A Palace in the Old Village

by Tahar Ben Jelloun

  Allah says lots of things. He even says it’s our mothers who get us into paradise!

  Allah said that? I don’t remember it.

  Well, then you’re a godless fool!

  Mohammed recalled the story of the man everyone called Momo, Hajji Momo, tall and thin, always wearing a greasy old cap of threadbare velvet, a former soldier in the French army who had left his village in the Aurès Mountains of eastern Algeria to make war against the Germans, to liberate France. He’d had a fight with his brothers and sisters about an inheritance and had been so disgusted that he never again wanted anything to do with that family tearing itself apart over money. He’d gone off to war, fought like a lion, and then in 1945, instead of going back home, decided to stay in France. There he met Martine, a buxom and warm-hearted woman from Normandy. His military pension was not enough to live on, so he worked for Renault with the same energy he’d shown during the war. He was a good man, but he had one fault: he drank. He sobered up in Mecca and for three months did not touch a drop of alcohol. When he returned, however, Martine went through a depression—Momo never knew why—and left him. Momo went straight back into alcoholic hell. Abandoned, without children, he died alone in their tiny apartment and was found three days later. The Arab community was stunned: this was the first time an immigrant had died utterly alone, as sometimes happens in French society. Dying so forlorn, that was intolerable. People had thought this would never happen to Muslims because they all belonged to the same clan, the same house, the house of Islam, which unites the rich and the poor, the great and the humble.

  The shadows of Brahim and Momo haunted Mohammed’s thoughts. The life left in front of him, he reasoned, was bound to be shorter than the life behind him. It wasn’t death that frightened him; it was what led up to and brought on death that preoccupied him, even though he was counting on his faith for comfort. That left loneliness, which didn’t scare him, because he was absolutely sure that neither his wife nor his children would abandon him. But the spectre of solitude kept him constant company anyway.

  It was during this period of doubt that Mohammed ran away. Like an angry adolescent, he decided one day not to go home as usual after work. He took a different train and wound up where he’d never been before. It was in late spring, when the air was mild; the landscapes had pretty colours, passers-by were smiling, and some said hello to him. He felt buoyant, imbued with the energy of his childhood. Fewer people from the Maghreb lived there; it was mostly eastern Europeans. He went into a bar and asked for a nonalcoholic beer. The waiter, who had his back turned, replied, We don’t carry that stuff here! Thinking he’d made a gaffe, Mohammed ordered a Coke. Still busily cleaning glasses, the waiter said without turning around, With ice, lemon, or nothing? Nothing. The man slid a can of Coke down the bar to Mohammed, who would have liked a straw but didn’t dare ask for one. Making an effort, he said softly, Omelet, I’d like an omelet. The waiter came over, looked him in the face, and shouted, An omelet how? Your choices are country ham and cheese, Parisian ham and button mushrooms, Spanish ham and cheese, Italian prosciutto…. I’d like just an omelet, with nothing else. I don’t eat pork…. Ah! You’re a Muslim! But with a plain omelet, a little glass of white would go very nicely! No, I don’t drink alcohol either. So it’ll be a plain omelet! Not even aux fines herbes? Plain, yes, just eggs and a bit of butter.

  He’d rarely eaten an omelet as good as that one. It was nothing special, but he had done something out of the ordinary, so everything seemed wonderful to him. He told himself he ought to have this sort of escapade again.

  And yet, as he left the bar he felt strange. He was having trouble digesting the eggs and all that butter. He thought about his wife, who was probably starting to worry; he could have phoned but didn’t know what to say to her. He was incapable of lying, of coming up with credible scenarios. He would have been ashamed to admit he’d taken off like that because he’d felt dejected and wanted to play a trick on his routine.

  He took the train back in the other direction, reaching his neighbourhood forty minutes later. It was evening. Families were watching television. A few young people were hanging around here and there. One called out to him: Hey, Pops, you in the market for the real thing, some good homegrown? If you don’t use, at least give some to your kids! Just joking, you old fart!

  Old fart! He’d heard that insult many times before, but never directed at him. As he walked home, head hanging, he wondered if he really looked like an old fart. What is an old fart? Must be a pathetic guy, someone who doesn’t fight back, who endures life, and the day he decides not to go through the same motions, he runs into a fresh kind of hostility. He has never found where he belongs. Outside of the painting shop at the plant, he’s in the way, he feels unwanted, and at home the routine is even more painful because of occasional small scenes with the children. Perhaps he’d rather have lived at the plant, where he was needed, where the assembly line depended on him for its smooth operation. He’d noticed behind the foreman’s desk a little corner that he’d have really liked to make his own, his home, his bed, his refuge, but he would have missed the children, even if he was beginning to get the idea that they didn’t miss him much; in any case, they kept their feelings hidden. They’d become little Europeans, looking out for themselves, pushing their parents into the background.

  The guy who murdered his wife and three children but botched his own death—he must be “an old fart.” There’d been a lot about him on TV. To kill and then attempt suicide because of debts or regret over a wasted life, that was something Mohammed did not understand. Suicide was forbidden in Islam. And anyone who commits suicide is punished by God for all eternity, forced to repeat his action forever. Just imagine a guy who hangs himself: until the end of time he’ll be hanging himself, maybe not from the same tree but in houses, stores, right in the middle of a wealthy family’s living room….

  Mohammed suddenly thought, Wait: will there be houses and stores in the afterlife? I know, no one has ever returned to tell us what goes on there. Kill? That’s horrible, I’d never do that! At the celebration of Eid al-Kebir, I used to refuse to cut the sheep’s throat, leaving that to my older brother or our neighbour. The sight of blood upsets me. I’ve never raised my hand to my children, always tried to restrain my temper. At the same time, I’ve indulged them too much, especially my youngest girl—so spoiled she became a terrible student. I realised this when she decided to drop out of high school. That day, I cried all alone after prayers. To me, it was more than a failure, a humiliation. I don’t like school, she told me, I’m quitting, and anyway I want to get a job. I understood then that any attempt to set her straight would be useless. I could have told her, If you only knew how I suffered from not getting to attend school, from missing out on so many things because I’m illiterate. If you had any idea what I’d give today to have knowledge, expertise, education, diplomas, but I feel like a donkey, a faithful animal going along the same road every day, doing the same things, unable to vary my routine for fear I’ll get lost, afraid of drowning in a calm sea. Oh, if you knew how alone I feel because I need someone to help me whenever I go into an administrative office, but all that, I guess it has nothing to do with you, you were born in a different time, you found life a little easier, a little less puzzling.

  You children don’t like to be reminded of what we others have gone through. Remember the day when you wiped your knife on a piece of bread? I had a fit: bread isn’t a scrap of rag! I was taught to bring bread to my lips and kiss it before taking a bite or putting it away. Bread is sacred, and you, you were treating it as a thing of no importance. You didn’t understand my reaction, especially since you weren’t used to seeing me react at all. Then there was that time you turned up your nose at some bananas, pushing them away with your fingertips and saying, Don’t like them. I made the mistake of saying that when I was your age I dreamed of eating bananas and apples, and that I’d had to wait till I came to France to taste them. But that didn’t interest you or your
brothers and sisters. It’s like the time your brother Mourad talked back to me when I was objecting to the people he was friends with, when he said, I hope I don’t turn out like you, oh no, not like you: you’re there and no one sees you, so excuse me, but you don’t make me want to be like you at all.

  I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time, but I never figured out why my son wouldn’t want to be like me. What’s so crummy, so repulsive about me? I’m clean, I don’t hurt anyone, I do my work the best I can, I’m faithful to God and carry out my duties, and none of that shows in my face! Maybe I should turn mean, wasting the family money in bars with whores, dragging around in the streets like Atiq, that guy who lost everything, especially his mind.

  Except for the youngest daughter, Rekya, each of his children had had a different reason for going away, and Mohammed’s house had slowly emptied out. Mohammed had a hard time coming to grips with this. He hadn’t noticed that they were growing up, choosing their paths, then leaving on them. Angry at himself for not having paid more attention, he took comfort in the fact that other parents were in the same boat. Then he brooded over the evil influence of a charlatan he held responsible for his empty nest, one of those old Berbers who take up sorcery, fortune-telling, and other services to plump up their bank accounts for their old age. These con artists let their beards grow, dress in traditional clothing, set themselves up in a small apartment, surround themselves with books on Islam, and burn a bit of incense. They hang calligraphed names of Allah and his prophet Mohammed on the wall next to photos of Mecca and Medina; on the floor lie prayer rugs with the image of the Kaaba. They claim to do no evil, simply to protect people from it. As a good Muslim, Mohammed detested such sorcerers. His wife and even his eldest daughter, Jamila, consulted a certain Allam, who extracted tidy sums from them in exchange for talismans to carry or hide among their belongings.

  One day Jamila had been pulled aside by security agents at Orly Airport: in her purse, wrapped in tinfoil and duct tape, was a small unidentified object that the agents suspected was drugs or an ingredient for a bomb. They had active imaginations. Jamila had opened the wad to reveal a strip of brown fabric on which Allam had scribbled in Arabic a protective talisman that had unfortunately proved powerless to deflect the attention of the security staff. During the flight, his daughter had reflected on how ridiculous it was for a modern young woman like her, born in Yvelines, to be carrying in her purse—along with (among other things) a mobile phone, a bottle of perfume, some lipstick, and a PDA—a scrap of dirty material for her mental and physical safety! But a little later, when the plane encountered some frightening turbulence, Jamila couldn’t help halfway blaming the storm on the fact that the talisman had been opened and incorrectly closed. I was sure born in France, she concluded, but my genes come from the old country!

  What could Mohammed do? His entire village practised this kind of magic. His wife occasionally burned herbs with a suffocating smell and asked him to stand in the smoke for seven minutes. Because he avoided conflict, he did as she asked instead of arguing; he had no choice if he wanted peace in his home. He walked around and around the little brazier so the nauseating herbal odours could affect the course of his life. His wife was a good woman, though; illiterate perhaps but intelligent, courageous, and thrifty. She never became angry, patiently put up with her children’s behaviour, and served her husband without grumbling, of course: protest was useless. She’d seen what had happened to Lubna, a young village woman who married too young and was taken to France by her husband. Lubna had tried to rebel, refusing to cook and clean the house, but her husband had boxed her ears so hard that she’d been deaf for a good hour. When she went to the police, the husband denied everything, then sent her back to the village as a repudiated wife. He’d written ahead to ask her father to take away her passport and throw it in the fire.

  Mohammed preferred the Book. He liked things to be simple and obvious. He was fond of the olive oil and pure honey his elderly uncle brought him. Although Mohammed was diabetic, his uncle had persuaded him that pure honey was completely compatible with diabetes: You can eat as much of this as you want; honey is wonderful for the health. What you should avoid is white sugar, city sugar. Honey can only do you good! Allah talks about it in the Koran: there will be exquisite honey in paradise, rivers of honey—it can’t be bad for you. So Mohammed ate some every morning before going to the plant. His diabetes was getting worse, drying his mouth, but he would not give up his honey. Hot bread soaked in olive oil then dipped in a bowl of honey—that was his treat, his pleasure.

  Mohammed took medications, and his wife had given him a talisman tightly sewn up in a scrap of grey cloth, probably the same kind his daughter carried. It will protect you against illness, the evil eye, and even against the heat in the plant! He pretended to believe her; he didn’t want to give up his morning feast. As for the Book, enveloped in a swatch of the paternal shroud, every day he slipped it inside a plastic bag bearing the logo of a local supermarket. Whenever he opened the book and brought it to his lips, he was no longer alone. No need for the services of al-Hajj, the sorcerer of the Porte de la Chapelle neighbourhood in Paris; no, he refused to go see him, and although Mohammed carried the man’s talismans around with him, that was because he didn’t want to hurt his wife’s feelings.

  Avoiding arguments with his wife or colleagues was a priority, and he found disputes over material things particularly pointless. He minded his business, quietly, inoffensively. When there was a strike, he went along with everyone else, never took the lead, followed Marcel’s orders, waited for the whole thing to blow over. It’s not my problem, he said. The French are used to going on strike, so I do as they do, and sometimes I don’t even know why we’ve stopped work, so Marcel explains it to me, and while I’m listening I think about something else, like my childhood back home, and I smile, because if I’d stayed home no French fellow would ever have taken the trouble to tell me the reasons for a strike, political or whatever, and no European would have asked for my opinion! It’s really your decision, Marcel tells me. You can vote against the strike, that’s your right; we’ve got a democracy here.

  The first time Mohammed had heard that word was in a café in Marrakech, one day while he was waiting for the bus to Tangier. Someone on the radio was shouting, “Demokratia al hakikya!” Democracy and truth. Later, on the bus, a man sat down next to him and began explaining what it was all about: You see, we who live out in the country, when we go to the city we feel like we don’t belong, but with demokratia we’ll get better treatment—that’s what a guy said on the radio the other day, that we’ll all be equal and our children will go to public school for free, like hospitals and medicines will be too, but to get that you have to go vote, even if you can’t read, so you just put your fingerprints in a notebook, then you vote, that’s demokratia, and then we’ll get water, electricity in the village, plus we’ll have roads and even streetlights because you see, we want to be like Europeans and that’ll take time and lots of effort, but we’ll get there, so anyway, right now I need to smoke this cigarette. Got a light?

  4

  MOHAMMED HANDED all bureaucratic paperwork to his youngest daughter, who spent hours filling out forms for the welfare and health insurance agencies, the bank, and the tax authorities. Although Mohammed had learned the alphabet back in Koranic school and could write his name in Arabic, his signature was a drawing of a tree—an olive tree, he said, the very one (and the only one) that grew in his village. He drew two vertical lines topped with a circle full of crosshatching: an original signature, unlike the traditional X used by his friends.

  I can’t write, but I like to draw. The children don’t know this; they’d make fun of me, so I draw in secret. Don’t need school for that. In fact, I have a notebook full of drawings, which I’ll leave to my children or, rather, to my grandchildren. I draw trees and houses. That’s all. Trees with fruits of every colour, big trees, middle-size ones, squat ones, trees thin as sticks, others that are bu
shy; I draw groves of them and even a forest, and I can walk in the forest, lose my way, stop and sit down with my back against an immense tree trunk, and though I don’t know the name of this tree, it offers cool shade to rest in, gives me fresh air, and it does me good, this tree that exists only in the forest I draw, for I know it doesn’t exist anywhere else. I draw trees and forests because we don’t have any back home, up country where it’s all dust and stones, dryness everywhere, and among the large or small stones there are scorpions that sting children while they sleep so that they die asphyxiated, sometimes, when people forget to raise the beds high enough, as with my four-year-old niece who was killed by a scorpion one night: in the morning she was swollen, her eyes shut, she had stopped breathing. If only we’d had water, some small streams, the scorpion wouldn’t have stung my little niece.

  I draw playgrounds, slides, mazes in an English garden like the one I saw one day on the TV: the whole movie took place among these crisply trimmed rows of trees, where all the grass was as smooth as carpet—I can’t remember anymore what the characters said. They wore old-fashioned clothes. It was pretty, orderly, strange. I draw the automobile plant seen from a distance, all splashed with phosphorescent colours, looking like an amusement park with lights that never stop twinkling; I also draw houses with roof terraces free of all satellite dishes and television antennas, terraces draped with rugs and fabrics of shimmering hues. I don’t appear to like colour, and my children have often reproached me for always wearing grey, but really I adore natural colours, the tints of spring, and I don’t need to wear them on my back because they’re in my head, where they make music when my mind is tired but they stay inside me, that’s why people say I’m sad, but being sad is being frustrated: nothing happens the way I’d hoped, so since I can’t do a thing about it, I keep my face closed up tight and watch the world run around as if it were in a frenzy or had some incurable fever, and I’ve been sad ever since I came to France, a country that has nothing to do with my sorrow but hasn’t managed to make me smile, to give me reasons to be happy, that’s simply how it is, I can’t help it and I’m not the only one—look at the men when they leave the plant, they’re all sad, especially ours, the guys from the Maghreb, leaning slightly forward while they walk as if weighed down, although perhaps I’m imagining things and they aren’t sad but spending their time having fun, while me, I just can’t. So yes, I love colours and I keep that to myself. I can’t make my children understand it, but I don’t even try, don’t feel like talking, explaining myself.