Mariner of the Mountains (Algerien par accident)

CALENTURE, from the Latin calēre, FROM THE QUALITY OF BEING WARM.

The lexicon dates from the 16th century,

in the context of the first ultramarine voyages.

It means FEVER, HYPERTHERMIA.

A phrenic delirium that spontaneously strikes mariners

during long journeys

in extremely hot latitudes,

particularly near the equator or heading toward the Tropics.

The calentura occurs during the night while the mariner is asleep:

the individual wakes up lost and runs onto the deck of the ship.

There, he imagines, amidst the waves breaking on the high seas,

trees, forests and meadows adorned in flowers;

He rejoices at this mirage, with a thousand joyful exclamations:

he shows a burning desire to throw himself into these meadows.

As if his mission had at last been accomplished.

If the other mariners are not sufficient in agility or numbers

to oppose the whim of this madness, his death is certain.

MARINER OF THE MOUNTAINS.

January 12, 2019.

Dear mother,

I'm writing to you from the middle of nowhere.

I'm in the middle of the Mediterranean,

in a rusty-old tub of an Algerian vessel.

Twenty hours from now,

Algeria will cease to be a blindspot in my mind

and will take on smells, colours and forms of its own.

And you won't be by my side to see what it's like,

this place that has haunted us all our lives.

If you were with me, we'd have taken a plane.

Alone,

I prefer to do the crossing by sea.

I potter around,

wondering why it took me so long to make this trip.

I'm hit with this anxiety to get this trip over with, and go home;

to stop thinking about all this.

I've spent 54 years thinking about this.

Ladies and gentlemen,

passengers of the cabin class are invited to the dining room.

Ladies and gentlemen,

passengers of the cabin class are invited to the dining room.

Enjoy your meal, thank you!

Not long out of Marseille, dinner was served.

The same menu for everyone:

tasteless chicken, with sour cream sauce,

some form of rice, fries, and an orange-flavored soft drink.

Whenever you spoke of traveling by boat,

you'd evoke the stink of engine grease,

and how it made you vomit.

I'm exhausted and I try to sleep. But it's impossible.

There's this constant dripping from the sink of this tiny cabin.

But I don't want to arrive in Algiers a wreck,

so I close my eyes and end up nodding off.

I dream of you,

like I've been doing since I decided to make this trip.

In this dream,

I see someone breaking into our backyard.

I run to you and try to tell you, but you don't see anyone.

I'm scared, I start to shout,

but you can't hear me.

Suddenly, you're standing there, pregnant, in a cargo plane.

The plane is noisy as hell, with groaning metal.

Suddenly you land on a beach covered with palm trees.

You run towards the water, a huge wave crashes on the rocks,

and drenches you with fronds of red seaweed,

the same seaweed you used to research.

I wake up with an image of you pregnant,

standing in the sea, smothered in seaweed.

I can't get back to sleep.

Iracema,

my imaginary travel companion.

It's 7:58 AM

the day I saw Algiers for the first time.

I spend ages waiting at Customs.

When it's my turn, I show my passport.

The officer asks my name.

He understood it straight away.

It was the first time in my life I didn't have to spell my name.

He asks me where I'm heading to.

I say I'm stopping by Algiers and then I'm off to Kabylia.

He looks quizzical, asks if I have relatives in Kabylia.

I change the subject.

I say I'm a journalist doing a story for a Brazilian TV channel.

He smiles, and asks if I know Zidane.

Little does he know how much I detest football.

The taxi driver says it is 8ºC outside.

The cold here reminds me of Fortaleza.

What a hot city.

At midday, we feel our ears will burst into flames.

Growing up, I used to think we were different,

with this Kabyle name nobody could pronounce.

We were the only Aïnouz: you and I.

It was strange not knowing my father.

But I also loved imagining we were special.

As if we belonged to a secret clan.

Onto an extraordinary mission in Latin America,

waiting for a secret agent to arrive from a very distant place,

from a mysterious land.

I take a shower to wash off the brine of the sea.

I order room service

I end up eating a cold cheese sandwich

while looking out the window.

There's a huge monument in the middle of the city.

I wonder what is this monument.

I know so little about this place.

When I was a kid, I was curious about it.

As I got older I stopped caring about this Algerian clan, this Kabylia,

this faraway place, across the sea,

from where this father kept sending postcards.

I called my father a few days before I left.

We hadn't spoken in a while.

I wanted to be the one to tell him I was coming,

before he found out on his own.

He wanted to come along.

He, who never told me much about this place,

who never invited you to visit the place where he was born.

I told him I'd rather take this trip by myself.

With you.

Hello. What are you doing?

Very well, I'm Brazilian.

- Brazilian? - My father is Algerian,

and it's my first time here in Algeria.

- Welcome. - Thank you.

- So I'm recording some footage. - Footage of Algeria?

Yes. For me.

- For you? To keep? - Yes.

Maybe I'll do something with it, because it's the first time.

I'm filming.

- You come often to Algeria? - First time.

- First time? - Yes, yes.

- First time? - It's my first time, yes.

- In French? You speak French? - Yes.

Oh it is quite something, not bad.

- It's beautiful, right? - It is fascinating.

- Can I take a look? - Yes, go ahead.

- Yes, I don't see well so. - Look.

- Is it filming everything? - Yes, yes.

- Is it film or digital? - It's digital.

- Where are you from? - Brazil.

- Brazilian. I salute you. - Thank you. Likewise.

- Oscar Niemeyer. - Yes.

I came across a bunch of street typists.

I think they fill out forms for people.

You didn't tell us you were coming with a friend.

I remember the sound of the typewriter in your office.

When I left Fortaleza you wrote me almost every week.

Phone calls were very expensive.

The day I cleaned out your apartment, I found a lot of old letters.

But I never found the ones you exchanged with my father,

from when you two arrived in the United States.

You in Madison,

and him, in Colorado.

You told you won the Madison Post Office prize.

In one month, I think at the end of 1962,

you received more letters than anyone else in the whole city.

I've often wondered what you two wrote to each other so much.

You telling him about your seaweed,

your roommates,

how much you missed your sister Jamacy,

your mother Branca,

and the heat of Fortaleza.

And him, telling you about the snow-capped mountains of Colorado,

a road trip to Las Vegas,

and the small house he'd found for the two of you to live together.

Or were you talking about the situation in Brazil,

with a military coup looming on the horizon?

And he'd tell you of a new era in Algiers,

of the Independence celebrations that seized the streets.

I'll never know what was in those letters.

You burnt them all before you died.

I'm tired,

but I don't want to sleep.

Two men approached me.

They wanted to know where I came from.

They thought it odd that a Brazilian was out alone at night in Algiers.

Just give me 50 dinars' worth.

Yes, a cup.

You pour it from one cup into the other.

Yes, it's like that under the tents.

I am telling you, you have to see it.

It's good?

I decide to head back to the hotel, but realize I'm lost.

I end up in another square, where guys are singing and dancing.

We Algerians, we love joy. We love freedom.

We love freedom.

Freedom is the only thing we have left.

Iracema,

if I'd found my way back to the hotel,

I wouldn't have stopped here,

where the ghost town, becomes a cheerful town full of life,

where Algiers the White

became Algiers...

the Red.

I slept like a log until late.

If you were here,

we'd have woken early.

Since it was past noon,

breakfast was over at the hotel.

I went out to find to something to eat.

I listened to conversations I couldn't understand

as a man started staring into the camera, all wary.