Boualem Sansal - The German Mujahid

“You don’t speak Arabic, you don’t speak Berber, how are you supposed to talk to people?”

“Pretend you’re deaf and dumb. . ”

“Dress like a Taliban, that way no one will notice you.”

“Steer clear of the red-light districts.”

“Steer clear of the banlieues .”

“Watch out for the cops, everyone says they’re like the mafia.”

“Keep away from the jihadists.”

“They’ll roast you like a Jew.”

“There’s no way they’re going to let you come back.”

“They’ll arrest you, they don’t like the French over there.”

“They’ll never let you in, they fucking hate French Arabs.”

. .

I waited till they were done, then I said, “Thanks for the support, guys, but I’m going anyway. I’ll be back in a week. Meet me from the plane at Orly.”

The night before I left was a long one. Aunt Sakina kept coming and going, she’d check to make sure the suitcase was properly closed, then she’d open it and put something else in, close it again, zip it up tight, go back to the living room, then come back to check it again. Uncle Ali was in his bed, staring at the ceiling, off somewhere in his head.

In my room, I read and reread the part of Rachel’s diary about going back to the bled , the airport, the security guards staring at everyone, snapping their fingers and dragging anyone suspicious out of the line, the atmosphere in the streets of Algiers like a concentration camp, the undercover taxi drivers who dump you in the middle of nowhere, the fake roadblocks, the guards holed up in their blockhouses, the desolate, dying landscape. It was weird, but the black picture he painted of it encouraged rather than discouraged me. I’d never thought that going back to the root of things would be easy. Everything has a price, and I was prepared to pay. Rachel says something about the road to Damascus, I don’t know what it means but I’m guessing that’s what the road to Algiers must be like.

Aunt Sakina didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. She didn’t move from the living room. She was turning things over in her mind. I’m the only child she’s got now; when uncle Ali is gone, she’ll only have me. I have to come back.

I didn’t sleep either. I read for a bit, then I turned off the light and stared at the ceiling, trying to think. I had all this stuff going round and round in my mind. I’d tried to deal with each worry as it popped into my head, but the more I tried, the more there were. There were so many, I couldn’t think, and in the end I dozed off. Suddenly I saw myself in a long, dark hallway, terrified as a prisoner on death row, I was struggling against something, I don’t know what, something pushing me into the darkness, then suddenly these two guys in balaclavas jumped out of the darkness, grabbed me by the arms and dragged me off, panting for breath. My legs were kicking into thin air. They threw me into this huge stadium where the terraces were already teeming with prisoners who looked weird, haggard and silent. Just as I was about to get to my feet and run away, these terrifying men appeared out of a tunnel and surrounded me, chanting my name in hoarse, frenzied voices: Schiller!. . Schiller!. . Schiller!. . they stretched their arms out towards me: Sieg Heil!. . Sieg Heil!. . Sieg Heil!. . The silence on the terraces was more intense and I was crying in pain. I woke up with a start, turned on the light. Maman , where am I? I put my head in my hands. I looked down at the suitcase on the floor. I didn’t remember leaving it there. It was a stupid place to leave it, anyone might trip over it, I would have pushed it against the wall or under the bed, or put it on a chair. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It fascinated and terrified me, then I smiled to myself, it’s just a thing, a box, a suitcase that needs to be strapped up so it doesn’t burst and spill everything everywhere. It seemed strange, taking clothes when you’re going nowhere, when you’re going to spend a week with friends in your other home. . But caught up in Rachel’s stories of the Holocaust, the suitcase reminded me of the concentration camps, of the life we leave behind.

This is no time to get spooked, I thought, in a couple of hours I’m flying off to a country where there’s a real war on, where no one can be sure they’ll make it through the day alive. Fuck sake, I grew up on the H24 estate, I’ve seen enough to take on the devil himself! But every time I managed to calm myself down, it started all over again. I’d read a bit, turn off the light, stare at the ceiling, determined not to think about anything. I’d try to think of the best way of not thinking about things and suddenly all the same thoughts would come flooding back. Suddenly I’m drugged and thrown into that stadium with the same zombies still chanting my name. It’s a vicious circle. In the end, I got up, pushed the suitcase under the bed, sat on the floor next to the window with my back to the wall and kept watch until morning. I didn’t feel safe until I heard the usual racket of the town blocks. It was four in the morning, the old African men in their Turkish slippers were getting ready for their daily migration across the savannah, the faithful were feverishly performing Wudu —their ritual ablutions — and every kid on the estate, ripped suddenly from their nightmares, was screaming loud enough to burst a deaf man’s eardrum. Then all the TVs and the radios came on at once. By this time, aunt Sakina had already settled uncle Ali in his chair by the window, cleaned the apartment and made breakfast. I checked my papers five times and drank endless cups of coffee while I waited. I was shaking. This would be the first time I’d been on a plane since I’d left Algeria, the first time I’d left France since then, the first time I’d faced the unknown, the first time I’d ever felt death at my elbow. And it was the first time in my life I would ever carry a suitcase. I was scared shitless.

I’ve been wandering around Europe for more than a month now, still retracing my father’s footsteps. I was travelling back through time. It was the story of my life. I can’t cope with being in France, with being at home, with the day-to-day routine. Too much has happened. The company finally fired me, Ophélie finally left me, my health wasn’t too good. And there was nothing I could do about any of it. To be honest, I had seen it coming but I did nothing, I just let it come. On a battlefield, such stoic acceptance and self-sacrifice would have marked me as a hero, but I did nothing because in the situation I was in, there was nothing to be done — the evil came from within. Everything inside me was broken. I was like one of those hopeless people whose great love has died, like someone who has survived a terrible disaster and goes into mourning never to come out. I had lost my place in the social order, in life, I was a pariah, I was my father’s son — I had been told as much by my friend, that ruin of a man, the great Adolph, aka Jean 134, son of the no less-remarkable Jean 92. At work, it was like I didn’t exist: no projects, no meetings, no phone calls. The paperwork was in hand, just waiting for a signature, everyone was waiting. There was nothing to be done, the CEO was constantly on the move, looking for some new El Dorado. When the paperwork finally arrived, I left, and it was as though I had never worked for the company. One signature wiped away ten years of loyal service. All anyone remembered were the last six months, which, admittedly, were catastrophic compared to the successes of my first nine and a half years there. Monsieur Candela shook my hand, squeezed my shoulder, said, “Drop by the house anytime.” He even had a tear in his eye, he’s always been a straight-up guy. I promised to drop by and I left. I’ve had enough of selling pumps and sluices, of cavitation problems that are always the fault of the manufacturer, never the fault of the client, I don’t give a damn about the terrible quality of their water, their oil, their milk, I can admit that now I’ve been relieved of my duties. Ophélie had reached the point of no return; in her mind, she had already left me, now she could breathe easily as she slowly packed up her things like we were moving house. I didn’t say anything. From time to time, she would look at me, head tilted back, eyes half-closed, then she’d shrug and go back to her packing. That’s how she’s always been, more worker bee than wife. Then, one day, she walked out. She left a note on the kitchen table. I read it and put it in a drawer. I knew that she was only doing what she had to do, I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t expect her to go on living with this frightening stranger. And she had no idea what was really going on, she didn’t know the stranger she was living with was the son of a monster who at any moment might turn into an SS officer and stuff her into the gas cooker. My body no longer sent out alarm signals, I had long since passed the danger point, now I didn’t feel anything except a slight sclerosis sometimes, a sudden confused urge to tear off my skin. I was distanced from life, and the distance had grown wider, the haze had thickened, the silence had deepened, the empty hours passed, the emptiness ever deeper. I was like the outsider the prescient Camus describes, an alien on earth, everything is here but nothing means anything. Perhaps I was dead but didn’t know it. How could I know, since in my state everything was relative and therefore equally unimportant?