The Bridges of Constantine Read Online Free PDF

feet; the young woman who twenty-five years later turned my life upside down; the woman on the stylish cover of a book entitled The Curve of Forgetting whose scant resemblance to you makes me wonder if it really is you?
    What name should I give you?
    Maybe the one your father wanted, the one I myself registered in his stead at the town hall. Or your original name – Hayat – the one you bore for six months while awaiting another legal name. That’s what I’ll call you. It is just one of your names but it is the name I will use for you, as it was the name I knew you by, the name that only I know. The name that is not on people’s tongues, not written down on the pages of books and magazines, nor in any official register.
    The name you were granted so that you might live – God grant you long life. The name I killed one day when I gave you another, official name. It is my right to bring the other back to life, because it is mine, not used by any man before me. Your name as a child lingers on my tongue, as though you were still the you of decades ago. Whenever I say it, you come back as a child sitting on my knees, playing with my things, saying words I don’t understand. At that moment I forgive all your sins. Whenever I say it, I slide back to the past and you come back as tiny as a doll. As my daughter.
    Should I read your book to know how this little girl became a woman? But I already know you’ll never write about your childhood, your early years. You fill the empty holes in memory with words. You get over the wounds with lies. Perhaps that was the secret of your attachment to me. For I know the missing links in your life. I knew the father you only saw a few times in your life, and know the city where you lived but that does not live in you – whose alleyways you treat without affection, trampling over its memory without paying attention.
    You grew attached to me to discover what you didn’t know. I grew attached to you to forget what I did know. Could our love last?
    Si Taher was a third character in our story from the outset, even when we didn’t talk about him. Though absent, he was present between us. Did I need to kill him again to be alone with you? If only you knew how heavy the burden of a last wish had been, even after a quarter of a century. How painful a desire confronted by its impossibility and by principles that ultimately only make it more appealing.
    From the very beginning the question was how I would erase Si Taher from my memory, his life from mine, to give our love the chance for a natural birth. But what would be left if I excised you from our shared memory and turned you into an ordinary girl?
    Your father was an exceptional comrade and an exceptional leader. He was exceptional in life and in death. Could I forget that?
    He wasn’t one of the fighters of the last battles of 1962 who, to guarantee their futures, joined the last wave. He wasn’t an accidental shahid , surprised by death during carpet bombing or hit by a stray bullet. He was made of the same stuff as Didouche Mourad, Larbi Ben M’hidi and Mostefa Ben Boulaïd. They sought death instead of waiting for it to come to them.
    Could I forget that he was your father when your constant questions restored his glory, in life and in death?
    The heart that loved you to the point of madness has grown confused. The echo of your request remains present: ‘Tell me about him . . .’
    I will tell you about him, my darling. There is nothing easier than talking about martyrs. Their history is ready-made and known in advance, like their finale. Their ending absolves them of any sins they might have committed.
    I will tell you about Si Taher.
    Only the history of shahids can be written. Another history follows, appropriated by the living. This will be written by a generation that doesn’t know the truth, but will deduce it of its own accord. Some signs cannot be misread.
    Si Taher died taher , pure, at the threshold of independence. He had