In the Country of Others

by Leïla Slimani

  With her face and body covered, she got out of the car and headed toward her mother-in-law’s house. She was sweating under the layers of cloth and occasionally she moved the scarf away from her mouth so she could catch her breath. It felt strangely intoxicating, going out in disguise like this. She was like a little girl, pretending to be someone else. She went unnoticed, a ghost among ghosts, and nobody could guess that, beneath those veils, she was a foreigner. She passed a group of young boys selling peanuts from Boufakrane and stopped in front of a little cart to run her fingertips over some fleshy orange medlars. In Arabic, she negotiated a price and the vendor—a thin, laughing peasant—let her have a kilo for a modest sum. She wanted to lower her veil then, show her face, her big green eyes, and tell the old man that she’d fooled him. But on second thoughts this seemed like a bad idea, and she sacrificed the pleasure of mocking the naiveté of the people around her.

  Eyes lowered and veil raised over her mouth again, she felt herself disappear and she didn’t really know what to think about this. The anonymity protected her, even thrilled her, but she felt as if she were advancing into a dark pit, losing more of her name and identity with each step, as if by masking her face she was also masking some essential part of herself. She was becoming a shadow, a nameless, genderless, ageless being. The few times she’d dared to speak to Amine about the condition of Moroccan women, about how poor Mouilala never left the house, her husband had cut short the discussion. “What are you complaining about? You’re a European—nobody stops you from doing anything. So mind your own business and leave my mother in peace.”

  But Mathilde was naturally contrary and she couldn’t resist the temptation to argue with him. Some evenings, when Amine came home exhausted after a day in the fields, hollowed out by worries, she would speak to him about Selma’s future, about Aïcha, about all those young girls whose fate was not yet sealed. “Selma should study,” she would tell him. If Amine kept calm, she would go on. “Times have changed. Think about your daughter too. Don’t tell me that you intend to raise Aïcha as a submissive woman!” Then Mathilde would quote, in her Alsace-accented Arabic, the words of Lalla Aïcha in Tangier, in April 1947. They had named Aïcha in tribute to the sultan’s daughter, and Mathilde liked to remind him of this. Didn’t the nationalists themselves make a direct link between the desire for independence and the need for women’s emancipation? More and more Moroccan women were educating themselves, wearing a djellaba or even European clothes. Amine would nod and grunt but make no promises. Out on the dirt paths, surrounded by his laborers, he would sometimes think back to these conversations. Who would want a degenerate wife? he’d wonder. Mathilde doesn’t understand. Then he’d think about his mother, who had spent her entire life locked indoors. As a little girl, Mouilala had not been allowed to go to school with her brothers. And then Si Kadour, her late husband, had built the house in the medina. He’d made a concession to custom with that single high window, the blinds always kept closed, which Mouilala was forbidden to approach. Kadour had been a modern man in many ways—he kissed Frenchwomen’s hands and sometimes used a Jewish prostitute in El Mers—but his modernity did not extend to his wife’s reputation. Sometimes, when Amine was a child, he would see his mother peeking through the gaps in the blind at the street outside. When she noticed him standing there, she would put her finger to her lips to seal the secret between them.

  For Mouilala, the world was criss-crossed with impassable borders—between men and women; between Muslims, Jews, and Christians—and she believed that if people were to get along, it was better that they didn’t come into contact too often. Peace would last as long as everyone knew his place. To the Jews in the mellah she entrusted the repair of braziers and the making of baskets; she also had certain dry goods, essential for the running of her house, delivered to her by a thin Jewish dressmaker with hairs on her cheeks. Kadour had boasted of being a modern man and had liked to wear frock coats and darted trousers, but she had never met any of his European friends. And she’d asked no questions when, one morning, she was cleaning her husband’s private salon and discovered lipstick traces on the rim of a glass and several cigarette stubs.

  Amine loved his wife. He loved and he desired her so passionately that sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night with the urge to bite her, devour her, possess her absolutely. But then he would start to have doubts. What madness was this? How could he have thought he’d be able to live with a European woman as emancipated as Mathilde? Thanks to her and her contrary nature, he felt as if his life were governed by a pendulum, swinging him from one hysterical crisis to another. Sometimes he felt a violent, cruel need to return to his culture, to love his god, language, and country with all his heart, and Mathilde’s incomprehension drove him crazy. He wanted a wife like his mother, who would understand him instinctively, who shared the patience and abnegation of his people, who spoke less and worked more. A woman who would wait for him in the evenings, silent and devoted, and who would feel fulfilled, all her ambitions met, when she watched him eat the meal she’d prepared. Mathilde was turning him into a traitor and a heretic. Occasionally he wanted to unroll a prayer rug, press his forehead to the ground, to hear in his heart and in his children’s mouths the language of his ancestors. He dreamed of making love in Arabic, of whispering sweet nothings into the ear of a golden-skinned woman. At other times—when he went home and his wife threw herself at him, when he heard his daughter singing in the bathroom, when Mathilde invented games and made jokes—he was filled with joy and felt himself raised above other men. He had the impression that he’d been pulled from the common herd and he had to admit that the war had changed him and that modernity had its advantages. He was ashamed of himself and his fickleness and it was Mathilde, he knew, who paid for that.

  * * *

  When Mathilde reached the old hobnailed door, she grabbed the knocker and banged it twice, very hard. Yasmine opened it—she’d lifted up her skirts and Mathilde could see that her black calves were covered in curly hairs. It was almost ten in the morning but the house was quiet. She could hear the purring of the cats stretched out in the courtyard and the slop of the wet mop that the maid was using to clean the floor. Yasmine watched in astonishment as Mathilde took off her djellaba, tossed her headscarf onto a chair and ran upstairs. Yasmine coughed so hard that she spat a thick, greenish wad of mucus into the well.

  Upstairs, Mathilde found Selma asleep on a bench. She was very fond of this capricious, rebellious girl who’d just turned sixteen. Selma had no manners but she did have a certain grace; unfortunately Mouilala was content to give her nothing but food and love. When Mathilde had mentioned this to Amine, he’d said: “That’s quite a lot, you know.” Yes, it was a lot, but it wasn’t enough. Selma’s life was caught between her mother’s blind love and her brothers’ brutal vigilance. Since developing hips and breasts, Selma had been declared fit for combat and her brothers often sent her hurtling into walls. Omar, who was ten years older than her, said he could sense something rebellious and untameable in his sister’s soul. He was envious of the protection she enjoyed, the tenderness that his mother had never shown to him. Selma’s beauty made her brothers as nervous as animals before an approaching storm. They beat her pre-emptively, imprisoning her before she did anything stupid, because if they waited then it would be too late.

  Selma’s beauty had increased through the years, and now it was irritatingly obvious, the kind of beauty that made people uneasy and seemed to foretell some terrible calamity. When Mathilde looked at her, she wondered how it must feel to be so beautiful. Did it hurt? Did beauty have a weight, a taste, a texture? Was Selma even aware of the nervousness that her presence provoked, of the irresistible attraction that men felt when they saw the perfect features of her adorable face?

  Mathilde was a wife, a mother, but oddly she felt like less of a woman than Selma. The war had left its traces on Mathilde’s body. She’d turned fourteen on May 2, 1939, and her breasts
had been late in developing, as if stunted by fear and hunger. Her dull blond hair was so thin that her scalp was visible. Selma, on the other hand, radiated sensuality. Her eyes were as dark and shiny as the olives that Mouilala marinated in salt. Her thick brows, her lush hair, the faint brown fuzz on her upper lip made her look like Carmen, a vision of Mediterranean sultriness. A vibrant fever dream of a brunette, capable of driving men wild. Despite her youth, Selma had the raised chin, bee-stung lips, and swaying hips of a heroine from some romantic novel. Women hated her. At school her female teacher picked on her remorselessly and was constantly telling her off and punishing her. “She’s an insolent, rebellious girl. Would you believe that I am afraid to turn my back on her? Knowing that she’s there, sitting behind me, plunges me into a state of irrational terror,” she’d confided to Mathilde, who had decided to oversee her sister-in-law’s education.

  * * *

  In 1942, when Amine had been taken prisoner in Germany, Mouilala had left behind the familiar backstreets of Berrima for the first time in her life. With Omar and Selma she traveled to Rabat, where she had been summoned by the general staff, and where she hoped to be able to send a package to her beloved firstborn. Mouilala got on the train, enveloped in a large white haik, and she felt frightened when the machine moved away from the station in a cloud of smoke and whistling. For a long time, she watched the men and women who remained standing on the platform, their hands waving vainly. Omar ushered his mother and his little sister to a first-class compartment where two Frenchwomen were sitting. The women started to whisper. They seemed surprised that a woman like Mouilala—with her ankle bracelets, henna-dyed hair, and long, callused hands—could sit next to them on a train. First class was for Europeans only and they were outraged by the stupidity and impertinence of these illiterate Arabs. When the ticket inspector boarded the train, they couldn’t contain a frisson of excitement. Ah, now this farce will be over, they thought. The old fatma will be put in her place. She thinks she can sit wherever she wants, but there are rules, you know.

  Mouilala reached into her haik and pulled out the train tickets along with the letter from the army informing her of her son’s imprisonment. The inspector examined the letter and rubbed his forehead, embarrassed. “Bon voyage, madame,” he said, raising his cap. And he disappeared into the corridor.

  The two Frenchwomen couldn’t believe it. The journey was ruined. They couldn’t bear the sight of this woman in her veil. They were sickened by the spicy smell of her skin, by the idiotic way she stared through the window. They were annoyed, most of all, by the little slattern who was with her. A girl of six or seven whose bourgeois clothes were not enough to mask her poor education. Selma, who was traveling for the first time in her life, could not keep still. She climbed into her mother’s lap, said she was hungry, then stuffed herself with cakes, her fingers sticky with honey. She talked in a loud voice to her brother, who was pacing up and down the corridor. She hummed Arab songs. The younger and angrier of the two Frenchwomen glared at the little girl. “She’s very pretty,” she said. Without knowing why, she was exasperated by Selma’s beauty. She had the impression that the child had stolen that gracious face, that she’d taken it from someone else who deserved it more than her and who would, undoubtedly, have taken better care of it. The girl was beautiful and indifferent to that beauty, which made her even more dangerous. The warm orange sunlight came through the window and, despite the thin curtains, which the Frenchwomen had drawn, made Selma’s hair glow, made her copper-toned skin look even softer and creamier. Her huge eyes were like the eyes of a black panther that the younger Frenchwoman had once seen at the zoo in Paris. Nobody, she thought, has eyes like that. “She’s wearing makeup,” she whispered to her friend.

  “What did you say?”

  The younger woman leaned toward Mouilala and, clearly articulating each syllable, said: “You shouldn’t put makeup on children. That kohl, on her eyes? It’s not good. It’s vulgar. Do you understand?”

  Mouilala stared at the Frenchwoman without understanding what she was saying. She turned to Selma, who burst into laughter and handed a box of cakes to the two women. “She doesn’t speak French.”

  The Frenchwoman was put out. She’d lost a good opportunity to underline her superiority. If this native didn’t understand, there was no point trying to educate her. And then, as if she’d suddenly gone mad, she seized Selma’s arm and pulled the girl toward her. She took a handkerchief from her bag, spat on it, and roughly rubbed it against Selma’s eyes. Selma cried out and Mouilala pulled her away, but the Frenchwoman wouldn’t let go. She looked at the strangely clean handkerchief then rubbed even harder, to prove to herself and her traveling companion that this girl was a floozy in the making, a little whore. Yes, she knew all about those sorts of girls, those fearless brunettes that drove her husband wild. She knew them and she hated them. Omar, who was smoking in the corridor, heard his sister crying and burst into the compartment. “What’s going on?” The Frenchwoman was frightened by this teenage boy in his glasses and she left the compartment without a word.

  The next day, on the way back to Meknes, happy that he’d been able to send letters and oranges to Amine, Omar slapped his sister. She cried. She didn’t understand. Omar said: “Don’t even think about wearing makeup when you’re older, you understand? If I ever catch you in lipstick, I’ll give you something to smile about!” And with the tip of his index finger, he drew a long, macabre smile across the child’s face.

  * * *

  Waking up now, Selma wrapped her arms around Mathilde’s neck, then covered her face with kisses. Ever since they’d first met, Selma had acted as her sister-in-law’s guide, interpreter, and best friend. Selma had explained to her the local rites and traditions, she’d taught her how to be polite. “If you don’t know how to reply, just say Amen and you’ll be fine.” Selma had taught her how to pretend, how to stay calm. Whenever they were alone, Selma showered Mathilde with questions. She wanted to know everything about France, about traveling, about Paris, and the American soldiers that Mathilde had seen during the Liberation. She was like a prisoner questioning a man who has managed, at least once, to escape.

  “What are you doing here?” Selma asked.

  “I’m going Christmas shopping,” Mathilde whispered. “Do you want to come with me?”

  Mathilde accompanied her sister-in-law to her bedroom and watched her undress. Sitting on a cushion on the floor, she observed Selma’s slim hips, her slightly rounded belly, her dark-nippled breasts that had never been constrained by an underwire bra. Selma put on an elegant black dress, the round neckline highlighting the slenderness of her neck. She took a pair of gloves from a box—the white fabric yellowed with age and covered in little stains of mold—and put them on with ludicrous delicacy.

  Mouilala was worried.

  “I don’t want you walking around the medina,” she told Mathilde. “You don’t understand how envious people are. They’d give an eye to take both of yours. Two pretty girls like you . . . No, you can’t do it. The people in the medina will curse you and you’ll come back with a fever or worse. If you want to go for a walk, go to the new town. You won’t be in danger there.”

  “What’s the difference?” asked Mathilde, amused.

  “Europeans don’t look at you the same way. They don’t know about the evil eye.”

  The two girls left laughing and Mouilala remained behind the door for a long time, trembling and speechless. She didn’t understand what was happening to her. Was it anxiety or joy she felt at seeing the two of them go out into the street like that?

  Selma was sick of Mouilala’s ridiculous old superstitions and backward beliefs. She had stopped listening to her mother. It was only out of respect for her elders that she didn’t shut her eyes and plug her ears with her fingers every time Mouilala started going on about djinns, bad luck, and ancient curses. Her mother had nothing new to say. Her life went round in circles as she c
arried out the same tasks over and over with a docility, a passivity, that made Selma want to vomit. The old woman was like those stupid dogs that chase their tail for so long that they end up collapsing on the floor with dizziness. Selma couldn’t bear her mother’s constant presence any longer. Whenever she heard a door creak, her mother would say: “Where are you going?” And she was always asking if Selma was hungry, if she was bored, and going out onto the roof terrace to spy on her. Selma felt oppressed by Mouilala’s solicitude, her tenderness. It was like a form of violence. Sometimes the teenager wanted to yell in her mother’s face—and in Yasmine’s too. For Selma, both women—the mistress of the house and the servant—were slaves, and it really made little difference that one of them had bought the other at a market. Selma would have given anything for a locked door, a place where she could keep her dreams and secrets. She prayed that fate would smile on her and that one day she could escape to Casablanca and reinvent herself. Like the men in the street shouting “Freedom! Independence!” she shouted the same words, but nobody heard her.

  She begged Mathilde to take her to Place de Gaulle. She wanted to “do the Avenue,” as all the boys and girls in the new town called it. She was desperate to be like them, to live for being seen, to parade up and down the Avenue de la République on foot or in a car, as slowly as possible, windows open and the radio playing full blast. She wanted to be seen like the girls here, to be voted the prettiest girl in Meknes, to sashay past rows of boys and photographers. She would have given anything to kiss a man’s neck, to taste his nakedness, to see the way he looked at her. Selma had never been in love, but she had no doubt that it would be the most beautiful thing in the world. The old times—the days of arranged marriages—were over. Or at least that was what Mathilde had told her, and she wanted to believe it.