Savages- The Wedding Read online

  ‘Idder, please.’

  Sari frowned; she sat up straight on the saddle and stroked the neck of the horse.

  ‘Well, Idder, you’re going to lose.’

  ‘You mean lose the election?’ Chaouch grinned.

  ‘Sir, I have scraped together all the past electoral results, precinct by precinct, census data, Google searches, Twitter feeds, press. And by the way, if you really want the “future to be now” you should think of making more public data readily available in France …’

  The future is now was Chaouch’s campaign slogan. He encouraged her to go on.

  ‘I’m sorry to break it to you, sir – Idder – but having plugged your campaign strategy into my models from all that data, there’s little doubt that you’re going to lose. Your campaign manager told me about his advice to stay out of the South where most people hate you because of your curly hair. Well, from what I’ve seen he’s right, people hate you here, and you’ll never get close to a majority, and that’s what the bird’s eye view captures: depressingly low scores and depressing postcolonial hatred of Arabs. That’s the information your strategists have access to. However … that’s also where my scourging of fine-grained data and looking at changes beyond levels kick in. Don’t get me wrong: you’ll never get a majority here, but inching your way up a couple percentage points – from twenty per cent to twenty-three per cent – will make a difference. In five years, I’ll also be able to tell you who to target with what ad, when France finally starts collecting better individual-level data … but for now, I just have one thing to say: stay here, stay in the South.’

  This piece of advice was to cause a formidable uproar later that day; but for the time being the two riders sat motionless on their mounts: the fireball had torn through the murk and the clouds, and was now burning right above the scrawny naked vines, so close it felt like the enormous face of a blushing beast that they might touch with their extended fingers if they were bold enough.

  ‘You know what I wanted this campaign to be?’ Chaouch said quietly, as he looked at the sunrise. ‘I wanted it to be like a family reunion.’

  He paused. Sari could see the pink light illuminating his lovely face. He hadn’t shaved yet and his cheeks looked bluish.

  ‘And what are you going to do about it?’ Sari asked.

  He smiled and trotted backwards, whistling the first notes of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. At the end of the famous opening crescendo he made the horse rear and waved at Sari:

  ‘Look! Over there!’

  Silhouetted against a blurry grove, a herd of bulls had raised their massive heads and were now clearly bellowing to be part of the concert.

  A few hours later, the candidate was sitting in the back of a tasteless fancy restaurant, protected by three folding-screens spangled with lilies. Fouad and Jasmine were late. In the main dining room, security officers whispered in their earpieces while scanning the ordinary diners; sometimes they sternly shook their heads, when one of the onlookers seemed on the verge of drawing out their smartphone to take a picture. Beyond the screens, the bordeaux carpet seemed a bit worn and fluffy. The nicest round table of the restaurant had been laid for five. A large windowpane overlooked a patio hosting an umbrella pine, a hibiscus and a waterless fountain. The walls were salmon-rose, covered with ivy and Virginia creeper. A group of heavily armed bodyguards watched the entrance of the garden, and sharpshooters were hiding on the roofs on top and around the building. The candidate had received too many threats; his security detail numbered as many units as that of the incumbent president.

  Unaware of these precautions, Chaouch had taken off his tie and elevated small-talk to a mild, medium level; he was entertaining his American guest with anecdotes from his teaching years at Harvard – his enthusiasm was so genuine it sounded like it really was the first time he was telling them. But his wife, Esther, seemed to think otherwise. She kept glancing at her watch and smiled briskly whenever her name popped up in the conversation. She had a PhD in Ancient History, and was a prominent expert on Roman politics, but there were certain subjects on which she had great difficulty maintaining her scholarly cool: she and her daughter were the targets of persistent innuendos, presenting them as a couple of evil-minded Jews attempting to trick the candidate in the interests of their ‘tribe’. These rumours spanned ecumenically from the far left to the far right; the word the latter used to describe them was not Jews but Israelites, a throwback to the nineteen-thirties and the Vichy period.

  ‘Idder, you need to speak up about these attacks,’ she suddenly said, in French, as though out of the blue, while her husband was ordering a plate of asparagus and kidding around with the waitress in white livery.

  ‘Which attacks?’ he asked in English, so as not to exclude Sari.

  ‘Tu sais très bien de quoi je veux parler,’ Esther Chaouch replied. She raised her glass of white wine, but didn’t drink from it.

  ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ Chaouch offered. He put the palm of his hand on his wife’s bare wrist.

  ‘What do you mean, later? After the election? In five years?’ she asked defiantly, lowering her glass and staring at the windowpane. ‘Forget it. I guess fighting anti-semitism isn’t considered the best way to bring in new votes these days, huh?’

  Sari thought it would be a good idea to use the toilet now, but a black suit removed one of the folding-screens to make way for the long-awaited young couple. Chaouch stood up and pinched his daughter’s chin. He then proceeded to give two kisses and a friendly handshake to Fouad, who was indeed startlingly good-looking, with big dark eyes and an actor’s smile that was remarkably neither toothy nor too aggressively fake.

  ‘You’re right on time!’ Chaouch exclaimed, jokingly. ‘Five more minutes and you’d have missed a passionate conversation on anti-semitism and freedom of speech.’

  ‘Oh, you think this is about freedom of speech?’ Esther asked, raising her glass again and shivering as if shifting one of the three screens had blown in a draught. She wore a beige cashmere-style shawl, with long sleeves that she rolled back down while her husband was introducing Sari to the newcomers and warning them that they would have to practise their English today.

  Esther gulped down half of her wine and squinted her eyes to decipher the tiny inscriptions on the bottle. ‘Et on peut connaître la raison de votre retard?’ Chaouch twitched his finger and slightly bent his head. ‘Oh I’m sorry,’ continued the soon-to-be First Lady, remembering she was supposed to stick to English. ‘Was the traffic bad?’

  As Jasmine couldn’t move an inch without a chauffeur and a police escort, the question was sarcastic. Fouad sat down in front of the window, facing the candidate. Sitting next to her mother, Jasmine feared she might notice her rosy cheeks and make further snide comments; Jasmine would then have a hard time holding back from describing the wild fuckfest that had caused their delay. Since things had become serious with Fouad, she spent most of her time provoking her mother, because her mother had once claimed that her newfound playboy was nothing less than a dowry hunter. Such allegations infuriated Jasmine, of course. They gave her the worst part in the drama; plus, come on, we don’t live in Balzac’s France any more, there is no dowry to be hunted! ‘You can call it fame if you wish,’ Esther Chaouch had replied. And they had never talked about it again; now Esther was cautiously avoiding the boyfriend’s looks, but she kept him under close observation, and didn’t miss any of his graceful hand gestures and timely chortles.

  Chaouch was telling him about the singing bulls at the crack of dawn. Esther abruptly shifted the conversation back to the attacks.

  ‘Oh no, really, darling,’ Chaouch said, rubbing his hands at the thought of the meal that was arriving, ‘I know it’s frustrating but if I start replying to every one of these attacks, it’ll end up giving them credibility, and that’s the last thing we want, isn’t it?’

  ‘So instead you’ll let it spread, like a tumour?’

  Jasmine stepped in. ‘The tumour’s already t
here.’

  Chaouch backed up his daughter. ‘And the more we feed it with outraged condemnations and moral sentencing, the bigger it’ll grow. Now, we shall confront all this, but …’

  ‘But in the meantime they have a free pass, and they can spit on your family in front of the whole country?’

  ‘Well, that’s what a family reunion is all about. Fighting and spitting and letting the drunk uncles rant on whatever they need to rant on.’

  ‘What do you mean, a family reunion? Half of the country hates us – half of the country thinks you’re not even French! These people are not your uncles, they want you dead, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘Listen, I’m running an economics-oriented campaign, and that’s why I’m in the lead. What this country needs is … jobs, growth … Let the bastards be bastards, nobody will listen to them any more when we’ve put an end to massive youth unemployment, trust me.’

  Fouad nodded admiringly. He leaned towards his neighbour on the left and whispered: ‘So, you’re the expert, what do you think about the polls? Are they right? Are we going to win the election next month?’

  Sari chuckled. ‘God only knows.’

  Chaouch caught the phrase and sang gleefully: ‘God only knows what I’d be without you …’

  Esther raised her eyebrows and poured some more wine into her glass. ‘I hate this place. We’re leaving this afternoon, right? What are you doing after lunch?’

  A bustle in the main room made everyone turn their heads towards the folding-screens. A little girl appeared in the gap. She was all dressed up and carrying an envelope – pressing it jealously against her bullhorn-print top. The bodyguard let her in after checking there was no poison inside and that it was okay with the candidate. Chaouch opened his arms but the little girl stood silently, fiddling with the corner of the envelope and twisting her ankles.

  ‘Comment tu t’appelles, ma chérie? Don’t look at her, she’s intimidated, poor girl.’

  She had long blonde pigtails and two blue ribbons on top of them. Chaouch went up to her and kissed her shiny domed forehead.

  ‘Tu me donnes l’enveloppe? C’est un cadeau?’

  She still couldn’t utter a single word. Chaouch kneeled down in front of her and stared at her until she let out a burst of childish laughter. One of her teeth was missing on the left side of her upper row. She gave him the envelope and pranced out of the room.

  Chaouch opened it and smiled. He handed it over to Sari, who didn’t smile. Nor did Fouad, nor did Jasmine – and when Esther finally read it she got up, fuming. Chaouch captured her wrist in his hands and asked her to calm down.

  ‘“Go back to your country, you Islamist son of a bitch?”’ Esther repeated it over and over, in French. ‘Listen, I’m not hungry any more, why don’t we leave this shit-hole?’

  Jasmine groped for her boyfriend’s hand under the table. Behind them, the fountain was now spouting water, albeit jerkily.

  Chaouch stood up and addressed the whole table.

  ‘I might as well tell you now that I’ve decided to stay in the South for a few more days.’ He gave a friendly look to Sari while his wife gaped at him. Then he winked at Fouad and added, with an imperceptible sadness in his voice: ‘No need to worry, I’ve already done the heavy lifting this morning and secured the bulls’ vote.’

  1

  Krim: An Introduction

  Community Centre, 3.30 p.m.

  Soon they would have to decide: who would stay behind, ‘nice and quiet’, at the community centre and who would leave for the town hall. The bride’s family was too large and not everyone could fit in, especially given the fact that the mayor wasn’t known for his patience in these situations. His predecessor (a left-wing independent) had quite simply banned Saturday weddings, to spare the town’s peaceful residents all the honking, Rai and flashy cars draped with Algerian flags. In spite of his right-leaning tendencies, the new mayor had lifted the ban, but threatened to reimpose it every time an overexcited tribe wreaked havoc in the house of the Republic.

  First among those opting to stay put – right on her couscoussier, no less – was Aunt Zoulikha, fanning herself with that day’s Metro, which was missing its front page, bearing the headline: ELECTION OF THE CENTURY. Next to her sat old Ferhat wearing an improbable blue-green ushanka hat that made his ears sweat. One of his great-nephews had tried to reason with him, but every time he broached the subject, Ferhat dodged it by pinching the boy’s chin and babbling on about the latest polls in a soft, almost professorial voice no one recognized.

  Everyone was acting a bit strange that afternoon: the bride’s party, it was rumoured, numbered in the hundreds, plus it was too hot outside for early May. The results of the first round of voting had turned la belle France into a pressure-cooker and it seemed that cousin Raouf was the only screw keeping the lid from blowing off. He sprayed himself with facial mist while tapping on his iPhone. Granny watched him, mystified, unable to comprehend this new species of men who lived their lives through screens. Following the Twitter feed of an obsessed pollster and the comments thread of a political site, Raouf lit cigarette after cigarette, keeping everyone abreast of the election forecasts that a colleague – a halal restaurant manager like him – posted on his Facebook page from London. Raouf, normally the paragon of elegance in his thousand-euro pinstriped suits, was dressed in the same t-shirt he’d worn the day before. Bearing the face of the smiling Socialist Party candidate, it was badly tucked in, perfectly visible beneath a blazer rolled up at the sleeves. With his agitated-businessman forearms thus exposed, it was as if the pulse of the nation throbbed in his veins.

  Granny, who had told him off for not putting on a suit straight away, no longer had the strength or the desire to scold anyone for anything. She sat silently on her throne in Raouf’s gleaming Audi, air-conditioning on high with the passenger door open, half-listening to the Kabyle songs that made the other shiny cars hum. She swung one of her wiry legs out of the vehicle and swept her gaze across the car park where her sparse tribe vegetated. About eighty-five (nobody knew her real age), Granny enjoyed a special status in the family: everyone was terrified of her. A widow almost since time began, she had never been known to feel pity or tenderness or to have a nice word to say to any human being past the age of puberty. She stood amidst her frivolous and voluble daughters like the embodiment of reproach, fuelled by an extraordinary endurance that reeked of both a pact with the devil and the certainty that she would bury them all.

  In the meantime the tech crew began their sound check in the reception hall and Granny returned to the cocoon-like silence of the Audi.

  ‘But why are you already here?’ the head crewman asked Raouf.

  ‘We needed a meeting point,’ Raouf replied without bothering to take off his earpiece. ‘Before going to the town hall. But we’ll leave soon; we’re just waiting for everyone to get here.’

  The sound guy didn’t look convinced. He had a piece of lettuce stuck between his teeth, which were too big for his mouth, and he smelled of onions.

  ‘So, you’re the groom’s family? Well, if you don’t mind, you’d better stop that music coming from the cars. We’ve been told not to disturb the neighbourhood before nightfall. What’s with that woman over there on the pot?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I thought you had a caterer?’

  Raouf didn’t know what to say. He opened his hands sheepishly and turned towards Aunt Zoulikha, a venerable barrel of pink flesh, stoic and immaculate, breathing heavily beneath a chestnut tree whose budding foliage did little to protect her from the unseasonable heat.

  Three other aunts, stamping their feet in the tiny shadow of a poplar, began to speak about their unruly youngest sister, while Dounia, the mother of the groom, went from group to group dismayed that no one seemed to want to join the race to the town hall.

  ‘There’ll only be people from that family,’ she complained, waving her white veil and her mobile phone. ‘It’s a crying shame, wallah, you
just don’t do that … And Fouad!’ she exclaimed suddenly, thinking of her other son, the middle child, who was coming down from Paris to be best man. ‘I can’t even get Fouad on the phone!’

  Uncle Bouzid took off his hat to mop his bare skull. He sported a distinctive baldness, rippled and muscular, traversed from end to end by veins that, when bulging, generally announced an imminent fit of apoplexy.

  ‘Hey, calm down, Dounia. The thing at the town hall starts in an hour and Slim hasn’t even arrived yet! We’re all here, right? We’re all here an hour early, actually, so let’s keep cool, please! Cool!’ He stopped short of shouting before adding with a hint of a smile: ‘Do you think they’ll turn the groom’s mother away? This isn’t a nightclub, you know! Ha, ha. Sorry, it’s a private party. I mean, really. Go and say something to Rab, the poor girl’s all on her own.’

  Rabia was indeed there too, talking as usual, this time on the phone to their youngest sister, whom nobody could be sure was coming. Almost all the Saint-Etienne family was there, in fact, not least Toufik the Helpful, his burly baby face crossed with its funny V-shaped unibrow – Toufik who, no doubt, would soon be picked on for no good reason but who for the time being kept on listening and smiling, completely out of sync with the other uncles, cousins and sons-in-law who chatted about car mechanics, the presidential election and horse-racing while occasionally shouting at their wives who shouted at their overexcited brats.

  And then, right at the back, behind the gym where people would vote the following day, far from the Rai and the malicious gossip, stood Krim. Krim with his sleepy eyes, Krim with his compact, stubborn eyebrows verging on hostility, Krim with his bizarrely flattened cheekbones that everybody said made him look a little Chinese.

  Leaning against an election billboard that now flaunted just two posters, he’d been rubbing a silver lighter against the fluorescent stripe of his tracksuit. When his mother, Rabia, came to ask him if he intended to go to the town hall, he stuffed the lighter in his pocket, shrugged his shoulders and looked away.