With its vomit or its phlegm, easily.
With the fear that is its halo.
Writing, of course, even a novel …
About flight.
About shame.
But with blood itself: with its flow, its paste, its spurt, its scab that is not yet dry?
Yes, how can one speak of you, Algeria?
And if I fall someday soon, backing up into the hole?
Leave me, knocked over backward, but open-eyed.
Do not lay me either in the earth or at the bottom of a dry well.
Rather, in water.
Or in the wind’s leaves.
That I may keep on contemplating the night sky.
Smelling the grass quiver.
Smiling in the streaks of every laugh.
Living, dancing feet first.
Rotting gently!
Blood for me remains ash white.
It is silence.
It is repentance. Blood does not dry, it simply evaporates.
I do not call you mother, bitter Algeria,
That I write,
That I cry, voice, hand, eye.
The eye that in the language of our women is a fountain.
Your eye within me, I flee from you, I forget you, O grandmother of bygone days!
And yet, in your wake,
“Fugitive and not knowing it,” I called myself,
Fugitive and knowing it, henceforth,
The trail all migration takes is flight,
Abduction with no abductor,
No end to the horizon line,
Erasing in me each point of departure,
Origin vanishes,
Even the new start.
Fugitive and knowing it midflight,
Writing to encircle the relentless pursuit,
The circle that each step opens closes up again,
Death ahead, antelope encircled,
Algeria the huntress, is swallowed up in me.
Summer 1988—Algiers.
Summer 1991—Thonon-les-Bains.
March — July 1994—Paris.
GLOSSARY
aïd: a religious festival.
bachagha: in Algeria, a chief who is the caïd’s superior.
baraka: luck, a favorable destiny; also a benediction.
bey: the representative of the sultan of Constantinople in Tunis. Although the sultan grants him this office, the bey functions, in fact, rather independently. In Algiers the same officer is referred to as the dey, and his independence was so notorious that the French referred to him as the “king of Algiers.”
brasero: see kanoun.
cadi: a Muslim judge with both civil and religious jurisdiction.
caïd: a North African chief who served as a representative of the French government for purposes of taxation, policing, and other administrative duties.
chahadda: the first verse of the first chapter of the Koran. It begins with the profession of faith.
chatter: someone who is tireless.
the Dahra: the back regions of the mountains.
djellaba: a long, loose Moroccan robe.
douar: an Arab hamlet of tents or more permanent structures.
fatiha: the Koran verses containing the profession of faith.
fellagha: an armed partisan of independence.
hadja: a woman who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
hadj: a man who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
hammam: the ritual baths.
hand of Fatima: the image of a hand used to ward off the evil eye.
hanéfite rites: rites practiced by the Hanafiyah, one of the smaller Sunite sects of Islam.
imam: a Muslim priest.
Kabyle: the people inhabiting the mountainous regions of Algeria. They speak the Berber language and have maintained ancient Islamic customs.
kalam: a pointed reed used to write on the Koranic tablet.
kanoun: a small container for hot coals used to heat a space or for cooking.
kharidjines: young men who have come of age.
koubba: the tomb of a local saint and the sanctuary associated with it.
Lla, or Llalla: address of respect for a woman: “My Lady,” the equivalent of Sidi for a man.
mahakma: the judge’s chambers.
mamané: a term of affection. Its English equivalent might be “granny.”
marabout: a Muslim holy man who has devoted his life to ascetic contemplation.
la Mitidja: the fertile coastal plain southeast of Algiers, presently a hotbed of religious fundamentalism.
mokkadem: the current representative and direct descendant of whoever the saint in question may be — whether Saint Ahmed or Saint Abdullah (our equivalents might be Saint Peter or Saint Paul, Saint James or Saint John, and so on).
Moriscos: the Spanish Moors, descendants of the Muslims expelled from Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century. When they arrived in Algeria, they were given the name Andalusians because of their most recent provenance.
Mourashidien: the “well-guided imams” were the first four caliphs, abu-Bakr, Omar, Othman, and Ali (the Sid Ali referred to by the old aunt). The term is only used by Sunite (Orthodox) Muslims, who consider that, following the schism prompted by the death of Ali, they and not the Shiites represented the legitimate continuation of the line under the guidance of Muhammad himself and hence, Allah.
muezzin: the Muslim priest who sings out the prayers at fixed moments in the day when the devout stop whatever they are doing and face Mecca to kneel and pray.
noubas: Andalusian songs retained as part of the “classical” music of the Maghreb.
oued: a temporary water source at an oasis (wadi).
pieds-noirs: French colonists in Algeria.
raïs: a pirate. Ramadan: the ninth month of the Islamic lunar year, during which Muslims fast, practicing strict abstinence from sunup to sundown.
rebec: a bowed musical instrument derived from the rebab and having a pear-shaped body, a slender neck, and usually three strings.
roumi: Christian.
sakina: serenity, particularly the moment of illumination experienced at death.
saroueclass="underline" the loose pants worn by women.
Sidi: a term of respect used before the given name of a man, because of either his age or his station. In North African cultures it is more or less equivalent to “my Lord.”
solta: unbridled power.
sura: a chapter of the Koran.
tchador: the face veil worn by Muslim women.
tzarlrit: a traditional musical form of Berbero-Spanish origin composed of five distinctly different movements.
yaouleds: the sons of workers: lower class.