Chaos of the Senses (21 page)

As a child I would often sneak a look inside that bag as though it were a chest full of wonders. I would sit on the edge of the bed, dreaming of a women's world that as of yet I knew nothing about. I would look at my mother's things and dream of having a body just like hers on which to sport all that lovely lingerie.

I would dream and dream, close my mother's body up again in the bag, stash it in the wardrobe, and rush out of the room before being taken by surprise by my other mother, the one that had no body.

I found myself now with my mother the ‘Hajja', whose body had changed since the days of my childhood. As she had when I was a little girl, she led the way, and I followed her unquestioningly from one room to another through the vast Turkish bath. The rooms of the bath were of different temperatures, growing hotter the farther in one went. My mother insisted on staying in the third, and hottest, of the rooms. I made no objection despite the fact that this was the room I hated the most.

I walked after her gingerly over a wet tile floor that seemed all too ready for someone to slip and fall on it, then shatter into a million pieces. I remembered once seeing a woman fall right in front of me. She'd been holding an infant who fell out of her arms and died within hours at the hospital.

As I entered the room, steam rose from pools situated along its walls. A child's cry could be heard here, women's laughter there.

Without question, I sat down in front of the first pool I came to. Or rather, I did have one question: Why was it that, ever since I'd been a young girl, I hated to sit in rooms that were devoid of anything but steam and water, and whose only furnishings consisted of women's naked bodies? Was it out of respect for femininity, which I had always expected to be more beautiful than bodies that had lost their natural contours? Or was it because from the very beginning I'd been destined to be a creature of paper and ink whose existence was imperilled by these prodigious amounts of water and steam?

My mother sat down beside me and placed her things on the tile floor. As for me, the only things I had were some clothes that I'd left outside, and which I had brought in her honour in case we ran into someone who knew me. Disturbed by the thought of
such an eventuality, I wrapped my towel around my body again and secured it mechanically around my bosom.

Suddenly I heard my mother's voice repeating words that I knew all too well from having heard them so many times in this very place. From the time she was a teenager, she'd been ashamed of her femininity and had hidden inside of towels with the insistence of someone denying an accusation.

This is a place where you learn from the glances of others how to deny your body, persecute your desires and wash your hands of your femininity. People here teach you that not only is sex shameful, but so too femininity, along with everything that bespeaks it.

As usual my mother yelled at me, ‘Take that towel off !' Her words led me to new questions.

Since she had given birth to me, did she think of my body as a personal possession that she was entitled to flaunt before others as one of her accomplishments, finding in it some solace or compensation for what her own body had become?

Suddenly I became aware of one of the reasons behind my complex, distant relationship to this place. In this city, where there was nowhere that one could describe as intimate or private, the Turkish bath was the place where the sanctity and modesty of people's bodies were routinely violated. They were placed under bright lights and subjected to women's curious stares, while hands passed over them in succession, rubbing, massaging, rinsing and dowsing them with huge quantities of water as though they wanted to purge them of their womanhood.

So was womanhood a kind of ritual impurity? Or did these women, most of whom went through their entire lives without ever denuding themselves in front of a man, have some sort of
libidinous relationship with these huge quantities of water, which they poured over their bodies pail after pail for hours on end with a mysterious sort of enjoyment, and an utter preoccupation with the womanly aspects of their physical selves? It was as though they had come here for a rendezvous with their own bodies, and for no other reason. Or are all women, regardless of their nationality or their age, the granddaughters of Cleopatra, who ruled Egypt during its glory days without ever entirely leaving her bathroom?

Whether collectly or mistakenly, these women were of the belief that after every bath they would go back home to take up their seats on the ‘throne' of the marriage bed, whose crown they would wear for a few brief moments – in the dark – before resuming their routine lives again.

The dark! As I sat gazing at these bodies whose femininity had been so disfigured, with their flabby bellies and drooping breasts, I suddenly saw one of the blessings of the dark, and I understood why God in his infinite wisdom had created darkness as a way of making it possible for his creatures to make love when their physical appearance had ceased to be conducive to sexual attraction. Otherwise, what man or woman, however wild their desires and however drunk they happened to be, would feel like making love with the lights on?

I kept these comments to myself. I also kept my towel wrapped around me in protest against being associated with this category of women. Each of them sat beside a small pool surrounded by streams that were either red or black depending on the colour of the henna that she used on her hair, which as she washed it, turned the Turkish bath's tile floor into a multicoloured Danube.

Suddenly there entered three middle-aged women of mediocre beauty who nevertheless possessed a peculiar allure. They had walked in stark naked, flaunting their feminine charms in everyone's faces, whereas the custom was for women to come in wrapped in a towel, and only to take it off after they were seated.

For a moment they were the centre of attention, and they were pursued mercilessly by curious, disapproving glances from every direction. I gathered from my mother's insulting remarks about them that they were prostitutes. Prostitutes? Did such a profession still exist in this city? Other than on the pavements of rundown neighbourhoods where certain down-and-out women might work the streets, I didn't think it did.

Before I knew it the room had divided itself into two camps, one of them occupied by the ‘honourable women', and the other occupied by the ‘women of ill-repute'. The former proceeded to make comments about the latter, targeting them with gibes and derisive glances inspired by a sudden exaggerated sense of their own virtue and superiority. The targets of these taunts were unfazed, and the three newcomers acted as though they had the place to themselves, laughing loudly, washing and flirting with each other as if to get a rise out of their critics.

I took pleasure in my anomalous presence between the two sides, since I considered neither of them morally superior to the other. Surrounded by steam, water, unspoken desire and women's hypocrisy, I may have been secretly amusing myself by recording wry comments in my mind. After all, a writer, like any other ordinary human being, stands halfway between purity and sinfulness.

Every virtuous human being has just enough filth inside him that at any given moment it might surface and drown out his virtues, and that deep inside every bad person there is a spark of
goodness that's bound to shine out one day at the very moment when he least expects it. Similarly, every woman has the capacity to be either a saint or a whore, since she was created with both potentialities. But the more she leans towards one of the two, the more likely she is to shun and deride the other.

Her patience at an end, my mother began vigorously massaging my arms, refusing to turn me over to a masseuse. Then she went on badmouthing the ‘harlots', saying that large families had a custom of reserving the Turkish bath once a week and inviting relatives and friends to come at their expense. They did this in order to ensure that they didn't have to mix with strangers, including the seedy types that had infiltrated Constantine, violated its sanctity and insulted its population.

I was only pretending to listen to her, and made no reply. I was busy thinking about something that Sasha Guitry once said: ‘There aren't honourable women and dishonourable women. There are only dishonourable women, and ugly women.'

As I left the Turkish bath that day, Sasha Guitry was still on my mind, and when I went home that afternoon in the rain, I recalled a certain sarcastic comment of his: ‘Don't make love on Saturday nights. What will you do then if it rains on Sunday morning?' He was poking fun at husbands and wives who make love out of boredom on Saturday nights, then don't know what to do with themselves if they have to stay home the next day.

Even though it was a rainy Saturday, I decided that evening to go against Sasha Guitry's advice, since in our country Saturday isn't the last day of the week, but the first, which meant that my husband wouldn't be around the next day to share my boredom. Add to this the fact that I was coming back from a
Turkish bath that had set my desires aflame, and I was dying to give my womanhood to a man.

I didn't know, of course, that the mere fact of my intending to fall in love would be enough to turn the country upside down. Nor did I know that history was planning to give Algeria one of its greatest surprises on that day. President Chadli Bendjedid had chosen this particular Saturday, 11 January, 1992, to announce his resignation and the dissolution of Parliament during the eight o'clock news broadcast, a development which would usher the country into a constitutional labyrinth. I didn't blame Bendjedid for dumping cold water on my desires at night. After all, he'd been dumping cold water on the desires of an entire nation for years on end.

Chapter Five

Definitely

T
IME ALONE WILL MAKE
you sane when everyone else has gone mad. As for history, don't expect it to be in a hurry to say what it has to say in such cases. It's waiting for the right moment.

After a wait of twenty-eight years, an aeroplane landed on the tarmac. A man more than seventy-eight years old disembarked and walked across a red carpet with a bewildered look on his face.

Was it only a one-hour trip between his place of exile and his homeland? Then why had it taken him twenty-eight years to cover the distance?

A thin man with an upright posture, and tall as the truth is lofty, he was slightly stooped over, his hands were dry and rough, and the bones in his face and hands were prominent.

Not long before history began, his name had been Mohamed Boudiaf. He lived in a small city in Morocco where, with his rough and calloused hands, he had run a small brick factory. Since igniting the spark of Algeria's War of Independence in
November 1954, he had lived far removed from all political activity other than the memories of a revolution that had spurned him, and news that drifted in from a country whose rulers had deleted his name even from their history textbooks.

Hence, he no longer had a name, from the time he set foot on the homeland's soil, his name became ‘history'. (But isn't history what prevents the future from coming to be?)

He had been ageless before, but now he was as old as his dreams, which had arrived on the scene two or more generations late.

Now at last he was learning to tread over the soil of the homeland in which he had never before walked with freedom or safety. France, which had pursued him doggedly, found that the only way it could detain him and his comrades was to hijack their aeroplane in 1956 as it crossed the Mediterranean Sea from Morocco to Tunisia. It diverted the plane to France, taking Boudiaf and his four companions – Ahmed Ben Bella, Aït Ahmed, Mohamed Khider and Rabah Bitat – with their hands bound towards their various places of detention. It did so to the astonishment of the entire world, which had yet to hear of the innovative practice of hijacking. It was met with outraged demonstrations on the part of the Arab masses, which during that same year had been filled with pan-Arab fervour and zeal by Abdel Nasser's rousing rhetoric.

It was only days before
The Voice of the Arabs
began broadcasting lively tunes demanding the five men's release. These anthems were soon taken up by young and old alike accompanied by women's ululations. One of them ran, ‘In the name of the heroes five, O France, we will have our revenge!' And we cried.

*

History, on the other hand, was laughing, since it alone knew what no one else could ever have anticipated. In June 1963, not long after Algeria won its independence and the five revolutionary leaders found themselves free men, the then-new president Ben Bella, who had once been Boudiaf 's comrade in arms, had Boudiaf arrested as he left his home. Boudiaf was led from one place to another until he ended up in a prison somewhere in a trackless wasteland. Thus it happened that the Algerian revolution's leading man suffered the disgrace of discovering that he had a homeland more savage than his enemies.

Ben Bella himself made the same discovery two years later when, in June 1965, Boumédienne removed him from power and threw him in prison, from which he emerged fifteen years later a wizened old man. As for Boudiaf, who had never demanded power for himself, but had refused to fight to free a nation from imperialism just to surrender it to the tyranny of a one-party system, he saw no difference between the two rulers who had come to power since the revolution.

On the day he disappeared, none of his comrades asked where he'd been taken. They were too busy dividing up the spoils!

But despite his long absence, Boudiaf re-entered the scene with a powerful presence.

Just like that, after twenty-eight years, his enemies had remembered him again. Sated and bloated, they had filled their pockets at the expense of the Algerian people. Then they had withdrawn, leaving a country that had been mortgaged to the World Bank – though with high hopes – for several generations to come. Boudiaf was the only one with any degree of integrity or self-restraint, and who had never once sat at the table around which dubious power deals had been struck.

Consequently, he was the only one whose name could restore confidence to a people who had lost all confidence in everything and everyone after seeing Ali Baba and the forty thieves lead one corrupt government after another.

They told him, ‘Algeria needs you. You're the only one who can save her!' – words to which his ageing frame could only respond with a loving ‘Yes!'

The old man rose, washed the clay off his hands, and purged his memory of hatred and bitterness, since he had always been of the belief that you can't build something with hatred. A man with an extraordinary ability to forgive, he embraced those who had exiled him and came home. Never once had Algeria called upon him but that he had answered her call.

Behold the man . . .

He was wearing a suit that he had never expected to wear for an occasion such as this.

He was learning to walk before us, to smile at us. He raised his right hand in a bashful salute, like someone apologizing for a hand that had never held anything but a weapon or fired bricks, and which saw itself as unprepared for such a role.

Behold the man, Boudiaf . . .

He had come to us on foot, treading on dreams. He was received with national flags by a generation that until that day had never heard his name, but which saw in his stature the history of Algeria in its legendary greatness.

Behold the man . . .

It wasn't his feet that kissed the soil of the homeland at every step. Rather, it was the soil of Algeria herself that celebrated his every step and kissed the soles of his shoes. Meanwhile, people's hearts cried, ‘Stop, history! One of your men has come to us!'

January 14, 1992 was exceptional even in its weather. The rain that had been falling in torrents for days suddenly stopped, and out came the sun. It was as though Nature was herself in harmony with what Algerians were feeling, or as though she wanted to conspire with history to give Boudiaf the best day of his life.

All afternoon Algerians' eyes were glued to their television screens. They wanted to see and hear this man who had entered the Silence Party thirty years before. What would he say?

Everyone wanted, if only with their eyes, to kiss this man whose comrades affectionately dubbed him ‘Mr Kindness and Patriotism' and whom all of us revered in our hearts as a father. Since Boumédienne's death, we had been orphans, suffering an emotional bankruptcy that surpassed the bankruptcy of our economy, and a national deficit of love even greater than the deficit in our budget.

We were looking for a man with the stature of Abdel Nasser, the eloquence of Boumédienne, and the integrity of Boudiaf. We were looking for a man who was as simple as we were, who would run his hand over our heads, pat us on the shoulder, tell us simple things we could believe, and promise us dreams that we knew he could make come true. We were looking for a man who would cry with us for everyone who had died without scrutinizing their political or religious affiliations, a man who would apologize to the living for those who had died, and to the dead for the assassination of their dreams.

We were looking for a man who, from the moment he stepped off the plane, would declare war on those who had assaulted our future and achieved glory for themselves by humiliating an entire nation. We were looking for a man who would say, ‘Algeria first!' and awaken our pride, and whose simple words would become a motto to live by.

We, of course, had been waiting for Boudiaf for as long as we could remember, yet without knowing it. But he, what had he been waiting for? One day he had said to his wife, ‘Even all this fanfare can't keep them from assassinating me. I don't trust them.' When she asked him if he had come with the intention of committing suicide, he replied – like someone who knows his fate is inescapable, ‘It's my duty. My only hope is that they'll give me some time.'

* * *

The next day the city woke up in the mood for a good debate, and I woke up in the mood to write. I couldn't see any better way to celebrate Boudiaf 's return than to go back to that notebook of mine.

I opened it at the place where, during a kiss four months earlier, both love and ink had run out on me.

My intention had been to write something about the present, to describe my wonder at the sight of Boudiaf. But my emotions turned my pen back to the past, awakening within me another man, a man who was bound to appear whenever I opened this notebook. It was a man who had once said to me, ‘I thought about how, if kisses die the way we do, the best time to die would be during a kiss.' Then he had left.

Ever since that day I had been nurturing memory with his feverish words lest the fires of love be extinguished while I waited for him.

Was it desire? The need to write? Or a kind of fate that makes every individual story parallel to some communal story, though we never know which of them is writing the other?

Otherwise, how is one to explain the surprise that was waiting for me three weeks after Boudiaf 's return? Never
once had I stopped feeling that I was going to meet him in some public place or other. Instead, however, I stumbled across him where I had least expected him to be: in my own home, on the pages of a newspaper lying neglected on the floor next to my husband's desk!

I love those presents that life gives you without any particular occasion, the kind that turn your life upside down with a simple coincidence. There are some that it flings on the ground in front of you so that when you bend down gratefully to pick them up, you realize you've stumbled serendipitously upon love!

And what if you've stumbled upon something else? After all, I don't think love has ever been in such close proximity to politics!

* * *

In a photo of Boudiaf with members of the National Assembly, I saw him, and could hardly believe my eyes. I fixed my gaze on his face in particular. I knew those features perfectly. That absent look was the same one that had given me pause on the day when he took off his shades to kiss me. The hair, the mouth, everything, I recognized it all. It was him!

I quickly reread the article under the photograph. Then I read it again slowly in hopes of finding some explanation for this man's presence in the picture.

I understood from the article that Boudiaf had decided to form the National Consultative Council, a body that would include numerous politicians who, known for their integrity and patriotism, hadn't been associated with any previous regime, to help him bring Algeria out of its political and legislative quagmire. I continued reading the article on the third page, which
included a number of photographs with captions identifying some of the council members. I was impressed by the number of writers and thinkers who had been appointed to the Council, noting that one of the individuals who had headed the Council on a periodic basis was none other than the renowned Abdelhamid Ben Hadouga, and that its membership included numerous women intellectuals, university professors and journalists in a country in which neither intellectuals nor women had ever been asked their opinion.

I looked over all the names and professions, and found not a single artist among them. I almost began to think I was deluded and that I was hallucinating his picture wherever I went, especially since I knew he was in Paris at the time. This being the case, it was highly unlikely that he would be taking part in a gathering of this nature unless he had returned from his trip.

Suddenly I thought of a way to put my doubts to rest. I headed for the telephone and dialled the number that my hand still knew by heart (or that my heart still knew by hand).

It was nine o'clock in the morning. I didn't stop to wonder whether it was an appropriate time to call, or if he would be the person to answer the phone. I didn't even stop to think about whether the number I was dialling with a trembling hand and a racing heart was right or not.

I wanted to hear him. At the very least, I wanted to hear the telephone ringing in the house where I had experienced love. I wanted it to wake up its furniture and bring its memory to life. On the second ring someone picked up the receiver, and my heart nearly pounded out of my chest.

I almost said something, but decided to wait for the person on the other end to speak first. After a short silence, I heard the
voice I'd waited for for so long that I no longer expected to hear it.

As if he had recognized me from my breathing, he asked me, ‘How are you?'

I could hardly believe what was happening to me.

‘Is that you?' I said.

Then, in the same tone of amazement, I asked, ‘How did you recognize me?'

‘From your silence,' he said with that endearing sarcasm of his. ‘Silence is our password.'

The only reply I could make was a stream of feverish words that I blurted out however they happened to come: ‘I've missed you! How could you have abandoned me and given me over to this crazy city? I want to see you. How can I see you? Answer me. Don't you know that my life is worth nothing without you? What have you done to me to make me love you this way?'

He made no reply, as though my words hadn't reached him. He only asked me, ‘Where are you calling from?'

‘From Constantine.'

‘Where exactly in Constantine?'

‘From home.'

‘Call me from somewhere else,' he told me.

‘Why?' I asked.

He didn't answer.

‘When?'

‘Whenever you'd like. I'll be home all morning.'

Then he hung up. All of this had happened within minutes, and all it had taken was those few minutes for me to go back to being the woman I had been several months before.