The Barbary Figs

THE BARBARY FIGS

RASHID BOUDJEDRA is an Algerian novelist. He has been routinely called one of North Africa’s leading writers ever since his debut, La Répudiation, was published in 1969, earning the author the first of many fatwas. While he wrote his first six novels in French, Boudjedra switched to Arabic in 1982 and wrote another six novels in the language before returning to French in 1994. His works - including poetry, non-fiction and plays - have been translated into many languages. The Barbary Figs (Les Figuiers de Barbarie) was awarded the Prix du Roman Arabe 2010.

ANDRÉ NAFFIS-SAHELY is a poet and translator from the French and the Italian. His fables appeared in Island Position’s inaugural volume of Imagine Africa. His translations include Abdellatif Laâbi’s The Rule of Barbarism (Island Position), The Bottom of the Jar (Archipelago Books) and Émile Zola’s Money (Penguin Classics). A selection of his poems is forthcoming in Oxford Poets 2013.

THE BARBARY FIGS

RASHID BOUDJEDRA

Translated and with an afterword by André Naffis-Sahely

ARABIA BOOKS

London

HAUS PUBLISHING LTD.

70 Cadogan Place, London SW1X 9AH

www.hauspublishing.com

Originally published as Les Figuiers de Barbarie by Rachid Boudjedra

Copyright © Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle, 2010

English language translation © André Naffis-Sahely, 2012

This work is published with support from the French Ministry of Culture.

Ouvrage publié avec le soutien du Centre national du livre.

ebook ISBN: 978-1-906697-41-9

A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved.

Chapter I

THERE HE WAS, dishevelled as always, with that sallow skin and those intense sad eyes! Looking absent-minded in his perennially tieless designer suit. Open-necked shirts in the summer and cashmere pullovers in the winter. This sartorial elegance reminded me of those legendary wardrobes of our youth that contained a dozen luxurious suits, and below which were a dozen pairs of brand-new Italian shoes – their colours matching those of the suits, shirts and pullovers – which emanated a raw, leathery smell that made my head spin, inspiring envy, but above all awe at such extravagance. Those clothes hailed from an alluring elsewhere, a world that we knew only vaguely, with a sense of foreboding and mystery, via its newspapers, books and films.

All the more so since his father’s wardrobe, which I’d never seen, was supposedly larger – a vastness that his son’s hinted at – and whose range was demonstrated by the father, who wore his suits in a sober, almost soldierly manner. He never wore the same suit, and unlike his son adorned them with the finest ties that often matched the colour of his eyes. Those blue eyes. Or were they topaz? Or turquoise? – it depended on the light and the surroundings. All those suits, which gave him an effeminate, almost timid air; and that mug of his – not a face, but a mug – whose fine features and blonde hair, parted on the left, literally mesmerised everyone he spoke to. That was how strikingly handsome he was, as if his good looks made him highly strung in the company of men, and awkward in the company of women.

Omar, the son, was more ordinary-looking and scrawny, with a swarthy complexion and curly hair. He resembled neither his father nor his mother. He was their antithesis. Their physical opposite, though at heart they were cut of the same cloth. They were very friendly with one another, thick as thieves, but there were no embraces, no tenderness, no nothing. When one saw them together, one quickly understood how fluidly they communicated, as if through a psychic bond.

Omar was almost my age, and as we got older, he pretended to distance himself. As did I. We had nonetheless thought very highly of one another from the first, from the time of those wardrobes full of beautiful suits and gorgeous shoes that he would fling open theatrically each summer when my family and I went to spend our holidays in that small town in the east of Algeria. I was slightly jealous of the treasures that the wardrobe revealed, since I didn’t own even a single suit: only two jackets, two pairs of trousers and a single pair of shoes, which I wore until down-at-heel.

This mutual respect, coupled with a sort of admiration, had therefore endured, and on seeing him there, in the departure lounge of Algiers airport – wearing a suit of alpaca fleece of an indeterminate colour, his face consumed by drink and melancholy – I told myself there and then: ‘He’ll never change!’

When our eyes met, I hurried towards him, despite the fact that he seemed to be taking his time in coming to greet me, although I knew he was itching to. He was merely pretending. It was his way of being coy.

Omar was hungry for tenderness.

I hastened, knowing he was touchy and that despite all his professional success and fine suits, he had become embittered, sad and unhappy.

Our encounters in that airport were not wholly fortuitous. Quite the contrary; they were actual appointments. A ritual we couldn’t do without. This had gone on for a very long time. It was all a perverse, confusing and affectionate game. We kissed, just like that. Politely. Coldly even.

‘Hello cousin!’ I said, ‘Off to Constantine? Of course you are!’

‘Hello cousin.’ He replied, ‘Yes, Constantine. You too, right?’

‘How’s life?’ I asked.

‘Bah!’ He said, ‘As usual, you know. Always on stand-by!’

He had studied architecture in the United States for a while and often peppered his sentences with an English word. Without a trace of pretentiousness. Without meaning to. As if inadvertently, or out of shyness.

By the time we had taken our seats on the plane, he said: ‘And how’s Nana doing? And Mozart? But you know, you never understood any...’

I didn’t have time to reply. Or did I say nothing in the end?

We were now sitting comfortably in our seats.

An air hostess said something, but no one took any notice.

Omar had sent me a photo of himself from the bush, a region with a tortured landscape. I had been surprised when the postman handed me the envelope, which contained only a single photograph. I turned it over and looked at the back. There was a place name and a date:

CHAABET LAKHRA

14-05-60

Nothing else. This curtness didn’t surprise me in the slightest, and yet the mere fact that he had sent me this photo during that horrifying war overwhelmed me.

It was a photograph of him in military fatigues, slightly blurry, slightly clownish, slightly scratched. I could barely recognise him. It was a photograph that brought to mind other classmates lost to the resistance, to careers, or to foreign cities where they had been exiled: a comical photo, which had taken four months to reach me. Four months to cover 30 miles! It reminded me of those colonial-style, turn-of-the-century photographs, converted into postcards and sold in the dark shops of the big cities. Colonial photographs as bleached and worn as Omar’s, which had found its way to me when I least expected it. Bromidic snapshots that set people, buildings and the naked bodies of barely pubescent prostitutes in motion. The photographs were generally comical due to those vulgar colonial expressions that so wretchedly twisted their subjects’ faces. I was very young, but already aggravated by those postcards, brimming as they were with such dramatic perverseness that they made me burst out laughing. As if this laughter were a form of catharsis, banishing any thoughts of their indecency, of the expropriation of those nubile bodies, lopsided buildings, or those bearded and moustachioed French soldiers posing in ghastly whorehouses, in those weirdly decorated studios, striking poses so unlikely that they gave the soldiers hilarious, sly expressions.

The photographs were miserable and colonial because they ignored their desired subject’s grief, as seen through the eyes of a voracious and cannibalistic other.

This was just as true of the postcards depicting Algerians hanging from worm-eaten gallows, which European Algerians would send to their loved ones, their parents or their friends back in France, emblazoned with the generic caption ‘From Algeria with love.’ I had a whole collection of those horrific photographs, which I hid from the rest of my family. Above all from my faint-hearted mother, as well as from Zygote, my younger brother, who was all too capable of sticking them under her nose just to frighten her.

Each time I looked at this photo of Omar, I felt bogged down, caught between hysterical laughter and tears. I could hardly recognise him, apart from the sadness radiating not just from his eyes but from his whole being. Besides, I thought he looked ridiculous in that oversized uniform and crooked cap, with that ancient rifle he hadn’t yet learnt to shoulder with pride.

What really upset me, however, was that Omar hadn’t scribbled anything more than a place name, Chaabet Lakhra, and a date – 14/05/60 – on the back of that shabby photograph.

Worse still, I was angry that he looked awful in that uniform and that idiotic cap – he whose elegance and wardrobes full of clothes I had found alluring from the very first.

Omar was badly wounded a few weeks after the photo was taken and evacuated to Moscow. He was on this flight, where I so often ran into him, because we both regularly took the shuttle between Algiers and Constantine. I found these all-too-frequent encounters with Omar intriguing. He made the trip for professional reasons, whereas I did it to spend a few weeks in our large family home in Constantine, situated at an altitude of almost 3,000 feet in the dry, invigorating climate I loved so dearly.

Having barely sat down, Omar abruptly said, as if to someone behind me and without looking at me, ‘You know, you still haven’t understood any of this...’ He didn’t finish his sentence. I didn’t need him to. I knew what he wanted to say because he’d said it time and again since 1962, the year of Independence, when we’d begun our studies at the University of Algiers. We had almost lost touch since we graduated. We merely bumped into each other. It was bizarre. Often by chance. Often because he made sure to appear out of nowhere and block my path so he could tell me about his past, or rather give his own take on his past. Or rather his father’s and younger brother’s past. Or rather of this sense of guilt... As if we did it on purpose, this bumping into one another. And yet that wasn’t the case. Though even if we refused to admit it, we were drawn to one another.

At the beginning, my immediate reaction had been to feel affronted by his attempts to convince me by rattling off the same old speech. Each time we arrived in Constantine, we would while our nights away talking and drinking red wine and whisky. He always began with that irksome, age-old refrain: You know... Finally one night, weary of it all, I wound up saying, ‘Yes I know, and you’re right. Fine, I’m in the wrong. But that’s all over and done with. You were exceptional. You didn’t shy away from your responsibilities. You followed your own path right through to the end. Swam against the tide. Your time in the bush fighting for the resistance, your brilliance at university, your colossal achievements. You made it. You studied in Chicago! You’ve become the finest architect in the country. You’re known the world over. And to boot,’ – I was trying to get a laugh out of him – ‘you’re the best-dressed man in Algeria. So you know, all the rest, the past... I give up, you’re right.’

He flew into a rage. A cold, frightening fury. He was still seething even after emptying a few bottles of wine or a bottle of Scotch: ‘So is that what this is all about? You’re trying to get one over on me. You say I’m right when you don’t actually think so. I don’t need your pity... Some more Glenfiddich? No, I don’t need your pity because I’m not pathetic. You praise my elegance, my accomplishments, but when it comes to the rest, what really matters to me – because that’s the only thing that matters to me – you give in to me as though I were a spoilt child. You let me down...’

I tried to cut him off: ‘I don’t care about your father and your younger brother. You’re my only concern. I loved your father dearly, Omar, but he was a cop! And not just any old cop. Police Commissioner in the toughest, most accursed city during the resistance. The Police Commissioner in Batna throughout the whole war. Batna was hell on earth! Appointed for life. And you – you...’

Omar had fallen silent. I wanted him to fight back, scream, hit me... but he simply retreated into his shell, refilled our glasses and, after an unbearable fifteen minutes of silence, said, ‘You never understood...’ Then he said nothing more for the rest of the night, just sat there sipping his drink. As if he were dead.

I wound up leaving without even saying goodbye. Without saying a word. He did the same. He sapped my energies. Drove me crazy. I didn’t want to play his game, but I always ended up getting mired in his pathological guilt. I began to have my doubts.

That day at the airport in Algiers, as I was boarding the plane to Constantine, I decided to have it out with him, exorcise his demons, relieve him of his grief. I had an hour to persuade him. The duration of the flight between Algiers and Constantine. One hour. Just one hour.

The plane sped down the runaway for take-off.

Chapter II

I'VE NEVER LIKED HAPPY PEOPLE. Happiness has always bored me. Omar was miserable, and that’s why I loved him. I relied on his misery and the profound respect I secretly harboured for him. My dealings with him were nonetheless strange. It was not like me to benefit from the misfortunes of others, but I found the drama and confusion surrounding his destiny fascinating, because his experience encapsulated my country’s tragic history. It simply radiated out of Omar, his family, his refusal to negotiate the labyrinth of events with honesty and lucidity; a kind of x-ray from which one could read – albeit with difficulty – the collective history of Algeria, one that was both frightening and painful.

I felt saturated with Omar’s pain each time I saw him, catching fleeting hints of his mental torture. All those scars my cousin accumulated after those traumatic events were continually exacerbated by fresh additions, each with its own hidden meanings, which could only be distinguished by vague, subtle nuances. These scars were swelled by the effects of a memory that had become confused by dint of his constant brushes with death. Omar had gone from one peril to another, from one loss of consciousness to the next, until his memories had grown heavier and more inward-looking.

Omar had but a single aim in life – to try and escape from the confusion inflicted by that falsified reality, from a father who had collaborated with the French and a brother who worked for the OAS. A reality that had been distorted and disordered for reasons that yet eluded him. He’d been striving to shake off all these gnawing regrets not only since he had first understood his family history, but forever. A genuine symmetry had nonetheless always existed between the various diverging points of view within the family nucleus, which overflowed with emotions, betrayals, acts of cowardice and heroism – both Omar and his grandfather had been staunch nationalists at first and rebels afterwards; with closely related fantasies that were quite capable of suddenly vanishing, contradicting themselves, running up against stubborn fact, disobeying all the known rules of paramnesia, splitting themselves into two, shrinking away, and so on. My relationship with Omar was therefore taxing, but excitingly complex.

He didn’t remain in the bush for long. He was gravely wounded after a few months and evacuated to a hospital in Moscow.

Moscow. The hospital. The night scattered into the air where it dissolved. As soon as the first particles of light bombarded the atmosphere, Omar woke up,