My timetable was as regular as sheet music. In the mornings I lurked online, on the prowl for any friendly-sounding apartment shares, to avoid rooming with my cousin Miloud in some migrant workers’ hostel. Or, worse, being accused of aiding and abetting in one of his sex scandals. There was always the option of a damp garret, with a shared toilet on the landing: 800 euros a month, bills not included.
For me, moving to Paris wasn’t a dream come true. It simply meant leaving Nice.
In the afternoons, I visited Big Baba. On the menu: a game of Crazy Eights and one rancid cappuccino between the two of us. I always let him win. After all, he could only hold the cards in one hand.
Sometimes, he would turn his head and give a long sigh, before checking everything was running smoothly at home without him.
‘Has anyone fixed the leak in the bathroom?’
‘You fixed it yourself, Papa… last year.’
‘I did?’
‘Mourad?’ he finally asked, one day.
‘Yes, Papa?’
‘I want to see my daughter again, before I die.’
‘What makes you say that? You’re not going to die!’ 52
‘Of course, I’m going to die. And I haven’t even made my Hajj!’
‘Insha’Allah, you’ll make a good recovery, Papa. And we’ll go to Mecca together. We’ll both make our Hajj!’
‘I’m starting to forget things. That frightens me. I must see my daughter. I have to see my daughter before I die.’
I can’t say it hadn’t occurred to me. I’d thought about it every day since Big Baba’s stroke. Dounia should know what was going on. Even if Mina and my mother made an impressive show of business as usual, I was sure they’d had the same idea too. You can’t simply Tippex someone out of the family album.
Big Baba had swallowed his pride. It was time to grab the opportunity before he changed his mind. I resolved not to talk about it to Maman or Mina for the time being.
On the way back from the hospital, I decided to stop off at the town hall. I guess I was acting in the spirit of that expression ‘to take potluck’.
I braced myself and parked Big Baba’s R11 Turbo in the visitors’ car park, before making for the reception where three switchboard operators were in mid-action. Arms flailing, and with the twisted wires of their handsets all tangled up, they looked like they were fronting the office for disorganised octopuses.
The operators smelled like those citrus-scented hand wipes they give you in aeroplanes.
‘Hello! Are you here for the job interview?’
‘No. I was wondering if… Actually, I’ve come to see Madame Chennoun.’
‘Who should I say is here?’
Mourad Chennoun, I wanted to reply, son of Abdelkader 53 Chennoun, shoemaker of repute, himself the son of Sidi Ahmed Chennoun, poet and shepherd of our mountains to the West.
‘Her brother, Mourad.’
That upbeat expression suddenly drained from the operator’s face.
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘No.’
‘Aha! Because she only sees visitors by appointment.’
She had said ‘Aha!’ conclusively. Meaning, You stand no chance of seeing her. I felt like an idiot who had tried ringing Madonna’s doorbell on the off-chance.
‘It’s important.’
‘Aha! Did she know you’d be dropping by?’
‘No, could you let her know I’m here, please.’
‘One moment.’
I detected scorn in the operator’s eyes. She had one eyebrow raised in a circumflex while the other sloped in a frown. Just like my mother. Talk about identical scowls. She was wearing blue mascara to match her uniform and, when she dialled, her nails, which were too long to be real, went clickety-clack on the keyboard.
‘Hello, Dounia? Your brother’s here…’
A long silence and then the operator said ‘Aha!’ again, before replacing the handset.
‘I’m sorry, she can’t see you.’
I stood there staring at her and waiting for her to offer me an alternative solution.
‘Okay. So what do I do now?’
‘Right, well… leave your number, and she’ll call you back later.’
What a numbskull! I should have realised it wouldn’t be so easy. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t read enough novels in my time. 54
Dounia was probably still deeply bitter about everything. How could I have forgotten her level of stubbornness?
I scribbled a note on a small yellow Post-It that had been handed to me by the snippy operator. My message was as spontaneous as it was stupid.
Call me please. Mourad.
After ten years of separation, getting back in touch with a Post-It note was kind of farcical.
‘She’s got your number, has she?’
The ironic tone led me to suspect that even random switchboard operators wearing citrus-scented perfume knew about our family history. ‘Aha, she must have been thinking, so here’s the evil brother from the evil Arab family that threw Dounia out!’
I added my mobile number for my sister’s benefit.
I didn’t write anything about Big Baba’s health, or about us. That would have been challenging, on a piece of self-adhesive paper measuring 76 millimetres by 76.
I felt disheartened, but I wasn’t ready to leave. For no particular reason, other than to digest my failed attempt at making contact, I stopped in front of the main display area. There was a poster with a Freefone number for victims to speak out against domestic violence. The slogan was striking, to say the least: ‘Kill silence, before it kills you.’
It was a campaign by SOS! – the ‘Speak Out Sister!’ collective headed up by Dounia. SOS! specialised in headline-grabbing slogans, and events that secured maximum media coverage. Ever since we’d picked up the trail of my sister again, I followed SOS! more closely.
Recently, they had even demonstrated in front of the National Assembly to drive home their message and raise awareness amongst politicians. Some of the women had 55 turned up gagged and handcuffed. Others sported bruised faces and black eyes, with bandages wrapped around their heads. A few wore burkas.
On the poster, my sister and the other leaders proudly displayed their banners in red letters with, ‘We Won’t Be Silenced, For Women’s Sake!’
They looked like they were yelling their slogans fit to bust. But deep down, they were probably thinking: ‘Here I am, on the frontline, wearing my bright red Dior lipstick. With these killer lips, who says I won’t make the front page of Le Nouvel Obs on Monday? Yaaaas!’
The anonymous demonstrators at the back were clinging with pained dignity to their placards, and the noble struggle.
One of the collective’s most fervent detractors, a man they regularly took to court for defamation, had a blog called: Shut The Fuck Up, For Everyone’s Sake!
They were always rallying in the name of sisterhood and the bigger cause, but their campaigns felt as phoney to me as Daniel with-the-hairy-wrists wearing ski glasses on a summer’s day. The way I saw it, SOS! took advantage of other women’s suffering, promoting an image of ‘victimhood’ to suit their headline-grabbing purposes.
My sister was becoming a symbol. She contributed with increasing regularity to public debates. Whenever she expressed her view on any topic, she did so with breathtaking confidence and poise. The little Arab councillor from the provinces was fast becoming the darling of the Paris elite.
Ahead of earning votes for her future political mandate, she was notching up Air France air miles on all those gas-guzzling Paris-Nice return flights.
Dounia’s appeal lies in symbolizing what the Republic does best: producing accidental success stories. 56
People can’t get enough of this model of excellence: ‘There you go, if you work hard enough, anything’s possible!’ It gives them licence to say, ‘Easy as one-two-three.’ Which makes it seem like everyone else is a waste of space, a bunch of layabouts lacking any ambition to succeed in life.
A fulfilling career?
No thanks. I’d prefer to spend my days buying scratch cards and hanging out at the local betting shop.
A job in a rapidly expanding business?
Not my kind of thing. I’ll just complain about my six years of higher education, so people will think I didn’t get hired because I was ‘overqualified’.
All those lowlifes sponging off the benefits system, lounging about with no sense of shame. It’s an outrage!
Politicians, hey? Still, what larks they enjoy in the corridors of power!
Dounia’s public image serves these kinds of arguments. I don’t know if she’s conscious of this. I’d like to have put the question to her, but the switchboard operator just went ‘Aha!
I’d watched several YouTube clips featuring my sister. There were some fairly offensive comments posted about Dounia. One that I’d spotted called her a ‘corrupt, sell-out, token Arab’.
On my way out, I still kept hoping my sister would change her mind. I sensed someone’s eyes drilling into my back and when I turned around I saw the citrus-scented operator shooting me an acidic look. I was convinced that she’d been instructed to inform Dounia as soon as I left the premises. I surrendered.
Out on the boulevard, the police were stopping cars. They signalled for me to pull over, which never happened with Big 57 Baba’s Renault 11 turbo.
An officer with a double chin approached; he looked for all the world like a pelican wearing glasses. He asked to see the vehicle registration documents, as well as my driving licence. ‘What on earth’s a youngster like him doing with a car like this?’ he must have been thinking, as he scrutinised the car’s yellowed registration certificate.
When I pulled down the sunshield to remove the logbook, a small envelope fell out and landed in my lap. Inside was a photo.