Salvation Army by Abdellah Taia

Author:Abdellah Taia
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2016-08-28T14:00:00+00:00

Here I am on the streets of Geneva. Berne Street. Neuchâtel Street. The Paquis district. The lake. Magnificent Lake Léman. France on the other side. I was going in circles. I bought a sandwich from a Lebanese guy, a chicken shawarma with a very strong, very garlicky white sauce that I can still remember. I didn’t have enough money to get something to drink. A glass of water would do. And after that? After that: I’d sleep. But where? In a hotel? Impossible, I needed to save the few Swiss francs I had to pay for using the baggage checkroom. On the street? Next to Cornavin Station? Inside the Station itself? I ran all the possibilities through my mind. Go up to someone and ask him to put me up for the night (I’d seen that done so many times back in Morocco, why not here ...)?

It was already nine o’clock. Darkness completely shrouded the city. The streets of Geneva were empty, worse than Rabat on a winters evening. It was cold now. A crazy idea crossed my mind: go to a sauna and spend the night there. It’s warm in a sauna. And a sauna would be open all night, wouldn’t it? Jean brought me to one the first time I visited him in the summer of 1997. Just where was that sauna? I didn’t remember any more.

So, forget the sauna idea. The street: no other choice. I started looking for a quiet spot, someplace out of the wind, if possible. Once again, my steps led me in the direction of Cornavin Station. The building was empty, silent, overly silent, sinister. The stores in the underground mall had closed hours ago. (In Geneva, everything closes at 7 p.m.—life just stops!) Fortunately, the store windows still had their lights on.

I had a good time looking in them, especially comparing the prices for different items and then converting them into dirhams. I wondered what Genevans were up to at this hour of the night. I exited the Station via the main entrance and looked up at the windows of houses and buildings. Yes, lights were on inside them but I felt they were somehow vacant, the Swiss somehow mute. I searched for a human form, some sign, was only met with silence. And the silence in Switzerland is deep, opaque, deaf, horrible.

I needed to talk, to hear someone else talking. I didn’t know what I needed to say. I needed to talk, just talk. After all, the Genevans spoke French and I spoke French too. Why had I studied this language for years in Morocco? Certainly not to be reduced to this silence. Before, I used to think that French was the best language for communication, a language that allowed you to express your ideas in a clear, precise way, achieve different shades of meaning, argue about things, defend yourself. I never imagined that French would become the language of silence. To say nothing, when one could be speaking French, seemed

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