The Country of Others

by Leïla Slimani

  The next morning she woke in her dress, with her stockings around her ankles. Her head ached so badly that she found it hard to keep her eyes open during breakfast. Irène drank her tea slowly, bit into a slice of bread covered in jam and took care not to stain her newspaper. Ever since her sister had left France all those years ago, Irène had eagerly devoured news of the colonies. When Mathilde came into the dining room, she was cutting out an article about clashes in the countryside and negotiations between the sultan and the Resident-General. Mathilde shrugged. ‘Maybe … I don’t know.’ She wasn’t in the mood to make conversation. Little surges of bile kept burning her throat and she had to take deep breaths to stop herself throwing up.

  She had not had an argument with Irène since she’d come back to France. During the first few days she’d felt like she was treading on eggshells: one word out of place, she thought, and everything would be ruined, the old disagreements would resurface. But a new complicity had developed between the two sisters. As children they’d competed with each other for their parents’ love, so no sibling tenderness had been pos sible. But now they were alone in the world, the sole memory-keepers of the dead. Distance and age had pared things back to their essential core, erased all pettiness.

  Mathilde lay on the living room sofa and dozed through the rest of the day. Irène stayed with her, covering her bare feet and turning away all visitors. When she woke it was dark outside. A fire was burning in the hearth and Irène was knitting. Mathilde felt sad and groggy. She thought back to her ridiculous behaviour at the party the night before and embarrassment washed over her. Irène must think her childish. Mathilde sat up and turned her feet towards the fire. She felt a need to talk. This place was her refuge; here she would find consolation. In this living room, against the quiet background of the clicking needles and the crackling fire, she told Irène about her husband. His outbursts. She didn’t go into too many details, nothing that would sound like a lie or an exaggeration. She said just enough and she felt certain that Irène understood. She talked about the farm’s isolation, the fear that tormented her in the dark night when the silence was broken only by the howling of jackals. She tried to make her sister understand what it was like to live in a world where she had no place, a world governed by unfair, repulsive rules, where men never had to justify themselves, where she was not allowed to cry if her feelings were hurt. She started sobbing as she described the long days and the vast solitude, the yearning she felt for home and childhood. She had never guessed how lonely exile was. She folded her legs under her and turned to face her sister, who was staring into the flames. Mathilde wasn’t afraid, because she believed her sincerity would overcome her sister’s qualms. She wasn’t ashamed of her tear-stained cheeks, her rambling words. She didn’t care about playing a role any more; she was content to let Irène see her for what she was: a woman prematurely aged by failure and disillusionment, a woman without pride. She had told her sister everything and now that she’d finished she looked at Irène, who sat motionless.

  ‘You made a choice. Now you have to live with it. Life is hard for everyone, you know.’

  Mathilde hung her head. How stupid she had been to hope for a shred of compassion! How ashamed she felt now at having believed, even for an instant, that she might be afforded some understanding, some consolation. Mathilde didn’t know how to react to such cold indifference. She would have preferred it if her sister had mocked her, lost her temper, said ‘I told you so!’ It would have seemed natural for Irène to blame Arabs, Muslims, men for Mathilde’s unhappiness. But this coldness left her shrivelled and silent. She was convinced that her sister had been preparing her reply for a long time, that she’d been chewing over it, waiting for the right moment to throw it in her face. It wouldn’t have taken much to persuade Mathilde not to leave France again, to give up on this crazy idea of being a foreigner, living abroad, suffering in solitude. Irène stood up without glancing at her sister. She did not open her arms. She was going to let Mathilde drown. At the foot of the stairs Irène called out: ‘You should go to bed now. We have an appointment with the notary in the morning.’

  ***

  They left after breakfast. When Irène got in the car, she still had a few breadcrumbs stuck to her lips. They arrived early at the notary’s office, on the first floor of an opulent-looking building. A young woman opened the door and showed them into a cold waiting room. They kept their coats on and their mouths shut. They were strangers once again. When the door opened, they turned towards it and Mathilde let out a small cry. Standing in front of her was the young man from the boutique. The man who’d admired her hat. She gave him her clammy hand and looked at him imploringly. Irène, oblivious to all this, walked into the office.

  ‘Hello, Maître.’ He let them go through and gestured to two chairs facing his solid wooden desk. The young man had taken over from the old notary, who’d drunk himself to death. He smiled like a blackmailer at a powerless victim.

  ‘So, madame, how is life in Morocco?’

  ‘Very good, thank you.’

  ‘Your sister explained to me that you live in Meknes.’

  She nodded, looking away from the notary, who leaned over his desk like a cat ready to pounce on its prey. He looked through a file, took out a document and turned back to Mathilde: ‘Tell me, are there any theatres in Meknes?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ she replied in an ice-cold voice. ‘But my husband and I are very busy with work. I have better things to do than having fun.’

  VI

  Mathilde flew back on 2 November. Aïcha was allowed to miss school that day and she waited for her mother by the road, sitting on a wooden crate. When she saw her father’s car arrive she stood up and waved. The flowers that she’d collected that morning had all wilted so she decided not to give them to her mother. Amine braked a few feet from the gate and Mathilde got out. She was wearing a new dress, some elegant brown leather shoes and a straw summer hat, incongruous in the November cold. Aïcha stared at her, her heart overflowing with love. Her mother was a soldier back from the front, a wounded but victorious soldier, hiding her secrets under her medals. She held her daughter close and buried her nose in the child’s neck, her fingers in her curly hair. Aïcha looked so slight, so fragile, that Mathilde was afraid she might crack one of her ribs if she hugged her too tightly.

  They walked hand in hand to the house and Selim appeared, in Tamo’s arms. He’d changed a great deal in the past month and Mathilde thought he’d got fatter because the food that the maid cooked for him was too greasy. But that day nothing could vex or anger her. She was calm and serene because she had resigned herself to her fate and decided to embrace it, to make the most of it. As she entered the house, as she walked through the living room filled with winter sunlight, as she had her suitcase carried up to her bedroom, she thought that it was doubt that was the problem, it was choice that created pain, that gnawed away at the soul. Now she’d made her decision, now she knew that there was no escaping this life, she felt strong. The strength that comes from not being free. She thought about the pathetic liar she’d been, the actress in an imaginary theatre, and she recalled a line from Racine’s Andromaque that she’d learned at school: ‘Blindly I follow now the fate that claims me.’

  All day long the children wouldn’t let her out of their sight. They clung to her legs and she made it a game, trying to walk forward with those weights on her calves. She opened her suitcase with solemnity, as if it were a treasure chest, and took out cuddly toys, children’s books, strawberry bonbons covered with icing sugar. In Alsace she had put away her own childhood; she’d tied it up, silenced it and shoved it to the back of a drawer. She would no longer think about her own naive dreams, her childish whims. She drew her children to her chest, lifted them up, one in each arm, and rolled on the bed with them. She kissed them passionately and in the kisses that she planted on their cheeks there was not only the strength of her love but the burning intensity of her regrets. She loved them all the more because of all t
he things she’d given up for them: happiness, passion, freedom. She thought: I hate myself for being chained like this; I hate myself not preferring anything to you. She placed Aïcha in her lap and read her stories. ‘Again!’ the child begged, and Mathilde obeyed. She had brought a whole suitcase of books, and Aïcha caressed the cover of each one with a religious fervour before opening it. She was intrigued and frightened by Struwwelpeter, with his tangled hair and his claw-like nails. Selim said: ‘He looks like you’, and that made her cry.

  ***

  On 16 November 1954 Aïcha turned seven, and Mathilde decided to organise a birthday party at the farm. She made the beautiful invitations herself, with a little slip of paper on which the parents could indicate whether their children would attend or not. Every evening she would ask Aïcha if her classmates had responded yet. ‘Geneviève isn’t coming. Her parents won’t let her. They say she’d catch fleas and diarrhoea because we live in the back of beyond.’ Mathilde shrugged. ‘Geneviève is an idiot and her parents are morons. Don’t worry, we’ll be better off without them.’

  For a week the party was all Mathilde talked about. In the mornings, in the car, she would describe the cake she was going to order from the best patisserie in town, the garlands that she would make from crêpe paper, the games from her childhood that she would teach them and that they would love so much. She looked so happy and enthusiastic that Aïcha didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. Her classmates taunted her constantly. She was the youngest girl in her year and the other girls were forever pulling her hair and pushing her on the stairs. They hated her even more because she was top of the class and won all the prizes for Latin, mathematics and spelling. ‘It’s a good thing you’re clever. You’re so ugly that no one will ever want to marry you.’ In chapel, kneeling next to Monette, Aïcha sullied herself with evil thoughts and hateful prayers. She prayed that the other girls would die. She dreamed that they would suffocate, catch incurable diseases, fall from trees and break their legs. ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ But she never actually did anything stupid, never carried out any of her fantasies of vengeance. She suppressed her jealousy towards Selim and balled her fists tightly when the urge came over her to pinch the little boy whom her mother stared at with such hurtful tenderness. Since Mathilde’s return, Aïcha had heard her father complain several times about the constant shuttling between home and school. ‘It’s ruining our health,’ he’d said. ‘It’s wearing out the children.’ Aïcha made herself as quiet and invisible as possible after that because she lived in terror that her parents would force her to board at school and she’d see her mother only on weekends, like most of the other girls.

  ***

  The day of her birthday party arrived. It was a wet, gloomy Sunday. When she woke, Aïcha stood on her bed and looked through the window at the branches of the almond trees shivering in the wind. The sky was sad and crumpled, like a bedsheet after a night of bad dreams. A man in a brown homespun djellaba walked past, the hood over his head, and the child heard the sound of mud squelching under his shoes. At noon the wind died down and the rain ceased, but the sky was still obscured by grey clouds and there was the hint of a storm in the air. It’s so unfair, thought Mathilde: the sky here is always so blue, and today of all days the sun disappears.

  Amine had to go to the patisserie to pick up the cake, then to the school where three girls – who did not get to go home on weekends – had accepted Aïcha’s invitation. Amine was running late. Twice he had to park by the side of the road and wait for the rain to stop because his windscreen wipers didn’t work properly and he couldn’t see where he was going. He had to wait at the patisserie. There’d been some mix-up and his daughter’s cake had been given to someone else. ‘There aren’t any strawberries left,’ the woman explained. Amine shrugged. ‘Never mind, I just need a cake.’

  At the farm Mathilde paced impatiently. She’d decorated the living room and set the dining room table with plates that had paintings of scenes from life in Alsace. She walked around the house, nervous and irritated, the most terrible scenarios running through her head. Aïcha didn’t move. With her nose pressed to the bay window, she stared at the sky as if trying to move away the clouds and make the sun appear with only the power of her thoughts. What could they do in this dusty house? What games could they play indoors? She wanted to take them running through the countryside, show them her hiding places in the trees, the donkey in the stable that was too old to work, and the horde of cats that Mathilde had tamed. ‘Lord, give me strength, You who love everyone.’

  At last Amine arrived, his clothes soaked, holding a cake box covered with cream stains. Behind him were Monette and three scared-looking girls.

  ‘Aïcha, go and say hello to your friends,’ Mathilde said, pushing her daughter’s back.

  Aïcha wished she could vanish. She’d have given anything for those girls to be taken back to their homes, for her to be left in solitude, out of danger. But Mathilde started singing, like a woman possessed, and Selim clapped his hands. The girls tried to sing along; they got the words mixed up and dissolved into laughter. Mathilde blindfolded Aïcha and spun her around. Blindly she advanced, hands groping forward, guided by her classmates’ stifled giggles. At five o’clock the daylight faded. Mathilde shouted: ‘I think it’s time!’ and she went into the kitchen, leaving behind the little girls who had nothing to say to each other. When she opened the box she almost wept. It wasn’t the cake she’d ordered. Hands shaking with rage, she put it on a plate and Aïcha heard her mother’s voice singing: ‘Happy birthday to you … Happy birthday to you …’ Kneeling on her chair, Aïcha leaned in close to the candles, and just as she was about to blow them out her mother stopped her. ‘You should make a wish first. But keep it secret.’

  They turned on the lamps. Ginette, whose nose wouldn’t stop running, started to whine. She was scared here and she wanted to go home. Mathilde put her face close to the girl’s and reassured her, but what she wanted to do was shake the little brat and tell her to stop being so selfish. Couldn’t she see that today wasn’t about her? But the expressions on the faces of the other girls, with the exception of Monette, suddenly changed.

  ‘We want to go home too. Ask your chauffeur to take us back.’

  ‘Our chauffeur?’ Mathilde thought about Amine’s sullen face, the brutal way he’d slammed the cake box on the kitchen table. So those children had thought he was the chauffeur and he hadn’t contradicted them …

  Mathilde started to laugh. She was about to clear this matter up when Aïcha exclaimed: ‘Mama, can the chauffeur take them home?’

  Aïcha stared at her mother with the same dark gaze as when she’d been punished and she seemed to hate the entire world. Mathilde’s heart contracted and she slowly nodded. The little girls followed her like ducklings to the office, where Amine had locked himself in. He’d spent the afternoon there, trying to calm himself down by smoking cigarettes and cutting articles from a magazine. The schoolgirls mumbled their goodbyes to Aïcha and got in the back of the car.

  It had started raining again, so Amine drove slowly. The three girls fell asleep, heads on each other’s shoulders, and Ginette snored. They’re only children, Amine reminded himself. You have to forgive them.

  ***

  The following Thursday, Mathilde took her children to a photography studio on Rue Lafayette. The photographer sat them on a stool in front of a backdrop representing Notre-Dame Cathedral. Selim refused to keep still and Mathilde lost her temper. She fixed Aïcha’s hair and adjusted the collar of her white dress. ‘Good … Now, whatever you do, don’t move!’ On the back of the picture Mathilde wrote down the date and the place. She put it in an envelope and wrote to Irène: ‘Aïcha is top of her class and Selim is learning very quickly. Yesterday was Aïcha’s seventh birthday. They’re my pride and joy. They’re my vengeance on all those who humiliate us.’

  One evening, as they were finishing dinner, a man knocked at the door. I
n the darkness of the entrance hall Amine didn’t at first recognise his former army comrade. Mourad was soaked from the rain and shivering in his wet clothes. With one hand he kept his coat closed; with the other he shook water from his cap. Mourad had lost his teeth and he spoke like an old man, chewing the insides of his cheeks. Amine pulled him inside and hugged him so tightly that he could feel all his ribs. He started laughing. He didn’t care about getting his clothes wet. ‘Mathilde! Mathilde!’ he yelled, dragging Mourad into the living room. Mathilde let out a cry. She remembered her husband’s orderly, a shy, delicate man for whom she’d felt an affectionate friendship that she’d never been able to express. ‘He needs to change – he’s soaked to the bone. Mathilde, go and get him some clothes.’ But Mourad was not having this. He waved his hands frantically in front of his face. No, he would not take his commander’s shirt, he would not borrow a pair of shoes from him and certainly not a vest. Never could he do such a thing; it would be indecent. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said Amine. ‘The war is over.’ These words were like a slap in the face for Mourad. They made him uncomfortable, creating a sort of whistling in his head, and he felt that Amine had said them only to wound him.

  In the bathroom, the walls covered in blue earthenware tiles, Mourad undressed. He avoided glancing at his skeletal reflection in the large mirror. What was the point of examining this body devastated by war, childhood poverty and years spent wandering foreign roads? On the edge of the sink Mathilde had left him a clean towel and a bar of soap in the shape of a seashell. He washed his armpits, his neck, his hands and forearms. He took off his shoes and put his feet in a bowl filled with cold water. Then, reluctantly, he put on his commander’s clothes.