2

Scramble

I WAS RIGHT WHEN I predicted that life would save me up till it found a big shithole to dump me in. Damn my luck and damn the old man, the son of a bitch. And damn the public slaughterhouse where I’ve been standing for hours. I hate the smell of medicine and the sight of doctors and nurses with faces as blank as those of vets treating animals. I go out to the square and come back. I can’t stay away from him for long. He keeps calling me, I mean calling Mourad, and I’m the substitute dog that has to play the role of Mourad till the end. This hospital, a legacy of colonialism, is almost unchanged from the time it was built. They’ve added some annexes to it, mutilating it irreparably. It’s crowded Rouïba Hospital, Rouïba, and its industrial area. They should execute those people in public, those major-league grifters. His condition deteriorated and I brought him here. But I’ve grown tired of waiting beside him all the time. He might need a companion if they decide to admit him for a few days. Never mind, I’ll sort it out. The doctor asked me if he’s been eating well and I told him without thinking that he’d lost his appetite. I lied to him. All the food we had has run out. Sometimes he’d have to go without food till nighttime. Then I’d give him a little food with some sweetened water. I was hungry too. I spent the last dinar I had, and when he fell seriously ill I was worried about taking him to the post office. He couldn’t go out without running a risk. I wouldn’t take that risk, so we were stuck.

Slaves rebel at the first opportunity. The woman abandoned us after the first week I couldn’t pay her. I came around to the idea of selling the television. It’s a big one and it’s the latest model. I started fantasizing about the amount of money I could raise with it. When the time came I got a third of what we had paid. It might be stolen, the man said, exploiting my need for money. As for the man in the electronic appliances store, he yelled in my face and threatened to call the police if I went into his store again, on the grounds that he didn’t deal in stolen goods. I took the money home with the feeling that I was just a piece of bird shit on the roof of the world. A wind might blow up and throw me out into the great void. Why not? I was a little happy nonetheless. I hired a taxi and went home with some vegetables, meat, and bags of large diapers, and had some money left to pay the woman. It had been an unforgettable week and it looked like it would cast its pall over the days to come as well. I’ve experienced all kinds of disgusting things before, but taking off someone’s diapers, getting rid of the shit and piss, and putting on another one pushes the limits when it comes to humiliation. Diapers are the most important invention in history. As for my inordinate humaneness, that’s a historical mistake that keeps recurring. The doctor tells me, totally relaxed, that old age is incurable. A great start! Maybe he thought I wanted the old man to recover and escape death! He needs to do some tests. Can you do them here? Some of the equipment in the lab is out of order and won’t be repaired any time soon. You can try a private lab. Long live the Algerian state, the welfare state with stuffed pockets. All that’s left in my pocket is a 2,000-dinar note and that won’t be much good. I wish he would die. Why is he hanging on to life? The matter will be left undecided till tomorrow, or forever. I was sweating heavily, my clothes were dirty, and I wanted to go home for a shower. My greatest achievement today was that they decided to admit him to the hospital. I had wanted to beg the scowling doctor to inject him with something that would make him sleep a long time, a sleep like death, a deep coma. I wouldn’t have protested. On the contrary, I would have been grateful to see his hellish face, which makes him look like a murderer anyway.

What need did I have for freedom? That’s a question I posed, belatedly and with not a little remorse, on the same night I decided to win back my freedom at any cost. I hadn’t done anything wrong and I wasn’t sick. I was sure of myself and that was enough. I tricked them into believing I was sick, in order to save myself, and I fell into more damned trouble. I don’t want to go over the incident or say why I found myself forced to cower in a mental hospital like a patient that’s not expected to recover. That’s nothing to do with anyone else; it’s a secret between me and my fate. As for my memories of the people in white coats, most of them are unpleasant. I’ve never hated anyone so much as doctors and lawyers, the false symbols of humanity. I put on an act for some of them and tricked them for a good long time. I played dominoes with them and they didn’t begrudge me their cigarettes. Most of them graduated from university as damaged goods and their competence is permanently in doubt. That helped me later, although they destroyed me with drugs in the beginning. I’ll curse them till I die. I lied to a fat nurse and told her she was attractive. People who are frustrated will believe even a madman. I showered her with endless compliments and gained amazing privileges. A little flattery works wonders. The doctor revealed to me that he was going to write me a letter to the effect that I had completely recovered. I was going to regain my reason through a certificate from him, but my freedom was in the balance. When darkness fell I headed to the doctor’s office. He had signed my release paper and I found him lying back in his chair because of the heat and the broken air-conditioning. The working conditions didn’t suit him and he was thinking of emigrating. He didn’t want to be a slave to a state that sucked his blood. That’s what he told me, and he spoke to me just like he would to any sane friend of his. He showed me the release paper and I tried to show a little interest. He put it back in my file. I took my leave and left. I agreed with the nurse that I would never go back to the big ward. I would escape that night. Her face looked really sad. Inside I felt sorry for her and I promised I would marry her. We’ll be together forever my love, I said, and she believed me. If it hadn’t been for her, getting out of that damned place would have been impossible. The hospital management was meant to inform some government department the next day, so that they could take me back to somewhere I didn’t deserve to be, but I had different ideas. I had memorized the layout of the hospital inch by inch in advance. My girlfriend took on the task of covering my absence, while I slipped into a place that wouldn’t occur to anyone and hid there. At dawn I had a new appointment with freedom.

I’ve put a new diaper on him and given him some water to drink. He might spend the night alone. But I’m happy to get out of the hospital unburdened. I can’t stay the night with him. I don’t have an ID card or any other document that would prove my identity, and the hospital staff needs proof of identity for people who stay with the patients. In the morning, as I was taking him to the hospital in the Protection Civile ambulance, the cleaning woman told me her teenage son could stay the night with him. It was an admirable solution, for which I expressed my gratitude, until she told me in an almost imperious tone that I would have to pay him. I tried to bargain with her, saying she would have one less stomach to fill morning and evening. The boy would eat his share of the hospital food and the poor old man’s share, but she refused. I agreed of course. I would pay him for two nights in advance and send him over as soon as I got back. Five hundred dinars a night was a good deal. That was the best available. In fact it was all I could afford.

Mourad wouldn’t be very interested in his father’s condition. He’d cope with his short-lived sadness by having a woman and a few drinks, then end up coming to terms with the idea of his father’s imminent demise. Yet I had to tell him. I’d kept the last number he called me from in a small notebook but I couldn’t remember where I’d put it. There was still the problem of finding a phone, but I would find a way. How I wished a miracle would happen and I would find Mourad standing right in front of me so that I could kick him in the ass. The bastard. I don’t hate him. I’m just angry, but I still feel grateful to him. He took me in to exploit me and salve his conscience, but I’m still very grateful, even after everything I’ve suffered with his father, and not just a little grateful. As far as I’m concerned, his shirts, trousers, and underwear also count in his favor. When I first tried them on I found they didn’t fit. He was fat and I looked like a real clown in them. I went to a tailor nearby and he adjusted them to fit me. Nothing in life has ever been my size: my life is like a patchwork garment. I need a tailor who can reshape my life the way I want it. What do I really want? Maybe to discard life and face death as naked as I was when I came from the void in the first place. I had a difficult choice to make and I could have neglected the old man till he died and his corpse stank. I could have gone away and never come back, or come back after his story was forgotten. I didn’t. In my heart I felt just as sorry for him as I would have felt for my own father if he had been destined to live long enough for me to see him as an old man. The bus shakes and smells foul. I can’t bear the way I smell either. My father died and one of the distant consequences of that is that this senile man has found someone to look after him. I’ve shouted in his face, I’ve insulted him and cursed him because of his son, but I haven’t abandoned him. I’m not a complete bastard. When he dies soon, as I hope he will, I’ll gradually forget about my complaints about his excretions and their smell, which cling to me and to his apartment, which I have to clean when I go back and relax a little. I’ll ask God to have mercy on him. Fate gave me a chance to see firsthand the state my father might eventually have reached. A wise man prefers to die in good health. Weakness in old age is humiliating to those who can’t find anyone to look after them.

I reached the station and got off the horrible bus without paying the conductor, a smart-ass young man who failed to notice me. I walked off as if I didn’t have a care in the world. It’s not the first time I’ve done that. The feel of the green 2,000-dinar note between my fingers gives me vigor and a sense of power. I’ll break it and keep half for the maid’s son, after buying a packet of Rym cigarettes, some soap for the shower, and a SIM card to call Mourad. I won’t promise my stomach a meal. A strong coffee will do. I’m hungry but I can take it. I’ll be happy as long as the hunger doesn’t keep me awake at night. This will be the first night I’ve gone back to sleep in my own apartment after spending a week staying up with the old man. I can’t say I hope he’ll recover. The doctor said, There’s no cure for old age, and I won’t second-guess him in his area of expertise. I have two apartments and I can spend the night hungry in whichever one I want. Total luxury, but without a meal. An empty belly has no conscience, and a full belly even less so. I should have been on guard against that. I withdrew a considerable sum from the old man’s pension and then I was extravagant. Before that, when I used to work as a porter in the wholesale stores in Oued Smar, I made loads of money but most of it went missing or was stolen from me. I cracked the skull and injured the shoulder of a porter who worked with me there, and then I ran away. Maybe I only had my suspicions about him, I don’t know, but I was already full of anger toward him and the next time he provoked me it seemed like a good opportunity to act. Before I took my revenge and left, I asked the pig who employed us to give me back my ID card for some bureaucratic procedure, and I said I’d hand it back the next day. He kept hold of our ID cards in case of similar situations. He gave us free lodging but the food was on us, and no one could find me or find out where I was unless they had a photocopy of the card, but I don’t think that guy, who had a beard like a devil’s, had taken any precautions. His only concern was to buy nuts and honey at the end of every day to make himself more virile. What good would virility do him when he was such a pig?

I had some tough times, hiding away and starving. I slept in the bus station at El Kharrouba for several nights. A cleaner harassed me and only with difficulty did I manage to escape from the guards. It was only routine harassment but I couldn’t go back there. Before that I’d thought of taking a bus to the desert, or to the west or east of the country, not to Sétif of course, but then I changed my mind. One moonlit night I reached a neighborhood close to the railway station at Rouïba. I don’t know why I ended up there in particular. I was hungry and smelled foul. Finally I managed to have a shower and get rid of the smell. Mourad happened to be passing by and we had a long conversation of which I remember nothing. He was half-drunk, while I hadn’t had any food in my stomach for a day and a night. He agreed I could sleep at his place and told me he might let me stay longer once he checked the next day that I wasn’t wanted by the police. Fortunately my name wasn’t on the wanted list. My ID card fell into the toilet at the station and got wet. I fished it out, but when I found it was completely ruined, I threw it back in and poured a bucket of water over it. I’d forgotten my name when he asked me about it the first time. I had been giving myself a different name everywhere I went. I was very hungry and he fed me. That day I had gone around the shopkeepers and cheap restaurants but they chased me away and none of them offered me a hot meal. I would have been prepared to burn the whole city down if I’d had a chance. Does anyone out there know what it feels like to be hungry and begging when people refuse to feed you? Throughout the time I lived with him, I called Mourad my friend. At first he was annoyed, since I was just a dirty homeless guy, lost and always hungry. Yet I won his heart and he accepted me as his equal in some ways. Maybe he saw me as a gift from fate, a gift he found by chance near the garbage dump.

In the middle of the week another intruder visited me around noon. He pressed the doorbell, which was out of order, and then knocked on the door. I saw him through the peep hole. He had a full beard and was wearing a yellow cloak. I’m always wary of people who dress ostentatiously. His face wasn’t completely unfamiliar to me, as I’d seen him before. He had been following me with his eyes that morning and I had ignored him. That was when I went to the café very early and had breakfast on account. I made nice to Mubarak, smiling at him for the first time. I needed him to lend me some money, any amount, on the grounds that his neighbor, the poor old man, was ill. I wanted to appeal to his better nature but he’s a big bastard, and I didn’t get anything out of him. I was pathetic, and anyone, believer or sinner, would have pitied me. The man who was watching me in the café kept stroking his neatly trimmed beard with his right hand. Now he was doing exactly the same thing on the other side of the door, as he waited for it to open. He gave me a smile and said, I’ve come to visit the old man. I heard he was very ill. (Who told him?) I’m the imam of the mosque in our neighborhood, the Takoua mosque, if you don’t recognize me, the imam continued. This old man is a believer and a great freedom fighter. He used to pray right behind me in the front row and he’d never miss a prayer time.

Was he praising him or finding fault with him for staying away from prayers? Besides, when was all this? I hadn’t seen him leave the apartment since the time I arrived. He’d been abandoned by his son and was waiting to die, nothing more. The imam started praying for him and I expected him to put his hand in his pocket and take out some money. The old man was hungry and words alone don’t silence an empty stomach. Finally he slipped me some money and I felt guilty for thinking ill of him as a man of God. But the worst of my earlier suspicions were confirmed when he revealed the real reason for his visit. He assumed an earnest expression and laid out his proposal to me. In fact it sounded like some kind of scam. I’m someone who’s permanently vulnerable to scams: that’s nothing new and not really anything to feel sorry about. He wanted me to let him bring clients to the apartment for “sharia exorcisms.” I could have half of what he earned—word of honor between us—and unlimited blessings. I agreed, almost without thinking. I hadn’t had a beer for many days and necessity is the mother of depravity. We agreed on a time, and he said he had plenty of customers. The faithful protect their brothers, and I would have to vacate my apartment, he added. I also agreed to that. I would stay in the old man’s apartment. It would be best if you kept away longer, he said, trying hard to keep me out of the way. Muslims should keep their word, okay. He scowled when I asked how much one of these sessions cost. The people are sick and they pay generously to get rid of the devil and make room for the angels lurking inside them to reappear, he said. The spiritual procedure is very time-consuming. You won’t be too put out, he assured me. It would just be two or three times a week in the afternoon, and sometimes daily. I agreed again. Poverty knows no morals and this religious man was going to throw poverty out of the apartment. In the mental hospital I was convinced I was sane, and just putting on an act for them without believing in the act myself. As for the state I’m in these days, it’s worth reconsidering. Circumstances impose on us new rules for engaging with life all the time, and one has to adapt. A dark area in my memory refuses to remind me of what happened. I relived my unfortunate experience in the form of horrible nightmares for months on end but finally I managed to forget, or else I would have killed myself. Death through cowardice is easier to bear than facing the pain when you are completely defenseless. I’m not sad I’ve forgotten what happened, and even if I did remember, it would still be a secret that I would take with me to the grave. And work together in righteousness, the imam concluded, then withdrew without further ado. I was left thinking, unable to back out of the agreement. Life never ceases to come up with predicaments and with them freedom of choice becomes a distant luxury. An hour later he brought his first customer. My apartment stank. It hadn’t been cleaned for a week, but I didn’t have anything to be ashamed of. Besides, cleanliness is in the heart, and preparing the apartment for him hadn’t been part of the agreement in the first place. He was surprised when he saw the state it was in, but I ignored his grumbling as if it were nothing to do with me. He finished his inspection, said he needed an hour or more, and asked me to leave. I started waiting for the end of the exorcism, spending half the first hour in the café, which was empty. It was a hot, humid day. Mubarak took me aside and said he was sorry he couldn’t lend me the money I had asked for. But he said he would drop in on me at home that evening. I left his place and stood in the shade for a while. Where should I go for the rest of the hour we had agreed? At the entrance to the building I met some women: two of them went in while an older woman stayed in the taxi that had brought them. Before long the taxi left, to come back and take the two women later. I went back to counting the minutes and from the square I could hear the old man shouting. The prostate pain is unbearable, he was saying. He held out for a while, suppressing his pains. But when the pain got the better of him he shouted out again. This time he was calling Mourad at the top of his voice. I went upstairs. Then he chose to be patient and a cautious silence prevailed. Suddenly there was another sound from my apartment. I hesitated a while, quite a long while in fact. The money in my pocket kept me silent, but something was bugging me inside. I felt sorry for the imam’s patient, though she did have a companion to help her with the difficult situation and help the imam against the djinn that possessed her. It’s not at all easy to drive out djinn that have taken up residence in the body of a somewhat plump young woman, and even in her black hijab she projected more than enough allure to excite a troupe of devils. At the entrance to the building she had walked past me. I looked down, away from her, but I noticed half a smile on her lips. I pretended to be modest by looking down, while the devil found plenty of scope to play in my heart.

More minutes passed and the sounds from my apartment began to sound suspicious. The djinn had started panting, following the lead of the humans inside. I could hear mutterings and muffled words, and that something was bugging me more and more. Might it have been my conscience? I had had the foresight to disable the lock on the inside of the door. I stood for some moments in the narrow corridor between the front doors of the two apartments, and then I pushed the door of my apartment with all my weight. The woman who had been leaning on it to keep it shut fell to the floor on the inside. I burst into the room and was amazed to see the dignified imam, a man in his fifties, stretched out on my bed naked, while the woman who had been wearing the black hijab now had a blue nightshirt tight around her flabby body. She was smiling broadly this time and pretended to be surprised, but not very convincingly.

Fate overcomes everyone. This is a fact I won’t let anyone debate with me from now on. For example, this filthy apartment was fated to be a den of debauchery, whoever lived in it, and I was fated to be always deprived. I didn’t celebrate the money the imam had given me for long. I hated the fact he had deceived me, and I punished him. I gave him and his two cows a few kicks. She’s my second wife, he said, The first doesn’t know and I don’t have anywhere to be alone with her in a sharia-compliant way. That’s how my imam justified his position. He likes to use the word “sharia” in every other sentence. I’m not shocked by him. He ended up giving me some more money so I was rather pleased, and I still had the option of blackmailing him. My plans for the night included preparing a banquet for myself and the old man. I overlooked the fact that he needed the doctor and medicine and decided to set aside what I had left of the money to pay the electricity bill and buy some cans of beer. Selfishness, poor judgment, I didn’t have time for regrets. In the afternoon I was visited by a guy who persuaded me to hand over most of the sum and left. It was the guy with the bookstore who sits in the café sometimes and uses complicated words. My debts had mounted up and were over the limit we’d agreed. He deducted the amount I owed and dashed my hopes of getting beer from him on credit in the future. Pay what you owe and order what you want. That was the new rule he set in his dealings with me. His face was implacable and there was no way I could negotiate. Defeated by fate yet again, I left. I had hoped for a night when the old man would have his fill of meat and I would get drunk and watch the balcony for the silhouette of the girl whose flirting I now found tedious. But now those hopes were dashed. I ended up having eggs and cheese for dinner and nothing on the balcony but cigarettes.

The balcony opposite was closed. It had been closed for many nights, and I had almost given up hope of her coming out again. I wondered if there was any point in waiting for the balcony light to come on and her silhouette to appear. I always plow the impossible and reap nothing of value. Ten o’clock came and nothing new. I looked in on the old man every half hour. It was raining, a miserable night. I cheered up, however, when I remembered that Mubarak hadn’t kept his appointment with me, but like anything that gives me pleasure it didn’t last long. Several minutes later he was seated in the sitting room, soaked and unusually silent. I was about to ask about the local imam, but I didn’t really want to. I took the initiative this time. What do you want of me, I asked. In a remote and abandoned cemetery in the part of the country where he came from, he said, bands of bad guys had buried a real treasure during the civil war. In the days of banditry and gangs that roamed by night, people paid ransoms and the money piled up. But cash wasn’t safe and gold alone is always king. There were some buried ingots there, and so we had to dig up what must be the most valuable grave in the world, thirty-four ingots. Few people were aware of this and the army had killed some of them, and only this dubious old man knew the exact location of the grave and he’d be the only heir. I need a young man, he told me, and there’s no one suitable but you, we only need to spend two nights there, when there’s a full moon. We’ll have to dig deep, there are shepherds in the area and people no longer bury their dead in that cemetery. We’d be easily visible in the daylight, so we’ll have to do it at night. The hardest work will fall to you. Your share will be one third and an extra ingot as a gift. We’ll finish the job before we go together to the nearest town. I’ll tell you the name of the town when we agree. I’ll come back to Rouïba and you can disappear into the capital forever. Also it would be preferable if you don’t come back as I don’t know where your family is. Be careful, forget your Mubarak, and live like a king.

I’ve no idea what kind of pills he’d taken before coming to see me. I listened to him and interrupted him a few times to seek clarification, as if I were actually interested in his offer. Just out of curiosity. He gave me high hopes, if the mission succeeded, and he was fully confident it was a foregone conclusion I would agree. He stuck his hand in his pocket. He was carrying a large amount of money. I thought it would be an advance payment, but the man was cunning. I’m a hungry puppy and he only has to show me a piece of bread for me to follow him. He left straight away. Why didn’t I settle the matter at the time? That something inside me had stopped bugging me and had tempted me to embark on an adventure through which I could deal my fate a deadly blow.