The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris

by Leila Marouane

  "Come off it!" I said, while the voice in my right ear was telling me to get the hell out of there.

  It was still hissing along as I lowered the blinds in my bedroom, unplugged and disconnected the telephones, and fell flat on the bed, all out of sorts and dressed like a cowboy.

  Get away from those women who refuse to give themselves up on the pretext that they're lesbians or virgins. Or that they're expecting their period, or a kid. Even the least talkative of them, the one who didn't have a long story to tell, even she rejected you.

  They're lost women; they fled the South but now they've totally lost their way. As a result: sheets never rumpled. Never soaked. That's how far you've come, oh Sultan of Saint-Germain. I wanted to be further than this by now. It was final. I had to find the young thing. Whatever the cost. Patrol her street from one end to the other. Keep a lookout for her in the shops. In front of her school. In the local libraries. Put the ring on her finger. If need be. What's the point? I shouted. She's gone. Call Agnès Papinot. On the pretext of an investment. Invite her to dinner. Put the ring on her finger. If need be. And so on and so forth, until a drug-free sleep took over.

  PART THREE

  A MADMAN'S BANQUET

  "No books are committed without a motive." Loubna Minbar

  When I woke up, it was well past two o'clock in the afternoon. I had slept a long, deep, uninterrupted sleep. A first for me. No Koranic school. No morning prayers. No shopping at the market. No phone ringing into my dream, Aren't you up yet, my son?

  I stretched, and cracked my neck and my knuckles, breathing in and out as if I had just discovered oxygen, then I left the bed, and my clothes, which I shoved into the laundry basket.

  I let the bathwater run, swallowed a glass of orange juice, made myself a good strong coffee and took it into the bathroom. I lit all the candles that were set along the edge of the bath and slipped into the warm, sudsy water.

  An hour later, smelling of luxury eau de Cologne, meticulously shaven, with a bath towel round my waist, I strode barefoot across my hardwood floors, made a second coffee as robust as the first, and settled into the armchair facing the balcony, with my eyes on the Paris skyline.

  As I stared at the bluish plumes that rose above the roofs, I thought I should make a fire. The chimney sweep had come on Friday, the wood had been delivered and piled in the loggia, or so the concierge had told me, for it was she who had dealt with the chimney sweep and the delivery man. But there was no wood in the loggia. Or anywhere else. Never mind, I thought, going back into the living room. I'd call the concierge. Maybe she'd gotten the wrong Friday. Or maybe I'd mixed the days up.

  I drank my coffee and smoked one cigarette after another. My thoughts were stalled. As I didn't know what to do to entertain my mind, I began to inspect the apartment—the closets, the dressing room, the library, the hardwood floor, the sparkling windowpanes, my ironed shirts, my suits neatly on their hangers …

  My mother, who imagined that the apple of her eye was up to his eyebrows in filth and evil spells, would have been impressed, I thought, as I removed my towel and put on a track suit.

  Ready to get to work, I opened the file marked "Novel," but my notes were nowhere to be seen. Second disappearance, I thought mechanically. First the wood. Now my notes. Or maybe I had never printed the notes out to begin with? But I remember printing them perfectly well. Just as I recalled the quality of their contents. I switched on the computer. There they were. In the right file. With a sigh of relief I clicked "print" and poured a whisky, which I sipped as I smoked a cigarette. When the machine had stopped its creaking, I picked up the sheets of paper. They were blank. I checked the ink level and started over. Not a line. Not a word. Quelling a rush of anger I went back into the living room. I poured a second whisky and began to mentally construct the opening pages of my book. He lived in fear of collapse. It inhibited him. The fear of collapse inhibited him. Friday, June 23 of the year 2006. Right after the khutab. Compass in hand, Driss sought the direction of Mecca in vain. The horizon. White. Bluish. Glacial. Then come the lost women. Each with along story to tell. He couldn't remember a thing about those stories. Or hardly a thing. Or maybe everything. After I'd filled my glass to the brim, I went back into the study. By hand I wrote, "Tangled up in lies. Prisoner of his past, guarding his secrets jealously. He liked his booze. Couldn't sit up straight in front of the machine. Alone, with cirrhosis of the liver. Two opposing destinies meet. Implosion for one. Explosion for the other. The rust of time. Sex is life's curse. Lucky Driss. Left without warning. Drifting endlessly. In a bottomless pit. What a terrible feeling, all this weariness, and you're not even sure you exist. Driss the bigamist. Blessed by his loved ones. Left without warning. But why?

  "An external experience, not internal. In other words, an experience stemming from others and not his own personal quest, which is why his faith failed to attain its potential and turned around and went back to the place they'd gone to get it for him in the first place. The abyss of the void.

  "Venus the enigma. Inhospitable Venus that orbits backward. The lost women. The voluble women. He nodded his head as he listened to them spouting their insane talk. Moving through a world where ecstasy and anxiety are formed, the two men went away in silence. One into the darkness. The other into ice and fire."

  It was at that point that I remembered the pink pajamas underneath my right-hand pillow, where the concierge had carefully tucked them away. But they were gone. I looked in the closets, the dresser drawers, the wardrobe. I rummaged through the laundry basket. In vain. Could it be that she had come by to collect them in my absence? She would have left the keys with the concierge. Hadn't I sent her a message to that effect?

  I called the concierge. "Has a young woman, a girl, left a set of keys with you? She's a brunette, with big eyes and long wavy hair. A fairly ordinary face …"

  Silence.

  "Neither tall nor short, slim nor round, often wearing jeans and a white shirt." Silence. "Make an effort, Madame Lisa. It's very important."

  "I assure you, I can't imagine who … And there was never any question of me calling the chimney sweep," she replied. "Not this year, in any case." But she would take care of it, first thing tomorrow. She didn't know anything about pink pajamas. How could she, she said briskly, when at my request she had returned the spare set of keys, and besides, she reminded me, she was no longer doing my housecleaning. "Really?" I said. Confused, I hung up. I dialed Samira's number. The number you have reached is no longer in service. Please make sure you have the right number in mind. Already! I exploded. So I called my cousin. I needed his advice. Or in any case to speak to him. But no one replied. So I dialed Agnès Papinot's number. Of course, Monsieur Tocquard. She had several things she could show me. That she was sure I'd like. Let's meet, shall we say, tomorrow? At the Jean-Pierre-Timbaud agency. In the 11th arrondissement. She dictated the address. Rolling her syllables. Real and authentic, I said, staring at the bluish plumes caressing the roofs of Paris.

  I was not yet in my dream, he said, when a ringing that I didn't recognize, which must have been coming from the neighbors' door, or so I thought, woke me up. I tossed this way and that to try to find the right position for going back to sleep. Just as I was shoving my head under the pillows, the ringing began again. It was at my door. Who could it be, on a Monday morning? The concierge with a package? The mailman with a registered letter? But the concierge was efficient and discreet: when there was a parcel, she always left it just outside the door. And she had the power to sign for registered letters.

  And what if she was at my door? That young woman? The one who disappeared—with my keys? And now she had come to get her pajamas. But she wouldn't ring. She would open the door, the way she had always opened the door, entering the apartment like a gazelle …

  And what if she had lost the keys? And what was I to do with Mademoiselle Papinot, who was sleeping the sleep of the blessed on my sofa? She had missed the last metro, and before so doing she had wrung my
confessions out of me, and then my secrets. And now she knew everything about me. From my birth to the day I walked into the real-estate agency. And all my recent tribulations. My encounters. The women who appeared and disappeared. The one I cared about most, the gazelle, the Turkish delight …

  She had listened to me with unflagging interest, though whether she was nodding out of compassion or weariness, I know not. Just as I had listened to those talkative women in order to hasten the end of their stories. Hoping, thereby, to attain my ends.

  And then, just as I was starting on my umpteenth whisky, could scarcely hold back my tears, and was on the verge of collapsing, she ran her fingers through my freshly straightened hair, and confessed that she had been aware of my lubricious intentions the day we were going through the inventory of fixtures, and had been flattered. Oh really? I said, sure that we would end up spending the night glued to one another.

  A moment later, I was signing and initialing all sorts of documents. I had become the happy owner of a house on the rue Jean-Pierre-Timbaud. Right near the mosque. Two stories. A little garden for the children. It's perfect for you, Monsieur Ben Mokhtar, Mademoiselle Papinot had said, looking at the candle that was dripping great drops, illuminating not the scene which I alone had anticipated and in which my guest had shown no interest, but the one where all the week's negotiations were finally being concluded, and the contracts were being signed, endowing me with a dream house, susurrated the real-estate agent, who had brilliantly attained her own ends. A house I had not visited, only seen on photos. Be prepared to do some work on it. Of course. Not lived in for years. But a veritable jewel, said Mademoiselle Papinot, all aflutter.

  Inshort, I was in a right fix, here in my purple satin sheets. An arm and a leg. Dry. Smooth. Chaste. All that for this. The ringing began again and I sprang out of bed. I threw on a T-shirt and some boxer shorts, walking on tiptoe so that I would not wake up Mademoiselle Papinot, and as I walked past the living room I closed the door, then turned to the front door. Through the spyhole I saw the concierge, and with her my sister, the blessed one, and my heart skipped a beat. They have come to inform me of something inconceivable, I thought, struggling not to pass out. My mother in the hospital. Alone. Dead of sorrow. Already in the morgue. He lived in fear of collapse, I kept repeating to myself, bracing my back against the wall. I finally opened the door. My sister was not wearing a scarf or a jellaba but, thank God, there was nothing in her expression to indicate the occurrence of a misfortune. And the concierge was smiling maliciously. "Here he is," she said. Then she turned on her heels. "May I come in?" said my sister, stepping into the hall. "What are you doing here?" I asked, following close on her heels, catching her just as she was placing her hand on the door knob to the living room. "Some welcome!" she flung at me, over her shoulder. "I have a guest," I whispered. "As I thought, and that's why I'm here. To warn you that Mom is coming."

  "Mom who?" I cried, forgetting the woman asleep in my living room. "Your mother, my mother, our mother," said my sister as I shoved her toward the kitchen. "But she never comes to Paris!" I said, lighting a cigarette. "You've never invited her, poor woman," said my sister with irony. "Nor have you," I retorted. "I go to her house, at least."

  "She could have let me know …"

  "You never listen to your messages. Even Alain called you."

  "Alain?"

  "Ali, if you prefer," said my sister, sweeping the kitchen with her gaze. Then, without any warning, she informed me that my mother had decided to move in with me for the time it would take to rid me of my spell and get me married, and that she would be coming with a Moroccan woman, some sort of witch, a very efficient witch, whom my mother was counting on to have everything done before the Great Hajj, in other words before the Eid al-Adha on December 20. "December 30," I corrected. "December 30, that was last year. The lunar calendar loses ten days. You're better situated to know that than I am …"

  "I am?" I said, somewhat dazed. My sister contemplated the table cluttered with the remains of last night's dinner—oyster shells, wine glasses, empty bottles—and said, "You're still drunk, brother. But you should have enough time to get your wits about you, she's not coming until the day before the Eid …"

  "When's that, the day before the Eid?"

  "In a week." As I was letting out a sigh of relief, my sister added, "In the meanwhile, I'll help you clean up this dump. You can tell it's the apartment of a boy whose mommy never instructed him in the use of a dust cloth. And when I think that the mommy in question is convinced you're living with a thirty-five year old woman …"

  "Thirty-four," I corrected, remembering the lie I'd concocted for my mother during one of her long-drawn-out Sunday calls. "Whatever the case may be," said my sister, "she wonders whether you haven't already had a child with this woman, and whether you didn't break it off with us for reasons that have something to do with our cousin Driss."

  "I have neither wife nor child. And no intention of having either. Where would I find the time? As for my dissidence, so to speak, it has nothing to do with Driss," I said. "Well that's lucky," said my sister. "Poor Driss …" she added, sorrowfully. "Driss is very happy," I protested. "Let's hope so …"

  "No father or mother, and accountable to no one," I said, thoughtful and envious. "Our mother panics over nothing. For the pleasure of panicking, I suppose …"

  "Well, the fact remains that you don't do a thing to reassure her, you never pick up the phone, even on Sundays, you switch off your cell, we're not allowed to call you at work, and the rare times you do call her, you just serve up the same old stew, ‘Sorry about last time, my mother, I was on a business trip, my mother, I was working all night, my mother.' You think it's fun for a mother who has sacrificed—"

  "I never have time—"

  "She prays from dusk to morning, she's decided to fast for the dahr. You have to have an iron faith to fast all year round. In short, she can't stop crying and saying over and over that it's all her fault, and she has to expiate it. She's aged, she's lost weight, she's always out of breath," sighed my sister. My head in my hands, to try to staunch the flood of tears welling in my throat, a dull anger blurring my vision, I said, "And Alain-Ali? What about him? Is it just a pose?"

  "A pose for survival. I didn't want to make the same mistakes my sisters made. That would have just finished our mother off. But Alain really is sincere. He wouldn't have gone along with the circumcision just to please me. And he really does practice his faith, in depth—he learns about everything. And besides, we're virtually separated, he has another woman …"

  "I suspected as much, I thought he was a strange guy …"

  "Frankly, I don't care one way or the other. On the contrary, he has liberated me the way no one else ever could have. And besides," she said with a laugh, "I've met someone myself."

  "I don't want to know." I cut her off. "I can see you're as rigid as ever."

  "Who gave you my address?" I asked curtly. "Zoubida. I had to beg her. Get her worried that maybe you had done something irreparable. I've never stopped seeing her. Unlike you: you've shown her no sign of life for over a year."

  "I can't keep up with the time …"

  "And your conquests distract you from your family obligations. Incidentally, who is your guest?"

  "She works in real estate. We've been working all night."

  "Tabtab, as our old lady would say."

  "Well, she is sleeping on the sofa …"

  "You're going to have to wake her up, she has to leave so I can clean," she said, shoving the last plates into the dishwasher. "Go ahead," I said, slumping into a chair. "Okay," said my sister, reluctantly.

  A few minutes later she came back into the kitchen and informed me that my guest was no longer there. That she must have slipped away discreetly …

  "Already!" I said, leaping up from the chair.

  "Good job, too," said my sister. "I have no intention of spending the night cleaning up your house." I slumped into the chair again and stared at the ho
rizon, struggling in vain against the flood of tears that was overwhelming me. "Can you fix us a coffee?" asked my sister. "Because you're not fasting?" I sobbed. "No, and you?" she laughed, starting the dishwasher. "For me it's not the same," I said, wiping away my tears. "Why isn't it the same?"

  "That's my business," I answered, starting the coffee machine. My sister said nothing more and drank her coffee down in one gulp. Then, as she looked around her at the kitchen, she began to lose her temper. "Get out the vacuum cleaner, the dust rags, and all the cleaning products you can find in this dump."

  "My apartment is spotless," I said indignantly. "I'm sorry, but this place is disgusting. It's just as Mom imagined. Can't you see the cockroaches parading behind your fridge, and all the dirty saucepans, and the empty cans, and the dust bunnies that have hopped right into the kitchen? There are books and papers scattered all over the hallway and the living room, and packs of cigarettes and empty bottles wherever you step. And I haven't even seen the bedroom … I wonder how on earth she agreed to come have dinner here."