Children of the New World

1. Cherifa

1 CHERIFA ... In the old Arab quarter at the foot of the mountain the whitewashed houses all look alike. Before the city grew larger, this was the only place where affluent families would come to find a bit of cool air, near the brooks and orchards at the end of the spring. Each home is at the end of a cul de sac, where, after wandering through a maze of silent little alleyways, one must stop. All that can be heard is some vague whispering suddenly interrupted by the shrill cries of children , whom the mothers are trying to keep at home, but to no avail. The military guard can show up at any moment. Then there is barely enough time to gather the children and muffle their voices behind closed doors. Once the soldiers have gone, the mothers, each with her own brood, settle down again at the back of their room, on the tile floor or on a mattress. There they stay for hours on end, and through the door, with its raised curtains opening wide onto the courtyard and fountains, they quietly watch the spectacle the guard had announced is about to begin: the mountain under fire. The days of intense fighting pass quickly inside the homes that people still think of as unseeing but that now gape at the war, which is masked as a gigantic game etched out in space. The planes are soaring and diving black spots that leave white trails, ephemeral arabesques that seem to be drawn by chance, like a mysterious but lethal script. “Oh, God!” a woman cries out when one of them nose1 ... 1 dives into the flames and the bullets that they can picture in their mind, but then it shoots up out of the smoke running along the ground (“Death, the damned thing has brought death in its wake!”). There it is again, spiraling way up in the sky; then nearby artillery fire ruptures the air, so close that the walls shake. This spectacle can last for an entire day. A whole day in which the women neglect their household chores and, with their children clinging to their skirts or pants, grow bold enough to pass comments in excited voices from one room to the next. In every house, which generally contains four or five families, one family per room, there is always one woman—young, old, it makes no difference—who conducts the choir in its impassioned verse lines of exclamations, sighs, or groans punctuated by silences, when the mountain bleeds and smokes. “This time, they won’t get them!” “With so many planes stacked up like that in one area, they must be bombing a douar—a village!” “Look, we’re getting back at them!” (Cheers!) “Yes, did you see that, you saw that, didn’t you, they just took down a plane! A plane, did you see that!” (One of them throws caution to the winds and goes out into the courtyard, dancing with joy.) “A plane shot down by our fighters! They really can hit their target!” The others stay in place, petrified; it’s a significant moment. One of the children pulls loose and moves to the doorway: “A second one down!” he exclaims, mistaking the dive-bombing of another plane for a crash. More artillery fire. And the terrified child covers his ears and blinks his eyes with each new barrage. The silence in the house hangs in the air for a moment, for the women are afraid that a bomb fragment might fall on the terrace. It has happened many times before; the last time, it killed old Lla Aicha who was sitting crouched in the courtyard by the door of her room, a place she hadn’t left during the daytime for years. She wouldn’t even give in to the appeals for caution, because she had decided that, however great the excitement or danger outside, this was where she would end her waning years. The shell had fallen. She bowed her head a little more, shuddered, shuddered again, and that was all. When the neighbors came to help her CHILDREN OF THE NEW WORLD 2 up, several hours later, they shrieked when they discovered a dead body in her place. When these spectacles occur, which is regularly once or twice a month, only the women are at home, because their husbands have already left for work, unless...