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Authors: Kamel Daoud
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and to domesticate people and soil and plants. Zujj is the poor relative, loafing in the sunshine, his whole attitude so lazy it’s evident he owns nothing, not even a flock of sheep, that could arouse envy or motivate murder. In a certain way,
your
Cain killed
my
brother for … nothing! Not even for his livestock.
We should stop here. You’ve got enough material to write a good book, no? The story of the Arab’s brother. Another Arab story. You’re hooked …
Ah, the ghost, my double … see him there, behind you, holding his beer? I’ve been taking note of his maneuvers. He’s getting progressively closer to us, ever so casually. A real crab, that one. The ritual is always the same. He spreads out his newspaper and reads it diligently during the first hour. Then he cuts out articles and news items — relating to murders, I think, because I once took a look at what he’d left on the table. Next he looks out the window and drinks. Then the contours of his silhouette get blurry and he himself becomes diaphanous and almost fades away. Like a reflection. You forget he’s there, you hardly step around him when the bar’s crowded. No one’s ever heard him speak. The waiter seems to guess what he wants to order. He’s always wearing that same old jacket, worn at the elbows, and the same bangs on his big forehead, and his look is always the same, intelligent and cold. And let’s not forget the cigarette. His eternal cigarette, connecting him to heaven by the fine coil of smoke twisting and rising above him. He’s hardly ever looked at me, despite the years we’ve been neighbors in here. Ha, ha, I’m his Arab. Or maybe he’s mine.
Good night, my friend.
VI
I used to love stealing the bread Mama hid on top of the armoire and then watching her look all over for it, muttering curses the whole time. One night a few months after Musa’s death, when we were still living in Algiers, I waited until she fell asleep, swiped the key to the trunk where she kept supplies, and ate almost all the sugar. The next morning she panicked, she was grumbling to herself, and then she started scratching her face with her fingernails and wailing about her plight: a husband vanished, a son killed, and another son observing her with an almost cruel joy in his eyes. Well, yes! I remember that, I remember feeling a strange jubilation at seeing her really suffering for once. To prove my existence, I had to disappoint her. It was like fate. That tie bound us together, deeper than death.
One day Mama wanted me to go to the neighborhood mosque, which served more or less as a day-care center, supervised by a young imam. It was summer, and the sun was so harsh Mama had to drag me into the street by my hair. I struggled like a maniac and managed to get free of her. Then I shouted an insult and, still holding the bunch of grapes she’d tried to coax me with just a minute or two before, I ran away. I ran until I tripped and fell and the grapes got completely crushed in the dust. I cried my eyes out and ended up going to the mosque, all contrite. I don’tknow what came over me, but when the imam asked what was causing me such grief, I accused another kid of hitting me. I think that was my first lie. My own personal version of eating the forbidden fruit. Because from then on, I became wily and deceitful, I started to grow up. Now, that first lie of mine, I told it on a summer day. Just like your hero the murderer — bored, solitary, examining his own tracks, spinning his wheels, trying to make sense of the world by trampling the bodies of Arabs.
Arab
. I never felt Arab, you know. Arab-ness is like Negro-ness, which only exists in the white man’s eyes. In our neighborhood, in our world, we were Muslims, we had given names, faces, and habits. Period. The others were “the strangers,” the
roumis
God brought here to put us to the test, but whose days were numbered anyway: One day or another, they would leave, there was no doubt about
your
Cain killed
my
brother for … nothing! Not even for his livestock.
We should stop here. You’ve got enough material to write a good book, no? The story of the Arab’s brother. Another Arab story. You’re hooked …
Ah, the ghost, my double … see him there, behind you, holding his beer? I’ve been taking note of his maneuvers. He’s getting progressively closer to us, ever so casually. A real crab, that one. The ritual is always the same. He spreads out his newspaper and reads it diligently during the first hour. Then he cuts out articles and news items — relating to murders, I think, because I once took a look at what he’d left on the table. Next he looks out the window and drinks. Then the contours of his silhouette get blurry and he himself becomes diaphanous and almost fades away. Like a reflection. You forget he’s there, you hardly step around him when the bar’s crowded. No one’s ever heard him speak. The waiter seems to guess what he wants to order. He’s always wearing that same old jacket, worn at the elbows, and the same bangs on his big forehead, and his look is always the same, intelligent and cold. And let’s not forget the cigarette. His eternal cigarette, connecting him to heaven by the fine coil of smoke twisting and rising above him. He’s hardly ever looked at me, despite the years we’ve been neighbors in here. Ha, ha, I’m his Arab. Or maybe he’s mine.
Good night, my friend.
VI
I used to love stealing the bread Mama hid on top of the armoire and then watching her look all over for it, muttering curses the whole time. One night a few months after Musa’s death, when we were still living in Algiers, I waited until she fell asleep, swiped the key to the trunk where she kept supplies, and ate almost all the sugar. The next morning she panicked, she was grumbling to herself, and then she started scratching her face with her fingernails and wailing about her plight: a husband vanished, a son killed, and another son observing her with an almost cruel joy in his eyes. Well, yes! I remember that, I remember feeling a strange jubilation at seeing her really suffering for once. To prove my existence, I had to disappoint her. It was like fate. That tie bound us together, deeper than death.
One day Mama wanted me to go to the neighborhood mosque, which served more or less as a day-care center, supervised by a young imam. It was summer, and the sun was so harsh Mama had to drag me into the street by my hair. I struggled like a maniac and managed to get free of her. Then I shouted an insult and, still holding the bunch of grapes she’d tried to coax me with just a minute or two before, I ran away. I ran until I tripped and fell and the grapes got completely crushed in the dust. I cried my eyes out and ended up going to the mosque, all contrite. I don’tknow what came over me, but when the imam asked what was causing me such grief, I accused another kid of hitting me. I think that was my first lie. My own personal version of eating the forbidden fruit. Because from then on, I became wily and deceitful, I started to grow up. Now, that first lie of mine, I told it on a summer day. Just like your hero the murderer — bored, solitary, examining his own tracks, spinning his wheels, trying to make sense of the world by trampling the bodies of Arabs.
Arab
. I never felt Arab, you know. Arab-ness is like Negro-ness, which only exists in the white man’s eyes. In our neighborhood, in our world, we were Muslims, we had given names, faces, and habits. Period. The others were “the strangers,” the
roumis
God brought here to put us to the test, but whose days were numbered anyway: One day or another, they would leave, there was no doubt about
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