First thoughts on arriving in Algiers

I started writing this at 5:30 in the morning. I’ve already been up for an hour. I’m running on four hours of uninterrupted sleep, which is still better than the night before.

Barcelona and the anxiety of it seems a long way away. Once I made it through security in Algiers, picked up my luggage, and met the embassy expeditor, I relaxed. Algiers, in general, seems very relaxed. For all the awkward attempts at predicting how I might react, or what I should expect, at least immediately, it all seems very easy, undemanding. The city strikes me as almost polite; the first day I was here, I walked around Cite Said Hamdine, through traffic, in a light rain, and although traffic was slow, it was steady, and there seemed to be little of the insufferably egoistic sense of urgency that drives people to rush, or to attempt silly maneuvers. I felt almost at ease being in traffic; not the ease of experience, as in Beirut or in Cairo, where I know how to navigate the streets and where everyone speeds and no one seems like they will ever stop, but an almost Zen-like being-at-peace with the traffic. Perhaps it’s just jetlag, but so far I do not feel agitated in Algiers, even though, conventionally speaking, there is plenty that probably should. Agitate me, that is.

My first glimpse of Algiers came as the plane was landing, and through a dense layer of fog. Even obscured by the clouds, my immediate impression of the city was: it’s so green. I have not yet explored enough of the city to be able to orient myself, and I have no way of judging our angle of approach, but as soon as we were over land, I noticed what seemed like huge blocks of greens so vibrant they cut through the grey, almost as if they had been painted on. These were adjacent patches of more deeply real, dark greens. I’m still not sure how to account for the combinations, and at the time, I thought I was seeing things. Just a few minutes before, when we were still above the clouds and in the sun, I had briefly convinced myself that a bright flash of white was the glare off the Ville Blanche. Once we ducked under the clouds, I decided that my anxieties and expectations were such that I could not be certain about anything I was seeing. I decided that, to go with the impressions as they came rather than trying to work things out, was the only sound strategy in such unknown circumstances, particularly when I kept on waiting for things to happen, for the world to unfold, as I expected it should.

A few thoughts on those expectations, and on my fascination with the greenery of Algiers: my experience of this city has already been powerfully mediated, and while all such experiences are mediated by media, in this case, I am profoundly aware of the specific combinations of media through which my experience is being construed. Most of the images come in black, white, and various—unfortunate and illegitimate—shades of gray, as do the texts, and the concepts.

When I exited baggage claim I met my expeditor. He took me off to meet the embassy car. The minute I sat down, the driver handed me a brown paper envelope with the legend “Welcome to Algiers!” and we were off. At the hotel bar in St. Paul, the day before Jill’s wedding, I had a distressing encounter with an ex-military man who insisted both that I should not go to Algiers and that I had to be some sort of spook. “Are you with the G?” he kept asking. I insisted that I was not, but he didn’t believe me. “You wouldn’t tell me, in any case,” he added, “Would you?” I am not a spy, but at that moment, it definitely felt as if I was playing out the part in some creaky BBC melodrama. Settling into a government car and being handed a sheaf of official papers in an exotic foreign land: it was all very MI-6. I am still waiting for my tuxedo, my Aston Martin, and my expense account.

The hotel owes me breakfast, however. I am off for café and baguette.