The art of losing, p.12
The Art of Losing, page 12
* * *
That year, surrounded by his clan, he harvests the olives, not knowing that he will never again see these trees heavy with fruit.
How is a country born? And who brings it into the world?
In certain parts of Kabylia, there is a folk tradition some call “the sleeping child.” It explains how a woman can give birth even though her husband has been gone for years: according to tradition, having been fathered by the husband, the child then dozes off in the womb and does not emerge until much later.
Algeria is like that sleeping child: it was conceived long ago, so long that no one can agree on a date, and for years it slept, until the spring of 1962. At the time of the Évian Accords, the FLN insist on the fact that Algeria is regaining its independence.
Almost half a century after the accords were signed, Naïma writes up the following account of the agreements, a Word document with lots of edits and italics.
Agreements Relating to Algerian Independence
Declarations Drawn Up in Common Agreement at Evian, March 18, 1962, by the Delegations of the Government of the French Republic and the Algerian National Liberation Front
I. CEASE-FIRE AGREEMENT IN ALGERIA
ARTICLE 1
Military operations and all armed action throughout the Algerian territory will be brought to an end on March 29, 1962, at 12 o’clock noon.
ARTICLE 2
The two parties pledge themselves to prohibit any recourse to acts of collective or individual violence.
Any action of a clandestine nature and in violation of public order must cease.
II. GOVERNMENT DECLARATIONS OF MARCH 19, 1961, RELATING TO ALGERIA
GENERAL DECLARATION
The French people, by the referendum of January 8, 1961, recognized the right of the Algerians to choose by means of a consultation of direct and universal suffrage their political destiny in relation to the French Republic.
The formation, after self-determination, of an independent and sovereign state appearing to conform to the realities of the Algerian situation, and in these conditions, cooperation between France and Algeria corresponding to the interests of the two countries, the French Government considers, together with the FLN, that the solution of the independence of Algeria in cooperation with France is the one which corresponds to this situation.
CHAPTER I
Organization of Public Powers During the Transition Period and Self-Determination Guarantees
a) The self-determination consultation will permit the electors to make known whether they want Algeria to be independent and in that case whether they want France and Algeria to cooperate in the conditions defined by the present declarations.
c) The freedom and the genuineness of the consultation will be guaranteed in conformity with the regulations fixing the conditions for the self-determination consultation.
h) The full exercise of individual and public liberties will be re-established within the shortest possible time.
i) The FLN will be considered a legal political body.
l) Persons in refuge abroad will be able to return to Algeria. Persons who have been relocated will be able to return to their regular place of residence.
CHAPTER II
Independence and Cooperation
A) Independence of Algeria
I. The Algerian State will exercise its full and complete sovereignty both internally and externally. This sovereignty will be exercised in all spheres, in particular in defense and foreign affairs.
The Algerian State will freely establish its own institutions and will choose the political and social regime which it deems to be most in conformity with its interests. On the international level, it will define and implement in full sovereignty the policy of its choice.
The Algerian State will subscribe unreservedly to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and will base its institutions on democratic principles and on equality of political rights between all citizens without discrimination of race, origin or religion.
II. Individual Rights and Liberties and Their Guarantees
1. Common provisions
(As she is typing the lines below into her keyboard, Naïma is struck by their remarkable clarity and brevity. They were written to protect her grandfather. These few lines below—Naïma thinks as she types them out—also proved to be remarkably ineffective.)
No one shall be subject to police or legal measures, to disciplinary sanctions or to any discrimination on account of:
—opinions expressed at the time of events that occurred in Algeria before the day of the self-determination vote;
—acts committed at the time of these same events before the day of the cease-fire proclamation;
No Algerian shall be forced to leave Algerian territory or be prevented from leaving it.
2. Provisions concerning French citizens of ordinary civil status
(For Naïma, the articles that follow, those most cluttered with figures and legal periods, are the least easy to read. In fact, she has simply copied-and-pasted them in imposing blocks, finding them impossible to paraphrase. These are the articles intended to protect those who would later be called pieds noirs. Naïma finds it funny—or tragic—to think that, in spite of the precision of the arrangements put in place, most of those to whom Article A guaranteed a place had left the country long before the time limit set out.)
a) For a period of three years from the day of self-determination, French citizens of ordinary civil status,
—born in Algeria and giving proof of ten years of permanent and regular residence on Algerian territory on the day of self-determination;
—or giving proof of ten years of permanent and regular residence on Algerian territory on the day of self-determination and whose father or mother was born in Algeria and fulfills or could have fulfilled the conditions for exercising civil rights;
—or giving proof of twenty years of permanent and regular residence on Algerian territory on the day of self-determination,
will enjoy, by right, Algerian civil rights and will be considered therefore as French nationals exercising Algerian civil rights.
At the end of the above-mentioned three-year period, they shall acquire Algerian nationality by an application for registration or confirmation of their registration on the voters’ lists.
b) In order to assure to Algerians of French civil status the protection of their person and their property and their normal participation in Algerian life, the following measures are provided for:
—They will have a just and genuine part in public affairs;
(How, Naïma wonders, can anyone ensure a just and genuine participation? In fact, what do the two adjectives mean in the previous sentence?)
—In the assemblies, their representation shall correspond to their actual numbers. In the various branches of the civil service, they will be assured of fair participation;
—Their property rights will be respected. No dispossession measures will be taken against them without their being granted fair compensation agreed upon in advance;
—They will receive guarantees appropriate to their cultural, linguistic and religious particularities. They will retain their personal status, which will be respected and enforced by Algerian courts comprised of magistrates of the same status. They will use the French language within the assemblies and in their relations with the public authorities.
(Chapter 2 included a capital “B” section, but it is one she never rereads. It deals with mining rights for hydrocarbons that France refuses to cede to the newly independent state. It is not news to Naïma that colonialism was pursued via multiple means, many of them devious. She has seen the word “Françafrique” in newspapers since she was old enough to read. Even so, she notices that subsection B and its articles take up more space in the Évian Accords than the measures intended to protect her grandfather. She notes the fact, nothing more, with the feigned casualness that strains to say so much while saying nothing.)
CHAPTER III
Settlement of Military Questions
The French forces, whose numbers will gradually be reduced as of the cease-fire, will be withdrawn from the frontiers of Algeria when self-determination is realized. Their total force will be reduced to 80,000 men within a period of twelve months from the time of self-determination. The repatriation of these forces will have to be completed by the end of a second twenty-four-month period.
—Algeria shall lease to France the use of the Mers-el-Kébir base for a fifteen-year period, which may be renewed by agreement between the two countries;
—Algeria shall also grant France the use of a number of military airfields, the terrains, sites and installations necessary to her.
CHAPTER IV
Settlement of Litigation
France and Algeria will resolve differences that may arise between them by means of peaceful settlement.
Hamid runs along the road, streaming with sweat, his knees aching so much it feels they might dislocate.
“You go to the shop, you give the money to Hamza, and you come straight back,” Ali made him promise. “You’re not to dawdle along the way, and you definitely don’t stop.”
Hamid promised, and, despite the blazing sun, he runs as fast as he can. He is intoxicated by the sense of his own speed. Suddenly a man appears in the middle of the road, arms outstretched to catch the boy. When Hamid slows, he smells the stench of his own sweat.
The man in the middle of the road smiles. His fine white teeth glitter in the midst of the black-and-red thatch of his beard. They look as though they are resting there, in a nest of hair.
“You’re Ali’s little boy, aren’t you?”
He looks happy to have run into him. Hamid nods.
“Are you running errands for your father?”
Another nod. The smile broadens.
“Can you do one for me, too?”
Hamid nods, skipping from one foot to another. He hopes it will not take too long. He wants to set off again, to run so fast he can outrun the smell of his own body.
“Tell your father…” the man says, slowly running a finger across his throat, “that any day now, we’re going to cut his throat.”
He says it with a smile, as though trying not to scare the boy, as though it is a settled and pleasant prospect. Years later, Hamid will still wonder whether the man was trying to help them, to warn them so they could escape the knife he mentioned, or whether he was simply sharing a shimmering fragment of the radiant future the FLN had planned for everyone. This is how things are going to be, all right, thank you.
Part of him still likes to think that it was Youcef who sent him this last messenger, in memory of the old days down by the river.
* * *
Hamid repeats the smiling man’s words to his father, studying his face for the slightest flicker. He longs for Ali to dismiss the threat with a wave of the hand and go on drinking lebn—buttermilk—stately, imperturbable. But Ali turns pale and sets his glass down on the table with a clack.
“Who was he?”
Without realizing, he has grabbed Hamid by the collar and is shaking him. Little Dalila covers her eyes.
“One of Farid’s sons, I think,” Hamid stammers.
Ali curls his lips into a sneer.
“He said that to you? He is planning to avenge the country? The guy’s a Martian! He didn’t start believing in independence until after the accords were signed! And now he’s swaggering around saying he’s going to kill the French. That guy would have sold his father and mother to France, if France had had any use for them!”
* * *
It is a phrase Hamid will hear many times in the years that follow: He’s a Martian. Eventually he will come to understand that it refers to those who joined the FLN in March 1962, when the Évian Accords were signed. But right now it signifies nothing, it doesn’t even evoke the fluorescent-green aliens he will later discover in the murky pages of comic books. It is an insult that hangs in the air, devoid of meaning.
* * *
Over the remains of dinner, the sibilant whispers of Djamel, Hamza, and Ali drift through the walls and reach the sleepless children.
“It’s your fault, Ali. It’s your fault, my brother. Why did you have to go around telling everyone you sided with the French? Now the FLN are going to come and kill us all.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Ali says. “I never said I sided with the French and I’ve never so much as touched a gun. No one has any reason to hold a grudge against us. People asked me about the families up on the ridge, and I answered. I told them so-and-so is so-and-so’s cousin. But it was common knowledge. They asked me to tell them about such-and-such a place, and I told them, where the river ran, where the rocks were. But that’s all. I’m no traitor.”
“Even if you’d done only half of that, they’d say it was too much. Do you really think the Amrouches need proof to come and take our farm from us? Don’t you realize that this is exactly what they’ve been waiting for? They’ve been salivating at the prospect for years. And now Farid’s sons are getting involved!”
“They’ll take everything! They’re bound to take everything. And it’s all your fault, Ali.”
“So you’re saying you were a mujahid?” Ali says spitefully. “You’re saying that’s why they released you without so much as plucking a single hair?”
“I don’t know why they released me!” Hamza roars.
They fall silent, shattered, exhausted, three hulking bodies crushed beneath the weight of what is to come.
“They’re going to set the dogs of independence on us…”
* * *
A warm spring turns into a sweltering summer, the mocking songs that follow Ali wherever he goes turn into insults. He cannot say when the change occurred, it seems it evolved naturally, gradually, the way the buds are slowly transformed into flowers and then fruits. Men standing by the roadside with hoes over their shoulders whistle between their teeth when he passes. One by one, the laborers who till his land stop coming to work. Ali and his brothers have no choice but to once again pick up their tools. Every night, hands made soft by years of idleness blister and bleed.
One morning, Ali notices that children are throwing stones at him. It is something that could be terrifying, but they do it as children do everything: with a mixture of cruelty and beaming delight, babbling all the while.
Around the deserted stall and around the barns, strange men prowl, their heads bowed, their eyes shining. When asked why they are there, they say they have come to buy olives, but when Ali holds out a bucket or a jar, they wave their arms wildly.
“No, no, we don’t want them now. We’ll be back later. Do you understand? We’ll be back…”
And they stalk off, laughing, rolling their eyes in disbelief.
* * *
Yema has decided not to leave the house, since a man at the village well insulted her and ripped off her yellow headscarf fringed with black. At night, as she falls asleep, she huddles tightly against Ali so that her arms, her legs, are screened by his body.
* * *
Slipping silently out of the house before his parents wake up, Hamid discovers that someone has shat on their doorstep. Curiously, he does not find the smell offensive. It smells like rotting flowers.
* * *
The following day, he finds an ear. This time he goes in search of his father.
* * *
The growing tensions can be measured by the mounting stacks of sandbags against the barrack walls. The soldiers often asked Ali to help unload trucks, and the weight of these natural bulwarks made his back creak. That June morning, the entire barracks has an inner lining of sacking and sand that muffles every sound in the shriveled courtyard.
As usual, Ali asks to speak to the captain. Scarcely looking up from his magazine, the soldier on sentry duty tells him the captain is out.
“Well, who can I talk to?”
“Sergeant Daumasse is here.”
Daumasse has the face of a rat, or a cuckoo, with his jutting Adam’s apple. This is the officer who watched his men beat old mother Tassadit without intervening, the man who gunned down Poor Fatima and Rafik in cold blood. Ali hates the man and the feeling is mutual: Daumasse cannot help it, he hates all natives. He thinks every last one of them should have been gassed, the way Americans gassed mosquitoes with DDT when they landed on the Pacific Islands. It was the only way to make the place inhabitable.
“What d’you want?” the sergeant asks.
He asks only as a matter of form.
“I need you to protect my house,” Ali says.
“That’s impossible.”
“Then give us guns.”
“Impossible.”
“Then move us somewhere else, to one of the French bases.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Well, throw us in jail, then! At least we’ll be safe there.”
The sergeant shrugs.
“The FLN has promised not to seek revenge on the harkis.”
Ali lets out a bitter, dissonant laugh that echoes through his nose.
“And you believe them?”
Daumasse is well aware of what has been going on around the country in recent months: the kangaroo courts set up in villages, the scores settled in the dead of night, the roadside ambushes. News that the accords had been signed had not yet reached those in remote rural areas before the “widows of the liberation” began to blossom.
Ali shifts his weight from one foot to the other, his hulking frame swaying like the needle of a metronome as he stares into the eyes of the increasingly impatient sergeant. It’s always the same with fucking bougnoules: give them a hand and they want the whole arm. Daumasse cannot help but wonder which shit-for-brains son of a bitch came up with the bright idea of enlisting them.
“Listen, pal,” he says in a last effort, “all you had to do was choose the right side.”
