Amna mentions the Berkanis, the prestigious family to which the suitor belongs. She does not say that she understands perfectly well what Ferhani is up to. Up to this point he has been setting in play a whole strategy against the heirs of the two Berkani saints (father and son, buried side by side in two mausoleums), men of exalted faith who had only arrived two centuries before. Some said, predictably, that they came from Seguiat el-Hamra, on the borders of Mauritania, the cradle of almost all the sacred genealogies. Others preferred to say they were Andalusian exiles come through the usual places: Tétouan, then Fez and Tlemcen, then the mountains neighboring Médéa, at the moment when Algiers was a modest village (a little hideout for pirates trapped by the Spanish fortifications on Peñón). Finally, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, they would have reached this zaouia of the Beni Menacers that the oh so “glorious” General de Saint-Arnaud would come to pillage from top to bottom, burning the olive trees and all the orchards …
So, as the mokkadem Ferhani sees it in his schemes and ruminations, Algeria at the turn of the century apparently is still at war with itself. One dead saint vies with another dead saint, one koubba, that is, tomb and sanctuary, vies with another koubba, another sanctuary — just as elsewhere, in other places, one bell tower would be the rival of another. A phantom Algeria where the living, who think they are living for themselves, continue in spite of themselves to settle the accounts of dead men who are not quite dead and who keep right on devouring each other …
Amna talks to the young Fatima and convinces her to marry Si Larbi, the descendant of Saint Berkani, this saint who is considered to be a “modernist” because one of his grandsons (in fact, a great-grandnephew) chose, right from the outset, to side with emir Abd el-Kader against the protégés of the French. Aïssa el-Berkani, one of the emir’s five caliphates, lost almost the entire Berkani patrimony as a result, but increased its prestige considerably. Si Larbi, who thus became Fatima’s second husband, after a stormy life, much of which was spent in exile in the west, seems to have been a beloved, perhaps loving, spouse — in any case one who was sensible and with a tranquil spirit. Long after his death, forgetting herself, Lla Fatima, throughout her austere old age would mention and even sometimes quote Si Larbi.
Her first child by him was Chérifa, the great beauty, and next Malika, two years younger. (This is the aunt who now welcomes and cherishes me during these days I spend resting there, probably because she has always been sad that she had only boys and not even one girl of her own.) Then finally came the beloved son. Soon afterward, Si Larbi, always lovingly responsible for the eldest child, Khadidja, gave Fatima some advice concerning her marriage. Then he fell sick; for a whole year Fatima cared for him.
Dealers in ancient medicine came from every hill, from even the most modest and humble sanctuary, from as far away as the Sahel around the capital, sellers of potions and rare herbs: but any roumi, even a learned doctor, the sick man would have refused. Fatima knew that no Christian would cross the threshold of the Beni Menacer family, and regretted it. A second time she found herself a widow. This time, I imagine, she wept.
When, two years later, she married Malek el-Berkani’s cousin (she was thirty, or a little older; he was practically the same age, though some say he was probably two or three years younger), it came as a surprise to the people around her. They expected her to take solace in solitude and piety. No.
Was it a marriage for love this time? No one will ever know … The bitter and cynical version of the “other man’s” son sometimes seems to be right: Yes, Fatima’s wealth was primarily Si Larbi’s, hence it was also the property of her son and her two adolescent daughters … And now the cousin, having remarried into the same household, started any number of new projects: modernizing the arboriculture and buying agricultural equipment never seen before in the mountains … Up to this point no “native” farmer had dared to imitate the European colonists of the plains!
In the off-season the young husband, who had been so busy and energetic, became unruly! He liked the itinerant bands of musicians and supported them. Sometimes he would not show up until dawn after evenings spent far away in the company, people said, of dancers … News of this was reported any number of times to Fatima, who, with her children, remained near the sanctuary. Did she regret the days when, she, all alone in her father’s zaouia, knew just as well as this man how to inject enthusiasm into everything, or did the shadow of the dancers inhabit the sleepless hours of her lonely evenings? She was of two minds.
Then Malek would settle down and devote himself entirely to overseeing the crops. Everyone called him the chatter, the man who is energetic and unflagging, throughout the region.
The little girl that Fatima had by him, Bahia, was two, the same age as her eldest daughter, when Fatima was widowed for the first time and decided to return to these “back” mountains — the Dahra. She muttered this word: dahra; ancient revolts had taken place on this site, and it was also, she thought: “the site of women’s bitterness” (as if, suddenly, the image of her mother who died so tragically, had the upper hand)! In the end she decided upon the separation of property that is provided for in Islamic law.
“To protect my son’s future!” she would say on the day that she and almost all her children rode in the barouche back down to Caesarea for good.
Two or three years later she is just barely getting used to her new house. She learns that her husband, Malek, whose weekly visits have become less and less frequent, has now taken action. Lla Fatima did not plan to live in the mountains again (using the excuse of her son’s French education). Lla Fatima does not want to come back and moreover does not let him manage the land. So he will remarry. He sends her the letter of repudiation … Is it on this black day that she starts going into her dramatic trances? No, I think not.
Misfortunes continue even though she has just bought another house. It is near the European quarter, just behind the church built like an ancient temple; this building is larger, its huge rooms have windows and balconies facing the street on the first floor, but they also look out onto Moorish galleries opening toward the sea and the port. So it is in a modern, mixed style (she is already imagining her son’s wedding that will be celebrated here in ten years)! She does not yet live there. She leaves one of the apartments on the ground floor rented to the city’s former rabbi and his family, whom she knows. She will live on the main floor and meet with her sharecroppers in the unoccupied rooms downstairs … She thinks about how she will move when autumn comes.
And yet misfortune (or probably “the evil eye”) continues: This is 1924 and there is an epidemic of typhoid fever in the city — it occurs first in the surrounding regions, but no one pays any attention, then it quickly reaches the Arab quarter.
Just before summer Lla Fatima realized that almost all her children were infected. Only Malika remained healthy, and took care of Chérifa, who took to bed first, then Bahia, the little one, who became dangerously delirious as a result of her raging fever. When it was Hassan’s turn to become tortured by constant vomiting, Lla Fatima lost heart. She was alone: Her father had been dead for ten years, her younger sister had long ago married in a distant city, and Amna was now practically paralyzed by the rheumatism of old age.