Morituri by Yasmina Khadra

From my old armchair, I watch the dawn taking its time to rise. The shots and the sirens have not stopped hurling their invective at one another the whole night long. Flames have devoured a depot on the heights of the quarter. A bomb exploded behind the hill. After that there was this damned draught of air, which teases the knocking spirits of my apartment block and which has forced me to remain on my guard until the morning.
From my window I can see the itching misery of the Casbah, its blackness is like slops, and, at the end, the Mediterranean. There was a time when, from the vantage point of a 'zealous patriot,' it seemed to me these hovels, bruised and battered by the war and disappointments, were actually the birthplace of nobility. Then I thought that 'my' alleyways, with their parchment configurations, contained the essence of valor. It was the time when Algiers had the whiteness of doves and innocence, and where, shining in the pupils of our kids, the earth's horizons saw their virginity restored. It was a time of slogans, of chauvinism; the time when the Lie, more adept than a mythical ancient, knew how to court us whilst every evening we went to bed on a day of distressing emptiness.
Today, from beneath the ruins of abuses, the Nation raises its robes to reveal terrifying deformities; even the most horrifying of barbarities cannot rival the ugly excesses of my proud haven. Henceforth in my country, almost to the point of no return, there are kids whom they machine-gun simply because they go to school, and young girls they decapitate because one must strike fear in others. Henceforth in my country, with some prayers to the good Lord, there are days that get up simply to go away, and nights which are only black when we have to account to our consciences.
Mina wriggles beneath the covers. Her virginal voice reaches me in a sleepy breath: Come to bed.
- It's six AM.
She raises herself on an elbow, her look full of bewilderment: You worry me.
You're right to be worried. I haven't taken out life insurance.
Even as I answer her, I am conscious of my spitefulness. But I can't help it. I know that I risk my skin every day and it gives me the shits.

*

Lino intercepts me on the threshold of the station. There is a spider's web on the right-hand lens of his glasses.
- I trod on it, he admits in order to arouse my compassion.
- That proves that you're still standing on your feet.
With his stress-racked finger he indicates the waiting room:
-Ait Meziane has been waiting for you for the past hour.
-The great comedian? I inquire enthusiastically.
However, the Ait Meziane who is moping in the waiting room in no way resembles the performer upon whom all the spotlights of the footlights were trained: a pitiful washed out remnant of a man, as faceless as his shadow, he has the night on his face. He stares at the toes of his shoes, his fingers remain inextricably locked.
- What has got you in such a state? I say, attempting to put him at his ease.
Without saying a word, he hands me an envelope. It's a threatening letter, signed "Abou Kalysbe." It warns the performer not to go anywhere near the theater, to stop frequenting these "aides of Satan" of intellectuals and to pay the mufti, in guise of a contribution, the modest sum of 100,000 dinars. I sit down facing him, trying to downplay the situation.
-This has to be a practical joke.
Meziane manages a derisory smile.
-Do you find that people here make jokes.
I am embarrassed. People in his situation are legion. At the beginning they were provided with discreet police surveillance, which tried to keep an eye on the vicinity, then, with the demand becoming increasingly heavy, and our losses more and more stinging, each one was more or less left to look out for himself, relying on the good luck of the elder of the tribe and on the blundering of the executioners.
-You know me, Llob. We were brats together, rubbing the bottoms of our pants on the same sidewalks. I am not one to sound the alarm the moment a flea appears on my pillow. But this time I have the feeling that my smile is liable to vanish altogether.
I nod gently, incapable of offering a single word of comfort.
-I don't engage in politics, he goes on. I steer clear of controversy. I only fight for laughter, Llob. My sole desire is to remove tension, to entertain...
-Above all, don't search for any reprehensible attitude in yourself, Ait. That's not what motivates them.
-What should I do? he asks impatiently. My suitcase or my prayer?
-Let's not give way to panic. There must surely be a way. You have friends in Oran, or else in Constantine. Get yourself lost for a bit and wait for the storm to blow over.
-They will find me and kill me.
- Leave the country...
-No, he cries. Don't ask me to exile myself in Europe. It's true, they are safe, the people on the other bank, but I am incapable of vegetating more than twenty kilometers away from my housing project. In any case, I don't know why I came to bother you, overwhelmed as you are.
He rises. Like a curtain on a stage of shame. The wings of his scorched soul seem to me all at once as opaque as the depths of the sea…I feel ashamed to see him depart like this, disappointed and lost, like a hope torn to shreds at a time when the consciences are fossilized.

*

When Ghoul Malek ordered me to come and see him at 13 Rue des Pyramides, I nearly drowned in my glass. An influential member of the old, ruling oligarchy, Malek had been a particularly feared big brother in the days of the single party. When he appeared on TV, it was enough to make people want to barricade themselves behind their curtains. Among his prerogatives were the summary execution of 'undesirables,' changing the laws, making women abort and aborting social projects; in short, he had the power of day and night.
Since the hysteria of October 1988, he has cultivated the impression of having retired from the fray. In reality, he continues to pull the strings from his majestic property at Hydra, and even though he no longer appears on the TV screens, he was such a bogeyman in his day, that his reputation still haunts people's minds.
Consequently, when his voice rang out at the other end of the line --- if you'll forgive the expression --- something froze in my underpants.
I arrive at 13 Rue des Pyramides a little before 10 PM . It's raging with rain. Flashes of schizoid lightning hurl their anathema over a supremely impassible Hydra. I maneuver my go-cart onto the stone path of a fir-lined alley and roll for about a hundred meters before reaching the palace. It takes me a hell of a time to locate the doorbell among the buttons ornamenting the control panel at the entrance. The door opens on an albino gorilla.
- Superintendent L...
- Wipe your shoes on the doormat!
The tone is authoritarian, staggeringly hostile. Calmly, I wipe my old shoes on the doormat. Just as I am about to hang up my coat, the gorilla stops me hastily...
- You can keep it, Monsieur. The interview won't take long.
- I hope so, Snow White, I hope so.
My hot blood changes to nitroglycerin. This does not impress the animal who, after a withering glance, takes off towards a padded door. I relax by interesting myself in the luxury encircling me like a prisoner's iron collar, notice an African statuette, go to examine it more closely.
- Watch out for the alarm, snaps a voice behind me.
Monsieur Ghoul Malek is standing in the middle of the hall, elephantine. He resembles Orson Welles - though obviously without his talent. He is wearing a vast scarlet dressing gown and a cigar between his fingers, which sport a ring as big as a shellfish. I sketch a purely professional smile and extend a hand, which remains humiliatingly suspended in mid-air.
The old party boss walks around me, bends over the statuette.
-You left too quickly, the other evening, from my son-in-law's place.
- My tie was bothering me, monsieur.
He hems and haws, then referring to the statuette:
-I shall never understand why such a timeworn object costs the earth.
- The vagaries of fortune, I presume, Monsieur Malek.
I saw that he has started, but hid it well.
- Do you know anything about the plastic arts, Superintendent?
-I manage now and again to tell the difference between Salvador Dali and a house painter.
He shakes his head: They say that you are religious, Monsieur Llob.
- It makes one feel good.
- Islamist?
- Moslem.
-Well, well...
-Monsieur, it's after 10 AM and I would like to get home before the curfew.
Calmly he turns around and stares at me.
-They also say that you are a good detective.
- That proves that they talk too much.
He suddenly plants a photo under my nostrils.
-My daughter, Sabrine.
-She's beautiful.
-She has disappeared.
I nod gently. For no apparent reason. Probably out of one-party habit.
- Does she ever leave home?
-She had no reason to do so.
-I see. How long ago did she disappear?
- Three or four weeks.
- She isn't with friends, relatives?
- Superintendent, he is already tiring, I chose you because I don't want this affair to be public knowledge, for one thing. Secondly, my daughter never goes absent without leaving a number where we can contact her. She also knows how to use a phone.
-So I'd assume…
-Thank you , Superintendent, you can leave.
The flour-covered gorilla has reappeared to see me out.
-I am sorry, a photo just isn't…
-On the contrary. It is sufficient when one is a good detective. Good evening.
Indolent pachyderm, he disappears behind the padded door.
-Follow me, burps the albino at me, breathing down the nape of my neck.
I follow him. Docile. Once on the threshold I take out a ten-dinar note and slip it into his pocket:
-Buy yourself a less troubling air, Monsieur Yeti.
Imperturbable, the albino take out the note and stuffs it into my mouth. I don't have time to catch him: the door slams in my face.