From Saïd Khatibi’s ‘I Resist the River’s Course’

4

 

The judge sentenced Chahla Lightning to death after she was charged with blowing up a café, then arrested on a tip. She escaped from prison by removing the window to her cell and jumping out, taking advantage of the weak security; it took the jailers a while to notice what she had done. That happened in 1959. Some said she bribed a guard to help her. She had been a fedayee, a freedom fighter during the War of Independence. She looked so much like a European woman that she did not raise any suspicions. She was in her twenties with a mole on her lower jaw. Everyone told her story, and when kids used to play with their toy guns, every one of them called themself by her name.

 

I saw an old picture of her; soft, white skin and jet-black hair, fit for a theatre or movie poster. She did not leave her secret work of planting traditional bombs hidden in halfah grass baskets until independence was won in 1962. Then, according to what I heard, she took her revenge on the one who betrayed her, a harki, an Algerian who cooperated with the colonizers. Chahla—whose family name everyone forgot, preferring to refer to her by her nickname, Lightning—was revered by elites and common folk alike, and they would approach her with gifts and kind words, as if she were a saint.

 

“I did what I had to do,” she responded after I frankly expressed my feelings toward her as she sat before me, hands clasped as she nodded her head, her gold earrings moving up and down along with it.

 

Today was the day of her scheduled procedure to replace her damaged cornea with a new one. She was in her mid-fifties. Her eyes, fixed on me, did not show any worry about the procedure that awaited her. I did not know whether to attribute this to her confidence in herself or in me. I hoped it was the latter. I was glad she had come to my clinic with her oldest son. “He’s waiting for me in the men’s room.” He would take her home when I was finished.

 

I think she came after having heard good things about me. She is the type of woman who does not take a step without considering everything, like a lizard feeling around for danger or safety before taking a step forward. But here she had no choice. No one else does cornea transplants. By virtue of her reputation and money (she lives in the Garden neighborhood where wealthy and important people live, in houses surrounded by parks and sidewalks unblemished by holes, and she gives money to a charitable organization that feeds and clothes street children), she could have gone to France for treatment. No one steals corneas from the dead there. Rather, their relatives donate them willingly. In fact, she could have travelled and gotten treatment there, paid for by the state that provides a comfortable life to veterans of the War of Independence like her.

 

“I’d rather eat dirt than go to France.” So she said, quoting President Houari Boumediene, who had honored her with a Medal of Merit. When he died in 1978, she organized a miniature funeral where the city’s children and old people walked in mourning for him.

 

I don’t want to eat dirt. I want to visit France. So I benefit from training courses in the hospitals there. And I get to meet my cousins, brought to the other shore by their father, who then died. I imagine them playing the piano or doing ballet, swimming in the sea and laying out in the sun. I never learned how to swim. They never spent their free time with a sponge in their hands doing dishes like I did, but I never complained. I dream that this lady will spread the word about me after I cure her eye. Maybe some functionaries will hear what she says about me, and I’ll start treating people in high places, not just regular people. This dream loosened my tongue, and I asked her to help me convince Bodot to dedicate his full show to the medical school project.

 

“I don’t know him,” she responded as if annoyed by my request.

 

I am pretty sure he knows her, and I’ll mention her name when I meet with him, which will gain me the trust of his viewers and the people in charge in the capital.

 

“Put your trust in God,” she added.

 

This was all the advice she gave me. I sensed she was reluctant to help me, but I hoped that my intuition was wrong, as it usually was.

 

I began to prepare my scalpel and the other equipment which I had used to transplant a cornea in Fouzia the seamstress’s eye, too. Then Miloud came in to help me, stroking his somewhat-soft scalp. She asked who he was.

 

“He’s the nurse.”

 

To put her at ease, I added, “My big brother.”

 

Her face, painted with various creams, shone as she smiled. I expected her to ask me about my husband as other women do, and I would tell her that I was married to a man who talked with his hands. Yesterday, he complained about how much Mina moves around. “It’s because of the rotten way you brought her up,” he said. To which I responded, “Just like her father.” I wasn’t wrong, just as his slap wasn’t wrong in finding its way to my cheek. But Chahla asked me something else.

 

“Who’s your father?”

 

“Azouz Khaledi.”

 

I thought saying my father’s name would remind her of her work as a freedom fighter, but she was not moved to speak, so I added, “During the War of Independence, his nickname was ‘Kerdada.’”

 

She did not say anything. It was as if she had asked merely out of curiosity, to make small talk.

 

I mentioned my mother’s name, Kamra Dili, who, during the war, provided women fighters with poison capsules that they would swallow if they were arrested and couldn’t stand up to torture. She denied knowing her, which didn’t surprise me, since her work was secret. I think it likely that my mother worked with other women freedom fighters who would plant bombs my father made, something he had learned during the Second World War.

 

“I’ve grown old and have started to forget,” Chahla Lightning commented.

 

I reminded her not to forget the after-effects of the cornea transplant. Her vision would not improve immediately; it would take weeks. I also told her that she would suffer from sensitivity to light and difficulty in opening her eye. She had followed my advice not to eat anything the night before coming in for the procedure.

 

“My Lord will bring healing,” she responded.

 

Miloud, short and broad, came forward to take her blood pressure. She rolled up her sleeve, and I saw a bracelet decorated with precious stones on her wrist. My brother confirmed with her that she did not suffer from any chronic illnesses and was not taking any medication that might interfere with the anesthesia. Then he asked her to count to ten. He administered the shot and, before she finished counting, her eyes closed.

 

Chahla Lightning did not sense any pain during the procedure, just I did not sense what she had in store for me.

 

***

 

Jamal Derqin was surprised Akila had not asked for a divorce, and that Makhlouf had not thought of divorcing her.

 

“I thank God I’m not divorced!”

 

“…”

 

“You know what it means to be a divorced woman in our country!”

 

What she wanted to say was that the divorcee is an outcast, but she didn’t quite say it like that.

 

“No one will stand with her.”

 

But Jamal Darqin knew divorced women who lived normal lives, no different than other women.

 

And whoever is put in jail is also condemned, she said to herself. But she did not express that out loud, preferring to return to his question.

 

“I could have asked for a divorce.”

 

“What stopped you?”

 

“Divorce was not in my interests.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Makhlouf would have asked for compensation, according to the law.”

 

Even though she was a doctor and makes a good living.

 

“Who would guarantee how much he would ask for?!” She defended her position, then added, “Also, I was scared of losing custody of my daughter.”

 

“So you got rid of him to avoid becoming a divorcee, and to keep your daughter at your side?”

Also read a discussion with Khatibi, “Said Khatibi and the Algerian Crime Novel.”

Saïd Khatibi is a novelist, travel writer, translator, and journalist born in 1984 in Bou Saâda, Algeria. He currently lives in Slovenia.  He writes in Arabic and French and translates between both. His novel Sarajevo Firewood, was shortlisted for the 2020 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. His other novels are The Book of Errors which was published in 2013, and Forty Years Waiting for Isabelle which won the 2017 Katara Award for Arabic Novels. He has written a travel book about the Balkans, The Inflamed Gardens of the East, 2015, and has written extensively on raï music, including the book Wedding Fire, 2010. The End of the Sahara won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award Young Author category in 2023 and I Resist the River’s Course is on the International Prize for Arabic Fiction’s 2026 shortlist.

Alexander Elinson is a Professor of Arabic at Hunter College of the City University of New York. His translations include Youssef Fadel’s A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me and A Shimmering Red Fish Swims with Me, Hot Maroc by Yassin Adnan, Khadija Marouazi`s prison novel History of Ash, Saïd Khatibi’s End of the Sahara, and Amara Lakhous’s The Fertility of Evil.