I know nothing about this place, I haven’t even heard its name. Perhaps they will let us go here. Who knows? They’ll leave. It’s their Cayenne. For the moment, we’re isolated, separated from one another. Far from all humanity, our warders, not without evil designs, learn that we don’t share the same language.
We were brought to a place and left. For some, it was the final trip. The older ones are still in shock. They tremble. Experienced in combat, they vow to sacrifice themselves, to martyr themselves, to go through with it to the end. They are as dead as they are alive. As for us, the others, more arrive each day.
I know that they worry about us. But who worries about how we are beginning to feel about ourselves?
Everything I believed in has died. Only my tongue refuses to die.
ACT I
THE NIGHT OF THE ELEPHANT
ONE NIGHT, I LOST my language. My mother tongue. I was hardly five years old, and I’d lived in France for only a few weeks. I no longer spoke my language, a spoken language, a language of fairy tales, of ogres and legends. One night, a night of dreams and nightmares, gave me over to another language, that of Europe. I became hers one night, that night when, sleeping, I met an army of elephants.
Dream elephants lumber through the half-light.
They’re one inside the other, and the other inside the one, and me inside them all.
Inside I’m suffocating.
They walk through me and over me. I push out.
Inside the stomachs of the elephants, I push out, I escape.
I’m taken in again, and I push out. And again inside another, and I push out.
I swim inside their stomachs, using my arms and legs, and I escape. And I enter again inside. I push out, swimming, I escape.
And then inside another.
I push out, I escape, I’m taken inside another.
I push out,
I escape, I reach out,
I touch the door,
I open it.
Swimming, I pull the door open, I pass inside, I close the door.
Behind the door, elephants.
Behind the door, no words.
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
Without words, no language.
Without words, no dreams. No words.
They’re behind me. I’m outside. Alone.
A voice says to me, “Drive the black and solemn horses …”
I fall.
I fell, speechless, into the day.
“What are you doing out in the hallway?” my mother asked in a language that I refused to speak. No longer. No, no longer. I was sitting in front of my bedroom door. I knew that there was something dangerous on the other side. I thought I had locked it. The sun was just about up. I was sweating, trembling. I remember saying to her, “Elephants.” I said, “Elephants,” but it wasn’t in her language. I was scared. I couldn’t tell her. I had nothing to say. Algeria was behind us. I’d just got to France. There were elephants in my room, and my brother and sister were still inside. I’d left them with the elephants. I’d fled the elephants, I’d left everything behind. My brother, my sister. My mother, my language. Everything was upside down. I no longer had a name.
I’d forgotten this dream. Were it not for the new terror that threatens the world, I would never have remembered it.
FOR MUSLIMS, THE NIGHT OF THE ELEPHANT marks the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. It was, the tradition says, when the army of Abraha, King of the Abyssinians, attacked Mecca. It is said that they were mounted on elephants procured from unknown parts, and upon these animals they set out to destroy the town. Seeing the animals, the city’s people became scared. The elephants chased them into the mountains. But it was due to divine grace that thousands upon thousands of birds arrived to pelt the elephants with stones. The army fell into disarray. It was a debacle. The soldiers died of infections. And the town, now holy, was saved. That night, there, the first Muslim was born.
I can’t deny what lies behind me. I can’t forget the difficult journey. It was suffocating. It was elephants upon elephants. It was one inside another, I went from one stomach to another. I pushed out from inside, and I escaped. Who had taught me about them, the elephants? And when and where? Who put them in my room? How did they find me? Were they at war with me? I couldn’t breathe. They were squashing me, but I didn’t know why. Why me? They were infinite, there was no end to them, one inside the next, invading my space. I fought them. I went out to fight them.
“Do you see what your Lord did to the Elephant Men?” says the Quran. “Did he not shred to pieces their plan? He sent wave after wave of birds against them, He cast stones against them as a sign. He laid waste to them.”
Could I defeat such an army? I survived. I left. I left them behind. Hadn’t I heard my mother’s stories about the birth of the baby Muhammad? I was young, I heard the stories in her language. But I’d left this story behind. Why hadn’t I followed history? If the people of Mecca had fled the elephants, why had I entered inside them?
I was born into the world in a minor language. A language that was passed on orally, a language that was never read. We called it Tamazight. A Berber language that throughout the incursions of history was guarded tightly by its people for what it knew. For the people of the Atlas Mountains, in the regions of Kabylie, in the Aures Mountains, where the Mozabites and Tuareg lived, it was in their language and in their spoken traditions that Islam was introduced.
“Speak the word, speak the word, speak the word,” the Archangel Gabriel said to Muhammad. “Speak what I tell you, and people will come to you.” And it is said that the voice that came from on high spoke to Muhammad in Arabic poetry. It is said that anyone who hears it will be moved. And was it for this reason that his wife and his nearest friends understood that he was no ordinary man? They listened to him, and they spread the word. And so the people came to Muhammad. They came and came, and more came after that. He told them, “We’re all the children of Abraham.” His every word was like a world unto itself. His presence was radiant. He was the Prophet. So he had to leave Mecca. The vendors of idols hated him, and they chased him out. He had to decide on a place. It was Yathrib in Medina, a town where the memory of the tribes of Israel and their rituals was still fresh. His disciples went before him, one by one. Then it was his turn. Whether out of affection or necessity, Muhammad liked to listen to the stories of the Jewish people, a community that modeled faithfulness to God, which he respected. He wanted to listen to all of the stories—about Noah and his sons, about Lot and his brothers, about Isaac, Sarah, and Ishmael, about Pharaoh, Moses, and Aaron, about Job and his miseries, about Elijah, about Solomon, about Jacob and David. He wanted to hear about their rules for daily life, which he would use to make his own. And they translated these from Hebrew into his language. It was said that Zayd, the youngest of his scribes, had been Jewish. He still went to Jewish school. And, as for the second, Ubayy, it is said that he was a rabbi before his conversion. Upon the death of the Prophet, it was up to them to keep alive his memory, his grandeur, and his glory. They knew his verses by heart. A little while later, they passed the knowledge on to Uthman, the Caliph and the new guide of the community. With the gift of their manuscripts, with the writing out of the Book, they became