Published by Langaa Publishers (Cameron) and distributed by African Books Collective (England) is a novel written by the Amazigh writer and filmmaker Noufel Bouzeboudja.
A Pebble in the River is a story inspired by true occurrences.
It is the story of a seventy-six old man, Akli, who narrates, speaks, thinks and reflects upon his life’s events in both a retrospective and an introspective way. The events take place at different moments in his life, in a land full of doubts and false promises.
A Pebble in the River begins with a dream during which Akli talks to Zira, the daughter he never could have. He sees her running among other kids in the green and flourishing fields, celebrating spring in the processions glorifying the ancient Amazigh goddess Izi, mother of all gods.
Zira is the fruit of a violence done to her mother, done to a woman, done to a human, done to Akli’s wife. A fruit of human barbarism. However, she is a nice fruit destined to life, to beauty, to love. Zira was born innocent in a world where adults pretend to own the supreme truth, if not through their long beards and verses, through some of their hideous traditions. Akli adopts Zira, a child born from his kidnapped and raped wife’s womb. Zira is a gift from life to Akli who, during the French occupation, endured Le Peine’s tortures that later on prevented him from procreating.
After the liberation (or what seemed to be “a liberation”) in which Akli took actively part since his late 16, he wanted to rebuild his parents’ house, have a wife, children and lead a calm life. But life had other plans in spare for him.
Thirty years after the liberation, witnessing how the country is led to the abyss by the snakes that promote corruption and a backward ideology, he sees himself obliged to take the arms again to protect his house, his family and village against his own neighbours. Against the islamists terrorists who burnt down his house and kidnapped his wife.
As absurdity cumulates, Akli feels rage and despair. How could he not? After years of fighting against the beardy terrorists, the corrupted snakes “misleading” his country initiate a law for a national reconciliation that allows the terrorists to stop fighting and quit the forests and mountains and come back to their houses. Justice? How can justice prevail when it is ruled by the unjust whose unique goal is to fill their Swiss and French bank accounts by creating chaos and selling the land’s wealth to the Western governments that shut both eyes and applaud false democratic processes in one country or the other?
What Akli was afraid of happens. He finds himself confronted to Kamal. Kamal is his own neighbour and the son of Musa, his brother-in-arms during the revolution against the French. Akli always suspected him and his group to be behind the destruction of his house and the kidnapping of his wife. Didn’t he denounce them to the authorities when they threatened people at Thadarth? They forbade to women to go to the public fountain, banished the foreign languages to be taught at school, prohibited alcohol, tobacco and dominoes. Didn’t Akli refuse to pay the jihad tax? Didn’t he oppose the Stone Age order they wanted to establish in Thadarth? Thadarth, a place where the values of tolerance and democracy were observed long before even the Roman invasions.
Once back to Thaddarth, Kamal starts provoking and threatening Akli who denounces him to the authorities. Because of the reconciliation law, Rombo, – the gendarme officer, the local Berlusconi and the mayor’s dog, more preoccupied by visiting brothels than doing his job, – expresses his regret and incapacity to resolve the problem.
After another altercation with his provoker, Akli, without thinking it twice, goes home, fetches his gun and, coldblooded and serene, discharges on Kamal. He then pulls his inert body down to the side way “to avoid that his dirty blood stains this land”.
During a Kafkaesque trial, Akli receives a death sentence reduced later on to a 25-years imprisonment. Neither his lawyer nor his fights (against the colonizer and the terrorists) nor the newspapers articles, nor the protests against his arrest, initiated in the country and abroad, can save him from prison. He thus is sent to the very prison he endured during the revolutionary war against the French colonizer.
In the coldness of his jail, the old man questions himself, life, God, Rabah (his brother-in-arms), about the utility of war and its uselessness, about the dishonoured glories and the glorious disgraces.
Akli suffers the hardships of confinement. It almost leads him to insanity. During days, weeks, months and years, Akli rehashes every instant of his life.
He remembers his childhood with its joys and hardships. He remembers his mother and grandmother’s tales. He remembers how proud was his father of his own father who (enrolled by force by the French to fight against the Nazis) fled with the captured German doctor (enrolled by force by the Nazis to fight against the Allies) from the French camp at the French-German border.
He recalls his teenage years when love came to strike his heart, when he saw for the first time Martine, daughter of Fino, the French cruel landowner or, better said, land expropriator. Akli started working in their domain when he was fourteen. His father became ill so, the family’s responsibility fell on his shoulders. It was at the Finos’ property that Jacqueline, Fino’s wife, taught him to write and read while he felt Martine’s hand secretly caressing his leg under the table. He reviews their first sensual moments in the stable, at the river, in the bushes. He remembers when, more than 37 years later, Martine, who left the country with her mom, came to visit him. They both revisited the old times and warmly cried them.
He also remembers how jealous was Dihya, his promised wife and cousin, who once discovered him stealing from her cherished flowers with the intention of offering some to Martine. He remembers how offended were his friends at Thadarth who used to tease and call him the “French Lover”. He remembers how jealous was Said-My-Book who also loved Martine. Said-My-Book was offered, by Jacqueline, the first book that Thadarth’s kids saw. They felt frustrated because they weren’t able to decipher the letters written on its pages. They were illiterate and were not allowed to study at the school where the French kids studied.
He remembers how he knew Ammi Ali, Rabah’s father, who initiated him to the idea of the struggle of the classes and who defined himself as a Muslim communist, something that Akli never understood. He recalls how, in his sixteen years, while having to choose between immigrating to France (the thing that his two brothers did) and keep working, he preferred to enrol in the liberation army to free the country.
After more than five years in prison, he is released by a general presidential grace. The grace he refused to ask for despite the insistence of his lawyer. Once out, Akli wants to see the sea, to feel the air on his face, to look at that blue immensity, to feel free. Karim, his right hand during the civil war, drives him there. Then to Thadarth where he finds his old friend, nana Ldju, Thadarth’s dean who was taking care of Zira during his imprisonment.
Finally, he finds Zira. She is a grown up girl full of life and questions. She doesn’t stop asking him about himself, about the revolution, about life, about everything; because she wants, once she grows up, to write a book about him.
The novel ends with a note of beauty and hope. Sitting on the grass, Akli admires Zira who is running and jumping, there in the green fields dominating Thadarth, facing the highly inspiring mountains. He is admiring her while a sweet tear runs down his cheek. Akli’s vow is henceforth one and certain: To love Zira and see her live.
