‘Hey, they’re my family, I’m taking them home, are you people Muslims or what?’ A quick stop at midday to grab a bite, delicious morsels dripping with grease, coated in sugar, teeming with bacteria. Algiers seems to have one food stall for every inhabitant, but no one to sweep the streets. Dying of starvation here would take some doing, but it’s not enough to eat, people need dignity. It’s beyond me: the more dire the poverty, the more cheap eateries there are, and the more people snack! The haggling alone is enough to make you abandon all hope. This, I realised, was the much-trumpeted free-market economy in action. All the albatrosses, the white elephants, the turkeys and the shiny gadgets manufactured around the world are offloaded here where people scrabble to buy them, despite the fact that the people here have no jobs and don’t know where their next pay packet is coming from. I wish some armchair economist would leave his comfortable sitting room and explain it to me. And spare me the nonsense about oil revenues and all that malarkey! The prices here read like science fiction. The swindlers make them up as they go along. And, God, their beady eyes! They specialise in exploiting people who are down on their luck, so my well-groomed appearance didn’t help. Stallholders quoted us the sort of prices they reserve for the wealthy and the well-heeled. We moved on to the next stall double-quick only to be greeted by the same nightmare. It was Catch-22. Chérifa is impulsive, she wants everything and she wants it now! If I hesitate, she sulks and stamps her feet. She doesn’t care about my purse or my health.
And, dear God, her taste! The colours, the patterns, the fabrics, it’s enough to make you throw up. The girl is a disgrace. And she has a terrible temper. Even though she’s an expectant mother, she’s still determined to be quirky . Luckily for me, I have an old feudal law to deal with such eventualities: she who pays, decides.
But the evenings, what bliss: hot baths, fresh scents, beds so soft you dream of dying in your sleep! Not to mention the pleasures of tearing wrapping paper, opening buttons, trying clothes on, taking a step back, a step forward, twirling in high heels, laughing all the while. What can I say? Pretending to be a fashion model is the greatest pastime in the world. How glorious it feels to play at being middle class when you’re penniless. And how dangerous. Chérifa is no princess, and everything I inherited, I got from my old prole of a father. I couldn’t help thinking that for poor anaemic creatures like us, doomed to fretfulness and mumbling, every step forward brings fresh pain. When faced with such ethical dilemmas, we are tempted to retreat into our shell and watch the economy die on its feet, because we know only too well that, for the poor, the worst is always yet to come. OK, you killjoys, get out of my dreams, it’ll be time enough to weep on Sunday. There is no abyss deep enough to wake the blissful dreamer.
In the end, I acquitted myself pretty well, I bought practically everything for next to nothing. Whenever my smile didn’t work, I bared my teeth and went for the conman’s jugular. Scam artists don’t know how to deal with outraged women, panic sets in and suddenly they find their shop flooded by people attracted by the scent of blood and ransacked by every urchin off the streets. That’s life, we all have our problems. Chérifa and her kid are now ready for the battle to come. I even got each of them a piece of jewellery worth a small fortune. We’ll go on a diet to replenish the coffers.
Finding a room that was to her taste and decorating it the way she wanted took time – God, but that girl is a handful! My house has eight bedrooms, three reception rooms, four box-rooms, twenty alcoves and three terraces, one with a sea view, a vast cellar riddled with unexplored passageways that is a world unto itself and feels like a medieval crypt, an
And, dear God, her taste! The colours, the patterns, the fabrics, it’s enough to make you throw up. The girl is a disgrace. And she has a terrible temper. Even though she’s an expectant mother, she’s still determined to be quirky . Luckily for me, I have an old feudal law to deal with such eventualities: she who pays, decides.
But the evenings, what bliss: hot baths, fresh scents, beds so soft you dream of dying in your sleep! Not to mention the pleasures of tearing wrapping paper, opening buttons, trying clothes on, taking a step back, a step forward, twirling in high heels, laughing all the while. What can I say? Pretending to be a fashion model is the greatest pastime in the world. How glorious it feels to play at being middle class when you’re penniless. And how dangerous. Chérifa is no princess, and everything I inherited, I got from my old prole of a father. I couldn’t help thinking that for poor anaemic creatures like us, doomed to fretfulness and mumbling, every step forward brings fresh pain. When faced with such ethical dilemmas, we are tempted to retreat into our shell and watch the economy die on its feet, because we know only too well that, for the poor, the worst is always yet to come. OK, you killjoys, get out of my dreams, it’ll be time enough to weep on Sunday. There is no abyss deep enough to wake the blissful dreamer.
In the end, I acquitted myself pretty well, I bought practically everything for next to nothing. Whenever my smile didn’t work, I bared my teeth and went for the conman’s jugular. Scam artists don’t know how to deal with outraged women, panic sets in and suddenly they find their shop flooded by people attracted by the scent of blood and ransacked by every urchin off the streets. That’s life, we all have our problems. Chérifa and her kid are now ready for the battle to come. I even got each of them a piece of jewellery worth a small fortune. We’ll go on a diet to replenish the coffers.
Finding a room that was to her taste and decorating it the way she wanted took time – God, but that girl is a handful! My house has eight bedrooms, three reception rooms, four box-rooms, twenty alcoves and three terraces, one with a sea view, a vast cellar riddled with unexplored passageways that is a world unto itself and feels like a medieval crypt, an
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