Seagulls in My Soup by Tristan Jones Page B

onto the street, and into a taxi. In rapid, fluent Spanish he ordered the driver to head for the airport
“A toda velocidad”
—with all speed—a phrase I have never been able to forget. Ever since, whenever I have been consciously heading or foolishly following others into risk and hazard, those Spanish words always pop up in my head.
A toda velocidad.
Fools rush in . . .
    At Algiers airport we quickly passed through customs, aided by a friendly police officer who greeted Reynaud as an old friend. Once out of the airport and headed for the railway station Reynaud could hardly contain an anti-Arab bigotry so virulent that it seemed to bounce off the walls and pavement around him. In fluent English, under his breath, all the way to the station and through it, to the ticket booths, along the platform, in a low monotone directed mainly toward me, he ranted and raved about “heathens” and “dirty Algerians” and “stinking whores.”
    As in crowded railway stations in all big cities there were beggars and seedy-looking people. Of course there were those who no one in his right mind would trust in any circumstances, but as far as I could tell, the people in the Algiers station were little different from people anywhere—a mixture of rogues and would-be angels. To hear Reynaud you would have thought you were in the Ninth Circle of Hell. But I needed his money, and so I grinned at him and took no notice.
    In the train Reynaud bribed the guard to allow us into a locked, evidently ex-first-class compartment. I thought of all the good Arabs I had known—all the decent ones, many affectionate ones, even a few very loving ones, among the lights of my life, as well as all the ordinary, every-day uncitified Arabs I had encountered throughout the Middle East, but I said nothing about them and Reynaud eventually tired of ranting and railing against them in a low voice (always in English). Besides, I was too fascinated, watching the other passengers as they left the train, wondering about their lives. Then, too, I was helping Tony solve the crossword puzzle in a copy of the overseas
Times
of London, which he had eagerly swooped on in the Málaga airport.
    I was surprised to see that there was still the usual complement of beggars and little ragamuffins at practically every halt. But the little ones, despite their rags, seemed to be having a high old time, laughing and shouting and waving at the passengers. The boys avoided our compartment, though, which made me a bit sad, because even with my rusty version of Arabic it was usually great fun to exchange badinage with them, no matter where. A couple of years later, when I traveled to London mostly by train, I watched the disinterested faces of young people in England as the train passed them, thinking they probably wished they were back in front of the goggle-box; and I remembered, as I do now, the faces of these children of the Riff. They were enjoying life. They were
living
life, and they weren’t yet jaded by familiarity with frenetic mediocrity.
    It was about eight o’clock when, at last, the train pulled slowly into Algiers. We made our way through the bustling crowds in the mezzanine, which was crawling with armed soldiers in pairs, to the station entrance. There Reynaud anxiously gaped around, then sighed slightly with relief as a gray van pulled up right in front of us. It was driven by a chubby, middle-aged Algerian, who said absolutely nothing the whole time he was with us. The only noise he made was a grunt when Reynaud gave him some money at the end of the ride.
    In complete silence we drove through the city streets, directly to the port gates, where we were stopped by a sergeant. Reynaud handed the sergeant an envelope and spoke rapidly in Maghreb Arab—far too fast for me to understand. Then the sergeant waved us through.
    The van passed through the dockyard, under the brilliant pools of light under the cranes,