Neil went into a high room with latticed windows that shut out the sun. An oil lamp in a glass bowl hung from the ceiling, there were low couches along the walls draped with handwoven rugs. Three men sat round a table drinking mint tea off a tray of hammered brass. They rose together and bowed to Neil. One of them, a graceful man in a pale flannel suit with hawk’s eyes, made room beside him on the couch.
‘I am Dr. Marouf,’ he said, handing him a glass of tea. He turned to a plump man on his left: ‘This is Mohammed Abdel Boussid’ — a moist face behind green pebble-glasses bobbed forward, unsmiling — ‘and this is Mohammed Sherrif.’
A sallow man with a pointed head of knitted hair, sitting on Neil’s left, bent forward with a sad smile and said, in almost a whisper, ‘Enchanté, m’sieur!’ His eyes were like pools of oil that caught strange prisms of light. He was dressed in a threadbare blue suit with a faded pin-stripe and a grimy shirt with no collar or tie. His hands were thin and dry, with a papery whiteness.
Dr. Marouf opened the conversation. He explained that he and Boussid were members of the Arab Front Political Bureau in the Casbah. Mohammed Sherrif was responsible for ‘defence and security’. ‘We are not famous men,’ he added, with self-effacing modesty, ‘we are small people working for the good of our nation.’
Neil thought hard: Marouf, Boussid, Sherrif. Whatever the elegant doctor might say, Neil knew that the first two names had been on most of the French security police files for the last five years. He remembered that Dr. Marouf had escaped twice from prison, and rumour had it that he had been tortured by the paras. He looked at Neil now like a Harley Street surgeon discussing a diagnosis.
The one name that puzzled Neil was Sherrif. The man sat with his thin hands clasped between his knees, smiling with deep sadness at the brass tray.
Marouf said, ‘We are greatly honoured to have a famous journalist from England to visit us.’
‘Thank you,’ Neil said, bowing and wondering what the hell Pol was playing at — Pol was a French agent: and these men were as much wanted by the French Government as were the leaders of the Secret Army — especially after the Casino bombing.
They talked gently, at great length, in wide spirals of thought, touching only obliquely on points of political passion, as when Marouf complained that the hospitals in the Casbah were hopelessly overcrowded and medicines destined from outside were seized by Secret Army commandos. They talked of patriotism and the unity of the people and the honour of manual work, like monks discussing faith and the Holy Spirit. Occasionally Marouf or Boussid would pause and ask Neil, with fierce earnestness, what he thought would happen in the country — did he think the Secret Army had any chance of winning? And if they did, would the British and Americans send in troops to help the Arab Front?
There was something oddly naive about them which both disarmed and rather worried Neil. He sipped his sweet green tea and said judiciously, ‘I don’t think the Secret Army has one chance in a million of winning. But nor do I think they can be beaten so easily. They are as much a popular movement among the Europeans here as you are among the Moslems. They are only saying what you are saying — that the country belongs to them. These Europeans are determined to fight and kill in order to hold on to what they honestly believe is theirs.’
Boussid pursed his moist lips and replied, ‘This country is not theirs. It is not France. It belongs to us. And one day the Europeans are going to understand that!’
The leather-faced man by the door refilled the little cups and Neil thought of the twin snakes of blood running down the boulevard: a woman’s severed leg in the darkness, and Van Loon groaning for a drink, dying with a pole through his guts. He said, in a feeble outburst of liberal righteousness, ‘Killing innocent people will do no good — it will make no one free.’
‘That is true!’ Sherrif blurted suddenly on his left. ‘But if killing does no good, what can we do to be free?’ His eyes widened into great pools of sorrow and his lips, smiling their perpetual sad smile, began to quiver.
Neil thought he recognized the symptoms of a paranoiac. He said cautiously, wondering again why he had been called to this meeting, ‘There are surely other methods besides killing and terrorism? You are only using the same methods as the Secret Army, and the Secret Army is going to lose.’
‘But what else is there, m’sieur?’ cried Sherrif. ‘We are poor men — we do not have tanks and atom bombs!’ His dry white fingers rustled together in his lap like dead leaves.
‘There is world opinion,’ Neil suggested, dubiously, ‘that is on your side.’
‘World opinion is one thing,’ said Boussid, focusing upon Neil his tiny cod’s-eyes behind their pebble-lenses, ‘but alone it does not make us a free people. If we ever win our freedom it will be because we have used the weapons of war. There is no dishonour in that.’
Neil looked at the plump pouting lips, the unblinking eyes, and said recklessly, ‘Was there no dishonour in what happened yesterday at the Casino de la Plage?’
From beside him came a whine like a wounded animal. He turned and saw Sherrif staring at him, the smile frozen on his lips, tears flowing like a child’s down his yellow cheeks. Neil realized that the smile was the result of partial
