Abduction by Simon Pare Page A

to stick to his rightful place – that’s all we ask of you!”
    She slammed the door. Mathieu shouted, “Stop her!” I hesitated for a couple of seconds – I was in my pyjama bottoms and vest – before rushing after her. The imam lived in the tower block on the southern edge of the estate. Although the gravel cut into my feet, I ran towards the building with mounting unease when I didn’t catch sight of Meriem. Assuming that she was running too, I should have caught up with her by now. Despite its gentle pinkness, the rising dawn over Algiers couldn’t manage to soften the landscape of urban ruins through which I ran like hell – some repair work on the gas pipes that had been dragging on for a year, piles of trash, some sprayed slogans to the glory of the FIS – the Islamic Salvation Front – and its leaders, graffiti calling on people to fuck a certain Hassan’s mother, a burnt-out car. As I panted along like a madman, a part of me, a tiny one admittedly but one that would retain, I suppose, its sense of sarcasm even if the devil was flipping me over and over like a cutlet in his pan, remarked: We were meant to be the descendants of the sublime Andalusians and Harun al-Rashid the Magnificent, and we have become the bastards of a trashcan country that aspires to disappear up the anus of al-Qaida!
    A neighbour on his way back from some place or other called out to me with a mixture of amusement and reproach: “Hey, sports star, training for the Olympics in our bare feet and pyjamas now, are we?”
    I had already made it to the second floor of the imam’s building when, like a wasp sting, I suddenly recalled the strange comment Meriem had made during the call to prayers: “Do you hear him?”
    â€œShit…”
    â€˜He’ was obviously at the mosque! Quite logically, Meriem had decided to go to where the muezzin was leading the service. I ran back down the stairs four at a time and crossed the estate in the opposite direction until I reached the building site of the mosque – which had been deliberately left unfinished so that it didn’t come under the control of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. A few latecomers were hurrying towards the entrance. Breathless and streaming with sweat, I searched for Meriem’s face.
    I felt like my chest had gone hollow when I caught sight of her half-hidden behind a digger, slight inside her coat and disfigured by the scarf covering her beautiful hair.
    â€œMeriem, please, wait for me, I’m nothing without you…” I whispered to myself like a prayer.
    I remembered how she would laugh in delight at the moment of orgasm and how, if I started holding forth in front of supposedly important guests, she was quite capable of sliding a mischievous hand under the table and guiding it towards my genitals…
    My passionate, happy wife. My wife and mother of my child. My wife, broken by grief. And I couldn’t do a thing, neither for her, nor for my child.
    â€œMeriem, listen to me…”
    I was just behind her now. She carried on walking, not looking round and mumbling, “I’m going to do what I have to do.”
    â€œAnd what do you have to do?”
    She ignored my question. I grabbed her by the arm. She tried to break free. Her large pupils, faded from crying, stared at me as if I were a stranger.
    â€œHe knows some of the people who took my daughter.”
    â€œHow can you be sure?”
    â€œAfter the elections were cancelled, the imam spent four months in jail. It’s common knowledge. They even say he was tortured. That’s some kind of proof, isn’t it?”
    â€œHe only did four months. Four short months. If he’d belonged…”
    I lowered my voice because we were being closely watched from the mosque entrance.
    â€œâ€¦ to the GIA or that kind of group, do you think the police or the army would have let him off so lightly? They’d