Ghizlan Touati is an Algerian writer who is particularly interested in the status of women in Algeria today. She is the author of two collections of short stories: ‘Women Don't Do That,’ published in 2022, and ‘A Bad Time to Buy Fish,’ published in Egypt in 2024. She has also published several articles on women's issues and culture.

Portrait of a woman

Every day, she sits down at the café, at the third table on the left, on the corner of the street. The café opens onto a large crossroads; chairs and tables are arranged on three sides, forming right angles. She, however, always sits in the same place and, if one disregards the chances of chairs being moved or rearranged from one day to the next, one could say that she invariably occupies the same chair.

Her hair remains black – she dyes it regularly – smooth and carefully combed. Lipstick highlights her very thin lips, which, if one were to exaggerate, could be compared to a beak at the end of which a cigarette is permanently alight. She holds it between two fingers with shiny, varnished nails, sometimes bright red, sometimes green or yellow.

Sitting there, she drinks tea, coffee, sometimes a 473 ml glass of beer, and observes. She never tires of watching passers-by. Every day, she chooses a subject on which to ponder; she sometimes spends a whole day scrutinising the shoes of those passing by, then, when night falls, takes numerous notes on their shapes. One day, she writes:
‘He was a tall man wearing red shoes, a small part of which was clean and the rest dirty. Perhaps the red was dirt and not the original colour...’

Another winter day, she observes women's legs. But torrential rain prevents her from seeing them from the feet to the knees: sitting inside the café, she can only see the world through windows smeared with thick drops, criss-crossed with small rivers. This blurred vision leads her to write: "Today, I saw the knee of a woman who was certainly over sixty, because her knee was a little pale and she wasn't wearing those shiny, transparent stockings that hide the skin and make knees and legs look beautiful and smooth; that knee certainly wasn't smooth. " She adds three dots, without worrying about what they might suggest, dots that arouse curiosity...

Another day, she sees a child walking beside his grandmother, who is holding his hand. She drinks her cup of coffee and smokes a cigarette resting on the ashtray, then places a book and a pen in front of her and begins to write down her observations on the blank pages left at the beginning and end of each book — those pages she has always wondered why they exist, why books are cluttered with them. She writes only one remark that day: ‘The child says to his grandmother: “I don't love you at all, I only love Mummy and Daddy, but I have to stay with you.” He pulls his hand away from hers, shouting: “I don't love you.”’ She adds a short note, almost a psychological analysis: "No one can force someone to love them, especially not a child. " Then she draws three question marks, closes the book and finishes her cigarette, while the coffee cools, as it does every day, in the calm.

This woman dresses in white, sometimes red, sometimes yellow, and, apart from her daily remarks, she indulges in another pastime: she sits, stands or walks, and asks others to photograph her. A man passes by; she asks him to take several shots. Cigarette in hand, legs crossed or back leaning against the chair, she stands straight, almost like a soldier facing her superior. She loosens her hair, smiles, revealing very white teeth and a mole hidden in the crease of her raised cheek. The man takes the photos and smiles, while she asks him to wait a moment longer, until she is ready.

One autumn morning, she is strolling through the city in the morning, enveloped in an overpowering perfume she wears like a garment. The sky is cloudy, threatening rain. She stops a young woman who seems more hurried than necessary, but the other's haste does not faze her. She asks her to take her picture and hands her her phone; despite everything, the girl agrees. She then asks her to wait until everyone has passed by. She doesn't want anyone in the background, doesn't want to sully her cloudy day with the appearance of an obese man, a woman leaning on a cane, or a dishevelled young man holding an umbrella before the rain even starts. ‘Wait until the street is clear,’ she says, then, as the girl is about to reply, she interrupts her: ‘They're just photos, is the world going to end while we take a photo?’ The girl remains silent and waits for the street to empty.

After each photo shoot, she goes home, takes a shower, tidies up her chair , carefully wraps her slim, clean body in perfume and make-up, looks at herself in the mirror for a long time, then sits down to contemplate her images — the photos of the woman she carries every day so that she can live in her place.

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Let's kick the world's arse...

This woman — I wrote a story about her two or three days ago, perhaps — I see her today. She is about to sit down at her table, pushes back the chair opposite her, pulls up the one on her right, marking out her personal space. Her black hair is freshly dyed; her lips, painted like a red harbour, await those who are absent. I like the colour of her lips. I walk past her and, for the first time, I smile at her when she looks up at me, after finishing settling in. She then places a packet of cigarettes on the table, adorned with a repulsive image intended to discourage smoking — like all things put in place to repress, they only increase the desire for what they claim to prohibit.

She looks at me with eyes whose expression I cannot yet decipher, then laughs familiarly. I laugh too, because I finally understand what is expected of me in this relationship: seeing her every day makes me feel like I know her perfectly; all I have to do is talk to her, smile at her. She then calls out to me, quickly, like someone who has been waiting for her moment, and says, "You know what? I really want to knock out a lot of people's teeth.‘ I smile at her, satisfied, and reply, ’Go ahead.‘ She says, ’Let's go..."

At the table opposite, a man was trying to join in the conversation between the two women, who wanted to knock out the world's teeth. He shook his head, smiled at me first, perhaps because I was standing between his table and hers, picked up his glass of beer, took a small sip and said, ‘Let's go.’

So there were three of us: two women and a man eager to break the world's teeth. Don't revolutions begin with a desire, with a person, with a woman, with two women and a man? I know of a revolution that began with a cat... But I preferred to hide within myself and gave up on the plan to break the world's teeth. But don't worry, I promised the beautiful woman that we would do it one day, sooner or later, as soon as I got rid of fear, life and freedom... We will break the world's teeth...

Her coffee arrived, the man finished his beer... As for me, I arrived at the door of the building.

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An empty cage...

 I sat there watching her, drinking a cup of tea or water, nothing more, nothing less, for days that I no longer counted and no longer wanted to count, on the balcony opposite hers, which she opened every day at ten in the morning. I woke up and got ready to follow the events... First she would take a quick look, then come back a few minutes later with an empty cage, which she would hang up. She would look at it, but I couldn't decipher her gaze. Sometimes I felt it was tinged with sadness; sometimes she would smile from the balcony — I could see her smile clearly; sometimes she was expressionless.

And once, she stopped and looked at me intently for four minutes, as she does with the cage, as if she didn't see me despite her attention, for four whole minutes, as if she were counting them. I started counting them too. I always look at the time when it comes to her. Then she goes back into the flat, and I don't know what she does...

I make tea and take it to the table I set up there some time ago, exactly since I heard screams coming from the other side, from the building opposite my flat, which I had never noticed before. Some things, even if they are right in front of me, I don't see, and others, I only need to see them once to become attached to them and pursue them. That's how my story with her began.

I'd got into the habit of sitting on my balcony overlooking the street in the morning to drink my tea and watch the trees, as a purely decorative pastime, because trees don't change or move. They were ornamental trees that didn't lose their leaves or lean, as if they were fixed in place. In fact, the details of the tree have changed only once since I moved there three years ago: a bird came to build its nest there, and when its eggs hatched and the young began to fly, it flew away, and the nest collapsed under the effect of the rain. This lasted thirty days. Since that day, the tree has not meant much to me...

The cries were very high-pitched; I felt as if they were coming from the walls of the flat. For a moment, because of my old obsessions, I thought the cries were coming from the rooms and their doors. Perhaps my imagination played tricks on me and I believed in the illusion that houses could be haunted by invisible forces, which cry out when they remember a crime that took place there. But nothing had happened here: I am the first tenant, the flat is new, it has two balconies — a large balcony overlooking the street, opposite the tree, and another overlooking a large courtyard...

It was the first day I met Zhour. She was screaming, standing on her balcony, holding an empty cage. When she saw me, she smiled and hurried away... I thought to myself, ‘All that shouting for an empty cage,’ and then I left.

But I was compelled to watch her, a hidden curiosity that made her my favourite everyday heroine, and her empty cage, which she hangs up every day, the source of my perplexity... for a quarter of an hour. She changes her red dress for a blue one, a pink one, a yellow one or a grey one, a different colour every day, but the first dress she puts on every day to hang the cage is red lace, long, with transparent sleeves. I watched her for four months straight, without interruption, and she never changed that red dress. She looked at me differently each time, and I smiled, trying to show my admiration more each day than the day before. I have never been so interested in anyone as I was in her...

On the first day of the fifth month, Zhour was not on her balcony... I waited for her; she did not come out, and the cage was not hung. I blamed myself for sleeping in too late. Maybe she had left early for an emergency, maybe she had slept longer, maybe someone had visited her... Midday came and she still hadn't appeared; the sun set, then night fell. At nine o'clock, the lights in her flat were still not on...

Something inside me told me to run to her and knock on her flat door, like neighbours do in films... She doesn't know me, I don't know her: what am I going to say to her? Ask her why she didn't hang up the cage? Why she didn't put on the blue dress? Today is Wednesday, blue day. You didn't move the plants, the sun burned them completely; the pot is empty, you didn't fill it with water, the pigeons will die of thirst if you don't... Today, I didn't drink tea because you didn't come... I repeat my speech, I organise my words. I discovered its importance for things... for me!...

In front of her house, I knocked on the door softly, once, twice in a row, then four times, then continuously... I noticed that there was a doorbell button on the left side of the door. I pressed it softly, then harder, then with force, as if the sound were springing from my fingers.

The door on the other side opened. A woman was trying to be friendly and attentive. I first asked her — I didn't like the look in her eyes — if she knew if Zhour was there. She got annoyed, at least that's what her facial expression suggested. I then explained that I was her neighbour, in the building opposite, and that I used to see her every day. I resorted to lying, putting together sentences that suggested I knew Zhour well.

She said, ‘Zhour?’

I had to confirm the name: it would never have occurred to this woman that I was looking for someone whose first name I did not know. She repeated ‘Zhour’ and shook her head. ‘I don't think anyone has seen her for a year.’

Then, before I could even move or say a word, she added:

‘She lived here. One day, her bird was killed. She hung its cage over there, on the other balcony, and it fell... She died a week later.’

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Unpublished stories

English adaptation based on the French translation from Arabic by Ghizlan Touati