The Funerals (an excerpt)
2015; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 89; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wlt.2015.0148
ISSN1945-8134
Autores Tópico(s)North African History and Literature
Resumo24 WLT NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2015 special section Political Voices from the Maghreb Throughout their lives, the three authors represented in this minifeature —Rashid Boudjedra (b. 1941), Matoub Lounès (1956–1998), and Ahmed Bouanani (1938–2011)— never shied away from controversies and as a result paid a dear price for their politics: Bouanani’s oeuvre has been largely forgotten, Lounès was murdered by extremists, while Boudjedra has spent much of his life either in exile or under police protection. From Lounès’s biting political songs to Bouanani’s surrealist poems and Boudjedra’s hallucinatory novels, these artists dedicated their immense talents to fighting against the twin legacies that arguably played the largest part in shaping the North African countries of Algeria and Morocco over the past century: French colonialism and Saudi-sponsored Islamic extremism. Curated and introduced by ANDRÉ NAFFIS-SAHELY Yann Arthus-Bertrand, School in Ghardaïa, Algeria. From Algérie vue du ciel (Éditions de la Martinière, 2005). By permission of Agence Altitude / Atelier Yann Arthus-Bertrand. WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 25 I t was my duty to try and understand the terrorists’ mentality. I continued studying the case files. To be obsessed by Sarah and Ali. I needed a lot of time to adapt to that senseless , cruel, and rapacious reality. I often felt out of sync. Above all, I was obsessed by Sarah’s death. Maybe because we shared the same name? Hovering above it all, the racket of countless garrulous swallows. Gossipmongers . Tireless. Blackening the sky during the hour of siesta. Intermittent sleep. The smell of my office clung to my skin and impregnated all my clothes. Tiredness climbed from the depths of my body, which by ten o’clock was virtually exhausted after fifteen hours of work. As a child, I was forbidden to go out into the street. I already bore the taint of being an Algerian girl whose father had abandoned her! I never left the window. Whenever the green streetcar passed by with its rocking trolley-pole—which my mother had always talked about but which I’d never seen—I felt as though the whole of my body was being jolted by tiny vibrations . That trolley-pole was very funny -looking. It was always running away. Forcing the poor conductor to stay alert. On his toes. On the lookout. Ready to readjust it if need be. Picturing that poor conductor running after that moody trolley -pole always made me giggle. It clung tightly to the overhead wires. Returning via the track and making it run along the rails. Mummy was an excellent storyteller. She knew how to imitate Charlie Chaplin by drawing a moustache on her lips with coffee grounds. Of all my memories, a particularly notable one stands out, a remembrance triggered by smell, or rather a taste, enough to make anyone drool: ice cream. Now the ice-cream cart man, him I’d met! He wound up being driven out of business by the Italian ice-cream machines that were painted in aggressive but eye-catching colors! Hearing Mummy talk, one would have thought the neighborhood hadn’t changed one bit. Despite the war. Despite the passing of years. Despite the nouveau riche. Despite all the political maneuvering. Despite all the new ugly mosques. Which all looked the same. Or pretty much. But the old domes were still there, one after the other. Stretching out into infinity. The tightly packed and clustered terraces, bulky but frail. Fragile. Crumbling. White. A faded blue. Ochre. The crooning muezzins . Winter? Summer? The shops only half-awake due to the heat waves. Life on the streets below seemed silly to me at the time. Burlesque. Thanks to her vivid stories , Mummy did nothing but overexcite my already febrile imagination. The news reached our unit’s office via Teletype at 11:12am on July 3, 1996. An eleven-year-old boy had just been murdered in his school’s courtyard while washing his teacher’s blackboard rag. I felt as though I’d lost my mind. I locked myself up in my office. I called Salim. The line was busy. I sent for the victim’s school bag. It was made of...
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