Sirocco Page 9

  Must be talking about the blast.

  “Oui,” Madame Fayet said later, as she walked to the front door, “it looks like we’ll have a white Christmas after all.”

  “I hope the snow will not stop us from reaching Sidi Mabrouk. Have a Joyeux Noël, Madame Fayet.”

  “You too, Madame Honninger. Joyeux Noël, and thanks again for the last-minute work on my dress.”

  “But it was my pleasure, madame.”

  Yvette closed the door and joined me. “Non, non, non. We are not cleaning now.”

  “But Yvette—”

  “Non. Let’s close the shutters. There will be plenty of time to clean up when I return. Besides, you have to get ready. We’ll leave in twenty minutes.” She clapped her hands. “Fissa, fissa,” the Arab way of saying, “chop, chop.”

  Twenty-five minutes later, we were on our way. By the time we crossed the Sidi Rached Bridge, the snow was already accumulating. In the car lights, enormous snowflakes assaulted the windshield like a storm of converging meteorites while, beyond the side windows, they danced like graceful feathers floating in the lee of a rambunctious pillow fight.

  Fifteen minutes later, we seemed to be plowing through the inside of a gigantic down comforter—warm harbinger of the wonderful family gathering in waiting. And the hypnotic whirl of snow beyond the car windows stirred visions of my twelfth Christmas, the previous year.

  Chapter Eleven

  Family portrait with Pépé Vincent, circa 1958.

  Christmas Magic

  Sidi Mabrouk, December 24, 1956

  The week before my twelfth Christmas, Debbah, Papa’s Arab righthand man, Debbah’s cousin, Ahmed, and two other workers from the cemetery’s workshop carried the Christmas tree from the truck bed up the stairs and into the dining room. That tree was the tallest Christmas tree ever and Pa had to top it to make room for the star.

  While the workers returned to the truck, Maman brought in the suitcase she had packed for Papa. “Be careful, chéri,” she said, her voice tinged with anxiety.

  Since the war of independence started, each time my father went on a job out of town, my mother waited in anguish until he returned. I worried, too. A lot. The thought that my papa might fall prey to a terrorist ambush and be tortured to death gripped my guts in a tight fist, and hard fingers pinched my throat so hard I couldn’t even cry.

  Zizou, the kids, and I stood close as Papa stuffed boxes of cartridges into the pockets of his sheepskin coat. “I’ll be all right,” he said. “In this cold, the fellagha aren’t going to wait around. They know that people traveling at Christmas time join military convoys.” He slipped the handgun Maman held out in his belt and grabbed the carbine. “Moreover, Debbah’s a good man to have at my side. He’s a fast learner; his aim improves with each lesson.”

  We followed our Pa and Ma to the door. “They predict heavy snow for the next few days; can’t you postpone this job?” she asked, anxiety moistening her eyes.

  “Non, I need to finish the Molineux’s mausoleum cistern and cover it before the cement freezes or I’ll have to break it all up and start from scratch.”

  “You’ll be back on the twenty-fourth, right?”

  “Early afternoon.”

  We all kissed Papa good-bye then stood at the top of the stairs and watched him drive away, Debbah sitting beside him in the cabin, the other workers hunched down under a canvas in the truck’s bed.

  Pinned onto the insipid blue sky, the sun’s pale glow did not dispel the bite of this December day, nor did it alleviate my worries. Once the truck disappeared at the bottom of the road, Maman hurried us back to the warmth of the kitchen’s woodstove. “Come, children, we have a million things to do before Christmas,” she said, failing to sound cheerful.

  Christmas was the same every year, which felt good since it was one of the few times, along with Easter, when we were almost sure Papa would be in a good mood. To keep him this way, Maman served his favorite holiday dishes—which, Halleluiah!—also happened to be ours.

  Our most prized Holiday pastries were les oreillettes, deep-fried pastry puffs smothered in powdered sugar and heaped in our large wicker basket lined with a bed sheet. The other delicacy that made me feel like I had died and gone to heaven were les dates fourrées, dates stuffed with a paste made of ground walnuts, rum, sugar, and a touch of rose water. Then, of course, la pièce de resistance: the goose stuffed with oysters— permeating every nick and cranny of our home with the aroma of its crackling skin.

  We all went to work so that, upon his return on Christmas Eve, Pa’d find a house full of smells and tastes that would cheer his heart.

  On Christmas Eve’s afternoon, I called from the dining room, “You can come now, Zizou, I finished the Manger.”

  My sister joined me at the sideboard.

  I turned on the flashlight buried in the folds of the butcher paper I had shaped into the nativity grotto and focused the beam on the straw wad that would cradle baby Jesus. Zizou examined the white paint sprinkled over the grotto. “I did not know it snowed in Bethlehem.”

  “It’s just that Christmas is not the same without snow.” Feeling challenged, I added, “I like it better this way.”

  Zizou left a fingerprint on the round-mirrored tray I used as a frozen pond. “Catechism never said anything about frozen water either.” She inspected the twigs that suggested a clump of trees. “And they had palm trees instead of these …. What are these sticks supposed to be?”

  I blinked. “Well … just trees. I imagine they could be … olive trees or, maybe fig trees or … date palms.” Climbing on a chair, I stuck a cardboard star covered with silver chocolate wrapping on the wall above the scene. “And this is the North Star that guided the Magi.”

  “How can they see the star if it’s snowing?”

  I sighed. “It’s Christmas, Zizou. Anything can happen on Christmas.”

  I glanced at the whitish-gray daylight beyond the window. “I really wish it would snow today. I can almost smell it.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware snow had a smell.”

  “Oh, it does.”

  As if conjured by a magician’s wand, snow began to fall. We ran to the French door and flung aside the curtains to watch the white flakes flutter like goose down. Zizou gawked at me. “You are a witch.”

  An inconceivable joy engulfed me. “It is Christmas!”

  In the kitchen, the boys whooped and broke into a singsong. “It-is-sno-wing. It-is-sno-wing. Ma, can we go out?”

  “No. I want you to be washed and dressed when Papa comes back from his trip.”

  She tried to conceal her worries about my pa, but I knew her well and heard the hitch in her voice. “He’ll be cold and tired and if he arrives late, he will want to eat right away.”

  As I recalled my earlier wish for snow, the old cold fingers squeezed my guts. Just for a little while, I had forgotten Pa was on the road. Against the white thickening screen of falling snow, I pictured his truck on a remote mountain road.

  Papa seesawing the wheel, trying to keep the skidding truck in check on the winding road. I heard the gears grind as he downshifted to avoid braking. I saw the chain-girded back tires glide sideways and drag the truck in a diagonal slide toward the snowed-in bank of a deep ravine. The men under the tarp at the back of the truck cried the beseeching mantra, “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”

  And I silently pleaded, “Oh, yes. God is great! God is great! Allahu Akbar!”

  I opened the French door, stepped onto the balcony, and breathed in deeply. The freezing air burned my lungs and stiffened the small hairs inside my nose. I scanned the road. Not a single tire track marred the already thickening shroud of snow. I hung over the balustrade and stretched to see as far down as the bottom of the road, but Papa’s truck did not round the bend. Tears slithered down my cheeks, and they weren’t only the result of the cold air searing my eyes.

  Maman called from the kitchen, “Nanna, you and Zizou have Mireille and the boys help you get
some more wood. I want the house nice and toasty for your father.”

  We put on our coats and treaded to the woodshed at the back of the house. The sight of the fast-piling snow rekindled the boys’ gripes. “Why can’t we play in the snow?”

  “Yeah, it’s not fair—”

  A faint bomb explosion reached us from a distance. No sooner had its dry bang faded than another followed, muted like a frail echo. Transfixed, we looked around, noses poking the air like hounds in search of a scent. But only fat flakes tickled our nostrils. Zizou’s compressed lips dimpled her chin and her lashes quivered. “Nanna, do you think Pa’s driving back through where the explosions were?”

  “Non,” I tried to convince myself, to loosen the lump in my throat. “They seemed to come from Constantine, and Papa is driving from the opposite direction.”

  A bit reassured, Zizou nudged the boys. “Move it, les gosses, it’s cold out here.”

  We carried armloads of splintered wood up the stairs, bounded down empty-handed and back up again with another pile, like a string of busy ants bringing choice morsels to their queen.

  The logs stacked, we were standing at the perron, brushing wood dust and chips off our coats, when my ears perked at the familiar sound. Seconds later, the truck rounded the bend and, for the first time since Pa had left, I breathed freely. As Papa switched gears, the engine seemed to take a breath before charging up the snowed-in slope with a roar, exhaling oily smoke through its tail. Zizou’s lips relaxed and her chin smoothed out. The kids pushed each other out of the way and raced to the kitchen. “Ma, Ma, Pa’s coming.”

  Zizou and I hurried down the stairs, opened the gates, and stood guard with huge grins pulling at our cold-stiffened features until the truck turned into the yard and stopped. We pushed the gates closed and kissed Papa’s frozen cheeks as he stepped off the cab. Zizou picked up his suitcase and we followed him up the slippery steps, along the corridor, and into the warm kitchen.

  Stiff-fingered, Papa removed his fur hat, fur-lined gloves, and wool balaclava. Maman helped him shrug off his sheepskin coat and he plunked himself into a chair in front of the stove. “We made it through the pass just before the blizzard started to blow,” he said through taut lips. His forest-green eyes glinted like two pools of melted snow reflecting nearby pines. His stubbled features seemed fossilized. Only his pale lips moved. “Nanna, take my boots off,” he said.

  I pulled hard on the cold rubber, almost falling on my ass as they came off, and peeled away two sets of those thick wool socks Maman liked to knit. Pa’s feet were alabaster white, as if no blood flowed beneath the skin—glacial-looking and lifeless like the feet of the white marble angels at the cemetery—making my own toes curl in sympathy.

  Maman ladled hot water from the stove’s side tank into the blue enamel washbasin, cooled it with a dollop of cold water, set it down at Papa’s feet then knelt in front of him and rolled up the cuffs of his pants. She gazed into his face. “Did you finish the job, chéri?”

  He raised his chin to the ceiling and, whether from pain caused by his thawing feet or pleasure at their warming up, he closed his eyes and gradually lowered his toes deeper into the warm water. “Oui. That’s why we left later than planned. Then we got caught in heavy snow halfway through the pass.”

  Maman rose to her feet and moved to the pantry, gathering ingredients for a vin chaud. “Did you encounter any problems?”

  “None. But the cab heater didn’t work, which didn’t make a fuck of a difference since we had to keep the windows down—the only way to see where I was going. Drove most of the way with my head out my window, Debbah watching out his.”

  “Are Debbah and the men all right?”

  “They were cold and a little shaken by the driving conditions but praising Allah by the time I dropped them at their homes in one piece.”

  While Papa spoke, Maman simmered a blend of red wine, cinnamon, orange zest, sugar, cardamom, and cloves until the sugar dissolved. Then, she strained the mixture into a glass and added a teaspoon of cognac.

  The mulled wine soon worked its magic. Papa’s skin regained color and he wiggled his toes in the cooling water, causing mine to relax in turn. Maman dried Pa’s feet and sent Mireille for his slippers. He put them on and leaned back in his chair with a blissful sigh. Watching his handsome face relax, I nearly cried out, “Oui, God is great! God is great!”

  Hung to dry over the stove’s brass bar, the steaming socks, gloves, and hat exuded a wet wool tang that blended in with the opulent aromas of burning wood, roasting goose, and spiced wine.

  Papa sniffed the air with a blissful smile. “It’s so good to be home.”

  YESSS! My Pa was home safe and he was happy.

  Now we could surrender to the magic of Christmas and forget, for a while, the brutal world beyond our walls.

  Papa Noël

  Following the bountiful meal, crowned with la Bûche de Noël—the rich, creamy, chocolaty Yule log—we cleared the dinner dishes and lined up our spit-shined shoes at the foot of the kitchen stove. “If you’d rather not have le Père Noël bring lumps of coal and old turnips instead of presents, you’d better shine those shoes,” Pépé had warned, long ago.

  Three years ago, though only nine years old, I had started playing along with Pépé’s shoe-shine ritual and helped keep the belief in Santa alive for my brothers and sisters—that is until now, when Zizou and I knelt on the numbing tile and prayed, “Thank you, Mon Dieu, for bringing Papa safely home. Amen.” We crossed ourselves and rose, ready to jump into bed.

  Zizou whispered, “You know, Nanna, kids at school say that Papa Noël doesn’t exist. What d’you think?”

  Dying to instruct her on the realities of life, take her down a peg or two, I raised a scornful eyebrow, burning to say, “I think you’re a little slow, ma fille. I have known le Père Noël doesn’t exist since I was a year younger than you. Don’t you think it’s time for you to grow up?” Then I remembered my heartbreak at having to give up the jolly old man and his reindeers.

  “Oh,” I said, “I don’t think those kids know as much as they think they do. Look at all the stupid things they tell about how babies are made—the stork, cabbages, getting pregnant by kissing boys, and other things that don’t make sense. I can tell you: I know for sure le Père Noël exists. As a matter of fact I saw him, once.”

  “Are you teasing?”

  I raised my hand and spat on the floor. “I swear I saw him. Thought I was going to have a ‘heart’tack,’ as Riri calls it.”

  The dubious set of Zizou’s face said she did not believe me, but her searching eyes said she wanted to—making me take heart. She stood one foot forward, arms crossed against her chest, chin raised in challenge. “I’m listening.”

  I warmed to my task. Better be good.

  * * *

  “Et bien,” I began. “It’s like this. Remember that Noël when Papa, Maman, Yvette, Tonton Gilles, and Pépé Honninger went to midnight mass and dancing at la Guinguette afterward?”

  Zizou nodded and I continued. “And Debbah babysat us? I think I was, maybe, eight and you, six. Before leaving, Maman said, ‘Now, be good and listen to Debbah. You go to sleep now.’ ”

  Thinking about that night brought back memories of how Ma looked standing at our bedside. So pretty in the green velvet dress Yvette had made for her. She wore the gold watch with the cursive digits under a domed glass Papa had given her when Riri was born, and the two rings that came from Mémé Honninger, her mother. One was gold with a Marquise-shaped ruby surrounded by small diamonds. The other a platinum octagonal Art Deco design with a diamond in the center from which radiated sixteen lines of diamond chips.

  That was the ring I always felt had been created just for me. The ring which, from the moment of its conception, had longed to hug my finger.

  Zizou brought me back to our conversation in her cavalier way. “That’s all?”

  “What’s all?”

  “How you saw le Père Noël?”

 
“Ah, oui. So, Maman told us to be nice and Tata Yvette laughed, shook a finger and added, ‘Be careful. If, during the night, you hear noises in your room, it will be Papa Noël bringing presents.’ She pointed at the row of shiny shoes set that year around the woodstove in our bedroom, then she said, ‘Now, you have to know that Papa Noël is very shy and has been known to run off at the slightest suspicion of being observed. My goodness, once, in his rush to escape detection, he even broke a leg. You can easily imagine he never returned to the house he fled in such a hurry.’ ”

  I remembered that, at this horrible news, my heart had beaten a tattoo. “Never, ever?”

  “Never.” Eyes dancing, Yvette had stuck out her tongue at Tonton Gilles, who told her to stop her silliness, even though the smile stretching his mustache showed he adored her for it.

  “So, how did Yvette’s story end?” Zizou sighed.

  “Well, she said, ‘Above all, if you wake up in the middle of the night and hear noises, keep your eyes closed tight and do not dare move—’ ”

  Impatient, Zizou snorted, “And that gave you a heart’tack?”

  “But of course not. Even though I was excited, I fell asleep then something woke me up. I opened my eyes. By the dark gray light filtering through the shutters, I knew it was dawn. I turned on my side to go back to sleep, but caught a shift in the furniture’s outline. Darker and rounder, it lumbered, heavy and slow, like the bear at the Amar Circus.”

  Zizou’s eyes grew the size of award-winning bubble-gum bubbles. She panted, “What was it?”

  Her fascination infected me and my voice turned to a whisper, “That’s when I remembered what Yvette had said about le Père Noël. So I squeezed my eyes shut tight. Very tight. I breathed slowly through my nose and prayed Papa Noël would not hear my heart beat like the Boussadia’s tam tam and make him run away and break a leg.”