Two Testaments (5 page)

Moustafa looked up quickly. “I don’t like it any more than you do, M. Hoffmann.”

“Call me David, please.”

“David then. What does it change?”

“It makes things less formal.”

“Less formal. Ha! And what do you want? To be my
pote
? I don’t need a friend like you, David Hoffmann. If I could get Anne-Marie out of here safely myself, believe me, I would never have asked you.” He looked away.

Moustafa could not remember when he had first started loving Anne-Marie. Was it when they were schoolchildren, playing outside on her father’s farm? For three generations the Dramchinis had worked for the Duchemins on the plot of land outside Algiers. They had been employees and also neighbors. Moustafa had grown up beside the Duchemins’ only daughter, and their friendship had been natural.

She was the mischievous one, always taking risks, pulling her Arab friend along. She had never seen the difference, never understood the wall that stood between her culture and his. He had first loved her for that. Her wild, beautiful naïveté.

She had not guessed for the longest time, not until her fourteenth year, when somehow it was no longer appropriate to hold hands and drag each other along through the orange groves just for fun. Their last run through the groves had ended with a kiss that Moustafa had planted squarely on Anne-Marie’s lips.

She had pushed him back, surprised. “Now why in the world did you do that?”

He shrugged, turning his eyes down, hidden beneath the unkempt black curls that tumbled to his shoulders. Why indeed. He had known then, at twelve, that Anne-Marie would never understand. He had sworn, though, that he would love her and protect her as far as it was in his power for the rest of his life. A boyhood dream …

He realized suddenly that he was smiling and remembered David’s intrusive presence. The tall American’s back was turned to him. Moustafa felt the smile leave his face. What right had this cocky American teenager had to take away Anne-Marie? Steal her heart and leave her with a child. David Hoffmann was the kind of man who got his way. The kind that women looked at twice, giggling and blushing. He had money and wits and a long list of other qualities that were sure to charm. He was the kind of man Moustafa hated. A man with no loyalties. Why be loyal when he could be free and taste the honey from many a hive?

And he was an American. A free man from a superpower. What had brought him back to this tangled mass of cultures? Was it after all a desire to possess Anne-Marie again?

“I’m glad you said what you did last night, Moustafa. You saved Anne-Marie further humiliation,” David commented, his back still turned.

Moustafa winced at the sound of the other man’s voice—calm, controlled, condescending. “For how long?” he seethed. “There is no telling who will crash through the door tomorrow to level us all.”

“Do you support the OAS?” David asked, turning slowly.

Moustafa laughed. “I support my people, plain and simple. And Anne-Marie.” He rose and walked over to where David stood, and both stared out the window. Moustafa watched the rain on the window sliding into little puddles on the frame. “I don’t disapprove totally of the OAS, you must understand. You know what the pied-noirs say?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “They say the OAS is like the Resistance during the other war. How can they sit idly by while their people are massacred arbitrarily? The FLN started this war seven years ago—a handful of terrorists who wanted Algeria to be free. Terrorism has always been the FLN’s way. It’s not war. It’s not combat. It’s cold-blooded murder, instilling fear. Anyone and everyone is in danger.

“But now, when the OAS strike back, they are considered murderers. The FLN is pardoned of its years of barbaric acts, and the OAS are the assassins. Who can make any sense of it? A son finds his father slaughtered. An Arab maid is given a choice—either she cuts the throats of the pied-noir children she has helped raise, or the FLN will cut her children’s throats. What do you do in a country gone mad? Where you could just as easily be blown up at a sidewalk café in the middle of the afternoon as shot to death in your apartment in the middle of the night. It is past understanding.”

David, his forehead against the window, seemed lost in thought. In barely a whisper he asked, “And what will happen to your people once independence is declared in July?”

Moustafa’s answer was matter-of-fact. “It will be a genocide. A complete genocide of harkis. And the world will never blink an eye.”

Moustafa watched a play of emotions cross David Hoffmann’s face. It looked like a pained anger, as if something from deep within him were welling up and threatening to spill over. Perhaps there was depth to this man after all.

David turned abruptly from the window. “Do you still have family here in Algeria? Who is still alive for you, Moustafa?”

“My mother, two sisters. And my older brother who is in the French army. A real harki. They are all here. I ran away once to France because I was afraid. I won’t do it again. I’ll stay with them and die. You must take Anne-Marie on the thirtieth. Give her daughter back to her. Then she will forget me. Then one day she can love again.”

Moustafa walked out of the kitchen, feeling once again like a traitor. He had betrayed his country; he had left his family. And soon his loyalty to Anne-Marie would be but a stained memory of an unfulfilled dream.

David could not sleep. In his mind he saw the curly black hair of Moustafa shaking back and forth; Moustafa appeared as a man resigned to a fate of certain death. David reached toward the suitcase that lay at his feet and brought out the Bible Gabriella had given him. He let the large book fall open to where a folded paper had been tucked between its pages. David unfolded it and stared at the picture in the moonlight.

Six different-colored ponies, drawn in the uncertain hand of Ophélie, were running toward the sun. He closed his eyes and remembered Ophélie’s explanation.
I’m the pink one. I’m leading us to Jesus. He’s in the sky, in the sun. And the red pony is Gabriella, because she has such long, pretty red hair. And then after her comes Mother Griolet. She’s the gray pony there, see? And you are the black one. You’re catching up with us and running to the sun. And the beautiful white pony with the black mane and tail is Mama. She is far behind, but she’s coming with the brown pony. That’s Moustafa.

How he wished she was right. But the word
genocide
throbbed like a migraine in his mind. And he wondered if the brown pony would make it after all.

3

The War Monument stood impressive and silent in the middle of downtown Algiers, a testimony to the bravery of Algerians, pied-noirs, French, and Arabs from another war. Rémi Cebrian, thirtysomething, compact and thick with pure muscle, reread the tract he had received earlier in the week urging pied-noirs to assemble at the monument on rue Michelet at one o’clock on March 26. The tract called for a peaceful protest march on the quarantined district of Bab el-Oued in the west part of Algiers.

It was past one when Rémi arrived at the Place, where hundreds of high-spirited young people already waited in happy expectation. More and more pied-noirs appeared, many laden with baskets of cheese and fruits and other provisions to take to their cut-off counterparts in Bab el-Oued. A few teenagers began singing “La Marseillaise,” and soon hundreds of voices joined them. Children held their mothers’ hands. Dogs wagged their tails, straining on their leashes. The mood was bright.

Rémi was not sure why he had come. To see. To take part. To support his fellow pied-noirs as they desperately tried to preserve their place in an Algeria that was fast becoming hostile to them. He thought of his wife, Eliane, and their three children, back at the farm on the outskirts of Algiers. He was marching today with a prayer in his heart that they could stay in their country, on their farm, in their house.

As the crowd grew in size, it surged forward, pushed by those in the back. People waved flags, swung their baskets of provisions, and laughed. But Rémi noticed the blockades of soldiers who stood rigid and tense, placed there to make sure another insurrection never got off the ground.

Soon the crowd of over two thousand fanned out onto the central street of rue d’Isly. Rémi, who was walking on the side of the pack near the front, caught his breath. Before them stood a dozen Algerian
tirailleurs
, young harki riflemen from the French army, looking angry and tense beside the young French lieutenant commanding them.

Afterward, no one could be sure what happened first. Rémi recalled that one of the tirailleurs nearest him was shaking violently, obviously terrified by the approaching mob. Suddenly a series of shots burst dryly through the jubilation. At once the tirailleurs panicked and began firing point-blank into the crowd. A woman screamed, hit in the face. The pied-noirs ran in all directions, stampeding like a herd of wild buffalo. Rémi grabbed a small child who was wailing hysterically and dragged him onto the sidewalk, ducking as bullets sped and shattered above them. A shop door opened and an elderly man shouted, motioning for Rémi and the child to come inside.

His face plastered against the shop window, Rémi watched masses of terrified people running, screaming. Blood was everywhere. Men were yelling, “
Arrêt au feu! Arrêt au feu!
Stop shooting!” For a few seconds the shooting ceased, then started up again. An old woman collapsed on the sidewalk, blood seeping from her neck. Rémi dashed outside, seized the woman under the arms, and dragged her into the store. Others had the same reflex, as makeshift stretchers were carried into the streets during the brief periods when the rifle fire calmed before suddenly bursting forth again.

“
Seigneur
,” Rémi said between sobs. “Another massacre.”

The firing lasted no more than ten minutes, but the carnage was sickening. Blood formed puddles in the street as if the skies had dumped red rain. Bodies lay strewn and twisted, eyes open with complete stupefaction and agony written on dead faces. Rémi stumbled into the street and reached the bleeding form of a teenage youth, who coughed up blood, then died in his arms. Sirens screamed from far away. Slowly, dazed, Rémi removed the stained French flag from the dead boy’s hand. Then he fled, tripping over an abandoned basket, knocking neatly wrapped parcels of cheese into the street.

He fell onto the sidewalk, his bloody hands leaving an imprint on the pavement, and vomited.

Hussein could feel the pent-up tension in the Casbah that night. He passed between the adults, listening, watching, wondering what new plans were being made. It seemed to him that the pied-noirs needed no further encouragement from the FLN to leave Algeria—the French army was providing the impetus.

“Hussein,” Ali hissed, clasping the boy’s arm so tightly that he almost cried out. Ali pulled him into an adjoining room, no larger than a closet, and shut the door behind them.

Hussein watched as his leader’s eyes shone bright and red in the dark room. He knew Ali was exhausted, that the red tint came from fatigue, and yet, looking into those eyes, Hussein recoiled within himself. The eyes looked mad, as if they belonged to a rabid dog.

“I have a plan,” Ali stated simply. “And you will accomplish it for me.”

His self-assured, harsh tone made Hussein tremble inside. The boy blinked hard, twice, determined not to show his fear. He nodded, wishing that Ali would not regard him so intently.

“You’re going to France. To Montpellier. You’re going to that filthy orphanage, posing as a helpless harki’s son, a victim of the war. They will take you in, and then you can finish the work for me.” He smiled, his lips parting to reveal yellow teeth as twisted as the mind of their master. “I will have my place in the new Algeria. I am needed here. But you—” He caught the boy by the collar, pulling him up to within inches of his face. “You will finish the work for me in Montpellier. Do you understand?”