Milianah
By
Alphonse Daudet
Translated
by James F. Gaines
Translator’s
Foreword: Among all the admirable gifts Alphonse Daudet possessed as
a writer lurked at least one horrible flaw: he was anti-semitic. It
is unclear if he acquired this prejudice from his childhood
environment, from some slights he felt he suffered in his early days
in journalism, or from the atmosphere of the lofty government
ministries of the Second Empire where he became a favorite –
perhaps all three. Even more unfortunately, it imprinted itself on
his family, for his son Léon became a vicious hater of Jews who
involved himself in the Dreyfus Affair on the wrong side, slandered
the Jewish French prime minister Léon Blum, and sided with the
pro-Nazi Vichy government during the Occupation. I have chosen not
to bowdlerize or mitigate Daudet’s anti-Jewish attitude in the
following piece for two reasons. Firstly, it is my impression from
the Jewish intellectuals around me that they do not prefer to cover
up the injustices done them under a doily of false delicacy, but
rather to probe deeply into the reasons and motives for such wrongs
in order to assure that they will not happen again. Secondly, I feel
that Daudet’s thinking was not entirely an individual phenomenon,
but part of a larger colonialist discourse that remains to be fully
examined, as it may affect the course of history in our own times.
Further, I feel this story is of special interest because, though it
has been largely neglected by nineteenth-century and colonial period
scholars, it offers observations – however stilted – on the
phenomenon of clashes that occur when an occidental, constitutional
system of law is superimposed on an indigenous system operating on
religious and ethnic models, with the result that both systems tend
to degrade each other and to provide disservice to the public.
***
On
this occasion, I invite you to come spend a day in a pretty Algerian
town hundreds of miles from my mill in Provence. It will give us a
change of scenery from the tambourines and the cicadas of that place.
Rain
is on the way, the sky is overcast and the peak of Mount Zaccar is
wrapped in mist. A dreary Sunday. In my cozy hotel room overlooking
the old Arab fortifications, I try to distract myself by
chain-smoking. I’ve gone over the entire library at my disposal in
the hotel: a huge, detailed registry book and a few comic romances by
Paul de Kock. Discovering a mismatched volume of Montaigne, I open
and reread his magnificent letter on the death of his friend Étienne
de la Boétie. It leaves me plunged deeper in somber reverie than
before. A few drops of rain have begun to fall. Each one, falling
on the window sill, creates a star in the dust that’s accumulated
since last year’s rainy season. The book slips from my hands and I
sink into a prolonged contemplation of those melancholy stars. Two
o’clock sounds on the municipal clock mounted on the white wall of
the tomb of a local Muslim saint. The poor old mausoleum! Who could
have told him thirty years ago that today he would have a big clock
stuck in his chest and that every Sunday it would send out the signal
to the Christian churches in Milianah that they should ring vespers?
Ding, dong, there they go, and it’s going to last a long while.
This room is getting really depressing. Those fat morning spiders
called Deep Thoughts have spun their webs in every corner. Let’s
get out of here.
I
emerge into the central square. The regimental band of the Third
Infantry, unafraid of a few drops of rain, is moving into place
around its conductor. In a window in the Officers’ Quarters, the
general appears with his daughters. In the square, the chief of
police strolls back and forth with the chief judge. A gaggle of
half-naked Arab urchins shriek out as they play marbles in a corner.
Further on, an old Jew in rags comes out to search for the sunny spot
he had left there the previous day and he is mystified that he cannot
find it. “And a one, and a two, and a three!” The band launches
into a tired mazurka by Talexy that hurdy-gurdies had played in the
alleyways years before. That tune used to annoy me to no end, but
on this occasion it moves me to tears.
Oh,
how happy they are, those musicians in the Third Infantry brass band.
Their eyes glued to the notes in front of them on the music holders,
intoxicated by the tempo, they think of nothing but counting their
measures. Their entire soul is laid out on that square of paper
hardly bigger than my hand, trembling on the instrument in its copper
clip. “One, two three, hit it!” That amounts to everything for
those boys. The patriotic tunes they play never make them homesick.
Alas, not being a part of the band, I get disturbed by the melodies
and I walk on…
Where,
oh, where could I while away this grey Sunday afternoon? Right!
Sid’Omar’s place is open. Let’s go visit Sid’Omar.
Although
he has an open-air shop, Sid’Omar is no shop-keeper. He’s a
prince of the blood royal, son of the former Dey of Algiers who was
strangled by his Turkish guards. His father dead, Sid’Omar took
refuge in Milianah with his beloved mother and lived there for a
number of years like a lordly philosopher surrounded by his dogs, his
falcons, his horses and his wives, in a comfortable shady mansion
brimming with orange trees and fountains. Then came the French. At
first our enemy and an ally of the insurgent chieftain Abd el-Kader,
Sid’Omar eventually quarreled with the rebels and submitted to the
colonial authorities. Out of revenge, the rebel leader burst into
Milianah, pillaged his palace, tore out the orange trees, stole his
horses and his wives, and all but decapitated his mother with the lid
of a huge wooden trunk. Sid’Omar’s anger was terrible. That
very instant, he became an active agent of the French, and we never
had a more ferocious soldier at our service during the arduous
struggle against the natives. Once the war was over, Sid’Omar
settled again in Milianah. Yet even today, if one mentions Abd
el-Kader, he grows pale and his eyes fill with fire.
Sid’Omar
is sixty. Despite old age and smallpox, his face remains handsome:
thick lashes, a woman’s complexion, a charming smile and a princely
air. Impoverished by the colonial wars, he lost all his former
wealth except a farm in the plains of Chélif and a townhouse in
Milianah, where he lives among the merchants and keeps track of his
three grown sons. The native leaders from miles around hold him in
great respect. Whenever a dispute arises, they appeal to him right
away for arbitration, and his word is almost always law. He seldom
leaves home. Each afternoon he sits in his store-front on a rug
overlooking the busy street. The white-washed room is sparsely
furnished with a circular wooden bench, some cushions, a few hookahs
and two brasiers. There Sid’Omar holds audience and dispenses
justice. Solomon in a store-front.
This
Sunday the space is packed. A dozen sheiks draped in their burnous
robes crouch around the room, each with a hookah nearby and a small
glass of dense coffee sitting in a finely-wrought metal holder. When
I come in, none of them reacts. From his seat of judgment, Sid’Omar
shows me his most gracious smile and beckons me with his hand to sit
at his side on a cushion of golden silk. Then, with a finger to his
lips, he bids me be silent and heedful.
The
case is this way: the leader of the Beni Zougzoug clan having a
dispute with a Jew from Milianah over the property rights to a lot,
the two parties resolve to submit the matter to Sid’Omar and to
abide by his decision. The matter has been put on the docket that
very day, witnesses already duly summoned, when the Jew up and
changes his mind, walks into court all alone and without supporting
testimony, declaring that he would rather involve the French colonial
magistrate than Sid’Omar. That’s how it stands when I arrive.
The
old, grimy-bearded Jew wears a maroon jacket, blue stockings and a
velvet skullcap. He raises his nose up to the heavens, rolls his
eyes in supplication, kisses Sid’Omar’s slippers, inclines his
head, joins his hands, and kneels. My Arabic is a bit rusty but from
the Jew’s pantomime and his constant refrain of “Frensh zhudge,
Frensh zhudge,” I can guess the tenor of his eloquent statement.
“I
doubt not the word of Sid’Omar. Sid’Omar is wise. Sid’Omar is
just. But the Frensh zhudge can handle this matter more suitably.”
Though
inwardly irate, the listener nevertheless remains impassive, true to
his Arab nature. Slouching on his cushions, his eyes half-closed,
the amber mouthpiece of the water pipe in his lips, Sid’Omar, god
of irony, smiles as he pays attention. All at once in the middle of
a most finely turned conclusion, the Jew is interrupted by an
outburst of “Carramba!” that stops him in his tracks. At that
instant a Spanish colonist who had come as witness for the sheik
rises from his seat and advances on this Judas Iscariot. He
splatters the Jew with a bucketful of insults in every language and
style, including certain French phrases too filthy, sir, for me to
repeat in this account. Sid’Omar’s son, who understands the
idiom of Paris, blushes to hear such terms in the presence of his
father and rushes out of the room. That tells you something about an
Arab upbringing. The arbitrator is still impassive, smiling away.
The Jew gets on his feet and sidles backwards towards the door,
shaking with fear but still intoning his interminable “Frensh
Zhudge… Frensh Zhudge.” As he exits, the furious Spaniard leaps
after him , catches up with him in the street, and punches him twice
in the face – biff! baff! Judas drops to his knees and hides his
head in his arms. The Spaniard comes back into the store-front with
a hang-dog look. As soon as he has gone away, the Jew hops back up
and casts a suspicious gaze on the motley crowd that has gathered
around him. There are people of every color there, Maltese, Balearic
Islanders, blacks, Arabs, all united in their hatred of the Jews and
overjoyed to see one of them roughed up. Judas hesitates a second
and then grabs an Arab by the edge of his burnous.
“You
saw him, Ahmed, you saw him. You were there. The Christian attacked
me. You will be my witness. Yes, yes! You will serve as my
witness.”
The
Arab pulls away from his grasp and shoves him off. He knows nothing.
He sees nothing. At the crucial moment his head was pointing in
another direction.
“But
you, Kadour, you saw it. You saw the Christian assault me,” cries
the unfortunate Judas to a fat black fellow who had been peeling a
prickly pear.
The
black man spits as a sign of scorn and hurries off. He saw nothing.
Neither did the little Maltese whose eyes burn like hot coals
underneath his headband. That Minorcan woman with skin red as a
brick, she didn’t see anything either, and she runs off laughing,
balancing a basket of grenadines on her head.
In
vain, the Jew pleads, implores, gesticulates. No one has seen
anything. No witnesses. By chance, two of his tribe appear at that
moment, their eyes lowered, skittering along the walls. The Jew
spots them.
“Quick!
Quick, my friends! To the agent! To the Frensh zhudge! You two saw
it. You saw how he battered an old man.”
And
did they ever see it!
Back
at Sid’Omar’s place there is a flurry of activity. Hookahs are
relit, coffee cups are refilled. Everyone chats and laughs out loud.
It’s such a hoot to see a Jew get thrashed! I make my way
discreetly though the smoke and the brouhaha. I feel like prowling
over to the Jewish quarter to see how Judas’s tribe is reacting to
the mistreatment of their brother.
“Come
dine with me, moussiou,” Sid’Omar calls after me.
I
accept with thanks. I’m back on the street.
In
the Jewish quarter, everyone is running this way and that. Word has
already gotten around. Not a merchant is in his stall, not a tailor,
not an embroiderer, not a leather worker. The whole tribe of Israel
has taken to the streets, the men in their skullcaps and blue
stockings in noisy, arm-waving clusters, the women with faces framed
in black fabric, shifting from one group to another, pale, stiff, and
red-eyed, calling out like cats. The second I arrive, the crowd
stirs, piles together, and rushes forward. Supported by the
shoulders of his witnesses, the Jew who is the hero of this adventure
hobbles between a double hedge of skullcaps amid a shower of
encouragement.
“Avenge
yourself, brother. Avenge us. Avenge the Jewish nation. Fear not.
The law is on your side.”
A
hideous dwarf redolent of pitch and old hides approaches me sighing
in a piteous manner. “You see,” he tells me, “We poor Jews.
You see how they treat us. Look, he’s an elderly man. They nearly
killed him.”
To
speak the truth, poor old Judas seems more dead than alive. Eyes
vacant, face distressed, dragging along rather than walking, he
passes by. Only a hefty judgment against the wrongdoer will be
capable of curing him. So they don’t take him to the doctor, but
instead to the colonial agent.
Algeria
is full of colonial agents. They teem like locusts. Business seems
very good for them. One of the greatest advantages is that you can
step right into that job without tests, without degrees, without
bond, without training. Just as in Paris you can magically become a
Man of Letters, in Algeria you can magically become a colonial agent.
All you need is a passing acquaintance with the French, Spanish, and
Arabic languages, a fat volume that passes as a legal code, and above
all the right professional attitude.
The
functions of a colonial agent are diverse. Barrister, solicitor,
salesman, consultant, interpreter, bookkeeper, sub-contractor, public
scribe, all at once or one at a time, he’s the colonial equivalent
of Moliere’s Maître Jacques from The Miser, doing anything
and everything. Except Molière’s miser had only one Maître
Jacques in his employ, while the colony has a lot more than it could
ever conceivably need. In Milianah alone, you can find dozens of
them. Usually, to keep a low overhead, these gentlemen meet with
their clients in a cafe on the main square and give their advice
between the coffee and the liqueur – but do they ever really give
it?.
Thus,
it is towards the café on the main square that Judas and his
witnesses proceed. Let us not accompany them further.
Leaving
the Jewish quarter, I pass by the entrance to the Bureau of Arab
Affairs. From the outside, with its tricolor flag waving and its
neat red tile roof, you could take it for a house along the Rhone. I
know the interpreter, so let’s go have a smoke with him. Cigarette
by cigarette, I’ll manage to finally finish off this sunless
Sunday.
The
courtyard in front of the Bureau is jammed with ragged Arabs. At
least fifty of them squat along walls in their robes. Though open
to the weather, this Bedouin waiting area reeks of human hide. Hurry
up. In the office I find the interpreter dealing with two braying
idiots who seem naked but for a layer of greasy cloth. They are
acting out some crazy story about a stolen string of prayer beads.
I sit on a mat in the corner to watch. It’s a really classy
uniform, that of the interpreter in the Bureau of Arab Affairs, and
this interpreter wears it really well. They seem to be made for each
other. The uniform is sky blue with black embroidery and shiny gold
buttons. The interpreter has curly blond locks and a rosy
complexion, a handsome cavalry man full of fun and imagination. A
bit talkative, but then, he speaks so many languages. A bit
skeptical, but then, he knew Ernest Renan back at the Oriental
Institute. Quite a sports enthusiast, as much at ease in a native
camp as at the Chief of Police’s receptions. Whirls a girl around
the dance floor better than anyone and whips up a mean plate of
couscous all by himself. In sum, a Parisian. That’s my man, and
no wonder the ladies go wild about him. For a dandy, he has only one
rival in these parts, the sergeant of the Bureau of Arab Affairs.
That Beau Brummel, with his custom-tailored tunic and his spats with
mother-of-pearl buttons, is the envy of the entire garrison. On
special assignment in the service and absolved of all menial tasks,
he parades daily through the streets with white gloves and a fresh
haircut, carrying folders of important-looking documents under his
arm. He is feared and respected. He is the embodiment of authority.
This
case of the stolen beads seems to be dragging out. Goodbye. I won’t
wait for the end.
On
the way out I find the waiting area all stirred up. The crowd
presses in around a tall native man, pale, proud, and robed in black.
A week ago, near Mount Zaccar, this man fought with a leopard. He
killed the leopard, but not before it chewed off half his arm.
Morning and evening, he comes to have his wound dressed at the Bureau
of Arab Affairs, and each time they stop him in the courtyard to make
him recount his story. He speaks slowly with a fine, deep voice.
Every so often he opens the folds of his burnous to expose the bloody
bandages around his left arm in a sling against his chest.
No
sooner do I reach the street than I’m caught in a violent downpour.
Rain, thunder, lightning, desert wind. Quick, find shelter. I slip
into the first doorway I come to and find myself in a batch of
homeless wretches heaped together under the arcades of a Moorish
courtyard. Belonging to the central mosque of Milianah, this
courtyard is the habitual refuge of the Muslim rabble and is called
the Paupers’ Court.
Big,
emaciated hounds covered with fleas and lice start to approach me
with hostile looks. I lean against a pillar in the gallery and try
to appear unaffected, as I watch the raindrops ricochet across the
colored tiles of the courtyard. The homeless are lying in clumps on
the ground. Nearby a young woman, nearly beautiful, with bare
breasts and legs and thick iron rings on her wrists and ankles, sings
a strange melody composed of three nasal notes. As she sings, she
suckles a naked infant colored like dark bronze, while, with her free
hand, she grinds barley in a stone mortar. Driven by nasty gusts of
wind, the rain periodically drenches the infant’s body and the
mother’s legs, but she pays no attention and continues the song,
while giving her breast and crushing the grains.
The
storm peters out. Taking advantage of a clear moment, I hasten to
leave this beggars’ court and head for Sid’Omar’s dinner. It’s
high time. Crossing the main square, I again run into the same old
Jew from earlier in the day. He’s leaning on the shoulder of his
colonial agent. His witnesses file along joyfully behind him. A
flock of nasty Jewish kids scramble around them. Their faces are all
glowing. The colonial agent has taken the matter under advisement:
he’s asking for a settlement of 2000 francs in damages.
At
Sid’Omar’s house, a sumptuous dinner. The dining room opens onto
a Moorish courtyard where several fountains are babbling. An
excellent Turkish meal right out of Baron Brisse’s cookbook. Among
other things, there are chicken with almonds, vanilla-flavored
couscous, meat pies (a bit heavy but with exquisite taste), and honey
pastries. For wine, nothing but champagne. Despite Muslim law,
Sid’Omar partakes a bit – when the servants’ backs are turned .
After dinner, we proceed to our host’s sitting room, where
hookahs, coffee, and more sweets are brought in. The furnishings in
this room are as simple as can be, a divan, some woven mats, and in
the background, a big, high bed with two small red cushions
embroidered in gold thread. On the wall hangs an antique Turkish
painting depicting the exploits of a certain Admiral Hamadi. It
seems in Turkey the artists only paint with one color per canvas, so
this one’s painted green. Sea, sky, ships, and even Admiral Hamadi
himself are green as can be.
Arab
custom dictates that one should retire early. The coffee drunk, the
pipes smoked, I bid farewell to my host and leave him to his wives.
Where
should I finish the evening? Too early to go to bed. The bugles of
the spahi troops have not yet sounded taps. Anyway, the golden
arabesques of Sid’Omar’s abode are still dancing around in my
head and would keep me awake. Here I am in front of the theater, so
let’s go in.
The
theater in Milianah is a former storage barn more or less disguised
as a house of entertainment. Crude oil lamps that are replenished
at intermission do the job of chandeliers. The low price seats are
not seats at all, but standing room, and the better seats are on a
bench. The highest price seats are very exclusive because they have
actual chairs stuffed with straw. All around the theater runs a
long, dark corridor without flooring. You might as well be outside,
it’s all the same. The night’s performance has already begun
when I arrive. To my great surprise, the actors are not half bad, at
least the men; they have enthusiasm and sincerity. Almost all are
acting amateurs, soldiers from the Third Infantry. The regiment is
proud of them and applauds them whole-heartedly every evening.
As
for the ladies, alas, it is always the same question of the eternal
distaff side of provincial theaters, pretentious, exaggerated, and
phony. Nevertheless, there are two among them that interest me , two
Jewish girls from Milianah, still quite fresh to the profession.
Their families are in the audience and can’t get enough of them.
They have convinced themselves their little girls will bring in
millions of sheckels in this racket. The legend of the great Jewish
millionaire actress Rachel has already begun to spread among the
children of Israel all over the Mediterranean.
Nothing
could be more tender and comical than those little Jewish girls on
the boards. They shrink timidly back at one corner of the stage,
powdered, rouged, low-cut and rigid. They are cold and a bit
ashamed. Once in a while they spit out a line without understanding
it and while they are speaking their big Hebraic eyes scan the house
in a stupor.
I
leave the theater. Amidst the surrounding shadows, I notice cries
from a corner of the square. It must be a couple of Maltese settling
scores with knives.
I
slowly head back towards the hotel along the ramparts. A heady
fragrance of orange blossoms and juniper berries rises from the
plains. The air is soft, the sky nearly cloudless. There at the
end of the path looms a ghostly old wall, the remnant of some nearly
forgotten temple. The spot is still sacred; Arab women come there
every day to hang little charms and effigies, fragments of old robes
or scarves, plaited tresses of reddish hair bound with silver thread,
strips of unknown cloth. They all flutter in a thin moonbeam, blown
by the warm night air.
