LES RENDEZ-VOUS MANQUES

A detailed presentation is not available in English, since this book has been published in French only.

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One day, they burst into the old house in the Bab Jedid quarter. There were three of them, among them an inspector, the same one who would later conduct the interrogation. Beneath a lumpy brow, amid the thicket of his eyebrows, on either side of a snub nose, two glaucous discs sank deep into their sockets. A scar slashed a pale line across the olive skin of a fleshy cheek. She would not soon forget those eyes. Nor his hands, broad and hard (real paddles of hands), crushing her arm as they took her away.

The mother understood nothing of this inquisition.

"Amal?" she finally answered, at first taken aback by the intrusion of these men who were looking for her daughter. "But she's at the university!"

"We'll see about that," spat the hulking man who seemed to be in charge. With a nod, he ordered his henchmen to comb the house. They rummaged through the bedrooms, shoving the furniture aside, lifting the threadbare rugs, looking under the beds, stripping the bedding. One of them even took down the photograph of the father (who had died the year before) and threw it to the floor, where the glass shattered. The print lay on the ground, slashed by a shard of glass. The mother could barely breathe, terrified. At her first hint of protest, the brute thundered: "You, old woman, shut it, or else..."

They turned the house upside down. Nothing in Ahmed's room, which they left strewn with his belongings. They eventually found a stack of leaflets tucked between the box spring and the mattress. "Is this your daughter's bed?" barked the mulatto. The mother nodded, without a word. At last they left, though not without muttering all sorts of threats, in case she had lied and Amal was not at the university.

She was there. They arrested her in the middle of a history class. I know it well: I was the one teaching it.