get a bit of fresh air. Irène would join me, wrapped in a sheet, and walk beside me in silence. I didn’t know what to say to her.

Nestled in hills garlanded with gardens and palaces, Algiers was bathed in bright sunshine that March morning in 1935. I was discovering the city for the first time in my life. It was beautiful, its seafront lined with luxurious apartment buildings that seemed to smile at the Mediterranean. In Oran, we thought people from Algiers were very affected. We didn’t like them. When they came to us, they put on airs that marked them out, proud of their sharp accent, convinced they belonged to a superior class. They had a highly developed sense of repartee which often led to arguments in our streets, since all that the people of Oran had to counter the coolness of their rivals’ words was their skill with their fists. But in Medina Jedida and the Araberber quarters, you couldn’t separate Algiers from politics. There was talk of ulemas, Muslim associations, in other words, groups of our fellow citizens who lived in Algiers in neighbourhoods identical to ours, but who refused to be like dumb cattle: they created ideological movements that spoke of a glorious past and claimed rights about which I understood very little. And when Muslims came from Algiers to Oran, unlike the Christians, we treated them with respect. Discussions continued long into the night, and in the morning, in our cafés, everyone talked in low voices and kept a discreet eye on the street. Informants were at work, the police increased their numbers, and the crowds in the souks were infiltrated. To be honest, I wasn’t interested in this occasional unrest in our cities. For me, it was a mystery as impenetrable as the ways of the Lord. The acclaim I received made me deaf even to the call of the muezzin.

Leaning out of the window of the railway carriage, I gazed at the light-filled city, its white buildings, its cars racing along the boulevards, its hordes of pedestrians who seemed to multiply at terrifying speed. Frédéric was standing next to me, telling me about the sites, the neighbourhoods, the holy places of the capital: the Jardin d’Essai, one of the most fantastic places in the world, Notre-Dame-d’Afrique overlooking the bay, the Casbah huddled around its centuries-old courtyards, Bab el-Oued where little people saw things in a big way, Square Port-Saïd overrun with pick-up artists and poets, closely flanked by the Military Club and the municipal theatre.

‘It’s a city of legend,’ Frédéric said. ‘No passing stranger leaves it without taking something away in his suitcase. When you pass through Algiers, you go through a mirror. You arrive with one soul and leave with an entirely new, sublime one. Algiers changes a person with a click of her fingers. It was in Algiers that the Goncourt brothers, who thought they were destined for a life creating art on canvas, finally turned their backs on painting to devote themselves body and soul to literature. It was in Algiers, at an ordinary barber’s shop in the Casbah, on 28 April 1882, that Karl Marx, who was famous for his beard, had it shaved off in order to be able to recognise himself in the mirror …’

‘You might as well talk to him about Cervantes’ five years in captivity and Guy de Maupassant’s sexual exploits while you’re about it,’ Francis muttered, making sure he stayed as far as possible from my fists. ‘He probably doesn’t even know the name of the President of France.’

‘Leave him alone,’ De Stefano grunted.

A swarm of journalists greeted us when we got off the train, immediately drawing a crowd on the platform. A handful of policemen tried in vain to contain it. Flashbulbs went off on all sides. Frédéric agreed to answer a few questions. The photographers jostled one another to get a picture of me. They yelled at me to turn and look at the camera, to pose in front of the train carriage. I didn’t listen to them.

‘How many rounds do you think you’ll last, Turambo?’ cried a puny fellow hiding behind his notebook.

‘Is it true you made a will before coming to Algiers?’

‘What’s in your gloves this time, Monsieur Turambo?’

‘His fists, nothing but his fists,’ De Stefano said irritably.

‘That’s not what they say in Bône.’

‘The people there are bad losers. My boxer’s gloves were checked by experts. We even gave them as a gift to the mayor.’

The aggressiveness of the journalists and their insinuations were exasperating. We hurried out of the station and got in the cars waiting for us on the other side of the street. The Duke had booked us rooms in the Hôtel Saint-Georges. There too, photographers and journalists lay in wait for us, including some British ones speaking French nasally and some Americans flanked by interpreters. A bellboy showed me to my room, made sure I had everything I needed and lingered in the entrance as if looking for something. I dismissed him; he left reluctantly, a disappointed pout replacing the smile that had stretched from ear to ear two minutes earlier. We had lunch in the hotel restaurant. In the afternoon, a group of Araberbers came to reception and asked to meet me. It was a small committee sent by a Muslim movement to invite me to the football match between Mouloudia of Algiers and the Christian team of Ruisseau. Frédéric firmly declined the invitation, claiming that my fight was the next day, that the streets weren’t safe, and that I needed calm and rest. I curtly told him to mind his own business. Since I’d come back from Marseilles, there’d been no love lost between my staff and me. I didn’t listen to anyone and made it clear I wasn’t going to be bossed about. Fearing that things might turn nasty, Frédéric reluctantly agreed, but asked Tobias to go with me. In the packed stadium, Muslim dignitaries came and congratulated me on my career and assured me of their blessing. Mouloudia beat the opposing team roundly by six goals to one. The committee offered me a guided tour of the Casbah. Tobias categorically refused; I don’t know if it was because of his wooden leg or because he had been given strict instructions.