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Fiction

The Algerian and the Moroccan

By Abdellah Taïa
Translated from French by Lydia Beyoud
Moroccan writer in exile Abdellah Taïa recounts the surge and ebb of power in a lost relationship.

This is my private diary from the year 2002.

A large notebook of ninety-six pages with a deep-blue cover.

I had lost it.

I found it yesterday while cleaning, forgotten, abandoned for I don’t know how long behind my dresser.

In the middle of this notebook there was, there is, an envelope on the back of which is written this title: “The Algerian and the Moroccan.”

I knew what it contained. Words, words written as a couple, the Algerian and me. The tale of our love written day after day, side by side. Were they still there, those words, intact, legible, or had they been erased with time?

I opened the letter. I opened my heart once again to the Algerian. I opened my body to this crazy story, to this great love, the greatest and strongest that I’ve ever known.

There weren’t just words in the envelope. Besides several yellow pages violently torn from another notebook, I found four other things. A bit of paper on which was written the Algerian’s telephone number. A cassis-flavored Délice candy. A hotel bill. Two ticket stubs for the film Beau Travail with Claire Denis. Memories? No. More like proof. I truly met this man. I was twenty-seven. He was thirty-six. I was still nothing in Paris. He was everything. God. From the first instant. He danced. I joined him. I danced. He liked me. I liked him. For a year and a half, the world, me and my destiny, were him. Him. Him. Slimane. An Algerian from the south with white skin. A married man who had just left his wife. Father of four daughters. A foundry worker. A sculptor. A poet in his soul. An Arab. More Arab than me. And nuts, open and closed at the same time.

I was living at the time on Rue Oberkampf, with another man, French, Samy. Met in the Paris metro just a few days after my arrival in the capital. Love with him had faded fairly quickly. The end was approaching. Life together no longer had any flavor. We fought all the time, screaming, silently. I left him as soon as I met Slimane. While waiting to find an apartment, the Algerian and I both lived in a hotel, Aviator Hotel, 20, Rue Louis-Blanc. Slimane had a house in Strasbourg where his wife and daughters lived. In Paris, he lived with his brothers. We had nowhere to go. The hotel in the Tenth Arrondissement was for nearly two months our nest, our cage, our own house. Four walls. Eat, make love. Nothing else. Except for looking for an apartment.

We ended up finding one, Rue Clignancourt, Eighteenth Arrondissement. Metro Marcadet-Poissonniers, line four. It was on the sixth floor and it measured eighteen meters square.

That was, each the prisoner of the other, where we loved each other, where we spoke Arabic every day and brushed against insanity.

From the very beginning, we wrote side by side, one for the other, one the story of the other, his past, his characters, his images, his obsessions. We did that, this incredible thing, impossible with others: holding the pen together, moving across the page together, in love and its writing at the same time.

When it was over, in the summer of 2001, before leaving me, Slimane took the two large notebooks in which we had recorded everything, pages and pages of love. He had decided that, since I was the one breaking us up, this “treasure” was his by right, he the great misunderstood lover.

Three months later, I found a letter under my door. The one I now have between my hands. Inside it were these pages. Some of the pages I had written by myself in the diary . . .

***

Slimane had only given me a few pages of our journal. He had kept the rest for himself, he might have destroyed them. Burned them. Everything we had written together, body against body, hands almost joined, he had taken for himself, stolen for himself. The written memory of our relationship belonged to him from now on. Our book no longer belonged to me either.  And this made me very angry. I couldn’t help seeing in Slimane’s act a desire to censor. To remove from this book whatever did not please him. Giving back to me whatever he wanted to give, almost nothing, a few small and thin pages that are, moreover, favorable to him. To exclude me, in a way. No further trace of me written by him. Me written in love by him.

I had been dispossessed. In making these cuts, Slimane had rewritten the lovers’ journal. Denatured love. Given it a different color. Incomplete.

I answered the letter very quickly.

I spent a whole night writing it. A strange letter in which I tried in vain to be logical, dry, cruel, cold. A letter of vengeance that was, in fact, not one. I posted it the next day at seven o’clock in the morning. It was the beginning of spring. It was still nighttime in Paris.

Slimane,
I can’t even call you “Dear Slimane” anymore, I’m so angry. With you. With me. With this injustice you are imposing upon me. With love which no longer has any meaning for me and which, nevertheless, is still there, in the depths of my heart. With this censorship that you allow yourself to exercise in our “Love Journal.” I’m angry because I have the impression of having given everything of myself, my body, but that never satisfied you.

You wanted more. Always more. To know everything about me, about what I was thinking, what I did when you weren’t there. About my heart, which gave itself to you from the first second of our meeting. My body had become your body. But you wanted more and even more. What more? I no longer knew what to give you . . . You demanded that I be there for you, all the time. I was. With pleasure. With love. With devotion, I loved you. I adored you. I left the others, my life, my career in Paris, my projects, for you. I stopped seeing the people who mattered to me. What good are friends when you’re in love? What do the others give you that I can’t give you? And who are these people to whom you’re so attached and that I don’t know? A thousand questions. I answered, I justified myself. A thousand questions repeated thousands of times. Some days, I dared to not answer you. I remember how beside yourself you were . . .

You didn’t believe me. For you, all I did was lie to you, cheat on you, sleep with anything that moved. I was a devil, a demon, that’s what you said, a little demon you were in love with. Crazy in love. “Possessively” in love. Unhealthily in love.

You left your wife and your children for me? I never asked you to. You were already living in Paris without them when I knew you.

Some days you left for work at seven o’clock in the morning as usual and, an hour later, you were already back. “It’s horrible, I can only think of you. You are me. I can’t do anything else . . . except be here with you, in this studio, this bed, in this darkness in the middle of the day.” That happened several times and each time I cried from emotion and rushed to open the bed, put on the sheets, the pillows, the covers and quick, quick, we were undressing and would meet, would press against each other, breathe each other in, sleep, wake up, go back to sleep. Eat almost nothing . . . Do you remember all that? Of course . . . How could you forget those instants of real love, pure love, of love more important and stronger than anything, anything?!

Do you remember the light in my eyes every time you opened the door? You commented on it once, just once. Afterwards, you lived in your own idea of love, your love for me obviously greater than what I felt for you. Your daily entrance into the little apartment was a total upheaval, a reversal of myself. You arrived, you barely smiled, you said, sometimes gently ironically, sometimes darkly: “Labass, Sidi Abdellah?” I watched you and I noticed the changes taking place in the air, the world that was nothing but you. YOU.

I was happy and I was afraid. You were the man, the king. I accepted your authority. I accepted your silences, your reprimands, your drama, your obsessions. You smoked. I would sit on the ground and I would take off your shoes, your socks. I enjoyed doing it, you never forced me to at all . . . How I loved, when it was cold, to wash your feet with hot water in the little red basin we bought together next to the Strasbourg-Saint-Denis metro station. I washed them, I dried them and I kissed them; they were mine.

You were Algerian, Arab like me and you were mine. But I could see that you had doubts, constantly had doubts. 

In the beginning, you told me: “Tell me about your stories from before me . . . Your past loves . . .” I told you everything, the boys and the men that had passed through my life, all the details, the slightest details, you wanted to know everything. Later, long afterwards, you returned to these stories and you ordered: “Reject your past. Yes, you heard me right, abjure your other love stories, say that they weren’t worth living . . . Say that you  can only envision love with me, and with them it was nothing but pleasure, fun, nothing more . . . Say: Before, I was a whore! Say: Before, I was going astray! Say: Before, I was a slut! Say: Before doesn’t exist . . . does not exist!” You were serious, this wasn’t just some new fit of jealousy. Your eyes were red with hate for this past, for this existence without you. You could not stand the idea of me living and being happy before knowing you. I absolutely knew not to even try to convince you, to make you change the subject. I said: “Before you, I was nothing!” You said: “Also say that you were just a whore!” I said that too. And we made love. While we both cried.

Now, it’s over, over. And I’m the one who made the decision this time. It’s over for us both having to love each other according to your own rules, according to your possessiveness and your neuroses, which I found sweet and interesting at first. It’s over even if love continues to exist between us. That’s how I want it. And I’m sticking to it. It’s over. I’ve had more than enough of being your love. Your object, in a word.

You did with me as you wanted. I became a submissive Arab woman for you. Every day, I had to finish everything I had to do before your return at five in the evening, and prepare everything for your comfort. The tagine, the mint tea. Clean laundry . . . It’s true, I admit it, I liked doing all that. Wash your dirty clothes, feed you, take care of your body. You didn’t force me. It’s also true that you invested yourself as much as you could in us as a couple.

The exterior world did not exist. I tried to do the same as you for a long time. The feelings that united us were enough for me as well. Our spiritual communion was precious in my eyes. You believed in the same things as me. Saints. Jinns. Sorcery. Superstition. Incense. Jawi, chabba, harmal, fasoukh, you knew what they were. The same that you knew that orange blossom water was essential to my survival. Sometimes I was ill. You took this water, you washed my face and my hands while chanting prayers. It soothed me. You understood that particular state, the hal that took hold of me, and you knew the right gestures and the right words to bring me back to life, to love with you. To the bed close to you.

You did that for me. I let you come inside my body and inside my soul. What other proof of love did you need?

I know that the Arab man is complicated. You were a thousand times more so. I understood you and I did not understand you. I knew that love is a thing that escapes us. I know that love is jealousy. Illness. I read it in books. We verified it together in the Anthology of Arab Poetry which you gave me at the beginning of our relationship. We experienced it for nearly two years. You wanted power. I gave it to you, willingly, without thinking about my future. The future was you and me, together, chest against chest, heart against heart, in the same breath. I renounced my ambition. I renounced the cinema, my greatest love since adolescence. For you, I stopped working out. I took off all the masks, all the masks, in front of you. The social persona which I had started to construct in Hay Salam ceased to exist as soon as you appeared before my eyes. Were you aware of all that, of all these sacrifices? Did you not see that you had made me a prisoner, the female prisoner of Rue de Clignancourt? No, I don’t think so . . . You continued to doubt, to make me submit daily to your interrogations. When next to you, I couldn’t even listen to the phone messages people left for me. And if by some misfortune I did, then I had to spend hours and hours explaining everything, who these people were, when I had met them, if I had slept with them, why I continued to maintain a relationship with them, what they looked like, how they behaved . . . Everything, everything, it had to be told, not forgetting anything . . . It was too much . . . Intolerable . . . Impossible . . .

At the same time I must admit that, even in the midst of hell, a part of me was happy, enjoyed it, this machismo, this dictatorship . . . I would say to myself: “This is love, this is love . . . I’m lucky . . . Just hang in there . . . This is love . . .”

I did as much as I could. I stopped working. I became like a little woman. Your vision of a woman. I became Saad, your childhood friend. I became a sculpture in your hands. A body for you, that lived only for you. An Arab name for you. They butchered it in Paris, but you, you honored this name. I rediscovered it. For two years, only your way of pronouncing it counted. You had the power to make it come alive, Arab like before, like never. At night, in the darkness, we fell asleep calling each other’s names. Slimane. Abdellah. Slimane. Abdellah. Slimane . . . I always won this competition. Sleep most often overcame you before me, you would snore lightly, you let go of my hand, but I, I continued, I prayed . . . Slimane, Slimane, Slimane, Slimane . . . You were there, a body breathing inside of me. I could not see you, I recognized you, I breathed you in. I spoke to you in Arabic. Our own language in which, outlaws, we loved each other.

With you I became Arab once again and at the same time I passed beyond this condition. This skin, this culture and this religion. Sex, in this context, was each time like the first time, a transgression, a meeting in heaven. Sex with you had ceased to be just sex. Every part of you found a place on and in me. Shyly, you spoke the dirty words of Algerian bad boys. Shyly I blushed, I lowered my eyes only to raise them immediately and ask to hear more. They weren’t insults. In my ear, they were poems, in my heart a love poem and in my groin the image of your body, your thick and naked body. You were a zamel. A gay. So was I. We were gay for one another, naturally, without pride, without shame.

You liked to go to the mosque from time to time. You said you liked the gymnastics of prayer, to be in the middle of strangers in prayer, in simple and direct communication with God. As soon as we met, you quit doing it. You no longer dared. Our bond was sacrilege in the eyes of Islam. You couldn’t manage to rid yourself of this feeling. I didn’t try to change your mind. I myself lived in this contradiction. I also needed to believe. I wanted to believe.

We ended up finding a solution. I took you to the Saint-Bernard Church and we watched others pray. Churches weren’t meant for us originally, they represented nothing in our spiritual memory. Nothing tied us to them and yet we returned there several times and in the end found a new spirituality. We invented it together, this religion, this faith, this chapel, this solemn and luminous corner, this time outside of time. This Christianity not far from Barbès.

I digress. I wanted to overwhelm you with reprimands and here I am telling you about the beautiful moments we spent together . . . I digress . . .  I must still love you. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t anymore. I’ve suffered. I am suffering. You’re stronger than me, even while absent. I’ve deprived my heart of you and I must learn to live again in solitude. You are in Paris, not far, in a suburb nearby, at the end of the RER B line, I see you, I follow you, you come home, you go out, I detach myself and I attach myself, I close my eyes to push you away and soon to curse you . . . But I don’t dare . . . I don’t dare…

You left me I don’t know how many times. We would fight. I didn’t give up easily. Like my mother, I’m stubborn, commanding, when I want to be. You were sick. Jealousy had become your motor. You always wanted to have the last word. I didn’t always give in easily. You would grab your workman’s lunch bag and you would say: “I don’t love you anymore. I’m leaving. Go, make your life with the others, those other people you love more than me . . .” There was no one else, there was just you, how many times I swore it, shouted it to you. My existence had ended up being summed up by this, screaming, crying, justifying myself. You abandoned me. You left. Ten minutes later, I was running after you in the streets of the Eighteenth Arrondissement. Rue de Clignancourt. Boulevard de Barbès. Rue Doudeauville. Rue . . . And the little bridge. And the little bench. You were there. You were waiting for me. Seated on the little bench. I joined you. And together we watched the trains in the Gare du Nord go by. In silence. The black African immigrants we liked and who we found touching for some reason beyond our understanding spoke for us. Shouted in my place. Intervened with you on my behalf without realizing it. The smile returned to our lips. You returned to reason. Each time, calmly, we stood up, we went to buy some melon, your favorite fruit, and we went back to Rue de Clignancourt to celebrate our assuaged love. Momentarily distant from insanity.

It always ended up reappearing in our life and destroying, little by little, something inside of me. I was crazy too, but much, much less so than you. 

You ended up tiring me. Wearing me out. I had no more strength, at the end of a year and a half of intense, possessed love, of repeating the same stories, of being subjected to your authority, of being less than you in love.

You succeeded, over time, in instilling in me the idea that my love was inferior to yours. You were a mystical poem. I was just a little short story by Guy de Maupassant . . . You were grand in love, it’s true. I could see it, I saw it from the very first day. I had to follow you, continually run after you to be even just a little bit at your level. You have no idea how much it cost me. You never recognized my efforts. Never rewarded them. Deep down, you never once had any idea of the amorous solitude you imposed upon me . . . Deep, deep down, you were right; a part of me, a tiny part, resisted you, and I’m sure you knew it well before me and that this is what made you suffer, what made you truly sick and insane.

I could not let my dream of Paris fade away completely. I was in this city to grow, to become an adult. Become someone. A Name. To fulfill my projects for films, for life, carried fervently inside me for a long time, too long. You never understood that. And I too did not understand that this dream was stronger, the strongest. Encountering love in Arabic is an unhoped-for miracle. But I could not speak to you about all that I wanted to do with my life. Of what was beyond me. So I silenced myself. I hid, without realizing it, without meaning to. I did not speak to you. I spoke to Paris.

I confess, I admit it; your love was the most pure. But this sort of love requires an iron constitution, a different kind of insanity which I do not have. I gave. I gave. I am poor beside you who are so rich. I am nothing next to you, fulfilled and assured of your vision. I am small, small, small. You raised me up one moment, but you let me go too many times. After falling so much, my legs no longer walk like before.

I went for a walk somewhere else. You pushed me to it.

I needed to stop. To betray.

It happened in the underground of the Gare de l’Est. He was a baker. The total opposite of you. Blond. Thin. Very young. From Lille. It lasted a quarter of an hour. Fifteen minutes to dirty myself, to regain my old life from before you, to lose myself again, alone. A little, insignificant moment of sex to commit a sin and depart from our religion, to turn my back on Christ and his churches.

I did it. I knew what I was doing. I did with this boy what I never did with you. New moves. New practices. Danger. A great violence. Darkness other than with you.

I went back home. I waited for you. I didn’t prepare anything for dinner. You cooked when you returned from work. We ate. And for the first time I provoked a fight with you. I pushed you to leave me. I knew what to say, I had everything prepared to drive you insane, to leave, to break it off.

You left.

I didn’t go after you.

You crossed the streets and the boulevard. Alone. At the beginning of night. Just before sleep.

How many hours did you remain waiting for me on the little bench on our bridge? Did you cry? When did you understand that it was over, that I would not be coming back? Were the Africans nearby, with their music, their dancing?

How many packs of cigarettes did you smoke? And when you ran out, what did you do? Wait and watch the trains going by?

I know you didn’t cry. You never cry. You close yourself up. And I have to come to you, to open you to the world and yourself. That night I didn’t come to take you back. To take you back as you are. To love you despite everything, despite myself.

In the strange darkness of the studio, I waited the whole night. I was shocked. You were never going to be back in this space, in this light, next to me. I had chased you away. I had taken back the power I had given you over me. And I did not know what to do with it. I still don’t know.

Like you, I did not cry.

Like you, I became a man from over there once again. An Arab image of a man. Dry. Proud. Hard. A puppet. Ridiculous.

Like you, for the first time in my life, I smoked. They were your cigarettes. A pack you had once forgotten that I was preciously keeping, well-hidden.

Your cigarettes were strong. My throat hurt. I could no longer breathe. But I smoked them all and I did not open the window to let any air in. I wanted to suffocate. To suffocate us. To place a fog between us. A wall. A prison. A new prison for me alone.

There, in that darkness, in that execution, that voluntary death, I remembered my spirit-possessed sister. I called upon the jinns. They came. I stood up. They entered inside me. And I fell down.

In another state, I had this dream.

I was in Cairo, the only city that we had wanted to visit together one day, and I was finally crying as I told our story to its ruins.

From Une mélancolie arabe. Published by Editions du Seuil, 2008. Copyright 2008 by Abdellah Taïa. By arrangement with the author. Translation copyright 2011 by Lydia Beyoud. All rights reserved.

English French (Original)

This is my private diary from the year 2002.

A large notebook of ninety-six pages with a deep-blue cover.

I had lost it.

I found it yesterday while cleaning, forgotten, abandoned for I don’t know how long behind my dresser.

In the middle of this notebook there was, there is, an envelope on the back of which is written this title: “The Algerian and the Moroccan.”

I knew what it contained. Words, words written as a couple, the Algerian and me. The tale of our love written day after day, side by side. Were they still there, those words, intact, legible, or had they been erased with time?

I opened the letter. I opened my heart once again to the Algerian. I opened my body to this crazy story, to this great love, the greatest and strongest that I’ve ever known.

There weren’t just words in the envelope. Besides several yellow pages violently torn from another notebook, I found four other things. A bit of paper on which was written the Algerian’s telephone number. A cassis-flavored Délice candy. A hotel bill. Two ticket stubs for the film Beau Travail with Claire Denis. Memories? No. More like proof. I truly met this man. I was twenty-seven. He was thirty-six. I was still nothing in Paris. He was everything. God. From the first instant. He danced. I joined him. I danced. He liked me. I liked him. For a year and a half, the world, me and my destiny, were him. Him. Him. Slimane. An Algerian from the south with white skin. A married man who had just left his wife. Father of four daughters. A foundry worker. A sculptor. A poet in his soul. An Arab. More Arab than me. And nuts, open and closed at the same time.

I was living at the time on Rue Oberkampf, with another man, French, Samy. Met in the Paris metro just a few days after my arrival in the capital. Love with him had faded fairly quickly. The end was approaching. Life together no longer had any flavor. We fought all the time, screaming, silently. I left him as soon as I met Slimane. While waiting to find an apartment, the Algerian and I both lived in a hotel, Aviator Hotel, 20, Rue Louis-Blanc. Slimane had a house in Strasbourg where his wife and daughters lived. In Paris, he lived with his brothers. We had nowhere to go. The hotel in the Tenth Arrondissement was for nearly two months our nest, our cage, our own house. Four walls. Eat, make love. Nothing else. Except for looking for an apartment.

We ended up finding one, Rue Clignancourt, Eighteenth Arrondissement. Metro Marcadet-Poissonniers, line four. It was on the sixth floor and it measured eighteen meters square.

That was, each the prisoner of the other, where we loved each other, where we spoke Arabic every day and brushed against insanity.

From the very beginning, we wrote side by side, one for the other, one the story of the other, his past, his characters, his images, his obsessions. We did that, this incredible thing, impossible with others: holding the pen together, moving across the page together, in love and its writing at the same time.

When it was over, in the summer of 2001, before leaving me, Slimane took the two large notebooks in which we had recorded everything, pages and pages of love. He had decided that, since I was the one breaking us up, this “treasure” was his by right, he the great misunderstood lover.

Three months later, I found a letter under my door. The one I now have between my hands. Inside it were these pages. Some of the pages I had written by myself in the diary . . .

***

Slimane had only given me a few pages of our journal. He had kept the rest for himself, he might have destroyed them. Burned them. Everything we had written together, body against body, hands almost joined, he had taken for himself, stolen for himself. The written memory of our relationship belonged to him from now on. Our book no longer belonged to me either.  And this made me very angry. I couldn’t help seeing in Slimane’s act a desire to censor. To remove from this book whatever did not please him. Giving back to me whatever he wanted to give, almost nothing, a few small and thin pages that are, moreover, favorable to him. To exclude me, in a way. No further trace of me written by him. Me written in love by him.

I had been dispossessed. In making these cuts, Slimane had rewritten the lovers’ journal. Denatured love. Given it a different color. Incomplete.

I answered the letter very quickly.

I spent a whole night writing it. A strange letter in which I tried in vain to be logical, dry, cruel, cold. A letter of vengeance that was, in fact, not one. I posted it the next day at seven o’clock in the morning. It was the beginning of spring. It was still nighttime in Paris.

Slimane,
I can’t even call you “Dear Slimane” anymore, I’m so angry. With you. With me. With this injustice you are imposing upon me. With love which no longer has any meaning for me and which, nevertheless, is still there, in the depths of my heart. With this censorship that you allow yourself to exercise in our “Love Journal.” I’m angry because I have the impression of having given everything of myself, my body, but that never satisfied you.

You wanted more. Always more. To know everything about me, about what I was thinking, what I did when you weren’t there. About my heart, which gave itself to you from the first second of our meeting. My body had become your body. But you wanted more and even more. What more? I no longer knew what to give you . . . You demanded that I be there for you, all the time. I was. With pleasure. With love. With devotion, I loved you. I adored you. I left the others, my life, my career in Paris, my projects, for you. I stopped seeing the people who mattered to me. What good are friends when you’re in love? What do the others give you that I can’t give you? And who are these people to whom you’re so attached and that I don’t know? A thousand questions. I answered, I justified myself. A thousand questions repeated thousands of times. Some days, I dared to not answer you. I remember how beside yourself you were . . .

You didn’t believe me. For you, all I did was lie to you, cheat on you, sleep with anything that moved. I was a devil, a demon, that’s what you said, a little demon you were in love with. Crazy in love. “Possessively” in love. Unhealthily in love.

You left your wife and your children for me? I never asked you to. You were already living in Paris without them when I knew you.

Some days you left for work at seven o’clock in the morning as usual and, an hour later, you were already back. “It’s horrible, I can only think of you. You are me. I can’t do anything else . . . except be here with you, in this studio, this bed, in this darkness in the middle of the day.” That happened several times and each time I cried from emotion and rushed to open the bed, put on the sheets, the pillows, the covers and quick, quick, we were undressing and would meet, would press against each other, breathe each other in, sleep, wake up, go back to sleep. Eat almost nothing . . . Do you remember all that? Of course . . . How could you forget those instants of real love, pure love, of love more important and stronger than anything, anything?!

Do you remember the light in my eyes every time you opened the door? You commented on it once, just once. Afterwards, you lived in your own idea of love, your love for me obviously greater than what I felt for you. Your daily entrance into the little apartment was a total upheaval, a reversal of myself. You arrived, you barely smiled, you said, sometimes gently ironically, sometimes darkly: “Labass, Sidi Abdellah?” I watched you and I noticed the changes taking place in the air, the world that was nothing but you. YOU.

I was happy and I was afraid. You were the man, the king. I accepted your authority. I accepted your silences, your reprimands, your drama, your obsessions. You smoked. I would sit on the ground and I would take off your shoes, your socks. I enjoyed doing it, you never forced me to at all . . . How I loved, when it was cold, to wash your feet with hot water in the little red basin we bought together next to the Strasbourg-Saint-Denis metro station. I washed them, I dried them and I kissed them; they were mine.

You were Algerian, Arab like me and you were mine. But I could see that you had doubts, constantly had doubts. 

In the beginning, you told me: “Tell me about your stories from before me . . . Your past loves . . .” I told you everything, the boys and the men that had passed through my life, all the details, the slightest details, you wanted to know everything. Later, long afterwards, you returned to these stories and you ordered: “Reject your past. Yes, you heard me right, abjure your other love stories, say that they weren’t worth living . . . Say that you  can only envision love with me, and with them it was nothing but pleasure, fun, nothing more . . . Say: Before, I was a whore! Say: Before, I was going astray! Say: Before, I was a slut! Say: Before doesn’t exist . . . does not exist!” You were serious, this wasn’t just some new fit of jealousy. Your eyes were red with hate for this past, for this existence without you. You could not stand the idea of me living and being happy before knowing you. I absolutely knew not to even try to convince you, to make you change the subject. I said: “Before you, I was nothing!” You said: “Also say that you were just a whore!” I said that too. And we made love. While we both cried.

Now, it’s over, over. And I’m the one who made the decision this time. It’s over for us both having to love each other according to your own rules, according to your possessiveness and your neuroses, which I found sweet and interesting at first. It’s over even if love continues to exist between us. That’s how I want it. And I’m sticking to it. It’s over. I’ve had more than enough of being your love. Your object, in a word.

You did with me as you wanted. I became a submissive Arab woman for you. Every day, I had to finish everything I had to do before your return at five in the evening, and prepare everything for your comfort. The tagine, the mint tea. Clean laundry . . . It’s true, I admit it, I liked doing all that. Wash your dirty clothes, feed you, take care of your body. You didn’t force me. It’s also true that you invested yourself as much as you could in us as a couple.

The exterior world did not exist. I tried to do the same as you for a long time. The feelings that united us were enough for me as well. Our spiritual communion was precious in my eyes. You believed in the same things as me. Saints. Jinns. Sorcery. Superstition. Incense. Jawi, chabba, harmal, fasoukh, you knew what they were. The same that you knew that orange blossom water was essential to my survival. Sometimes I was ill. You took this water, you washed my face and my hands while chanting prayers. It soothed me. You understood that particular state, the hal that took hold of me, and you knew the right gestures and the right words to bring me back to life, to love with you. To the bed close to you.

You did that for me. I let you come inside my body and inside my soul. What other proof of love did you need?

I know that the Arab man is complicated. You were a thousand times more so. I understood you and I did not understand you. I knew that love is a thing that escapes us. I know that love is jealousy. Illness. I read it in books. We verified it together in the Anthology of Arab Poetry which you gave me at the beginning of our relationship. We experienced it for nearly two years. You wanted power. I gave it to you, willingly, without thinking about my future. The future was you and me, together, chest against chest, heart against heart, in the same breath. I renounced my ambition. I renounced the cinema, my greatest love since adolescence. For you, I stopped working out. I took off all the masks, all the masks, in front of you. The social persona which I had started to construct in Hay Salam ceased to exist as soon as you appeared before my eyes. Were you aware of all that, of all these sacrifices? Did you not see that you had made me a prisoner, the female prisoner of Rue de Clignancourt? No, I don’t think so . . . You continued to doubt, to make me submit daily to your interrogations. When next to you, I couldn’t even listen to the phone messages people left for me. And if by some misfortune I did, then I had to spend hours and hours explaining everything, who these people were, when I had met them, if I had slept with them, why I continued to maintain a relationship with them, what they looked like, how they behaved . . . Everything, everything, it had to be told, not forgetting anything . . . It was too much . . . Intolerable . . . Impossible . . .

At the same time I must admit that, even in the midst of hell, a part of me was happy, enjoyed it, this machismo, this dictatorship . . . I would say to myself: “This is love, this is love . . . I’m lucky . . . Just hang in there . . . This is love . . .”

I did as much as I could. I stopped working. I became like a little woman. Your vision of a woman. I became Saad, your childhood friend. I became a sculpture in your hands. A body for you, that lived only for you. An Arab name for you. They butchered it in Paris, but you, you honored this name. I rediscovered it. For two years, only your way of pronouncing it counted. You had the power to make it come alive, Arab like before, like never. At night, in the darkness, we fell asleep calling each other’s names. Slimane. Abdellah. Slimane. Abdellah. Slimane . . . I always won this competition. Sleep most often overcame you before me, you would snore lightly, you let go of my hand, but I, I continued, I prayed . . . Slimane, Slimane, Slimane, Slimane . . . You were there, a body breathing inside of me. I could not see you, I recognized you, I breathed you in. I spoke to you in Arabic. Our own language in which, outlaws, we loved each other.

With you I became Arab once again and at the same time I passed beyond this condition. This skin, this culture and this religion. Sex, in this context, was each time like the first time, a transgression, a meeting in heaven. Sex with you had ceased to be just sex. Every part of you found a place on and in me. Shyly, you spoke the dirty words of Algerian bad boys. Shyly I blushed, I lowered my eyes only to raise them immediately and ask to hear more. They weren’t insults. In my ear, they were poems, in my heart a love poem and in my groin the image of your body, your thick and naked body. You were a zamel. A gay. So was I. We were gay for one another, naturally, without pride, without shame.

You liked to go to the mosque from time to time. You said you liked the gymnastics of prayer, to be in the middle of strangers in prayer, in simple and direct communication with God. As soon as we met, you quit doing it. You no longer dared. Our bond was sacrilege in the eyes of Islam. You couldn’t manage to rid yourself of this feeling. I didn’t try to change your mind. I myself lived in this contradiction. I also needed to believe. I wanted to believe.

We ended up finding a solution. I took you to the Saint-Bernard Church and we watched others pray. Churches weren’t meant for us originally, they represented nothing in our spiritual memory. Nothing tied us to them and yet we returned there several times and in the end found a new spirituality. We invented it together, this religion, this faith, this chapel, this solemn and luminous corner, this time outside of time. This Christianity not far from Barbès.

I digress. I wanted to overwhelm you with reprimands and here I am telling you about the beautiful moments we spent together . . . I digress . . .  I must still love you. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t anymore. I’ve suffered. I am suffering. You’re stronger than me, even while absent. I’ve deprived my heart of you and I must learn to live again in solitude. You are in Paris, not far, in a suburb nearby, at the end of the RER B line, I see you, I follow you, you come home, you go out, I detach myself and I attach myself, I close my eyes to push you away and soon to curse you . . . But I don’t dare . . . I don’t dare…

You left me I don’t know how many times. We would fight. I didn’t give up easily. Like my mother, I’m stubborn, commanding, when I want to be. You were sick. Jealousy had become your motor. You always wanted to have the last word. I didn’t always give in easily. You would grab your workman’s lunch bag and you would say: “I don’t love you anymore. I’m leaving. Go, make your life with the others, those other people you love more than me . . .” There was no one else, there was just you, how many times I swore it, shouted it to you. My existence had ended up being summed up by this, screaming, crying, justifying myself. You abandoned me. You left. Ten minutes later, I was running after you in the streets of the Eighteenth Arrondissement. Rue de Clignancourt. Boulevard de Barbès. Rue Doudeauville. Rue . . . And the little bridge. And the little bench. You were there. You were waiting for me. Seated on the little bench. I joined you. And together we watched the trains in the Gare du Nord go by. In silence. The black African immigrants we liked and who we found touching for some reason beyond our understanding spoke for us. Shouted in my place. Intervened with you on my behalf without realizing it. The smile returned to our lips. You returned to reason. Each time, calmly, we stood up, we went to buy some melon, your favorite fruit, and we went back to Rue de Clignancourt to celebrate our assuaged love. Momentarily distant from insanity.

It always ended up reappearing in our life and destroying, little by little, something inside of me. I was crazy too, but much, much less so than you. 

You ended up tiring me. Wearing me out. I had no more strength, at the end of a year and a half of intense, possessed love, of repeating the same stories, of being subjected to your authority, of being less than you in love.

You succeeded, over time, in instilling in me the idea that my love was inferior to yours. You were a mystical poem. I was just a little short story by Guy de Maupassant . . . You were grand in love, it’s true. I could see it, I saw it from the very first day. I had to follow you, continually run after you to be even just a little bit at your level. You have no idea how much it cost me. You never recognized my efforts. Never rewarded them. Deep down, you never once had any idea of the amorous solitude you imposed upon me . . . Deep, deep down, you were right; a part of me, a tiny part, resisted you, and I’m sure you knew it well before me and that this is what made you suffer, what made you truly sick and insane.

I could not let my dream of Paris fade away completely. I was in this city to grow, to become an adult. Become someone. A Name. To fulfill my projects for films, for life, carried fervently inside me for a long time, too long. You never understood that. And I too did not understand that this dream was stronger, the strongest. Encountering love in Arabic is an unhoped-for miracle. But I could not speak to you about all that I wanted to do with my life. Of what was beyond me. So I silenced myself. I hid, without realizing it, without meaning to. I did not speak to you. I spoke to Paris.

I confess, I admit it; your love was the most pure. But this sort of love requires an iron constitution, a different kind of insanity which I do not have. I gave. I gave. I am poor beside you who are so rich. I am nothing next to you, fulfilled and assured of your vision. I am small, small, small. You raised me up one moment, but you let me go too many times. After falling so much, my legs no longer walk like before.

I went for a walk somewhere else. You pushed me to it.

I needed to stop. To betray.

It happened in the underground of the Gare de l’Est. He was a baker. The total opposite of you. Blond. Thin. Very young. From Lille. It lasted a quarter of an hour. Fifteen minutes to dirty myself, to regain my old life from before you, to lose myself again, alone. A little, insignificant moment of sex to commit a sin and depart from our religion, to turn my back on Christ and his churches.

I did it. I knew what I was doing. I did with this boy what I never did with you. New moves. New practices. Danger. A great violence. Darkness other than with you.

I went back home. I waited for you. I didn’t prepare anything for dinner. You cooked when you returned from work. We ate. And for the first time I provoked a fight with you. I pushed you to leave me. I knew what to say, I had everything prepared to drive you insane, to leave, to break it off.

You left.

I didn’t go after you.

You crossed the streets and the boulevard. Alone. At the beginning of night. Just before sleep.

How many hours did you remain waiting for me on the little bench on our bridge? Did you cry? When did you understand that it was over, that I would not be coming back? Were the Africans nearby, with their music, their dancing?

How many packs of cigarettes did you smoke? And when you ran out, what did you do? Wait and watch the trains going by?

I know you didn’t cry. You never cry. You close yourself up. And I have to come to you, to open you to the world and yourself. That night I didn’t come to take you back. To take you back as you are. To love you despite everything, despite myself.

In the strange darkness of the studio, I waited the whole night. I was shocked. You were never going to be back in this space, in this light, next to me. I had chased you away. I had taken back the power I had given you over me. And I did not know what to do with it. I still don’t know.

Like you, I did not cry.

Like you, I became a man from over there once again. An Arab image of a man. Dry. Proud. Hard. A puppet. Ridiculous.

Like you, for the first time in my life, I smoked. They were your cigarettes. A pack you had once forgotten that I was preciously keeping, well-hidden.

Your cigarettes were strong. My throat hurt. I could no longer breathe. But I smoked them all and I did not open the window to let any air in. I wanted to suffocate. To suffocate us. To place a fog between us. A wall. A prison. A new prison for me alone.

There, in that darkness, in that execution, that voluntary death, I remembered my spirit-possessed sister. I called upon the jinns. They came. I stood up. They entered inside me. And I fell down.

In another state, I had this dream.

I was in Cairo, the only city that we had wanted to visit together one day, and I was finally crying as I told our story to its ruins.

from Une mélancolie arabe

C’est mon journal intime de l’année 2002.

Un grand cahier de 96 pages avec une couverture très bleue.

Je l’avais perdu.

Je l’ai retrouvé hier en faisant le ménage, oublié, abandonné depuis je ne sais quand derrière mon armoire.

Au milieu de ce cahier il y avait, il y a une enveloppe sur le dos de laquelle est écrit ce titre : «L’Algérien et le Marocain».

Je savais ce qu’elle contenait. Des mots, des mots écrits à deux, l’Algérien et moi. Le récit de notre amour écrit jour après jour, l’un à côté de l’autre. Y étaient-ils encore, ces mots, intacts, lisibles, ou bien s’étaient-ils effacés avec le temps ?

J’ai ouvert la lettre. J’ai ouvert mon coeur encore une fois à l’Algérien. J’ai ouvert mon corps à cette histoire folle, à cet amour grand, le plus grand et le plus fort que j’aie jamais connu.

Il n’y avait pas que des mots dans l’enveloppe. En plus de quelques feuilles jaunes arrachées violemment à un autre cahier, j’y ai trouvé quatre autres choses. Un bout de papier sur lequel figurait le numéro de téléphone de l’Algérien. Un bonbon Délice au cassis. La note d’un hôtel. Deux entrées de cinéma pour Beau Travail de Claire Denis. Des souvenirs ? Non. Des preuves plutôt. J’ai vraiment rencontré cet homme. J’avais 27 ans. Il en avait 36. Je n’étais encore rien à Paris. Il était tout. Dieu. Dès le premier instant. Il dansait. Je l’ai rejoint. J’ai dansé. Il m’a aimé. Je l’ai aimé. Pendant un an et demi, le monde, moi et mon destin, c’était lui. Lui. Lui. Slimane. Algérien du Sud à la peau blanche. Homme marié qui venait de quitter sa femme. Père de quatre filles. Fondeur. Sculpteur. Poète dans l’âme. Arabe. Plus Arabe que moi. Et fou, ouvert et fermé à la fois.

Je vivais à l’époque rue Oberkampf, avec un autre homme français, Samy. Rencontré dans le métro de Paris quelques jours seulement après mon arrivée dans la capitale. L’amour avec lui s’était affadi assez vite. La fin s’approchait. La vie ensemble n’avait plus de goût. On se disputait tout le temps, en cri, en silence. Je l’ai quitté dès que j’ai rencontré Slimane. En attendant de trouver un appartement, l’Algérien et moi avons vécu tous les deux dans un hôtel, Aviator Hôtel, 20, rue Louis-Blanc. Slimane avait une maison à Strasbourg où vivaient sa femme et ses filles. À Paris, il était chez ses frères. On n’avait pas où aller. L’hôtel du 10e arrondissement parisien a été pendant presque deux mois notre nid, notre cage, notre maison à nous. Quatre murs. Manger, faire l’amour. Et rien d’autre. Si ce n’est chercher un appartement.

Nous avons fini par en trouver un, rue de Clignancourt, 18e arrondissement. Métro Marcadet-Poissonnier, ligne 4. Il était au 5e étage et sa surface faisait 18 m2.

C’est là, prisonniers l’un de l’autre, que nous nous sommes aimés, que nous avons parlé en arabe tous les jours et que nous avons frôlé la folie.

Dès le départ, nous avons écrit l’un à côté de l’autre, l’un pour l’autre, l’un l’histoire de l’autre, son passé, ses personnages, ses images, ses obsessions. Nous l’avons fait, ça, cette chose incroyable, impossible avec d’autres : tenir un stylo à deux, avancer dans l’écriture à deux, être dans l’amour et son écriture en même temps.

Quand ce fut fini, l’été 2001, avant de me quitter, Slimane avait pris avec lui les deux grands cahiers où nous avions tout enregistré, des pages et des pages d’amour. Il avait décidé que, puisque c’était moi qui rompais, ce « trésor » lui revenait de droit, lui le grand amoureux incompris.

Trois mois plus tard, j’avais trouvé sous ma porte une lettre. Celle que j’ai maintenant entre les mains. Dedans il y avait ces pages. Quelques-unes des pages que j’avais écrites seul dans le journal.

[ . . . ]

Slimane ne m’avait donc rendu que quelques pages de notre journal. Il avait gardé le reste pour lui, l’avait peut-être détruit. Brûlé. Tout ce que nous avions écrit ensemble, corps contre corps, mains jointes presque, il l’avait pris pour lui, volé pour lui. La mémoire écrite de notre histoire lui appartenait désormais. Notre livre n’était plus à moi aussi. Et cela m’avait mis très en colère. Je ne pouvais pas m’empêcher de voir dans le geste de Slimane une volonté de censure. Enlever dans ce livre ce qui ne lui plaisait pas. Me rendre ce qu’il voulait bien rendre, presque rien, quelques petites et maigres pages qui lui sont, de surcroît, favorables. M’exclure, en quelque sorte. Plus de trace écrite de moi par lui. Moi écrit dans l’amour par lui.

J’avais été dépossédé. En faisant ces coupes, Slimane avait réécrit le journal amoureux. Dénaturé l’amour. Lui avait donné une autre couleur. Incomplète.

J’ai répondu à cette lettre très vite.

J’ai passé toute une nuit à l’écrire. Une lettre étrange où j’essayais en vain d’être logique, sec, cruel, froid. Une lettre de vengeance qui n’en était pas une. Je l’ai postée le lendemain à 7 heures du matin. C’était le début du printemps. Il faisait encore nuit sur Paris.

« Slimane,

Je n’arrive même plus à t’appeler cher Slimane, tellement je suis en colère. Contre toi. Contre moi. Contre cette injustice que tu m’imposes. Contre l’amour qui n’a plus aucun sens aujourd’hui pour moi et qui, pourtant, est encore là, au fond de mon coeur. Contre cette censure que tu te permets d’exercer dans notre “Journal amoureux”. Je suis en colère parce que j’ai l’impression d’avoir tout donné de moi, de mon corps, mais jamais cela ne t’a satisfait.

Tu voulais plus. Toujours plus. Tout savoir de moi, de ce à quoi je pensais, de ce que je faisais quand tu n’étais pas là. De mon coeur qui s’est donné à toi dès la première seconde de notre rencontre. Mon corps était devenu ton corps. Mais tu voulais encore et encore plus. Quoi, plus? Je ne savais plus quoi te donner… Tu exigeais que je sois là pour toi, tout le temps. Je l’ai fait. Avec plaisir. Avec amour. Avec dévotion, je t’aimais. Je t’adorais. J’ai quitté les autres, ma vie, mon chemin dans Paris, mes projets, pour toi. J’ai arrêté de voir les gens qui comptaient pour moi. Les amis, cela sert à quoi quand on a l’amour ? Que t’apportent les autres que je ne peux pas te donner ? Et qui sont-elles, ces personnes auxquelles tu es si attaché et que moi je ne connais pas? Mille questions. J’ai répondu, je me suis justifié. Mille questions répétées des milliers de fois. Certains jours, j’ai osé ne pas te répondre. Je me souviens à quel point tu étais alors hors de toi…

Tu ne me croyais pas. Pour toi, je ne faisais que te mentir, te tromper, coucher avec tout ce qui bouge. J’étais un diable, un démon, c’est ce que tu disais, un petit démon dont tu étais amoureux. Fou amoureux. “Possessivement” amoureux. Maladivement amoureux.

Tu as quitté ta femme et tes enfants pour moi ? Je ne te l’ai jamais demandé. Tu vivais déjà à Paris sans eux quand je t’ai connu.

Certains jours tu partais au travail à 7 heures du matin comme d’habitude et, une heure plus tard, tu étais déjà de retour. “C’est affreux, je ne pense qu’à toi. Tu es moi. Je ne peux rien faire d’autre… sauf être là avec toi, dans ce studio, ce lit, dans ce noir même en plein jour.” Cela s’est produit plusieurs fois et, chaque fois, je pleurais d’émotion et je me hâtais d’ouvrir le lit, mettre les draps, les coussins, les couvertures, et vite, vite, on se déshabillait et on allait se rejoindre, se coller l’un à l’autre, se respirer l’un l’autre, dormir, se réveiller, se rendormir. Ne presque rien manger… Te souviens-tu de tout ça ? Bien sûr… Comment oublier ces instants d’amour vrai, d’amour pur, d’amour plus important et plus fort que tout, que tout ? !

Te souviens-tu de la lumière dans mes yeux chaque fois que je t’ouvrais la porte ? Tu l’as remarqué une fois, rien qu’une fois. Après, tu étais dans ton idée à toi de l’amour, ton amour pour moi plus grand évidemment que celui que je te portais. Ton entrée quotidienne dans le petit appartement était un bouleversement total, un renversement de moi-même. Tu arrivais, tu souriais à peine, tu disais, des fois gentiment ironique, des fois noir : “Labass, Sidi Abdellah ?” Je te regardais et je constatais les changements qui se produisaient dans l’air, dans le monde qui n’était plus que toi. TOI.

J’étais heureux et j’avais peur. Tu étais l’homme, le roi. J’acceptais ton pouvoir. J’acceptais tes silences, tes remontrances, tes mises en scène, tes obsessions. Tu fumais. Je m’asseyais par terre et je t’enlevais tes chaussures, tes chaussettes. J’aimais le faire, tu ne m’y obligeais pas, pas du tout… Comme j’aimais, quand il faisait froid, te laver les pieds avec de l’eau très chaude dans la petite bassine rouge que nous avons achetée ensemble du côté du métro Strasbourg-Saint-Denis. Je les lavais, je les essuyais et je les embrassais : ils étaient à moi.

Tu étais algérien, arabe comme moi et tu étais à moi. Mais je voyais bien que tu avais des doutes, en permanence des doutes.

Au début, tu m’as dit dit: “Raconte-moi tes histoires avant moi… Ton passé amoureux…” Je t’ai tout raconté, les garçons et les hommes qui sont passés dans ma vie, tous les détails, les moindres détails, tu désirais tout savoir. Plus tard, longtemps plus tard, tu es revenu à ces histoires et tu as ordonné : “Renonce à ton passé! Oui, tu as bien entendu, abjure tes autres histoires d’amour, dis qu’elles ne valaient pas la peine d’être vécues… Dis que l’amour c’est avec moi que tu le vis, et qu’avec eux ce n’était que du plaisir, du fun, rien de plus… Dis : Avant j’étais un putain! Dis : Avant j’étais égaré! Dis : Avant j’étais une salope! Dis : Avant n’existe plus… plus !” Tu étais sérieux, il ne s’agissait pas d’une nouvelle crise de jalousie. Tes yeux étaient rouges de haine pour ce passé, pour cette existence sans toi. Tu ne supportais pas l’idée de moi vivant et heureux avant de te connaître. Je savais intimement qu’il ne fallait même pas essayer de te convaincre, de te faire changer de sujet. J’ai dit : “Avant toi, je n’étais rien!” Tu as dis : “Dis aussi qu’avant tu n’étais qu’un putain !” Je l’ai dit aussi. Et on a fait l’amour. En pleurant tous les deux.

Maintenant, c’est fini, fini. Et c’est moi qui l’ai décidé cette fois-ci. C’est fini d’être tous les deux uniquement dans ta façon à toi d’aimer, dans ta possessivité et dans tes névroses que je trouvais gentilles, intéressantes au début. C’est fini même si l’amour continue d’exister entre nous. Je le veux. Je persiste et je signe. C’est fini. J’en ai plus qu’assez d’être ton objet d’amour. Ton objet tout court.

Tu as fait de moi ce que tu as voulu. Je suis devenu une femme arabe soumise pour toi. Chaque jour, je devais finir tout ce que j’avais à faire avant ton retour vers 17 heures et tout préparer pour ton confort. Le tagine, le thé à la menthe. Le linge propre… C’est vrai, je l’avoue, j’ai aimé faire tout cela. Laver tes vêtements sales, te nourrir, s’occuper de ton corps. Tu ne m’obligeais pas. C’est vrai aussi que tu t’investissais comme tu pouvais dans la vie de couple.

Le monde extérieur n’existait plus. J’ai essayé de faire comme toi pendant un long moment. Les sentiments qui nous unissaient me suffisaient à moi aussi. Notre communion spirituelle était précieuse à mes yeux. Tu croyais aux mêmes choses que moi. Les saints. Les djinns. La sorcellerie. La superstition. Les encens. Le jaoui, la chabba, le harmal, le fasoukh, tu savais ce que c’est. De même que tu savais que l’eau de fleur d’oranger était essentielle pour ma survie. Parfois, j’allais mal. Tu prenais cette eau, tu me lavais le visage et les mains en psalmodiant quelques prières. Cela me soulageait. Tu comprenais cet état particulier, ce hal qui s’imposait à moi, et tu avais les bons gestes et les bons mots pour me ramener à la vie, à l’amour avec toi. Au lit contre toi.

Tu as fait tout cela pour moi. Je t’ai laissé entrer dans mon corps et dans mon âme. De quelle autre preuve d’amour avais-tu besoin ?

Je sais que l’homme arabe est compliqué. Toi, tu l’étais mille fois plus. Je te comprenais et je ne te comprenais pas. Je sais que l’amour est une chose qui nous dépasse. Je sais que l’amour est jalousie. Maladie. Je l’ai lu dans les livres. Nous l’avons vérifié ensemble dans L’Anthologie de la poésie arabe que tu m’as offerte au début de notre relation. Nous l’avons expérimenté pendant presque deux ans. Tu voulais le pouvoir. Je te l’ai donné, de mon plein gré, sans penser à mon avenir. L’avenir, c’était toi et moi, ensemble, ventre contre ventre, coeur pour coeur, dans un même souffle. J’ai renoncé à mon ambition. J’ai renoncé au ciné, mon plus grand rêve depuis l’adolescence. J’ai arrêté de m’endurcir pour toi. J’ai enlevé les masques, tous les masques, devant toi. Mon identité sociale que j’avais commencé à construire à Hay Salam a cessé d’exister dès que tu es apparu devant mes yeux. Te rendais-tu compte de tout cela, de tous ces sacrifices ? Ne voyais-tu pas que tu avais fait de moi un prisonnier, la prisonnière de la rue de Clignancourt ? Non, je ne crois pas… Tu as continué à douter, à me faire subir quotidiennement tes interrogatoires. Je ne pouvais même plus écouter à côté de toi les messages qu’on me laissait sur mon téléphone fixe. Et si par malheur je le faisais, il fallait alors que je passe des heures et des heures à tout expliquer, qui étaient ces gens, quand je les avais connus, si j’avais couché avec eux, pourquoi je continuais d’entretenir des relations avec eux, à quoi ils ressemblaient physiquement, moralement… Tout, tout, il fallait dire, surtout ne rien oublier… C’était trop… Intolérable… Impossible…

Je dois toutefois avouer que, même en plein enfer, une partie de moi était heureuse, aimait ça, ce machisme, cette dictature… Je me disais alors : “C’est ça l’amour, c’est ça l’amour… J’ai de la chance… Il faut tenir le coup… C’est ça l’amour…”

J’ai tenu comme j’ai pu. J’ai arrêté de travailler. Je suis devenu une petite femme. Ta conception de la femme. Je suis devenu Saâd, ton copain d’enfance. Je suis devenu une sculpture entre tes mains. Un corps pour toi, qui ne vivait que pour toi. Un prénom arabe à toi. On le massacrait à Paris, toi, ce prénom, tu l’honorais. Je le redécouvrais. Pendant deux ans, seule ta façon à toi de le prononcer comptait. Tu avais le pouvoir de le rendre vivant, arabe comme avant, comme jamais. La nuit, dans le noir, on s’endormait en s’appelant par nos prénoms. Slimane. Abdellah. Slimane. Abdellah. Slimane… Je gagnais toujours cette compétition. Le sommeil te gagnait très souvent avant moi, tu ronflais légèrement, tu lâchais ma main, mais moi, je continuais, je priais… Slimane, Slimane, Slimane, Slimane… Tu étais là, un corps qui souffle en moi. Je ne te voyais pas, je te reconnaissais, je te respirais. Je te parlais en arabe. La langue à nous et dans laquelle, hors la loi, on s’est aimés.

Avec toi je redevenais arabe et je dépassais en même temps cette condition. Cette peau, cette culture et cette religion. Le sexe, dans ce cadre, était à chaque fois comme la première fois, une transgression, une rencontre au ciel. Le sexe avec toi avait cessé d’être uniquement du sexe. Tout de toi trouvait place sur et en moi. Timide, tu disais les mots sales des mauvais garçons algériens. Timide, je rougissais, je baissais les yeux pour les relever aussitôt et demander à en entendre d’autres. Ce n’était pas des insultes. Dans mon oreille, c’étaient des poèmes, dans mon coeur un philtre d’amour et dans mon bas-ventre l’image de ton corps, de ton corps épais et nu. Tu étais un zamel. Un pédé. Je l’étais aussi. Nous l’étions l’un pour l’autre, évidemment, sans fierté, sans honte.

Tu aimais aller à la mosquée de temps en temps. Tu disais que tu aimais la gymnastique de la prière, être au milieu des inconnus en prière, dans la parole simple et directe avec Dieu. Dès qu’on s’est rencontrés, tu as arrêté de le faire. Tu n’osais plus. Notre lien était sacrilège aux yeux de l’islam. Tu n’arrivais pas à te débarrasser de ce sentiment. Je n’ai pas essayé de te faire changer d’avis. Moi-même je vivais dans cette contradiction. Moi-même j’avais besoin de croire. Je voulais croire.

On a fini par trouver une solution. Je t’ai emmené à l’église Saint-Bernard et on a regardé les autres prier. Les églises, ce n’était pas pour nous à l’origine, cela ne représentait rien dans notre mémoire spirituelle. Rien ne nous attachait à elles et, pourtant, nous y sommes retournés plusieurs fois et nous avons fini par y découvrir une nouvelle spiritualité. Nous l’avons inventée ensemble, cette religion, cette foi, cette chapelle, ce coin sombre et lumineux, ce temps en dehors du temps. Ce christianisme non loin de Barbès.

Je m’égare. Je voulais t’accabler de remontrances et voilà que je te parle de ce que nous avons vécu de beau ensemble… Je m’égare… Je dois t’aimer encore. Il ne faut pas. Il ne faut pas. Il ne faut plus. J’ai souffert. Je souffre. Tu es en moi fort, même absent. J’ai privé mon coeur de toi et je dois réapprendre à vivre dans la solitude. Tu es à Paris, pas loin, dans une banlieue proche, au bout de la ligne du RER B, je te vois, je te suis, tu entres, tu sors, je me détache et je m’attache, je ferme les yeux pour t’éloigner et bientôt te maudire… Mais je n’ose pas… Je n’ose pas…

Tu m’as quitté je ne sais combien de fois. On se disputait. Je ne renonçais pas facilement. Comme ma mère, je suis têtu, dictateur, quand je le veux. Tu étais malade. La jalousie était devenue ton moteur. Tu voulais toujours avoir le dernier mot. Je ne t’ai pas toujours laissé le prendre facilement. Tu saisissais ta sacoche d’ouvrier et tu disais : “Je ne t’aime plus. Je pars. Va, fais ta vie avec les autres, ces autres que tu aimes plus que moi…” Il n’y avait personne d’autre, il n’y avait que toi, combien de fois je te l’ai juré, crié. Mon existence avait fini par se résumer à cela, crier, pleurer, me justifier. Tu m’abandonnais. Tu partais. Dix minutes après, je courais après toi dans les rues du 18e arrondissement. Rue de Clignancourt. Boulevard de Barbès. Rue Doudeauville. Rue… Et le petit pont. Et le petit banc. Tu étais là. Tu m’attendais là. Assis sur le petit banc. Je te rejoignais. Et on regardait ensemble les trains de la gare du Nord passer. Dans le silence. Les immigrés africains noirs qu’on aimait et qui nous touchaient pour des raisons qui nous dépassaient parlaient pour nous. Criaient à ma place. Intervenaient sans le savoir en ma faveur auprès de toi. Le sourire revenait à tes lèvres. Tu retrouvais la raison. Calmes, on se levait, on allait acheter à chaque fois du melon, ton fruit préféré, et on revenait à la rue de Clignancourt célébrer l’amour apaisé. Momentanément loin de la folie.

Elle finissait toujours par réapparaître dans notre vie et détruisait peu à peu quelque chose en moi. Tu étais fou. Je l’étais aussi, mais beaucoup, beaucoup moins que toi.

Tu as fini par me fatiguer. M’épuiser. Je n’avais plus la force, au bout d’un an et demi d’amour intense, possédé, de répéter les mêmes histoires, de subir ton autorité, d’être moins que toi dans l’amour. Tu as réussi, avec le temps, à fixer en moi l’idée que mon amour était inférieur au tien. Tu étais un poème mystique. Je n’étais qu’une petite nouvelle de Guy de Maupassant… Tu étais grand dans l’amour, c’est vrai.

Je le voyais, je l’ai vu dès le premier jour. Il fallait te suivre, courir en permanence pour être un petit peu à ton niveau. Tu n’as aucune idée de tout ce que cela m’a coûté. Mes efforts, tu ne les as jamais remarqués. Jamais récompensés. Au fond, tu n’as eu à aucun moment idée de la solitude amoureuse que tu m’imposais… Au fond, au fond, tu avais raison : une partie de moi, toute petite partie, te résistait, et je suis sûr que tu le savais bien avant moi et que c’est cela qui te faisait souffrir, te rendait au sens propre malade et fou.

Je ne pouvais pas laisser mon rêve de Paris s’évanouir complètement. J’étais dans cette ville pour grandir, devenir un adulte. Devenir quelqu’un. Un Nom. Réaliser des projets de films, de vie, portés en moi avec ferveur depuis longtemps, trop longtemps. Tu n’as jamais compris cela. Et je n’ai pas compris, moi non plus, que ce rêve était plus fort, LE plus fort. Rencontrer l’amour en arabe est un miracle inespéré. Mais je ne pouvais pas te parler de tout ce que je voulais faire de ma vie. Ce qui me dépassait. Alors je me suis tu. J’ai caché, sans le savoir, sans le vouloir. Je ne t’ai pas parlé. J’ai parlé à Paris.

Je le confesse, je l’admets : ton amour était le plus pur. Mais pour ce genre d’amour, il faut une santé de fer, une autre folie que je n’ai pas. J’ai donné. J’ai donné. Je suis pauvre à côté de toi tellement riche. Je ne suis rien en face de toi rempli et sûr de ta vision. Je suis petit, petit, petit. Tu m’as élevé un moment, mais tu m’as lâché trop souvent. À force de tomber, mes jambes n’arrivent plus à marcher comme avant.

Je suis allé marcher ailleurs. Tu m’y as poussé.

Il fallait arrêter. Trahir.

Cela s’est passé dans le sous-sol de la gare de l’Est. Il était boulanger. Tout le contraire de toi. Blond. Mince. Très jeune. De Lille. Cela a duré un quart d’heure. Quinze minutes pour me salir, reprendre la vie d’avant toi, me reperdre, seul. Un petit moment insignifiant de sexe pour commettre un péché et sortir de notre religion, tourner le dos au Christ et à ses églises.

Je l’ai fait. Je savais ce que je faisais. J’ai fait avec ce garçon ce que je n’ai jamais fait avec toi. Des gestes nouveaux. Des pratiques nouvelles. Du danger. Une grande violence. Le noir autrement qu’avec toi.

Je suis rentré. Je t’ai attendu. Je n’avais rien préparé pour le dîner. Tu as fait la cuisine à ton retour du travail. On a mangé. Et j’ai provoqué pour la première fois une dispute avec toi. Je t’ai poussé à me quitter. Je savais quoi dire, j’avais tout préparé, pour te mettre en folie, en départ, en rupture.

Tu es parti.

Je ne t’ai pas rattrapé.

Tu as traversé les rues et le boulevard. Seul. Au début de la nuit. Juste avant le sommeil.

Combien d’heures es-tu resté à m’attendre assis sur le petit banc de notre pont ? As-tu pleuré ? Quand as-tu compris que c’était fini, que je ne reviendrais pas ? Y avait-il les Africains pas loin de toi, leur musique, leur danse ?

Combien de paquets de cigarettes as-tu fumés ? Et quand tu n’en avais plus, qu’as-tu fait ? Attendre et regarder les trains qui passent ?

Je sais que tu n’as pas pleuré. Tu ne pleures jamais. Tu te fermes. Et il faut venir à toi, t’ouvrir au monde et à toi-même. Cette nuit je ne suis pas venu te reprendre. Te reprendre comme tu es. T’aimer malgré tout, malgré moi.

Dans le noir étrange du studio, j’ai veillé toute la nuit. J’étais choqué. Tu n’allais plus jamais être dans cet espace, dans cette lumière, à mes côtés. Je t’avais chassé. J’avais repris le pouvoir que je t’avais donné sur moi. Et je ne savais pas quoi en faire. Je ne le sais toujours pas.

Comme toi, je n’ai pas pleuré.

Comme toi, je suis redevenu un homme de là-bas. Une image arabe de l’homme. Sec. Fier. Dur. Pantin. Ridicule.

Comme toi, pour la première fois de ma vie, j’ai fumé. C’étaient tes cigarettes. Un paquet que tu avais oublié une fois et que je gardais précieusement, bien caché.

Tes cigarettes étaient fortes. J’avais mal à la gorge. Je n’arrivais plus à respirer. Mais je les ai toutes fumées et je n’ai pas ouvert la fenêtre pour aérer. Je voulais étouffer. Nous étouffer. Installer un brouillard entre nous. Un mur. Une prison. Une nouvelle prison pour moi seul.

Là, dans cette obscurité, dans cette exécution, cette mort volontaire, je me suis souvenu de ma soeur hantée. J’ai appelé ses djinns. Ils sont venus. Je me suis levé. Ils sont entrés en moi. Et je suis tombé.

Ailleurs, j’ai fait ce rêve.

J’étais au Caire, la seule ville qu’on voulait visiter un jour ensemble, et je pleurais enfin en racontant à ses ruines notre histoire.

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