The Country of Others

by Leïla Slimani

  Make her shut up, thought Selma, make her let me go. But the old woman went on, fingering her ivory cross, which had been smoothed to a shine.

  ‘Right now you’re in love and it’s wonderful. You believe everything the boys tell you. You imagine that it will last and that they’ll always love you as much as they do now. Next to that, your studies seem unimportant. But you don’t know anything about life! One day you’ll have sacrificed everything for them, you’ll have nothing left and you’ll be completely dependent on them. At the mercy of their good moods, their affection, their brutality. Believe me when I tell you that you must think about your future. You must study. Times have changed. You are not doomed to the same fate as your mother. You could become someone, a lawyer, a teacher, a nurse. Or even a pilot! Haven’t you heard about that girl, Touria Chaoui, who passed her flying exam at sixteen? You can be whatever you want to be, if you work for it. And you will never ever have to ask a man for money.’

  Selma listened, hands tightly gripping her glass of tea. She listened so attentively that Mademoiselle Fabre thought she’d managed to convince her. ‘Go back to school. Revise for your exams. I’ll help you if you need help. Mademoiselle, promise me you won’t give up.’ Selma thanked her, kissed her wrinkled cheeks, and said: ‘I promise.’

  But as she walked back home Selma thought about the old woman’s face, her skin as white as chalk, her lips so thin that she looked like she’d eaten her own mouth. Alone in the narrow streets, she laughed and thought: What does that old nun know about men? What does she know about love? She felt a vast contempt for the Frenchwoman’s fat, sad body, for her solitary existence, for those ideals of hers which were nothing more, in truth, than a way of masking the lack of tenderness in her life. The previous day, Selma had kissed a boy. And ever since, she’d found herself constantly wondering how it was possible that men – who bullied and oppressed her – could also be the ones she was so desperate to be with. Yes, a boy had kissed her and she remembered with superhuman accuracy the precise path that his kisses had taken on her skin. She kept closing her eyes and reliving that delicious moment, her excitement unfading. She saw again the boy’s pale-blue eyes, she heard his voice, the words he spoke – ‘Are you trembling?’ – and a shiver ran through her body. She was a prisoner of that memory, she dwelled on it constantly and touched her fingertips to her mouth, to her neck, as if trying to find the trace of a wound, a mark that the boy’s mouth had left on her. Each time he’d put his lips on her skin she’d felt as though he was liberating her from fear, from the cowardice in which she’d been raised.

  Was that what men were for? Was that why everyone talked about love all the time? Yes, they mined the courage that lay deep in your heart, they brought it out into the daylight and forced it to bloom. At the thought of a kiss, a new kiss, she felt an immense strength fill her. How right they are, she thought, walking up the stairs to her bedroom, how right they are to suspect us and to warn us, because what we’re hiding, under our veils and our skirts, is so fiery and glorious that we might betray anything for it.

  At the end of March a cold snap hit Meknes and the water in the patio well froze. Mouilala fell ill and was bedridden for days, her thin face barely visible above the thick layer of blankets that Yasmine spread over her. Mathilde often came to see her and tried to make her better in spite of her resistance, her refusal to swallow the medicines. Mathilde had to treat her like a scared and wilful child. Mouilala did recover, but when she finally got out of bed and went to the kitchen, in a dressing gown that Mathilde had given her, she realised that something was wrong. At first she didn’t know what it was that was making her panic like this, giving her the feeling of being a stranger in her own home. She walked through the corridor, shaking off Yasmine, and went up and down the stairs despite the pain in her legs. She leaned out of the window and looked at the street, which seemed to her oddly dull, as if something had been stolen from it. Was it possible that the world had changed so much during the few weeks that she’d been ill? She thought she was going crazy, that demons had taken possession of her just as they had her son Jalil. She remembered stories she’d heard about her ancestors, who would parade half-naked in the streets and talk to ghosts. So now she’d been struck by the family curse and she was slowly losing her mind … She was frightened. To calm herself she did what she always did. She sat in the kitchen, grabbed a bunch of coriander and began mincing it. Then she raised her hands, their fingers twisted and covered with finely chopped herbs, to her mouth, to her nose, coating her face with the minced coriander until she started to cry. She stuck her fingers in her nose, rubbed her eyes like a madwoman. Still she couldn’t smell anything. With some witchcraft that she didn’t understand, the illness had robbed her of her sense of smell.

  So it was that she didn’t notice when her daughter came home smelling of stale tobacco and dust from building sites. Mouilala was unaware of the cheap perfume that Selma had bought in the medina with stolen money and which clung to the fabric of her blouses. Above all the old woman couldn’t tell that the sugary perfume was mingled with the fresh citrus odour of a man’s cologne. Selma would come home every evening, her cheeks red, her hair tangled, her breath smelling of another’s mouth. She would sing on the patio, talk to her mother with shining eyes and hug her sweetly. ‘I love you so much, Mama!’ she would say.

  One evening Mathilde was waiting for Amine when he came home. ‘I was in town today,’ she told him. ‘I saw your mother.’ Mouilala had behaved strangely towards Aïcha. When the child had put her mouth close to her grandmother’s hand, the old woman had started yelling. ‘She accused Aïcha of trying to bite her. She was sobbing and holding her hand to her chest. She was really frightened, Amine, you understand?’ Yes, he understood. He’d already noticed his mother’s thinness, her vacant gaze, her absences. She’d stopped dyeing her hair with henna and she sometimes left her bedroom without first tying her headscarf over her grey hair. When Mathilde had gone to see her, she could have sworn that Mouilala hadn’t recognised her. The old woman had stared at her for a few seconds, glassy-eyed and open-mouthed, and then she’d looked relieved. She hadn’t pronounced her daughter-in-law’s name – she never did – but she’d smiled and put her hand on the young woman’s arm. Mouilala would spend hours sitting at the kitchen table, staring limply at baskets of vegetables. When her mind recovered some of its old strength she would stand up and start cooking, but her meals didn’t taste the way they used to. She would forget ingredients or fall asleep on her wooden chair and let the bottom of the tajine burn. This woman who had always been so silent and austere now spent her days humming childish songs that made her burst out laughing. She walked in circles and lifted up her kaftan while sticking her tongue out at Yasmine.

  ‘We can’t just leave her like that,’ said Mathilde. Amine took off his boots, hung his jacket on the chair in the entrance hall and said nothing. ‘She should come and live with us. Selma too.’ His wife stood with her hands on her hips, watching him tenderly. When Amine glanced at her she saw the passion in his eyes. Surprised, she touched her hair flirtatiously and untied the string of the apron she was wearing. At that moment he regretted his inarticulacy. He wished he was one of those men who find the time to think deeply and show tenderness, the time to express all that they carry in their hearts. He observed her for a long time, thinking that she’d become a woman of this country, that she suffered just like he did, that she worked just as hard, and that he was incapable of thanking her.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Anyway, I didn’t like them being alone there, in the medina, with no man to protect them.’ He walked over to Mathilde, stood on tiptoe and slowly kissed her cheek, which she’d leaned down towards him.

  At the start of spring Amine helped his mother move. Jalil was sent to stay with an uncle, a holy man who lived near Ifrane and who assured them that altitude would be good for his nephew’s weak mind. Yasmine, who had never seen snow, offered to go with him. Mouilala was given the brightest room,
near the entrance of the house. Selma had to share a bedroom with Aïcha and Selim, but Mourad had managed to get hold of some bricks and mortar and he’d begun building a new wing to the house.

  Mouilala rarely left her room. Often Mathilde would find her sitting by the window, staring at the red-tiled floor. Wrapped up in white, she would gently nod her head, revisiting a life of silence, a mute existence where grief was forbidden. Her dark, wrinkled hands stood out against the white fabric. Those hands seemed to contain this woman’s entire life, like a book without words. Selim spent a lot of time with her. He would sit on the floor, his head resting in his grandmother’s lap, and he’d close his eyes while she stroked his back and nape. He refused to eat anywhere except in the old woman’s bedroom, and they had to accept the bad habits he formed there: eating with his fingers and burping noisily. Mouilala, who had for as long as Mathilde had known her been very thin and only ever eaten other people’s leftovers, was now a terrible glutton, as many old people are in their last years, finding in these frivolous pleasures one last particle of meaning.

  All day long Mathilde rushed about: from school to home, from the kitchen to the laundry room. She washed the old woman’s thighs and her son’s thighs too. She made meals for everyone and ate standing up, because she didn’t have time to sit. In the morning, when she was back from the school, she healed the sick then washed and ironed clothes. In the afternoon she went to the suppliers and brought chemical products or spare parts. She lived in a state of permanent anxiety: for their finances, for Mouilala’s health, for her children. She worried about Amine’s dark moods. The day that Selma arrived at the farm, her husband had warned Mathilde: ‘I don’t want her going near the men. I don’t want her hanging around. It’s school and home and that’s all, you understand?’ Mathilde had nodded, her heart torn with anguish. When her brother wasn’t there – which was most of the time – Selma was insolent and cruel. Mathilde gave her orders, but Selma just ignored them. ‘You’re not my mother,’ she said.

  Mathilde feared the violent rains of March, the hail that the labourers had been predicting because of the yellow late-afternoon skies. She jumped when the telephone rang and prayed, hand on the receiver, that it wasn’t the bank or either of the schools. Often Corinne would call her mid-afternoon and invite her to come for tea. ‘You’re allowed to have fun, you know!’

  The letters that Mathilde wrote to Irène now were dry and formal, with no secrets or feelings. She asked her sister to send her recipes for meals from their childhood. She would have liked to be a perfect housewife, like the ones who appeared in the magazines that Corinne lent her. The ones who knew how to run a household, who kept the peace, the ones who held everything together through a combination of love and fear. But as Aïcha told her one day in her reedy little voice: ‘Anyway, everything goes wrong in the end.’ Mathilde didn’t contradict her. She would peel vegetables while reading a book. She would hide novels in the pockets of her aprons and sometimes she would sit on a pile of laundry that needed ironing to read novels by Henri Troyat or Anaïs Nin that she’d borrowed from the Mercier widow. She cooked dishes that Amine hated. Potato salads covered with onions and stinking of vinegar, platefuls of cabbage that she boiled for so long that the house reeked of it for days, meat loaves so dry that Aïcha spat them out and hid the remains in the pocket of her jacket. Amine complained. With his fork he pushed away escalopes drenched in cream, which were not suited to this climate. He missed his mother’s cooking and convinced himself that Mathilde was just provoking him by claiming that she didn’t like couscous and lentils with smoked meat. At mealtimes she would encourage the children to talk, asking them lots of questions, and she’d laugh when they banged their spoons on the table and demanded dessert. Then Amine would grow angry with these disrespectful, noisy children, he would curse this house where he could no longer find the peace that a working man had a right to expect. Mathilde would pick up Selim, take a dirty handkerchief from her sleeve and cry. One evening, watched by his astounded daughter, Amine started singing a Maurice Chevalier song: ‘She cried like a baby, she cried and cried and cried … She cried like a fountain, all the tears she had inside …’ He pursued Mathilde into the corridor and shouted: ‘Oh là là, what a tragedy! What a tragedy!’ And Mathilde, wild with rage, screamed insults in Alsatian. When they asked her, later, what those words had meant, she would always refuse to explain.

  Mathilde put on weight and a few white hairs appeared at her temples. During the daytime she wore a wide raffia hat, like the ones the peasants wore, and black rubber sandals. The skin on her cheeks and neck was scattered with little brown patches and fine lines started to form. Sometimes, at the ends of those interminable days, she sank into a profound melancholy. On the way to school, her face caressed by the wind, she thought about how she’d first come to this land ten years earlier, and what had she accomplished during all that time? What would she leave behind? Hundreds of meals eaten and vanished, fleeting moments of happiness of which no trace remained, songs whispered at a child’s bedside, afternoons spent consoling people for long-forgotten sadnesses. Sleeves resewn, solitary anxieties that she never shared with anyone out of a fear of being mocked. Whatever she did – and however great and sincere the gratitude of her children and her patients – it seemed to Mathilde that her life was constantly being swallowed up. Everything she achieved was doomed to disappear, to be erased. That was the fate of all small, domestic lives, she thought, where endless repetition of the same tasks ended up eating away the soul. She looked through the window at the plantations of almond trees, the acres of vines, the young shrubs reaching maturity that would – in a year or two – start bearing fruit. She envied Amine this domain he’d built, stone by stone, and which, that year – 1955 – was providing him with his first feelings of satisfaction.

  The peach harvest had been good and he’d sold his almonds for a handsome profit. To the extreme annoyance of Mathilde, who needed money for school supplies and new clothes, Amine had decided to invest all his profits in the development of the property. ‘A woman from here would never dare stick her nose into that kind of thing,’ he told her. He was going to build a second greenhouse, hire a dozen extra workers for the harvests and pay a French engineer to draw up plans for the construction of a reservoir. Amine had long been passionate about growing olive trees. He’d read everything he could find on the subject and had grown some densely packed experimental plantations. He was convinced that he alone could create new varieties, more resistant to the heat and the lack of water in this region. At the Meknes Fair in the spring of 1955 he gave a confused speech on his findings, reading from the notes in his sweating hands as he tried to explain his theory to a sceptical audience. ‘All innovations are mocked at first, aren’t they?’ he said to his friend Dragan. ‘If things go as planned those trees will have a yield up to six times higher than the varieties I’m growing at the moment. And their need for water is so reduced that I could go back to traditional irrigation methods.’

  During all those years of labour Amine had grown used to working alone, not relying on anyone else’s help. His farm was encircled by those of colonists whose wealth and power had always made him feel inferior. At the end of the war the colonists in Meknes had still held considerable sway. It had been said that they could make or break a Resident-General, that all they had to do was lift a finger and the politicians in Paris would do their bidding. Nowadays, Amine’s neighbours were more agreeable towards him. At the Chamber of Agriculture, where he requested subsidies, he was received with deference and – even if they refused to grant him the money he asked for – he was congratulated for his creativity and determination. When he told Dragan about this meeting, the doctor smiled.

  ‘They’re scared of you, simple as that. They can feel the wind turning, they know that the natives will soon be in charge here. They’re just covering their backsides by treating you as an equal.’

  ‘An equal? They say they want to support me, that they believe in
my vision for the future, but they refuse to give me credit. And when I fail they’ll say I was lazy, that Arabs are all the same, that without the French and their work ethic we would never make anything of ourselves.’

  In May, Roger Mariani’s farm burned down. The pigs were killed and in the days that followed the air all around was filled with the smell of charred flesh. The labourers, who didn’t try particularly hard to put out the fire, covered their faces with cloths and some of them threw up. ‘It’s haram,’ they said, ‘to breathe this cursed air.’ The night of the fire, Roger Mariani came up the hill and Mathilde took him to the living room, where he drank an entire bottle of Tokay on his own. This man who had once been so powerful, who’d threatened General Noguès at his office in Rabat and got what he wanted, now sat in the old velvet armchair and cried like a child. ‘Sometimes I feel like my heart is breaking. I can’t think any more, it’s like my brain is lost in thick fog. I don’t know what the future holds for us now. Where is the justice if I have to pay for crimes that I will always deny having committed? I believed in this country, the way a saint believes in God: unthinkingly, unquestioningly. And now I hear that they want to kill me, that my peasants have hidden weapons in secret caches so they can shoot me, or that they’re going to hang me. So, all this time, they’d just pretended to stop being savages …’

  The relationship between Amine and Mourad had been stretched thin during the Christmas holidays, and for weeks afterwards Amine consciously avoided his former aide-de-camp. Every time Mourad appeared on the dirt path that led from the farm to the douar, every time he saw that gaunt face, those yellow eyes, Amine felt sick. He looked at the ground when he gave orders, and when Mourad approached him to discuss a problem or celebrate a coming harvest Amine couldn’t keep still: he would stamp his feet and often he had to ball his fists and grit his teeth to prevent himself simply running away.