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I’M HOSTAGE TO A BUNCH of circumstances and I can’t see a logical reason why they should have picked on me rather than anyone else. I feel like a mouse strung up by its balls. The neighborhood’s had no water in the taps for days and the apartment’s in a terrible state. The shit’s piling up in the toilet and I didn’t want to grab a bucket and go begging for water. I did bring one bucketful of water from the café at dawn, but it’s not enough at all. The sewer rats are cleaner than I am now. The neighbors took precautions by installing cisterns in case of a crisis, but I’m using the toilets in the mosque or in Mubarak’s café, and now I have to act nice to him by smiling. The old man is asleep nearby. He just lies on a long sofa all day, and I move him to his bed if he gets tired. I won’t lie and say that I don’t hate him more than I did. I deliberately don’t give him much to eat so that I don’t have to change his diaper every hour. He had diarrhea and I seriously thought of arranging a quick death, so that I could regain my dignity. I gave him some medicine and luckily he improved. Then I was indescribably happy when he had constipation. Unfortunately it didn’t last long. I’ve given him endless amounts of chocolate, the cheap kind of course. After that I came up with a less expensive solution, and rice became our staple diet. I’m the meek version of Mourad, a submissive dog rather than a rabid one roaming all over the place. I’m no one, just what people have wanted me to be. It was a waste of effort buying the SIM card and tracking down someone willing to lend me their phone to use for a few minutes. The last number he called from is no longer his, as far as I can see. A woman answered me. From her voice she sounded old and she spoke German. Many attempts over three days, and the same woman answered. A thousand curses on the rabid dog. I wanted to lure him into coming back, saying your father’s dying and he wants to see you, don’t deprive him of one last look. I was going to tell him every lie in the book and leave the place as soon as he came back. In a dream I had he did come back and his father didn’t die, but that was just a figment of my imagination. By cutting off all links, he seems to have taken precautions for a possible moment of weakness that he expected to come.

The old man didn’t stay long in the hospital. The cleaning woman’s son went off with his mother and stopped spending the night with him. The doctor allowed him to be discharged and I brought him back reluctantly. I had set aside some money that would have saved me from begging for two weeks or more. The government had given the cleaning woman a place in social housing. The young man told me he’d been born in a rough neighborhood on the edge of the city and lived there for sixteen years. He was born and grew up like a rat in the shanties, and then they moved to live in one of those concrete boxes. I feel handicapped without that woman. She took care of cleaning the two apartments, and did the laundry and the shopping. They’d been moved to a remote area. Now I have to look after the old man. He came out of the hospital and went back to his apartment, not to anywhere else—the cemetery for example. I wonder if I’ll cling to life like him when I grow old. She came to say goodbye to us. I think she felt some affection for us, sympathy or I don’t know what. I feel nothing toward any human being. I forgave her for being mean when she left us earlier. She told me she felt like the old man was her father, and maybe I believed her. I was too old to be her son, yet I was a little saddened that we were going to lose her maternal protection. The old man and I were just two grown-up orphans. She volunteered to cook us one last meal. It was delicious, more delicious than the food she had cooked for us earlier. It tasted of real love. She said she wouldn’t be able to work for us from now on. Her new home was too far away. But she planned to visit us from time to time and she apologized for leaving us on our own. You’re nice, she told me, and she urged me not to let the old man die alone. I was frustrated and maybe I felt a little grateful toward her, but I forgot her five minutes after she left.

I wondered how I would deal with the new situation. I can’t challenge even an ant, and I don’t want to anyway. I hope he dies soon and I promise I’ll be sad for him, as if he were very dear to my heart. Do I really hate him? I’ve moved the television from my apartment to his apartment. He sits stock-still in front of it all day long, dozing off and then waking up. He prays seated because he can no longer stand up by himself. Then he goes back to watching everything that’s broadcast, with interest and sometimes with delight. He laughs for no reason, even at the weather forecast, and sometimes he thinks the newsreader is addressing him or asking him a question, so he answers and gets into a serious discussion in his booming voice. His voice has lost none of its strength, even when he was in the hospital. Another world. As for me, I laugh sometimes, though that’s pathetic. Nothing works any longer. People are nothing but memories.

I wish my memory could be wiped clean. People are sculpted by their experiences, and I’m just a shapeless, shoddy piece of sculpture, made of fragments, the creature of others and of the experiments they have carried out on me. I agreed to be a guard dog because I was a wreck. To be honest I didn’t expect all this torment. I just wanted to stay away from people, keep my distance, and have fun waiting for death, not to become a dishcloth for other people’s mistakes, which is what Mourad made of me. Okay, nothing about me is worth lamenting. I’ve lived life with all its constraints. I worked as a garbage collector for three years. For a homeless man like me, it meant nothing that I had been to university or that I was a human being. I was exploited by everyone who could exploit me. I almost forgot everything I had learned at university, and experience taught me lessons that were more durable. If you’re a subcontracted garbage collector, someone else collects your salary and gives you only a part of it. I loaded the garbage onto donkeys in the narrow lanes of the casbah. I ate the remains of food I found in the garbage bins. I vomited the first time and then grew used to it. I forgot my dignity forever. Dignity means nothing when you’re hungry. The instinct to survive is stronger. A subcontracted garbage collector rents a room with a dilapidated ceiling and walls and sleeps on a dirty mattress. I was more pragmatic than anyone else in the world. Countless human beings live off garbage and I was no better than them. I’m someone whose flesh thrived on garbage, on food that overfed rich people threw away in houses, restaurants, and hotels. The contents of every home’s garbage bin reflect the social status of the people who live there. I would hurry to grab it before it was too far gone to be edible. Some of the workers came across money and valuables, but the most I ever found was leftover food, shoes that were falling apart, and discarded or unwanted trousers. Once I found a book about happiness. I threw it away immediately and went back to my room at dawn to masturbate over the image that was stuck in my mind—that of a housewife in her fifties. My life has always fed off other people’s leftovers.

I ate expired cheese and rotten fruit. My stomach grew used to that and I acquired immunity. Sometimes my luck would come up with some fresh chicken or turkey liver or gizzards. I would hold a barbecue in my room from time to time and I noticeably put on weight. My luck seemed to be on the rise when I moved to work on a truck in the Ben Aknoun area, where there were hotels with bars. I started finding beer cans and wine bottles that weren’t completely empty and some that were unopened. It began with cans of soda and ended with me overjoyed if fate granted me something that would help me through the long empty day. I had a special bag I slung over my shoulder for that purpose. Sometimes I’d come back with the bag full, assured of supplies for days. The friend and colleague closest to my heart would help me fill the bag, indifferent to the religious views of our other colleague. Could I have saved my friend but didn’t? I was paralyzed as I watched the wheel of the truck crush his stomach. I saw him, his eyes popping out, and I may have detected half a smile on his lips. That prig held me responsible. He said I could have pulled the guy out and that the man had reached out his hand to me. I’m not sure. I envied my friend anyway. Deliverance came to him quickly and free of charge, like an unexpected gift. He smiled at me and reached out his hand to say goodbye or invite me to cleanse myself of life and join him. He was kind and wished me well. There’s no messing around with luck, so I’ll have to bide my time. The other workers all glared at me as if I had pushed him under the truck. Maybe they suspected me from the start. Just idiots—instead of demanding their rights and breaking out of their state of legalized slavery, they held me responsible for the accident as if I were a superhero in charge of defying the will of God. After that a sense of guilt seeped into me, as if I were a real murderer, and I had nightmares. I saw the same scene in different forms every time. That period passed with minimal damage and I went back to not caring—invisible, silent, biding my time. The poor guy died and then I decided to give up that kind of work forever. Working as a subcontracted garbage collector is not a job you have many regrets about when you give it up.

No one else will be destined to write a life story as squalid as mine, although it’s all true. Some of the facts smell so strong that they would overpower any perfume, however expensive it might be. When was the last time I bought a bottle of perfume? I’m still grateful to the exploitative garbage collector who subcontracted his job to me—another stupid act of gratitude on my part. In the last two months of those three damned years I grew lazy and he found another wretch to replace me when I decided to go. He had a word with one of his relatives in the wholesale stores in Oued Smar and that relative of his recommended me to a rich merchant who was religiously conservative but in fact just a pig. I said goodbye to my shabby room and settled down comfortably in my new job despite the hard work. I was happy to be sure of a place to spend the night without fearing the ceiling would fall in on my head if it started raining. The warehouse where I and others spent the night was a real palace compared with my previous room, but I lost my freedom and with it the pleasure of sleeping alone and naked.

I was drinking, but not for any particular purpose. Out of curiosity to explore, and then out of habit, as an escape that was expensive but productive in a way. Through it I forgot I was me, and it saved me from feeling crushed inside. It was quite an ordeal finding alcohol and somewhere to drink, but I found it was worth the trouble. The pig hated me and held back some of the money he owed me. He patronized me, treated me as an idiot. He called me “the drunkard” and threatened to fire me, without actually doing so. I admit I deceived him for weeks. I couldn’t avoid playing along with him and maybe I even wanted to reform myself, but it was a faint and intermittent desire. I frequented the nearby mosque and took part in Friday prayers. I had fasted regularly in the past but praying regularly was too much. My mind was exhausted, as was my body. Even so, never mind, I wasn’t doing anyone any harm. On religious holidays I would stay on my own because my workmates went off to their families. I would have a break from them for two or three nights. On one occasion he caught me drinking in the warehouse. He laid into me and threw me out. The place where you make a living must never smell of the devil’s brew, he told me. I plucked up my courage and went back an hour later to plead with him. I had nowhere else to go. I repeated to him something I had heard in the Friday sermon, that God forgives all sins, otherwise people would be helping Satan against their fellow Muslims. I promised I was repentant and he forgave me. After that he and the devil were on my case, and I realized that he agreed to take me back only because I was reliable, worked hard, and didn’t ask for much.

I noticed the way they looked at me in the café, wary of the stranger that had suddenly landed among them. But I ignored them. At first it was annoying to be under constant surveillance, but then their curiosity wore off and I got used to it, just as I’ve got used to everything else in the past. My talents in this regard are extraordinary. Only that bookshop guy discovered that I drink; he’s an expert in carousing and well aware of the signs. I exaggerate. I’m not literally a carouser. Once he followed me to the entrance to the big square and we spoke. It was easy to come to terms, though my conditions were tough. He doesn’t ask about anything and his curiosity doesn’t make him commit stupidities of any kind or drag me into problems that have nothing to do with me. He told me he was interested in storing a few crates of booze in my apartment. I agreed at first, then backed out. The neighborhood’s very rough and the neighbors wouldn’t stop talking if they discovered it. So I didn’t get a discount on the usual price, just easier repayment terms. I had been without supplies for two whole months, a record period, and he offered to sell me some alcohol at the right time. We didn’t speak again. He supplies me with what I need and I pay him depending on how much ready cash I have. The bookshop guy is incomprehensible, I mean inconsistent. He’s smart and well informed but when it comes to the crunch he leaves all that aside and is a complete scammer. He treated me rudely the last time. He wouldn’t give me any more time to pay, as he usually did. He made me repay all the money I owed and we started from scratch. I didn’t ask him to show me his bookshop and I think he preferred I know nothing about him, other than that he sits in the café and talks big to his gang, as if he were lecturing at university or at a free thought forum. He uses his bookshop only as a front. Deception is common among all people, and the alcohol trade is very profitable, although the police do try to crack down on it. He works without a license and gets the beer from a factory on the road between the capital and Blida. Personally I don’t care how much he makes from me. Money might not bring us happiness, but it can buy us oblivion.

I recently had a favor to ask of the bookshop man, the booze dealer. He was unexpectedly helpful. People with flexible principles can be very useful in hard times. He didn’t help me for free, yet I’m grateful to him anyway. I’m a man who’s grateful to an unhealthy extent, even toward those who don’t really deserve it. The old man is ill and his memory’s gone, I’m broke and helpless, and the old man’s pension was stuck in the post office and mounting up. The postmaster is an old school friend of the bookshop man and maybe he sells him booze, just as he sells it to me. Ignoring the rules overcomes problems. The postmaster was well paid for ignoring them and on top of that he wanted me to thank him and show him gratitude that he didn’t deserve. I didn’t do it this time. As for the bookshop man, he was paid in full for his mediation, without having to sympathize with me as a regular customer who doesn’t cause trouble, or with the old man who was his neighbor that I had got involved with. I gave them an appointment, after sunset, and they brought a large ledger with them. The postmaster checked that the old freedom fighter was still alive, then he stained the old man’s index finger with ink and put his fingerprint on the ledger as proof that he had received his pension in full. I hardly spoke to the postmaster, beyond the usual greetings, and I just looked at the bookshop man with contempt because of his opportunism. They went off, leaving us with just a third of the money, and that third would have to take care of everything we needed for days, though there may not be that many days left. There was some furniture left that could be sold, but that could wait until the third ran out—the most important third in my life, and in his. I’m not prepared to work again and in practice that would be impossible. Who would look after the old man in my absence? I got him supplies of medicine and enough diapers to last until his early death, which I am looking forward to more than anything else. Inside me, that something bugs me whenever I think of leaving him alone and looking for somewhere else I can stay. I can’t see the logic behind a messed-up insect like me having to face all these difficult ordeals. All the wretched insect wants to do is keep well out of the way, crawl under a rock or into a crack in the wall of an abandoned house, so that it isn’t crushed under someone’s foot.

What does it mean when your first romantic experiences are with a fat woman who looks like a lump of grease? That nurse had too much of everything except wisdom. I spoke to her obligingly but I was reluctant to go any further with her, on the grounds that I feared God and she had ruined all my dreams about women. When I later saw pictures of real women in sex magazines I found in the garbage, and compared them unfavorably with the nurse, I appreciated how much trouble I would have been in if, in my misery, I had given in to temptation and slept with her. Several times I almost abandoned my regime of chastity through reckless acts. I didn’t ridicule her, because people should be judged by their character, but her large frame did impose its presence and there was no way to avoid it. Love is a winning card with women. She treated me better than anyone has ever treated me before. She bought me countless cigarettes and clothes, and she gave me special pills that make you feel as light as a feather floating in the air, happy with everything around you and prone to laugh at anything you see, even a funeral. That was the state I was in when I spoke to her about love and a life together and praised her figure and her elegance as if she were a Russian figure skater. I was her favorite in the hospital and I saw her colleagues making fun of her by winking at each other. I admit that the sight of us together was ridiculous. Once she came to me and complained about them, and I told her that jealousy can do worse things than that to women, and she shouldn’t pay any attention to what they said. We agreed she would help me escape. I would disappear for days and then head to an apartment in Bachdjerrah for which she gave me the address. We would wait till the story was forgotten, then get married, and she would arrange everything. Her brother wouldn’t object. He wanted to be spared the trouble of worrying about her, even if a mangy dog came and asked to marry her. In any case it’s not my fault. The judicial system would forget me and we’d be happy, I told her. I played the role of the mangy dog and when I saw she was a little hesitant, hours before I regained my freedom, I barked a lot to assure her that I loved her and she had to wait for me. In the previous days we had avoided each other as much as possible so that she wouldn’t be the first person suspected of helping me escape. Did they discover her role in my escape or is she still waiting for me?

One day I recklessly went out of the apartment to face the madness of the world around me with what was left of my sanity. I don’t regret it at all; in fact, I consider it the best decision I ever made, at least as far as the first night is concerned. Luckily the water main came back on and I did a heroic job undoing the effects of the water shortage that the neighborhood had been through. I made my den look like a bridegroom’s apartment on his wedding night. The night brings people countless blessings. The girl on the balcony and I had each made up our minds to take a step forward under cover of darkness, and in fact it was a massive leap for a man like me, a novice in such matters. The balcony light came on again and my excitement was well founded. Circumstances conspired to pave the way for a wonderful night. She’s shy and not talkative. Maybe I had been unfair to her at first. She took the initiative to come and at the time I judged that she had a boldness that I didn’t have. It was no use talking and I wasn’t interested in that. I made do with the small lamp in my room. I welcomed her as one should, without pretending to be more generous than I could afford to be, because the fridge was empty. What good does talking do in such situations? The world of women is extraordinary. Does it make sense that I’d never been given a chance to explore it? Her silence made me anxious. It was an involuntary silence, or rather a laudable silence. Someone like her is the best person you could tell your secrets to or reveal your flaws to without fear that they might give you away. She was plump and agreeable, as fresh as she should be. She outdid me in daring and was bolder than me. I’m shy and I don’t have a sense of humor. I left the lamp light low and I missed the chance to take a close look at her face. I might not recognize her if we met outside and in the street I wouldn’t have the opportunity to check her identity by consulting my tactile memory of the contours of her body. We were hardly able to understand each other. The signals she gave were difficult to decipher and I’m not quick-witted. She was in a normal state at first but then she lost the power of speech for reasons I didn’t understand. We agreed to repeat the first night and for the first time in my life I felt an emotion and attraction toward another human. I spent the day asleep and woke up in the afternoon, had a shave, and tried to get clean and neat, like a man that a woman might desire, even if she was mute. I went through periods when I thought that I was just hallucinating, that there was no light and no silhouette, or even a balcony in the first place. With certainty and strange enthusiasm, the old silhouettes won out. That bloody useless SIM card deserves to be cut up a thousand times. I had wasted all the money on the card speaking to that old German woman. I topped it up again, looked for that folded and scented piece of paper and the number written on it in pink ink, and dialed the number with considerable enthusiasm. Mubarak allowed me to put the SIM card in his phone. I made the call. She picked up, but I couldn’t hear any response. I tried again twice within minutes, then gave the phone back to its owner and broke the SIM card. My experience on the first night was useful to me, and if I had to be grateful for anything in the world, it would be her body. How deprived I was! She was very short and she had hairy legs and yet I saw her as a real gift. I wished she had answered me and that we could have had a chat like two strangers who have long been ravaged by deprivation. She seemed like a good woman to me and I saw tears in her eyes when I told her about some of the things I had suffered. It was the first time I’d seen someone crying for my sake. She tried to explain many things to me but I didn’t understand her. I didn’t find out if she was living alone or not, or where she went to when she disappeared. I didn’t even know her name.

Life went my way for a while, but then it stopped treating me nicely. One of the few things I gathered from her was that she had been inside the apartment in the past. That hurt me in a way I had never experienced before. I still have the luxury of feeling shocked, jealous, or angry about something against which I am powerless. The gullible pay double price every time. Mourad made his mark between her legs. She used to come to see him. She very much hated him. I didn’t need to be a genius to work that out. And she isn’t wholly nice. In fact she isn’t nice at all. She went into the kitchen on her own, found the lighter easily, came back and lit a cigarette, and in bed she proved that there’s a massive, an immeasurable difference between the amount of experience she has and the amount I have. She’s a sex bitch. I was in an extremely bad mood. The darkness in the room hid my face, but I could see her smiling profusely. Maybe she wanted to give me an explanation, if she could get any words out. Who am I that she should give me an explanation? I’m used to allaying my hunger by devouring other people’s leftovers. Their leftovers are not very appetizing, but I’m so hungry I’ll eat anything. That same hunger drove me to have my way with her until the crack of dawn, although a pain I had never experienced before was still burning in my heart.