The Age of Reinvention (19 page)

“So tell me about him: What's happening? What's the problem?” The problem is him. His difficult personality, the people he hangs around with, his fragile nature, his wanderings. “He does nothing all day. He's not like you: whatever he tries to do, he fails. He gave up school at fourteen. He's never managed to stay in a job for longer than a week. He was offered a job at a market stall, but he couldn't get up in the mornings. He just hangs around, basically. He says he can't find anything. It's like he's doing it deliberately, or maybe he's just unlucky, I don't know . . .” “Mom, he's twenty-four. He's an adult. Just let him live his life.” “But he's not that old in his head, believe me. I worry about him all the time.” Furtively, Samir strokes his mother's shoulder. “It's terrible for a mother to have two children, one of them a success and the other one . . .” she says in a voice made hoarse by suffering. “If you had children, you'd understand . . .” Samir stiffens. How has he been able to keep silent for so long about the existence of his children? He thinks about them now. How he would love to be able to call them and say: “Here's your grandmother.” Several times, his children have asked him about his parents, but his answers have all been lies, inventions. In the story he told them, his mother was a beautiful intellectual feminist and his father a tall and overly strict university professor.

She says she's not eating, not sleeping anymore. “I need you, Samir. Please, don't leave me on my own. He's my child. You could be a good influence on him. I'm worried he will do something bad. He's been hanging around the wrong kind of people recently. Ten men were arrested near here for an armed robbery, and I found weapons in his room. I didn't tell you on the phone because you didn't want me to. But why didn't you, Samir? You don't have any problems with the police, do you?” “Of course not, Mom. But I'm a lawyer, and some of my cases are sensitive. It's possible my telephone line is tapped, that's all. I'm careful.” “Come with me—I'll show you what I found.” He follows her through the hallway that leads to the bedrooms, glancing at the pictures of her and François hung on the wall. In the photographs, the first thing you notice is the incongruity of their family bond: her so dark-skinned and him milky white; her dressed in old-fashioned clothes, her body hidden under baggy gandouras (only in the apartment, though: outdoors, she never wears anything but dresses she makes herself with fabric bought by the yard in Saint-Pierre Market), him in XXL Nike sweatshirts. When he sees his brother's bedroom, he recoils slightly. The bed is made, the windows have been cleaned, but there are objects scattered all over the place: newspapers, documents, empty boxes, clothes, scrunched-up cans of Red Bull and beer. “He doesn't like me touching his things,” she explains when she notices the look of disgust on Samir's face. In the corner is a collection of Nike sneakers, including several pairs of high-tops that must have cost more than $100 each; a PlayStation console with ultraviolent video games; dozens of horror DVDs; and a few porn movies that François has not even attempted to conceal. Where has he gotten the money to buy all this? And how does he dare leave it here so brazenly when he knows his mother goes into his room every day to clean it?
When he's not hanging around with his friends, he locks himself in his room and spends the whole day playing video games. But recently, I've realized that he's been doing something else in there
 . . . With these words, she kneels down and, pointing at the floor, asks Samir to come closer. “Look,” she says, revealing a large hole hidden under the grayish, stained linoleum, sliced through with a box cutter in places. “Come closer,” she urges. And, with a little flashlight that she takes from the pocket of her apron, she illuminates the interior of the cache so that Samir can see the revolver, the knife, the grenade, the billy club, and the various other sidearms whose names she doesn't know but which clearly scare her. “See all that?” she asks, her eyes wide and filled with tears once again. “If he doesn't have those things to threaten people, or rob them, or kill them, then why does he have them?”

She is in a panic, convinced that François took part in the armed robbery she mentioned. The police have been searching other apartments in the building. “They were here, I saw them, all of them carrying guns like soldiers. I'm scared, Samir. I'm scared that he's done something bad, that he'll go to prison . . . oh, the
hchouma
!” “The word is
shame
, Mom.” “No, for me it's a
hchouma
! Some words have more power in Arabic. ‘Shame' sounds too smooth—it's not violent enough. It's a lying little word. ‘
Hchouma
' is a harsh word—it comes from the throat . . .” And she bursts into sobs again, screaming: “What a
maktoub
he's had!” Automatically, Samir translates in his head: “What a fate!” She's right: “fate” is such a small, quiet word; “
maktoub
,” with its
k
clacking under the tongue, translates the weight of violence, the threat of inevitable doom, so he doesn't correct her this time. She cries out: “Oh, my son! I'm so glad you are here! Don't leave me alone with him,
yaouldi
, I beg you!” She's hysterical, he thinks, bored. He has never been able to stand these exuberant displays of feeling, these exhibitionistic shows of rage. He has lived his life secretly, with discretion as his watchword, and in moments like this he detaches himself from this woman with whom he seems to have nothing in common. His life is so different from hers now, with a set of behaviors and beliefs that is almost diametrically opposed; a lifestyle more in keeping, he thinks, with the man he has become: the respected/famous/role-model lawyer. In a quiet voice, he asks her to calm down. She sobs and hiccups, gasping that she's going to die, and he says nothing. She starts to tear at her clothes, to scratch at her skin until it bleeds—
You want to see me suffer?
—so, coldly this time, in a metallic voice, he tells her: “Enough, Mom. What do you expect me to do? He has his life, I have mine. I can't solve everyone's problems. And can you imagine the repercussions on my own life? Can you imagine how it would look if someone found out my brother had an arms cache in his bedroom? I have too much to lose. I understand that you're worried. I'll talk to him. I'll try to help him, as far as I can, but I can't do any more than that without the risk of compromising myself—and that is out of the question.” “Please, Samir, I'm begging you—do something!” At what point did Samir realize that he has to keep his distance from this affair, to separate himself definitively from his mother and his brother? When the word “prison” was pronounced? When he discovered the weapons? Or even earlier than that, as he walked through the ghetto? He feels hot suddenly. He knows what the risks are if he is discovered here, in the proximity of those weapons. His whole body is clammy with sweat. He takes off his jacket and tie and tosses them on François's bed. “You must not mention this to anyone, you understand? No one must find them! I don't know what I can do, to be honest—reason with him? You know as well as I do that I've never had any influence on him. I barely even know him. We only lived together for about five years! We have nothing in common, and you know it. The only one who might have any influence on him is his father. Maybe you should talk to him about it?” At the mention of François's father, Nawel really does collapse, sliding to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. Samir does not react. His face is impassive. But she continues to weep—nothing seems to calm her—so he speaks again: “I don't see any reason why you shouldn't call Brunet—it's his son, after all. You've spent your whole life protecting him, but what are you scared of? All he has to do is help his son, find him a job—he has the resources to do that, the contacts, the money. And it's his duty. Why should I be the one to take all this on? I'm not his father! You had this child with him, and you took it upon yourself to raise him single-handedly when that man should have helped you. It's his problem, not mine!” Just then, there is a thud in the hallway, the sound of a door banging, and footsteps on the linoleum. A voice calls out: “Mom?” “It's him,” Nawel whispers, her face a mask of fear. Swallowing her tears, she closes the lid on the arms cache, stands up, and leads Samir to the hallway, where François is waiting impatiently. “Mom! Where are you, for fuck's sake?” “I'm coming!”

Every time Samir sees his brother, he feels the same shock. Physically, they have nothing in common. François is wearing jeans with rips in the knees and the backside, a round-necked black T-shirt, and garishly colored high-top sneakers. Seeing Samir, he moves toward him, fist-bumping him like a teenager, and crowing sarcastically: “Ah, His Lordship is here!” Samir does not reply. He detests this familiarity, the fist-bumping. He follows his mother, who asks them to sit at the table. The tension. The aggression. The mistrust. All these forces he has to struggle against each time he finds himself in the same room as his brother, as if Samir were battling the darkest, most sordid part of his past: not of the shame of poverty, but of this brother whose existence he never wanted, and with whom he shares nothing. Intellectually, socially, they are in absolute opposition. François gave up school after failing his professional exams in mechanics; he writes and speaks poorly—a savage, thinks Samir, watching him rock backward on his chair, use his fingers to eat, make strange noises while he drinks.

“So? What're you doing here?”

“I came to see Mom.”

“Come to visit the prisoners, have you? We're in here for a life sentence, but you come for twenty minutes, talk to us through the Plexiglas window, and
basta
! See you next time, bro!”

“You seem to know a lot about incarceration . . .”

“No, believe it or not, I've never gone down. Amazing, eh? I've messed around, but I've never been to prison.”

“Don't speak too soon.”

“What? Have you come here to threaten us?”

“Are you incapable of speaking without being aggressive?”

“You're the one who's aggressing me! You turn up, preach a sermon, and then you fuck off again . . .”

Samir does not reply. François continues chewing noisily.

“Could you try to eat more quietly?”

“Fuck you.”

Samir looks at his brother. François is holding his knife in his fist, struggling to cut his meat. “Don't you know how to use a knife properly?” In a flash, François is on his feet, brandishing the knife at Samir with astonishing agility. “You wanna see?” he hisses, before throwing the knife across the room as his mother shouts and sobs. “This is my home! I live how I want! If you don't like it, you know where to stick it!” He takes a few steps toward the door, then returns: “And don't forget to leave us some money before you go!” Then he disappears down the hallway that leads to his room, abandoning Samir and their mother. “You see?” she says, in a tear-choked voice. “He's going crazy! I can't even talk to him anymore.” Her words are drowned out by the deafening din of François's music. Samir listens to the words:

We'll see how pretty you look with a broken leg!

We'll see how well you suck when I've smashed your jaw.

You're just a bitch in heat, a pig in shit, you should be in the abattoir!

You're just a demon disguised as a woman. I want to see you smashed to pieces, I want to see you in tears!

I want to see you lose your soul!

I want to see you burn in Hell!

Samir stands up but his mother holds him back. “Please, don't go in yet. Let him calm down first.” So he sits down, eats without appetite, indifferent to his mother's tears. Out of nowhere, he thinks of Nina, his desire to be with her. In the background, François's voice rises over the music, angrily chanting the chorus:
You're just a filthy whore! A filthy whore! A filthy whore! A filthy whore! A filthy whore! I'm gonna get you pregnant, you bitch! And abort it with a switchblade!

“Can you hear that?” Samir shouts. “He's sick!”

“He's not well at the moment—don't be angry with him. He's unemployed. I hope it's just a phase. But what worries me is what I showed you earlier.”

“Stop making excuses for him. He should just go out and find a job, instead of sponging off you. He's a man, not a kid.”

“Don't talk about him like that. He's doing what he can. He doesn't have many friends, so he hangs around with two guys that I don't like. But he has a good heart. He's a nice boy, really, you just have to know how to deal with him. He's been unlucky . . .”

“How has he been unlucky? What are you talking about?”

Silence, suddenly. François has turned off the music.

“He doesn't have a girlfriend?”

“No. Go and talk to him now. He must have calmed down.”

Samir gets up and heads toward his brother's room, thinking about what he might say to him. He knocks on the door and, without waiting for a response, enters. François is sitting at his computer, apparently lost in a video game. From where he stands, Samir can see the images on the screen showing a muscular man wielding a machete, his T-shirt soaked with blood; the goal of the game seems merely to kill as many people as possible. In a sudden movement, François turns around.

“Who said you could come in? What the hell are you even doing here?”

“Don't talk to me like that.”

“I'll talk how I want. If you don't like it, you can fuck off. This is my home.”

For a moment, Samir wants to hit him, but he controls himself. He does not want to find himself in the local police station accused of assault and battery; he doesn't want to have to listen to any more of his mother's sobs or his brother's threats.