Free The Bridges of Constantine by Ahlem Mosteghanemi Page A

wanted to staunch the wave of sadness that had taken me by surprise, fearful that it would sweep us away towards memories we weren’t yet ready to leaf through. Or did you just want to keep to your plan when you suddenly stood up and said, ‘Can I take a look around the pictures?’
    I stood up to accompany you.
    I explained some of them and told you what occasions had made me paint them. Then you switched your gaze from the paintings to me and said, ‘You know, I really like your style of painting. I’m not saying this to be nice, but I think if I were an artist, I’d paint like you. I feel that we both share the same sensibility. I rarely feel that about Algerian work.’
    What confused me most at that moment? Your eyes, which had suddenly changed colour under the lights and were looking at my features as if contemplating another one of my paintings? Or what you had just said, which I felt was an emotional confession, not an aesthetic impression? At least that’s what I hoped or imagined. My attention paused at the words ‘we both’. In French they take on a singular emotional tone. It’s even the title of a soppy magazine for the remaining romantics in France: Nous Deux .
    I hid my confusion with a naive question. ‘Do you paint?’
    ‘No, I write.’
    ‘What do you write?’
    ‘I write stories and novels!’
    ‘Stories and novels!’ I repeated, as if I didn’t believe what I was hearing.
    As if you sensed an insult in the hint of disbelief or doubt in my voice, you said, ‘My first novel was published two years ago.’
    Moving from one shock to another, I asked you, ‘What language do you write in?’
    ‘Arabic.’
    ‘In Arabic?!’
    My scepticism annoyed you. Perhaps you had misunderstood when you said, ‘I could have written in French, but Arabic is the language of my heart. I can write in nothing else. We write in the language we feel with.’
    ‘But you only speak French.’
    ‘That’s habit.’ You resumed looking at the pictures before adding, ‘What matters is the language we speak to ourselves, not the one we use with others!’
    I looked at you in shock, trying to put my thoughts in order. Could all these coincidences meet together in one giant coincidence? Could all my fixed ideas and my first nationalist dreams come together in one woman? A woman who was you, the daughter of none other than Si Taher? A more astonishing meeting in my whole life was unimaginable. It was more than coincidence that our paths should cross after a quarter of a century. It was wonderful destiny.
    Your voice brought me back to reality: you were standing in front of a painting.
    ‘You don’t paint many portraits, do you?’
    Before giving an answer, I said, ‘Listen! We’re only going to speak Arabic. I’ll change your habits as of today.’
    In Arabic you asked me, ‘Will you be able to?’
    ‘I can,’ I replied, ‘because I’ll also change my habits with you.’
    You answered with the secret happiness of a woman who, I discovered later, loved orders. ‘I’ll obey you because I love that language, and I love your insistence. Just remind me if I should forget.’
    ‘I won’t remind you, because you won’t forget,’ I said.
    I had made a most beautiful blunder. I had turned the language that I was romantically involved with into another player in our complex story.
    I asked you in Arabic, ‘What were you just saying?’
    ‘I was surprised that there’s only this one portrait of a woman in your exhibition. Don’t you do portraits?’
    ‘There was a time when I painted portraits, then I moved on to other subjects. In painting, the older and more experienced you are, the more confining it is. You have to find other means of expression.
    ‘In fact, I don’t paint the faces I really love. I only paint something that strikes me about them, a look, the wave of the hair, the hem of a woman’s dress or a piece of jewellery. Details that stick in the mind after they’ve gone. Things you hint at