A Palace in the Old Village (5 page)

MY CHILDREN ARE
Mourad, Rachid, Jamila, Othmane, Rekya, and the marvellous Nabile, who is actually the son of my sister, who entrusted him to me in the hope he might get into a school for retarded children. Nabile is my favorite. He was born with a problem, and I believe he has transformed this problem into
something
wonderful. I’m told he’s a “Mongolian,” whatever that means, but I know he’s an astonishing boy. He throws himself into my arms, hugs me tightly, and says “iluvyoo.” My children never tell me that. I don’t say it either, actually—that’s not the sort of thing the family says at home. Once a secretary at the factory handed me back a form that wasn’t properly filled out, so I said, But he filled it out; I’m sure he’s right. And she said, Who’s he? My youngest daughter! The woman was shocked, but how can I explain, that’s how it is with us. We don’t talk about our daughters or their mother, it’s a question of respect, but the secretary didn’t get it. I’ve never
complimented
my girls; it isn’t done, to say, You are
beautiful
, my daughter. No, that we don’t do.

My children have Arab features and gestures, but they claim they are “assimilated,” a word I’ve never
understood
. One day Rachid showed me a card and said,
With this, I vote. I’m French and European too. So I said, Hold on: you already waited more than a year and a half to get your papers; you’re not going to start the same nonsense so you can call yourself European! Don’t forget where you come from, where your parents come from; it’s important: wherever you go, always remember that your native land is written on your face, and it’s there whether you like it or not. Me, I never had any doubt about my country; you kids today, you don’t know what country you’re from, and yes, you say you’ve been Frenchified, but I think you’re the only ones who believe that—you think the police treat you like a 100 per cent Frenchman? True, if you go to court the judge will say you’re French, he has to, but he considers you a foreigner, or else a bastard. It’s as if LaFrance had a bushel of babies with someone from someplace else and then forgot to declare them; what I mean is
recognise
them. It’s very strange, but in any case nothing is going to be easy for you! When we arrived, there were already immigrants, from Italy, Spain, Portugal, and they gave us more or less the fish eye. Actually, they weren’t really immigrants like before, their countries were all going to join Europe and we, we got left at the station, I mean on the sidewalk. It was all right for us to be here, but we had to be discreet, not talk or move around too much. Then one day—I hadn’t been here long—the Algerians, who were fighting for their independence, decided to demonstrate in the streets of Paris. I wasn’t there, but I know that lots of rooms rented by Algerians were left empty after the demonstration. Their tenants were dead. We whispered about it and were afraid
because the police were constantly lurking around the projects.*

Don’t ever forget where you come from, my son. Tell me: is it true that you call yourself Richard? Richard Ben Abdallah! It doesn’t go together, you’ve fiddled with the first name, but the family name betrays you: Ben
Abdallah
, “son of the worshiper of Allah”! That’s silly! What did you do? Changed that name too? Ah, I see: you got rid of the servant part and kept just the Ben. Now people might take you for a Jew, that’s it, you want to erase your roots and find yourself a spot, a little corner among the French, the Jews preferably, and tell me, is it working? Is it easier for you to find a job? You did that to get into a nightclub? He didn’t answer me, ran off. Richard! To think I had a fine sheep slaughtered on the day he was baptised! Rachid is more beautiful than Richard, but what can I do? I’m lucky he didn’t erase his father
completely
like Abdel Malek, our neighbour’s son, who left with an American family and sent no news for ten years until the day he turned up back home, calling himself Mike Adley and speaking Berber with a foreign accent. He was ridiculous and didn’t even know that his mother was dead. He saw his father, gave him some dollars, and then said good-bye, like some tourist, before vanishing again. Adley! Mike Adley!

What is it they find so attractive in these modern countries? Perhaps it’s our way of life that puts them off. They don’t like us anymore. We’re no longer cool; we’re behind the times. They feel ashamed of us. I have never in my life committed an offence, never lied or cheated or stolen. I have always been upright, openhearted, with
nothing to hide. I worked so my family would lack
nothing
, I always gave them presents, vacations, I was an honest father, too honest. My children don’t want to be like me. That’s the problem. But do I want to be like me?

I locked myself in the bathroom and stared in the mirror for a long while. I saw someone else, old before his time, a face marked by hard work and many years. What have I done with my life? I worked every day, and I slept the rest of the time to recover from work. It’s a life the same colour as my grey overalls. I never wondered whether my life might have had other colours. When I’m back in Morocco, I don’t ask myself all these
questions
. There I’m in tune with nature even when it’s
yellow
with drought. I’m at home. This feeling has no equal anywhere in the world. How can I put it? It’s feeling safe even when storms and lightning threaten, even when there’s not enough sugar and water. That’s it: here in
Yvelines
I have never felt at home in our home. It’s no one’s fault, that’s how it is. I’m not accusing LaFrance or Morocco or Jean or Jacques or Marcel or the king or the queen, no: I am not at home where I live. Perhaps my children don’t ask themselves that question, so much the better, but that means … that I came here so I wouldn’t feel at home and they would. But where is it, their home? I’ve never travelled outside LaFrance; the auto plant committee organises trips to Italy, Spain, and
communist
countries, but I’ve never wanted to leave my
children
to spend a few days discovering other cities, I’ve never felt the need. Maybe I should have travelled. I don’t know what it’s like to be foreign, a tourist in a
foreign
country; I haven’t the time to do things like that.

Fortunately, Nabile is here. Nabile, a gift from God, a light in my life. Like me, he doesn’t read well and writes with difficulty, but there’s something enchanting about him. He’s an angel. When he enters a room, he can spot right away those people who make faces or won’t accept his condition. He ignores them. He’s incapable of having negative feelings. To me, he has been more than a son: a compass, a guide, sunshine in my grey life, a smile that wipes away a world of woe. I like to go out with him to a restaurant. He loves to dress up and have fun. It’s for him that I put on a tie. He insists on that. Without him, I think my life would have been even more difficult and dispiriting. I thank God for sending him to us. When he goes back home to the village, he talks constantly to his parents, telling them about his life with words that no one understands, but he knows that, so he expresses himself with gestures, and then he gets them laughing. He’s a clown, a comedian, he’s a real actor, by the way, he loves putting on a show, doing magic tricks, acrobatics, and he’s so limber and inventive that everyone’s
astonished
. I believe that if he’d stayed in the village he’d be a vegetable today, drooling, with no zest for life. Back home we don’t do a thing for such children, just leave them to nature, like animals; no one hurts them, but no one takes care of them, either. In LaFrance he’s been to school, played sports, learned music; he’s happy.

I’m afraid for him. One day he was the one who said to me: I’m afraid for you. He said it quite clearly. He may be the only one in the family who has understood me. He’d noticed I was glum, pensive, dejected. It brought tears to my eyes. Afraid for me! He’s right: sometimes I
too am afraid for my health, my mental equilibrium. I may be silent, but I’m thinking, I think all the time, which doesn’t show, so my wife, poor woman, doesn’t know all this and cannot understand how unhappy I am, but I don’t want to upset her. She’s a good mother who lives only for her children, as I do, even though I’ve begun to realise that something is wrong. Then I
remember
Nabile, and the sun comes out again in my heart. He’s the only child in the family who brightens my Sundays.

At a school assembly, his principal once announced that he was on the honour roll. Nabile was pleased, but expectant, and finally asked, So where’s the roll?
Everyone
laughed, and so did he. He’d done it on purpose, to add some fun. At home my youngest daughter has paid the most attention to him. She’s deeply fond of this
gentle
, sensitive boy. Another time he got into a fight during recess because a boy called him a Mongol, and he taught that kid a lesson.

Nabile is athletic, well built, muscular, and
good-looking
. He doesn’t think of himself as handicapped and likes to help people. When he sees someone having trouble walking, he’ll take an arm and escort that person across the street. He has hidden gifts. One day we were at Marcel’s place. Suddenly we heard somebody playing the piano—and not a beginner, either, just hitting any old keys. It was Nabile, who had quietly sat down at the instrument and begun improvising, to the delight and amazement of us all. He’s an independent boy,
meticulous
, a bit of a perfectionist. 

I WATCHED THE ELECTIONS,
when Le Pen sprang his big surprise on Chirac, and I had a good laugh, but my wife was afraid and wondered if we should start packing.* No, I said, don’t worry, Le Pen needs us, oh yes. Imagine this country emptied of its immigrants, when he could no longer blame all evil and uncertainty on us, claiming that we’re taking advantage of social
security
and child benefits! He’d be in a fix without Arabs to pick on. No, he’s putting on his usual act. He’ll never get any real power, but who knows, politics—sometimes I watch it on TV, and when they talk about us it’s a bad sign. No one says anything nice about our work. That’s how it’s always been; I’m used to it.

And you know how I hate suitcases and those huge plastic bags in garish colours from discount stores, “migrant bags” they’re called, and I hate packing cases crammed with useless stuff we have to lug along to the village to hand out to the stay-at-homes. I hate luggage, obligatory gifts, junk that piles up in the cellar. I hate things that glitter and aren’t worth spit—but you, you’re always afraid of running out of something, you carry so much with you that even I begin to wonder if maybe war might break out, if we’d better stock up, so I don’t object, I keep quiet, let you do what you want.

Well, anyway, I watched Le Pen: he’s scary, he has fat hands, and slaps from those hands must make a guy see stars, fake stars, but I can’t take him seriously, I don’t know why; he makes me laugh, and I always imagine him in rather unflattering positions, the nasty kind, yet I know there are other Le Pens in this country who may not talk the way he does but they don’t like us just the same, and how come?
How come no one likes us?
What terrible thing did we do to be objects of suspicion and even abuse in the street? Our reputation isn’t exactly spotless, which must come from way back, maybe the Algerian war or even longer ago, and obviously there’s the rotten-apple-spoiling-the-whole-barrel business, so what can we do? Keep a low profile? We are low-profile experts, my companions and I—we hunker down, don’t raise our voices even when we’ve been the victims of some injustice or everyday racism because we don’t want any trouble. What can we do?
Disappear!
Cease to exist, become transparent while still slaving away—in fact, that would be ideal: to be here, being useful,
efficient
, but invisible, without having children or cooking with our smelly spices, and I’ve often thought about that, how to be as low-key as possible and work as if we didn’t exist. Before, or at least when I came to LaFrance, no one mentioned us; we started off in projects housing immigrant workers, then later hardly ever ventured into town, but when our children came along the noise level rose, and quite a bit, so why attract even more attention by asking for citizenship? I’m fine with my green passport, my ten-year residence permit. I don’t need a different colour passport.

Seems the people of LaFrance prefer us Moroccans; the poor Algerians, they’re out of luck: their country’s been occupied for so long, and nowadays Algeria is rich, I saw that on TV. They’ve got oil and gas, underground treasures that will feed them for centuries, yet they’re emigrating—more and more are coming here. It’s awful, such a rich country with such poor people! (It’s not me saying that but a human rights activist in Algeria.) It’s different in Morocco. We’re poor and always have been. City people live better than country folk. But us, we have the Makhzen: the
caïd
, the pasha, the governor—
representatives
of the central power that governs us. We don’t know how it works, but the police and the army do whatever the Makhzen wants. The poor person has no rights, submits, and keeps quiet. Whoever hollers gets “disappeared.” That’s the Morocco I left in 1960, to take the train then the boat then the train to Lalla França. I never talked politics. I know, however, that both sons of the butcher in Imintanout went missing. A couple of plainclothesmen who said they were from the Darkoum Real Estate Agency asked the two young men to show them some land their father had for sale, and the car they drove off in had a temporary license plate even though it was basically a jalopy. The youths never returned. The father went to Marrakech to find the agency, which had never existed. The mother went mad, and the father shut up shop. That was in the summer of 1966. They were high school kids in Marrakech.
Whenever
I visited in the summer, people would tell me about all the youngsters in prison, almost whispering even though there was no one near us.

Fear, yes, I have known fear. Fear that they would take away my precious passport, fear that I would be arrested for no reason. That happened to Lahcen, who was held in the police station at the airport for more than two days; they had forgotten him. When they gave him back his passport, the officer said, Since you’re lucky to live over there, think of your brother, empty your pockets—we have to help one another, it’s only natural, because some have everything and others almost nothing but suffering, and you won’t let your brother suffer, so take a hint, my friend! Lahcen gave him whatever money he had and left the police station suffering from a wicked migraine.

Fortunately, that Morocco no longer exists. It’s over, the time of fear, when the Makhzen acted without respect for the law and what’s right. I discovered this going through customs in Tangier. Overnight the
customs
agents had become polite, no longer suspecting us of smuggling drugs or weapons. It seems the new king ordered them to stop harassing us. He’s a good fellow, this young king, not at all like his father.* At the time, some of our immigrants worked for the consulate or the police in Rabat, and we could identify them because they would loudly criticise the king and the
government
. Me, I always said Long live the king, long live Morocco! Then they had nothing to report to their bosses. It was Marcel, the union rep, who warned me: You know, watch out. That Sallam, the guy who just arrived from Roubaix, well, he never worked there; he came directly from Rabat and funnels information about the Moroccan immigrant community to the
police. There’s him and the other one, the really skinny guy who calls himself FelFla, “Pepper.”

The CGT, the labor union federation, has always helped us. They’re the ones who organised literacy classes on Saturdays and Sundays at the Labor Exchange, run by young students from Paris and French-speaking guys from our cities—Fez, Marrakech, Casablanca—who would take turns coming to teach us. We enjoyed those afternoons, found them relaxing—we’d talk about home; our teachers explained things; sometimes the French students would help us write letters to our
families
and, most importantly, fill out official forms for our retirement, bank accounts, and so on. Even if I did have trouble learning the language, I preferred being there to spending the day in a café, watching people come and go. At my age, learning to read is no joke. I did pick up driving pretty easily, though. I’d stare at the signs and imprint them in my head. I’ve always been a prudent man. I know the highway code by heart. Where I run into trouble, it’s with detours: there I screw up and choose some road that takes me back to where I came from. Roadworks and those detours, they terrify me. I know the France–Morocco trip by heart. I never speed. I stop now and then for rest breaks. I get backaches, so I do exercises. Often it’s having to pee that makes me pull over. That’s how we found out I’ve got the sugar—a young Moroccan doctor explained to me about diabetes. Now I’m careful, although back home I do let myself go, I admit. That’s what it’s for: letting go, not worrying,
forgetting
about rules. It’s hard to say no to a glass of our sweetened mint tea; that hurts people’s feelings, so I
drink the tea and ask God to help me deal with all that extra sugar in my blood.

Brahim wouldn’t learn to read or write. He liked to drink beer and frequented Khadija, the whore who dyed her hair blond and called herself Katy. She wasn’t a bad woman, but she’d lost all her teeth, poor thing, in a fight with her pimp, and she worked as the cleaning lady in the bar where Brahim hung out. She was pitiful. Men didn’t want her anymore, so she drank to console
herself
, and on Saturdays she’d set herself up on the
sidewalk
at the Saint-Ouen flea market and use henna to “tattoo” girls’ arms and hands. She had a gift for
delicately
tracing arabesques on their skin.

Mohammed knew Khadija’s story but kept his
distance
, more from timidity than from any moral or
religious
disapproval. One day she came over to him as if she were drowning and desperate for help. He didn’t know what to do, especially when she kissed his hand. Seeing the anguish in her face, he slipped her some money, because he considered her an unlucky casualty of immigration. Then he thought about it and decided that her lot was her fate, that she would have gone bad even if she’d never left home. Everything is written. Nothing happens by chance—yet he also knew that
people
are responsible for their actions. He stopped and thought: If I go into this bar, get staggering drunk, and lose my human dignity, I am the guilty one, not God. If I do something stupid and make a ton of foolish
mistakes
, it’s my fault and mine alone; let’s leave God out of it. So if I keep walking along, if I slip on a banana peel
and break my back, is it God who wanted me to crack in two? Or is the guilty guy the bastard who threw away the banana peel without a thought for passers-by who might snap their spines? No: one must simply be careful and watch one’s step. But after our ’tirement, aren’t we left in a bad way, in an unhealthy and woeful state? I mean, my muscles ache even though I don’t work
anymore
, my joints hurt, and my body feels battered by a strange fatigue, a tiredness I’ve never felt before, and it’s weird, because it comes from nothing: the nothingness that has taken over my life is beginning to eat away at my body. Life is hollowing me out. I’m in pain. I don’t complain, that’s not my style, but ever since I caught ’tirement, nothing goes right. I used to like my tiredness at day’s end when I came home. While I washed up, my wife would fix me a light supper; I’d see the children, and during the TV news programs drowsiness would steal over me. I’d fall into bed and a deep sleep. Now I miss that beautiful exhaustion. In its place is a more insidious, disturbing fatigue. I must be ill. One day the doctor at work told us, Listen carefully: if you wake up tired in the morning, that’s because something is wrong, it’s the sign of a hidden illness that doesn’t dare show itself. Maybe that’s it. But I don’t feel like consulting a doctor.

I’m a little ashamed when I think that I still rose at dawn when my ’tirement began, put on my work
overalls
, took my lunch box, and went off to the factory. It was automatic—I couldn’t break free of those actions I’d made part of my life, my body, my soul. (May God
forgive
me; I shouldn’t bring my soul into all this.) I’d get to
the factory gate, stop short, and watch my comrades go in: happy, joking around, ready for a long and good day’s work. I felt mortified. They didn’t understand why I kept coming back, and I didn’t feel like talking to them, explaining or justifying myself to anyone. Then there’s my wife. She didn’t say anything but gave me peculiar looks. What was I going to do now with my grey
overalls
, my lunch box, my protective goggles, my papers, my endless days off, all this time crashing down on me like a pile of rubble? I can’t even bequeath it all to one of my children—not that they’ve noticed that I’ve fallen into ’tirement. They ask me no questions, drop by briefly and head out again without paying any attention to how I feel. Watching them, I can’t manage to see their own children treating them the same way. Everything changes. It’s hard to accept that we can find ourselves so quickly in a different world. Our forefathers didn’t
prepare
us, told us nothing. They’d never have imagined that men would leave their land to go abroad.

When Mohammed thought about it, he became
convinced
that ’tirement had killed Brahim. He’d seen him wandering the streets, drinking at Katy’s place,
stumbling
and weaving whenever he decided to go home. His wife had gone back to Morocco, influenced by that same Allam who’d had a hold on Mohammed’s wife and eldest daughter; the man was a marriage counsellor as well as a sorcerer, and he’d encouraged Brahim’s wife to go home to her village to protect herself against that
man-eating
witch Khadija: You see, she’s a wreck, poor thing, so you’d best avoid her, take your husband and go back home where at least there’s no bar, no alcohol, no Katy.
Your husband is bored, and now that he no longer works he’s always shacked up with that pitiful woman, but you, if you want to get your man back, you must take things boldly in hand. Here is a talisman to put in your purse and here’s another to sew into the inside pocket of
Brahim’s
jacket: these should help the both of you. But as you know, everything is in the hands of Almighty God!

Brahim refused to follow his wife. He found, tore up, and stamped on the bit of cloth sewn into his jacket. You tried to cast a spell on me? Well, I piss on it, your spell! Go, get out! Go back home to your parents, leave me alone. I’m tired.

Brahim found himself all alone in their half-empty apartment. Dirty laundry piled up in a corner of the
living
room. His wife had taken the family photos, but one picture remained, hanging on a wall, a photograph of a snowy landscape, perhaps some Swiss or Canadian mountains, and it was nice to look at in that apartment stripped of every reminder of his native land. Both his children lived and worked abroad and used to call now and then, until the phone was cut off. Unpaid bills, unopened letters. Brahim was letting himself fall apart. When he had a liver attack and screamed in pain,
neighbours
called a doctor, who sent him to the hospital. There he called for his children, whose phone numbers were in a notebook, but he had no idea where it was. The pain was so awful he couldn’t remember things from moment to moment. When Mohammed came to visit, he found him frighteningly pale, thin, with jaundiced eyes and dry lips. Brahim had lost the will to live. Mohammed told him their religion forbade that and
recited a few verses from the Koran that he knew by heart. Gripping the patient’s arm, he bent to kiss him on the forehead, and when he straightened up, tears coursed down his cheeks. After staying a moment longer, Mohammed went on his way, thinking about his own death. So much loneliness, ingratitude, and silence left him speechless. Where had the man’s brothers gone, his friends, his companions in misfortune? Was that how immigrants took leave of this world? That solitude stank like a mixture of medicine and whatever was stalking them, these poor souls whom no one had warned about the way they would end their lives.