That Devil's Madness (34 page)

Her photography – that was neutral enough. She thought of the shots she's taken since leaving Melbourne. If she were honest with herself, she was proud of them – her work had certainly matured. Why was that? Was it being in a foreign country? The intensity of the situations? Probably a bit of both. But she still hadn't found the Blida film of the Babary macaques. What had happened to that film? She went over the other news shots she'd taken – the bomb explosion in the square, the dead farmers, Boumedienne's funeral. She really did have some excellent shots there.

But she'd hesitated when it came time to take a photo of that farmer who'd been shot, then not taken it at all. Why was that? She hadn't hesitated when she'd taken the photo of the woman in the market on the stall of oranges. What was different? Was it the adrenaline rush in the market? Partly – of that she was sure. She hadn't had time to think amongst all that chaos. But if that was the case, she should have been more in control in that farmhouse. So what was different? Algiers versus Constantine. Chaos versus quiet. Crowd versus her and Steven. Man versus woman. Muslim versus French. The woman with the oranges had been Arab, whilst the farmer French. Why did she think of that, all of a sudden? That couldn't have anything to do with it, surely.

She walked the perimeter of her cave, hugging the blanket tighter around herself, trying to get warm, but couldn't stop thinking about the contrast between the two situations. If it was race that had swayed her, did that make her racist? She'd never thought of herself as such. Didn't want to think of herself as such, even now.
Think of something else.
Photographs. Go back to photographs. Think of the ones that influenced her.

As Nicolette thought of the iconic images that had made her want to become a photojournalist, she realised they were mostly photos of people in war or civil unrest situations. Not photos of crumbling buildings, blown up bridges or fighter planes, but photographs of people, victims. Did that make her morbid? A voyeur? Or was it because she could look at them and think
Thank God it's not me
?

She heard footsteps splashing outside and froze.
Please don't hurt me again.
Whoever it was stopped, then moved away again. Oh God, she had to get away from here! The sooner the better.
Now. No. Don't think about escaping just now. It's broad daylight and you haven't worked out where they're keeping Steven and Amoud. Go back to the photographs.

Okay, photographs. Voyeurism – no, she wasn't a voyeur, unless everyone was, to some degree. But as she visualised those influential photos, she begun to realise something she'd never noticed before. When a photograph was of someone close to home – an Australian, for instance, or an American or Englishman – the victim's face was not usually seen, the photograph taken from behind, or they were covered, or their face hidden by someone standing there. But when the photograph was of a Muslim, or an African, or a Vietnamese, then the face was front-on in the photo. Why was that? Did the fact that they weren't one of
us
make them less of a person? Less worthy of dignity? Of discretion? Had she picked up the same habit, without ever realising it?

Once more she heard footsteps splashing in puddles, coming closer. She walked backward until she felt the cave wall behind her. She wanted to hide. To run. But there was nowhere to go.

The man she'd recognised as the one who'd stopped the beatings came in with her meal. He handed her a plate, put a bottle of water beside her. But unlike the other men who brought her food, he didn't leave immediately. Nicolette looked at her plate, not sure why he still stood there. Did he expect her to thank him? There was no way she'd do that. She wanted to yell at him that he could burn in hell before she thanked him for anything, that he needn't think stopping the abuse had been something extraordinary because the abuse should never have happened in the first place. She wanted to throw the plate of food at him, but they only fed her once a day, and she knew she needed to eat if she had any hope of keeping up her energy to escape. So instead she forced herself to scoop up a portion of the food – spicy meat and couscous this time. She wished he would go. He turned and spoke to the guard, and Nicolette watched as the guard answered and the man nodded and smiled. His smile – one side higher than the other. She remembered such a smile. There was a face full of beard and many years of exposure to the elements, but she'd only ever seen that smile on one person in her whole life.

‘Rafiq? Is that you? You
are
Rafiq. I know you are.'

26

Nicolette's mind was a whirl of emotions. Thoughts and possibilities. Rafiq was here. He would help her. Maybe. Probably not. Rafiq was one of the men who'd captured her. But maybe he hadn't realised who she was. Maybe that's what happened – it wasn't that they'd wanted to hold her and Steven captive as such, they just wanted Westerners.
Any
Westerner. She and Steven were just at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Yes, that had to be it – when Rafiq had recognised her, he'd stopped the questioning. Given her water. That was proof, wasn't it?

He'd hurried out of the cave without answering when she'd called him by name – it must have been because he was surprised
she'd
recognised
him
. That had to be it. But it was him, of that she had no doubt. So he would help her. Of course he would. They'd been friends, the three of them, spent years playing together, roaming the Berber quarter, the gorges and the city. Nicolette stopped pacing. Rafiq and Jamilah had never been to her mother's apartment – why had she never thought of that before? But no matter – that was no longer important. Not right now.

Outside the rain stopped but Nicolette wasn't aware of it. She had to think this out. Had to convince Rafiq to help her. Help
them
. But Rafiq was an insurgent. A terrorist. Nicolette fought the word, wanting to deny its meaning, its implications, its very existence. In her world these people were evil. Killed and destroyed for no reason other than hate and fanaticism. Did Rafiq blow up buildings and kill innocent people? Nicolette battled this reality. That wasn't the Rafiq she wanted to think about. Jamilah had called him a freedom fighter – that, at least, fitted her memories of him better. The Rafiq that fed and befriended little red vixens. Pulled Nicolette from danger. Looked after her. She'd heard Jamilah's words then interpreted them into some idealistic image of Rafiq – someone good and pure, who fought honourably for the good of his people. It had made sense, in a romantic, adolescent way. Just as his father and grandfather had fought to give Algeria back to the Muslims, so was he fighting to give the Berbers the same thing. An honourable quest that did not involve murder and bombing. How could she ever think like that? Be so naive? So
childish.

Freedom fighter. For the Berbers, that's what he was, of course. But insurgent, terrorist, freedom fighter – did they all mean the same thing, depending where you stood? She remembered something her Grandpa Louis has told her, not long before he'd died. It was during WWI, when he'd come across a badly wounded German soldier. The man was praying – saying the Lord's Prayer in Latin, which was how he knew the man was praying – and hearing this coming from the mouth of an enemy had shaken him, because he'd suddenly realised that, just as all the French mothers and wives and children were praying to God to look after their men and destroy the enemy, so too everywhere in Germany, German mothers and wives and children were also praying to God to look after
their
men, and destroy
their
enemy. Was it the same here? Did the Arabs pray to Allah just as the Berber did? Did all the Muslims pray to Allah to protect them from the French during the Algerian war, just as the French prayed to God to protect them from the Arabs and Berbers? Insurgent, terrorist, freedom fighter. It was all too much to think about…

Night came but Nicolette didn't notice. Still she paced, her mind in turmoil. This wasn't the script she'd written for herself – the meeting she'd imagined with Jamilah and Rafiq was to have been very different. But what about Jamilah? Was she one of them too, even though she lived and worked in Constantine and had a family, children? Even though she had helped Nicolette cut her hair and dye it, and they'd talked like old friends? How much of that had been real?

She remembered what Jamilah had said to her that day.
You're still half blind
,
still the dreamer.
They had sat drinking mint tea, and Nicolette had been happy her dream was becoming a reality.
I fought in the war of independence, right beside the men.
Was she still fighting? She'd heard the words, even questioned their truth, but not registered their implications. Her friend – the girl she'd preened and giggled with – had lived another reality, secret to Nicolette. Might still be doing so. What a fool she'd been. A blind, stupid fool. Just as she had separated her Frenchness from the French colonisers who'd fought the Algerians, so too had she separated her friends from the Algerians who'd fought the French.

The guard at the entrance called to Nicolette and signalled to her to sit down – her pacing irritated him.

She sat, but still her mind refused to slow. Why hadn't she known? There had been plenty of evidence, plenty of horror. She'd witnessed some of it. So why had she pretended the terror didn't exist? Didn't apply to her? Jamilah had kept a lot from her, that was true, as had Rafiq. And her grandfather had also protected her, filling her world with fairy tales and stars at night and stories of bonds between men being stronger than any atrocity. He had woven a cocoon of whimsy around her, and she had welcomed it. But was that a good enough excuse?

And this bond – was this a lie too? No, that, she refused to believe. She had
seen
it. No one would ever convince her otherwise.

The clouds parted, the moon reflected in puddles and drops of water glowed silver, but still Nicolette struggled with her reality. She felt angry towards those who had fed her these half-truths, these glorious images of modern day knights rising above the populace, strong and sure and pure. Always honourable. Always just. Her grandfather had been wrong. Her friends had been wrong.

She had been wrong.

Steven had tried to explain it by saying she'd been just a child. But so had Jamilah, by just a few months more, and she hadn't lived in that cocoon. Nicolette pressed her arms against her belly and rocked back and forth, shivering. She didn't want to think along those lines, because to admit she'd been wrong would mean admitting she'd had a choice. And her choice had been to refuse to see. Even if she excused Nicolette the child, she couldn't excuse Nicolette the adolescent, or Nicolette the adult.

It had been so easy to immerse herself in her new country. In primary school with its open playground, birthday parties and trips to the movies, she'd rarely thought of what she'd left behind. Then high school with its drama club, crushes on boys, weekends at the beach – by then Algeria had been a long way away. By the time she was turning herself into a flower child, wearing kaftans and cheesecloth and no shoes, listening to Dylan and Joplin, and protesting Vietnam in the streets of Adelaide to help end that war, Algeria had become a foreign country, no different to her than Japan or Alaska or Russia. And that made her a hypocrite, a fraud. Because during all that time, by refusing to think about Algeria, she'd also been refuting the very real bonds that had once existed.

A clap of thunder made her jump.

She had to stop this. Stop thinking about what had or had not been, and think about what was now. The bottom line was that she, Steven and Amoud had been taken hostage, and one of those captors was Rafiq. Rafiq had to be persuaded to help them.

She would ask to see him. Remind him of the bond that had existed between the three of them, the places they'd been to, the things they'd done together. The bond between their grandfathers. He had intervened that first night; he must remember. He obviously had some authority – he could order them released. She would persuade him.
Had
to persuade him.

As the sky lightened to a stormy dawn and rain fell once more, Nicolette fell into a restless sleep.

#

She was ignored next morning when she asked to see Rafiq. The guard pointed his gun at her and she felt it wiser to stop, but she didn't give up. Later, when another took his place she asked again, keeping her gaze lowered to appear more humble, and again she was ignored, although this guard didn't point his gun.

It was almost night by the time Rafiq came again. The rain had stopped and the air smelled of wet rock and wood smoke. He stood at the entrance, silhouetted against the twilight. He didn't speak – just waited.

Now that he was here, silent, Nicolette didn't know how to begin. She looked at him, willing him to say something, anything to give her a clue on how to approach this. She lowered her gaze and he turned as if to leave.

‘I recognised you,' she blurted out, not wanting to lose this chance. He turned back towards her and she saw the slightest part of a nod. ‘I … I wanted to thank you. For stopping the beating.' Then she realised that she had to get him to respond, to speak to her. ‘It was you, wasn't it?'

‘It was me,' he said at last, and once more turned to go.

‘I saw Jamilah. We talked.'

Rafiq stepped out into the dusk.

‘She came back with me – to my hotel room.'

He turned.

‘She helped me cut my hair.'

He walked back into the cave.

‘She cut my hair and we talked, and remembered when we were children. When we were friends.'

‘That was a lifetime ago.'

‘Not so very long ago. Do you remember when we used to run through the gorges, and you'd show us where the falcons were nesting?'