" This is a city with its legs spread open toward the sea. Take a look at the port when you walk down toward the old neighborhoods in Sidi El Houari, over on the Calère des Espagnols side. It’s like an old whore, nostalgic and chatty. Sometimes I go down to the lush garden on the Promenade de Létang to have a solitary drink and rub shoulders with delinquents. Yes, down there, where you see that strange, dense vegetation, ficuses, conifers, aloes, not to mention palms and other deeply rooted trees, growing up toward the sky as well as down under the earth. Below there’s a vast labyrinth of Spanish and Turkish galleries, which I’ve been able to visit, even though they’re usually closed. I saw an astonishing spectacle down there: the roots of centuries-old trees, seen from the inside, so to speak, gigantic, twisting things, like giant, naked, suspended flowers. Go and visit that garden. I love the place, but sometimes when I’m there I detect the scent of a woman’s sex, a giant, worn-out one. Which goes a little way toward confirming my obscene vision: This city faces the sea with its legs apart, its thighs spread, from the bay to the high ground where that luxurious, fragrant garden is. It was conceived — or should I say inseminated, ha, ha! — by a general, General Létang, in 1847. You absolutely must go and see it — then you’ll understand why people here are dying to have famous ancestors. To escape from the evidence. "
― Kamel Daoud , The Meursault Investigation