Excerpt from Beautiful Abyss
By Yamen Manai, Translated from French by Lara Vergnaud
1
Yes, sir? You’re kidding, right? You can rough me up like the other guys, but I’m not going to call you sir. Dream all you want, I won’t say it, I’m not your dog. Mister Bakouche is all I owe you, and that’s just because I don’t know you. Maybe once we get better acquainted, I’ll end up calling you a total prick.
Calm down? You have it all wrong. I am calm. Don’t start thinking that I’m riled up just because my face is busted. You’re here to help? Give me a break. You don’t know me from Adam or Eve, and you want to help me? The people closest to me have always dragged me down, so you can’t be surprised that I have trouble trusting some stranger with an outstretched hand. It’s your job? Oh, you mean because the court appointed you? Makes sense. Lawyers aren’t really known for their altruism. . . . Lower my voice, you’re not the enemy? How would you know? Do you have kids, Mister Bakouche? Do you love them? Do you tell them? Do you take them in your arms and squeeze them tight, or are you like everyone else in this country—loving them in your own way?
You’re supposed to be asking the questions? Okay, fine. My file’s on the table, fat as the Bible. I already told the police everything, so what else do you want to know? Start from the beginning? This is serious business? Damn right, it’s serious, the most serious business of my short life. The charges against me shouldn’t be taken lightly? You think I take things lightly? Let me tell you something, ever since I was brought into this world, I’ve felt them weighing down on me, heavier than they ought to be, and I got used to it all. So you can take your “don’t take this lightly” and shove it you know where.
Nah, I’m never at a loss for words. No money, though, ever since I was born, except that one insane day when my father gave me twenty dinars so I could go have some fun, or so he said. “Here, son, go to the movies, that’s what you’ve been wanting, right? Hey, you can even buy yourself a crȇpe.” I stared at his outstretched hand and then looked at him in disbelief. There was something gentle in his eyes, something weird, since anything gentle about him was always weird. My mother whispered in my ear: “Go on, take it, see he does love you.” So then I wasn’t so sure, I thought to myself maybe I had been wrong about him. I grabbed the money. It was almost unreal, like in some strange dream, all the more since Kheireddine’s horse began to neigh and rear up. To warn me no doubt, but at the time, I didn’t get it. I was just scared that I’d wake up without having gone to the movies, so I stuffed the money in my pocket, and I raced to the theater. That’s the only time I ever had any dinars to my name, but let me tell you, words, I got plenty.
And yet, that very night is when I shot at my dad? Yeah, that’s right. Do I regret my actions? No, and I can even tell you that if I had to do it again, I would. And the mayor? Yup, me again. The Minister of the Environment? Yes, still me. And you can bet that if they gave me back my shotgun and lined them up in front of me—the president, the ministers, and all the deputies—I’d shoot at every last fucker. And I’d aim for their hands every time.
Am I aware that these actions, coupled with these statements, will ruin my future? That’s a good one, Mister Bakouche, and if my whole body wasn’t sore, I’d be rolling on the floor laughing. My future was ruined long before all this. Why? Because I was born here, in this country, around these people, around people like you. How else do you explain why thirty local kids tried to cross the Mediterranean if they had any future here? Why did Tarek, a.k.a. Genius Boy, attempt it, his bachelor’s degree in math tucked inside his shirt, if he had a future here? How many times did he write to the ministry to get a teaching post? And Ziwene the gardener, with his agronomist diploma? How many times did he write the agency to ask for funding for his organic farming project? He told anyone who would listen that Europe gave the government grants for people like him, and it had been years, and he still hadn’t seen a dinar of the aid that should have rightfully gone to him. Even Moussa, who had the least learning but was smarter than all of them, took his chances at sea, even though that kid hated water so much we called him Kitty. He could barely stand a drop of rain. All those guys who used to have their asses glued to a chair at Café des Sports, sipping their cafés au lait, dreaming of a future like a bus that never comes, ended up the same, feeding the fishes with their drowned corpses. So I have to admit that, no, I didn’t think about my future for a single second when I shot at all those people.
Did I act alone? Yeah, it was just me and nobody else. It was my business, my fight. What was driving my actions? My rage, I guess, my anger. No, I haven’t pledged allegiance to anyone. I’m not affiliated with any terrorist group. I don’t like groups, not a one, whether they’re terrorists or not. Why don’t I like them? Thing is, I know how groups are, I was in one in middle school, long enough to grow immune to them. Ever since, I’ve always been on my own, headphones in my ears, and I don’t talk to anybody. Though, I was in a popular group, one with pretty girls. Everyone wished they could join and spend recess with them on the playground. Well, I got to, but they didn’t fool me. They didn’t include me because I was handsome or cool. They included me because they wanted to borrow my homework. I’d show up half an hour early to hand over my notebooks, and those shitheads would copy my work, and when the recess bell rang, they’d make a little room for me in their circle. At first, I was happy, because there was a girl in the group who I liked. I’d liked her for a long time, and before I got Bella, I used to think about her constantly. During recess, I’d always try to stand next to her, to brush my shoulder against hers. Sometimes, she’d turn around and smile at me, and I’d start blushing. But they were mean kids, even her. They’d always talk about people behind their backs, and only ever talk shit. When Ghazi wasn’t around, they’d make fun of him because of his braces and call him Iron Man, but in front of him, all smiles. When Farès wasn’t around, they’d make fun of him because of his unibrow and call him Palm Boy, but in front of him, all smiles. They used to call Lobna Fatty because of her weight and Myriam The Whore because rumor had it that she kissed two boys on the mouth one week apart, but in front of them, all smiles. I figured that I had a nickname, too, and they ripped me apart when my back was turned. So I decided to stop showing them my notebooks, to ignore them, and to plug my ears with my headphones so I didn’t have to hear their bullshit, or anyone else’s for that matter. And if someone gave me back my shotgun and lined up every group in the world, I’d send them straight to hell, too, because every group thinks it’s better than the others and within the same group, everyone thinks they’re the best of the lot. So maybe it’s time to be done with all that crap for good.
No, I’m not an Islamist. I already told the cops that, which is when they stopped beating me up. I didn’t shoot those bullets in the name of Allah; it was in the name of Bella. I can’t stand Islamists, they’re fuckers just like the rest. They say that dogs are impure and women should stay home to take care of the kids. But believe me, I know that dogs are pure and without my mom’s job, we would have starved to death. It wasn’t my father who was going to put something in our bellies. No, I’m not an Islamist. I’m just a Muslim. At least, I think I am. Sometimes I pray, and sometimes I don’t. The urge to talk to God is like the urge to talk to people, it comes and goes. Do I go to a mosque? Nah, the last time I set foot in one was in middle school. Which one? The big Aghlabid mosque, in Kairouan. Yeah, like you said, the first mosque in Africa, a national treasure, especially with all the graffiti vendors spray on the outside walls to reserve their spots on souk day. I saw the tags myself, during a school trip. A cultural outing, the only one in three years. Out of respect, I took off my shoes and left them at the entrance while everyone else kept theirs on. They couldn’t have cared less. Easy to guess what happened next. Exactly. When I came out, I couldn’t find them. Thing is, my shoes were total crap, like everything else I wear. I still can’t believe someone would steal them. I finished the field trip barefoot. I didn’t have any money to buy myself a pair of shlekas and the teachers that came with us weren’t going to bail me out. One of them even started mocking me, cracking up: “Just tell yourself you’re at the beach.” I was embarrassed, and I swore to myself that I’d never set foot in a mosque again. That night, my father beat the shit out of me because I’d lost my only pair of shoes.
2
Let’s start from the beginning? And what exactly is the beginning? You seem awfully sure of yourself given how ass-backwards this country is.
How old am I? Fifteen. You’re surprised? From the way I look and talk, I seem older? Well that’s out of my control, I didn’t pick my age, just like a fruit in a tree doesn’t pick whether the sun shines on it or not. It’s life that decided for me, and let me tell you, on the inside, I feel like I’m a thousand years old.
Yes, I’m from a southern suburb of Tunis. A working-class neighborhood? That’s nice of you, working-class isn’t really the term, shithole would be better. What’s so shitty about it? Oh, almost everything. I’m not talking about people, they’re shitbags whatever the neighborhood. Yeah, that’s it, urbanization, infrastructure, city planning. You ought to visit us when it rains, when the streets turn into flooded wadis and the sewers spit back our own shit at us. Or maybe you’d rather come on a hot day when the trash cans crammed every which way give off a rancid stench and send hordes of mosquitoes flying at us. Come pay us a visit, and if you’re driving, look out for the craters! ‘Cause at that size, you can’t really call them potholes. Oh, and watch for the railway crossings, too, or a train from our decrepit national arsenal might zoom out and prematurely send you into the afterlife, quick and dirty. Come on, you can take a seaside stroll all the way from Radès to Soliman, to see what the kids wade through in the summertime to cool off. A piss swamp, there’s no other word for it, seeing as that’s where they dump our sewage. You can go on a hike, too, we have Radès forest and Jebel Boukernine, too, just so you can get a good look at the disgrace of a dumping ground that’s killed off all of nature’s true inhabitants. Follow the Miliane River, and you’ll see a vibrantly colored mix of industrial and household trash. Stick close to the walls and read the graffiti: Cursed be he who pisses here. Or: Cursed be the parents of he who puts his trash cans here. No, it doesn’t work, the opposite, actually, it makes us want to break the rules even more, it makes us more defiant, we lift our dicks a little higher, the better to drench those hopeless directives. There’s not a single wall, a single message, that scares us. We’re not afraid of any curse because we are the curse, because the same guy who writes that on his wall is pissing on his neighbor’s, the same guy who writes it on his wall is throwing his shit over his neighbor’s.
Shit, shit, and more shit. This country is in so much shit that it’ll sink soon enough, that’s what everyone’s been saying for months. Though one night, at Café des Sports, Tarek the Genius Boy did some math and announced that at the rate we’re sinking, and given the density of the shit, we’ll fall right through the earth’s core and come out in China. Maybe things are better there. Everyone around him laughed, the kind of laugh that’s actually another way of crying.
Am I from a good family? What do you mean? No, I don’t come from a family of beldis, I’m not from one of those families that only propagate with their own kind, the kind of people who watch the country fall apart from their ivory towers and use their money and influence to raise those towers even higher so that everyone below looks as small as insects that can’t reach or hurt them.
You mean an educated family, a family that can read? Does it matter? There are loads of people who can read in this country, but tell me, what do they read? Jack shit, for the overwhelming majority. You have to admit it, books are persona non grata around here. Do you know that old proverb? The one our ancestors used to say? Elli kraw métou: Those who read end up dead, too. Reading doesn’t give us any power? It can’t save us? It doesn’t make a difference, we always end up six feet under? Fine, reading doesn’t make you immortal, I’ll give you that, but it does make you less dumb, and that’s already a lot.
About the author and translator:
Yamen Manai was born in 1980 in Tunis and currently lives in Paris. Both a writer and an engineer, Manai explores in his prose the intersections of past and present, and tradition and technology. He has published four novels with the Tunisia-based Éditions Elyzad—a deliberate choice to ensure that his books are accessible to Tunisian readers: La marche de l’incertitude (2010); La sérénade d’Ibrahim Santos (2011); L’Amas ardent (2017), published in English as The Ardent Swarm (2021); and Bel abîme (2021).
Lara Vergnaud is a translator of prose, creative nonfiction, and scholarly works from French. She is the recipient of two PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants and a French Voices Grand Prize, and she has been nominated for the National Translation Award. Her translations include novels by Zahia Rahmani, Fatima Daas, Ahmed Bouanani, and Joy Sorman.
