by Karine Tuil
* * *
We are together.
* * *
The questions and the revelations come later—after dinner. They are lying next to each other on the bed. I want you to tell me the truth. It’s a command, not a request, and something inside him clicks. He is going to speak. She wants to know why he stole Samuel’s identity and elements of his biography in order to construct his new life. If his friends and family know the truth. If he has thought about the consequences. “I guess you never imagined there’d be an article about you in the Times . . .” Exactly—she’s right. Never once did he imagine having such a meteoric rise. “Where I come from, people hardly ever move or change. They end up dying in the same hole they grew up in.” He has seen his old friends a few times: most are unemployed or stagnating in menial positions. They have kids, money problems, tiny apartments, secondhand clothes. They never go on vacation, they wait for the end of the month the way some people wait for the Second Coming, dream of changing their car/television/life. Some ended up in jail. He doesn’t regret what he did. Sure, he lied. Yes, it was a kind of betrayal. But only in the final and glorious aim of achieving something with his life, when society offered/promised him nothing. “You want to know why I reinvented myself? Shall I tell you?” She doesn’t reply. She looks at him. What does it matter?—in a shock of bliss—What does it matter, when I love you? He sits up and grabs her shoulders. “Nina, my entire life is built on a lie.”
11
“After Samuel’s suicide attempt, and after we broke up—and let’s not forget that you were the one who gave in to his blackmail; I loved you!—after I lost everything that mattered to me, I left Paris. You never knew that, did you? I never told anyone about it, apart from my mother. I got a scholarship at the university in Montpellier to study law. I didn’t want to see you and Samuel anymore. I didn’t want to run the risk of passing you in the street. I didn’t even want to hear your names mentioned! I distanced myself from all our mutual friends and acquaintances. I erased their numbers from my address book. I had decided to forget about you completely. And I never tried to see you again . . . I . . . no, actually, that’s not true. I’m lying. Once, just once, I took a train to Paris. I’d just moved to Montpellier and I felt terrible: I wanted to see you. I spent the whole day standing in front of your apartment building, hidden behind a car, just waiting for you to appear. But when you did finally emerge—I remember you were wearing a denim skirt and a white top—I didn’t dare speak to you; I was paralyzed by the fear that you would reject me again. That hurt so much; I was in pieces by the time I got home. After that, all I did was work. Whenever I think back to that period, I see myself locked in my room, poring over my law books. I see myself learning dozens of books by heart, telling myself: She’ll regret this. So, deep down, you played a part in my success. Subconsciously, I was trying to prove to you that you’d made the wrong choice. I wanted to amaze you . . . Ridiculous, isn’t it? Anyway, I got my master’s and was admitted to the bar—I was in the top ten, in fact. Then I got my MAS. That summer, I worked as a waiter in London. And when I came back to France, I started looking for a job . . . This is where things became more complicated . . . I had a fantastic CV, believe me—I’d spent hours perfecting it. And every diploma, every line on that résumé was a victory over adversity, over the contagion of failure and resignation. That résumé was my life’s work. So I had no doubt about my abilities, and I sent it to the best law firms in France. That evening, I took my mother and my brother to a restaurant to celebrate. I felt happy and proud . . . this was the culmination of twelve years of work and self-sacrifice! Nobody helped me! No one! And within ten days, I was utterly disillusioned. I started collecting rejection slips. Three in one day . . . then six, then eight, then ten. It was a slap in the face. I couldn’t believe it. I would wait for the mailman in the lobby every morning . . . I’d sent my CV to a bunch of law firms, having gotten their addresses from the phone book. They all said no. No, but good luck. No, but we’ll call you if anything comes up. I didn’t even get an interview! They had all decided I was unsuitable without even bothering to meet me! That was a bad time. I felt very low. I started boxing, as a way of preventing myself from going under, but it did no good. I could feel myself sinking. I tried to analyze where it had gone wrong. What mistake had I made? But I thought: Look at you—you are faultless. You were efficient/convincing/dynamic. You’re exactly the profile of applicant they’re looking for. Not only do you have the necessary diplomas, but you passed them with spectacular scores. You even won the speech-making prize at the law conference! And you won it easily! They applauded/praised/were jealous of you. Everyone said: He’s one of the most brilliant students of his generation/he’ll go far/give it five years and he’ll be one of the most famous lawyers in Paris. And now they are all rejecting you! They send you long letters full of excuses to justify those rejections. Because, of course, they are terrified. They don’t want to be accused of discrimination in their recruitment procedures. So they abide by the rules: they give you lots of valid reasons why you don’t correspond to their needs for that particular position. Put yourself in my place: I was angry! Filled with hatred! I hadn’t dared tell my mother the truth: I let her believe I’d been hired by a big firm. Every morning I would get up early, about six a.m., dress in a suit, and leave the apartment with the words, ‘See you this evening!’ It was my first acting gig! I would take the bus, then the RER, to the business district. And you want to know the truth? It was a nightmare. Seeing all those clean-shaven executives bustling past, stinking of colognes that their wives bought for them at a hundred euros per bottle from a special perfume store in Florence . . . I wanted to kill them. My life might easily have tipped over to the other side in the space of a few seconds. I could feel that violence welling up inside me. I wasn’t scared. Quite the opposite: that violence made me feel strong. It was with me all the time: as I looked through the windows of luxury boutiques, telling myself I couldn’t afford to buy any of their wares, that I didn’t even dare go in; as I watched those beautiful and very young women parading around on the arms of doddery old men . . . hatred! I felt like everything was out of my reach—but why? I would sit in seedy cafés and read. My existence was making me sick. I’d lost over twenty pounds in two months. Back then, I was boxing three times a week with a guy I’d met in law school, and one evening, we decided to go for a drink afterward. I’d just had another rejection letter. I was desolate. My friend kept telling me that things would work out, that I’d get a job, but the more he repeated this, the more I felt the violence rising up within me—like when you keep releasing the safety catch on a box cutter, so that, in the end, all you’re holding is the blade itself and you are bound to cut yourself, to make yourself bleed. He kept saying: You have to stay positive, it’ll come! But I couldn’t stay positive. Optimism was something reserved for the privileged few—those people with life insurance policies and positive bank balances. Optimism was a luxury I couldn’t afford anymore. I knew I had very little chance of being hired by a good firm, of succeeding in a world whose doors opened only to those who knew the secret codes; I knew my way would always be blocked by someone else, someone with more influence, better recommendations, and I wanted to know why. Oh, I had my own ideas about it, but all the same I asked him: ‘Is the fact that I have an Arab-sounding name the reason for all these rejections?’ My friend started to laugh. He said I was paranoid, that the idea was ludicrous. But I wasn’t paranoid. I had sent my résumé to a dozen firms and had received only rejection letters—some of them hadn’t replied at all—whereas another guy from our law school, a guy with no personality, no sense of judgment, no ability—this guy who had failed the final exam twice and who everyone said would end up dropping law as a profession and taking over his father’s business—this guy wound up being hired by Bertrand and Vilar, one of the biggest firms in Paris . . . And you know what my friend said to me? He said: ‘You’re looking at this the wrong way. You’re making yourself the
victim, accusing other people . . . it’s counterproductive.’ He didn’t completely deny the persistence of discriminatory practices, but he refused to believe that racism was a systematic and organized part of society. I, on the other hand, felt certain that I had not found a job simply because I was an Arab. The human resources guys, the employers, would see my name and immediately think: Cross that one off the list. Leave that one in the ghetto where he belongs! And it was at that moment, as I explained to him that my name and my identity were the problem, that he told me to change my first name. He was completely serious. He thought it was possible that success was more likely in modern-day France for someone named Louis, Hugo, or Lucas than for someone named Mohammed. He was just describing a social and political reality. And he was right. He told me: ‘Write Sam Tahar instead of Samir. Maybe that’ll make a difference.’ So, one evening, I tried something. I felt I had been a victim of discrimination, you see, but I wanted to be certain of it, so I sent my CV to a dozen law firms with this name typed at the top left-hand side of the first page: SAM TAHAR. All I had done was remove two little letters—it was hardly a betrayal. I just wanted to see what would happen. And guess what? Within a week, I had been invited to three job interviews. The first two went well; the senior partner even assured me that I would have a response very soon. The third interview took place at a large firm on Avenue George-V that specialized mainly in criminal law. On my way in, I noticed a little clear plastic box stuck to the pediment of the door—you know, one of those objects containing a parchment that Jews put there to protect their houses? The man who was interviewing me was named Pierre Lévy—a Mediterranean Jew, in his forties, who immediately made me feel at ease. An intelligent, perceptive guy. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but in the middle of the interview, he said, in a buddy-buddy tone of voice, ‘Sam’s short for Samuel, I take it?’ Without thinking, I nodded. It was completely spontaneous. I wanted that job. And I didn’t really understand the implications . . . Well, okay, I understood that the guy was a Jew, but I didn’t see any harm in it, I didn’t see the danger. Sam, Samuel, Samir—did it really matter? Then, when he told me that he’d once been engaged to a ‘North African Jew’—Claire Tahar—whose brother was named Samuel, I realized that he assumed I was a Jew, and in that moment I must admit that I wavered, I got a little scared. I thought: Maybe he’s going to hire me because he thinks I’m one of them. I had in mind the cliché of Jews helping each other out. Later I realized how false this was, because—once they reach a certain social level, Jews don’t want to stay with their own kind anymore. The ghetto mentality is something that bothers them greatly. I hadn’t said much during the interview: I didn’t feel I’d really shone. In fact, I remember thinking that I’d been less convincing in that interview than in the previous two—I’d slept badly the night before, I was stressed—and yet, as he walked me to the door, this man told me that I was now part of the law firm Lévy and Queffélec. Unbelievable, isn’t it? The next morning, he introduced me to the firm’s other two partners; he showed me my office—a nice one with a street view—and he took me out to lunch at a restaurant. As we were looking at the menus, he asked me if I was religious and I replied that I didn’t eat pork. That was all. I didn’t lie. He laughed and said, ‘Oh, I see. So you’re just a Yom Kippur Jew!’ I could have denied it then, but I didn’t say anything.
“During lunch, he told me how happy he was to have appointed such a highly qualified lawyer to his firm, and I began to feel scared. I wondered what would happen if I admitted that I’d been hired on a misunderstanding; that I was actually Muslim, not Jewish, as he believed—and, perhaps, as he wanted. But I needed that job, so I persuaded myself I would tell him the truth later, after a few months of experience, or I would leave his firm one day without ever having had to confess. You can imagine what happened next: I never managed to tell him. And I have stayed with that firm for my entire career. Working with a man like that—a man as experienced and cultivated as that—was everything a young lawyer like me could hope for. Not only was Pierre a good lawyer, he was also a generous man, an attentive friend, the kind of guy who comes to pick you up from the airport in the middle of the night just for the pleasure of seeing you again, without even having to ask him, the kind of guy who would never leave you the check in a restaurant—he never even lets you see it—who will transfer you money immediately if you show even the slightest need of it, without demanding to know what you need it for or why you can’t cover the sum yourself, without ever suggesting to you that you owe him, the kind of guy who will stand surety for you if you ask him and, most importantly, if he likes you, because that’s just how he is: a kindhearted, sincere person. If he likes you, he’ll give you everything he has—and if he doesn’t have it, he’ll arrange for you to get it. You think I’m joking? What I’m trying to say is that there aren’t many guys like him in the world. I couldn’t take the risk of damaging a friendship like that. I felt worse and worse about it, and I decided I would tell him everything when I set up on my own. In the meantime, I thought about legally changing my first name. I made inquiries. I started thinking about it, and that was when Samuel came to mind. I never expected to see Baron again. ‘Samuel?’ It was a good choice. Everyone would call me ‘Sam.’ I would have preferred a more elegant name, like Edouard or Paul or Adrien, but I figured that would sound ridiculous: a French first name next to my Arab-sounding surname. It would attract attention, people would ask questions—and that was the last thing I wanted. Sam was good; it was neutral. In fact, most people call me Sami. A few months later, I officially changed my name to Samuel Tahar. Lévy wanted to create a branch of the firm in New York, so he asked me to go there for three years, on behalf of the firm. I passed the bar exam and moved there permanently. When I say it like that, it sounds very simple, but it was actually one of the most difficult periods of my life. I was on my own, I wasn’t earning much money yet, I didn’t feel I belonged anywhere, I didn’t know anyone, and even the people and places that fascinated me—all those groups where the most influential New York intellectuals gather, not only lawyers but journalists and writers—I didn’t dare approach them for fear of being rejected. You can imagine how I felt on my graduation day, all alone. I hadn’t told my mother about it, of course, because I didn’t want her to turn up: I had drawn a line under my past. So while all the other students were accompanied by their parents, I received my diploma in the most absolute solitude. I had to give some reason for this, so that’s when I thought about using Samuel’s personal history—his parents’ death. When I heard my name announced that day and walked, alone, toward the stage, I had to fight hard not to collapse. That day, I realized the true consequences of my lie: the knowledge that I would never share my life with anyone. In sadness and in happiness, in sickness and in health, I would always be alone.
“As for what happened after that, it was a simple exercise in mimicry. I began to hang around with a new group of friends—mostly bourgeois Jews who welcomed me like a brother. I had a good instinct, a sort of talent for socializing. And I think I made them laugh. For five years, I had read every political biography that had been published, every major interview. I used all this—and my imagination—to tell stories. Everyone would invite me to their dinner parties: I knew how to be scathing when the situation merited it; I could be cruel too, and they loved that. My transgressive tastes, the freedom with which I spoke my mind—that was a source of fascination in those corseted circles. I knew all the codes: I’d assimilated them, just by watching other people and learning. I was like a chameleon—I adapted to whatever background you set me against. I could even get into people’s heads when I talked to them: I would mimic their tics, adopt their systems of thought. When I began getting invited to a higher social sphere, I took classes with a maître d’ who I’d met during a business trip in Paris. I thought: Why not? No one knows me. I want to learn. So he taught me how to hold my silverware, how to sit at a table—all those social proprieties I had never properly
learned before. On my thirtieth birthday, I spent a week in Burgundy studying oenology, after which I was capable of distinguishing between wines and evaluating which was better. Later still, I learned about music. I had felt humiliated one evening when, having been invited to the opera by a few colleagues, I’d spent the whole night with my mouth shut—I wasn’t even capable of bluffing my way through, because I knew absolutely nothing about classical music. It was not the kind of thing you learned about in the ghetto. The day after this debacle, I went to a record store. It was perfect—they had Bach, Chopin, Mozart, Dvorak—and I told the sales assistant not to leave out anyone important. On my way out, I bought a season ticket for the New York Opera, and that was a revelation. I never managed to enjoy the theater in the same way, though—I would always get bored. I gave up after falling asleep while watching a play by a Polish author in the original language, with subtitles. I would just confess to everyone: ‘You know, I’ve never really liked the theater.’ So, you see, I was a self-made man. Through sheer force of will and hard work, I invented myself. It may have been built on a lie, but the success I built is still all my own. I made those life choices, I made those career plans, I made those decisions! I never wanted to suffer again, in any way. Which explains why I was never able to really connect with many people. Complicity, friendship—sooner or later, it always involves revealing things, confiding secrets, and that was something I could not allow myself. I always keep people at a distance. You know something strange? I almost called you vous when you phoned me! Easy familiarity is something that immediately places people at the bottom of the social ladder. But in the U.S., there is no tu and vous, so you have to create distance in a different way: a cold look, a strong handshake, a scowl instead of a smile . . . these things create a balance of power, a tension—and I liked that. The only people I ever trusted enough to confide in were my partners at the firm. But even with them, I never dared tell the truth. Do you understand what I’m saying, Nina? I’m trapped.”