There’s no need to look, everything is within reach. The place is teeming. Here the little people do their shopping far from laws and from harassment. From an aerial viewpoint, you’d swear they were free electrons, but no, they are controlled by gravitational force. The area attracts teenage runaways the way nectar attracts bees. They’ve been told that this is the gateway to a new life and that, as with any travel agency, there are endless choices of destination. Two hundred metres away, abutting the harbour walls in glorious confusion, stand the bus and train stations and between them, on a patch of waste ground, are the gypsy cabs, a riot of clapped-out rustbuckets, every one in perfect working order. ‘Direct from producer to consumer’ is a slogan from the socialist era, but it applies perfectly to the black market.
The elegant women of Algiers also frequent the square; it is the only place where they can find perfume from Paris imported from Taiwan via Dubai. People say that at customs the sniffer dogs are trained not to smell perfumes but that’s just a joke the kids tell; in fact in Algiers there are no sniffer dogs in customs — if there were all hell would break loose. The elegant ladies turn up here dressed like paupers hoping to pass unnoticed but their pale complexions and their strange lisping accent give them away and prices are hiked up.
‘She came up to me outside La Grande Poste. I… I buy imported perfume there… you can’t find anything in the shops.’
‘I get what I need from Tata Zahia who used to work at the Union. She runs a little shop from home. It’s all good stuff, and direct from Paris, too, if you please! She’s a genuine trafficker, honest, friendly, she’ll even have a little chat over a glass of mint tea. Sometimes there are fifty people there and we have a party. She has a cousin who’s a minister and he supplies her on the quiet. I’ll recommend you. So, what happened next?’
‘I brought her back to my rooms in the halls of residence… I felt sorry for her…’
‘Did she have her holdall?’
‘What?’
‘Her clothes, her gear.’
‘Um… yeah.’
‘So how is she? I mean the pregnancy… is she eating properly?’
‘Um… yes. I couldn’t let her move in with me, my room is tiny… besides I need peace and quiet to study… and anyway, it’s against the rules…’
‘So where does she sleep?’
‘Sometimes my room, sometimes one of the other girls… we organised a rota… whenever she needs to move, we distract the caretaker. During the day, she goes for a walk in the city, and…’
‘And?’
‘…’
Chérifa is slippery as an eel. After a week of doing nothing, of strolling in the sunshine, she hooked up with a homeless man who smelled of damp straw, he was succeeded by some useless cop, then an incompetent journalist and now, apparently, she’s run off with an airline pilot we don’t know the first thing about beyond the fact that he dresses too well to be honest.
‘We’re worried. She’s been gone a week now. The girls are really fond of her, she’s so happy-go-lucky but she… um… well she’s due any day now so she shouldn’t be…’
They’ve clearly been charmed by the siren song of my Lolita.
‘I know, I know.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘Track down the pilot, it can’t be that difficult, there’s only one airline in this country last time I checked. It’s called Air Algérie, right? We’ll just wait until he ejects from his glider.’
‘I… um… I don’t want any trouble…’
‘I’ll deal with everything. I’ll pop in and see him unexpectedly, the same way you came to see me. Did Chérifa give you my address?’
‘Not exactly… I had to search. She talked about you all the time, about Rampe Valée, the Turk’s palace, the Frenchman’s castle, the Jew’s shack, the Kabyle’s cave… I… um… I couldn’t understand why the house had so many names.’
‘It’s history, it’s complicated. So, what then?’
‘She mentioned the Hôpital Parnet, she talked about your friends, about Mourad, Sofiane, Monsieur 236.’
‘235! I’m not intimate with every driver who works for GAUTA!’
‘Sorry, Monsieur 235… Missing Parts and Bluebeard, the gorgon from the rue Marengo… and… well… your ghosts… the ones in the house, I mean.’
‘Well how do you like that? A veritable menagerie!’
‘She’s very fond of you, and she really is very sorry. One day she actually went to see you at the hospital and she came back so upset… You were in a terrible mood and she didn’t dare talk to you.’
‘Let’s dispense with sentimentality for the moment, just give me the facts. So what happened next?’
‘…’
I choked back my tears, I would have to hear this drama out to the bitter end if I was to understand.
So, she had met some peasant in the woods next to the university campus. It’s the sort of place that attracts lovers trying to get away from prying eyes and radical preachers. Our two country bumpkins meet and realise they are kindred souls and before you know it they’re embroiled in some vegetarian discussion. They pretend they’re living in a commune, they draw up a list, life is beautiful. Their little game lasts a week before things turn sour. ‘He’s as much fun as a lizard,’ she said. That’s Chérifa all over, the minute she’s bored, she’s off.
The next day, some other freak was trailing her back to the halls of residence. No need for binoculars to spot this one, the other girls knew immediately where this nasty piece of work came from. The dark glasses, the walkie-talkie glued to the ear, that swagger like a boat putting out to sea, that arrogance that says you have the world at your feet and a Colt 45 swinging by your side, these are the hallmarks of an institution, the most important institution in this country: the police.
Her new companion offered Chérifa a season ticket to the seediest parts of Algiers which, if Mourad is to be believed, are among the most stomach-turning in the solar system. Things move at a break-neck pace, Chérifa learns to smoke, to drink, to fight, to strike a pose and she also learns a new vocabulary. The other girls stop their ears and listen, the little fool dropped words like bombs. She would go out at ridiculous hours, come back at all hours without so much as a by-your-leave. The girls at the halls of residence couldn’t handle it, one by one they closed their doors to her. Young women from good families are more terrified by a whiff of scandal than they are by terrorism. The caretakers started to grumble openly, the rumours spread. Attracted by the scent, dubious cars began showing up on the campus. Before long the sticklers came out of the woodwork claiming that stranglers were operating in the area. I suspect this means the sermonisers and the Defenders of Truth. It’s high time we standardised the vocabulary, we can’t go on using different words for the same things. The problem is people stammer and shift and shilly-shally about anything to do with Islam. It’s like the Tower of Babel, people say stickler, strangler, cut-throat, Islamist, lunatic, fanatic, fundamentalist, terrorist, suicide bomber, jihadist, Wahhabi, Salafist, Djazarist, Taliban, Tango, Zarqaouist, Afghani, born in the banlieue, member of al-Qaeda and I don’t know what else — it’s like these people had nothing to do with Islam. But they’re all basically the same person with different clothes and different beliefs. The specialists should at least agree on their terms, that way we would be able to have a frank discussion about the problem, but let’s be honest, if Islam is responsible for anything, it’s producing Muslims, there’s no way of knowing how they will turn out later, and there’s no after-sales service. For crying out loud, if people have children, they should keep them under control.