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was my card, my identity papers.
    You stretched out a hand in greeting and said with a warmth that took me aback, ‘I’d like to congratulate you on the exhibition.’
    Before your words could register, my gaze was caught by the bracelet adorning your bare wrist. With its plaited yellow gold and distinctive engraving, it had to be a piece of Constantine jewellery. One of those heavy bands that in the past were always part of a bride’s trousseau and were for ever found on the wrists of women in eastern Algeria. Without completely taking my eyes off the bracelet I took your hand. My memory instantly travelled a whole lifetime back to my mother’s wrist, which was never without such a bracelet.
    I was seized by an ambiguous feeling. How long had it been since I’d seen a bracelet like that? I could not remember. Maybe more than thirty years. With considerable adroitness you withdrew the hand I had been gripping, perhaps unconsciously, as though I were holding on to something you had suddenly brought back.
    I lifted my gaze for the first time, but our eyes only half met. You smiled at me. You were looking at my missing arm, while I contemplated the bracelet on your arm. Both of us carried their memory on the surface.
    That might have been the end of our acquaintance. But you were an enigma made even more mysterious by such details. I took a gamble on discovering you. Fascinated and confused, I examined you. It was as though I already knew you whilst also just making your acquaintance.
    Your beauty wasn’t of the dazzling, frightening or disconcerting kind. You were an ordinary girl with an extraordinary aura and a secret hidden about her face. Perhaps it was your high forehead, the natural arch of your thick eyebrows, the mysterious smile on your lips that were painted a pale red, like a covert invitation to a kiss. Or perhaps it was your wide eyes and their changeable honey colour. I already knew these details. I knew them, but how?
    You spoke in French, interrupting my thoughts. ‘It makes me happy to see such a creative Algerian artist.’ You went on, a touch embarrassed, ‘Actually, I don’t really understand much about painting, and I only go to art exhibitions once in a while. But I can give an opinion about beautiful things, and your paintings are superb. We need something new like this, with a taste of modern Algeria. That’s what I was saying to my cousin when you came up to us.’
    With that, the young woman came forward to shake my hand and introduce herself. Perhaps she thought she would join in the conversation from which she felt excluded – I had, without realising, ignored her from the beginning. Introducing herself, she said, ‘Miss Abdelmoula. Pleased to meet you.’
    The name shook me.
    I looked in amazement at this girl who was shaking my hand with a warmth not lacking in arrogance. I gazed at her as if only just noticing her presence, then went back to considering you. Perhaps I was seeking an explanation for my amazement in the features of both your faces. Abdelmoula. Abdelmoula. My memory went searching for an answer to this coincidence.
    I knew the Abdelmoula family well. There were only two brothers: Si Taher, who had been martyred more than twenty years before, leaving behind a boy and a girl, and Si Sharif, who had married before independence and might have had several sons and daughters by now.
    Which one of you was Si Taher’s daughter? She whose name I was commanded to carry from the front, back to Tunis, and whose father I represented when registering her birth at the town hall? Which one of you was the baby I had kissed, cuddled and spoiled as her father’s stand-in? Which one of you was you ?
    Despite some features in common between you, I felt that you were you, not her. Or so I hoped, dreaming prematurely of a certain bond between us. I was astounded by this coincidence and suddenly found the reason why I was already attracted to your face. You were the image of Si Taher, but more