It was a Polaroid that dated back a good 20 years and reminded me of a line from Proust: ‘The memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment.’
The photo had been taken in front of the house belonging to Uncle Aziz, a farmer in Western Algeria and one of Big Baba’s relatives. We used to love going over there. It meant escaping the hustle and bustle of Algiers and experiencing first-hand a hostile kind of nature.
Walking barefoot over the feverish midday ground and scraping the soles of our feet on tiny stones. Catching locusts only to release them again because we didn’t know what else to do. Black cockroaches like leather, their bodies so long that Mina made up a name for them: limousine cockroaches.
Uncle Aziz took us to harvest Barbary figs, with the help of a bamboo pole whose tip was cut in three to make a pincer that hooked the fruit. We used to collect them by the bucketful. But no matter how careful we were, by the end of the day, our hands were always covered in prickles, which Mama Latifa, Aziz’s wife, would pull out using her teeth. Her method was rustic but efficient. She would spit the prickles into a small dish.
The house was surrounded by the huge cactus plants that produced these Barbary figs. We called them ‘barbed wire figs’. 59
High up in the mountains the moon was very white, round and full. We could almost touch it. As for the stars, I’d never counted as many in Nice. In the West, far from Algiers, they glowed as far as the eye could see.
After the summer downpours, we would go snail collecting and, at the end of the afternoon, the women would busy themselves with cooking inside the mechta. The aroma of grilled almonds filled the traditional stone house. Mama Latifa baked rye bread while I crouched down next to her, watching her knead the dough. She had been born with half a finger missing, and her husband would often tease her on the subject: ‘If I’d known you were half a finger down when I married you, I’d have knocked 2000 dinars off your bride price!’
On Aziz’s farm, the boys ran through the fields pushing an old bicycle wheel with a branch; they built tiny windmills using the coloured plastic from powdered milk pouches; they climbed trees and whistled at stray dogs. The little girls wore ribbons in their hair, or brightly coloured headscarves with their thick brown plaits sticking out. I remember the partially sighted old man who used to take his daily siesta in the shade of an almond tree, his bony body lying on an empty wheat sack, his face protected by the large hood of his djellaba. He must be long dead now.
There were rabbits, crammed into cages. As well as oxen, sheep, goats and a few sad mules tethered to the tree trunks.
I recognised the spot instantly because we would often visit it with my family, but when this photo was taken, I was just a chubby-cheeked baby in Big Baba’s arms. My two sisters were dressed in identical matching outfits.
My mother used to treat them as if they were twins, despite their age gap. Sometimes, Dounia would try to differentiate 60 herself by unpicking her lace collar or tearing the ribbons off her dress. My mother flew into a rage as soon as she noticed, her high-pitched voice bouncing off the ceiling and crashing down on Dounia’s head like a pétanque ball. Every sentence began with: ‘Look at your sister, she’s not…’
One day, down by the oued where a trickle of water still ran, Dounia had caught an enormous toad. For no reason, she threw it at Mina who was juggling walnuts in the courtyard. By way of punishment, Dounia had come in for a rare hiding, and we nicknamed her alSahira: ‘the witch’. My mother kept her apart from Mina for several days and sent her to bed without any supper for several nights.
‘She’s so jealous, she’ll end up doing something really bad to Mina!’ people remarked of my big sister.
One year, the whole family was in Algiers for the engagement party that was being held in honour of my mother’s youngest sister, Asma. The women in the room wore flashy outfits and jewels, they laughed loudly and fanned themselves with paper plates. Every summer there was one particular style of dress or fabric in fashion, and, for reasons that escape me, the fabric would be named after a television series or character.
That year it was Dynasty, the following summer it was the turn of Knots Landing. I can even remember a fabric named Boudiaf, after an assassinated Algerian president. It’s each to their own, when it comes to repurposing world events.
My aunt Asma sat in the middle of the room, on a chair that was covered in golden cloth and wrapped with a big ribbon. On either side of her stood two little girls in almond-green satin dresses. Following tradition, each had to hold a tall candle while the henna circle was applied to the palms of the 61bride-to-be, and they were under strict instructions not to let their candle go out; this was a task of the utmost importance, to be undertaken with great solemnity.
Everyone was busy admiring the little girls, who had been dressed so elegantly in beautiful clothes bought in France (made in China, of course, but who was telling?)
My sisters looked like two dolls.
In all the bustle of the party, nobody noticed Dounia setting fire to Mina’s hair with her engagement candle. Not long after, Asma’s mother-in-law said, ‘I can smell bouzelouf!’
Bouzelouf is sheep’s head roasted over the fire until all the wool is scorched; then you scrape off the wool with a knife, before boiling up the meat and stewing it with chickpeas. My favourite part was the brain. I used to think it made you clever, until the day one of my cousins said, ‘If you eat sheep’s brain, you’ll become as stupid as a sheep. And when you go back to France, they’ll put you in prison for leaving a trail of millions of little black droppings behind you wherever you go!’
I stopped eating brain on the spot.
My mother grabbed the candle off Dounia in a fit of rage. Meanwhile, some of the younger women put out the flames in Mina’s singed clump of hair. My younger sister was sobbing and scarlet.
The bride remained as stony-faced as all the brides I’ve ever seen in Algeria. A few women were whispering amongst themselves, ‘Those immigrant children have been so badly brought up!’
Outside in the courtyard, Dounia came in for a proper hiding, one so severe that she wet herself. My mother was letting her have it, because of the shame, I guess. The sound of plastic sandals against my sister’s skin rang out along the corridor. 62
A few minutes later, a strange-looking Dounia returned to the main room and started dancing again, as if nothing had happened. Except that her legs were streaming with urine. A hunchbacked old woman dragged her outside by the puff-sleeve of her pretty princess dress, which was now displaying wet patches. ‘Go and wash yourself, then change your clothes!’ she instructed Dounia. ‘You’re a disgrace!’
It was with a heavy heart that my mother had to cut Mina’s hair. For months after that episode, my sister wore a hideous bob, short on the neck, with her dry frizzy curls rising up to the sky.
After Dounia’s big departure, my mother gave up hiding her heartbreak, and took instead to saying, ‘In any case, she’s crazy! I can’t believe she came out of my womb! Do you remember, Mina? She tried to burn you alive at your Aunt Asma’s wedding!’ Or, ‘I knew I could never trust a girl who threw a toad in her own sister’s face!’
I tucked the photo into my jacket pocket and drove home in the Renault 11 Turbo, thinking: ‘It’s crazy how the same memory must be so different for each person’.