My uncle, wearing the thick jumper that hid his increasingly emaciated frame, sat glued to the wireless, never moving from his chair. From morning to night he sat turning the dial of the radio, trying to tune to some station without interference. Over the whine and static of the airwaves, the house hummed with news and speculation. Germaine had given up on her husband, allowing him to do exactly as he pleased. My uncle insisted on having his dinner served in the living room by the wireless, so that he didn’t miss a scrap of news.
As 8 May 1945 dawned, and the whole world celebrated the end of their nightmare, in Algeria a new nightmare appeared, devastating as a plague, monstrous as the Apocalypse itself. Popular celebrations turned to tragedy. In Aïn Temouchent, near Río Salado, marches for Algerian independence were brutally suppressed by the police. In Mostaganem, riots spread to the surrounding villages. But the horror reached its height in the Aurès and in the Constantine province, where the police, aided and abetted by former colonists turned militiamen, massacred thousands of Muslims.
‘I can’t believe it.’ My uncle’s voice quavered as he sat trembling in his pyjamas. ‘How could they? How could they murder people who are still mourning children who died fighting for the freedom of France? Why should we be slaughtered like cattle simply for demanding our own freedom?’ Pale, distraught and haggard, he shambled up and down the living room in his slippers.
The Arabic radio station reported the bloody suppression of Muslims in Guelma, Kherrata and Sétif, the mass graves where thousands of corpses lay rotting, the Arabs hunted by packs of dogs through vineyards and orange groves, the lynchings in the village squares. What was happening was so horrific that my uncle and I did not even dare to join the peaceful demonstration down the main avenue of Río Salado.
This savage, bloody cataclysm left the Muslim population of Algeria in mourning and almost killed my uncle. One night as he listened, he suddenly brought his hand up, clutched at his chest and collapsed. Madame Scamaroni drove us to the hospital, where we left him in the care of a doctor he knew and trusted. Germaine was distraught, and Madame Scamaroni offered to stay with her. Jean-Christophe and Fabrice came round and waited with us late into the night. Simon borrowed his neighbour’s motorbike so he could come too.
‘Your husband has had a heart attack, madame,’ the doctor explained to Germaine. ‘He’s still unconscious.’
‘Is he going to pull through?’
‘We’ve done everything we can; the rest is down to him.’
Germaine did not know what to say. She had barely uttered a word since we arrived at the hospital. Her face was pale, her eyes haunted; she clasped her hands and bowed her head in prayer.
At dawn the next day, my uncle regained consciousness, asked for a drink of water, and demanded he be discharged immediately, but the doctor insisted on keeping him under observation overnight. Madame Scamaroni offered to pay for a nurse so that my uncle would have full-time care, but Germaine politely declined. She thanked Madame Scamaroni for everything she had done, but insisted that she would look after her husband herself.
Two days later, as I sat by my uncle’s bed, I heard a voice outside, calling me. I went to the window and saw a figure crouching in the shadows. It was Jelloul, André’s manservant. I went outside, and as I crossed the path separ ating the house from the vineyard, Jelloul came out from his hiding place.
‘My God!’ I said.
Jelloul was limping. His face was swollen, his lip split; he had a black eye and his shirt was lashed with red stripes, clearly whip marks.
‘Who did this to you?’
Jelloul glanced around, as though afraid someone would hear, then said:
‘André.’
‘Why? What did you do wrong?’
He smiled at what was clearly a preposterous question.
‘I don’t need to do anything wrong. André always finds some excuse. This time it was the Muslim unrest in the Aurès. André doesn’t trust Arabs any more. When he got back from town drunk last night, he laid into me.’
He lifted his shirt and showed me the welts on his back. André had not pulled his punches. Jelloul turned back to face me, pushing his shirt tails back into his dusty trousers. He sniffed loudly and then said:
‘He told me it was a warning, that he didn’t want me getting any ideas. Said I needed to get it into my head that he was the boss, and he wasn’t going to tolerate insubordination from the hired help.’
Jelloul was clearly waiting for something, but I did not know what. He took off his fez and began twisting it in his grubby hands.
‘Jonas, I didn’t come here to tell you my life story. André threw me out without a penny. I can’t go back to my family with no money. If I don’t earn, my family will starve.’
‘How much do you need?’
‘Just enough to feed us for a couple of days.’
‘Give me two minutes.’
I went up to my room and came back with two fifty-franc notes. Jelloul reluctantly took them, turning them over in his hands.
‘It’s too much . . . I could never pay you back.’
‘You don’t need to pay me back.’
He looked at me and shook his head, thinking. Then, flushed and embarrassed, he said:
‘In that case, fifty francs is enough.’
‘Take the hundred francs, please,’ I said. ‘I’m only too happy to give it.’
‘I believe you, but it’s not necessary.’
‘Have you got work lined up?’
‘No.’ Jelloul suddenly gave a mysterious smile. ‘But André can’t survive without me. He’ll send for me before the end of the week. He won’t find a better dog than me.’
‘Why do you call yourself a dog?’
‘You wouldn’t understand . . . You’re one of us, but you live like one of them. When your whole family depends on you for money, when you have to support a half-crazed mother, a father who had both arms amputated, six brothers and sisters, a grandmother, two aunts disowned by their families and a sickly uncle, you are no longer a human being. You are a dog or a jackal, and every dog seeks out a master.’
Jelloul’s words unsettled me, and I realised that though he was not yet twenty, he had an inner strength, a maturity. The young man who stood before me that morning was not the lackey we had long thought him. He even looked different: he had a quiet dignity I had not noticed, a handsome face, high cheekbones, and eyes that were perceptive and unnerving.
‘Thank you, Jonas,’ he said. ‘I’ll make it up to you some day.’
He turned and began to hobble away.
‘Wait,’ I called after him. ‘You’re not going to get far on that foot.’
‘I got this far, didn’t I?’
‘Maybe, but you’re only going to make it worse . . . Where do you live?’
‘It’s not far, honestly. It’s just the other side of the marabout’s hill. I’ll manage.’
‘I won’t hear of it. Wait there, I’ll get my bicycle and drop you off.’
‘No, Jonas, it’s all right. You have better things to do.’
‘I insist.’
I thought that I had seen poverty in Jenane Jato; I was wrong. The shanty town where Jelloul and his family lived was beyond anything I had ever imagined. The douar was made up of a dozen squalid hovels on the banks of a dried-up riverbed. A few scrawny goats ambled around. The place smelled so foul I found it difficult to imagine how anyone could spend two days here. When the path petered out, I left the bike on the slopes and helped Jelloul down the hill. The marabout’s hill was only a few kilometres from Río Salado, but I could not remember ever having passed this way. People shunned the place, as though it were cursed. Suddenly the simple fact that I was on the far side of the hill terrified me. I was scared something might happen to me, and I knew that if anything did, no one would think to come looking for me here. It was ridiculous, but the fear was all too real. I felt a mortal dread at being in this douar of ramshackle huts pervaded by the stench of rotting flesh.