Madah-Sartre: The Kidnapping, Trial, and Conver(sat s)ion of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir (France Overseas: Studies in Empire and D)

fr a n ce o v e r se a s: Studies in Empire and Decolonization s er i es ed i to rs :

Philip Boucher A. J. B. Johnston James D. Le Sueur Tyler Stovall

The Kidnapping, Trial, and Conver(sat/s)ion of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir

With an introduction by James D. Le Sueur

University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln and London

Publication of this book was assisted by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. A Great Nation Deserves Great Art Translation © 2007 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Introduction to the English edition © 2007 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. French edition © 1996 by Marsa Editions. Published by arrangement with Marsa Editions. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America Set in Quadraat by Bob Reitz. Designed by A. Shahan. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Toumi, Alek Baylee, 1955– [Madah-Sartre. English] Madah-Sartre: the kidnapping, trial, and conver(sat/ s)ion of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir / written and translated by Alek Baylee Toumi; with an introduction by James D. Le Sueur. p. cm.—(France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization) Includes bibliographical references. isbn-13: 978-0-8032-1115-5 (pbk.: alk. paper) isbn:-10: 0-8032-1115-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)

I. Title.

pq3989.2.t592m313 842⬘.92—dc22

2007

2006018677

To the memory of the victims of September 11, 2001. To the memory of the 150,000 civilian victims of terrorism in Algeria. To all exiled people, to all the women and men of the resistance who have made the choice not to live in humiliation. To Khalida Messaoudi, brave and courageous woman, unbowed.

James D. Le Sueur

It is not an exaggeration to say that Madah-Sartre is one of the most imaginative and provocative plays of our era. In it exiled Algerian playwright Alek Baylee Toumi crosses several unspoken boundaries and, in so doing, places his art and himself at the center of one of today’s most important and violent disputes. That dispute, as Salman Rushdie has often stated, centers on the right, if not necessity, of intellectuals to criticize radical Islam. Alek Baylee Toumi is well-schooled in the facts of life of the post-Rushdie fatwa era — when criticism of militant Islam has become a complicated and altogether deadly business, when even the translators of literary works have been murdered by religious extremists, and publishers, editors, and booksellers have been threatened and harassed. Nevertheless Toumi chose to engage in this debate through this play, knowing full well the stakes of the literary game.1 As a result of his courage and commitment to art and critique, he can now stand defiantly before us — in his own flawless translation — as one of the most creative and courageous playwrights of our generation. Like many other writers fully aware of the danger of reprisals by religious extremists, Toumi published MadahSartre under his nom de plume, Alek Baylee (which translates as “the Kabyle”). The first of several plays, it was conceived in large measure as a recalibration of Jean-Paul Sartre’s most famous play, No Exit (Huis Clos). It was in No Exit that Sartre distilled the powerful paranoid intoxicant of his existentialist credo from the pure fear of bevii

ing trapped in hell with Others, whose mutual disdain seemed to spill from one condemned soul to the next. What better literary device could there be for Alek Baylee Toumi than to draw from this fear of the Other and then graft it onto the bitter realities of a nation turned to fratricidal chaos? Madah-Sartre, Algeria’s own No Exit, was written in 1995, while Toumi was in exile in the United States (where he still resides). The fact that he chose to situate the reincarnated ghosts of Sartre and his lifelong companion, Simone de Beauvoir, in Algeria during that year is no coincidence. As leading European intellectuals, both Sartre and de Beauvoir had played instrumental roles during the decolonization of French Algeria (1954–62) and thereby served as perfect mirrors from which to reflect the hopes and illusions of the past. By mobilizing their ghosts, giving them voice, and having them kidnapped on their way to the funeral of the slain Francophone Algerian writer, Tahar Djaout,2 Toumi could mine their reputations and bring them down to earth during a major humanitarian crisis. By doing this he could venture into territory that is forbidden to the historian. He could ask what if . . . ? What if Sartre and de Beauvoir could see what had become of their once-cherished Algerian cause? What if they could confront the radical Islamists who now terrorize innocents in the name of God? What if they could bear witness to the new hell of postcolonial Otherness? The year 1995 was a particularly good time to ask those very questions. It was a bloody year in Algeria, preceded by several years of intense escalating violence, and it was thus a good moment to assess the phantoms of the past and the grim realities of the present. Algeria’s violent decade of the 1990s, sometimes referred to as a “Civil War,” viii

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or “The Second Algerian War,” spilled over its borders with the involvement in a hitherto internal conflict by a group of Afghan-trained Algerian jihadists known as the gia (Groupe Islamique Armé). This internationalization began with the failed December 24, 1994, highjacking of the Algiers-Paris Air France flight 8969 — which the gia planned to blow up over the Eiffel Tower on Christmas Eve — and then continued with a series of bombings in 1995 in Paris (nine years before the deadly Madrid attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda affiliates in Europe in March 2004, and a full ten years before other jihadist suicide bombers struck in July 2005 in London). The first of a string of Algerian gia bombs in Paris killed eight people and wounded eighty-seven on July 25, 1995, at the busy Saint Michel subway stop on the Left Bank. Other foiled and unsuccessful bombing plots continued to terrorize Paris over the course of the next several months. Demonstrating both a clear will and desire to strike directly at France for its not-so-tacit support for the military regime in Algeria, Algerian jihadists were already several years into a devastating terror campaign at home that resulted in the murder of dozens of prominent Algerian intellectuals, activists, artists, and tens of thousands of Algerian civilians. One of the prime but elusive targets in this violent campaign had been Khalida Messaoudi, perhaps Algeria’s most prominent feminist politician and today’s minister of culture. We now know that the jihadist movement in Algeria was a large and central part of a global, well-organized, and extended campaign to combat opponents of political Islam, first at home within the Islamic world, then abroad throughout the West. Yet as efficient as groups such as the gia were in killing opponents or in forcing [introd uction]

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them into disorienting exile, they could not stop the political aesthetics of literary critique. In fact, the more innocents the militants killed, and the more the Algerian government began to censor criticism of its own highly questionable violent excesses, always couched in the language of repressing terror, the more the literature of protest flourished. Hence, rather than suppressing these new post–Cold War dissidents of the Muslim world,3 as Rushdie called them, the fraternal enemies of the Islamists and the military government fostered an entirely new literature, art, music, and even cinema, and unwittingly inspired in each a sense of utter urgency that refused despair and an unyielding determination to overcome the logic of violence. Alek Baylee Toumi’s play is perhaps the best example of the literature to emerge from this new generation of Algerian writers who choose to write their way through terror. The literary generation emerging from the civil conflict of the 1990s includes Anouar Benmalek, Maïssa Bey, Slimane Benaissa, Aziz Chouaki, Tahar Djaout, Yasmina Khadra, and Malika Mokeddem and has benefited from the sustained critiques of more established writers such as Assia Djebar and Rachid Boudjedra. This said, Toumi also issues an important caveat that is important for all readers to understand from the beginning. As he writes in his “warning,” he wants to ensure the proper distinction between the terms Islamist and Muslim. Islamists are, in his view, dangerous religious fundamentalists who often resort to terrorism against innocent Muslims and non-Muslims alike, in order achieve their earthly paradise. His work is thus written in defense of civilian Muslims and Others, but is strongly “anti-Islamist” and “antiterrorist.” x

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Violence in Algeria and indeed artistic reactions to it, however, did not surface ex nihilo. In fact, Algeria’s steady descent into terror during the 1990s was preceded by two turbulent millennia, marked by successive waves of foreign occupation, culminating in the modern period with the French capture of Algiers in 1830 and the establishment of Algeria as the jewel of France’s colonial empire. By 1954 the French military and political authorities could no longer contain Algerian nationalism. In July 1962 Algeria achieved independence, after an eight-year war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and marked one of the most violent episodes in the history of twentiethcentury decolonization.4 Alek Baylee Toumi was born during the French–Algerian War in a village in Kabylia and was still a young child when his nation finally won its independence. In 1965 Colonel Houari Boumediene overthrew President Ahmed Ben Bella, establishing a military dictatorship with the only legally recognized party the fln (Front de Libération Nationale), thus ending Algerian hopes for an open democratic society for three decades. In that same year Alek Toumi entered a French-speaking Jesuit school in Algiers. Hence, just as his homeland was beginning its controversial Arabization program, which linked linguistic reforms to nationalist identity politics, Toumi’s intellectual formation was firmly situated in the French Cartesian rationalist tradition. He received his baccalaureate, traveled to France, and then in 1984 continued his university studies at the University of Wisconsin. Meanwhile in Algeria during the 1980s, after a decade of firm control over the Islamist movement, the government of President Chadli Bendjedid (1979–92), who assumed power after the death of Colonel Boumediene, [introd uction]

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began to yield to pressure from religious conservatives. Perhaps the most important concession came with the passage of the Family Code in 1984, which greatly limited women’s civil rights and put them in a legally subservient position in relation to men.5 While the Algerian government confronted growing opposition from women’s rights movements, it also began to encounter extreme socioeconomic distress, fueled by a population explosion, massive state corruption, and grossly inefficient utilization of the country’s vast natural resources. Social unrest increased, and in October 1988 major youth riots forced the government to declare a state of siege. This decision proved fatal to the fln, which lost virtually all credibility as news of the killing of hundreds of Algerians by state forces proved true. In reaction to growing public opposition, President Chadli heeded calls for political liberalization. Algeria’s resulting new constitution in 1989 allowed for the creation of Algeria’s first multiparty system. Among the many parties that vied for power in this democratic process was the newly formed Front Islamique du Salut (fis). Clearly the fln never felt that the fis represented a serious threat to their power, but the fis won stunning victories, first in the municipal elections of June 1990 and then in the first round of the national elections held in December 1991. Already in the summer of 1991, the fis had called for the creation of an Islamic Republic and for instituting shari’a (Islamic law), and it also threatened armed revolt against the state. This threat of militant action led to the arrest of top fis leaders and hundreds of others. Among the newly formed parties that hoped to block the fis’s ascent to power through the ballot box was the Rassemblement pour la Culture et la xii

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Démocratie (rcd), led by Saïd Saadi and Khalida Messaoudi, who were both strong secularist candidates. Unable to check the fis’s swift rise to power, the military intervened in mid-January 1992, canceled the second round of the elections, dissolved the National Assembly, and voided the December election results. The Algerian government quickly installed a powerful military junta government known as the High State Committee, headed by Mohamed Boudiaf, a former war hero who returned after years of exile only to be assassinated about six months later in June 1992, during a live television appearance. After the military intervention and Boudiaf ’s assassination, the situation quickly deteriorated into a violent conflict between the military and the Islamists. The fis formed an armed insurgent movement known as the Armée Islamique du Salut (Islamic Salvation Army), or ais, and suddenly other militant groups formed and proclaimed a jihad against the state, its supporters, and cultural opponents. The ais and other groups immediately began to use fatwas to legitimatize killing their opponents, and prime targets of these fatwas during 1993 were journalists, writers, activists, foreigners, French speakers, and academics. By 1993 even more radical Islamist groups emerged, the most prominent of them being the terror conglomerate known as the Groupe Islamique Armé (gia). Many of the gia were veterans of the Afghan jihadist campaign against the Soviets, and they came to Algeria in the hopes of making it a central part of the global effort to overthrow corrupt (in their view) secularist governments. During the battle for Algeria the gia developed a reputation for killing intellectuals who refused to fall into line with its extremist views. One of the most outspoken crit[introd uction]

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ics of the Islamist movement to be murdered was the Algerian writer Tahar Djaout. Djaout’s murder in mid-1993 seemed to change the entire tenor of the Algerian civil war and brought international attention to the plight of Algerian intellectuals and to the relevance of their situation for intellectuals across the globe. Djaout’s assassination also set in motion the gia’s decision to step up its campaign to eliminate other opponents, and it began a long and bloody campaign to execute any writer or intellectual (along with other categories of targets) who dared criticize Islamist ideologies. Alek Baylee Toumi, like many others, including Salman Rushdie, Julija Sukys, and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka,6 was deeply affected by the murder of Djaout and understood long before al-Qaeda became a household name that the world had changed. Toumi also knew that the international media largely misunderstood the conflict. The media’s misunderstanding of Algeria was in part due to the tendency of international human rights groups and even Western governments to side with the Islamists. Many Islamists were granted political asylum in the United States and in Western Europe. One of the most prominent fis leaders in exile, Anwar Haddam, had managed to escape to the United States, from where he continued his advocacy of an Algerian Islamic state. From 1996 to 2000, he was held without charges by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, after being sentenced to death in absentia in Algeria for allegedly ordering acts of violence to be carried out there.7 Anwar Haddam is important here because his persona was partially fictionalized in the character of Madah (a composite name short for Mad-d-Allah, to symbolize Islamic fundamentalists) in the play.8 In addition to these current events and the realities xiv

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of Islamist rage that loomed large in 1995, the legacy of decolonization continued to haunt French and Algerian psyches. During Algeria’s struggles to achieve national liberation, one of the prevailing ideologies was that the fln represented the true sovereignty of the Algerian people. With that ideology came claims of authenticity and also the insistence that violence (even against their countrymen and rival nationalist movements) would liberate Algerians from their French overlords. These methods meant that the fln tolerated no middle ground, no collaboration, and no challenges to their claims to represent Algeria’s cultural authenticity and political legitimacy. And importantly, while the fln recognized the place of Islam as the religion of the people, it also remained secularist and socialist in orientation. Many French intellectuals supported the fln’s logic of violence during decolonization, and Sartre and de Beauvoir remained foremost proponents of the fln. They tended to see in the fln (and other national liberation groups around the world) the hopes for a worldwide proletarian, socialist revolution. Moreover, Sartre and de Beauvoir’s positions on Algeria drew international attention and were a constant source of embarrassment for the French government. Understanding this, Sartre and de Beauvoir used their symbolic capital as world-famous intellectuals to argue that European, and especially French, colonialism was incorrigibly corrupt and doomed to disappear. Prior to its extinction, though, colonialism would make desperate use of the most savage repression, including torture, to maintain its hold on its overseas possessions.9 Hence Sartre and de Beauvoir argued that violence against the colonial system was justified and necessary for the global liberation of humankind. [introd uction]

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By setting both Sartre’s and de Beauvoir’s ghosts on the historical stage of Algeria during the 1990s, Toumi evokes not only the powerful symbolism of two of the most important advocates for “Third World” national liberation, but also brings their spirits onto a violent historical stage permeated with the phantoms of the past. Toumi suggests rather provocatively that by condoning such unmitigated violence in the name of revolutionary abstractions, they helped to sow the seeds of this terrible present, where their fellow intellectuals are ruthlessly slaughtered in this harvest of hate. The reincarnated Sartre and de Beauvoir, who themselves had made it known that the notion of a spiritual afterlife was one of humanity’s grand illusions, are now in the mood for some self-criticism and seem to enjoy giving life on the stage a second chance. Their ghosts are summoned by Toumi, with a kind of magical realism, so that the viewer (or reader) senses that their appearance on stage is logical and natural. They are present in order to account for their own past advocacy of violence and at the same time to defend rationalism and democratic justice. True to the spirit of their philosophical positions, both ghosts defend the writer’s right of political critique and the role of the intellectual. But they are called back down to earth for other purposes as well: Simone de Beauvoir to defend women’s rights and Sartre to destroy radical Islamists’ claims that they rightfully occupy the space of cultural legitimacy vacated by failed secular nationalists. As a Francophone writer, Toumi stands his ground and allows the deteriorating situation in Algeria to speak for itself. And despite the playfulness of his literary devices here, there is a powerful message. According to Toumi, the radical Islamists attempted to use the rhetorical trapxvi

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pings of authenticity advanced during the nationalist period, an ideology that made sense given the brutality of French colonialism and its totalizing effect on identity. He shows that these Islamists have also sought to replace the secularist ideology with a species of religious fascism that would permanently destroy civil society. In one of the many terms coined by Toumi, the “fascislamists” are the thugs clad in religious rhetoric who stop at nothing in their effort to wrest the Algerian state from the military. At the same time, Toumi had no illusions about the Algerian state when he wrote the play in 1995 and demonstrated an equally well-grounded disdain for the military regime that was then ruling the country in the name of preserving order. From his point of view, the Islamists and Le Pouvoir — the military-backed state — each used the violence of the other side to justify a ruthless quest to dominate an ever-cowering Algerian population — common Muslim citizens such as the taximan, who in the play largely personifies the average pious man desperately trying to survive in this unrelenting war zone of impiety. Given the brutality of the war between Islamists and the state in Algeria during the 1990s, it might just take the ghost of Sartre and de Beauvoir to make sense of the situation. What is certainly clear in this play is that the power of critique that Sartre and de Beauvoir once possessed has in fact been transmitted to future generations of writers, and that these writers understand exactly what is at stake in the contemporary period. The Islamists were also no doubt equally aware of the stakes, which is why they began to target the very intellectuals, such as Tahar Djaout, who best communicated the democratic, secularist, and genderless values that Sartre and de Beauvoir once embraced. Moreover, knowing full well the reality of [introd uction]

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violence against innocent civilians, Toumi does not recoil from having his characters put this reality starkly. Toumi’s play thus refuses to yield to the radical Islamists in Algeria. Confronted with the wholesale murder of Algerian intellectuals and the Islamists’ desire to purge the country of all those corrupted by the West, Toumi was one of the first Algerian writers to put this battle in such provocative terms. As he sees it, human dignity hangs in the balance. Literature itself has a specific role to play, that of “engagement,” as Sartre himself put it. This wonderful pièce de théâtre, written from the perspective of an exiled intellectual, brings home the reality that has become all too familiar to readers in the post–September 11 world. Madah-Sartre gives us reason to believe not only in the art of resistance but also in the resistance of literary critique.

n ot e s I would like to thank David L. Schalk, Ladette Randolph, Loukia K. Sarroub, and Alek Baylee Toumi for their welcomed comments on this text. 1. For more on the effect of fatwas, see Daniel Pipes, The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West, 2nd ed., with a postscript by Koenraad Elst (New Brunswick: Transactions Publishers, 2004); Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trial of Political Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Fawaz A. Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 2. Tahar Djaout (1954–93) was assassinated in Algiers in May 1993 by the gia. He co-founded the journal Ruptures and wrote many important books, including his posthumous novel The Last Summer of Reason (St. Paul: Ruminator Books, 2001) and The Watchers (St. Paul: Ruminator Books, 2002).

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3. Salman Rushdie, “The Struggle for the Soul of Islam,” New York Times, July 11, 1993. 4. For more on the decolonization of Algeria see, James D. Le Sueur, Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics during the Decolonization of Algeria, forward by Pierre Bourdieu, 2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005); Matthew Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post–Cold War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); and David L. Schalk, War and the Ivory Tower: Algeria and Vietnam (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005). 5. For more on feminist opposition to the Family Code see Khalida Messaoudi, Unbowed: An Algerian Woman Confronts Islamic Fundamentalism, interviews with Elisabeth Schemla (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). Also see James D. Le Sueur’s Uncivil War and “Ghost Walking in Algiers: Why Alek Baylee Toumi Resurrected Jean-Paul Sartre and de Beauvoir,” French Culture and Society 10, no. 4 (Fall 2002): 507–17. 6. Wole Soyinka wrote the forward to the English translation of Tahar Djaout’s acclaimed novel The Last Summer of Reason (New York: Ruminator Books, 2001). See also Julija Sukys, Silence Is Death: The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006). 7. ins officials attempted to have Anwar Haddam deported back to Algeria, but this action was blocked. Failing to make a case against him, he was released in the United States in December 2000. 8. Le Sueur, Uncivil War, 312. 9. For more about French torture, see Henri Alleg’s The Question, preface by Jean-Paul Sartre, forward by Ellen Ray, and introduction by James D. Le Sueur (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006). See also James D. Le Sueur, “Torture and the Decolonization of French Algeria: Nationalism, ‘Race,’ and Violence in Colonial Incarceration,” in Captive and Free: Colonial and Post-Colonial Incarceration, ed. Graeme Harper (London: Continuum, 2002).

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In French the word islamiste refers to radical Islamic fundamentalists, to Islamic terrorists and their organizations. Musulman is a term used to designate mainstream Muslims, ranging from liberal, secular, or nonpracticing Muslims to moderate or conservative ones who go to the mosque but are not fundamentalists. In the case of the civil war in Algeria, the overwhelming majority of the assassinated people—journalists, intellectuals, school teachers, raped women—are Muslims. It means that: The victims are Muslims, while the killers, the assassins, the terrorists are Islamists This is a major difference between the two. The problem is that in English the word Islamic is used interchangeably to refer either to a Muslim or to an Islamist. It is very important not to confuse the two and to learn to distinguish between victims and executioners. Madah-Sartre is not anti-Muslim; to the contrary, it defends Muslim victims and all Others who are victims of terrorism. That is why Madah-Sartre is, without a shadow of a doubt, antifundamentalist, antiterrorist, and anti-Islamist.

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ma da h je a n -pau l s a rt re s i mo n e de be au vo i r mu lla hs and ps y -mu l l ah chi e f cha do r and cha do re t t e s co ps ta xi ma n (Hamid Lounar) chau ffe u r (’Mmi Ali) do ct o r s u rg e o n (Dr. Freeman) a rt i s t do o rma n t e rro ri s t n u rs e s pre s e n t e r g ua rd ra di o a n n o u n ce r ra di o re po rt e rs (Veronique Lamesche and Liz Miller)

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t hre e sta ge s 2. Center 1. Left

3. Right sta ge 1

m a d a h and five m u l l a h s go back and forth to see what is going on with the chadorized (veiled) sisters. Two mullahs wear “33-rpm” turbans on their heads and kamis (long robes with sleeves), and three wear black suits, white shirts without ties, and beards. m a d a h wears a chechia, a kind of little cap with holes, and a gandoura (a sleeveless North African long shirt).

Between stages 1, 2, and 3, place large sheets (white curtains). sta ge 2 Tribunal setting for m a d a h and s a r t r e . Tables. Chairs. sta ge 3 t a x i m a n and c o p s . s i m o n e d e b e a u v o i r . ch ado re t t e s . Hospital.

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It is an odd world that we live in where reality and fiction, truth and lies, reason and madness often go hand in hand, mix, dangle, and intermingle until they displace the boundaries that separate them! Survivors of this violent and absurd world, a world of illusion and chameleon-like men . . . You, who are trying to avoid fears and horrors of daily life, you who have the great privilege of coming here tonight . . . Time was I used to drink up memories. I did not see life pass by. Outside, opinion is a temple where perfumes, colors, and polls respond to each other. On the streets, children play, women sing, and rains of death slowly fade away . . . Cynical and worn-out intellectuals have been watching this end of the millennium slowly dragging out to its last days. There is still time to learn to read. Here is the story of one of those intellectuals and his companion, who have had, and still have, quelque chose à dire, something to say . . . a man and a woman who left their fingerprints on the twentieth century . . . Coming to attend the funeral of an assassinated writer, they were carjacked on their way home. You have surely heard about them, they left a little while ago. They were called Jean-Paul and Simone. The presenter introduces all the characters, finishing with s artre and s i mo n e , who are still in the sky. After presenting ma da h and the mu lla h s , curtain. Play the beginning of “Fool’s Overture” by Supertramp, the part with Winston Churchill’s speech. 1

Somewhere in the seventh heaven. Center stage. s im one : Are you ready? Do you have all that you need? s artre : One moment. My pipe, my glasses, something to write with. s im one : Paulo, are you sure you want to do this? s artre : He was a friend . . . Let’s go, Castor. Don’t forget your coat. Everything is arranged. We’re traveling incognito. They think we’re dead. We take a cloud to Paris, then Orly-Algiers, and then we go to Kabylie1 by taxi. Burial is tomorrow.

1. Kabylie is the largest of the Berber regions in northern Algeria. Berbers call themselves Imazighen, or “Free men,” and they are descended from the original population of North Africa, comparable to Native American Indians. 3

sc e n e 1 Algiers, on the east road. A taximan is driving with a woman in the back seat, dressed up in European style. He is stopped by many cops, some hooded. cop : (in civilian clothes) Get out of the car. Your papers.

The ta xi ma n gives the cop his driver’s license, insurance, and title. cop : Where do you come from? tax im a n : (in a French accent) From Algiers, Mr. Policeman. I went to buy medicine. My mother is ill. cop : Who is this woman? tax im a n : A customer. I’m driving her home. cop : Where are you going? tax im a n : I am going back home. cop : What do you think of the military power? tax im a n : But, Mr. Policeman, I . . . think nothing. I am not in politics. I work . . . I have nine children to feed. I am fifty . . . I have done nothing. cop : For the military fln or for the fundamentalist fis?1 1. fln (pronounced “efelen”) is the Front de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Front), a military-backed single party that ruled Algeria. fis is the Front Islamique du Salut (Islamic Salvation Front). Pronounced “feece,” it has the same sound as the French word fils, meaning son. 5

tax im a n : But . . . I am for nothing . . . I am a family man. I have nine kids waiting to eat. cop : You are . . . against religion. You are against God. tax im a n : No, I am not against. I am against no one. cop : Then you must be working with the police. You’re a rat, an informant. Talk. tax im a n : (begging) What do you want me to say? cop : Who are you for? Choose, or we’ll burn your cab. tax im a n : (crying, begging) I am old, I pray, I go to the mosque . . . I am not against religion. cop : But . . . whom are you for? Choose a side. tax im a n : I am for no one. I am against no one. Don’t kill me. I have nine children. cop : You are for the terrorists. You’re against us. Talk. tax im a n : What do you want me to say? I am for nobody. cop : Who are you? Who do you work for? tax im a n : For no one. I work to eat and feed my children. I work for myself. I am the only employee and the boss. I don’t do politics. cop : You’re clever . . . You refuse to talk. (He slashes the taximan’s left cheek with a blade.) This is a warning. Now scram.

sc e n e 2 Later, at a second roadblock. po li ce me n stop the tax i man . Two are standing on the road and several are armed, wearing hoods, watching. They look like the first cops. 6 [ act one ]

cop : Get out. Hands up. (searches him) Your papers. Who is this woman? Where did you find her? tax im a n : She is a customer. A neighbor. I am driving her home. cop : What does she do? tax im a n : Uh . . . teacher. She teaches in a grade school . . . little kids. cop : Ah . . . Who did this to you? tax im a n : (scared) No one. I hurt myself in an accident. cop : (sarcastic) So, just like that, you slashed your cheek. Perhaps shaving! tax im a n : But . . . Mr. Officer, I was just arrested, half an hour ago. cop : Who stopped you? What did you say? tax im a n : Nothing. I never did anything to anyone. cop : So why did you stop? tax im a n : Because they were in uniform, like you, and they had guns. cop : What did you say? tax im a n : Nothing. cop : You’re scared . . . Whom are you for? God the father, fln, or his son, the fis? tax im a n : (crying) For no one. Neither the father, nor the son. I am a poor guy; I love God the Holy Ghost. That’s all. cop : Where are you going? tax im a n : Home. My mother is ill. I have bought medicine for her. [ scene 2 ]

7

cop : Medicine? . . . It’s for the terrorists. You are with them. You supply them, don’t you? tax im a n : But, Mr. Officer . . . I haven’t got anything . . . I have done nothing. I have an ill mother who is waiting for her medicine (He shows him the little bag with milk in it.) You see? My mother is ill. Here’s her prescription. I have searched the entire city for medicine, but I only found two out of seven. And this milk is for the children (He is begging for his life.) cop : Who’s the aspirin for? You’re with them, with the military fln. You’re against the fundamentalist fis. tax im a n : No . . . No, Mr. Officer. It’s for my mother. She has a horrible headache. cop : Take a side. Between your mother and justice, what’s your choice? tax im a n : But, Officer . . . I am for no one. I don’t do politics. cop : Choose. Or we’ll take you away. tax im a n : (he hesitates, then speaks) I am not against you. I love both, my mother and justice. I love everybody. All I want is to work and live peacefully. To live, that’s our only luxury here. That’s not asking too much. Earn a living, buy some bread, find some water, and feed my family. I am not against you. cop : You’re not against us . . . But who are we? tax im a n : I don’t know . . . Justice. cop : Which one? Human justice or divine justice? tax im a n : I don’t know . . . yours. I am sure it is the right one. 8 [ act one ]

cop : (pointing to his uniform) What’s this outfit? tax im a n : A police uniform. cop : So, you are for the agents of the Securidad. You made a second mistake. We are God’s warriors. (He slashes his other cheek.) Watch out next time. Leave the woman here and go. tax im a n : But . . . Why . . . ? Why . . . ? cop : You’re lucky to have nine kids. Otherwise, we’d burn your car and you in it. You talk too much . . . Beat it.

sc e n e 3 The taximan goes to a medical doctor’s office. docto r : Who is it? tax im a n : It’s me, Hamid Lounar. docto r : Who? tax im a n : Hamid, the taximan. Open up. I am wounded. docto r : (opens the door) Come in. What’s wrong? Who did this to you? tax im a n : An accident. I had an accident at a roadblock. They took away the customer. I did not know her. I tried to lie to protect her. But . . . they still took her. May God protect her. docto r : You’re not very handsome . . . I don’t have any more sutures; there is a shortage right now. I am going to put in a bandage to stop the blood and prevent infection. Go to the hospital emergency room. Ask them to sew your face.

The taximan leaves with a bandage on each cheek. [ scene 3 ]

9

sc e n e 1 Kabylie in the springtime. Somewhere in the Djurdjura Mountains, two hours east of the capital of Algiers. sartr e has come clandestinely to attend the funeral of a writer, poet, novelist, and journalist. The following day, s a rtr e leaves in a cab. The chauffeur (’ mmi a li ) is listening to Kabyle music. ch au f fe u r : (in a Kabyle accent) This was the poetsinger who was oppressed for a long time. Before him, there was Si M’hand, the poet who spoke in verses. You know them, don’t you? Sir Jean-Paul, I think you do not speak Kabyle.1 Father Jean, Father Robert, Father Superior, they did love Kabylie. They were good men. First they kicked them out of the Collège . . . exiled. Now, they assassinate them. Ah . . . the beasts, they’ve even assassinated brave priests. Sir Jean-Paul, you say nothing. I think you’re sad. You shouldn’t let yourself be demoralized. That’s what these animals want. But . . . they won’t succeed. Never. s art re remains silent. ch au f fe u r : Now I am going to have you listen to another child of Algeria, a Jewish man from home

1. Kabyles speak Kabyle, a Berber language completely different from Arabic. In Algeria, Kabyles are to Arabs what Basques are to Spaniards, what Irish are to the English, what Kurds are to Iraqis. 11

. . . who we can listen to only on foreign stations! French, Arab, Kabyle, or Jewish, children of this country have been cursed, condemned to exile. (He plays “Adieu mon pays” [Good-bye, My Country] by Enrico Macias.) This is the hymn of the exiled, of all those who were forced to leave, and of all those who will be kicked out. One hour later, on the way to the airport, they encounter a roadblock — a “true” roadblock by the army, as opposed to a “fake” roadblock by terrorists. The two cars with sartr e are stopped. There are a dozen cops; some are in uniform, others in civilian clothes. It is impossible to know who they are. The chau ffe u r stops the music. one o f t he co ps : (knocks at the window) Turn off the engine. ch au f fe u r : (to the passengers) A true “false roadblock” or a false “true roadblock”? Real cops dressed as cops? Terrorists disguised as cops? What should I do? If I run them over, they’ll empty their guns at us . . . I was told that this road was safe. “Sleepers” . . . Even the cops are infiltrated. (to the cop) Achou? . . . What? What’s wrong? cop : Papers!

The c hau ffe u r , ’Mmi Ali, hands over his papers. c op : Get out, all of you. (The cop notices a Frenchman in the first car and an old European lady in the second one. Pointing to Sartre.) You . . . this way. (to the woman) You too, with him. c op : (to the others) You . . . Beat it. (to the chauffeur) Take this. (gives him an envelope) Go. 12

[ act two ]

ch au f fe u r : But . . . why? cop : (threatening with his Kalashnikov rifle) If you want them to stay alive, you’ve got to give this letter to the media. Do as we say, or we’ll kill them. We’ll burn your car and you with it. Now take the envelope and leave.

sc e n e 2 v oic e o f ra di o a n n o u n ce r : You’re listening to wrif-fm radio station, with a news brief from Veronique Lamesche. v er on i q u e la me s che : This morning, a carjacking on the road to Maison-Blanche Airport in Algiers. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and a woman who is said to be his companion, Simone de Beauvoir, were kidnapped. The gia, the Groupe International Armé, has claimed responsibility for this spectacular action that has succeeded, “thanks to the help of God,” the group says. The series of terrorist acts that have been paralyzing France continue. After the rer subway and the train tgv, a bomb was defused near the pyramid of the Louvre. On the ground level of the Eiffel Tower, guarded by seven hundred soldiers, a message was found: “Houbel Tower, you’ll soon be converted to Islam.” According to government sources in Algiers, “the dead are dead and therefore cannot be in Algeria.” The notorious and gossipy “sidewalk radio” has rumored the place of detention of Sartre and de Beauvoir. They are said to be somewhere in the underground in the “liberated zone” in East Algiers. (classical music playing) [ scene 2 ]

13

sc e n e 3 [The Attempt to Convert Sartre]

s artr e is put in a room, alone. Other prisoners are brought in to join him — some intellectuals, an artist, and a singer. artis t : You are Sartre, aren’t you? s artr e : You’ve recognized me, despite my age . . . Why are you here? Where are we? artis t : They kidnapped me yesterday . . . I am a . . . writer and also a painter. I used to show my artwork “Chez Vincent,” in his bookstore. He was a friend, a brother. But he is no longer of this world . . . this friend of arts and letters was gunned down. Goodbye book store. Good-bye culture . . . s artr e : What are they going to do to you?

[The artist slides his index finger over his throat.] s artr e:  You think . . . they’re going to kill you? artis t : No. The sacrificial lamb of the Muslim “Aid” holiday . . . you know. They’re going to slit my throat, Abraham’s sacrifice. They think I should be killed in the name of God, who asked Abraham to sacrifice his son. But God is not going to send a sheep to save my head, so I will be sacrificed instead. s artr e : They think they’re Abraham? artis t : They are convinced that they are the “Soldiers of God.” But they are only thugs, opportunists . . . sadistic, psychotic men, who use God . . . They want to extinguish the stars in the sky. s artr e : Are there others like you? artis t : (nods his head to say yes) There are men, women, young and old. There are also young virgins 14

[ act two ]

who are sacrificed for the sacred Fi(l)s. (A terrorist enters suddenly.) . . . Ask to talk to the big chief, not the Emir. terrorist: Get up! (He leaves, and the prisoners get up.) artis t : (in delirium) They are going to do the triage. Lakhdar got out of his cell. Nedjma,2 where are you, dear? They stole my sister, beat her up, gang-raped her, one after the other, in front of the old woman who was crying . . . tears of blood, tears of shame. They raped her for months, in the name of God. They loot, in the name of God. They kill, in the name of God. They rape, in the name of God. They decapitate, in the name of God. Pregnant, they abandoned her in the forest . . . in the name of God. She has gone insane. Where are you Mother Earth? They swarm and search you. They abuse and pollute you. They regulate you with their rules and their canons, their swords and their sticks, their pricks and their demons. It’s the veil and theft, the veil or rape, rape and madness . . . They burn bridges, houses, women, and children. Under the napalm, the forest is shaking . . . under the crackling of trees, from east to west, forests vomit their spleen. Black bile! The traitors are robbing and covering it up, then raping the land of our ancestors. ter r o ri s t : (comes back) Shut up! You, this way, you over there. Artist . . . to the basement. (to Sartre) Monsieur . . . (polite) please . . .

2. Nedjma: a first name meaning “the star.” It is also the title of Kateb Yacine’s major novel about a woman and the history of Algeria. Kateb is considered one of the greatest Francophone writers from North Africa. [ scene 3 ]

15

artis t : (before leaving) Two shadows fade away on the road. Farewell. Nedjma, where are you my mother, my protector? . . . ter r o ri s t : (to the artist) Shut up . . . (He pushes him away.) s artr e : I want to see your leader. ter r o ri s t : He is waiting for you. We know who you are. The radio has announced the news. (pauses, then firmly) . . . Are you ready? s artr e : Ready? ter r o ri s t : Yes. For the conversion. s artr e : What conversion? ter r o ri s t : You must convert to Islam if you want to remain alive. s artr e : Ah . . . you must be joking. ter r o ri s t : No. We are not. We never joke. It’s conversion or . . . (passes his finger over his throat)

Sartre shakes his head to say no.

sc e n e 4 Right stage. A hospital waiting room. v oic e o f ra di o a n n o u n ce r : (from offstage) You’re listening to wrif. Here’s Liz Miller with a news brief. v oic e o f li z mi lle r : The office of the president in the Elysée Palace has confirmed that Jean-Paul Sartre went to Algeria in order to pay a last tribute to a slain writer.3 Yesterday afternoon he was carjacked 3. Journalist, poet, and novelist Tahar Djaout was assassinated by Islamists in May 1993 with two bullets in the head. His death marked the beginning of the genocide of intellectuals. 16

[ act two ]

on the road to the airport. The French government, along with all political parties and labor unions, demands his immediate release. A politician from the extreme right has declared: “This time, Sartre deserves it. It’s so much the better if Simone ends up veiled. The true resistors are men of the fundamentalist fis fighting against the dictatorship of the military fln.” In a letter received by French news afp, the gia is demanding that Sartre and his companion convert to Islam. Committees for the liberation of Jean-Paul Sartre are popping up everywhere, including in mosques in France’s suburbs. The whole world watches helplessly, fascinated by this absurd farce. In reaction to these events, tourists are afraid of flying and many show-business stars cancel trips to Paris. The sa rt re family has been advised to remain silent. The waltz of diplomats starts backstage. Music: Jacques Brel, “Une valse à 1000 temps.” tax im a n : Are you a doctor? Can you sew me up? docto r : No surgical thread. There’s a shortage. Go bring me some thread. tax im a n : But where do I get it? docto r : Look for it. Try another unit, perhaps ophthalmology. I have no sutures for you. It is not a joke. The hospital has no money. We ask patients to be patient . . . cooperate. And especially to bring medicine with them. tax im a n : But where do you expect me to find it? docto r : You think I like this? I am a surgeon. Our pharmacy and hospital have nothing, neither antibiotics nor cotton, to say nothing of the water we lack. Chronic shortages. We’re broke. I am like a me[ scene 4 ]

17

chanic without spare parts. Except that I fix human beings and they can’t wait like used cars. Go . . . try elsewhere. Perhaps someone has something to share, a brave soul with a little piece. To sew your cheek . . . And watch out . . . watch what you say. The taxi ma n leaves and goes to another unit.

18

[ act two ]

Intellectuals Are Jews

sc e n e 1 Center stage. Faced by s a rt re ’s adamant refusal to cooperate, “they” send him do ct o r ma dah , a professional converter of atheists. madah : (Little and chubby. He is dressed in a traditional Algerian gandoura and a white cap. He enters and sits in front of Sartre. He is looking at a file, stroking his beard.) You have written Being and Nothingness. You are an atheist . . . that’s a sin. You lived as a sinner . . . that’s bad. You had a lot of women in your life. God gave you that right. But you drank whiskey; that’s very, very bad. You defended Djamila Bouhired1 in the fifties. That’s good but . . . she’s dangerous, a bad influence on our women. You were against Camus, and in general you supported the fln during the Algerian War. That’s what redeems you and gives you the chance to save your soul. You refused the Nobel Prize . . . excellent. That’s a Jewish prize. You should not let them buy you. Perhaps we’ll make another Dr. Beggar of you. Ah, Monsieur Beggar, what a good ally that Frenchman was! s artre : What are the charges against me? madah : Plenty of them. 1. Djamila Bouhired was a woman freedom fighter during the Battle of Algiers. Simone de Beauvoir wrote a book in support of her struggle. 19

s artr e : For instance. madah : Encourages critics and critical thinking. s artr e : So what? madah : It is very, very serious, since it is directed against us. (accusingly) You sign and circulate petitions: that’s very serious. You lead marches. You associate with bad women and heretics. Finally, you are a chronic atheist and alcoholic bum. But . . . there is worse than this. s artr e : What’s worse than being an atheist and drinking wine? madah : There are more serious charges. s artr e : What, then? . . . madah : There are worse things than being an atheist, drinking wine, eating pork, refusing to pray and living in sin. There is something worse than all of this. A sacrilege, the ultimate crime, our mortal enemy. s artr e : (intrigued) What is it? madah : You can’t guess? s artr e : No. I am only Sartre, not a fortuneteller. madah : (pauses . . . looks at him and cries out) Intellectual. (pauses) A critical intellectual. s artr e : That figures . . . madah : (looking somber) You are an intellectual, you live with intellectuals, you breathe like an intellectual, you eat like an intellectual, you dress up like an intellectual, and you have an immeasurable influence on these thinkers they call intellectuals. You are the prototype. 20

[ act three ]

s artre : (surprised . . . silent then) Ah! . . . Of course. Intellectual! madah : Yes, intellectual. Associating with intellectuals and feminists, our worst enemies. You are a laboratory of thinking. But . . . (conciliatory) I am your . . . last chance, before . . . (silence) You, the existentialist, who used to repeat to anyone hanging out on the Left Bank, that . . . (he looks up his cards) “Existence precedes essence . . .” Your existence ended and now you’ve had an extension. To see the world, twenty years after your death, in order to remake it. You’re perhaps living the essence you talked about. Before redoing, reconstructing the world that others were deconstructing . . . Tell me, what did you think you’d achieve . . . while alive? s artre : Nothing. I tried to help people. Help them help themselves, support them in their claims, in their desires to be free, in their dreams for a better life, in their projects for revolution. I especially wanted to live my life fully. Read, write, and say something to change the world. Help the world get rid of its despots and tyrants. De-despot it, transform it. That’s all. And you? Why did you kidnap me? madah : It was a mistake. It is your Kabyle colleague and his Jewish cousin that we wanted . . . Pierre, Jacques, and their committee . . . We caught you, and your wife, by accident. s artre : Where is Simone? What are you going to do with her? madah : We won’t harm her. Don’t worry. Simone is with the women. [ scene 1]

21

s artr e : When can I see her? madah : Soon, soon. It is only up to you. s artr e : Clearly, but what do you want? I have to admit that this is beyond me, kidnapping . . . a living dead man! madah : (firm) It’s I who ask the questions. You, you answer. I ask you to answer in simple language, prose. No philosophical jargon. Okay? s artr e : But . . . I would just like to know what you’re trying to achieve? madah : We fundamentalists have a project similar to yours. We also want justice. I remember your motto: “Do, make, act, and while doing, make yourself and be only what you’ve made of yourself.” The difference is that you thought you could do this alone, without God. s artr e : God is not a part of my consideration. madah : That’s your mistake. You believe in man. But men are not all Jean-Paul Sartre. Worse, you believe in women. One of your heretics used to say: Woman is the future of mankind! Fatal mistake. The future is chez Dieu, with God! A society without God, and governed by women, is doomed to failure. Look at Eastern bloc countries that did not believe in God and that you supported. They’ve crumbled. Disaster! s artr e : I have made mistakes. I admit it. I am only a philosopher, a simple human being. However, I differentiate between the political and the religious. You, you confuse philosophy, theology, and politics. A philosopher is not a political man. If he does engage in politics, he is neither a politician nor a 22

[ act three ]

demagogue. Your discourse is the same as the French extreme right, based on exclusion. Jean-Marie2 with a turban would look very much like you. madah : We have good relations with the extreme right you’re criticizing. These people you accuse of swimming in contradiction are more consistent than you. If we were opposed in the past, we now have the same enemies: Jews, feminists, and secular intellectuals, those who are against God, “God, country, family.” For us, France’s sole party of God is the National Front. We have the same program. Everyone stays in his home. We live next to each other, but separated. It is not racism. The French at home, and the Arabs in their homes. Everyone for himself, and God for all. We prefer believers to atheists, man to woman, Paul to Marie. s artre : Man to woman. Perhaps you prefer Paul to Marie, but I would say it is Jean-Marie that you prefer to Jean-Paul. madah : If we prefer Jean-Marie to Jean-Paul, it is because the first one loves God and the second one does not even believe in him. The first one goes to church and the second does not even look at it. The first one has an army of believers and the second one has an army of intellectuals. Since the first one supports us, the choice is simple. If you could believe in God, if you could only make a little effort, we would accomplish great things together, transform the world. Two believers like you and the revenge of God is complete. 2. Jean-Marie Le Pen is a French politician and leader of the extreme right party the National Front. [ scene 1 ]

23

s artr e : (half smiling . . . pondering) You intrigue me. You do know I am an atheist, don’t you? So why do you keep talking to me about God? madah : Because people listen to you. The young, the old, men, women, everyone still reads your works. You’re an exception. That’s why we would like to save you. Your body is finished, but think about your soul. s artr e : Leave my soul alone. You’d better take care of your donkey. You can’t even feed him, you can’t feed yourself, can’t feed your people. Instead of solving real problems, illiteracy, unemployment, the housing crisis, the shortage of water, hunger, you run away . . . You have an obsession: the Other . . . eliminating others who are different, at all costs. I have no time to worry about God. Moreover, during the Algerian War and Vichy France, your God often didn’t want to see, blinded by his own light. If Jesus turned his cheek, God turns his eyes . . . closes his ears and his nose. And he still does. Your God veils his eyes. madah : (furious . . . looks down. He is tense.) You talk like this about God. You are a heretic. We should burn you alive. s artr e : Calm down, calm down . . . We’re only discussing things. There is no need to burn me since I am already dead. Tell me . . . how do you explain that God is often so deaf ? Why doesn’t he hear the screams of those who are burned, of those sent to the gas chambers, of those whose throats are slit, of those who are raped . . . your God that you believe in so much? madah : Sacrilege . . . (he calms down) If you’re refer24

[ act three ]

ring to the Holocaust, it is because they were Jews. We slit the throats of traitors. What you’ve said about God is sacrilegious . . . You are sick. (He wants to leave, but the phone rings . . . He answers.) Hello . . . (pauses, then speaks to Sartre again) I have to go, it is very important. But I’ll be back in ten minutes. (leaves) Behind the window, the “psy-mullahs” who were observing the scene are debating . . . To continue or not to continue? They are engineers, doctors, psychologists, but also fundamentalists. All men with beards and suits. They are deliberating. mu lla h 1 : We must reverse the spell. He is possessed by Satan. mu lla h 2 : No. Let’s try again. He is hard to convert. He did not even believe in Christianity. He has no religious education, no basis at all. We must start from scratch. mu lla h 3 : You’re right. If we succeed with him, a large part of France would follow us. We would then have a more moderate government in the Elysée Palace. They would even sell us arms, perhaps Mirage fighter planes. ps y-mu lla h : Go ahead, Madah. Give it a try. (Madah returns on stage with a big book under his arm.)

sc e n e 2 Right stage. Hospital. Ophthalmology unit. tax im a n : Is there a doctor here? door ma n : There is no one. And you need an appointment. [ scene 2 ]

25

tax im a n : (begging) I am wounded. I need to be sewn up. I have nine children. Please, where is the doctor? door ma n : Do you have an appointment? tax im a n : Yes. (upset) With death. I have both cheeks open and if I am not sutured, I will die. I have a wife, nine kids, and a sick mother. door ma n : Okay, okay. Come in without an appointment. Did you bring your surgical thread and some cotton? tax im a n : My thread and cotton? door ma n : To clean your wounds and to sew you up. There is a shortage. There’s no hard currency to buy any. The beast has eaten it all, the oil, the cotton, and the thread. A real savage. tax im a n : What beast? door ma n : Beauty. It is a beauty that is also a beast. She comes from the West. tax im a n : (looking dumb) Ah! door ma n : (imitates him) Ah! . . She is a funny one. She waits for you, hugs you, smiles, then jumps on you and devours you. tax im a n : Ah! door ma n : She encourages you to borrow money then throws you crumbs. She lends you capital to better ensnare you. Instead of planting wheat, we planted factories. No more gardens, no more gardeners. Factories lose money but feed the beast. Not dumb at all, a real brain. A hydra of the g7. So civilized, but with a heart of stone. Drives around in a limo, goes around licking her chops. She has entered 26

[ act three ]

China. She takes an orange, presses it, and drinks up the juice. She builds up . . . then downsizes the workers. tax im a n : Ah! door ma n : Pay cuts, fewer workers, but more hours. The system is under pressure; it’s time for downsizing. No more hiring, they’re firing. A real vulture, without pity. Even with children who are breast-fed and orphaned. tax im a n : Ah! door ma n : A Third World nightmare. The beast is everywhere. Every year the interest goes up. We can’t pay it and we can’t even declare bankruptcy. Like a vampire, this beast has sucked all our blood, even milk for the babies. We have nothing left; she ate all that is green—earth, plants, and banknotes. Like grasshoppers in times of depression and the years of the Sirocco wind. This beast is called . . . tax im a n : Ah! door ma n : Foreign debt! tax im a n : Ah! door ma n : As for the forests . . . the mountains are burning. A real ecological disaster. Nothing is left, not even alfalfa. tax im a n : Where can I find thread? door ma n : Go to the street venders, in the back alleys . . . With local dinars? Maybe, but you need a lot. With real money, French francs or dollars, you can find some . . . that’s for sure. tax im a n : But where can I find real money? [ scene 2 ]

27

door ma n : Buy it . . . You’ll need plenty of money. tax im a n : Where can I find this money? door ma n : That’s your problem . . . You ask too many questions. You talk too much. I showed you how . . . Go away. I have work to do.

sc e n e 3 Center stage. madah : (enters, then sits facing Sartre) Mon Fi(l)s, it was my son who called. Where was I? (looks at his notes) s artr e : We were talking about God. madah : Yes. Do you know that without God, the Western world will have no real peace? That this material happiness is only an illusion. That your capitalism is condemned to failure. Sooner or later, it will crumble. What will be left? Nothing. What’s left for Third World countries? Nothing but unemployment. It’s impossible to pay our foreign debt. Even the U.S. debt . . . is larger than all the Third World debts put together. No job, no housing, no health care, no welfare. Not even hope. We fundamentalists give them hope, the hope that they lack so much. They believe in something, in God, and they are ready to die for Him. Life by God and for God. Repeat after me. There is no God but God and Mohamed is his prophet. s artr e : You know that I do not believe in religion. I have no faith, I lost mine very young. madah : Why? s artr e : People lose their eyesight or their hearing. I lost my faith. 28

[ act three ]

madah : Didn’t you go to church . . . ? s artre : I don’t believe in organized religion. I prefer to stay home and read the paper. madah : Hmm . . . a kaffre, a heretic! Have you read the Book? I suppose you did since you used to read one book per day. If only you had had faith, you could have become a good preacher, like Steve Catens. We saved his soul. He does not do drugs and does not sing. s artre : No. You’re mistaken. I have not read the Koran. But I respect good Muslims. I can imagine that it is the same story as the Bible. madah : (he pulls out a French translation) Here’s some reading. I won’t be back tomorrow. I’ll be back Saturday, and we’ll discuss it. s artre : Why . . . don’t you work on Fridays? madah : No. Thursday and Friday is the weekend in Algeria. We are the only country in the Mediterranean that has made this change. Since ’76, thanks be to God. s artre : Why did you make this change? People are lost. It is not the same in Tunisia and Morocco. madah : To entice people to go pray. This way we can take the roll, keep track of “absen-theists.” And settle accounts. s artre : That’s not good for your economy, since your neighbors don’t work on Saturday and Sunday. madah : Propaganda. To the contrary, we’re the only people who go to work when others are resting. [ scene 3 ]

29

s artr e : What did you mean by these lists of “absentheists”? madah : We know who goes to the mosque and who does not. Those who do not go on Friday have no excuse. Those who don’t go are put on a red list. In general, they drink wine and do not fast. We have our Big Brother, who watches everything. We know who drinks, who prays, and who does not. They are kaffres, heretics. This is forbidden. They must pay for it . . . I have to go. Read the Book, sincerely. Open your heart. Accept God as your savior, become God’s servant and your soul will be saved. madah leaves. Light on stage 1. ma dah joins the mullahs who are checking their lists and celebrating.

sc e n e 4 s artr e is imprisoned alone on the left stage. A guard brings him French newspapers: Le Monde, Libération. g uar d : Here! . . . (gently throws the papers) Your turn to have Dirty Hands and Nausea. s artr e : You surprise me. You have a sense of humor. g uar d : I am paraphrasing one of your dead comedians. We don’t laugh. Humor is stupid. It is one of the devil’s inventions. We don’t party either. There are too many people dying of hunger and thirst. We only want to hear the Word of God. s artr e : Can one sing? g uar d : No. We don’t whistle either. Do you know that Satan stimulates whistling by tickling your anus? s artr e : Really . . . But what do you do? 30

[ act three ]

g uar d : We listen to the Koran and we pray. That’s all. I am here to guard you, not to discuss. I have to feed you. We are going to sacrifice a sheep. In your honor we’ll roast it and have a méchoui.

The guard leaves and then comes back with a few friends and a sheep. They slit its throat on stage, in front of sartr e , who is . . . concerned.

[ scene 4 ]

31

Second Attempt at Conversion

sc e n e 1 Saturday morning. Center stage. ma da h is back, smiling and very happy. He is wearing a new gandoura, gray, opened. Under it, he wears a black suit with a white shirt, with no tie and no hat. madah : Bonjour, Monsieur Sartre. Did you have a good weekend? Did you enjoy your reading? Do you need anything? s artre : No, thanks. madah : Have you read the Book? s artre : Yes I have. madah : So? . . . (waits, hoping) s artre : I learned that God created Adam and Eve. The garden, the snake and the apple. I know that Abraham is Ibrahim. Moses is Moussa. Jesus is Aissa. That Ibrahim, Moussa, and Aissa are very common first names in North Africa. The Koran is a continuation of the Bible, the same source. It all depends on the interpretation you give to the text. madah : You’re right for Moses and Jesus. But you forget the last prophet after them, Mohamed. We believe in your prophets Moses and Jesus, but you don’t believe in ours. It only goes one way. There is no reciprocity. 33

s artr e : Perhaps, perhaps. But you . . . you can go to the West, preach and convert people. Can a Christian or a Jew go to your country and preach? The answer is negative. You do not allow others to preach in your country. madah : (silent . . . tense) s artr e : You . . . you can go to France, Europe, the United States, open a mosque, pray, and convert my people to your religion. Will you allow me to open up a church and talk about Jesus? No. You won’t. I do know that you have assassinated four Catholic priests in Kabylie, two nuns in Algiers, seven monks in Médéa, a bishop in Oran, and it’s not finished yet. Muslims who change religion or who just have a different interpretation are called “apostates.” You forbid your women from marrying Christians, Jews, or Blacks, on the pretext that they do not believe as you do. You see that there is no free exchange in (pointing at him) “your” religion. Can I, atheist Sartre, go to your land and preach my existentialism? madah : No, you are a kaffre, a heretic. We want to give you the chance to save your soul, not to corrupt others. Your file is already heavy. s artr e : If I wanted to burn in hell, would I have the liberty to make this choice? madah : Why do you want to burn in hell with Others? Why make a bad choice? Sartre shouldn’t think he is the character in one of his plays. Why become a Hugo Garcin, spending eternity with two criminals, when you can have virgins from heaven? Why do you want to make such a bad choice when you can 34

[ act four ]

redeem yourself, despite a life spent in fornication and scandals? You do know that Simone had lovers, don’t you? She cheated on you many times. You must wash away this affront with blood, by sacrificing this infidel woman. s artre : You want to kill Simone? madah : (silent . . . pauses before speaking) She is the devil in the flesh, the essence of evil. Our feminists look up to her. They have studied her books, they emulate her actions, instead of staying at home and making good Muslim children. They want to relegate man to a secondary position. In the U.S., Lush Rambaugh calls her disciples “feminazies.” Lush is right. We want to save her. You can start by making her wear the hidjab, the Islamic veil. s artre : You don’t want a Simone but rather a Sinone.1 See-mone? No! See-nun? Oui. madah : You surprise me Jean-Paul . . . (cynical laugh) humor . . . Beauvoir is more dangerous than Kahina,2 a redheaded Berber Jewish woman, who fought my Arab ancestors. s artre : Why do you hate Jews? Aren’t Arabs Semites? You are also children of Abraham, aren’t you? madah : They hate Arabs. They have colonized Jerusalem. s artre : Hate has been taught to you. It is learned 1. Simone de Beauvoir is considered the mother of French feminism. 2. In the eighth century, when Arab invaders arrived in North Africa, they met fierce resistance from a young Berber woman named Kahina. She succeeded in uniting various tribes to fight against the new colonizers. [ scene 1 ]

35

from one’s parents, one’s family, one’s friends, in one’s town. Fear of the Other, mixed with ignorance. Amalgams and generalizations make an infallible recipe to spread this racist virus. Vichy France had the same reflex . . . Have you ever wondered why you have this hate in you? When an Arab, a Jew, and a Black start killing each other, have you ever wondered why Jean-Marie applauds and says: Three fewer Negroes! madah : Jews refused to believe in the prophets. They refused Moses, Jesus, then Mohamed. s artr e : Your followers teach in school that, during religious holidays, Jews have the obligation to make bread with Arab blood. And this horror is not a fantasy. It was taught to the child of a friend of mine, who was horrified. He is a Muslim himself and he is revolted by this. What is this hate? The Koran, which I’ve just read, talks about “People of the Book.” This is a noble expression that describes God’s people, Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Why do you distort everything? What is this abominable culture of hate, cultivated and spread by your disciples, who are filled with hatred? madah : Jews must be persecuted until they convert. s artr e : How about Christians? madah : Christians have betrayed us. They are allies of the Jews. They too must convert or will end up in hell. s artr e : But why should the whole world adopt “your” interpretation of a religious text — yours, Madah? I finished reading the Koran yesterday. I found 36

[ act four ]

in it a lot of peace, tolerance, respect, and love. It is even said that men are free to believe or not believe. So why is your interpretation better than others? madah : Because it is God’s law. We must save you in spite of yourself. I went to college. I know what I am talking about. s artre : (cynical) For someone who never graduated from high school . . . well. I know you went to college in Europe because you were a member of the only political party, the fln. That you used to be married to a European woman . . . while you ordered others not to marry Christians. When I died in 1980, you had just been excluded from the party. madah : (embarrassed . . . mumbling) But . . . s artre : How do I know? You forgot that I supported the fln in ’54. I kept friends in it, often talked to them. Especially in ’78, after the fall of the Shah of Iran and the death of your dictator. My friends were betrayed, exiled. They kept silent for years. That was their mistake. One should not remain quiet. Silence is death. If you speak, you die, and if you remain silent, you die. So, speak out and die. It is better to die, head high, than live as a coward. It’s even better to live . . . standing up. madah : (concerned) And you? Who gave you the right to speak for the Third World? Who do you think you are? Why should we adopt your values? Why do you want to export democracy? . . . You just want to exploit us again. s artre : Democracy and freedom are not Western luxuries, but rights for everyone. I have defended, [ scene 1 ]

37

and still defend, liberty and justice for all, including you Madah. I would like to see them rule the world. I accept diversity and difference. All Others who are different I accept, especially when they do not agree with me. That’s called tolerance. But you, Madah, you hate difference, you fight it. You claim responsibility for the killing of secular and Muslim intellectuals, poets, comedians. madah : Because they are our enemies, allied with the Jews. Feminists want to have four husbands. They are the sparrow hawks of colonialism and daughters of Joan of Arc. One of them was rude with our leader. s artr e : What did she do? madah : (flash back . . . project picture or video of the scene) Look at her. She came in front of the cameras, without a veil: that’s forbidden. She wore tight pants: forbidden. She wore make up: forbidden. She went to the hair salon and curled her red hair: forbidden. She wore a scarf on her shoulder instead of covering her head: forbidden. She spoke French: forbidden. And she looked him in the eye: sacrilegious. She came to challenge our values and (furious) . . . broke . . . seven rules! Seven! She is the sister of Satan. If Kahina3 thinks she is flouting us, she’ll pay for it one day. s artr e : (silent) madah : (calms down) She is a Jewess, a Barbra Strei3. An allusion to Khalida Messaoudi, one of the leading women’s rights activists and advocate for democracy in Algeria. A born redhead, she received an Islamic fatwa condemning her to death in 1993 and has survived many assassination attempts. See her English biography Unbowed. 38

[ act four ]

sand. Look at feminism, what will it lead to? Look at the U.S., infected by aids, and lesbians who hate men. It is because of them that men become gay. God sent aids to punish homosexuals. This is Simone’s fault, because of what she wrote. We hold you responsible for your wife’s acts. s artre : You confuse feminist, womanist, women’s rights, activists, and hate. You put everything in the same bag. I can assure you that Simone, the mother of feminism, is full of love. She still loves man, a lot of men. She was not my wife but my companion. madah : That’s the problem: you should’ve gotten married. Do you know that you can have four wives, like the prophet? Well . . . I know that you had a lot of women but you should keep an eye on them. Cut their nails or they scratch you. Otherwise, it is the end of everything. But you, Sartre, you supported Simone in her struggle. Women must obey not order, follow not lead, submit not uplift. The Second Sex means that women must remain second, after men. Adam first, then Eve. It’s God’s law. s artre : You mean . . . a second-class citizen. madah : Yes . . . she is still a citizen. Just like in a train, first class for men and second class for women. It’s better than missing the train. But I don’t have time for semantics. Women must submit to men, that’s God’s will. It’s in the Koran and in the Bible too. The same source, you just recognized it. If women were our equals, then we would have seen women prophets. We never did. s artre : How do you know? [ scene 1 ]

39

madah : I repeat that Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohamed were all men. There will never be any more prophets after Mohamed. Women are the devil, Satan, temptation . . . Evil! When a man sins with a woman, it’s because she has tempted him. And your Simone with her theories has only corrupted our girls. A woman must remain a virgin until marriage, pure private property for the exclusive use of her husband. She must make God-fearing children. You Westerners condemn polygamy but practice it in the closet. You’re not consistent. You had many mistresses and Simone had many lovers. You’re not a man. s artr e : I have never been married. We had a contract in which we were both free. I was free to see whom I wanted. And so was she. madah : You dare to call that freedom . . . You were free to be cuckolded! For us, a cuckold is not a man. In the West, you’re hypocrites. You say one thing and do the opposite. Fifty percent of Frenchmen are cuckolds. France is a country of women controlled by feminists. France colonized us and wants to recolonize us. Intellectuals, Francophones, feminists are her agents. They are the “Party of France.” s artr e : Wouldn’t it be fair to call you the party of the Saudis or Iran? You have imported an ideology that did not exist in North Africa thirty years ago. madah : Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are Islamic countries. s artr e : Iran is a kingdom with apartheid based on sex . . . It’s like South Africa in the fifties where women wearing chadors have replaced the Blacks. 40

[ act four ]

The chador is the passbook. As far as the Gulf kingdoms are concerned, they practice slavery and are governed by corrupt dictators. madah : Perhaps . . . But don’t worry; they’ll pay for it some day. They are temporary allies. They are also your allies. s artre : It is true that they guarantee Big Oil’s interests, cheap gas at the pump. They give you funding, arms, and especially a regular dose of fundamentalism. If you want to free your people, then stop oppressing women, killing intellectuals, and burning schools. madah : Killing an intellectual is better than killing one thousand policemen. The media jump on the news like dogs. They get a big return on their investment fast. The death of an intellectual is a loss for his wife, his children. It is a loss for France but not for Algeria. We must destroy the “Party of France,” beginning with the language. s artre : What do you plan to do to the French language? madah : Replace it with English. French is a language of colonization. s artre : Every Foreign language could be seen as a colonizer. The more you take of it, the more it takes you. The more we think we master it, the more it masters us. The better we speak it, the better it speaks to control us. You’re naive to believe that we can change languages like we change shirts. You also seem to forget that English, a British language, is also a language of colonization. [ scene 1 ]

41

madah : We prefer English to French. A great evil calls for a great remedy. We need to replace French with a language that allows access to computer science and technology. Look around you. Our youth speak only Arabic and English. s artr e : Why do you reject the Algerian dialect and want to impose classical Arabic? Your mother, your family, on the streets, in the markets . . . no one speaks Middle Eastern or standard Arabic but a Creole mixture comparable to Afrikaans. Why this mystification? Isn’t classical Arabic a foreign language for your mothers, your sisters, your aunts? madah : We will ban this street dialect. We will ban all uses of Creole Arabic. No more popular theater, no more Raï music,4 no more Andalusian music. We will purify the Arabic language of the people until it becomes like clear water. Arabic was creolized with Berber and French . . . and a lot of Spanish, Turkish, and Italian words. In France, don’t you fight the invasion of English words? We’re doing the same. s artr e : No. It’s not the same. We have not banned French to replace it with Latin, nor with English. That’s precisely what you’re doing. Ethnic language cleansing! You want to exterminate culture because it is impure. This is self-hate. Why do you hate so much? Hell is in yourself, it is not Other people. madah : We are Arabs, we are only Arabs, and nothing but Arabs. 4. From Oran, west of Algeria, across from the Spanish border, Raï (pronounced “rye”) music is a mixture of North African, Oriental, and Spanish influences. Its lyrics are often about love and sex, sung in Farabic, a mixture of French, North African Arabic, and Berber. Raï singers are known for drinking a lot of whiskey. 42

[ act four ]

s artre : A new Aryan race? How do you know you’re not mixed? Are you pure? madah : Absolutely. That’s why we should use a pure language, the language of religion, of the prophet and of God. There is no room for impurities. God speaks in Arabic. s artre : God speaks all languages. God is multilingual. madah : (pauses . . . surprised) s artre : What will you do with the masses that do not understand classical Arabic? How about Berbers, native North Africans? And Beurs, the children of immigrants workers who only speak their Creole or French? madah : One sure thing is . . . we must kick out the last vestige of colonialism, its language. We must get rid of French. (He is very nervous . . . shaking.)

Curtain.

sc e n e 2 Right stage. The pediatric unit of a hospital. tax im a n : Where is the doctor? door ma n : He’s not here. tax im a n : Is there anyone else? door ma n : This is pediatrics. There are only children and women. tax im a n : I am wounded. I need surgical thread. I can pay. I brought hard currency. (shows his wound and the money) [ scene 2 ]

43

door ma n : There is no one here. They killed the poet and the pediatrician, the singer and the dancer, the clown and the psychiatrist. No one to heal, no one to laugh, no one to listen. Children are afraid and mothers are crying. Go to the newborn service, they’ll treat you. You’ll need thread. tax im a n : I haven’t found any. door ma n : We can’t work without medicine. tax im a n : I brought real money. door ma n : Ah . . . In that case, go to the admissions office. Ask for Tombeza, no one else. Say hello and tell him that you need to talk to him . . . That I sent you. Tell him you’re my cousin from Musiki and buy him “some coffee.” You get it . . . ? He needs money to travel to Europe with his son. Now, I hope you understood me. And watch out what you say. tax im a n : Thank you. Thank you. (shakes his hand) God bless you. (He walks out and goes to the admissions office.)

sc e n e 3 Admissions office. door ma n : What do you want? tax im a n : I am looking for Tombeza. door ma n : He is not here. tax im a n : I was next door and they sent me here. door ma n : What’s wrong? tax im a n : My cheeks are talking. I need to see a doctor. 44

[ act four ]

door ma n : Ah . . . you’re the guy who talks too much. That’s not good; you can get killed for it. Let me see. (looks at his wound) Got an appointment? tax im a n : What appointment? This is an emergency. door ma n : Then go to the emergency room. tax im a n : They sent me here. door ma n : Here you need an appointment. You should always make an appointment in advance because there’s a year’s waiting list. tax im a n : A year! . . . door ma n : Without pull, without connections, you can’t survive. For housing, you wait ten, fifteen, twenty years to find an apartment after you’ve graduated from college. Here, it’s just one year. I can tell you’re not from here. tax im a n : I am . . . from here. But I have always been in good health. I did not know I was going to be wounded. door ma n : An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You should’ve made an appointment to see a doctor a year ago. tax im a n : (begging) Please . . . tell me where I can find Tombeza. door ma n : Well . . . You do need an appointment to talk to Tombeza. tax im a n : What? He’s not a doctor, he’s a bureaucrat. door ma n : Here you may be able to talk to a doctor without an appointment. You may be seen without an [ scene 3 ]

45

appointment. You may even be treated and given free samples without appointment. You may even leave without paying and without saying thank you. But . . . you cannot see Tombeza without an appointment. tax im a n : Ah . . . door ma n : Why do you want to see Tombeza? tax im a n : He is my cousin. We come from the same village. door ma n : Where is he from? tax im a n : From Musiki. We used to herd sheep together. door ma n : Ah . . . (smiling) You should’ve said so earlier. Okay, he is no longer here. I swear, on my mother’s life, it’s the truth. He left, on a mission. Right now he must be in a meeting in Europe. Go to the morgue. You will find thread there. They are always sewing together the raped, the beheaded, the decapitated, before burying them.

46

[ act four ]

Third Attempt at Conversion and the Party of France

sc e n e 1 Center stage. s artre : Why this hatred of the West . . . of France? Can you explain to me what you mean by this “Party of France”? madah : In 1962, with independence, France left Algeria . . . But she left her children behind. They are the new rulers. s artre : I am French. Does that make me a member of the Party of France? madah : No. Not you. You supported our revolution in the sixties. s artre : If I had been a member of the extreme right oas,1 would you consider me one of the Party of France? madah : Of course . . . but you weren’t. The oas put a bomb in your apartment in Paris. But today, you’d almost be one of the Party of France. s artre : Why almost? madah : Because intellectuals — your disciples, your emulators — are our worst enemies. The Beauvoirians, feminazies, Kahina and her sisters march 1. The oas (Organisation de l’Armée Secrète) was an ultra-right organization of fascist settlers during the Algerian War. 47

against us. It is this third option that is the Party of France. They are Harkis,2 France’s agents! s artr e : Aren’t you agents of the Saudis? Aren’t you the “harkislamists” of the mullahs? madah : The Harkis were collaborators. I only collaborate with God. s artr e : Or with a party called the Party of God, an agent of the terrorist International. madah : We want to liberate our country. We want to liberate Jerusalem and then all Islamic nations. We must fight France. s artr e : Which France? There are liberals and conservatives, communists and extreme right-wingers. In every group, you have subgroups, sets, subsets, tendencies and so on. The French nation is Januslike, it has two faces: one is modern, universal, and stands for human rights and freedom. The other is racist, anti-Semitic. And the latter is your ally. What did France do exactly? madah : France supports the military junta. s artr e : You want her to support you. madah : France is our worst enemy. She is controlled by Jews. Look at the media, the banks, the universities, intellectuals. All . . . all of this is in the hands of the Jews. We want Algeria to become one fundamentalist country, just like you want France for the French. We’ll bring back our immigrant workers and 2. The Harkis are Native Algerians who fought on the side of France, against independence, during the French-Algerian War of 1954– 62. They are considered traitors by their fellow Algerians. 48

[ act five ]

turn them into good believers. They should not mix with Christians. s artre : Separation of races and people. You have invented nothing. Fundamentalism is an old idea, brought back from the drawers of history. We’re in the era of recycling. After cans, bottles, plastic and paper, some zealots of the nineties recycle ideas. With you, it’s everyone for himself and the devil take the hind most. You trivialize racism. madah : This is not racism, this is responsible segregation, a “fecund regression.” Everyone will gain in the end. Multiethnic societies are in ruins: look at Yugoslavia. They massacred Muslims and the West did nothing. For many years you watched while civilians were being slaughtered . . . you let it happen, you let an entire population be killed . . . Children were massacred. Men were sent to camps, and from camps to mass graves. Muslim women were humiliated then raped . . . while the Western world did nothing. s artre : Sure, the West is guilty, a clear case of cowardice. Isn’t this what you’re doing with your “marriages of pleasure”? You’re worse, you’re raping your own women . . . daughters, sisters, mothers. If they are not veiled, they are raped. Raped then decapitated. What an ignoble crime, a horror, this gangraping of women you call a marriage of joy. You’re disgusting bastards and horrible criminals. You attack defenseless girls alone. You are cheap cowards, worthless scum. Where is your pride, where did you bury your honor? madah : (tense . . . looks down) [ scene 1 ]

49

s artr e : Who pronounced that famous fatwa that legalized the rape of joy? You kidnap women, you marry them temporarily one after the other, with just enough time to wipe off your sex. Then you divorce them. Who blessed this practice? madah : I wouldn’t know. s artr e : Yes, you do. Your men did it. madah : I’ve always been opposed to it . . . but I can’t control everybody. I agree that they are cowards. But . . . so are you, Sartre. The military torture people and you say nothing. Do you know how many of us have been arrested, beaten up, tortured, forced to drink dirty water? Do you know how many have been sodomized? Castrated? Where was the West? Why didn’t you say something? Where do instruments of torture, guns, planes, napalm, come from? Who arms the military? Isn’t it cowardice to back torture? s artr e : Torture is horrible. But you’re not the only ones who have suffered. Thousands of innocents, who have nothing to do with you, have been tortured . . . Average citizens, students, workers, were arrested then tortured by the single party in power. And you used to be with the fln. One day you jumped on the bandwagon of democracy and highjacked it. madah : (silent) s artr e : What about your fundamentalist friends who have been threatening, harassing, beating, burning, chasing, exiling . . . for the last twenty years? Who started this campaign of terror? Your men. They’ve been terrorizing everyone. madah : (silent . . . stunned) 50

[ act five ]

s artre : We must condemn all those who use violence and torture. Terrorism against innocent civilians has never solved anything. It is true that the West has often been cowardly, abandoning civilians. I have often said it. But you are no better. You harass, beat up, and kill women . . . that’s cowardice. You kill poets, that’s cowardice. You kill foreigners, that’s cowardice. It’s against your own laws of hospitality. You assassinate your own intellectuals and say it’s because they are privileged people who speak French. That is wrong: they are average citizens, often poor, who refuse your purification of cultures. They have no protection. madah : (silent) s artre : After more than twenty-five years of fln dictatorship, they have to live under your reign of terror. Why don’t you fight the party apparatchiks? If you were men, as you claim to be, you would attack the big sharks, the party lords, the mafia that controls the economy, the vampires who suck the blood of the people. madah : Their day will come soon. s artre : Allow me to doubt this. Their day may come or it may not. madah : What are you trying to say? . . . s artre : They’ll be rehabilitated. I do know that all crooks and sharks that became rich on the black market give you money. They clear their conscience by paying taxes for the Father, the fis — the son, and the Holy Spirit. madah : We take all the help we can get. We can’t [ scene 1 ]

51

afford to be particular. In France the conservatives don’t spit on the votes of the extreme right, the liberals don’t reject the communist votes. We also make temporary alliances. We don’t like it but we have to live with it before we can change the system. s artr e : How? Do you have an economic program? What is your social program? madah : A divine society. For God. A project based on God’s law. No more taxes, we’ll have zakat.3 No police. We’ll have Islamist militias who will enforce shari’a.4 People will live closer to God, in the way of God. We want a just world, a better world, an Islamic world where the word of God will be obeyed. That’s why we resent ungodly France. s artr e : Since you hate the West so much, and since you want a pure Arab state, why do you put your children in French or Swiss schools? Why aren’t they in Saudi Arabia or Iran? madah : That’s just propaganda from the Party of France. It’s a question of distance. While we’re waiting to have our own schools, we put them in our neighbors’ schools. This way they can convert. We want to learn from you and for you to learn from us. We want to save the soul of the whole world. That’s our mission. s artr e : (cynical) Really? You make a decree for the Arabization of schools for your people and at the 3. One of Islam’s five pillars, zakat is a form of charity. Once a year, Muslims must donate about 2.5 percent of their savings to the poor. 4. Shari’a is the Islamic law as it is applied in Islamist states, such as Saudi Arabia or Iran. 52

[ act five ]

same time put your own children in French schools. Well . . . that’s not very consistent, is it? I don’t understand why all those who hate France run toward it as soon as they have a little headache. madah : Because we don’t have good hospitals. Why is that? Because you French colonized us . . . exploited us for centuries. Now it’s our turn. You should read your own prefaces . . . Fanon’s book.5 Do you reject what you used to preach? s artre : You are the master of the art of finding excuses. I read my own prefaces. You should read Hegel! Today they listen to you. Tomorrow you’ll be forgotten. Today you’re killing people. Tomorrow you’ll be killed. Where are the original followers of the Ayatollah? Exiled, banned, or jailed. The dissidents who lived in Washington ended up hanged in Teheran. The wheel turns and turns, and one day your turn will come. madah : I’m not afraid of death. I know I am going to heaven and I’ll take with me seventy members of my family. s artre : You’re sure? madah : Yes. It is the will of God. s artre : What if there is no heaven? madah : (yells) You’re a heretic. Impossible. There is a heaven. 5. Frantz Fanon was a black psychiatrist from Martinique who worked in Blida, Algeria, in the fifties. He joined the Algerian freedom fighters in 1957 and is the author of The Wretched of the Earth, a powerful book about decolonization. [ scene 1 ]

53

s artr e : (tries to calm him) Be assured . . . there is a heaven. madah : (surprised) Ah . . . you’re becoming wiser. (happy) I see a light of faith entering your heart. s artr e : I am going to surprise you. There is a heaven, and I come from heaven, I who am an atheist. madah : Impossible! Those who do not believe in God will burn in hell. s artr e : No. It is possible, since I just came from heaven. madah : It’s impossible. s artr e : It is possible . . . God saved my soul. madah : (stunned) s artr e : For defending you and your friends in 1954 and 1961. I had accumulated enough good deeds. Plus Simone and I had adopted an orphan, a native Algerian girl. madah : (mumbling) Yes . . . I know. s artr e : I am an atheist, yet . . . I do live in heaven. madah : (stunned) s artr e : God is fair and will judge you on your acts. Your actions will count more than the show you’re putting on. I agree that the world cannot keep on like this. The Third World is being strangled economically, that’s why it is exploding. Unemployment in Europe is 15 percent. In Africa, it is 50 percent, 60 percent, and even more. The Western world knows about it but looks the other way. People have nothing, no work, and no way out. 54

[ act five ]

madah : When you have nothing — no bread, no water — there is still faith. Belief in God. Belief that tomorrow will be better. We give people faith, that’s what you philosophers cannot provide. You write theories about the proletariat, you and your friends, intellectuels engagés . . . (sarcastic) You talk about revolutions with caviar and silver spoons in your big mouths. Little spoiled bourgeois brats with guilt complexes . . . You so-called intellectuals, you are pathetic. You are more to be pitied than to be censured. s artre : More to be pitied than . . . killed. madah : (silent) s artre : We can’t choose our parents or our class. Speaking of caviar, I never liked it. As for revolutions, beware . . . You’re turning into oppressors. You want power, and power corrupts. madah : No. We have God. As long as we have faith, he’ll protect us from corruption. A believer with his faith is untouchable. s artre : Perhaps, perhaps . . . But we can live a good honest life without religious zeal . . . Can’t we have moral values without religion? madah : No. You must first believe in God and have a religion. Our detractors call us zealots, fundamentalists, fanatics. But we are sure to be on the right road, the road to Allah. s artre : You believe in Allah, don’t you? Tell me: are Dieu, God, and Allah the same? madah : Absolutely. Dieu in French, God in English, and Allah in Arabic. It is all the same. Elohim in Hebrew, Jah in Jamaican. There is only one God. [ scene 1 ]

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s artr e : You’ve just used five words, five different roads to go to God. So your road is not the only one. Some Muslims are waiting for the Mahdi, another prophet. How do you explain that? madah : There will never be another prophet after Mohamed. It is a heresy to claim so. s artr e : You’re not answering my question. How about the Bahais in Iran, who had a prophet in the eighteenth century? madah : They’re heretics. s artr e : For you, Shiites are heretics. For many Shiites, Bahais are heretics. For me, you . . . are the heretic. madah : (laughs . . . then appears to be saying a little prayer) I will save your soul. (notices Sartre thinking hard) . . . What are you doing? s artr e : I am trying to follow your reasoning . . . trying to understand your logic. I confess I am lost. If religion is a road to God, and if all roads, as they say, lead the Fronts, our political parties, to Rome,6 why are you killing Others? madah : Because my religion is the best . . . the last and the most complete. Our prophet is the last one. s artr e : But every religious person is convinced that his religion is the best. Every philosopher is convinced that what he claims is true. But one day, will they all realize that their claims are not infallible? . . . 6. This refers to the Rome conference of 1995, where the fis (Front Islamique du Salut), the fln (Front de Libération Nationale), and the Socialist ffs (Front des Forces Socialistes) met to “negotiate.” 56

[ act five ]

Intellectual fads go out of style. As do clothes, shoes, or music. Why is your way of reading a text the best? Isn’t there a multitude of interpretations? Religion has never been an exact science. madah : There are interpretations made by heretics who call themselves free spirits, intellectuals. They are allies of Jews and feminists, our worst enemies. s artre : Why is your interpretation better than that of a secular Muslim’s — Averroës, Attaturk, Salman Rushdie, or Kahina, for example? madah : Averroës and Attaturk are dead. Leave the dead in peace. Rushdie is a heretic, he must die. Kahina is a feminist and Jewish. She must also die. All feminists are Jews, it’s the fault of your concubine. She made a bad example. Rushdie is a dirty “salman,”7 Kahina is the “sal-(wo)man.” It’s Beauvoir’s fault. s artre : What are you going to do to Simone? madah : A tribunal of women will judge her and save her soul. s artre : What are the charges against her? madah : Wait . . . Let’s go outside, get some fresh air . . . Tell me, have you really met God? . . . (whispers) What’s he like? s artre : Ah . . . what’s he like? (smiles) You’ll be shocked. It’s a secret . . . Perhaps I’ll tell you some day. madah : (takes Sartre toward the left stage) 7. In French the adjective sale, is pronounced “sal,” and means dirty. [ scene 1 ]

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The curtain closes on center stage. It opens again on the left showing ma da h and s a rt re . Light on stage 1, the left stage, then light off again.

sc e n e 2 [The Persecution of Simone and the Reading of the Charges]

s im one enters on stage 2. Her hair is red. She is dressed in white, with a squared crown on her head. There are a c h i ef ch ado r (tall, in her forties) and seven little c h ad o r ettes (thirteen to twenty years old), wearing large “hands” (mains de Fatima) on their uniforms. The uniform is a military type, with a long brown shirt and pants, and with a scarf covering the head. Their chi e f wears a chain with a “crescent” around her neck, and is sitting in the center of the stage. The ch ado re t t e s will chant the chorus. simone is sitting, facing the chi e f cha do r . ch ief cha do r : Your file is very heavy. You are the master thinker of our homegrown feminists. Your writings have been declared heretical. ch or u s : All these writings by a heretic, Must all be burned in public. ch ado re t t e 1 : Kahina and her sisters want the right to leave their homes without permission. They imitate your actions. ch or u s : Permission to leave the homeland, Must be given by the husband. 58

[ act five ]

ch ado re t t e 2 : They want to go to school with boys. For them, equality means sharing toys. ch or u s : Equality should not be mixed, Each sex must be separated. ch ado re t t e 3 : They want to get an education. College with men means temptation. ch or u s : Education stays in the home. No temptation, away from men. ch ado re t t e 4 : They want to learn how to drive, So they can have sex, in their cars. ch or u s : Neither car, nor bike, No need of a mount. ch ado re t t e 5 : They want the right to work and keep the salary, They want to deprive their husbands of the money. ch or u s : Pocket money is very ugly. Salary is evil money. ch ado re t t e 6 : They march on streets with men. They want to vote like men. ch or u s : Marches are traps for fools. Elections are only for men. Marches are traps for fools. All women in the kitchen. [ scene 2 ]

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ch ado re t t e 7 : They are against the Code of Family8 That they named the Code of Infamy. ch or u s : A model for women Is the Code of Family. Feminism for women Is corrupting debauchery.

sc e n e 3 [The Judgment of Simone]

ch ado re t t e 1 : You’ve been condemned to death but if you agree to convert, we will spare your life. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose. We will even give you back your man. You will marry him on the condition that he converts, because you won’t be able to marry a non-Muslim. He won’t cheat on you anymore. Our moral police will watch him. Repeat after me: there is no God but God, and Mohamed is his prophet. s im o n e is wiping the sweat from her face. The scarf on her head shows a curl of hair. A cha do r ette jumps on her and puts it back under her scarf. ch ado re t t e 2 : Sacrilegious! You must keep your hair hidden. I know you used to be a jeune fille rangée, a well-behaved teenager. So stay that way. s im one : What a circus! I feel like I am in a surreal8. The Family Code refers to legislation that legalized polygamy and made women eternal minors or second-class citizens. French colonialism had the “Code of Indigenes.” 60

[ act five ]

istic play. I know it is André Breton’s centennial but (sarcastic) . . . I have to confess that this comedy is rather amusing. ch ado re t t e 1 : Listen. We’re not here to laugh. We’re here to work. Repeat after me . . . s im one : (yells) enough! Stop. You are insane. I am no saint. My name is Simone de Beauvoir. ch ado re t t e 1 : I know. And we’d like to see you become a saint, a real sister. s im one : You don’t want to “See-mone,” but rather to “see a nun.” ch ado re t t e 1 : We have a beautiful dress for you, white. It is a hidjab, an Islamic veil. Look what we brought you . . . very soft material. s im one : You . . . want me . . . to wear a veil in front of you, the Chief Chador and her seven chadorettes? ch ado re t t e 1 : (smiling) Yes. Your name, Simone de “Beau-voir,” means “beautiful to see.” Wear it and become Simone de “Beau-veil.” s im one : Simone de Beau-veil! Clever idea . . . what a beautiful horror. Mesdemoiselles, I regret to tell you, you’re wrong. But . . . why me? ch ief cha do r : Because you have a lot of influence on women. If you wear it, others will follow. Even feminists, those atheists. s im one : But they’ll scream treason. Don’t you realize that the day Simone wears the veil, feminism will sail away? Don’t you realize what you’re asking me? . . . You have a better chance of converting the Pope. ch ief cha do r : One day, one day, the whole world [ scene 3 ]

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will become believers . . . even the Pope. And all women will become Muslim. s im one : You mean fundamentalist. You don’t expect all the women of the world to wear the fundamentalist veil, do you? ch ado r : If they want to . . . why not? s im one : We have our own nuns, the Christian sisters. Some of them lived in Algeria. Your hidjab looks a lot like their uniform. In the past, women who went to the convent wore this type of dress. You don’t expect all women to dress as if they were in the convent, do you? Do you want a world cut in half ? On one side, bearded men in robes. On the other, women chadorized, like nuns. You want Earth to become a convent. ch ief cha do r : We are not there yet. We . . . we are practical women. And you . . . you are a theoretical woman. s im one : Huh . . . But how you do plan to proceed? ch ado re t t e 1 : We have already started with school. In ten to twenty years, all young girls will wear the chador. By choice. After high school, we’ll take over the university. s im one : (very amused by these girls . . . plays along) I am intrigued. Listen to me . . . I am going to tell you a good lesson, a lesson I learned in Algeria. One is not born a Muslim woman, one becomes one.

The c ha do re t t e s look surprised. They do not know how to understand this ambiguous formula. They look at each other. 62

[ act five ]

ch ief cha do r : Yes. That’s right. So, you’re joining us. You’re converting, aren’t you? s im one : You must convince me first. Tell me, why do you want me to wear this veil? Why are you wearing it? ch ief cha do r : It is in our religion. It is stated that women must veil. s im one : No. Isn’t it said that she must “cover” herself ? Clothes are enough. You’re confusing clothes with the veil. ch ief cha do r : No. You can remain clothed with women, but you must be veiled in front of men. s im one : Why? ch ief cha do r : Out of decency. You can’t talk to a man unless you’re veiled. It is in our religion, it is the will of God. s im one : That’s not true. It is the will of men who manipulate you. Why do you want to wear it in school? ch ief cha do r : You allow the cross, the Star of David, and the yarmulke, don’t you? It is the same. It is a religious sign. s im one : It is true that the Christian cross and the Jewish star are religious signs. But the equivalent of the Red Cross is the Red Crescent, not the international Red Veil. ch ief cha do r : We are true Muslim women. If we choose to wear it, you can’t prevent us. s im one : You are a bunch of parrots. There are Algerian women who have been assassinated because [ scene 3 ]

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they refused to wear it. Some were kidnapped and raped. Just out of respect for women like Kheira, who have been gang-raped, or Katia, who was gunned down because she stood up, you should remove it.9 In memory of all slain women, because they were considered the devil in feminine form, you should remove it. ch ief cha do r : (silence) s im one : No. This fundamentalist veil is not a religious sign. It is a uniform, a symbol. A symbol of the oppression of women. It is the flag of the International Fundamentalist. ch ado re t t e s : (silent) s im one : Jews have the star, Christians have the cross, and Muslims have the crescent. Is the crescent your religious sign, or not? ch ief cha do r : (violent) Yes! And I am wearing one. (She pulls out a crescent in gold.) But it is not enough. The chador is a sign of decency, of authenticity, demanded by our religion. s im one : According to your reasoning, Muslim women who do not veil are not true believers, are they? I am sure they’ll disagree with you. There are millions who refuse to wear this cloth jail. In school, the crescent is enough. A zebra does not need to show his stripes and a Muslim woman does not need to veil. 9. Katia Bengana was a seventeen-year-old Algerian high school student who was gunned down for refusing to wear a hidjab. Kheira, known only by her first name, was kidnapped and gangraped; she survived and then courageously testified. 64

[ act five ]

ch ief cha do r : (silent . . . looks up) s im one : Fascists had black shirts and pants. Nazis had swastikas. Some communists wore the blue of Mao. These were symbols. International Communism had the hammer and the anvil. International Fundamentalism has found its symbols, “sexistly” correct. Kamikaze men with kamis robes . . . Even more modern is the shirt without a tie, a suit, and a beard. And for women, a hidjab imported from Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan. Why don’t you wear the traditional white haik, the veil of Algerian women? ch ief cha do r : Those women are illiterate peasants who do not know what they are doing. We did go to school, we can read the Holy Book. They are ignorant. s im one : Illiterate . . . perhaps. It is true that they did not go to school . . . because men did not allow it. Yesterday it was French colonizers. Today it’s your fundamentalist men. I forbid you to call them ignorant. These old women suffered during colonization, then during the revolution. Some of them took up arms so you could go to school. So you could be free. Not to wear this rag. They sacrificed their lives. I knew them, Djamila and the others. You are the ignorant ones. You’ve betrayed their ideals. You are the traitors. ch ief cha do r : That’s feminist propaganda. If we want to wear it, it is a choice you must respect . . . even if it goes against your ideas. s im one : Nazis used to force Jews to wear a big yellow star on their jackets . . . because the Other of the [ scene 3 ]

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Nazis was the Jew. Your men have replaced their traditional gandouras and burnous capes for the fundamentalist kamis and a beard. With their hats and long robes, they look like troops of the Ku Klux Klan. They have fabricated a new Other . . . the woman. They force you to wear this chador. This fundamentalist veil, this chador, is your yellow star. ch ief cha do r : Feminist propaganda. That’s the work of Kahina. Not only has she read your books, but now, it is you who read hers . . . Unbowed! She escaped twice . . . next time, she’ll pay for it. s im one : It is also the position of Djamila. She was a member of the original fln. ch ief cha do r : Djamila is a traitor. She married a Frenchman. s im one : So? . . . Didn’t the head of the fundamentalist party marry a European woman? ch ado r : He did it to convert her. s im one : So . . . why did he divorce her? ch ado re t t e s : (silent, embarrassed) s im one : Come on . . . You are not combatants, you are comme ma tante, “like my aunt,” parrots who are afraid to look nice . . . or who do it in the closet. How many of you wear a mini skirt and a diaphragm under the chador? . . . Are afraid to say I love you to the one you love? You lack tenderness and love . . . That’s why you’re so aggressive. ch ief cha do r : (silent) s im one : I knew and supported the women combatants during the Algerian War. None of them is for 66

[ act five ]

International Fundamentalism. In 1981 they took to the streets, marched for democracy, challenged the totalitarian regime . . . downtown, on the steps of Algiers Main Post Office. Your men, who are so macho, did not have the courage. These women were the first ones who dared in public. Then, in ’91, they took up the right to vote. Let history not forget it. I know these freedom fighters . . . None of them is for the veil. Why? ch ado re t t e s : (silent) s im one : Moreover, explain why during the Algerian War men did not tell them that if they wanted to join the revolution, they must wear the hidjab . . . No, they told them to unveil. ch ief cha do r : (silent) s im one : Men did tell them to unveil, to go out and drink, smoke, and fight with arms. Go see The Battle of Algiers. You don’t even know your own history. ch ado re t t e 1 : That was a tactic. s im one : The chador is the tactic. They forced or “convinced” you to wear it in times of peace. This is a tactic of the new colonizers. You look like Nazi women or women for Il Duce. The emblem of the French Republic is Marianne, a free woman, guiding the people. This veil is not a sign but a uniform, tainted with blood. The international veil is the emblem of the International Fundamentalist. With its petro-dollars, its green Khmers . . . its puppets and . . . its puppeteers! ch ief cha do r : What do you mean? [ scene 3 ]

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s im one : You’ve been manipulated! You are an easy tool, the foot in the door, pushed by the International Fundamentalists. Hassiba Ben Bouali10 and her women did not fight for this but for liberty. To be women, full citizens. Free women, with the freedom to choose, without veil, chador, or hidjab. You understand . . . Ah . . . Hassiba Ben Bouali, if you could see our Algeria now. ch ief cha do r : You’re not going to prevent us from believing, are you? You’re an atheist, like your companion. We want to save you . . . You know that you live in sin, don’t you? I repeat . . . the veil is prescribed by our religion. s im one : Perhaps . . . perhaps . . . I did read religious texts, the Torah, the Bible and . . . the Koran! You’re referring to a verse in sourate 33 that says that you must have a veil between males and females. But it does not say who must wear it. It all depends on how you understand it. I say that men who insist on seeing a veil can wear it. I traveled in the Sahara and met the Tuaregs. Why don’t you do as they do? They respect women, and the Targui men veil. Aren’t they Algerian, native North Africans? Tell me why Berber women do not veil? ch ado re t t e s : (stunned . . . silent) ch ief cha do r : We are here to give you one last chance . . . Save your soul, get rid of the feminist virus. s im one : There is no need to save my soul. I live with 10. Hassiba Ben Bouali is another woman freedom fighter. She died during the Battle of Algiers, with Ali Lapointe and Omar. 68

[ act five ]

Sartre in heaven. We write all day long. We read and observe you living. I am amused and sometimes bewildered when I see what has become of feminism. Especially in the U.S. I’ve never said to hate men, hate women, or hate each other. The word feminism has became pejorative, almost another F-word. Some women in power have lost their heads . . . became Thatcherites. They have betrayed the spirit of the feminist message, which was against all forms of oppression . . . a message of love. You too have betrayed the message of Islam, a religion of peace, love, and freedom. ch ief cha do r : Why do you want to go to hell? We are here to help you. s im one : Me too, I am going to help you. Young beautiful teenagers, we often call them airheads, they laugh sometimes too loud . . . Well, they’re right, you know. I once saw God and God loves to laugh . . . laugh out loud. The giggle is a sip of life, a pearl sparkling with beauty. It is the best remedy against any disease. We must learn to live and especially to laugh again . . . laugh about everything . . . without making fun of Others. Listen to what I am going to say: You are not born a Muslim woman, you become one. You are not born free, you become free . . . become free . . . become a free woman. (She stands up and plays with the veil.) ch ief cha do r : (silent) s im one : You are not born veiled, you become veiled. (She starts to dance.) Look at me. I saw this in a marriage in Kabylie. I was surprised that none of the [ scene 3 ]

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Kabyle women were veiled . . . They were all dancing like this . . . (music by Djurdjura playing) . . . I visited Oran. One night I saw an Arab woman singing. Shikha Remiti11 had a band, she was smoking and drinking in public! There were many women artists. Aren’t they Algerian? ch ief cha do r : They are Jews, women with loose morals who have invented Raï, the music of the devil. We must burn them.

On the other stage, ma da h and his friends are worried. s im o n e stands up, dances with the veil, and sings “Emporte moi” (“Take Me Away”). s im one : (singing) Take me away . . . May the wind puff up the sails, And at the hour of the stars, There will be only us.

Take me away, May the veil, sail away And at the hour of the stars, All of us will be free. I feel I am Snow White. ch ado re t t e s : (all stand up and say in chorus) And we are not the seven dwarfs! s im one : This is what an Italian journalist did in 11. Shikha Remiti is considered the creator of Raï music. Unveiled, Remiti was notorious for drinking heavily. 70

[ act five ]

front of the Ayatollah. (She violently tears up the veil. She stands up in front of them.) ch ief cha do r : (Stands up. Freezes pose for three seconds.)

Black out the stage. s i mo n e , the chi e f c h ad o r , and ch ado re t t e s leave the stage.

[ scene 3 ]

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Fourth Attempt at Conversion

sc e n e 1 madah and s a rt re are back on stage 2, slowly walking. They sit at a table. madah : (worried) You are not born Muslim, you become one. You heard Simone. . . . But she dances. Now if you convert, she’ll become your wife. Between us, I find her more moderate than our own feminists who want to have more rights than men. s artre : These rights they are claiming, aren’t they human rights? We are not talking about the Equal Rights Amendment, but about the “minimum wage” in human rights. A little freedom . . . the right to get out of the house, to go to work . . . The right to be able to work, to earn a living, eat bread, and drink water . . . Laugh, sing, dance with one’s family, without being harassed or killed . . . Speak freely, have fun. This is neither feminism nor communism. madah : Singing, dancing, and laughing are sins. They are banned. We must pray and read the Book, that’s all one needs. As far as women are concerned, they don’t need to go out. The husband must work for them. s artre : What would single women do? madah : Their father, brother, husband or a male family member will support them and care for them. 73

s artr e : What about those who have no father, no brother? How about those who are too poor, sterile, or too old to find a husband? The widowed and divorced? What will they do? madah : We will find them a husband. s artr e : Why don’t you let them choose their own man? madah : Because they may tempt him outside of marriage. Fornication is strictly forbidden. We aspire to create a pure, ideal society where women will not be exploited as they are in the West. Look at your sex shops and X-rated movies. Your women often get pregnant when they are teenagers. They have abortions or abandon their children. Our so-called feminists want the right to . . . adopt children! They are against family and tradition. s artr e : You’re confusing two types of families. There is the family that advances and the family that moves backward. If you are for family values and against abortion, why are you against adoption? madah : Because it is banned. You can adopt only bastards, illegitimate children conceived in sin. To encourage adoption is to encourage fornication. Pregnant teens and prostitutes must perish. They are taints on society. In a true fundamentalist society, there will be no sin allowed. Moreover our prophet said that adopted children are not yours. s artr e : I’d like to see in what context he said it. I’m sure you’re taking things out of context. I knew many Muslims, peasants, students. All were kind, peaceloving, and tolerant. Once, we got lost with our guide in the south of Algeria. Peasants came to us and 74

[ act six ]

invited us to share their meal. A real feast. The guide told us that they must have borrowed most of the food since they were very poor. They went into debt to feed us, the colonizers. But we were their guests . . . According to the code of honor, male or female, the guest was sacred in North Africa. Today they kill foreigners. After policemen, soldiers, women, intellectuals, journalists, they’re killing foreigners. Why this orgy of blood? madah : Those are traitors who do not deserve to live. To kill heretics, apostates, and feminists is not a crime. It is an execution of sentence, a sacrifice for God, in the name of God. An act of faith. We also sacrifice sheep. This one in honor of your conversion. They bring a sheep and slit its throat on stage. The stage goes black. Light appears on the left stage. They leave with the sheep, come back on the left stage, and decapitate it. They leave the head and legs on stage. The stage goes black.

sc e n e 2 The taximan at the morgue. Stage 1. tax im a n : I am looking for Dr. Sliman. They told me he is here. door ma n : He is not here. And you need an appointment. tax im a n : Do all these people have an appointment? door ma n : Of course, with death. We must sew their heads back on before burial. All dead. Some of the girls are barely fourteen. Raped, their throats slit, [ scene 2 ]

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then decapitated. A horror. The country has become numb from violence. Outside the beast has eaten everything, we are bankrupt. Here the fln vultures are doing the same. Money embezzled and deposited in Swiss banks is larger than the foreign debt, the beautiful beast. We have ugly beasts and beautiful beasts. The ugly beasts, the gia terrorists, cut off heads, strike when they want, kill unarmed civilians . . . the weakest. Especially young girls, virgins . . . They also kidnap married women and children. The rape of virgins and the sodomy of boys have been declared legal by a fatwa. Taboos we should not talk about . . . Cry, the beloved country! tax im a n : (tears in his eyes) door ma n : (shows him the corpse) This woman refused to veil. This one lived alone, divorced. This one was a widow. This man . . . a radio reporter. He used to speak well, too well. Women? All of them raped first. Men? All tortured, then decapitated. Watch out when you talk. tax im a n : Wait . . . (he starts crying, recognizes one of his customers) Ah . . . Why . . . why? She was innocent, from a good family. She was in my cab last Thursday . . . she said she was a school teacher, she had a family to feed . . . They are poor, her father is handicapped . . . they aren’t in politics. door ma n : That’s the work of the ugly beasts. Animals, barbarians, cowards. A bunch of psychotic thugs, former drunks and delinquents, sexually deranged. They finance them, train them in Afghanistan, Sudan, and Pakistan. They are turned into

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[ act six ]

bloodthirsty mercenaries . . . Then the guards tell them the cold war is over. Thanks, you can go home. The only work they can do is killing. They aim for the heads of those who think. See these bodies? . . . Everyday more come in . . . in bags, without heads . . . tax im a n : I need to be sewn up. door ma n : But . . . you’re alive? tax im a n : So? door ma n : Here you’re in the kingdom of death and decapitated heads . . . called the mort gueux, the morgue. In Blida, the unit is named for Frantz Fanon. Poor Fanon, if he could see what’s happening to his hospital . . . Male nurses must put the heads back on . . . tax im a n : But what can I do? door ma n : Ah . . . Si aaka, ah . . . death! Death has fallen on this country . . . After the plague, we have cholera . . . We must choose between two evils . . . Ah . . . to be a nurse, you need a heart of stone to do this job here . . . Go away, there is no one here. And you need to bring some thread. Got any? tax im a n : Yes . . . I found some. door ma n : Let me see. tax im a n : (shows him the little piece) door ma n : Good . . . Go across to the women’s unit. tax im a n : No, I am not leaving. door ma n : Go there. It is the unit you want. Go. (He ushers him out.)

[ scene 2 ]

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sc e n e 3 Stage 3. Women’s unit. There is a sign with a drawing showing a woman, similar to one for toilets, under which is written “Women” in French, English, and Arabic. nu r s e : What do you want? tax im a n : I am looking for Tombeza. nu r s e : He’s gone . . . a long time ago. tax im a n : Then Dr. Sliman . . . It’s urgent. nu r s e : He is in admissions. This is Dr. Freeman’s unit. tax im a n : Dr. Sliman, Freeman . . . it’s all the same. I need a surgeon. nu r s e : There’s none here . . . What do you want? tax im a n : (breaks up in tears) Please . . . I beg you, my sister . . . I am wounded. I have nine kids, a wife, a mother waiting . . . I need to be sewn up and I don’t have an appointment . . . (crying) Why . . . why this? I can’t take it anymore . . . I am going to die . . . and who’ll feed my family? Please, I must see a doctor . . . (cries) nu r s e : You see this? (points to the sign on the door) . . . Why have you come to the women’s unit? tax im a n : Because they’ve refused to treat me elsewhere . . . bouncing me around like a tennis ball . . . from one unit to the next . . . Look for Tombeza? I did, but he left for Europe . . . Dergez Man, one who takes a stand. Not here. Si Sliman? Exiled. Boudiman? Assassinated. They told me to bring money, cotton, thread . . . I can’t take it. Where is Tombeza? 78

[ act six ]

nu r s e : He can’t help you. Times have changed. Jimmy Tombeza takes “his coffee,” his kickback, then dumps you. You could even lose your life. His father had power, controlled the union. Now with the debt . . . it’s over. The old party guard has eaten the country but does not want to leave. Old Tombeza left just after October of ’88.1 Took his money and put it in a safe . . . It is said that he is in Switzerland . . . in a private clinic. Of course, he owns it. Tombeza has become Tom Bezef, Tom Too-much! tax im a n : But . . . what can I do? If I am not treated, I’ll die. Then you’ll have to sew me up. Just do it, now . . . Please. nu r s e : Okay, okay. Let me see. tax im a n : (shows his cheeks) Two gashes. nu r s e : We have no sutures. tax im a n : I brought some thread. I paid a broker who fences them . . . nu r s e : Okay . . . I’ll go see the doctor . . . (She leaves then comes back.) Follow me and not a word to anyone. Otherwise they’ll all flock here. (She takes him behind a curtain.) Not a word. s u r geo n fre e ma n : (removes the bandages) You’re not pretty. Who did this to you? tax im a n : I made a mistake . . . Twice in a row at a fake road block (He summarizes his story.) I’ve been told

1. A series of riots took place in Algiers, in October 1988. They marked the end of the one-party system. After legalizing the democratic parties, in a last Machiavellian move, the fln also legalized the fundamentalist fis in 1989. [ scene 3 ]

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to shut up . . . I have no luck, just my country. Algeria has no luck. The Maghreb has no luck. Africa has no luck. The Third World has no luck . . . s u r geo n fre e ma n : (pondering) Hmm . . . you have two large slashes . . . and perhaps not enough thread . . . Which side do you want me to start sewing? From this opening? (pointing to the left cheek) . . . or from this opening? (pointing to the right one) tax im a n : (He stops . . . looks down. After thinking it over, he points to a third horizontal opening.) From this one! (He slides his index finger from left to right and points to his mouth. Then he pulls his lips back with his fingers to show that he wants his mouth sewn.)

Black out of the scene.

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[ act six ]

Foreigners

sc e n e 1 Stage 2. ma da h and s a rt re are sitting at a table. Several mu lla hs are watching behind a curtain or window. s artre : Why do you kill foreigners? And with knives . . . you slit their throats. madah : Because they support this regime. The people made their choice . . . but the army intervened. This same army that you, Sartre, used to fight. s artre : I fought Pétain1 and Vichy France. I spoke out against the French military during the Battle of Algiers, against torture and fascism, against the crs2 during May of ’68. The French extreme right oas tried to kill me. Just as your fundamentalist gia3 is doing to my fellow intellectuals. madah : I repeat that these intellectuals are allied with the Jews. The Algerian army is no different than the French one. Many of its military men used to be on the French side. They joined the fln after 1958 1. A French military man, Henri Philippe Omer Pétain collaborated with the Nazis during WWII. Charles de Gaulle went into exile in England, later organizing the French Resistance with the help of Winston Churchill and the Allied Forces. 2. The crs are the riot police that were beating up students in Paris in 1968. 3. The gia (Group Islamique Armé) is one of the most violent of terrorist organizations. It is composed of Algerian Islamists, veterans of the Afghan war against the Soviets in the eighties. 81

. . . many under the order of de Gaulle. We are fighting them, just as you used to fight the French army. We’re doing the same. Independence was confiscated by those who were waiting outside, in Tunisia and in Morocco, until the end of the war . . . the army of the frontiers! They came in 1962 and removed or killed the freedom fighters who were inside. s artr e : In every revolution, the Dantons, the Trotskys, the Abanes4 end up excluded, when they are not just assassinated. How did Abane die? His own Algerian brothers killed him. Then they placed mediocre opportunists and crooks in power. But we have to keep fighting. madah : That’s what we’re doing. s artr e : Yes . . . But you’re going backward. You want to go back to the Middle Ages. Your revolution turns counterclockwise. The golden age of the Arabian, then the Ottoman, Empire has long passed. madah : Passed . . . but not dead . . . It has existed and it has been born again. Islam will rule the world. Look at communism: it has failed. Capitalism is in crisis. Neither East nor West. Islam is the best. Tell me, you the Intellectual, what have you done for us in Algeria? s artr e : Algerians have to solve their own problems. Peacefully. I have always supported oppressed people, without any distinctions of race, religion, or sex. You, you are sexist, racist, and anti-Semitic. madah : You did not answer my question. What did 4. Ramdane Abane is considered the political brain of the Algerian revolution. 82

[ act seven ]

you do after ’62? Nothing. C.B.S. . . . as in Close Big Sartre’s mouth! s artre : It is not for me to interfere in the internal affairs of a country. madah : You interfered during the Algerian War . . . but afterward you kept your hands off. Coward, you are a coward, Sartre. Why in ’58 and not today? s artre : Because in ’58, France, which is still my country, was the colonizer in Algeria. During World War II, Germany and its Nazi collaborators were the colonizers. I meddle with the affairs of my own country, not others. Everyone has the right to do this in one’s own country. That’s the difference between “engagement” and “interference.” Except in times of massacres of innocents, of genocide, of crime against humanity. Then we all must act, and quickly. That’s why I was in the French Resistance. madah : That’s what we’re doing. s artre : Except that you’ve been slaughtering intellectuals who have as their weapons only simple words and dove feathers. You gang-rape women under olive branches. Your gia is “nazislamist.” madah : Propaganda! We are fighters and our struggle is also an “engagement.” We do not plan to stop in Algeria. We want to liberate all Africa, the Middle East, and the Gulf countries from dictators, corruption, and injustice. And from the Jews. s artre : I have always fought dictatorship . . . I’ve learned to recognize it. What you’re doing is tyranny. madah : You were once Stalinist. [ scene 1 ]

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s artr e : And you are a “Stal-islamist.” I defended the original fln. That has nothing to do with the political party. Many of my Algerian friends were expelled after independence because they did not agree with the party line. madah : You did nothing after the military coup of 1965. Your silence bailed out the Stalinist regime. s artr e : I was never a member of the fln . . . I never supported its dictatorship. I condemned the French Communist Party before the Algerian War. I have always fought Stalinist, fascist, and fascislamist parties. madah : Words, words, words! You have always been very good with words. But when the state uses repression and torture, French intellectuals say nothing. When your disciples talk, they slander us. Like Bob Henry Levi, another Jew. s artr e : Another Jew who likes Algeria, the country where he was born and that he cannot visit without being killed. A brave Freeman, an exile, like many children born in Algeria. You’re so fast at pulling your anti-Semitic guns, a reflex . . . You who accuse others, when did you join the fln? madah : I was arrested at the beginning of the war. I am an authentic fighter. s artr e : . . . who drives around in a Rolls Royce. madah : It’s a present. s artr e : From your Saudi friends. madah : First they were allies of the West, your allies. You went and died for Kuwait. 84

[ act seven ]

s artre : You’re becoming defensive. You never did the revolution . . . you lighted a fuse . . . a firecracker here and a lot of noise at independence. You spent your life waiting in a house outside the country. In history manuals you’re irrelevant. Your ancestors were the Oulémas. Traitors, weren’t they? Now you want to take revenge against the others. madah : (silent) s artre : The religious Oulémas were asking for French assimilation but only for “educated Muslims” like themselves. They are the real party of France. Yesterday you were singing “our ancestors the Gaulois,” today you’re singing “our ancestors the Bedouins of Saudi Arabia.” What you’re saying is not “let’s be Algerian,” but let’s kill what is Algerian in us. Don’t you have several millennia of history? Aren’t you North African and Mediterranean? . . . Are you Arab Algerian or are you Saudi Arabian? Why are you erasing your Algerian heritage? madah : This is Berberism. The flaws in this country are the Beurs,5 the feminists, the Kabyles, and the Jews. We must islamize them, by force if need be. We must start by kicking out France, its children, its schools, its language and culture . . . the Party of France. s artre : But which France? The France of the Enlightenment, of the declaration of human rights, or the France of obscurantism and religious fanaticism? The France of modernity, or the racist and anti-Semitic France? The “Party of France” of the Republic 5. The Beurs are French citizens of North African descent. [ scene 1 ]

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or the party of the National Front? I am for the first, but you’re an ally of the second. You are the party of racist France . . . madah : (silent) s artr e : Your booksellers spread revisionist literature that denies the Holocaust . . . Like the Godmio Bookshop in Paris . . . By the way, why do you finance it? madah : It is a pillar of God. They want the same thing, France for France and North Africa for North Africans. s artr e : But . . . they want to kick all immigrants out. madah : No. They want to help them go back home. That’s what we also want. Everyone in his own home. France for the French and Algeria for Arabs. Equal but separated. It isn’t racial segregation. I’d call it “realist segregation.” s artr e : France is the home of all French citizens. America is the home of all Americans. Without distinction of race, religion, or sex. In the same way, Africa is the home of all those who were born on its land. The Maghreb is for all Maghrebians, and Algeria is for all Algerians. It is not just for fundamentalists, Saudis, Iranians, or Sudanese. Africa will remain African and Algeria will remain Algerian. madah : Algeria will be fundamentalist one day. We will study our culture based on religion. s artr e : No more schools, no more music, no more dances, no more singing, no more poetry, no more theater, no more literature. Nothing. Tabula rasa . . . nothingness. Your men are ruining this country. They burn schools, kill thought, veil women, and gang86

[ act seven ]

rape them . . . They kill intellectuals and decapitate them. You did stoop so low, like the Nazis. madah : It is not us. It is not my fault. We are moderates. Violence is the result of the cancelled elections we won in ’91. s artre : No, no, and no. The violence started before ’88 and not in ’92. The climate of terror was there for fifteen years, before the elections. Violence and terror also exist in Egypt and Bangladesh, yet there were no aborted elections there. As far as moderation, allow me to doubt. Muslims are moderate and tolerant, but not you. A moderate fundamentalist is someone who has not killed yet. You have a selective memory. madah : (cynically) Look who’s talking. s artre : What do you mean? madah : We have a short memory, don’t we? You’re a little bourgeois trust-fund baby. You’ve always felt guilty and ugly. Since you’re physically unattractive, to forget your looks you’ve decided to become intelligent and think for others. The master of thinkers, the essence of wisdom. A case of compensation. Now you want to think for the Third World—all the better to colonize it. (cynical) Ah . . . Albert Camus, the stranger, persecuted in Paris . . . He was at least a poor kid. At least he was more consistent than you. s artre : (silent) . . . Camus was not very consistent at times . . . We had a falling out . . . He chose to defend his mother, an illiterate single woman, but that was before justice began exerting itself in blind terrorism. Maybe he was right . . . but then, who could have predicted what is happening? [ scene 1 ]

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madah : (sure of himself) God. s artr e : (surprised) madah : Yes, God. Only God can predict because only he knows everything. s artr e : Really . . . he’s been talking to you? madah : Every day. s artr e : How? . . . You have a direct line? madah : In order to hear God, you must pray. Five times a day. Had you done this, you would’ve known that both communism and capitalism were doomed to fail. s artr e : Ah . . . I forgot. I am only an atheist. Speaking of Camus, he was for a diverse Algeria not a purely Arab state like you’re trying to create. His lecture in Stockholm got twisted. madah : He said . . . “I’ll choose my mother over justice.” s artr e : No, that’s not true. North Africa has always been ethnically mixed. You are a mixed Arab. The original population was the Berbers, followed by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, and Byzantines. Then the Arabs came from Arabia . . . who were less than 10 percent, barely 5 percent, of the population. Then the Turks of the Ottoman Empire followed by the French . . . who were a mixture of Spaniards, French, and Italians. There were also Blacks from Africa, Greeks, Jews, and Other Christians and Muslims. All these people, all these different religions were mixed together to produce the Maghreb as it is today. One should accept all these 88

[ act seven ]

dimensions. Some may see them as contradictory, but recognizing contradictions prevents conflict. madah : (silent) s artre : It is a sign of wealth to speak several languages, to have several cultures, to be from several civilizations. You are multiracial and multicultural. Why do you want to deny it? Ninety percent of the people of the Maghreb do not come from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or the Middle East but from North Africa and the Mediterranean. They are a cocktail of ethnic groups and civilizations. madah : If France had not colonized us in 1830, we would have never spoken French. We would’ve spoken our own language. s artre : Which one? madah : But . . . Arabic! s artre : Which one? Creole Arabic or classical Arabic? You are “creolophone” not “classicophone.” Your dialect is a mixture of Franco-Arabo-Berber or Farabic. madah : (defensive, sweating) We would have spoken Arabic, period. s artre : In 1830 North Africa was part of the Ottoman Empire. Archives from that era are neither in French nor in Arabic. madah : (stunned) What? . . . s artre : They are in Turkish. madah : That’s not true. s artre : Yes, it is. If the Turks, who controlled only the big cities, had not left, they would have contin[ scene 1 ]

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ued to use their language. We would have then had a Turco-Arabo-Berber mixed with Spanish and Italian words. Who knows? They speak Spanish in southern and northern Morocco, don’t they? You must start by accepting yourselves as mixed and not pure. Unity is not uniformity. We can unite people only by respecting difference, by respecting Others, not by eliminating them. madah : Turks were Muslims. s artr e : Ninety percent of Muslims are not Arabs! The largest Muslim country is neither Algeria, nor Egypt, nor Saudi Arabia. It is Indonesia. Indonesians are not Arabs, are they? madah : (silent) s artr e : There are French, Italians, and Germans, and there are Vichy France, fascists, and Nazis. They are not the same. Likewise, there is the original fln, tolerant Muslims, on the one hand, and on the other hand, you have the fln Party, its fascislamist allies, the nazional-fundamentalists. You do know, don’t you, that the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not fundamentalists? madah : We all have one green flag. s artr e : False. The Algerian flag is green and white with a red star and a crescent. Look at the wall (points to the Algerian flag on the wall) . . . Isn’t this flag green, white, and red? madah : (silent) s artr e : What will you do with the white, the crescent, and the red star? 90

[ act seven ]

madah : (silent) s artre : More than a million died for it. Are you going to rip off the white? Decapitate the star because it is red? Burn the crescent because Muslims are not fundamentalists? Will you throw away the green piece because it is not dark enough? Because it is also a mixture of blue Mediterranean Sea with yellow North African sun? And why? To have a dark green, solid, pure . . . a Khmer green. You do not represent Muslims. madah : And you . . . you keep contradicting yourself . . . Yesterday you condemned Camus and today you’re defending him. Camus was against independence but he would defend us today. s artre : I can assure you that Camus condemns your actions. He stood for a free, democratic, multiple Algeria. He was against independence because he thought that an Arabist or Arabo-Islamist Algeria would self-destruct and he was not far off. Your project of an Islamist totalitarian society is a negation of citizenry, a purification of identity. This is nazislamism! madah : Poor Jean-Paul! You accuse others of contradictions but forget what you’re saying. s artre : What are you planning on doing to me? I am already dead. You can’t kill a ghost. madah : We can kill a man a second time . . . by discrediting his godless books. Sartre, you’re history. We have a network of mosques more efficient in recruiting lost people than your revolutionary writings. The young Jahl Abounarol mesmerizes his [ scene 1 ]

91

audiences. People faint just hearing him. You and your pathetic “engagement” . . . you lost in ’68. Forty years ago, perhaps, you were dangerous for France, for the West. Your prefaces were frightening . . . Black Orpheus, The Wretched of the Earth . . . and Portrait of the Colonized Man. You wrote for the Jew Albert Memmi. Ah, I forgot . . . What is literature? You even wanted to “engage” poetry. Today no one reads it. It’s out of fashion . . . in the dungeon of oblivion. s artr e : And what do intellectuals read? madah : Our thinkers read the Book of God. The only truth. Your intellectuals play with computers on the Internet . . . a new gadget, with “Windows” . . . another invention of Jews to better control the world. s artr e : And what did you invent for them? Brain washing, dry cleaning for the brain, a drive-in tune up . . . fast food for fanatics? madah : We want to free the Muslim world from Western domination. We want our children to learn our culture, not yours. Look at our so-called intellectuals, they still speak only French. s artr e : That’s a lie. They all speak other languages—Algerian, Kabyle, Arabic. In the street, with their friends, their mothers, their grand parents, they speak their dialects, they don’t speak your pure Arabic. It is you who refuse the language of the people. My intellectuals you’ve been assassinating are multilingual. They live among their people, in housing projects . . . You and your men have gone too far . . . You muzzle people with tablets of silence and pills of opium . . . You get them drunk with satanic hate. 92

[ act seven ]

madah : All these Francophone writers criticize us. They refuse to write in their native tongue. s artre : Because it’s impossible. Their native tongues are not written. Algerian Arabic and Berber are not taught in schools. Berber was tolerated and then banned in the seventies. Kateb Yacine was censured, then exiled. Yet his plays were written in Algerian and in Berber and were understood. Le Pouvoir, the fln in power, did everything to eliminate him and his dialects and your fundamentalists helped with the dirty work. Rachid started writing in Arabic . . . you condemned him to death, before Rushdie. You say that it is legal to spill his blood. madah : Rachid is a communist, like Djaout and Kateb. Kateb called us “monument brothers” . . . he referred to minarets as “missiles that refuse to take off ” . . . he insulted us. Then there are journalists who don’t respect us . . . s artre : Many of these journalists are very courageous . . . How many died in ’95? How many did you torture . . . slowly with knives, with pincers? . . . How many bullets were aimed at their heads? They leave their homes in the morning without being sure of arriving at work. They leave their work in the evening without being sure of arriving home alive. They can choose, coffin or exile. For those who resist and stay, and by a miracle succeed in staying alive, it is submission or prison. Their freedoms are slowly shrinking. But thanks to them the country keeps on thinking, producing, spreading the thoughts that allow us to breathe. Why won’t you accept criticism? [ scene 1 ]

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madah : Because we’re preaching divine words. You cannot criticize the Word of God. We hold you, Mr. Intellectual, responsible for all this. s artr e : Why? madah : If we have Francophone intellectuals, it is because of you. They imitate you. s artr e : You’re wrong again. If I am like this, it is thanks to one of your early ancestors. One of the great intellectuals of the world is Algerian. Born in HippoAnnaba, thousands of years ago, the early Christian bishop Saint Augustine spoke Berber, was Berber, and wrote in Latin. We still have his Confessions. After him, there was Averroës in Spain, father of secularism . . . he was Muslim! And many others that you don’t know. Today there is Kateb, Mammeri, Djaout, Mimouni . . . They are agnostics, atheists, secular Muslims but all tolerant. The classical Arabic that you’re trying to force on people is also a language of colonization . . . from the Saudis of the eighth century. madah : Assuming this is true, you’re still guilty of setting a bad example. s artr e : Which one? madah : They imitate you and your actions, your marches, your petitions, your engagement! And your woman, la dame Sartre . . . Mother Simone is a devil. Our feminists look up to her, swear by her. They want to go from the second to the first sex. Equality! (sarcastic) They want the right to have four husbands. Come on! Their brains are smaller than men’s, yet they want to rule! You two, Simone and you, are the source of debauchery among our intellectuals. 94

[ act seven ]

s artre : (intrigued) Hmm . . . madah : Those who resist and fight us are intellectuals, men and women, especially women. Despite the veil, the threats, they keep on fighting. Imagine what would happen if we let them go free. s artre : What do you plan to do? madah : Break them with the Islamic veil. Writers must islamize themselves. Those who keep on struggling against us will pay for it. Those who fight us with the pen will perish by the sword. But those who follow us on the right path, the road to God, can go only to heaven. s artre : Women who chadorize are often forced to wear the veil. Then there are the threatened, the battered, the burned, the raped, the ones with their throats slit, the decapitated, the immolated. madah : These actions are done by groups we do not control and that are often manipulated. This is a consequence of elections we won. If these women had accepted shari’a, we would not have all this. But these feminists have been refusing the Islamic law since the early eighties. They were the first ones to march . . . defying the ban issued by the single party. s artre : (listening) madah : If the party members were corrupt, it is because they walked away from God . . . We’ll make them pay for it one day. Look at our men, someone like Dr. Bin Haj, barely thirty, but he makes crowds faint.

sartre: Your doctor is a high-school dropout. He did not pass his exams and does not have facial hair: [ scene 1 ]

95

no degree, no beard. Two failures, a dropout. Some dropouts become drunk, others become preachers. Protestant televangelists in the U.S., or zealot Islamic fundamentalists, they are all the same. They represent the religious right. Political power is what they’re after. They have found a practical road, with one-way traffic: just religion. The masses follow . . . Poor lonely men and women listen to these demagogues talk to them. A shrink will tell you that they become violent because of their failures. Your Bin Haj is a loser, a psychotic in your Islamic army who has converted to converting people — a psychopath and pathological misogynist. madah : (yelling) Perhaps, perhaps . . . but we won the elections, democratically. You must support us. s artr e : Let’s talk about the elections . . . madah : Yes, we won them. Democracy Algerian style. The military stole away our victory. s artr e : I have read enough to know that fundamentalists were allowed to vote several times — two, three, and even six times. For their wives, mothers, sisters . . . A free and democratic election means one person one vote. Therefore these elections are null and void. The election organizers were the fln and the bearded-flns,6 your men. They designed voting polls to suit their needs. Add to this that 50 percent of the population that is completely illiterate. How can an illiterate choose among fifty candidates when he cannot read names? 6. Barbefelenes (the bearded-flns) are Islamists of the fln party, a group of reactionaries who worked for passage of the Family Code. 96

[ act seven ]

madah : God can guide him. And there’s a party of God. That’s why we won. s artre : Come on, everyone knows the cards were marked. It was rigged, that’s why 50 percent abstained. You got 24 percent max, by cheating. Seventy-five percent were against you. I also know that there was a climate of terror and intimidation. The first victim of the fis was a baby in 1989, burned alive by the inquisition. madah : Our men don’t kill. s artre : Yes, your men are the murderers. I read Kahina’s testimony in Modern Times. madah : Feminists are our enemy. I see you remain faithful and still subscribe to your magazine. s artre : What do you want? Even after death, I still do not pray, and I consult Modern Times. I learned that terror against intellectuals started in the early seventies. I met Kateb once. He told me about his problems with censorship, the fln Party. Kateb said that your men were doing the dirty work for the police. They harassed him, went to pray on his stage to prevent him from producing his plays. You even nicknamed him “Kateb Lenine.” I read his plays, The War of 2000 Years and Mohamed, Take Your Suitcase. I assure you that this play is not about the prophet but about immigrant workers. madah : Kateb was an atheist and Nedjma is not an Algerian novel. It’s a story about a bastard woman who had several lovers in her life. She is not a Muslim woman. Moreover all intellectuals are communists. s artre : Don’t you have any decency left . . .? [ scene 1 ]

97

madah : (surprised) s artr e : I have made many mistakes in my life. But have you ever wondered that perhaps you’ve taken the wrong path? madah : No. Never. I am sure we’re right because we are on God’s path. You can’t be wrong when you follow God’s way. s artr e : (exasperated) I feel I am talking to a Lucien Madcarthiste . . . (he stops himself) Would you have supported me in the sixties, when I defended Algerian political prisoners? madah : Of course. I was one of them. s artr e : You said that I was wrong about women like Tamila. But if I, who you claim to respect, was wrong in supporting Algerian women, was I wrong supporting you and the group of men in the sixties? mad a h remains silent. Behind the window, the psy-mullahs are concerned. s artr e : Was I wrong to support prisoners like you who today are killing my intellectual friends? madah : (silent, looks down) s artr e : You’re not answering. That means I was right in defending you then, because you were the oppressed in 1960. According to the same logic, I should do the same thing and defend my friends today — poets, journalists, feminists, intellectuals — because they are the oppressed ones this time. madah : (silent) s artr e : There are two possibilities: either I was wrong while defending you, since you’ve turned into 98

[ act seven ]

an oppressor, or I was right, and I am also right now when I defend the victims of your oppression. In both cases you are the purifier we should eliminate. madah : (silent) s artre : We can’t make two types of societies live together when one lives on the death and destruction of the Other. Either you or I have to disappear. It’s me . . . or you . . . It is me, the Intellectual, or you, the anti-intellectual. madah : (silent) s artre : It’s me, the Intellectual . . . or you, the Antellectual. Either you accept me with my differences, all my flaws, as you say, or you destroy me. If you decide to kill me, then I have the right and the duty to defend my friends and myself. It is self-defense. We . . . are the nonviolent, the pacifists who have killed nobody. madah : (silent) s artre : The irony is that many laws protect you, Madah, and the madmen who follow you. In the name of freedom, we allow hate speech, calls for murder, and the rights of the assassins to be protected, to receive even asylum that my own friends have been refused. madah : Why don’t you convert and everything will be settled? Listen, I am here to help you. s artre : Because I do not force my views on you, you should not force yours on me. It’s a question of principles. madah : But these are not my views that I’m forcing [ scene 1 ]

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on you. It is the Word of God. There is no room for heretics. And God must come before principles. s artr e : Expect to see me defend myself, then. The Resistance once again . . . like in the forties. This is Vichyslamism. madah : (sweating . . . the psy-mullahs are nervous) But you . . . s artr e : Remember, I am living twice. I am a spirit on leave. You and your friends who are keeping people hostages, between the military hammer and the fundamentalist blade, how many do you plan to kill? Go ahead, we aren’t scared . . . They’ll keep on writing, laughing, singing, and dancing. If this country is in a blood bath, it is not because of rigged elections but because of your actions during the eighties . . . and before. It is you and your former fln Party who are responsible for dictatorship, barbarism, and civil war. Neither Stalinism nor fascism, neither the fln Party nor Islamism. Democracy is the only alternative. madah : But we are for democracy, under an Islamic republic. s artr e : Your project is to apply shari’a. As soon as you’re in power, you’ll ban all non-Islamist parties. With you, there is no possibility of disagreement. I once made a mistake with the Soviet Union. I won’t make it with Algeria. You reproach me for my critical thinking, you do not accept criticism. Either we accept your values, or we die. You use democracy to better slaughter democracy. What you really want to make is a Taliban kingdom based on the slavery of 100 [ act seven ]

women, similar to regimes in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan. As far as an economics project is concerned, you have none. madah : Ah . . . Jean-Paul, you’re being unfair. You repeat the accusations of our feminist enemies. You know that Kahina is the devil, Satan’s sister. You talk like her. I have the impression that I am hearing the devil speak through your mouth. s artre : (listening) madah : I came to give you one last chance. Convert and I’ll free Simone. You’ll become Muslim and she’ll marry you. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Imagine how many students in the world will follow you. After Dr. Beggar and the Rajah,7 we want you . . . It is conversion or . . . I am not responsible for what they’ll do. s artre : Who are “they”? madah : They have made up their minds. Soldiers of God do not compromise. s artre : Let them come, with their long knives, their saws, and their sex, their pricks and their biceps. Let them come with their cannons and their turbans, their Emir and their black kohl around the eyes. I am not afraid of the inquisition. It is me . . . or you . . . Me . . . or . . . you. madah : Listen, I owe you something. You must help me help you. We will make of you another more efficient Rajah. We’ll send you to Arabia for training. 7. Dr. Beggar and the Rajah are two Frenchmen who converted to Islam. The first one became an Islamist advocate of the fis. [ scene 1 ]

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Everything is ready. You’ll be taken care of. I am concerned . . . because I owe you my life and I am afraid I cannot honor this debt. s artr e : You owe me nothing. madah : If you accept, then God will be happier. s artr e : Come on . . . I was in heaven. I am going to tell you a big secret: I live . . . in heaven. madah : (stunned) What?! s artr e : And I’ve always lived there. In heaven, there are Jews, Christians, Muslims, secularists, agnostics, and even atheists. madah : (drinks some water) That’s impossible . . . Only Muslims go to heaven. Atheists? Impossible. You must believe, have faith; it’s the sine qua non for getting into heaven. s artr e : Eh, no. It is “sine qua si.” I am an atheist who lives in heaven madah : (shaking) How can this happen? s artr e : To do, to act, to make, and while doing, make yourself, and be only what you’ve made of yourself. Because we are judged on all that we did in our life. When we arrive, every case is judged separately, regardless of one’s religion. It is your deeds, your life actions, which count. God pulled out my file, then she said . . . madah : (terrified) Ah . . . She . . .??? s artr e : Yes. She said here’s all the good you did in your life. Here’s all the evil. Well, the good things win by far over the bad things you did. Perhaps you were an atheist, but you were sincere. You see? There 102 [ act seven ]

are two criteria: the actions of an entire life and your sincerity. madah : (sweats, is shaking) Ah . . . s artre : Look at the Earth, the land of your ancestors, Africa, well . . . Mother Earth is a woman. madah : (wipes his forehead) Ah . . . s artre : The nation is a woman. Marianne, the republic, is a woman. Justice is a woman . . . with a blindfold over the eyes demanding justice from men. madah : Ah . . . s artre : A dear friend, who just died, said life is female. Algeria is feminine, France is feminine, and all the beautiful things are feminine. I am proud of my woman, my daughters, and of all women. La patrie, our country, is a woman. Even better . . . madah : (shaking) Ah . . . s artre : You see, God is a woman. madah : (yells) This is a heresy. s artre : I’m sorry to disappoint you. But it is Satan who is a man . . . The devil is a guy, macho, bearded, sexist, and misogynist . . . the antithesis of God. madah : (on the verge of having a heart attack) s artre : But God is a spirit who often takes the body of a woman . . . a beautiful woman. Sometimes she is white, sometimes she is black. Sometimes she is yellow, sometimes she is red. She likes colors, the rainbow. She loves to dress up, to take a walk. She loves to sing, dance, and laugh. She loves to dream and tell jokes. There’s still time to learn to laugh. [ scene 1 ]

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madah : (silent) s artr e : I saw her having a drink with the comedian Coluche and the poet Kateb. They were having fun . . . Coluche was telling them his last joke about heaven . . . madah : Ah . . . s artr e : God loves to laugh and . . . she does not wear a veil, you know. madah : Ah . . . s artr e : She is very beautiful and cultivated. She loves to listen to music, read poems, and walk in the woods. Her most beautiful poem is nature. Listen to the wind, look at the grass, watch the snow melting, listen to birds singing. That is the song of a woman named God . . .

On ne naît pas femme, on Dieu le vient! That means: One is not born woman, God becomes one. You know, she does not like silence imposed on others. She loves poets very much. They are sensitive souls she conceived in her own image. God is a poet and you . . . (loud) have been killing poets! madah : (drinks water, sweats, is very nervous) s artr e : God is a woman, and not just any woman. She is a Freewoman! And you, you hate women. madah : (mumbles) That’s false. It’s a heresy. Now choose. The conversation is over. It’s conversion or the blade. mad a h shakes, then faints. Two mullahs enter the stage, feel his pulse . . . They are terrified. 104 [ act seven ]

s artre : (stands up . . . We do not know if he wants to convert to save s i mo n e or if he is ready to be executed. The director must show ma da h ’s face sweating; he does not understand. The two mu lla hs walk back toward center stage. s a rt re follows them, then speaks with a smile.) I am ready to . . . mad a h and the mu lla hs are confused. Scared, they look at each other, confused about what he means. s artre : (middle of stage, assertive) I am ready.

Curtain. Blackout. Light on right stage.

fina l sc e ne [Dance of Women from Five Continents]

Music by sung by Djura, from the all-woman band Djurdjura.8 the s eve n cha do re t t e s : The Fatma or the fatwa? s im one : (silent, looking at them)

The se ve n cha do re t t e s pretend to deliberate. Their leader goes out and consults the m ul l ah s behind the window. They will tell her that s i m o n e will be burned unless she converts. The chi e f c h ad o r goes back on stage and informs her group. s im o n e is watching them. ch ief cha do r : (to Simone) You should get some rest. Tomorrow, at the prayer of dawn, at the hour when mountains whiten, you’ll go away. 8. Djurdjura is an all-woman Algerian band that sings in Berber; Djura is their lead singer. [ final scene ]

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two cha do re t t e s put blankets on the floor, remove their chadors, hang them up, and put on traditional Kabyle dresses to sleep. s i mo n e , dressed in a Kabyle dress, with a traditional belt (yellow, red and black), sits next to them, pretending to sleep. s im one : Look at me. I am like you. (stands up) Each of you is going to take her veil and use it like a sail. And all together we will veil away. s im o n e starts dancing . . . The chad o r ettes are terrified by this crazy woman. They all get up and look at her. The music becomes louder and s i m o n e more delirious. A wind is blowing from the side stage. All the veils are blown away. s i mo n e and the Freedwomen sail away. s im o n e dances a Berber dance, women shaking their hips. Music: The director should make an arrangement from each of the following three pieces:

1. Berber music (Idir-Zahra from “A vava inouva”) 2. Raï music ( from Khaled in Algerian Arabic) 3. Shirla Shalom (chant of “Peace Now,” in Hebrew) The director could also add pieces from three of the following: Sting’s “They Dance Alone,” and dances from South America, the Gitanos, and Africa. s im one : (reciting the hymns)

I sing the hymn of freewomen, from Africa and from the Maghreb, these little daughters of La Kahina, who are named Katia or Khalida. Women from the South, East, or West, 106 [ act seven ]

those who are blamed for being evil, not given rights, often accused, then locked up in a walking prison. Hymn to life: Read and write, laugh and play, go to school, to read and sing, sing and laugh, dance and say, speak out and scream, full of life! Watch flowers and talk to birds, and no longer fall, under the knives, of zealot bandits, killers of women, those assassins of innocent hope . . . Laugh out loud, and burst with life, dance and laugh, and no longer dying, under the flying fragmented bombs, still ripping youthful living. Here’s the dance of the crazy Mothers from South America, these brave women still searching for their disappeared ones, for truth about their missing children. Music from Sting, “They Dance Alone.”

Here’s the dance of the veiled women, the stolen women, the decapitated women, [ final scene ]

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whose bodies have been declared, guilty, for having been raped. Doves fly away. It is the dawn of a new day. The right stage blackens, while the light opens up on center stage. si m o n e is on stage, reciting the following hymn.

Hymn to the Woman Our mother who art in heaven, Hollowed be thy name, Thy Queendom shall come On Earth and in every home. Bless this day our daily bread, And forgive us our silences, Our selfishness and our trespasses, As we forgive those, Who have abandoned us. So be she, A (wo)man. simone moves to the front stage.

So be She, A (wo)man!

108 [ act seven ]

In the France Overseas series The French Navy and the Seven Years’ War jonat han r. dull French Colonialism Unmasked The Vichy Years in French West Africa ruth ginio Making the Voyageur World Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade carolyn podruchny Silence Is Death The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout julija sˇ ukys Beyond Papillon The French Overseas Penal Colonies, 1854–1952 stephen a. toth Madah-Sartre: The Kidnapping, Trial, and Conver(sat/s)ion of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir Written and translated by alek baylee toumi With an introduction by james d. le sueur