Not all porn stars are alike—I met quite a few while Satana and I were together. You get all sorts of women doing porn, romantic airheads and mercenary sluts—a smatter of everything … and then there are the superstars like Satana. I wanted her from the way she sat next to me at the gig. It was clear that she was interested, but she was clever enough to know that she shouldn’t make it too obvious. I remember her that night—she was like a little kid wielding a gladiator’s sword. She went into battle weighed down by her artillery, but she rode to the front with a self-assurance I found touching. I was used to girls wanting to sleep with me. That’s one area where I can’t complain about racial prejudice. If there are any preconceptions, they work in my favor. But I found Satana’s approach attractive. I like women who know how to shine. I’ve rarely met anyone who eclipsed me like she did.
The very next morning, on some dumb pretext, Satana sent me a text message via Gabriel. We met up immediately and threw ourselves at each other. She had that weird little body that I loved from the moment I saw it. She looked like Betty Boop. She loved to clown around. She’d run around the house bare-assed shouting bullshit, having her there was like having a wild bird in the house. Her smell was incredible, I was so happy with her. Obviously, she noticed that I never invited her to public engagements. I was thinking about my mother, who was embarrassed enough when I went home to the village to visit and people recognized me—she didn’t want to be mother to a rock star, she found it embarrassing. And she took a dim view of all the money I made. So I could just imagine her at the hairdresser, flicking through pages of Voici and seeing me with a porn star on my arm … But in the end, I cared more about making Satana happy than my family. I genuinely loved the girl.
We didn’t last long as a couple. I’m too much in demand, Vernon, simple as that. It’s not like I meet a pretty girl and by the time I get home that night, I’ve moved on. It’s like women who would take your breath away are determined to get me into bed, whatever it takes. You reject them once, maybe twice, and the third time, you wake up—you’d have to be stupid to resist that kind of temptation. I adored Satana. I wish I’d been the one who treated her right, spoiled her, made her laugh. But I was the one who made her suffer with my senseless one-night stands. The one who always had a stash of coke hidden in her fridge. She got a taste for it. I could tell. Four nights she went without sleep, ranting incoherently. I watched her pull away. And I thought, shit, I can’t throw her out on the street while she’s in that state, I have to help her kick the habit. But I couldn’t imagine passing up all the girls either. So she stayed at my place, and I never went home, and she got more and more wasted, and I was waiting for the right minute to help her get clean. What I should have said was, “Okay, babe, I’ve canceled everything, we’re going to get on a plane and go into rehab together, and when we’re clean we can decide what we’re going to do.” Instead I said, “You’ve gotta get a grip, babe. Ease up a little…” while I was packing a suitcase and leaving with another girl. She had fits of jealous rage, and all I could think of was getting the fuck out, and fast. But I would come back. And she would be there. And I was still happy to see her. So it carried on. I never went away without making sure that she had a stash of coke and Ambien that would last her until I got back. I’d put a straw up her nose the minute she stepped out of the shower and say, “You’ve gotta get a grip, babe.” I loved drugs more than I loved my girlfriend. And that was my way of taking care of her. “You’ve gotta get a grip, babe.” Satana was an amazing dancer. Her body was tuned to rhythm—even when she was at her worst. You could tell how good a piece of music was from the way she moved. If she sat a song out, it meant the song was shit. She was the one who got me into writing music again. I felt good when I was with her. She made me feel safe. And just at the point when no one thought I had it in me anymore, I released an album. Loin du Cœur was a massive hit—remember? No one expected it to be so fucking huge.
Meanwhile, she was foundering. She wasn’t doing any more films. I wanted to help, but everyone just wanted to meet the porn star, and they had nothing to suggest beyond “Do you fancy playing with yourself in front of me?” She used to say: “Do I regret doing porn? Every single day. You end up being blacklisted. People wave you in, give you the red-carpet treatment, but as soon as you’re inside, they can’t find your name on the guest list, and you watch as everyone else heads off to get their slice of cake while you’re stuck in the cloakroom. Forever. Yeah, I regret it. Why didn’t I just become an escort? It’s much less hassle. I wanted people to look at me. If I hadn’t done porn, I wouldn’t be with you. I would never have dared talk to you. It’s complicated. Everything good in my life, I owe to doing porn. But I could have done without the incredible amount of shit that comes with it. I can’t even see my little girl. Can you imagine me picking her up from nursery school? Better to just let her father get on with it. He’s a decent guy. You can’t fuck up everything in life. I send them money every month. And I’m okay with that. I’m not really the maternal type. When she is with me, I don’t know what to do with her. But, still…”
She would get nosebleeds, she’d trail blood all over the apartment before she noticed, then she’d walk around holding a pack of Kleenex to her nose. We fought a lot. We always made up—it was worth it. She was hurting herself. Her jaw twitched uncontrollably, she’d tear at her eyebrows while she was talking to you. She wanted to beat the shit out of the super in our building, she wanted to sue people she’d worked with. I was on tour with Loin du Cœur so I was never home. I didn’t even try to get back as often as I could. By now, her mood swings were out of control. She fell in love with a cop. Swear to God. She packed her bags and walked out to be with a fucking cop. I was furious. Being unfaithful never stopped my being jealous, but for her to leave me for a cop—it took months before I forgave her.
We were more chill together as exes than we had ever been as lovers. Satana is one of the few women I dated with whom I stayed friends. I loved meeting up with her. I called her all the time, I answered all her messages. She started saying people were watching her. I didn’t believe her. She told me a story: “This guy came up to me and asked if I wanted to be in a movie, I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ At the last minute, his assistant called to tell me that they wanted to push back the meeting with the producer to early evening if that was convenient. And because I’m dumb, I said, ‘Sure, I’m free.’ I called the guy who had set up the audition to check and he screamed down the phone—this guy’s not just anybody, he’s a major producer. The guy fucked me on the office sofa, I swear I barely had time to say hi. He asked, like, two questions and fucked me up the ass, he was so rough, so crude, that I thought about kicking the shit out of him, but he’d already shot his load and I felt so stupid, I hardly moved, hardly said a word.” And me, I played it down—the guy must have thought she was up for it, you know what it’s like, guys are assholes, we see a girl who’s done porn and we assume she does the dishes in high heels and a thong. Then I found out that she’d seen the guy again, and she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Her drug consumption skyrocketed. From time to time, she’d tell me these sleazy stories: We went from the whole libertine orgy thing to this. What really turns this guy on is seeing me fucked up. I get fucked by old guys, let guys piss on me, get tied up in dungeons. He can’t get enough. He pays me in coke. During the day, I think: I’m never seeing that fucking pig again, but that night I’m at his place. If I struggle, they hold me down. If I start crying, they just carry on. That’s his thing. And I keep going back. He’s got blow, he’s got money. I’m just shit.”
And I said, “That’s terrible, babe, you need to chill. I’m here. You can stay at my place, you’ll have everything you need and we can get you checked into a good clinic if you want.” And she gave me a look of disgust. “I’m better off in that sleazy grind-fest. I suffered more at your place than I have in my whole life.” I didn’t take it well. I didn’t call her back for a while.
She ca
me back in a terrible state. She mentioned lots of names. Famous people. It was impossible to know what was real and what was deranged fantasy. She wasn’t particularly lucid. Her body was covered in bruises. Satana said she’d slept with a bunch of politicians, that she’d kept a list of names and that she was going to tell all. She was raving. She didn’t want me to help, she burst out laughing. “It’s way too dangerous. You don’t want to know, but it’s gone too far, I’m planning to dish the dirt. I’ve told him if you want me to keep my mouth shut, you’re going to have to pay, and pay well. He said he’s going to kill me and he’ll do it.”
“Don’t worry, babe, nothing’s going to happen to you. If you like I can pay for you to spend a couple of weeks in Los Angeles? You’ve always loved L.A.… No, I can’t go with you, I’ve got too much going on.”
Satana stayed holed up in my apartment for four days. I pampered her. I looked after her and gave myself a clear conscience. To be honest, I deserve some credit: she yammered on all the time, jumping from one subject to another, I had no idea what she was going on about. She was terrified of dying. That much at least was clear.
Then one night she said, “I really need to go out,” and I knew what that meant: since I’d been rationing her drugs, she was going to go score herself a gram somewhere as a treat. She was in no fit state to manage on her own. She was bound to do something stupid. But I couldn’t stand having her around anymore. Too much pain. So I thought, fuck it, I’ve been pretty cool to her, like I was pinning a medal on my chest. What a stand-up guy.
She died a few days later. A cocktail of jellies, coke, and booze—her heart couldn’t take it. Everyone immediately started saying suicide, because she was a porn star, because people think “girls like that” are—or should be—constantly suicidal.
She’d told me a hundred times: “He said he was going to kill me and I don’t know where to go where to hide he said he’s going to kill me.”
Do you know what I did, Vernon? Do you think I called up any of the journalists I have on speed dial and said: Maybe it’s worth looking into this more closely … No, Vernon, no. I didn’t talk to anyone, I put on my best suit and went to her funeral and I cried behind my Ray-Bans. And deep down, I thought it was normal. Sad and pathetic. But she was a lost cause, wasn’t she? It was terrible, because I adored her. And I’d done everything I could for her, right up to the end, hadn’t I? At the cremation, I could shake hands and look devastated. I’d been a good friend.
The worst thing is that if it had been some minimum-wage idiot who had done this to her, I’d probably have made more of an effort. But Dopalet is a big shot, and somewhere in the back of my mind I never forgot that he wasn’t the kind of guy you want to antagonize. Too powerful. Way out of my league …
But sometimes, when I was ripped, I’d call him up. Big fucking cojones, yeah? I call him up and I say I know every sleazy thing he’s done, the scumbag. He doesn’t like that. He tells me I should be careful. Be very careful.
Fuck, Vernon, you could sleep for the Olympics. I’ve never told anyone that story. I’m too scared. Too ashamed. And I’m lucid: no one gives a fuck. You know that Jewish expression: “They will never forgive us for the wrong they have done to us”? The Jews are fucking optimists. They can’t stop themselves from trusting other people. The truth is that they’ll never forgive us for being alive. They will never sleep soundly as long as they know that we get some small pleasure from life.
EVER SINCE SHE BECAME DEVOUT, Aïcha goes around telling anyone who will listen that her role is to deal with the housework and that she’s perfectly fine with the division of labor between men and women. But this is purely theoretical. She hangs out the washing, clears the table, empties the dishwasher. When it comes to anything else, no matter how nicely Sélim asks for her help, she has an essay overdue she needs to finish right now. Bent over the laundry basket, Sélim is sorting dirty clothes to put in a dark wash. He is used to doing this. He takes a certain pride in the way he pilots the domestic ship. Aïcha grew up in an apartment that was always perfectly turned out. Just as he did before her. Sélim’s mother was an exceptional homemaker. As a little boy, he loved the fact that when he came home everything was in its place, that when he washed his hands the taps were gleaming, that at dinner, the tablecloth was immaculate and the corners perfectly straight. Aïcha is like him. Meticulous—untidiness upsets her. He has always made time to keep their home shipshape. Just as he has always made time to be there when she is doing her homework and has never missed a parent-teacher meeting. While she was in primary school, and in her first year at high school, no one had ever mentioned his origins. But France made a U-turn—in her second year in high school, people expressed approval that a Muslim father should take such an interest in his daughter’s education. On one occasion, another father asked in a confidential tone why he had not given his daughter a French name. “It’s a pity, if you had you might pass for Spanish.” The remark caught Sélim unawares. It was only some hours later that he felt a rage surge through him. What possible response was there to the insanity gripping the whole country?
He is proud that he has done his best to be a good father. He has boasted about things that others belittle. He would find it difficult to think of anyone among his friends and colleagues who puts any value on a man’s desire to be a good parent. No one cares about the fundamentals. They have a different scale of values. They think he would have been better off marrying a young girl from the old country, let her take care of the housekeeping and devote himself to his academic work. When he found out that the mother of his child had become Vodka Satana, professional degenerate and one of the lumpenproletariat of the entertainment industry, it took an almost superhuman effort on his part not to go insane, on the one hand, and on the other not to rip her eyes out and call her every name under the sun. He had drawn on his reserves of strength to accept the situation and behave like a man: accept his responsibilities and take care of his daughter. Everyone had thought he was weak and not very manly. If he had stormed out, dragged his wife home by the hair, beat her black and blue, ripped her heart out with his bare hands, and howled, “I wish the slut were still alive so I could kill her again” as the police dragged him away, in the world we live in, people would be making T-shirts with his face printed on them and demanding he be granted a full pardon. These days, it’s the national mantra: glory to the crazy man, honor to the brute. And women are the first to agree. They don’t like sensitive men. They want a slap, a clout, a guy who wears a wifebeater and demands to know what’s for dinner as he belches in front of the TV. Even his own daughter thinks like this. He would give his life for her. He is not even sure she loves him anymore. She is disgusted by everything he stands for, otherwise she’d never have done what she did. It is her way of defying him, the prayers, the hijab, the Suras she intones all the time.
He forced himself to be the father he wished he’d had. His father is dead, he died when Sélim was very young—it was at night, his mother screamed, the telephone rang, but he has no memory of any of that, all he remembers is the howl of his big sister, Louisa, who, though barely tall enough, threw her arms around her mother’s waist and sobbed. A fall from a roof earlier that day. They had waited until dark to inform the family. Perhaps if they had called earlier, there would have been time to say goodbye. Sélim never knew exactly. As it turned out, it had taken the foreman too long to confirm his identity. How many Algerians who came to work in France died on the building sites of a country that cherished its luxury apartments and its ability to build on the cheap?
When his father died, he was so young he did not know how to tie his own shoelaces. On the day of the funeral, he remembers his sister bending over him, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, helping him to tie them. Until that day, their mother had never taken a bus by herself. The kitchen, the corner supermarket, a little cleaning in the next street over. She had never needed to go any farther. She spoke rudimentary French. Enough to understand what h
er children were talking about, or what the postman was saying when he came to the door. But she did not talk to the other women from Oran who lived in the neighborhood. She was probably afraid that she would not be able to learn a new language. His father’s death changed all that. She learned to write, only their names and addresses at first, then how to ask someone for directions, how to tell the time, she learned the names of the things she bought. In her own way, she emancipated herself. His mother was very funny. There was no one like her for spotting someone’s weak point and ridiculing it. They laughed a lot at home. She could come through the door in a black rage and snap out of it in a second because something distracted and amused her. She could burst out laughing while holding a slipper and just about to give one of her children a spanking—she could not keep a straight face. After she was widowed, she never went back to the old country. She never explained why—she wasn’t the sort to give press conferences about her feelings. Whether because of the unrest in the 1990s, or perhaps for personal reasons … she never went back to Oran, but she was disappointed that Sélim refused to do military service there. He emphasized the importance of his studies, how he couldn’t afford to lose two years. He couldn’t give a fuck about his military service, and one country was as good as another, but he sure as hell couldn’t see why he should have to get posted to that old shithole … his brother, Abdel, had come back half-crazed from his two years there—if the French did not see them as ordinary citizens, the Algerians didn’t much care for them either. The boys who served their two years in Algeria rarely came back with a smile on their faces. They had a rough time of it, they were ashamed to talk about it, and they came home even more unsettled: citizens of nowhere, reviled on both sides of the border. But his mother did not like her sons to make a fuss. Having a son like Sélim made things difficult among her friends in the neighborhood and with her family back in the old country—the women would nod irritably when she told them he had decided to teach in France, she would say that the most important thing was keeping him out of prison, but they implied: you poor thing, your son has no respect for his family, he is a nonentity, I pity you, you’re lucky you have two other children. Louisa and Abdel were easier to manage. His mother was constantly telling Sélim to stop deluding himself: “You think people here are waiting for you? Do you think we’re here just for the fun of it?” She had never been proud of him. She had been relieved when he introduced Satana. At least she was not French. And she was not like him, either. A pretty unsophisticated little thing. As for what she became later … as far as Sélim knew, no one had ever told his mother, who cursed her for deserting her husband and her child, but that was all.
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