Big Baba was only half alive. Hemiplegic, to use the medical term.
A month had gone by since his stroke and he had just been transferred to the hospital’s ‘Neuro Rehab’ unit. There were no obvious signs of progress, but he was still here. Half was good enough for us.
Nice was in the grip of a heatwave. On some days, the temperature soared to 41 degrees. I was on three showers a day, minimum.
‘Hey! Mourad! The water in the bathroom isn’t for free, you know! It doesn’t just fall out of the sky!’
‘Oh yes it does, Maman.’
‘I suppose you think you’re funny? Tfffou!’
The days ticked by, but the heart had gone out of our home.
We no longer ate our evening meal at eight o’clock on the dot. There was no fruit in the glass dish on the living room table, and the neighbourhood cats had stopped roaming in our garden now their doting benefactor was no longer around to feed them.
I was finally allocated my first teaching job. The wait was over. As I had suspected, I would be working as a newly qualified teacher in the Paris region. In Montreuil, to be specific, 47 east of the city, in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, at the Collège Gustave-Courbet. When I read the name of the school in my posting letter, it immediately conjured embarrassing images of that close-up on female intimacy in Gustave Courbet’s famous painting: The Origins of the World.
But I had a more serious problem on my hands: finding somewhere to stay. With less than a month to go.
It was Maman’s idea to telephone cousin Miloud.
After arriving in Paris two or three years earlier, with a student visa and a place at Paris-XIII University, Miloud had decided to stay on despite his provisional residence permit expiring.
Mina was against it. As were the authorities.
‘Are you serious? You’re talking about Miloud? Miloud the glue-sniffer?’
‘Why do you have to bring that up, Mina? He didn’t know what he was doing back then, he was a child, meskine!’
‘What d’you mean, poor thing? You’re defending him now! So, you’re saying he was a child when he went to prison for pimping a 16-year-old girl in the suburbs of Algiers, on the pavements of Chéraga, right?’
‘We don’t know the whole story! And anyway, he’s changed! He’s taken up studying again, and he came to France for a new life… You don’t spare anybody, do you?’
‘You can’t mean that, Maman? Pfff. The guy’s a piece of scum. He’s a hobo! He disgusts me.’
‘We’re not asking him to raise your brother! We just want him to put a roof over Mourad’s head for two or three weeks until he finds his own studio.’
‘Have you signed up online, Mourad?’
‘I’ve taken a fine tooth-comb to the Internet, but from what I can see everything’s too expensive.’ 48
‘Don’t worry, we’ll help you out. What about sharing?’
‘I’m still looking.’
‘That’s why we said… in the meantime, there’s always Miloud.’
‘No, Maman! Not Miloud!’
My posting was taking up all our headspace. As a result, we were less preoccupied with Big Baba. We took it in turns with the hospital visits. Although he was glad to see me, I always left on a low. He had no idea how serious his condition was, and I was endlessly rewinding the same cassette.
‘I don’t know what’s going on with this leg. I can’t move it!’
‘That’s what happens when your right side is paralysed, Papa. Don’t worry, the physio will sort it out.’
‘And my arm as well! Look! I can’t even lift it. It feels like someone’s pinning me down!’
‘Don’t worry, Papa.’
‘How long is all this going to last?’
‘We don’t know. The team here is doing everything it can to help you.’
‘Perhaps I slept in the wrong position.’
‘No, Papa, that’s got nothing to do with it. It’s because of your stroke. It paralysed your limbs.’
‘But why can’t I lift my leg?’
‘It’ll be okay. Don’t worry. What matters is there are signs of progress; the doctor told me you’ve got some feeling in your fingers now…’
‘What’s my room number?’
‘419.’
‘Which floor?’
‘Fourth. As in 4:19.’
‘Look! My leg won’t move…’
Then his eyes would cloud with sadness.
‘My son, I don’t want the nurses to clean me.’
49 I could picture my grandfather, Sidi Ahmed Chennoun, saying: ‘There are only two things we appreciate when we no longer have them: youth and health!’
I’d seen a library signposted on the same floor, and it occurred to me that Big Baba might enjoy it if I read to him.
The library smelled as fusty as a second-hand bookseller (elderly bachelor variety) and consisted of two rickety shelves overrun with yellowed books. There were also a few car magazines with photos of models you would only see in a toyshop window display these days, as collectible miniatures. The educational books and novels must have dated from back when the hospital was still treating patients for the plague.
Oliver Twist was at one dusty end. Oddly enough, when I stared at Dickens from a certain angle, I could detect a faint likeness to Big Baba. The moustache, the serious expression, the slightly anxious gaze, yes, there was something …
On the shelf below, I spotted the inevitable Harlequin romances… The adrenaline of torrid nights in retirement homes. Authors with white American brush-and-blow-dry names, like Perry Williams or Andrew Richardson. I imagined them as writing stars in Arkansas, collectors of old-fashioned typewriters, divorcees with a weakness for brandy. I could see them, driving their pick-up along a deserted road as they hatched the plot for their next raunchy novel.
I remember writing a school assignment about the role of women in so-called ‘romance’ literature. I chose The Captive Mistress. The title spoke volumes. As did the suggestive cover.
No question of reading anything like that to Big Baba. So, I opted for the Dickens.
The healthcare assistant came to change my father. As I waited in the corridor, I thought about his sense of modesty; 50 I thought about how much a man can suffer on becoming a baby again.
‘Chapter One. Treats of the place where Oliver Twist was born, and of the circumstances attending his birth.’
‘Don’t forget to read it in a journalist’s voice…’