Algiers, 4 May 1902, around 10 o'clock in the evening

Today, went to see a sorcerer, lodged in a tiny shop on one of the streets in the upper part of town, among the dark stairways along rue du Diable. Was convinced of the reality of that incomprehensible and mysterious science of magic.... And what horizons, at once far-reaching and obscure, this reality opened up to my mind, what a sense of calm as well, firmly demolishing any doubt!

Of late, the feeling of calm and melancholy has returned. Unquestionably, Algiers is one of the cities that inspires me, especially certain parts of town. I'm happy with our present neighborhood, with our house too, after that horrible dump on rue de la Marine. Here, if it weren't for the unending, boring, and thankless work, and the problems and anxieties of our present situation, I would have a few days of peace, contemplation, and productivity.

How is it that the imbeciles the "world" and literature are teeming with can claim there is nothing Arab about Algiers? I, who've seen many other cities, experience some of the purest impressions of the Orient here.

One very graceful impression is that of sunset over the port and the terraces of the upper town, and the gay Algerian women; a whole playful world in pink and green on the slightly blue-tinted white of the uneven and disorderly terraces. It's from the little lattice window of Madame Ben Aben that you discover all this.

The bay of Algiers is, along with that of Bone, the prettiest, most deliciously intoxicating corner of the sea I've ever seen. How far we are here from disgusting Marseilles, with its ugliness, its stupidity, its rudeness, and its moral and material filth! In spite of the crowds brought here by a prostituted and prostituting "civilization," Algiers is still a lovely city, and it's easy to live here.

Yet, seeing the corpse of Zeheira, the Kabyle woman who threw herself down a well in the impasse Medee to escape a marriage she hated, borne on a stretcher covered with rough gray cloth, cast a mourning veil, heavy and dark and indefinable over this luminous Algiers for days on end.

The more I study--very badly and too quickly--the history of North Africa, the more I see that my idea was correct: Africa ingests and assimilates everything that is hostile to it. Perhaps it is the Predestined Land from which the light that will regenerate the world will one day emerge!

During the landing at Sidi-Ferruch in 1830, a peaceful looking old man approached the French camp. All he said was the following: "God is God, and Mohammed is His prophet!" He then went off and no one ever saw him again. That man had come to announce something that no one understood ... it was the permanence of Islam, there, on the bewitching soil of Africa.

Tenes, 18 September 1902, 9 o'clock in the morning

Autumn is coming. A strong wind blows continuously and the sky is covered with gray clouds. It rains from time to time. The wind moans here as the North Wind once did, back there. Our life goes on monotonously and would be tolerable without the eternal problem of money. Yet here we at least have the security of a bare minimum.

If it wasn't for the resentment of the people we have to deal with and the petty and vulgar intrigues, we would be--relative to the last two years--quite happy. What's poisoning Tenes is this herd of nervous, sex-crazed, empty-headed, and spiteful females. Naturally, here as everywhere else I become the target for the rabble's hatred. In itself all this slime means nothing to me, but it annoys me when it starts to close in, to rise to my level. There is, however, the precious resource of departure, of isolation along the great roads among the tribes, in the great peace of blue and pale gold horizons.

Here I've taken many rides--to Main, to Baghdoura, to Tarzout, to Cape Kalax, to M'gueu ... so many escapes to the countryside, to the repose of the still vast land of the Bedouins.

As for our morale, the past few days have been gray, and--strangely--as almost always now, Ouiha shares my own state of mind. His health disturbs me. Yet maybe, with regular treatment he'll get well for good. If he were made caid, and if we moved to a village, far from the stupidity of Tenes, he would certainly be happy. From a literary standpoint, the last few days have been wasted. I've fallen into a kind of depression that prevents me from making any effort. Today it's starting to get better, but this evening I'll probably leave for Sidi Merouan's great yearly taam. A report of the feast could be the subject of my next article for the ungrateful Nouvelles. The location and subject lend themselves to this piece. Melancholy impressions of autumn. During the last few days, my health, which was really beginning to improve, is again on the decline. Is it my physical health that has influenced my moral health or vice versa?

25 December 1902

More and more, my boredom and discontentment with people and things are increasing ... discontentment with myself as well, for I've been unable to discover a modus vivendi, and I'm really afraid that with my character none is possible.

There is only one thing that could help me get through the few years of life on earth that are reserved for me: literary work, that sham existence that has its own charm and the great advantage of leaving the field almost entirely open to our will, which allows us to express ourselves without suffering from painful contacts with the outside world. It's a precious thing, whatever the results from the point of view of career or profit, and I hope that with time, as the sincere conviction grows stronger in me that real life is hostile and complicated, I'll be able to resign myself to that existence, so peaceful and calm. Of course I'll make many incursions into the dismal field of reality ... but I know ahead of time that I'll never find there the satisfaction I'm looking for.

Actually, once the last five days of Ramadan are over, I'm off to Medea and Bou-Saada. It will mean a trip, a diversion from the monotony around me. Then I'll go all the way to Biskra, where I'll turn back at the last irrigation ditch in the oasis and cast a nostalgic glance down the road to the Souf and the hallucinatory Oued-Rir', down the road to the past ... over and done with forever!

Once again my soul is going through a period of transition, of incubation. Once again it is in the process of changing and, probably, of growing darker and sadder ... If this movement toward despair continues, what sort of terrifying end will it lead me to one day?

I feel, however, that there is a remedy, but it means accepting Islam with complete humility and sincerity. In it I will find my final rest and a heartfelt joy. The troubled and, so to speak, ambiguous atmosphere in which I live does nothing for me. My soul is languishing and turning inward for the most annoying reasons.

Thursday evening, December 11, as it had been decided, I left in the moonlight of Ramadan for the trip to Dahra.

I left to put my mind at rest, with the conviction that I would accomplish nothing--the gift of prescience is becoming stronger and stronger in me ... a gift that would be precious if it were within our power to change anything in the ineluctable course of events ... but unfortunately this gift is painful because it cannot be used, for it doesn't allow me to change circumstances in the least, but only to know ahead of time that any effort my reason still requires me to make will be hopelessly ineffective.

The evening was clear and cool. A great silence reigned over the deserted town, and we slipped through like shadows, the horseman Mohammed and I. This man, so Bedouin and so close to nature, is my companion of choice because he squares well with the landscape, with the people ... and with my state of mind. In addition, he's unconsciously as preoccupied as I am with obscure and disturbing mental occurrences. He wants the things I understand, and he certainly feels them more intensely than I do, precisely because he doesn't understand them and doesn't try to. To Montenotte and Cavaignac, with their Arab cafes. Outside Cavaignac we left the main road and entered the tangled labyrinth of the inextricable countryside around Tenes. We crossed wadis, climbed hills, tumbled down ravines, skirted cemeteries.

Then, in a desert of diss and doum, above a sinister hollow resembling the Sahara, where the bushes are perched high on mounds of earth, we got down and ate ... to eat and rest. The eeriness of the place made us jump at every sound. Suddenly, I caught sight of a vague silhouette in the hollow, white against one of the bushes. The horses grow excited and snort ... Who is it? It disappears, and when we pass by later on, the horses show signs of nervousness.

The road then follows a narrow valley cut by numerous wadis. Jackals are howling nearby. Farther ahead we climb, following the flank of a mountain separating the region from the sea, until we arrive at the village of Kaddour-bel-Korchi, the caid of the Talassa.

The caid is not there and we have to go on, over a terrible stretch of road. We find the caid where the territory of the Baach begins, in the village of a certain Abd-el-Qader ben Aissa, a pleasant and hospitable man. We eat a second meal there and, when the moon has set, we leave for Baach, along muddy trails bordered with ruts and covered with slippery stones.... At dawn we catch sight of the fort at Baach, the most beautiful in the region, high on a steep hillside, very similar to the forts in the Sahara.

Translated by Richard Bononno