“Is she at university?”
“Tax law.”
“Does she study hard?”
“On that score, I can’t complain.”
“You’re lucky. A lot of kids don’t know what to do with themselves.”
“The Prophet is the problem.”
“Sorry?”
“She spends all day banging on to me about the Prophet. Drives me insane.”
“You have to move with the times.”
“It’s pretty obvious you don’t have a daughter.”
“Yeah, I can imagine . . . I can just picture having a daughter and her turning out straight. It would be a total nightmare, I don’t know how I’d live it down.”
Sélim smiled, for the first time, at something she had said. For a while she listened to him complain about how difficult it was to be a parent, to bring up a daughter alone. Then she made her excuses.
Sélim had called her back the next day.
“We were interrupted yesterday. This screenwriter you’re looking for, it wouldn’t be Xavier Fardin?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Remember that early nineties movie – “Ma seule étoile est morte” – it hasn’t aged well, but back when it was first released everyone was raving about it.”
Her mobile phone sandwiched against her shoulder, she typed Xavier Fardin and Alex Bleach into Google – bingo, they knew each other. The Hyena gave a low whistle:
“Good call.”
“When you don’t know something, always ask daddy. So, tell me: do you know much about the psychology of girls?”
“Hey, that’s my specialist subject.”
“Cut the shit. I’m talking about my daughter here. Can we meet up?”
“Again? Yesterday you didn’t even want to go for coffee with me and now you’re talking like you want us to get married.”
In fact, he simply wanted her to join his daughter on a week’s holiday to Barcelona. “For assessment purposes.” The Hyena found it hard to believe he was really suggesting something so unlikely. But he was serious. He sucked on his e-cigarette like a crotchety old baby and wouldn’t let it go.
“Your daughter? In what sense exactly do you want me to assess her?”
“Terrorism. Jihad.”
“Has she been googling plane tickets to Iran?”
“No. I don’t know what she does. I don’t want to spy on her. Even if I did, I wouldn’t have the first idea how to go about it. Okay? But I’ve got a feeling something is not right. I’m afraid she’s living a double life . . .”
It was difficult to blame Sélim for developing paranoid fantasies. It’s a symptom of the times. And when a guy marries a super-cute, shy, funny little beurette and she leaves him overnight, takes a Russo-Satanic stage name and floods the world with hot, double-penetration porn videos . . . well, he has a right, later on, to suspect the female of the species of being capable of anything. The Hyena keeps this line of argument to herself and tries to reassure him:
“I spent, like, five minutes with her but honestly she didn’t come across as the suicide-martyr type . . . so you’re freaking out just because she wears the hijab, is that it?”
“No. She’s obsessed with religion.”
“It’s better than being hooked on crack.”
“I’m not so sure. Seriously. I wonder how far it goes. We barely talk.”
“Okay. You know she’ll get over this? She’s young, it’s a phase . . . How do you expect me to follow her around Barcelona? I can hardly shadow her . . .”
“Of course not, you go there with her. Actually it was Aïcha’s idea. I didn’t want her to go on her own. Last night, after you left, she suggested you could babysit her. She said ‘That way you won’t have to worry.’ And it’s true . . . after all, you’ve done a lot of bizarre jobs . . . and obviously, in your own way, you know a lot about women . . . Once you’ve spent a couple of days with her you’ll be able to tell me what you think . . . It’s just a case of observing her.”
“How on earth did she come up with the idea?”
“She doesn’t have a lot of female role models.”
“As female role models go, I’m hardly typical – Does she know I’m a dyke?”
“I’m not exactly planning to go into the details of your private life with her . . .”
“All due respect, Sélim, what you’re suggesting is totally lame.”
“I helped you out with Fardin, didn’t I? Please, as a favour to me.”
*
The Hyena would be incapable of explaining how the details were ironed out, but in less than an hour, it was settled: she would go with the girl to Barcelona. Often, the craziest decisions can seem coolly logical.
And it was true, he had helped her track down the screenwriter. Xavier Fardin. It had taken Sélim only a couple of calls to find his phone number – and she met up with him the same day in the bar opposite his apartment. Hetero douchebag type, smug, confident in his opinions, spewing hoary old clichés yet convinced he’s just invented the wheel, cocksure for no reason she could fathom – she felt his bovine, lecherous eyes brazenly undressing her. He was all excited that someone was taking an interest in him. When she told him she worked for a producer, he instantly reeled off his whole C.V., he made it very clear that he would love to work on a film about Alex Bleach. But he could not tell her where she might find this guy called Vernon Subutex who had the footage – she could try searching on Facebook, but he seemed to be in hiding, he was having problems with a particularly vengeful ex. He was a decent guy who, for years, had run a record shop in Paris.
When she got home, the Hyena had called Gaëlle – yes, she knew Subutex, the guy who used to run Revolver, a nice guy as it goes, sure, no problem, she could try and get in touch with him.
Her search had not just taken off, it was soaring like a helium balloon. The Hyena had said nothing of this to Dopalet, when he phoned she kept him on tenterhooks – “It’s pretty complicated, you know, but I’ve got a couple of leads, I’ll keep you up to speed.” If you tell the client that the job is easy, it’s difficult to tell him later that it is going to cost a fortune. And besides, she enjoyed seeing him in meltdown – it’s always nice to see dictatorial C.E.O.s squirm from time to time.
The Hyena crosses Plaça de la Universitat and heads up calle Aribau towards the apartment. Barcelona is still a charming old whore, smiling whenever she gets a tip, it seems that nothing can ruin her beauty, not the tourists, not the shop signs, not even the blocks of modern architecture. Rubbish bins line the pavement, at regular intervals men open them and peer under the lids. No two are the same. An anti-globalisation activist finds a pair of jeans in his size, an Eastern European guy pushing a shopping trolley salvages a roll of electric cable, an elderly man can find nothing that takes his fancy, an African digs out a wicker basket which he fills with books and newspapers.
*
She had met Aïcha in the café at the gare d’Austerlitz – which was little frequented after 9.00 p.m. – to take the night train. The Hyena does not take planes. Aïcha was worried about arriving exhausted.
“It means leaving a day earlier and getting there shattered. I’m attending a seminar, it’s not like I can relax.”
“You do know Islamists always take this train? It’s famous for it.”
The girl looked away, appalled at the turn the conversation was taking. But it was true, the train was always full of bearded men, foreheads marked with brutal prayers.
Aïcha’s suitcases were so heavy that it would have been reasonable to wonder whether she were transporting weapons. But they were filled with books and documents. She had obviously thought to herself, I’m going to Barcelona for a week, why not take my whole library with me.
She is not like her father. She has his studious side – Sélim had been gifted and assiduous, a combination that tends to make for happy students. It was after university that things became complicated. He perfectly understood university rules and regulations w
hereas the chaos of real life bewildered and demoralised him. Aïcha has not inherited his whimsical nature. She is a single-minded girl whose serious expression and frequently knitted brows make her look permanently angry. Not frenzied, I’m-going-to-smash-someone’s-face angry, but so focused that she seems harsh.
She is obdurately polite, reserved to the point of being chilly; from the second she set eyes on the girl, the Hyena liked her. She is not pretty, in the classic sense of the word. Too stout, too sullen. But this is precisely her charm. An impression of intelligence allied to strength without a trace of feminine gentleness. Despite her veil, Aïcha does not seem very modern, she has the face and the expression of a girl of long ago. She has the face of a girl from the seventies. Probably something to do with the nose. Which, it turns out, you get used to.
*
The two women scarcely spoke to each other before boarding the train. The station platform was deserted at this hour, the few passengers were like ghosts. The Hyena had taken this train a dozen times, she liked the anachronistic feel of it. The carriages were something from another century, and had not changed. She was happy to be taking it one last time. Soon, the night train would no longer exist. Too expensive.
“So, how do you feel about your father being worried enough to send someone with you to Spain when you’re almost twenty?”
“It’s sad, isn’t it?”
“Are you angry with him?”
“No. He’s my father. I love him as I will never love another man.”
She said it simply, everything seems very clear in her mind. The Hyena suddenly understood why her father was worried, she had rarely encountered someone so strong-minded. Her words were tinged with a deep sadness – Aïcha seemed already resigned to the fact that the love she speaks of is not something to be taken lightly.
“But doesn’t it make you want to rebel, your father having someone constantly keeping an eye on you?”
For the first time, Aïcha seemed surprised and she smiled and looked away.
“No, I don’t feel the need to rebel.”
And the way she turned her head away said it all: maybe people still rebelled against authority back in your day, long ago. See where it got you? My generation goes about things differently.
They were sitting side by side in the tiny two-person compartment. Then the ticket inspector came and asked them to wait out in the corridor while she made up the couchettes. The space was reduced, bags and suitcases had to be carefully stacked. Aïcha took out a file of course notes – L.L.M. modules in Corporate Tax – she said this as though talking about something commonplace like an English course. She buried herself in her notes. The Hyena scanned the news headlines on her mobile phone before striking up a conversation.
“What exactly are you studying?”
“I’m in second year tax law.”
“Is it what you wanted to do?”
“No-one forced me.”
The Hyena made the most of the silence to wonder what the hell she was doing here. While feeling happy to be aboard this train – it had been so long since she had last travelled.
“So, you knew my father back in the days when he and my mother were still together?”
“I lived just upstairs from your place.”
“Did you know my mother?”
“We were neighbours. I used to pop in for coffee, she’d come by to borrow cooking oil . . .”
“Before you came around last week, I didn’t know that my mother was a whore.”
“I’m sorry?”
“No-one ever told me that she had done porn. I heard you mention the name Pamela Kant when you were talking to my father. I looked her up. It was grim. I wrote to Pamela Kant to ask if she knew my mother, she wrote back some rubbish. I looked up some more photos of her. It took a while before I recognised my mother.”
“You didn’t say anything to your father?”
“It’s too embarrassing.”
“So you were waiting to talk to me?”
“Yes. It’s because of you that I found out, so I thought you would tell me what I wanted to know.”
ZBLAM. ZBLAM. THIS IS THE SHITTY SOUND OF REALITY BANGING at her door. Zblam. But no everyday reality, not yesterday’s reality. Zblam. Not familiar reality. Nor something horrendous some unbelievable news an earthquake an event demanding some reaction some swift decision. Zblam. Zblam. It is more like madness, light as a shadow but beneath a blazing sun. It is the past that is past, something that cannot be changed stuck right in the middle from now on nothing will ever be as it was before.
Aïcha is a room in which the contents of every wardrobe have been ransacked, tossed onto the floor. Nothing can hold back the past. It is inexorable. Her mother was a prostitute. Everyone knew. No-one told her. She was the daughter of a whore. A “public woman”. Like a public toilet, but slutty. Her father was the husband of a whore. Her father outraged that she found out. Shit, Papa. Shit, shit, shit. Why didn’t you kill her?
She loves her father. Loves him so much it hurts. Like razors in her veins. Loves him enough to spill her own blood. She knows it is unfair, this thing that has driven them apart these past two years. When she first discovered Islam, it was another way of saying that she loved her father more than anything. She had never been taught about religion at home. Her grandmother had died too soon. At the school she went to, there was no-one she could talk to. One day, she had been fortunate enough to listen to the imam and everything he said seemed familiar. Everything, finally, made sense. It was a matter of thinking about life differently rather than sacrificing it on the altar of consumerism. Everything her father had taught her, she rediscovered, magnified, in every grain of Islam. Everything he despised, those things he fought, the Qur’an said was wrong. Everything he respected, his regard for other people, his striving to do good, the Qur’an said was right.
The first time she got up from the table, one evening in June, “I’m going to say prayers”, her father had turned pale, he had said “You’re what?” Aïcha had not expected him to dig his heels in. She thought that they would discuss the matter, that he would welcome her faith, that he would be proud of her, because he would realise that it was a right and necessary choice. He did not let her speak. He clenched his teeth and turned his back, leaning on the sink and jerking his head towards her room, “Get out of here, I can’t even look at you.”
It was not fair. She does not hold it against him. She is sorry that it upsets him. She is patient. She knows that one day he will understand that being devout is her way of being worthy of him.
After her grandmother’s death, they had packed her things away in cardboard boxes. In these boxes Aïcha discovered photographs she had never seen before showing her father as a young man, in several he is laughing. His head is thrown back, his eyes screwed up, laughing with his whole body. She has never seen him laugh like this. In the boxes, Aïcha found his master’s thesis on the films of Bergman, articles by Claude Julien carefully clipped from Le Monde diplomatique, an outline for a thesis on Victor Serge. All the girls in the photos of him at university are French; they wear their hair short like Jean Seberg, they are slim and wear clothes that show off their bodies.
Who is this young man? His expression is different, it is confident, determined. There is no sign yet of that wound, that sadness like a fissure through which all his joy would trickle away.
France persuaded her father that if he embraced her universal culture, she would welcome him with open arms as she would any of her children. Fine promises, but empty; Arabs with university degrees were still the bougnoules of the République and were kept, discreetly, outside the portals of the great institutions. For a daughter, nothing is worse than to see that her father has been conned – except perhaps discovering that he fell for it. Her father had been duped. He was told that in France everything is based on merit, that excellence is rewarded, he was taught that in a secular state, all men are equal. Only to have doors slammed one by one in his face, with no righ
t of appeal. No communitarianism here. But there always comes a moment when you have to give your first name – that “Close Sesame” that magically means that apartments are already taken, job vacancies are already filled, a dentist’s schedule is suddenly too busy to accept an appointment. “Integrate,” people said, but to those who tried they said “See? You’re not one of us.”
She stared at her father’s hands in the photographs, the hand of an intellectual, clean, well cared for, toying with a cigarette holder, the hands sketching ideas in the air. Faith alone is capable of holding back the rage that gnaws at the daughter’s insides. She refuses to be a slab of hatred, a wounded, dangerous animal. Just as she refuses to sell her body. She refuses to give up her humanity. And faith alone affords her serenity and a sense of structure, offers her dignity.
*
Her relationship with her father became fractious and Aïcha could do nothing to prevent this. He says, “You’re only doing it to piss me off”, referring to her faith. He refuses to discuss things. And yet, he used to adore her.
She was not annoyed that he refused to let her go to Barcelona on her own, even for her studies. She knows that he worries. She wishes that someone would reassure him. The Islam she practises has nothing to do with what the newspapers lap up when they want to sell their lies.
When she heard the old lesbian talking about Pamela Kant, she had no idea who she was, she remembered the name because it sounded funny. Then she googled it. She was outraged at the point at which she contacted Pamela Kant on Facebook, but she decided it was best to focus on other things. It nagged away at her and she overcame her disgust and did a little more digging into the case of Kant, this woman her mother liked to go dancing with. Vodka Satana. She did not immediately make the connection. She would never have made it but for the tattoo, the eye of Isis on the shoulder blade.
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