The Meursault Investigation: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Harun opens his story by saying that “Mama’s still alive today.” She could tell many stories, but she chose not to. On the other hand, Harun has “rehashed this story” so much that sometimes he can’t remember it.

Harun says that the story in question is more than fifty years old. People still talk about it, but they only care about one of the men involved, although there were two. The second man is left out because first is such a good writer he managed to make everyone like him and forget his flaws, “whereas the other one was a poor illiterate God created apparently for the sole purpose of taking a bullet and returning to dust.”

The forgotten man was Harun’s brother (Musa). Nothing is left of him except Harun, who speaks in his place and waits in this bar for “condolences no one’s ever going to offer.” He’s even learned to speak French in order to speak in place of his brother.

Harun knows that he can’t “imitate” the murderer because Meursault is a brilliant writer with a masterful command of his own language. Instead, Harun will do “what was done in this country after Independence”: he will recycle the stones from the colonists’ houses to build “my own house” and his own language. Since the murderer has left Algeria behind, Harun can claim his words for himself. In any case, Algeria is filled with “words that don’t belong to anyone anymore,” on old store signs and books.

Harun says he knows his interlocutor has questions, but asks him to pay attention to his story first. This is not an ordinary story but one that begins at the end and eventually arrives at the beginning. Harun knows the interlocutor has already read Meursault’s novel, whose words are like “precious stones.” The novel’s world is “clean, clear, exact,” marked by precise language. The only incongruous element is the Arabs who occasionally appear, seeming like “blurred incongruous objects.”

It seems to Harun that the murderer, Meursault, must have been tired of living in “a country that wanted nothing to do with him.” In this context, his murder is more like “the act of a disappointed lover.”

Harun has also read the novel and absorbed its meaning. The protagonist has “a man’s name,” while Harun’s brother (Musa) had “the name of an incident.” The author could have named him “Two P.M.” or any other meaningless phrase. In Arabic, the word for two is Zujj. Actually, this seems like a good name for Harun, since it suggests a pair of brothers, “him and me.”

Harun’s brother, Musa, is “a brief Arab,” who lived only for two hours one afternoon and “has died incessantly for seventy years.” In a way, the existence of the novel means that he’s “kept under glass,” replaying his death again and again many decades later.

Whenever Harun thinks about the novel, he gets angry. Its author, Meursault, gets to discuss everything he lost, from his mother to his body to his girlfriend’s body to his belief in God. He’s been able to write about Musa’s murder without paying any attention to him as a person.

Harun finds it stunning that even after Independence, no one tried to figure out the story behind Meursault’s victim or locate his family. Everyone was too busy admiring Meursault’s brilliant writing and sympathizing with his existential crisis. In fact, no one knows anything about Musa.

Harun wants to tell the story of his brother, Musa. He tells his interlocutor that by coming into the bar, he has “opened a bag.” He asks the interlocutor to take out his copy of Meursault’s book and read the first page out loud.

After the interlocutor has finished reading, Harun explains the passage. After Meursault’s mother died, he “falls into idleness and absurdity,” which he thinks he can cure by killing someone at random. From the beginning, Meursault is “looking” for Musa; he seeks him out “not so much as to meet him as to never have to.” Harun thinks that Meursault has killed Musa not as much by shooting him but by writing about his death in such a dismissive manner and eliminating his name from the story.

Harun sketches out Meursault’s story for the interlocutor. Meursault kills an Arab who, in his novel, apparently lacks a name. Then he explains that his murder is “the fault of a God who doesn’t exist,” and he committed it as part of an existential crisis, and also because he had gotten sunstroke on the hot beach. Through these reasons, he’s able to escape the crime unpunished; the entire world has conspired with him to hush up the crime and forget about the victim. Meanwhile, Musa had no say in his death or its subsequent portrayal.

For Harun, “the absurd” isn’t a philosophy developed by Meursault but the burden that “my brother and I carry on our backs or in the bowels of our land.” Harun wants justice, even though he knows that such a desire is absurd at his old age, so long after the crime occurred. He’s not referring to the justice provided by courts, but the justice that happens when “the scales are balanced.” Moreover, he wants to die without feeling haunted by Musa’s ghost.

Harun exhorts the interlocutor to finish his drink. He’s been waiting for someone to listen to him for years. If he can’t write a book himself, at least someone else might be capable of telling his story.

Harun believes the story should be written “from right to left,” starting from when “the Arab” (Musa) was still alive and continuing until his death. Harun’s only reason for learning this language was to tell the story. He had to find a response to Meursault’s narrative that no one else could give him.

For Harun, learning another language eventually means letting it “own” him. Sometimes he feels that the French language thinks for him and even speaks for him. Once, Harun knew a man whose father received a French telegram no one could understand. When someone finally translated it, weeks later, he found that his mother had died and he missed the funeral. The son later learned French so that such a thing would never happen to him, and Harun acted from similar motives. Every night, it seems that Musa has risen from the grave to ask Harun why he “let this happen” to him.

Harun tells the interlocutor that he only had one brother and no sister. Musa was older than him, and although he was thin from hunger, he was also very strong. He had “hard eyes because our ancestors lost their land.” Harun has few memories of Musa, because Harun was so young when his brother died.

Two memories are as follows: One day, Musa comes home from the port where he works as a porter and puts young Harun on his shoulders, making sounds like a motor and letting the boy pull on his ears to “steer.” Another time, Musa beats Harun for some small misdeed. The next day is Eid, a day of forgiveness, so Musa is supposed to apologize to Harun, but Harun is embarrassed because he doesn’t want Musa to “lower himself” by doing so, even to please God.

Harun’s father abandoned the family years before. Rumors often circulate as to where their father is, and when Musa hears news, he has long, furtive conversations with Mama from which Harun is excluded. He gathers that, for some reason, Musa has “a grudge” against Mama. When Musa and Mama fight, Harun worries that his older brother will disappear as well. Sometimes Musa even leaves the house at night to go drinking, but he always returns sleepy at dawn, “and so my mother would get him under her control again.”

Harun’s family life is centered around Musa, and Musa “revolved around our father,” whom Harun has never even seen. The only thing Harun has left of his father is his surname, Uled el-assas or “sons of the guardian”—this is derived from their father’s profession as a factory watchman.

To young Harun, Musa is a “simple god.” When Harun first hears of his brother’s death, he feels not angry but offended. It seems impossible that his all-powerful brother could die in such an ignominious way and be gone forever.

Harun never weeps for Musa, but he stops looking up at the sky. Years later, he declines to fight in the War of Liberation, even though he’s sure the Algerians will win. As soon as he learned to read and write, he realizes that while Meursault killed, his deed was “really a way of committing suicide.” However, Harun came to those conclusions “before the scenery got shifted” and he “realized how alike” he is to Meursault.

In Harun’s view, the story of the murder doesn’t begin with Meursault’s famous opening lines but by Musa’s last comment to Mama that he’ll be home earlier than usual. Harun remembers it was a calm day, without any rumors. He realizes now that just as Musa replaced their father as head of the family, Harun replaced Musa as a child requiring sustenance.

In the next moment, Harun retracts this comment, saying it’s a lie. In fact, “Independence only pushed people on both sides to switch roles.” Before, Arabs were “ghosts” in their own country, which was occupied by the French. Now, the French only return as anxious or nostalgic tourists.

Harun warns the interlocutor to make a note of Musa’s name, otherwise he will stop telling the story. He says his genealogy is “pretty pathetic”: he’s the son of the watchman, and the brother of the Arab. In Oran, origins are very important: everyone wants to prove that their family is one of the oldest in the city, and that in comparison others are “foreigners.”

Oran is a city “with its legs spread open toward the sea.” Harun tells the interlocutor to walk through the old neighborhoods and look at the port, which is “like an old whore, nostalgic and chatty.” He says that the city was “conceived” by one of the generals who invaded during the French conquest. People want to have famous ancestors in order to “escape from the evidence.”

Harun’s brother is named Musa, but he will always be known as “the Arab.” For centuries, the settler has achieved his conquest by “giving names to whatever he appropriates and taking them away from whatever makes him feel uncomfortable.” Once Meursault named Musa “the Arab,” he could kill him without even thinking about it.

After Independence, Mama tried for years to have Musa classified as a martyr, in order to be awarded a small pension by the new government. She never succeeded, because it was impossible to prove the barest facts about Musa, even his existence, despite the fact that he died in a public place. It’s impossible for Mama to tell the world her son’s story when she can’t read or write a book.

Harun often repeats Musa’s name so it doesn’t vanish. He wants the interlocutor to write in down in large letters. As they prepare to leave, Harun insists on paying the bill, and asks to know the interlocutor’s name.