Mariner of the Mountains (2021) - full transcript

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.

He was cross-eyed,
he had a glassy eye.

Do you remember the first time you
took me to the ophthalmologist?

I was 9.

The doctor diagnosed me
with keratoconus.

A cornea deformation.

A congenital disorder.

You assured him no one in our
family suffered from that condition.

You probably thought
it came from my father's side.

It must have been odd

raising a son without knowing
his other half.

I decided to visit the monument
I spotted from my hotel window,

the Martyrs' Memorial,

built to honour the heroes
who died fighting the French army.

It seems over a million people
died in the war.

I wondered if
the weight of all the dead

would outweigh the cement
used for this monument.

I was taking pictures
in the outskirts of Algiers,

when this elderly man came up
and introduced himself.

He was a retired fisherman.

He comes here every evening
to have a smoke, gazing at the sea.

After I told him I'm a journalist,
he told me he fought on the front.

He pulled out his ID
and stated, proudly,

he still knows how to shoot
with an AK103.

He showed me a scar
where a bullet grazed his head.

He said he lost both parents,
his brothers and a sister in the war.

He must be over ninety.

About the same age you'd be
if you were still alive.

- Hello.
- Hello.

- How are you?
- I'm very well and you? How are you?

In Algeria,
there are a lot of problems.

At least the harbor
is well maintained.

Smoke, smoke, smoke...

no good, smoke, smoke, no good.

- There is no work.
- No, no work.

No work.

After the old man left,
three guys came up to me,

they wanted to tell me
about their lives,

which consist of looking at the sea,
dreaming of getting away.

One of them, the one in the
Gucci cap, is 23.

He's tried to leave Algeria 8 times,
and was deported back 8 times.

He tells me something
that haunts me.

He wished the French
had never left.

Iracema,

I want to understand what he feels.

If it's rage towards the present,

or if it's the anger of being haunted
by a past drenched in blood?

Maybe he isn't thinking of the past,
he wants to have faith in the future.

The boys leave and I stay,
staring at the sea.

It feels like I'm no longer
in Algiers,

but I'm in Fortaleza.

It was one Sunday at the beach,

when I inquired about
my father for the first time.

I think I was 8.

Instead of telling
me the story of my father,

you told me the story
of the novel Iracema,

The forbidden love
between a Tabajara native

and a Portuguese colonizer,

which bears the first Brazilian child

and ends in tragedy.

Your eyes were glued to the sea,

and I could sense your fierce desire
to cross the Atlantic,

in order to arrive here

where I am now.

Did your decision to sequence
the DNA of a red seaweed

had something to do with a yearning
to wade into the ocean

and come out
on the other side of the world?

It was that red seaweed
that earned you a scholarship

to leave to the United States.

How could something you could
only see under a microscope,

change someone's life forever?

I picture your heart

when you embarked on a plane
from Fortaleza to Washington.

I know one thing.

It was on a bowling outing
with the other foreign students,

when you met my father.

He left Kabylia to study
engineering in America

so he could return to rebuild
a free Algeria.

I wonder if on that first night
you talked in French

or in English.

Then you both left Washington.

You moved to Madison
and him to Colorado.

You spent months exchanging
only through letters.

The same letters that earned
you the Post Office Prize.

It was 1963, once you
finished your Master's Degree,

that you moved to Colorado.

I never saw you two together,

except on the photos that
you kept from that time.

Like in a love story with Audrey
Hepburn and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

I wonder how you felt
when you said goodbye.

You, pregnant, returning to a Brazil
taken over by the military

and him embarking
to the Mecca of Revolution,

to Independent Algeria.

You had a farewell kiss and
he promised he'd come back for you,

to start a life together, here.

You, him and I.

Or maybe not.

Maybe nothing was said,
there was no farewell kiss.

There were so many things
I wanted to ask you.

Were you still waiting for him,
that day, in Fortaleza,

while gazing at that chopping sea?

Did you still dream
of coming here?

Were you still in love with him?

I don't think so.

When you told me the story of IracemaI think you'd had enough of Algeria,

of Kabylia, of Majid

and of this whole thing.

Was it on that very day that my
desire to make this voyage was born?

Before I knew it,
it was almost night

and I was still here,
looking at the sea.

I've noticed
they speak a different language here.

I don't know if it's Kabyle,
Berber or Tamazight.

Once again, someone asks
where I come from,

and takes a picture of me.

And I keep asking myself
how do they know I'm a foreigner.

The owner was impressed
when I said I was a journalist.

He offers me
freshly squeezed orange juice.

It was good.

I was sick of sodas
and cartoned stuff.

I have finally arrived in Kabylia.
It feels like another world.

I decided to stop at this lake,

which I'm not sure if it's a lake
or a reservoir.

While filming,

I wondered if one of these kids
could be my distant relative,

a second or third degree cousin.

Portuguese, it's like Spanish, right?

Portuguese is nicer.

I speak Spanish.

I understand, no problem.

My name is Katia.

Your name is Katia?

You enjoy Algeria?

- Beautiful country.
- Very beautiful.

So sir, you are in Algeria
for how many times before?

When you come to Algeria?
One day?

A couple of days ago.

Then your documentary
is gonna be ready when?

- Next year.
- Next year?

Can you tell us the title,
so we can find it and watch it.

- When will it be out?
- I don't know yet.

How did I think I could be
a cousin of one of those kids?

As if Kabylia were one big family.

I ended up in a village
called Beni Yenni.

Traditionally,
they were swordsmiths here

because of the surrounding
silver mines.

When the Arabs forbade it, the locals
started making jewelry instead.

If you were here,
you'd have bought a lot of them.

I remember a coral necklace you had,

but rarely wore, because
you were against coral harvesting,

which messed the ecosystem
of your red seaweed.

It struck me that your birthday
would be in the coming days.

I get the urge to buy
a necklace to give you as a gift.

I started to choose
then I heard you saying:

"Don't be silly, Karim.
Keep it in your savings account".

The jeweller asked me
what I was doing here.

I told him I was lost,
I was looking for Tagmut Azuz,

the village where my father was born.

He said it wasn't far from here.

He asked if my father was alive.
I said yes,

he lives in Paris
and has a place in Algiers.

He asked if my father was with me.

I said no, that I don't see him often

and wanted to make this trip alone.

I decide to get a haircut,

not that I have much hair left.

You'd have hated it.

You always complained
that I got my hair cut too short,

that it made me
look like a soldier.

I wanted to look more like them

so they'd stop asking me
where I come from

and what I'm doing here.

I saw a woman
with a scarf on her head.

I wanted to go over
and talk to her,

as if she were you,

as if you'd come to live here,

and were staring at these mountains,
remembering Fortaleza's seascape.

I thought I had come to Kabylia,

in search of something that might
make me better understand who I am,

some answer that I can give
when I'm asked where I come from.

But everything I see around here
makes me think of you, Iracema.

Today, more than ever,

I miss you so much.

I found
a recently built hotel nearby.

The room is big,
with two single beds.

The shower is ice cold,

the towels were folded
into a bunny-like shape.

And the mattress is too soft.

What would it have been to live in
a country becoming so conservative?

Would you have agreed to
give up your red seaweed

and to live
on top of these mountains,

away from the sea?

I doubt it.

If you were here with me,
we would be relieved

that Majid never came back
to take us away with him.

I was happy living with you and my
grandmother at 880 Santana Jr. Av.,

in the Papicu neighborhood.

Going to the beach
every weekend.

Were you also happy?

At breakfast, I notice some
old pictures of Kabylia on the wall.

They were certainly
taken by a French traveler

depicting the Kabyles
as exotic tribe,

savage and ancestral.

I imagine how was the life of these people

who have been living
in these mountains for centuries,

since long before
the French invaded.

How was the life
of my grandfather,

of my great-grandfather,

of my great-grandmother?

I'll never forget my arrival
in Tagmut Azuz.

Make beautiful images
of me and Kabylia.

Suddenly, a woman opens the
door and comes out of her house.

She looks me in the eye
and says:

"Make our Kabylia
look beautiful."

I think my haircut
must have worked.

This woman
thinks I'm really from here.

I spot a boy walking to school
and ask if I can take his picture.

I try to get him in the frame
wondering how it would have been

if this had been
my own daily walk to school.

Would I have moved to Algiers
and become an engineer?

Would I have found a wife
and had twin kids to raise?

And dreamt of living in Zürich?

Or maybe I'd never
have left this village

until I reached 54

when I'd have travelled to Fortaleza

to see where
my Iracema was born?

I'd be now, staring at the Atlantic,
wondering how my life would have been.

Can you imagine?

It would have been
my life inside out.

Hello.

For the first time,
nobody is paying attention to me.

I feel like a spy,
disguised as a Kabyle.

Everyone here could be
a sibling of my genitor,

which is how you started to call him
after a certain point.

What would it have been like
had I met my father here,

instead of a café in Paris?

I remember,

he was waiting for me
at a table outside,

squeezed onto a narrow sidewalk.

A stranger, in a navy-blue suit & tie,
sitting across from me.

I was 18.

I grew up imagining Majid as a cross
of Yuri Gagarin and Che Guevara.

He was neither.

He was an ordinary man.

An engineer married to an Algerian,
with whom he had a daughter.

He didn't look like
a member of a secret clan,

who grew up in the mountains,
and survived many wars.

So many years
wanting to ask him so many questions

suddenly we didn't have
much to say to one another.

We finished our coffee,
said goodbye

and I rushed to call you.

I wanted to tell you everything,
but you didn't want to know.

You changed subjects.

Today, I understand
it must have been awkward for you,

my meeting the man with whom
you'd dreamt of a shared life,

and whom you never saw again.

Today I think
I understand you, Iracema.

I understand I'll never grasp the
extent of what you lived together.

And then a well-dressed gentleman
approached me.

I think he'd been following me
since I left the café.

Hello.

He caught me so off-guard

that when he asked my name,
I didn't lie.

He laughed and went to get a man
who introduced himself excitedly.

My name is Aïnouz Karim.

I was born on August 15th 1966,
in Tagmut Azuz.

I am a businessman.

Pleased to meet you, the
second Mr. Aïnouz Karim.

Pleased to meet you.

Look, Aïnouz Karim.

And these are my children.
There you go.

He even showed me his ID to prove
we were born in the same year.

Pleased to meet you. Thank you.

Can you imagine how it felt,
after thinking you were one of kind,

to arrive in a small village
on top of a North-African Mountain,

and be introduced to my doppelgänger.

In one minute he introduced
me to the whole village.

Welcome to our home,
in the heart of Kabylia.

Long live Kabylia.

Kabylia, my beautiful country.

We are proud of you.

It's a pleasure.

Good morning.

How are you?

Have you seen your brother?

Aïnouz?

Not him.

The one that lives there.

Have you seen that tree?

This tree is more than a century old.

I've advised him to seek
an elder to answer him.

- What do you want me to say?
- No, you are right.

- You need an elderly person.
- Yes an elder is best.

- Yesterday he was in the square.
- I saw him at a café.

He was taking pictures
of the At-Azzouz district.

- He is U-Yidir At-Bouzid's grandson.
- Yes, but I don't know him.

Me neither.

An elder who knows the village
could answer his questions,

explain why we gave this district
the name At-Azzouz.

What do you want me to tell him?
I told him the name of the alley.

That's the end of the story.

This house belongs to a woman

who might be my cousin or my aunt.

He is French.

- Who is he?
- He's family.

How do you know?

How do you know he's family?

- He's Aïnouz.
- Yes.

- God bless him.
- How are you?

She introduced me to her daughter,
to her niece and even her grandson,

the same boy I met on his
way to school in the morning.

Some of them spoke a little French,
but it was hard to communicate.

It's someone from our family
who's here to film us.

He's from the Aïnouz family.
From my mother's side.

Yes he's an Aïnouz.

The children are curious.

- He said yes.
- Thanks a lot.

Yes because he's French.
My French is bad.

No my daughter, he's an Aïnouz.
He's not French.

Maybe he's only called Aïnouz.

Yes, maybe he only calls
himself Aïnouz to coax us.

- Karim Aïnouz?
- Yes, Aïnouz Karim.

- On the internet.
- Yes that's it.

You'll see there are
plenty of photos.

Tell me, is the movie
going to be on TV?

No, in movie theaters,
not on TV.

Movie theaters?
Oh, okay. At the cinema.

- Abroad?
- What do you mean?

Ah, so it won't be on TV
for us to see?

It should be aired in Algeria
so we can see it.

My sister wants to know

if it's possible
to put it on Facebook?

On Facebook.

So with these photos I'll be
in the USA, Tunisia, Zimbabwe.

Switzerland.

He's only filming me.
I only have to smile.

What do you want me to say?
I'm waiting for my fate.

Me, the state I'm in,
what do you want me to say? Nothing.

I only have my eyes left to cry.

He's not a stranger.
He's my brother-in-law.

Tell him it's for the day
he comes back.

She's saying when you come back
she'll fill you up with cakes.

He said okay.

Tell him that my sister
will offer him a box.

She'll give you a big box.

She says you'll have
a big box of cakes and a wife too.

- He's kidding.
- She doesn't have a daughter for him.

She's a young woman. Come on,
use the wall to help you walk.

If she walked assiduously, in 6 days
I'm sure she'd lose weight.

Who is he, why is he filming us?

I don't know.

- Wait, I'm going to stop here a bit.
- Who's this person filming us?

I have no idea
who this could be.

- We're here, take your picture.
- No, don't take my picture.

I don't know where these
photos will end up.

Let me through,
don't take my picture.

- What's going on here?
- What's this photo business?

- Wait, I'll explain it to you.
- He's an Aïnouz.

An Aïnouz? Who are his parents?

His grandfather is called Idir
and his father Majid Aïnouz.

Okay, I see.

He's his son,
he was born abroad.

And now he wants to take our
Tagmut Azuz with him.

He wants to know see his village.

Tell him, Tagmut Azuz
is better than Paris.

He came all the way
to the village to film.

Yes, he came to film.

He wants to get back to his origins
and keep up traditions. That's good.

God bless you.
Shall I make you some coffee?

Do you want a coffee?

Here.

My children are happy.
They say you will take my picture.

You're part of the family.

You're my uncle's son.
We're from the same family.

We're all Aïnouz.

It was my aunt who married me
into this family. Do you see him?

She married me off
to an old alcoholic.

He's always drinking.

He's always begging. It's shameful.
It's too much.

Wait, I'm going to give a banana
to uncle Idir's grandson.

Wait.

I only have two.

There they are.

Give them to uncle Idir's grandson.

Let's take a picture.
Come on, get up.

Come on.

Come on. Come.

I need to be in it.

Oh yes, put yourself like that.

This is Mister Ayouni.

Yes, Mister Ayouni.

Ah it's okay.

And there they are.

Mister Ayouni and Misses Ayouni.

Come on, come on.

This other relative said I perhaps
had a right to some land here.

I never thought about it before,

but suddenly I started thinking
that maybe I could live here,

restore one of these old houses,

grow a bunch of grape vines,
make wine,

and open a nightclub.

It was a reverie that popped
into my head all of a sudden.

A wish to start all over again

and to become
Karim Aïnouz upside-down,

who was born in Tagmut Azuz,

who lives in the mountains,

and who is a nightlife impresario.

May God protect and unite you.

It's over.

Long life to you.

Long life to you,
for you to discover the world.

She tells me
I must meet my great-uncle.

She makes a point
of taking me to his house.

That's a Kabyle lemon tree.

That's a mature fig tree.

He shows me each plant,
and describes every tree.

This is a pomegranate tree.

Here, even the lemon tree
is Kabyle.

This is a plum tree.

That's an avocado tree.

That's a persimmon.

The one over there
is a four seasons lemon tree.

Over there is a mandarin tree,
the clementine.

That there is an orange tree.

By the way, there are fruits.

Close the door, Djou.

He invites me in,
he wants to prepare me a couscous.

I say I can't, but he insists.

He says our surname means "generous".

No, he says that
my name means "generous".

I don't think
you ever knew that.

He tells me about
my grandfather, Idir.

Your grandfather

was a very bright man

with an elephant's memory.

At first,

he married a cousin of his,

they had a son,

and then I don't know what happened,

it was love at first sight

he met your grandmother.

My grandfather got married, had a son
and then abandoned his wife.

Just like your story with my father.

He fell in love with my grandmother,
with whom he had five children.

He says that my grandparents
taught Math at a school nearby.

He tells me
my grandfather was a revolutionary,

who was persecuted and
tortured by the French.

He was part of the first government
after the War of Independence,

he ended up being exiled
after a coup d'état

launched from within the same
party that led the Revolution.

He was expelled from Algeria,

the country he'd fought so hard for,

nurtured such dreams for,

and to which he could never return.

No wonder the National Anthem
sings about so much bloodshed.

Come on.

After the couscous,

my great-uncle invites me to visit
the house where the Aïnouz were born.

It's good.

Alright, let's go.

He tells me that here
in Tagmut Azuz

that the Catholic Missionaries opened
their very first school in Algeria.

He tells me that my father
and grandfather went to that school.

My uncle tells me that my grandfather
and father were born in this house.

This house was occupied
and split in two,

so these blasted missionary priests
could live here.

According to my uncle,

a Frenchman wrote that
the first conquest of Algeria

was achieved with the bullets
of the French army

and the defusing
of the Kabyle resistance.

The second conquest was achieved
by enforcing a colonial administration.

And the third
and ultimate conquest,

was achieved through
the Missionary Schools.

But to the colonizers' dismay,

these schools were never enough
to prevent the uprisings.

I remember a passage
from a book I brought on this trip,

The Wretched of the Earthby Frantz Fanon.

Page: 34.
Chapter: Concerning Violence.

"Thus the native discovers
that his life, his breath,

"his beating heart are the same
as those of the colonizer.

"He finds out the colonizer's skin
is of no more value than a native's.

"And this revelation
unsettles the world.

"All the revolutionary assurance
of the native stems from it.

"For if, in fact, my life is worth
as much as the colonizer's,

"if his glance no longer
shrivels me up nor freezes me,

"if his voice no longer
turns me into stone,

"I'm no longer on tenterhooks
in his presence.

"I'm already preparing
such efficient ambushes for him

"that very soon there will be
no way out but that of flight."

REVOLUTION UNTIL VICTORY.

I try to imagine
what this house was like before

versus what it is now.

It's a small place, Iracema.

It must have been a shock
to leave here for Colorado.

It's her, it's not me, it's her.

My grand-uncle's
three granddaughters, my cousins,

goof around and look at me.

The oldest is called Ines.

She volunteers
to carry the camera.

She stands behind me,
by my side, attentive.

It's funny.

It almost seems
she was waiting for me.

She asks me
if I want to hear a story.

I say yes.

She looks into the camera
and tells me

of the creation of the world
as in the Kabyle mythology.

Machaho! Tellem chaho!
Once upon a time.

This is the device that has opened
Kabyle stories since bygone times.

The age old formula
that opens the doors

onto a world so strange
and yet familiar,

where we see marvels,
as in our dreams,

or our desires are brutally
frustrated like in reality.

Once upon a time
there was a wild buffalo,

Itherther,

and a heifer,

Thamuatz.

They lived in the depths of the Earth
where no light ever reached,

a place called Tlam.

Tlam was a dank, dark netherworld,

replete with subterranean streams.

Until one day,

Thamuatz falls
into one of these rivers

and Itherther decides
to follow her.

The underground river disgorges
into a valley.

Itherther and Thamuatz

emerge and gaze at the light
for the first time.

Blinded
by an explosion of lights,

they climb the Atlas Mountains
in order to reach the sun.

And up on the highest peak,
they conceive Achimi,

the buffalo that gave rise
to all the creatures of the world.

Iracema,

at that moment, I feel as though
I came here just to meet my cousin.

Ines.

I am a ghost.

It was as if she were
your doppelgänger.

While everybody wants to tell me
about the past, war, revolution.

Ines told me about a myth.

A story from when the world
wasn't even the world yet.

It makes me want
to make a movie with her.

2021: THE ODYSSEY OF INES.

Once upon a time

the crew of a spaceship encounters

an alien vessel in deep space.

Ines,
one of the teenage cosmonauts,

flees the spacecraft
into the unknown

and she drifts into the void.

Ines embarks on a new journey
to a distant galaxy named Amda.

My uncle asks me
if I've been to the cemetery.

I say I haven't.

He makes a point
of taking me there.

I realize
that I had passed by it once.

There's a huge tree in the middle.

As though everyone who had died there
was now part of that huge tree,

as if it were nourished
by the dead.

Most of the headstones
bore the same surname:

Aïnouz.

For the first time, I actually felt
I had understood this place.

Will I finally be able to explain
that I also come from here?

Suddenly it all started to tremble
as if I were on the edge of a cliff.

I felt hollow.
A kind of vertigo.

I was afraid I'd fall into a grave
and never come out again.

The night has fallen when I leave.

My uncle insists that I stay.
I tell him I'm booked into a hotel.

It's a lie. The desire
to stay here longer just grows,

and I feel drawn to that tree
in the middle of the cemetery.

I'm afraid I'll never
be able to leave these mountains.

So, without saying goodbye to anyone,
I head back to Algiers.

It's dark, and I don't know
what I'm doing.

I retrace my route,

back down the mountains
towards the sea.

Back in Algiers, I drive by
a shopping mall and decide to stop.

I need a familiar place,

somewhere I can pretend
I'm not here anymore.

I take the escalators until
I come across a bowling alley.

I ask for an hourly rate,
and start to play.

I don't know if anyone notices me,
because I'm long passed caring.

I barely hit any pins,
but I don't care.

I think about you doing the same,

laughing and having fun,

long before I was born,

wanting to devour life.

I wake up the following morning
with the singing of children.

I look out the window and see
that the hotel is next to a school.

From this new room I can clearly hear
the children singing the Anthem.

I think about the War of Independence
I didn't experience,

but which allowed me to be born.

It was this War that cracked open
the horizons of this country,

and allowed Majid to go to America,
where you two could fall in love.

And it was to this Revolution
that he came back

when he said farewell to you.

I'm proud to have in my eyes
the same blood

that ran in the veins of that army
of audacious women and men

who fought
with rusty old machine guns,

knives and sickles,
and their bare hands,

to eject a European nation,

which wielded the 4th largest
military power in the world.

Murderous Regime!
Murderous Regime!

A regime that makes
a billion a day selling oil and gas

and yet lets the nation
rot away like a sick dog.

Iracema,

there are times it looks like you
and Majid came from the same place.

But I prefer to dream
of a free Algeria,

with a free Brazil,

like you two did once.

"Glory to Him
Creator of all things.

"And every thing
its shape and its colour".

I felt like postponing my
departure and taking another boat,

but I think it's time to leave.

So I go down to the harbour
and stay there, staring at the sea,

awaiting the ship that will swoon me
to the other side of the planet.

I imagine you,
breaking out in laughter,

smoking a cigarette,
wanting to engulf the world,

waving farewell to Algiers.

When I finally board,

I run to the stern
and stare back at the city.

I try to understand if everything
that happened here was real,

or if it was just another dream.

Algiers the Golden, the Red,
the White, drifts away

becoming Algiers
the Grey and the Sultry,

like a mirage.

I remember the word "calentura",

the term for heatstroke,

a condition that often afflicts
mariners as they reach the Tropics,

a delirious fever
that makes them imagine the sea

as rolling green fields,

and pushes them to want
to jump overboard.

I look into the water and I want
to throw myself into this silver blue

and ride a buffalo,

dive into the depths until I find
your beloved red seaweed.

I want to fly, underwater,
like in the myth Ines told me,

with no past, no resentment,
faceless, tearless.

I want to fly all the way home,

wherever those may be.

To you,

my beloved Iracema,

with much saudade and joy,

your mariner of the mountains.

MARINER OF THE MOUNTAINS.

I want to specially thank
all the Algerians

that have crossed my path

and who have accepted to accompany me
on this voyage.