This last French word, which she pronounced rolling the r, surprised them. The two visitors looked at each other despite the half-light. They both knew old pensioners, veterans of the other war, who were called, even in Arabic, “the men of Verdun”—always with a rolled r. So what did the other war, the one from which only old men remained, have to do with this one, “our war”? the women wondered. Could it be that old Rkia in turn, despite her magic potions and her recent pilgrimage, was slipping into some disturbing senility?
“I will admit,” said the sister-in-law from under her veil on their return trip, “I thought, ‘She is rambling; she no longer can see the way she could before!’ But you see, she was firm when she said ‘Selim is in good health.’ Where he is does not matter!”
“She did relieve my anxiety a little,” the mother acknowledged.
They went home, where they found the others; of course it was only with the women, young and old, that they talked about Lla Rkia’s verdict. Some of them embraced our mother warmly and she thought to herself that this was one of the reasons she had come on this second day of Aïd—to share in the almost childish buzz of excitement and spontaneity.
That same night she went back to their apartment in the capital with her daughter, who was her youngest child, and her husband.
The following nights she slept peacefully.
Ten days later a letter from the court in Metz, in Lorraine, arrived. The prison administration informed the father that his son, aged less than twenty-one, had been arrested, that he was being indicted for “criminal association” and other equally pompous charges. The mother did not feel that these were as serious as the charges made against Salim when he had been arrested at seventeen in his own country. She remained silent, looked gravely at her husband, and breathed deeply, thinking excitedly, What is essential is that he is alive. He is safe. All the prisons in the world don’t matter! He’ll get out! Then finally she asked softly, “Metz, in Lorraine — isn’t that near … Verdun?”
“Verdun?” the father repeated, surprised.
“The seer, the one in our town …”
Stammering then in confusion but at the same time calm again, she explained, or rather admitted, that the last time she and her daughter had visited their town, she had met with Lla Rkia, who had “seen” Salim “on the road to Verdun,” she repeated almost triumphantly.
So the news of the arrest of their son did not really arouse either anxiety or alarm — at least not for the mother.
Shortly afterward the two of them left for the village to visit their old nurse. She herself had a son in prison in the south, “in the Sahara” she said. They could tell from her silences that her two youngest sons (though without sighing she said rather proudly that she had not heard anything from them) had very probably “gone up” into the nearby mountain, in short, joined the Resistance.
The nurse who was nearly sixty was ilclass="underline" a weak heart and chronic diabetes at the same time. In bed, in the half darkness of her cool shack, she was informed of Salim’s arrest in Lorraine and that they had to stop worrying about him from now on (prisons in France were less harsh than the ones here), or rather muster their patience until things finally worked themselves out! She listened to the news from her bed of pain; in the old days she used to say she loved Salim as much as two of her sons put together!
“I’m getting old,” she finally murmured. “Prison. Provided he doesn’t stay there for years. Provided I can see him standing before me someday …” She stopped, musing, then finished her sentence, “and free! Oh yes, Lord and gentle Prophet, free, the son of my heart!”
The mother listened, showed no emotion, asked about life in the village. She delivered the medicine they had brought, took care of making another list, and then located her husband so that they could return to the capital.
Late that evening in the kitchen she silently decided, for herself (she then would talk to her almost adolescent daughter about it before laying the groundwork for getting the husband’s permission), yes, she made a firm and irrevocable decision. If her son had to remain in jail for years, well then, she would go there “even alone if necessary!” because her husband, who had just left teaching, would be less free than before over summer vacation. The next evening, finishing up the dishes, and this time with the young girl there, she repeated, “I will go alone, unveiled — now I know that I will — alone into every one of the prisons they put him into!”
“You’ll take me with you!” the daughter interrupted, hardly surprised at her mother’s resolution.
And so, for the mother, the news of Salim’s imprisonment meant that she could anticipate the beginning of an adventure …
She slept peacefully when they returned from the village. After market the next day she talked about it with her only friend, the woman who ran the pharmacy. She bought some aspirin and began tentatively to study the different models of sunglasses. (It would be summer when she went, and it felt easier to think of herself suddenly off the boat, taking the train, without her veil now but with her face blocked at least by dark glasses.) The Frenchwoman left the last customers with her assistant and showed the mother into the back of the shop. The news of the son’s arrest was reported, explained. “So,” said the mother, “I’m right not to be too worried?” and she watched the expression on the pharmacist’s face. Then, without waiting, she came out with her prepared sentence: “My son is a political prisoner!” She repeated the last words, trying them out, and watched for any little reaction in the woman she was talking to, who, of course, remained friendly; to be a “political prisoner” was noble, not shameful. Would the Europeans who were less well disposed have the same reaction as her friend?
She would have liked to talk about her projects, just to be encouraged. Would her husband, if he could not get away and go to France for a holiday, let her travel alone, in short, in his stead? But she did not talk about it anymore this time. On her next visit in three or four days there would be fewer customers. Then she would mention it. She would explain that she felt strong. She would seek some comforting reassurance.
That evening, in the kitchen when she and her daughter finished putting everything away, she whispered to her a little impishly, with a knowing smile, “Find us a map for the city of Metz. Because I’ve had an idea. We’ll go to Alsace for ‘rest and relaxation’! That’s not far away, is it? Your father will let us, I’m sure!”
She went to sleep imagining the high façade of the prison in Metz: not gray, not black, a tall building, of course, but with a gracious air, a bit like a deluxe hotel where her son was staying, where she would cheerfully go …
When mid-July arrived in 1959, the father, emotional over letting them go on such a long trip alone, accompanied the mother and his daughter to the boat. During the crossing in their second-class cabin the mother watched over her daughter, the daughter watched over her mother — she was elegant and seemed so young. The pieds-noirs passengers, especially, thought the adolescent, would never guess that this lady in a flowered summer suit just a few weeks earlier, in Caesarea, had been just as elegant but in a different way. Reigning in the first rank of guests seated like gods around the musicians as they celebrated the seventh day after the birth of her youngest nephew, she was an Andalusian Moorish woman! In which place are we playing a role? Is it there among the family or here on this boat among these passengers who think we are tourists like themselves? And the mother, who stayed in the cabin, absolutely convinced that she was going to be seasick despite the sea’s being clear and so calm, the mother advised her young daughter, who wanted to go up on deck, “Be careful! Don’t talk to strangers, but if it becomes unavoidable then don’t mention the real reason for our trip, that is, your brother! Not that you should be ashamed, to the contrary! We are proud of it! But you never know. We are two women alone, and among ‘them’ they might take us for what they call fellaghas! Remember, we are going for our health to a treatment center in the Vosges, and besides, it’s really the truth!” She delivered her advice in Arabic, then lay down. It had been bound to happen: Unable to sleep, nauseated, she would not doze off until they took the train from Marseilles the next day. Her daughter acquiesced and went up on deck, where she stayed alone for hours, filling her eyes full of the night that made the waves sparkle.