Harraga by Boualem Sansal Page A

anyway, little Chérifa, she comes, she goes, and likely will for some time, because, like I said, there are cousins everywhere, furtive exiles weighed down by sorrow and homesickness. And being an insomniac, she keeps odd hours. But what’s to be done, Tante Zohra? C’est la vie !’
    ‘And how is Sofiane? Did he go to Oran, surely he must have gone to say his goodbyes to this cousin of yours?’
    The way she just came out with it! She’s a cunning shrew, trying to trip me up.
    ‘No, no, my dear, you know Sofiane, he always did have his head in the clouds! Remember how whenever he passed your house he pretended not to see you?’
    My little performance earned me a week of peace and happiness. The old bat didn’t believe a word of my rigmarole, but it hardly mattered since all she needs to do her scandalmongering is her tongue and a little spit.
     
    That night, I didn’t sleep a wink. I scrubbed the house from top to bottom, I might even have cleaned it twice. While I was about it, I did the laundry, then I pottered around. I felt like I was in Kubrick’s The Shining just before all hell is unleashed. On my wanderings I discovered a makeshift corridor on the second floor running from the back of an old wardrobe to a sort of box-room – it was beyond me how I had never noticed it before. The door to the box-room creaked like it was a thousand years old. Slave quarters? A place to hide when things were tough? It was probably something constructed by the Turk, those people have a lot going on under their fezzes. Inside, I expected to find a skeleton or see a ghost surge forward and slip between my legs, but nothing. The room smelled of mildew. No gold doubloons, no pirate map, no clue what to do next. Some day I’ll leave a sheet of mysterious drawings here that will help my successor live, secure in the knowledge that his life will be rich and carefree. A pinch of gold dust, and the results would be better. This rickety old house evolved over time, there’s always something left to explore.
    Then, suddenly, my knees gave out. I’d overexerted myself. I went back to the living room and lay down, I read a book. I went into the kitchen and made some herbal tea and sipped it as I watched the cockroaches gorging on scraps of food. It’s been a long time since I’ve waged war against them. The future belongs to cockroaches. In some old scientific magazine I read that the more you persecute them the stronger they get, so I leave them be in the hopes that indolence and overeating will kill them off. Then, sadly, I listened to the radio babble on about this and that, a phone-in for parish-pump problems from far-flung, probably fictional listeners convinced their nightly ramblings are advancing some great cause. Tonight’s topic: civic-mindedness and household refuse. To a man (and woman), they put the blame on everyone else, not one of them was prepared to take any responsibility. The pathetic fools. When you’re this deluded, better to keep your mouth shut and not spout such drivel! When you’ve made your bed, you have to lie in it.
     
    Then I wept and wept and wept.

I can’t help but wonder what times they are I’m living through. Things fell apart so quickly. Was there ever a before? Did I ever really live? Did I ever have anything other than my beloved parents who died too soon, my idiot little brother who disappeared into himself or is in the process of doing so? And Yacine, my big brother, who died by the roadside having known no greater love than his rickety old banger. It is easy to be overwhelmed by such emptiness. What century is it out there? The din and the dust that reach me in brutal waves have nothing of interest to say to me. The world has taken a wrong turning, ominous Islam and garish consumerism are battling it out with mantras and slogans. Their conflicting cacophony makes my ears hurt. Here in Algeria, even time itself – humanity’s world heritage – is torn between rabid