Ahmed the Philosopher: Thirty-Four Short Plays for Children and Everyone Else

AHMED. I’m going to tell you an extremely funny story. Once upon a time, in Sarges-les-Corneilles, there was this big ugly goon, this real pain in the ass, named Moustache. Albert Moustache. You know the type. He was always asking me: “You Arabs, born natives of Algeria, what are you doing here eating up all our French pastries?” He was always asking my girlfriend Fenda, who’s black and beautiful: “You Negroes, born natives of Timbuktu, why the hell do you have to drag your asses to Sarges-les-Corneilles?” He was dying to figure it all out. Because he’d been born in Sarges-les-Corneilles, he’d been the dunce of the school in Sarges-les-Corneilles, he’d done his military service in the Sarges-les-Corneilles fire station, he’d married a shrew who was a born native of Sarges-les-Corneilles, he’d lived in a housing project in Sarges-les-Corneilles, he had a German shepherd by the name of Pisspot, which was the son of a bitch from Sarges-les-Corneilles by the name of Shitbag and of a dog from Sarges-les-Corneilles by the name of Pukeface. And what’s more, he worked at Capito-Nuke, a factory in Sarges-les-Corneilles. A true blue Sarges-les-Corneillian like Moustache, I doubt if there were two of them under the sun. So, when he saw people from Africa coming here, people who’d spent their lives crossing oceans, who spoke three languages, who had several wives, and who, every Saturday morning, brightened the Sarges-les-Corneilles marketplace with color and beauty, he just couldn’t get over it. One day, I said to him: “My dear Moustache, what’s bothering you is that you don’t see the cause and the effect.” He was annoyed, he bellowed: “What is this Moslem mumbo-jumbo? Cause and effect! Cooze and fuck, you mean!” But I knew how to deal with him, old Moustache: “The problem,” I went on, “is that you see the effect: all sorts of people not like you, at least according to you, because they’re not any more not like you than you are yourself. Because with you, there are days, especially when you’ve been hitting the sauce, when you’re really not yourself. But let’s not dwell on that. The important thing is that you don’t see the cause. Yet an effect without a cause has the following effect: that you get all upset.” “So,” bellows Moustache, “are you going to tell me the cause of your damn effect?” “Take a good look at me,” I hurl at him. “I see all too much of you, you damn Muslim,” he hurls right back at me. “So I’m the effect, huh,” I catapult at him, “me here, I’m the effect that, without a cause, gets you all upset?” “You really look like an effect without a cause,” he jabbers at me. Then I let him have it: “Scrutinize me. Scrutinize the effect, and you’ll eventually see the cause. Because, necessarily, the cause is in the effect.” “If I screwtenize you, all I see is your shit-brown face,” he shrieks at me. “Screwtinize some more,” I zap back at him. “Because if the cause isn’t in the effect, it’s a miracle, the effect occurs all by itself.” “You’re not really trying to tell me that the presence of a bunch of Islamicists and sexed-up black chicks in Sarges-les-Corneilles is a miraculous gift from the good Lord?” “Go ahead,” I press on, with my face right in his moustache, “screwtenize hard!” And then I see Moustache’s eyes light up. He stares at me, he flexes all the soft muscles of his intellect, he rolls his eyes, he turns red as a rooster’s comb … By George, he’s got it! “You came here,” he declares, “because you decided to go where it was better.” “Moustache,” I retort, “you’ve put your finger on the cause. But,” I persist, “you, why do you stay in Sarges-les-Corneilles? There’s nothing in the world that’s better than Sarges-les-Corneilles?” “Goddam shithole of a hick town,” he declares. “So now,” I whisper to him, “we’re in a pickle. If the cause of being here is that people came for something better; and if you’re not here for the better, but for the worse … then there’s a diabolical conclusion: the effect without a cause, it’s you here, Albert Moustache, and not me.” Then I saw Moustache’s eyes narrow and become like a little pig’s eyes. “Even by screwtinizing me,” he started moaning, “you can’t see the cause of why I’m in Sarges-les-Corneilles?” And, scrutinizing him really hard, I said: “No, it’s impossible to see anything. You’re here because you’ve been here forever. But that’s not really a valid cause. You’ve got to get used to it, Albert, it’s you yourself, as an effect without a cause, who are getting yourself all upset.” Ever since then, he’s been crying, Albert Moustache has. I swear to you! He’s been crying nonstop. His dog Pisspot even sleeps next to him to try to understand.