The Bridges of Constantine Read Online Free PDF Page A

have no right to cry from longing. He did not talk much about your mother, for example. Didn’t he miss her? A bride whom he had enjoyed for a few stolen months and whom he had left pregnant.
    Why the sudden haste? Why didn’t he wait a little while, arrange a few days’ leave and register you himself? He had waited six months, why not a few weeks more? And why me? What twist of fate brought me together with you? Whenever I asked myself these questions, I was confounded and found myself believing in destiny.
    Despite his responsibilities, Si Taher could have escaped to Tunis for a day or two. Crossing the well-guarded border with its patrols and checkpoints wouldn’t have frightened him. Nor would breaching the electrified and landmined Morice Line that stretched the length of the border between Algeria and Tunisia, from the coast to the desert, which he subsequently crossed three times – a record number, given the dozens of corpses of fighters left strewn along it.
    Was it Si Taher’s love of discipline and respect for rules that made him feel so anxious after you were born? He’d discovered that he’d been a father for months, and the child was still unregistered, officially nameless. Having awaited you for so long, was he worried that he might lose you if he didn’t have your existence and affiliation to him officially signed and sealed? Did he have a bad feeling about your legal status, and want to register his ahlam – his dreams – at the town hall to ensure her reality? So that fate wouldn’t come and snatch her away. Ultimately, after a first failed, childless marriage, he dreamed of being a father like other men.
    I don’t know if, deep down, Si Taher wouldn’t have preferred a baby boy. But I did learn later that he had tried to outwit fate and had chosen a boy’s name before his departure – ignoring the possibility of a girl. Maybe this was the unconscious result of a military mindset and nationalist obsession. I often heard him begin his military speeches and plans with, ‘We need men.’
    So Si Taher seemed happy and optimistic about everything in that period. The hard man suddenly changed. He became less rigid and more fun when off duty. Something inside him was changing, bringing him closer to others, more sympathetic to their personal circumstances. He granted passes more readily for snatched home visits, yet denied himself one. Late fatherhood, a ready symbol for a brighter future, changed him.
    A small miracle of hope. That was you.
     
    Morning dawns.
    The day surprises me with its usual din. Against my will, the sudden sunshine floods me with light. I feel it stealing something from me. At that instant I hate the inquisitive, shaming aspect of the sun. I want to write about you in darkness. My story with you was like undeveloped film. I am scared that light will expose it and ruin it, because you are a woman who flowered in a secret part of me and whom I possessed with the legitimacy of secrecy. I should only write about you after drawing all the curtains and shutting the windows of my room.
    Even so, I’m happy at the sight of the paper stacked in front of me. I filled the sheets in a night of frenzy. With a tasteful cover, I might dedicate them to you as a book. I know, I know you hate overly tasteful things, and that you’re very selfish. In the end, you care for nothing outside of yourself and your body.
    A little patience, madam.
    In a few more pages I’ll have laid my other memory naked before you. A few more pages are needed before, in vanity and desire, regret and madness, I’ll fill you out. Like love’s feasts, books also need starters. Although I admit that writing the foreword is not as immediate a problem as finding where the story starts .
    Where do I begin my story with you when your story with me had so many beginnings? It began with unexpected endings and upheavals of fate.
    When I speak about you, whom do you think I am talking about? The baby who once crawled at my