The Country of Others

by Leïla Slimani

  ***

  One morning a pick-up truck parked in the courtyard and two boys unloaded a large wooden bed. The elder of the two couldn’t have been more than seventeen. He wore a pair of trousers that only reached halfway down his calves and a canvas cap faded by the sun. The younger boy had a doll-like face that offered a strange contrast with his massive, muscled body. He stood back and waited for the older boy to give him orders. Mourad pointed out the storeroom but the boy in the cap just shrugged. ‘It won’t fit through the door.’ Mourad, who’d bought the bed from one of the best artisans in town, exploded. He wasn’t there to have a discussion. He ordered them to take the bed in sideways, dragging it along the ground. For more than an hour they shoved the bed, carried it, turned it over. They hurt their backs and their hands. Sweating and red-faced, the two boys laughed at Mourad’s stubbornness. ‘Come on, old man, be reasonable!’ said the younger boy. ‘If it’s too big for the hole, you’ll never get it in there.’ The foreman was disgusted by the boy’s lewd double-entendre. Exhausted, the teenager sat on the bed base and winked at his companion: ‘It’s his missus who’ll be dis appointed. This is a really nice bed for such a small house.’ Mourad stared at the boys as they jumped on the bed and laughed. He felt stupid and he wanted to cry. When he’d seen this bed in the medina it had seemed perfect. He’d thought about Amine then, and how proud of him his boss would be: a man capable of buying a bed like this would be the best possible husband for his sister, Amine would think. ‘I’m an idiot,’ Mourad muttered, and it took a huge effort of self-control not to beat the boys and take an axe to the bed. Instead he watched the truck vanish in a cloud of dust, his heart filled with a calm despair.

  For two days the bed stayed where it was and nobody asked any questions. Amine said nothing, and nor did Mathilde. They were both so embarrassed and ashamed that they pretended it was perfectly normal for a double bed to sit there, in the middle of a sandy courtyard. Then, one morning, Mourad asked for the day off and Amine said yes. The foreman picked up a mallet and smashed down the wall of the storeroom that faced the fields, then pushed the bed through the gap. After that, he got some bricks and mortar and began enlarging the room where he would live from now on with Selma. All day and long into the night he built a new wall. He intended to install a bathroom in the house for his wife, who currently had to use the outside toilets. Tamo stood on tiptoe to watch through the window as the foreman laboured. Mathilde told her to mind her own business and get back to work.

  When the house was ready Mourad felt proud, but it didn’t change his habits. At night he left the big bed to Selma while he slept on the floor.

  To find Omar they had to follow the smell of blood. That was what Amine said, and in that summer of 1955 there was no lack of blood. It ran through the streets of Morocco’s cities, where more and more people were murdered in broad daylight, where bombs exploded in the streets. The violence spread through the countryside: crops were burned, plantation owners beaten to death. These killings were a mixture of politics and personal vengeance. People were killed in the name of God and of country, to wipe out a debt, to pay back a humiliation or an adulterous wife. The white authorities responded with racist attacks and torture. The only thing the two sides had in common was fear.

  Every time he heard about a killing Amine would wonder if Omar was involved. Was he dead? Was he a murderer? He thought about it when an industrialist was assassinated in Casablanca, when a French soldier died in Rabat, when an old Moroccan perished in Berkane and when a town planning officer was the target of an attack in Marrakech. He thought about Omar when – two days after the murder of the pro-independence newspaper owner Jacques Lemaigre-Dubreuil by counter-terrorists – he listened to the Resident-General Francis Lacoste give a speech on the radio. ‘Violence, in all its forms, is horrifying and contemptible.’ A few days later Lacoste was replaced by Gilbert Grandval, who arrived at a moment of high tension. At first Grandval sparked hopes that the terrorism could be brought to an end, that a dialogue could be re-established between the two communities. He reversed a number of convictions and distancing measures. He stood up to extremists in the French community. But on 14 July an attack in Place Mers Sultan in Casablanca destroyed all those hopes. Grieving women, their faces veiled in black, refused to shake hands with the French representative. ‘We have no attachment to mainland France and now we’re going to lose what we spent years building: the country where we raised our children.’ Europeans rushed into the medina of the white town, grabbing all the French flags that had been put out to line the streets for Bastille Day. They pillaged shops, set fires and committed all kinds of atrocities, sometimes egged on by the police. A chasm filled with blood now gaped between the two communities.

  On the night of 24 July 1955 Omar reappeared. He came to Meknes hidden in the back seat of a car driven by a Casablancan teenager. They parked below the medina, in a dead-end road that smelled of urine, and smoked cigarettes while they waited for the sun to rise. Gilbert Grandval’s retinue was supposed to drive through Place El-Hedim around nine that morning, and Omar and his companions considered it their duty to welcome him. In the boot of the car, hidden inside large bags filled with rubble, were two revolvers and a few knives.

  The sky lightened and the square filled with French troops in ceremonial uniform. They were going to present arms as the retinue passed and then escort the Resident-General to the Mansour Gate, where he would be given dates and milk. Women stood behind barriers. They waved cross-shaped dolls in robes made of cloth and small bouquets of flowers. In exchange for their presence they’d been given a few coins, and they were laughing among themselves. Despite their cheerfulness it was obvious that their fervour was fake, that their chants of ‘Vive la France’ were nothing more than a sad farce. Some amputees tried to get as close as they could to the passage of the procession in the hope that the people of France would be alerted to their fate. When the police pushed them back, they shouted: ‘We fought for France and now we’re living in poverty.’

  At dawn special protection groups began setting up blockades in front of each gate leading to the old town. But soon they were overwhelmed by the massing crowds. A van parked on Place El-Hedim and the police, in a panic, ordered the passengers to get out and drop the Moroccan flags that they were waving. The men refused and began stamping their feet in the back of the van, making it sway. The sound of those stomping feet galvanised the crowd. Boys and old men, peasants from the mountain, bourgeois businessmen and shopkeepers all gathered in the vicinity of the square. They carried flags and photographs of the sultan and they chanted: ‘Youssef! Youssef!’ Some held clubs, others carving knives. Near the tribune where the Resident-General was due to give his speech, local worthies looked anxious and their white djellabas were stained with sweat.

  Omar gave a signal to his companions and they leaped out of the car. They walked up to the increasingly agitated crowd and melted into it. Behind them veiled women had climbed on to trestles and were shouting: ‘Independence!’ Omar made a fist and started yelling along. To the men who surrounded him he gave out bags filled with rubbish. They threw rotten fruit and dried shit at the policemen’s faces. Omar’s deep, vibrant voice was like a flame in a forest. He stamped his foot, spat on the ground, and his rage spread around him. Young boys and old men all swelled with courage and pride. One teenage boy, wearing a white vest and a pair of trousers that revealed his hairless calves, started throwing stones at the security guards. The other protesters imitated him and soon the police were caught in a rain of stones. All other sounds were drowned out by the clatter of rocks on the cobblestones and the shouts of the policemen, calling – in French – for calm. One of them, bleeding from his eyebrow, grabbed his submachine gun. He fired into the air and then – jaw tensed, eyes filled with fear – aimed his gun at the crowd and fired again. In front of Omar, the boy from Casablanca fell to the ground. Despite the chaos of people running and women crying, his companions gathered round him and one of them started
looking around frantically. ‘There are ambulances coming. We have to get him out of here!’

  But Omar made a commanding gesture with his hand and said: ‘No.’

  The young men, used to their leader’s coldness, stared at him. Omar’s face was totally calm. He smiled. Things were going exactly as he’d hoped. This disorder, this confusion, was the best thing that could have happened.

  ‘If we take him to the hospital and he survives, they’ll torture him. They’ll threaten to send him to Darkoum or somewhere and he’ll talk. No ambulance.’

  Omar squatted down and with his skinny arms he picked up the wounded boy, who screamed with pain.

  ‘Run!’

  In the panic Omar lost his glasses, and later he would believe that it was this blindness that enabled him to run through the crowds, avoiding bullets and making it to the gate of the medina, where he could lose himself in the maze of backstreets. He didn’t look round to see if the others were still with him; he made no attempt to console the injured boy, who was calling for his mother and praying to Allah. He also didn’t see, on his way out of the square, the hundreds of abandoned slippers strewn across the ground, the bloodstained fezzes, the weeping men.

  In the streets of Berrima he heard the ululations of women gathered on roof terraces. He felt as if they were encouraging him, guiding him towards his mother’s house, and like a sleepwalker he found his way to the hobnailed door and knocked. An old man opened it. Omar pushed him out of the way and ran on to the patio. When the door had been closed behind him he asked: ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Tell me who you are first,’ said the old man.

  ‘This is my mother’s house. Where are they?’

  ‘They left. Weeks ago. I’m looking after the house for them.’ The caretaker glanced uneasily at the body slumped over Omar’s shoulder and added: ‘I don’t want any trouble.’

  Omar lay the wounded boy on a damp bench. He put his ear close to the boy’s mouth. He was breathing.

  ‘Keep an eye on him,’ Omar ordered, then went upstairs, feeling his way with his hands. All he could see were vague shapes, haloes of light, disturbing movements. He smelled smoke then and realised that houses all over the city were burning, that the protesters had set fire to traitors’ businesses, that the revolt was really happening. He heard the roar of an aeroplane flying over the medina and the sound of gunfire in the distance. His heart filled with joy as he thought that right now, outside, men were still fighting, and that France – in the person of Gilbert Grandval – must be trembling before this uprising. By late morning gendarmes and uniformed goumiers had surrounded the medina of the new town. Near the Poublan Camp three tanks took up position, aiming their guns at the native town.

  When Omar went downstairs again the boy had fainted. The caretaker was with him, sniffing and tapping his forehead. Omar told him to shut up, and like a cat the old man walked across the patio and went to hide in Mouilala’s old room. All afternoon Omar sat on the hot patio. Sometimes he massaged his temples and opened his wide, owl-like eyes as if hoping that his sight would miraculously return. He couldn’t risk going out and getting arrested. The police were prowling the medina’s backstreets now, knocking on doors, threatening to break in and pillage everything if the inhabitants didn’t open up. Jeeps drove through the streets, picking up the few Europeans who still lived in the old town and evacuating them to the fairground or the Bordeaux Hotel, which had been requisitioned for that purpose.

  After a few hours Omar fell asleep. The old man, who started at the slightest noise, began to pray. He looked at Omar and thought how cold-hearted and amoral he must be to be able to sleep in such a situation. During the night the wounded boy started twitching and groaning. The caretaker went over, held his hand and tried to hear what the boy was whispering. The boy was just a poor peasant who’d fled a life of deprivation in the mountains to try his luck in the slums of Casablanca. For months he’d looked for work on one of those building sites that people were always telling him about. But nobody had wanted him and, like thousands of other peasants, he’d gone to work the quarries, at the edge of the white town, too poor and ashamed to even think of going home. It had been there, among houses with corrugated-iron roofs, in that shanty town where fatherless children shat in the street and died from throat infections, that a recruiter had found him. The man must have looked at the hate and despair in that boy’s eyes and thought: Perfect. Now, feverish and in terrible pain, the boy was begging for someone to contact his mother.

  Early in the morning Omar called out to the caretaker: ‘Find a doctor. If the police ask you where you’re going, tell them a woman is giving birth and it’s urgent. Hurry up! You find a doctor and then you come back here, understood?’

  He handed him some money and the old man, relieved to be free of that cursed house, quickly left.

  Two hours later Dragan arrived. He hadn’t asked the old man any questions, he’d just picked up his old leather bag and followed him. He wasn’t expecting to see Omar and he took a step back when the young man’s tall body appeared in front of him.

  ‘This guy’s wounded.’

  Dragan followed him and leaned over the boy, who was breathing weakly. Behind him Amine’s brother fidgeted. Without his glasses he looked more childlike, his fine features drawn with tiredness. His hair was sticky with sweat and his neck was covered with dried blood. He stank.

  Dragan rummaged around in his bag. He asked the old man to boil some water so he could clean his instruments. The doctor disinfected the wound and made a sort of bandage around the injured arm, then gave the boy a tranquilliser. While he was treating him Dragan spoke softly, stroked the boy’s forehead and reassured him.

  While Dragan was busy sewing up the wound, Omar’s comrades had come into the house. Observing the deference with which they treated their leader the caretaker became suddenly obsequious. He ran to the kitchen and began making tea for the resistance fighters. He cursed the French, calling them infidels, and when his eyes met Dragan’s the doctor just shrugged to show that he didn’t care.

  The doctor went over to Omar before leaving.

  ‘You’ll have to check the wound and keep it clean. I can drop by again tonight if you want. I’ll bring a clean bandage and some medicine for the fever.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, but we’ll be gone by tonight,’ Omar replied.

  ‘Your brother’s worried about you. He’s been searching for you. The rumour was that you were in prison.’

  ‘We’re all in prison. As long as we live in a colonised country we can’t call ourselves free.’

  Dragan didn’t know what to say to this. He shook Omar’s hand and left. He walked through the deserted streets of the medina and the few faces he saw were marked with grief and sorrow. The voice of a muezzin rose into the sky. That morning four boys had been buried. The French police had set up a security cordon at dawn, and they had protected the funeral procession as it peacefully entered the mosque. When Omar had seen Dragan to the door he’d offered him money but the doctor had coldly refused. He’s a cruel man, Dragan thought on his way home. Amine’s brother reminded him of other men he’d met during his travels. Men full of fine words and grandiose ideals who had used up all their humanity in the speeches they gave.

  Dragan let his chauffeur go for the day. He sat at the wheel of his car and drove, windows open, to the Belhaj farm. Outside, the sky was a tender blue and the heat so oppressive that he half expected the fields to burst into flame at any moment. He opened his mouth and breathed in the hot wind, the ill wind that warmed his lungs and made him cough. The air smelled of bay leaves and crushed stink bugs. As always in such moments of melancholy he thought about his trees, about the ripe, juicy oranges that would one day roll on Czech and Hungarian tables, as if he’d sent a parcel of sunlight to those nightlands.

  When he reached the hill he felt almost guilty at being the bearer of sad news. He wasn’t one of those people who believed in the myth of villages filled with easy-going, h
appy Berber peasants. All the same, he knew that there was a sort of peace and harmony in this place, which Amine and Mathilde felt responsible for maintaining. He didn’t realise that they kept themselves deliberately apart from the fury of the town, that they kept the radio silent, and that newspapers were used here only for packing up fresh eggs or making little hats and aeroplanes for Selim. He parked his car. In the distance he could see Amine hurrying home. In the garden Aïcha had climbed a tree and Selma was sitting on the swing that Amine had hung from the branches of the ‘lemange’ tree. The hot concrete tiles had been watered and a cloud of steam was rising from the ground. Inside the foliage, birds flew and sang, and tears welled in Dragan’s eyes as he contemplated the indifference of nature and the stupidity of men. We will all kill one another, he thought, and butterflies will continue to fly.