With one week left to decide what to pack, we each built ever-shrinking piles of personal effects—judicious nitpicking that had to fit inside the two yellow suitcases along with everyone else’s judicious nitpickings.
June 23, 1962
In spite of the previous month’s spring cleaning, Ma decided we must give our home the proverbial “coup de balai”—the sweeping one gives to a house, which also referred to the resolution of pending matters before starting anew.
We moaned and groaned but picked up brooms and rags.
“But, Ma,” Zizou argued, “We already cleaned the house. Why do it again, when we are not going to live here anymore?”
“Oui,” Yves said, “why should we clean for the guys who are going to steal our house from us?”
“We don’t want strangers to see our dirt.”
I almost laughed at my mother’s absurd assertion, but her dignified stance sealed my lips.
She stabbed a stubborn finger into the air. “Remember, ‘Cleanliness is Next to Godliness.’ ”
“Yaa, Ma,” Mireille said, then asked, “Is it like when you want us to wash between our toes and behind our ears and wear clean underwear, just in case we get into an accident?”
“Oui, ma fille. Something like that.”
Zizou’s eyes and mine examined an old water stain on the ceiling.
At first, I resented the redundant work but, as I went through the house with a mop and dust rag, the full impact of our looming loss hit me square in the belly. I knew every corner of this house as intimately as the lines in the palms of my hands—each nook and cranny, each mark on the furniture, each water stain on the ceiling plaster, blemish on the wallpaper.
Each blotch, scratch, crack, a testimony to my personal and family saga. Happy. Sorrowful. Funny. Tragic. Each intricately woven into the essence of our home.
Each bestowing on it a unique soul—an essence never to be found in any other home. Any other family.
The enormity of our loss lent a boost to my cleaning zeal. Oui, my beloved house, we’ll leave you looking finer than ever.
While polishing the never-used china at the bottom of the china cabinet, I found my green tin box. I sat, legs stretched along the cold tiles, set my rag aside and lifted the box’s lid, uncovering nearly forgotten bits and pieces. L’Oeil de Malika, buttons with jet-black or diamond-like stones, butterfly wings, and my Atlantis Sous Les Flots story
I rose to my feet and fetched Albert’s seahorse, added it to the box, snapped the lid shut, and set the box on top of my pile when my father’s voice boomed in my mind’s ear as if from above, “On-ly-the-es-sen-tials.”
I didn’t think he would deem my box essential, except that leaving it behind would convert my own treasure into someone else’s trash. I couldn’t bear to let strangers’ hands rummage through my box, discarding its content like rubbish with the exception, perhaps, of the unique buttons.
I drifted about the house in a futile search for a hiding place when, Eureka!
I strode downstairs to the backyard and snuck into Papa’s workroom, wrapped my green box in oilcloth and took the bundle to the back garden. I dug a hole among the laurel’s roots where I knew the Barbary Corsairs’ treasure trove rested. I carefully laid the box into the earth and covered it with the loose soil. But, as I tamped it down, I had a change of heart. I unearthed the box and retrieved the seahorse, slipped it inside my pocket then returned the box to the laurier’s care and scattered bits and pieces of garden refuse to cloak the disturbed earth.
I turned my back on the buried milestones of my youth, and wrapping my hand around the seahorse inside my pocket, wandered about the garden, gathering as I went a last harvest of memories.
I stroked the smooth bark of the pear and fig trees, breathed in the familiar fragrances of lemon verbena, rosemary, and lavender. Heard the lost echoes of our fleeting childhood—the laughter, songs, and cries of hurt glancing off each and every corner of our yard.
Glancing off the mulberry tree and grape harbor where, in summer months, the wasps and bees flickered in dry sunbeams.
Off the neighbor’s mud shack where, winter and summer, the Arab boys droned verses of the Qur’an.
Off the now deserted poultry yard and the bamboo grove still teeming with tadpoles and, no doubt, a slithering snake or two.
I didn’t know whether to laugh full throated in celebration of joys past or sob desperately in anticipation of our looming loss. Instead, I wiped a lone tear and smiled.
Memories. One treasure no one could ever steal away from me.
Still under the spell of past visions, I tied a silk cord around the seahorse’s neck and slipped it around my neck. Then I walked to Albert’s door and knocked.
“Bonjour,” he said, opening his door wide with a warm smile. “I was about to look for you to say au revoir.”
“I came to say au revoir too.” I pulled at the rope around my neck. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again, but this,” I stepped closer and showed him the seahorse, “this will remind me of you. Always.”
His eyes shone and he searched his pocket with a mischievous smile. “I’ve something else for you to remember me by.” He handed me a folded piece of red cloth woven with gold threads.
“What is it?”
“Open it.”
I opened the small bundle one red fold at the time, holding my breath, willing the moment to last forever.
The ring sparkled in the mid-afternoon sun, setting my face on fire.
“Put it on,” Albert urged.
The thin gold coin wrapped around the top part of my finger and around the whole of my heart. I looked into my friend’s eyes through brimming tears. He reached out and pulled me close. “When we see each other again, and if that’s what you want, we’ll get engaged to be married.”
I didn’t know whether I loved him, but knew I needed the comfort of his arms around me. I whispered against his shoulder, “When will I see you again?”
He pointed at the suitcases lined up in his entry hall. “A taxi’s taking me downtown. I’ll be staying at a hotel until the day after tomorrow when my plane leaves. But I will be back for the next school season.” He pulled a piece of paper from his breast pocket. “Here is my address in France. Send me yours when you’re settled somewhere.”
He brushed my lips with a soft kiss and held me at arm’s length. “Take good care of yourself, I’ll be thinking of you.”
I reluctantly walked away, stroking the sparkling ring with a finger then turned. “Thank you,” I said softly and ran up the stairs.
By late afternoon, we had finished cleaning the house like deck hands battening down the hatches before a storm. The packing finished and nothing else to do until dinner; I stepped onto my balcony and beheld a familiar scene, a scene many centuries older than me.
It was the time of day, just before dusk, when no sound made by man or beast can be heard.
Arab boys clad in short, stained tunics beating their skinny sun-roasted calves passed by, bare feet raising puffs of dust. They wielded long, inoffensive sticks of whittled twigs on the flanks of a herd of cows that needed no prodding. Bearing their curved, pointed horns like royal crowns, the beasts trod the centuries-old dirt path, moving homeward at a sedate pace.
Their long-lashed, soft eyes had reflected my sphere-shaped image with unchanging indifference whenever I’d stood close to the side fence.
Tonight, they still switched their tails from side to side, swatting at the pestering flies from their mud-caked haunches and swollen udders. From my perch at the balcony, I caught a whiff of the bitter aroma of crushed grass they left in their wake, the sweet, rich scent of milk seeping from their dirt-stained teats, and the pungent tang of freshly dropped dung patties.
They forged onward, backs swaying in purposeful bovine tradition, and soon disappeared behind the rosemary hedge lining the side road.
Across the street, coiffed in heavy turbans and embroidered skullcaps, my neighbors crouched, backs propped against the adobe wall of their enclave. Forearms nonchalantly leaning on bent knees, hands hanging in repose, they looked like immoveable outcrops standing vigil over fertile valleys.
Their skin, crisscrossed with deep ruts, bore the look of brown parchment, and their unreadable expressions spoke of wisdom untouched by the inexorable march of time.
On occasion, a slow smile uncovered a row of betel nut-stained teeth and creased the skin around their eyes with good-humored crags. Causing me to smile back. These simple men wore their white summer robes draped around their bodies with the panache of kings bearing jeweled mantles of rare silk.
Their tranquil, inscrutable features spoke of centuries of dogged acceptance and of undemanding lives spent in hard physical labor under a merciless sun. As they recovered from the broiling toil of the day, they waited for the cannon to sound the end of daily fast in this month of Ramadan and the beginning of the feast their women prepared on the other side of the adobe walls.
Smoke rose in lazy blue ribbons in the tranquil air, carrying the acrid smell of cooking fires, then dissolved into wisps that melted in the growing shadows of far purple mountains and paling pinks of the twilight sky. Tomorrow, no sirocco would carry sand from the Sahara. Tomorrow, a plane would carry us away from paradise.
As if mourning for our loss, the air was filled with a universal silence. Even the raucous cicadas ceased their unnerving and never-ending concert. In communion with all living things, they convalesced from the desiccating heat of the day.
The unwavering faith that the familiar scene before me would go on long after we were gone filled me with gratitude that good things do survive.
A mood of spiritual union with all things brought a balm to my soul as, in the distance, one dog answered the desultory barking of another. Thus, from farm to farm, their echoing voices partook of an ancient knowledge of peace, now forgotten by man, as it traveled in a soothing, reverberating tongue, telling of serene villages and sanctuary.
Serenity shrouded, at this moment, with the sadness of aux revoirs.
Dinner unfurled like a post-funeral meal, punctuated by sounds of silverware against china. The dishes done, we bathed and readied the clothes we’d wear for our passage into exile. We went to bed with distracted, whispered kisses, “Bonne nuit, Maman …. Bonne nuit, Papa …. Bonne nuit, les enfants.”
I fell asleep with the heaviness of a timbered oak and woke up at dawn in the hush of a household lost to slumber. I lay on my side of the bed, filled with unease, trying to make sense of the dream I had just shaken off—a dream in color.
In this dream, I stood unmoving but could still see every detail of the three-hundred-and-sixty degree panorama surrounding me. It felt as if a mesmerizing painting had caught my spirit, sunk it into the weave of its canvas till it meshed with the colors, and turned me into an unsubstantial element of the scene.
I was royal blue sea with no shimmering zones of lighter blues and greens, no swells and no foam-hemmed waves stretching over sand. Only an inert royal blue plane.
I was cloudless pastel sky with no fading intensity as it met the sea in a hard, uncurved horizon.
There was no sail, gull, or rustling surf. No breeze, humming motor, or playful bathers. No beach. No tree. No tuft of grass. Only the royal blue, lifeless water scoring the base of an orange-sienna cliff that soared out of sight.
High above water, a path no wider than a one-man tent with no beginning and no end trailed the infinite length of the rock.
The open flaps of a sand-colored tent framed its blank inner darkness.
I was absence of movement, sound, and living things. Absence of heat, cold, wet, dry, love, hate. Absence of hope and despair.
I was unfathomable silence lost in a petrified abyss of primary colors ….
June 24, 1962
In spite of its wealth of colors, the dream’s desolation and lack of pulse perplexed and distressed me, in perfect keeping with the blur of morning ablutions and tasteless breakfast.
Compliant lonely ants, we went about our tasks until the time came to dress. I untied the strips of rags that curled my hair during the night and slipped into my new, straw-colored silk blouse. I tucked it into the belt of the A-line skirt of burnt sienna I had cut and sewn from a remnant of shantung silk, just for this trip. As a fashion statement, I slipped a narrow tie of the same material as the skirt under the shirt’s open collar and hung the seahorse coupled with Albert’s ring around my neck inside the shirt.
My curls and outfit were meant to demonstrate to anyone watching at port of arrival in France that, however loathed and looked down upon, Pieds-Noirs did have a sense of style.
That morning, no sense of style or pride animated me. The colored dream weighing me down, I went through the motions and helped my unusually subdued brothers get dressed.
Before heading for the airport, Zizou and I walked about the house, securing shutters and windows, but Papa said no. “We’ll leave the house wide open.”
Our eyebrows shot up. “All the windows?”
“All the windows.” He sauntered down the stairs with the precious rust-colored suitcase. “And the door.”
“And the gate?”
“Wide open.”
No doubt meaning to spare our pride, not one neighbor turned up in the deserted road to observe our retreat.
A teacher colleague of Papa’s who’d leave in a few days drove Maman, the boys, and the yellow suitcases in our father’s car. A taxi drove Papa, his small suitcase, my two sisters, and me.
The taxi sputtered then started behind Pa’s car through the gates and down the road.
Mid-slope, I couldn’t resist looking back. I turned and watched, dead-hearted, as my house shrunk into the distance, her shutters and windows thrown open wide. Her front door gaped in an “Oh” of dismay. Her gates stretched like arms that seemed to say, “We’ll wait for your return.”
Only the little black wrought-iron gate with the mailbox remained shut in a solemn promise to keep trespassers at bay. Pa had never gotten around to fixing its hinges, and its bottom still scraped against the concrete beneath.
I frowned, sad at not feeling the pain of loss but, as the car rounded the bend, the sight of the old oak on the outer corner of our yard hit me like a fist on the side of the head with the raw awareness of things cut in mid-bloom. Tonight, Pa wouldn’t be taking potshots into the tree, and the perennial owl dwelling among its limbs would, once again, get the last hoot.
The road’s curve erased the house and I faced forward, taking in the familiar scenery as it sped by. Hoarding the colorful images I had taken so long for granted. Fastening them to a corner of my memory the same way one pins the brilliant wings of butterflies.
As brief as a daydream and as endless as a nightmare, the nine-kilometer ride to the airport came to an end, and we joined the hundreds of shuffling others.
The sensory blur that had shrouded my day became even hazier.
My brain snapped shots of inconsequential details—a couple holding hands, an old man’s careful steps, a suckling newborn, children chasing each other in a game of catch ….
In a daze, I lost all sense of time as family groups gathered on the hot tarmac—piles of sand waiting for Sirocco to scatter them across the globe.
Photo by W.A. Dahl
A fourth generation French settler in Algeria, Danielle A. Dahl was born and raised in Constantine, where she came of age during the Algerian War of Independence. A week before Algeria celebrated self-rule and just before Danielle turned eighteen, she and her family fled their home and life as they knew it. Destitute and facing a bleak future, they took refuge in France. Eight years later, hoping the soil of L’Amérique would be better suited to a happy life than that of France, she moved to the United States. There she studied commercial art at the Art Institute of Boston and worked in Filene’s art department.
Later on, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she met her future husband, Walter. The couple lived in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Illinois before retiring to South Carolina, where Danielle wrote her memoir, Sirocco.
Aside from writing and reading, Danielle likes to paint, take pictures, bowl, and hike.
Danielle is a member of the South Carolina Writers Workshop, Sisters in Crime, the National Association of Memoir Writers, and the Seneca Writers Critique Group. She won second place in the 2011 Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Awards for nonfiction and was semi-finalist in the 2011 William Faulkner Wisdom Competition for a novel-in-progress as well as for a short story. Lastly, two of her creative nonfiction stories appeared in the 2011 and 2012 Petigru Review Literary Journal.
At present Danielle is writing the first draft of Mistral, the sequel to Sirocco, which depicts the struggle that she, her family, and over a million and a half others like them faced after they fled Algeria and searched for new places to call home in France and across the globe.
You can find Danielle on the Web at www.dadahl.com.