The Country of Others

by Leïla Slimani

  For Mouilala, the world was criss-crossed with impassable borders – between men and women; between Muslims, Jews and Christians – and she believed that if people were to get along, it was better that they didn’t come into contact too often. Peace would last as long as everyone knew his place. To the Jews in the mellah she entrusted the repair of braziers and the making of baskets; she also had certain dry goods, essential for the running of her house, delivered to her by a thin Jewish dressmaker with hairs on her cheeks. Kadour had boasted of being a modern man and had liked to wear frock coats and darted trousers, but she had never met any of his European friends. And she’d asked no questions when, one morning, she was cleaning her husband’s private salon and discovered lipstick traces on the rim of a glass and several cigarette stubs.

  Amine loved his wife. He loved and he desired her so passionately that sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night with the urge to bite her, devour her, possess her absolutely. But then he would start to have doubts. What madness was this? How could he have thought he’d be able to live with a European woman as emancipated as Mathilde? Thanks to her and her contrary nature, he felt as if his life were governed by a pendulum, swinging him from one hysterical crisis to another. Sometimes he felt a violent, cruel need to return to his culture, to love his god, language and country with all his heart, and Mathilde’s incomprehension drove him crazy. He wanted a wife like his mother, who would understand him instinctively, who shared the patience and abnegation of his people, who spoke less and worked more. A woman who would wait for him in the evenings, silent and devoted, and who would feel fulfilled, all her ambitions met, when she watched him eat the meal she’d prepared. Mathilde was turning him into a traitor and a heretic. Occasionally he wanted to unroll a prayer rug, press his forehead to the ground, to hear in his heart and in his children’s mouths the language of his ancestors. He dreamed of making love in Arabic, of whispering sweet nothings into the ear of a golden-skinned woman. At other times – when he went home and his wife threw herself at him, when he heard his daughter singing in the bathroom, when Mathilde invented games and made jokes – he was filled with joy and felt himself raised above other men. He had the impression that he’d been pulled from the common herd and he had to admit that the war had changed him and that modernity had its advantages. He was ashamed of himself and his fickleness and it was Mathilde, he knew, who paid for that.

  ***

  When Mathilde reached the old hobnailed door, she grabbed the knocker and banged it twice, very hard. Yasmine opened it – she’d lifted up her skirts and Mathilde could see that her black calves were covered in curly hairs. It was almost ten in the morning but the house was quiet. She could hear the purring of the cats stretched out in the courtyard and the slop of the wet mop that the maid was using to clean the floor. Yasmine watched in astonishment as Mathilde took off her djellaba, tossed her headscarf on to a chair and ran upstairs. Yasmine coughed so hard that she spat a thick, greenish wad of mucus into the well.

  Upstairs, Mathilde found Selma asleep on a bench. She was very fond of this capricious, rebellious girl who’d just turned sixteen. Selma had no manners but she did have a certain grace; unfortunately Mouilala was content to give her nothing but food and love. When Mathilde had mentioned this to Amine, he’d said: ‘That’s quite a lot, you know.’ Yes, it was a lot, but it wasn’t enough. Selma’s life was caught between her mother’s blind love and her brothers’ brutal vigilance. Since developing hips and breasts, Selma had been declared fit for combat and her brothers often sent her hurtling into walls. Omar, who was ten years older than her, said he could sense something rebellious and untameable in his sister’s soul. He was envious of the protection she enjoyed, the tenderness that his mother had never shown to him. Selma’s beauty made her brothers as nervous as animals before an approaching storm. They beat her pre-emptively, imprisoning her before she did anything stupid, because if they waited then it would be too late.

  Selma’s beauty had increased through the years, and now it was irritatingly obvious, the kind of beauty that made people uneasy and seemed to foretell some terrible calamity. When Mathilde looked at her, she wondered how it must feel to be so beautiful. Did it hurt? Did beauty have a weight, a taste, a texture? Was Selma even aware of the nervousness that her presence provoked, of the irresistible attraction that men felt when they saw the perfect features of her adorable face?

  Mathilde was a wife, a mother, but oddly she felt like less of a woman than Selma. The war had left its traces on Mathilde’s body. She’d turned fourteen on 2 May 1939, and her breasts had been late in developing, as if stunted by fear and hunger. Her dull blonde hair was so thin that her scalp was visible. Selma, on the other hand, radiated sensuality. Her eyes were as dark and shiny as the olives that Mouilala marinated in salt. Her thick brows, her lush hair, the faint brown fuzz on her upper lip made her look like Carmen, a vision of Mediterranean sultriness. A vibrant fever dream of a brunette, capable of driving men wild. Despite her youth, Selma had the raised chin, bee-stung lips and swaying hips of a heroine from some romantic novel. Women hated her. At school her female teacher picked on her remorselessly and was constantly telling her off and punishing her. ‘She’s an insolent, rebellious girl. Would you believe that I am afraid to turn my back on her? Knowing that she’s there, sitting behind me, plunges me into a state of irrational terror,’ she’d confided to Mathilde, who had decided to oversee her sister-in-law’s education.

  ***

  In 1942, when Amine had been taken prisoner in Germany, Mouilala had left behind the familiar backstreets of Berrima for the first time in her life. With Omar and Selma she travel led to Rabat, where she had been summoned by the general staff, and where she hoped to be able to send a package to her beloved firstborn. Mouilala got on the train, enveloped in a large white haik, and she felt frightened when the machine moved away from the station in a cloud of smoke and whistling. For a long time, she watched the men and women who remained standing on the platform, their hands waving vainly. Omar ushered his mother and his little sister to a first-class compartment where two Frenchwomen were sitting. The women started to whisper. They seemed surprised that a woman like Mouilala – with her ankle bracelets, henna-dyed hair and long, callused hands – could sit next to them on a train. First class was for Europeans only and they were outraged by the stupidity and impertinence of these illiterate Arabs. When the ticket inspector boarded the carriage, they couldn’t contain a frisson of excitement. Ah, now this farce will be over, they thought. The old fatma will be put in her place. She thinks she can sit wherever she wants, but there are rules, you know.

  Mouilala reached into her haik and pulled out the train tickets along with the letter from the army informing her of her son’s imprisonment. The inspector examined the letter and rubbed his forehead, embarrassed. ‘Bon voyage, madame,’ he said, raising his cap. And he disappeared into the corridor.

  The two Frenchwomen couldn’t believe it. The journey was ruined. They couldn’t bear the sight of this woman in her veil. They were sickened by the spicy smell of her skin, by the idiotic way she stared through the window. They were annoyed, most of all, by the little slattern who was with her. A girl of six or seven whose bourgeois clothes were not enough to mask her poor education. Selma, who was travelling for the first time in her life, could not keep still. She climbed into her mother’s lap, said she was hungry, then stuffed herself with cakes, her fingers sticky with honey. She talked in a loud voice to her brother, who was pacing up and down the corridor. She hummed Arab songs. The younger and angriest of the two Frenchwomen glared at the little girl. ‘She’s very pretty,’ she said. Without knowing why, she was exasperated by Selma’s beauty. She had the impression that the child had stolen that gracious face, that she’d taken it from someone else who deserved it more than her and who would, undoubtedly, have taken better care of it. The girl was beautiful and indifferent to that beauty, which made her even more dangerous. The warm orange sunlight came
through the window and, despite the thin curtains, which the Frenchwomen had drawn, made Selma’s hair glow, made her copper-toned skin look even softer and creamier. Her huge eyes were like the eyes of a black panther that the younger Frenchwoman had once seen at the zoo in Paris. Nobody, she thought, has eyes like that. ‘She’s wearing make-up,’ she whispered to her friend.

  ‘What did you say?’

  The younger woman leaned towards Mouilala and, clearly articulating each syllable, said: ‘You shouldn’t put make-up on children. That kohl, on her eyes? It’s not good. It’s vulgar. Do you understand?’

  Mouilala stared at the Frenchwoman without understanding what she was saying. She turned to Selma, who burst into laughter and handed a box of cakes to the two women. ‘She doesn’t speak French.’

  The Frenchwoman was put out. She’d lost a good opportunity to underline her superiority. If this native didn’t understand, there was no point trying to educate her. And then, as if she’d suddenly gone mad, she seized Selma’s arm and pulled the girl towards her. She took a handkerchief from her bag, spat on it, and roughly rubbed it against Selma’s eyes. Selma cried out and Mouilala pulled her away, but the Frenchwoman wouldn’t let go. She looked at the strangely clean handkerchief then rubbed even harder, to prove to herself and her travelling companion that this girl was a floozy in the making, a little whore. Yes, she knew all about those sorts of girls, those fearless brunettes that drove her husband wild. She knew them and she hated them. Omar, who was smoking in the corridor, heard his sister crying and burst into the compartment. ‘What’s going on?’ The Frenchwoman was frightened by this teenage boy in his glasses and she left the compartment without a word.

  The next day, on the way back to Meknes, happy that he’d been able to send letters and oranges to Amine, Omar slapped his sister. She cried. She didn’t understand. Omar said: ‘Don’t even think about wearing make-up when you’re older, you understand? If I ever catch you in lipstick, I’ll give you something to smile about!’ And with the tip of his index finger, he drew a long, macabre smile across the child’s face.

  ***

  Waking up now, Selma wrapped her arms around Mathilde’s neck, then covered her face with kisses. Ever since they’d first met, Selma had acted as her sister-in-law’s guide, interpreter and best friend. Selma had explained to her the local rites and traditions, she’d taught her how to be polite. ‘If you don’t know how to reply, just say Amen and you’ll be fine.’ Selma had taught her how to pretend, how to stay calm. Whenever they were alone, Selma showered Mathilde with questions. She wanted to know everything about France, about travelling, about Paris and the American soldiers that Mathilde had seen during the Liberation. She was like a prisoner questioning a man who has managed, at least once, to escape.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Selma asked.

  ‘I’m going Christmas shopping,’ Mathilde whispered. ‘Do you want to come with me?’

  Mathilde accompanied her sister-in-law to her bedroom and watched her undress. Sitting on a cushion on the floor, she observed Selma’s slim hips, her slightly rounded belly, her dark-nippled breasts that had never been constrained by an underwired bra. Selma put on an elegant black dress, the round neckline highlighting the slenderness of her neck. She took a pair of gloves from a box – the white fabric yellowed with age and covered in little stains of mould – and put them on with ludicrous delicacy.

  Mouilala was worried.

  ‘I don’t want you walking around the medina,’ she told Mathilde. ‘You don’t understand how envious people are. They’d give an eye to take both of yours. Two pretty girls like you … No, you can’t do it. The people in the medina will curse you and you’ll come back with a fever or worse. If you want to go for a walk, go to the new town. You won’t be in danger there.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ asked Mathilde, amused.

  ‘Europeans don’t look at you the same way. They don’t know about the evil eye.’

  The two girls left laughing and Mouilala remained behind the door for a long time, trembling and speechless. She didn’t understand what was happening to her. Was it anxiety or joy she felt at seeing the two of them go out into the street like that?

  Selma was sick of Mouilala’s ridiculous old superstitions and backward beliefs. She had stopped listening to her mother. It was only out of respect for her elders that she didn’t shut her eyes and plug her ears with her fingers every time Mouilala started going on about djinns, bad luck and ancient curses. Her mother had nothing new to say. Her life went round in circles as she carried out the same tasks over and over with a docility, a passivity, that made Selma want to vomit. The old woman was like those stupid dogs that chase their tail for so long that they end up collapsing on the floor with dizziness. Selma couldn’t bear her mother’s constant presence any longer. Whenever she heard a door creak, her mother would say: ‘Where are you going?’ And she was always asking if Selma was hungry, if she was bored, and going out on to the roof terrace to spy on her. Selma felt oppressed by Mouilala’s solicitude, her tenderness. It was like a form of violence. Sometimes the teenager wanted to yell in her mother’s face – and in Yasmine’s too. For Selma, both women – the mistress of the house and the servant – were slaves, and it really made little difference that one of them had bought the other at a market. Selma would have given anything for a locked door, a place where she could keep her dreams and secrets. She prayed that fate would smile on her and that one day she could escape to Casablanca and reinvent herself. Like the men in the street shouting, ‘Freedom! Independence!’, she shouted the same words, but nobody heard her.

  She begged Mathilde to take her to Place de Gaulle. She wanted to ‘do the Avenue’, as all the boys and girls in the new town called it. She was desperate to be like them, to live for being seen, to parade up and down the Avenue de la République on foot or in a car, as slowly as possible, windows open and the radio playing full blast. She wanted to be seen like the girls here, to be voted the prettiest girl in Meknes, to sashay past rows of boys and photographers. She would have given anything to kiss a man’s neck, to taste his nakedness, to see the way he looked at her. Selma had never been in love, but she had no doubt that it would be the most beautiful thing in the world. The old times – the days of arranged marriages – were over. Or at least that was what Mathilde had told her, and she wanted to believe it.

  ***

  Mathilde agreed to Selma’s request, less because she wanted to please her sister-in-law than because she had shopping to do in the European quarter. Selma was almost a woman now, but she spent a long time outside the toy shop, and when she placed her gloves against the window one of the salesmen yelled: ‘Hands off the glass!’ People stared at her suspiciously in her European outfit, her hair tied in a cowardly bun at the base of her neck. She kept tugging at her white gloves and smoothing down her skirt, smiling at passers-by in the naive hope of reassuring them. Outside a café, three boys wolf-whistled when they saw her and Mathilde was irritated by the smile that Selma gave them. She had to take her hand and walk faster because she was afraid that someone would spot them and report this embarrassing incident to Amine. They hurried towards the covered market and Mathilde said: ‘I have to buy food for dinner. Don’t wander off.’ At the entrance to the market some women were sitting on the ground, waiting to be hired as servants or babysitters. All but one of them wore a veil over her face, and that woman’s toothless smile frighten ed Selma, who found it hard to imagine anyone possibly wanting to hire such a hag. The teenager walked slowly, dragging her black ballet shoes along the wet street. She would have liked to stay in town, to eat an ice cream and admire the skirts in the shop windows and the women driving cars. She would have liked to belong to those groups of young people who danced to American music every Thursday afternoon. There was an automated figure in the window of the café: a black man with a flat nose and thick lips who nodded his head. Selma stood in front of this robot and for a few minutes she nodded in time with it, like
a mechanical doll. In the butcher’s shop, she laughed at a drawing of a cockerel on a poster under these words: ‘Credit we’ll bestow, when you hear this cock crow.’ She insisted on showing the poster to Mathilde, who grew annoyed. ‘Everything’s a joke to you! Can’t you see that I’m busy?’ Mathilde was worried. She rummaged in her pockets. Frowning, she counted the change that the shopkeepers gave her. Money had become a subject of perpetual dispute. Amine accused her of being an irresponsible spendthrift. Mathilde had to argue, nag, sometimes even beg to be given the money she needed for the school, the car, Aïcha’s clothes, visits to the hairdresser. Amine doubted her word. He accused her of buying books, make-up, useless fabrics to make dresses that nobody cared about. ‘I’m the one who has to earn all this money!’ he would yell sometimes. Then, pointing at the food on the table, he would add: ‘Do you know how hard I worked to pay for that, and that, and that?’