Read So Vast the Prison Online
Authors: Assia Djebar
So Vast the Prison (43 page)
Men shot down pull the earth to them like a blanket
And soon the living will have nowhere left to sleep!
In the middle of it what can one do other than be dragged down by the monster Algeria—and do not call it a woman anymore, unless it is a ghoul (which is feminine), or a voracious female centaur risen from some abyss, no, not even madwoman.
Sucked up by the monster, what was there to do except plunge my face into the blood, smear myself with it, scald myself with it, in trances, hallucinating—the performances of Sidi Mcid, described by the mother of the poet in those carefree days, before there had even
been a May 1945 (and the blood of Guelma, Tébessa, Sétif) to drive her insane.
In the middle of this scene, above all not crying, nor improvising funeral poetry, nor contorting oneself in stridency—the dances at Nador ravine but also at the sanctuary of my childhood at Sidi-Brahim, facing the sea, with its pebbly beach reserved for the deeply religious, little girls, and beggars …
Because from now on the dead we think we bury today will fly off. They are the lighthearted ones now, relieved, lightened: Their dreams sparkle while the gravedigger’s mattock is at work, while the mourning is filmed, projecting their revived grief to the four corners to repeat this procession of shrouds!
We think the dead are absent but, transformed into witnesses, they want to write through us.
Write how?
Not in some language or some alphabet? Not in the double one from Dougga, or the one of the stones of Caesarea, the one of my childhood amulets, or the one of my familiar French and German poets?
Nor with pious litanies, nor with patriotic songs, nor even with the encircling vibratos of the
tzarlrit!
Write, the dead of today want to write: now, how can one write with blood?
On what Koranic board, with what reed reluctantly awash in vermilion red?
The dead alone are the ones who want to write, and “with the utmost urgency,” as we like to say.
How can one inscribe with blood that flows or has just finished flowing?
With its smell, perhaps.
With its vomit or its phlegm, easily.
With the fear that is its halo.
Writing, of course, even a novel …
About flight.
About shame.
But with blood itself: with its flow, its paste, its spurt, its scab that is not yet dry?
Yes, how can one speak of you, Algeria?
And if I fall someday soon, backing up into the hole?
Leave me, knocked over backward, but open-eyed.
Do not lay me either in the earth or at the bottom of a dry well.
Rather, in water.
Or in the wind’s leaves.
That I may keep on contemplating the night sky.
Smelling the grass quiver.
Smiling in the streaks of every laugh.
Living, dancing feet first.
Rotting gently!
Blood for me remains ash white.
It is silence.
It is repentance. Blood does not dry, it simply evaporates.
I do not call you mother, bitter Algeria,
That I write,
That I cry, voice, hand, eye.
The eye that in the language of our women is a fountain.
Your eye within me, I flee from you, I forget you, O grandmother of bygone days!
And yet, in your wake,
“Fugitive and not knowing it,” I called myself,
Fugitive and knowing it, henceforth,
The trail all migration takes is flight,
Abduction with no abductor,
No end to the horizon line,
Erasing in me each point of departure,
Origin vanishes,
Even the new start.
Fugitive and knowing it midflight,
Writing to encircle the relentless pursuit,
The circle that each step opens closes up again,
Death ahead, antelope encircled,
Algeria the huntress, is swallowed up in me.
Summer 1988—Algiers.
Summer 1991—Thonon-les-Bains.
March–July 1994—Paris.
aïd:
a religious festival.
bachagha:
in Algeria, a chief who is the
caïd
’s superior.
baraka:
luck, a favorable destiny; also a benediction.
bey:
the representative of the sultan of Constantinople in Tunis. Although the sultan grants him this office, the bey functions, in fact, rather independently. In Algiers the same officer is referred to as the dey, and his independence was so notorious that the French referred to him as the “king of Algiers.”
brasero:
see
kanoun
.
cadi:
a Muslim judge with both civil and religious jurisdiction.
caïd:
a North African chief who served as a representative of the French government for purposes of taxation, policing, and other administrative duties.
chahadda:
the first verse of the first chapter of the Koran. It begins with the profession of faith.
chatter:
someone who is tireless.
the Dahra:
the back regions of the mountains.
djellaba:
a long, loose Moroccan robe.
douar:
an Arab hamlet of tents or more permanent structures.
fatiha:
the Koran verses containing the profession of faith.
fellagha:
an armed partisan of independence.
hadja:
a woman who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
hadj:
a man who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
hammam:
the ritual baths.
hand of Fatima:
the image of a hand used to ward off the evil eye.
hanéfite
rites: rites practiced by the Hanafiyah, one of the smaller Sunite sects of Islam.
imam:
a Muslim priest.
Kabyle:
the people inhabiting the mountainous regions of Algeria. They speak the Berber language and have maintained ancient Islamic customs.
kalam:
a pointed reed used to write on the Koranic tablet.
kanoun:
a small container for hot coals used to heat a space or for cooking.
kharidjines:
young men who have come of age.
koubba:
the tomb of a local saint and the sanctuary associated with it.
Lla
, or
Llalla:
address of respect for a woman: “My Lady,” the equivalent of
Sidi
for a man.
mahakma:
the judge’s chambers.
mamané:
a term of affection. Its English equivalent might be “granny.”
marabout:
a Muslim holy man who has devoted his life to ascetic contemplation.
la Mitidja:
the fertile coastal plain southeast of Algiers, presently a hotbed of religious fundamentalism.
mokkadem:
the current representative and direct descendant of whoever the saint in question may be—whether Saint Ahmed or Saint Abdullah (our equivalents might be Saint Peter or Saint Paul, Saint James or Saint John, and so on).
Moriscos:
the Spanish Moors, descendants of the Muslims expelled from Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century. When they arrived in Algeria, they were given the name Andalusians because of their most recent provenance.
Mourashidien:
the “well-guided
imams
” were the first four caliphs, abu-Bakr, Omar, Othman, and Ali (the Sid Ali referred to by the old aunt). The term is only used by Sunite (Orthodox) Muslims, who consider that, following the schism prompted by the death of Ali, they and not the Shiites represented the legitimate continuation of the line under the guidance of Muhammad himself and hence, Allah.
muezzin:
the Muslim priest who sings out the prayers at fixed moments in the day when the devout stop whatever they are doing and face Mecca to kneel and pray.
noubas:
Andalusian songs retained as part of the “classical” music of the Maghreb.
oued:
a temporary water source at an oasis (
wadi
).
pieds-noirs:
French colonists in Algeria.
raïs:
a pirate. Ramadan: the ninth month of the Islamic lunar year, during which Muslims fast, practicing strict abstinence from sunup to sundown.
rebec:
a bowed musical instrument derived from the rebab and having a pear-shaped body, a slender neck, and usually three strings.
roumi:
Christian.
sakina:
serenity, particularly the moment of illumination experienced at death.
sarouel:
the loose pants worn by women.
Sidi:
a term of respect used before the given name of a man, because of either his age or his station. In North African cultures it is more or less equivalent to “my Lord.”
solta:
unbridled power.
sura:
a chapter of the Koran.
tchador:
the face veil worn by Muslim women.
tzarlrit:
a traditional musical form of Berbero-Spanish origin composed of five distinctly different movements.
yaouleds:
the sons of workers: lower class.
zaouia:
a community built around a sanctuary where noble families descended from the local saint live.
zen oak: a type of oak typical of the Mediterranean coast.
ASSIA DJEBAR won the prestigious Neustadt Prize for Contributions to World Literature in 1996 for perceptively crossing borders of culture, language, and history in her fiction and poetry (previous winners include Max Frisch, Francis Ponge, and Gabriel García Márquez) and the Yourcenar Prize in 1997. She is a novelist, scholar, poet, and filmmaker who won the Venice Biennale Critics Prize in 1979. She writes in French and her books have been translated into many languages; those currently available in English are
A Sister to Scheherezade
(1993),
Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
(1993), and
Women of Algiers in their Apartment
(1992).
Algerian with Berber roots, Djebar was educated in France and in her homeland. She is currently Director of the Center for French and Francophone Studies at Louisiana State University. She lives in Paris and in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
BETSY WING is the author of
Look Out for Hydrophobia
, short stories and a novella and has published in
The Southern Review
and other journals. Her translations include Helene Cixous’s
The Book of Promethea
, Didier Eribon’s
Michel Foucault
and more recently
The Governor’s Daughter
by Paule Constant as well as poetry and essays by Edouard Glissant (
Black Salt
and
Poetics of Relation
). She lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.