The Guillotine Choice Read online

  When he arrived at the farm door he was kept waiting by a servant, who vanished into the cool interior of the building, leaving Hadj Yahia standing in the sun. A fellow Berber would never have behaved in this way. One of his own people would have ushered him in to the home or would have taken him to a seat under the shelter of a tree and offered a cooling drink.

  As he waited he looked around himself at the gardens that surrounded the large, white house. Grass, flowers and low, box hedges in an arrangement that, Lapoque informed him during a previous visit, was modelled on a king’s garden in France.

  He ground his teeth against his resentment and ruefully considered that he would soon have no teeth left. He had, however, managed to look after his family better than most. Earlier in his life he had worked for the French in the construction of the railways. One day he stole a piece of railway track. He hid the stretch of metal in some bushes and at the end of his shift, loaded it on to a mule and travelled to the far side of the Djurdjura mountains, where there would be fewer questions asked. He had sold the metal in the market for a more handsome sum than he hoped for.

  With a rising pulse, he had realised that this capital could help him start up as a trader. He began to travel far and wide throughout the Kabylie region, selling and buying. He would fill the panniers on his mule with olive oil and figs and head towards the Arabs in the south, nearer the Sahara. From there he would load his mule with wheat, barley and salt and head north towards the cities of Tizi Ouzou and Bejaia.

  All his travel meant he was away from his family for four to six days at a time. He joked to his wife she shouldn’t worry about him while he was away. He was sleeping in the hotel of a thousand stars. He had Mother Earth for a bed and a bright, night sky for his roof.

  Over the years he built up a reputation for fairness and quality, and whenever he arrived at a market people would argue among themselves who should get first pick of his fine goods. At times these arguments even resulted in fights.

  The money from these ventures enabled him to buy land in his valley and whenever the French forced the sale of an indigène’s land he would do what he could to buy it before a Frenchman did. His aim: to keep as much Algerian land for Algeria as he could.

  The downside was that it brought him into the orbit of people like Henri Lapoque, who was bustling to his door; fat on the bounty of colonialism. Hadj Yahia swallowed his anger and waited for the offer of recompense he was due. He forced his features into a neutral expression and faced the colon.

  ‘I am pleased with your work,’ said Lapoque. ‘So much so that I would like to offer you this good hunting gun as payment.’ He held out a rifle. ‘This is better than money, non? You can hunt with this. Feed your family.’

  Hadj Yahia stood braced with his feet on the earth, showing nothing of the thoughts that were racing through his mind. He was no idiot; he knew that this patronising offer was made to save the Frenchman some cash. But Lapoque hadn’t become this successful just from hard work and conniving against the locals. He was a dangerous man, with a mouth close to the ears of the local officials. The wrong word in the right place could cost his family greatly and Hadj Yahia knew that he had to handle this transaction with care.

  His stomach churned with the effort of restraining his true response. He could see his fingers close around Lapoque’s fat throat, squeezing the life from him. But there was only two ways that episode would finish: the guillotine or Devil’s Island.

  He asked to reflect on it for a couple of days before making his decision and as he rode away from the farm he was chill under the cloud of his resentment.

  After almost a hundred years of French rule, his people were all but destitute in their own country. This situation was outlined to him by Caid Mezaine one day over a sweet coffee in a cafe in Maillot.

  The Caids were Algerians placed in a position of power over their brothers by the French. Many Caids were corrupted by this power and used it to stuff their own pockets at the expense of their neighbours.

  This had the effect of making Algerians focus a good deal of their anger and frustration onto one of their own rather than the real architect of their misery: the colons.

  Caid Mezaine, however, was a man above such greed. He played the game with sufficient attention only to keep himself on the right side of the French. As best he could, he used his authority to help his neighbours.

  ‘When the French arrived,’ Caid Mezaine had explained to Hadj Yahia between sips, ‘literacy levels in Algeria were the same as those in France. Now however, it is thought that only four per cent of Algerians can read and write.

  ‘The French even have a term for what they have done to us.’ Caid Mezaine clasped his hands in front of him and swallowed as if the word he was about to utter might burn on the way out. ‘Clochardisation. They have effectively turned us into a nation of beggars.’

  * * *

  All the way home and all through that evening’s meal, Hadj Yahia considered what he should do. He knew that if he forced the issue, Lapoque would find a way to hurt him. It would be no difficult task for him to find some minor transgression; complain to the magistrates and before Hadj Yahia knew it he would have a huge fine to pay. A fine that he could only pay if he were to sell some of his precious land.

  On the other hand he was struggling to contain his frustration at yet again being taken advantage of by the French. There was only so much a proud man could take. He looked around the menfolk of his tribe, crossed-legged on the carpet under the tree. They were all absorbed, discussing the issues of the day, while the air cooled and the sun coloured the mountain peaks amber. This was not something he could throw into the open forum. Some of them might be drawn into doing something dangerous. Who should he speak to? He watched his sons as they spoke to the group. Dahmane or Amar, as per the Berber customs, should be sounded out. They were old enough to offer counsel.

  Then his eyes lit on his youngest, Kaci. He couldn’t ask him, could he? People would scoff that a man such as he should seek words of advice from a boy who had barely grown a beard. Kaci faced him, aware of his scrutiny and raised an eyebrow in question. Hadj Yahia was struck by the maturity of the gesture and the intellect sparking in his youngest son’s eyes, for there was no doubting Kaci’s intelligence. Who else in the family could read and write perfect French?

  He remembered the boy of eleven and his excitement that his time for schooling had begun. One of the Frenchman’s ways of ensuring the subjugation of his people was to limit their exposure to education. Only one child from each family was allowed to go to school at any one time, and even then they were restricted to the basic certificat d’études primaires. Of course in a nation comprised of large families, this often meant that many Algerians were adults before their turn came round. By which time their assistance in the fields was essential for the survival of the family unit.

  Luckily for Kaci, his elder brothers didn’t take to schooling so his turn came sooner than might be expected, and he welcomed the opportunity it presented with open hands and a voracious mind. Summer or winter, sunshine or snow, Kaci would walk up to twenty kilometres a day to and from the nearest school, crossing a river on foot. Shoes were a luxury to his people and this was to be done on bare feet. He would arrive home exhausted, eat his only meal of the day and go straight to bed. Only to get back up in the dark of the early morning and, on an empty stomach, trudge the same distance all over again.

  He remembered Kaci’s complaints that he had lost a year’s teaching because Monsieur Aslan, who was a nice man, by the way, was such a terrible teacher. How many boys would make such an observation?

  How could he, Hadj Yahia, put his problem to anyone else?

  * * *

  It was a Tuesday at the end of the market day.

  ‘What would you recommend I do?’ Hadj Yahia absently stroked the gun.

  Kaci held his hand out to take the rifle from his father. As Hadj Yahia continued speaking, Kaci held the weapon to his cheek and looked along th
e sight. Then he stroked the butt that had been burnished to a deep walnut. He felt the weight of it in his hands and considered the food he could bring to the family meals.

  ‘This is a beautiful gun, Vava,’ he said. ‘I would love to keep it for myself.’

  Understanding coursed between father and son. Although the main bulk of Kaci’s wage went directly to his father, he was allowed to keep a small amount of coin for himself, which he had no doubt been saving with painstaking patience until it amounted to something.

  ‘I have some money, Vava. I’ll buy the gun from you. This means you get good coin. I get a weapon.’ His father saw instantly that this was the perfect solution and did not hesitate. He patted his youngest child on the shoulder.

  ‘You make me proud, my son.’

  They sealed the transaction with a hug and parted; the father to consider the man he had raised, and the son to dream of long days in the hills with nothing between him and his prey but the brush and silence.

  That night, during the evening meal, Hadj Yahia informed the family of recent events. With people living so closely together, the family cell was a vital component of Berber life, and decisions were normally only made after lengthy debate. However, not one dissenting voice was raised that evening. Everyone understood the importance of Kaci to the clan, how deserving he was of this honour and, more importantly, how unspoilt he was. And even if this tacit understanding wasn’t part of the family make-up, such was the delivery of the decision that no one dared question that the gun was given to the youngest in the family.

  * * *

  Immediately, Kaci embarked on this exciting newfound hobby and started practising with his new gun. He became an excellent shot within a very short space of time, and soon he was able to save from his earnings and buy a new, better gun from Algiers. This he registered in his father’s name with all the administrative formalities required at that time. The old gun he passed on to his eldest brother, Dahmane, who accepted it with pleasure.

  Every spare moment he had, Kaci was afoot in the mountains, sighting hare, dove and boar down the barrel of his rifle.

  A passion developed in him for hunting that would eventually lead to the murder of an innocent man and the threat of the guillotine.

  FOUR

  Infighting

  Hadj Yahia and his brothers, Hamadache and OuHamou, along with their wives and children, lived within a very small space. Their numbers totalled twenty-nine. Hadj Yahia often looked over the masses of people crammed in of an evening and wondered how they managed. What other choice did they have? He was the head of the family since his two elder brothers and his father were dead. Hamadache’s children, Ali and Arab, were both in their late thirties. Everyone contributed to the family by working on the land that Hadj Yahia invested in. As leader of the family, he took great care to ensure their survival. And land became the focus of this intent. Whenever and wherever he could, he saved and saved to ensure that there was enough coin in the family coffers to buy up any land that became available.

  His control over this was absolute until the family owned most of the land that surrounded Maillot. The price, however, was high and the cost was that the family lived and worked for the most part on an empty stomach.

  Water from the well was all that was drunk in the morning; there was no way that coffee would be allowed. Lunch was a basic dish called aamouch, which was a paste of barley flour mixed with olive oil. Figs were plentiful so they were permitted as a form of dessert. Dinner in the evenings was always couscous, but it was composed of barley mixed with acorns and served with a sauce made from dried beans and chilli powder.

  The family had another house further up in the mountains, where some of them might go in the heat of the summer with the livestock for cool, fresh grazing. This was an even more basic construction. Just one room to house the family and those animals that were too precious to risk against the hunger of the jackals roaming those parts.

  With so many people under the one roof, it was inevitable that tensions would ferment. That was why the family council, a djamaa, was so important. Then complaints could be aired. Everyone would have their say, and the wiser members of the family could propose a solution. If a solution couldn’t be reached, friends from nearby families who were known for their sage counsel could be called upon to settle matters. It was a system that had worked well for generations. For the Saoudi clan, however, it was about to be put to the strongest test, and found wanting.

  Ali was the first to cause problems. The rule was that everything was shared among the family. In the interest of fairness there could be no exceptions. However, he demanded that the war pension he received be ignored by the family. As far as he was concerned this was his, he had earned it the hardest way possible and no one was receiving a sous.

  Ali’s brother, Arab, was the next one to cause an issue. He had been married twice before and on his third marriage he chose a cousin from a part of the family with which there were problems. His uncle Hadj Yahia and other members of the family did not approve and tried to persuade him to choose someone else. Arab was resolute. She was the girl he wanted and the one he would have.

  From the moment she arrived, Saadia was trouble. She ignored the efforts of the family council, bickered constantly with the women and generally behaved only as she wanted. The men brought their wives’ issues to Arab, but he was so besotted with his new wife he would only shrug his shoulders and carry on with whatever task he was performing.

  Further problems arose when Dahmane married within the house to Arab’s daughter, Fatima, whom he loved to distraction. Hadj Yahia saw his chance to punish Ali and Arab’s lack of respect, and he applied pressure to Dahmane to divorce his new wife.

  Dahmane could not see what the problem was. Fatima was a lovely girl, she behaved impeccably. Besides, she filled his heart with joy; why should he divorce her? With trepidation he ignored his father’s order.

  So one day, when Dahmane was away from the house, the girl’s mother was told a lie: your daughter has been divorced by Dahmane. Ignorant of the truth, the mother started packing her daughter’s belongings.

  After a hard day in the furthest field from the house, Dahmane was tired. All he could think of was lying with a full belly that night, with his young wife in his arms. His father approached him before he reached the house.

  ‘Before you go into the house, my son, I have something to tell you,’ said Hadj Yahia. He placed his hand on his son’s shoulder and guided him to a quiet spot among the olive groves. ‘Your wife has left the family home, son. You are now divorced.’

  Dahmane was stunned into silence.

  He shrugged off his father’s hand and walked over to another tree, his feet dragging in the dust. Under the shelter of the tree’s branches, he considered recent events. What did this mean? What could he do? He knew he had not really divorced his wife. He was also aware of the undercurrents between the different sections of the family. What should he do, he repeated to himself time and time again. He loved his wife. He also loved and respected his father. He chewed on his lip and fought back the tears.

  This was impossible. He trusted his father’s motives. He knew as well as anyone the disruptive influence that Ali and Arab were on the family. But why should he and Fatima suffer? He moved around the tree so that he was hidden from the house. Here no one could see him and study his reaction. With elbows on his knees and head in his hands he wept. If only Ali shared the family values. If only he wasn’t so greedy. If only he had caught a bullet from a German’s gun.

  He heard the footsteps of a child. The small brown face of Talis peered at him from behind the bark. The boy flashed a smile, eyes wide in the joy of the moment. Dahmane brushed a hand through the air in short sharp movements. Go away, he was trying to signal, without speaking. Talis thrust a pink tongue in his face, turned and ran away.

  Dahmane was in an impossible position. He had to choose between the love for his wife and the respect for his father, which in turn meant th
e extended family. He couldn’t begin to imagine how it would feel to have everyone he loved turn against him. He was also acutely aware that whatever decision he made, his ex-wife would soon return home to live with her parents. Everyone under the one roof. Together and apart.

  Within days the lie became a truth. There was nothing Dahmane could do to stop events. He could run away, but where to? There was very little work and very little food. The French would see a lone male and assume he was a terrorist. So after a period of adjustment with her maternal grandparents, Fatima returned to her father’s home. In the eyes of the world the couple were divorced and Dahmane was resigned to sleeping in the corner with the other single men and boys.

  * * *

  The family atmosphere continued to worsen. Ali continually ignored Hadj Yahia’s requests to share his pension. Everyone else who could earn cash now and again did so and placed it at the disposal of the whole family. Kaci was by now working for the French in the town hall and as such was the only one able to bring in regular money. He always handed it straight over to his father, who had a good eye for how to work these funds for the family, and built up a modest herd of cattle. Kaci was jokingly known as ‘the golden boy’. He took this in his stride, for he knew that he was only doing his part. From his point of view the others had the hardest work of all, toiling all day in the sun out in the fields.

  Only Ali refused to join in the spirit of the commune. Hadj Yahia tried time and time again to bring him back into line.

  ‘We are a family. We share. It is that simple,’ he said one night after dinner, his expression calm, his eyes fixed on Ali’s face.

  Ali jumped to his feet. ‘I fought the Germans for the bastard French. I lay in freezing cold mud waiting for a bomb to blow me to pieces.’ As he shouted his hands were punching the air around him. It was true, he had fought in the Great War and on his return home he was awarded a special pension by the authorities; a modest sum of money paid out on a regular basis.