Divorce Islamic Style (9781609458942)

by Lakhous, Amara

  I have to say that the situation has improved now. At first the veil obsessed me, day and night, it was a fixed idea. I was afraid it would be a real obstacle to fulfilling my dream. No one would dare go to a hairdresser with a veil. And so? So what. I kept having the same nightmare: Marilyn wearing a veil, and in tears! The only way to get rid of it was to convince my husband. I used every trick, I even told him that the son of an Egyptian in a veil who lived on Viale Marconi refused to go to school because his classmates made fun of him: “Your mamma is a Taliban!” “You’re the son of a Taliban,” or “Your mother is bin Laden’s sister.” Removing my veil would be good for our daughter. Why have her grow up with complexes?

  Unfortunately, my husband didn’t want to hear about it, and he just kept repeating the same phrase: “The wives of all my friends wear a veil—what will the Egyptians and the other Muslims of Viale Marconi say about me?” Damn, all he thinks of is himself, his own reputation. He doesn’t care a dried fig about me. He’s not the one with the veil.

  Issa

  A week has passed since I moved to this apartment. I’ve had tremendous problems adjusting; I can’t sleep at night more than two hours in a row. What should I do? It’s not my fault if I’ve always had a room to myself. For the same reason, I’ve acquired certain habits, like sleeping nude, temperature permitting, or reading before I go to sleep; I love biographies of famous people. Here it’s not a good idea to be the self-taught intellectual immigrant and passionate reader. In other words, I’ve been forced to quickly change my habits, and I immediately renounced my nighttime nakedness. I might be taken for a pervert or a gay, more than sufficient reason to be thrown out of this apartment. Muslims are real male chauvinists, openly homophobic. While we Italians, sly as usual, are friendly toward gays and women but underneath we’re—hypocritically—chauvinist.

  I still can’t understand how people manage to sleep with the light on. There’s always someone who comes home from work after midnight or goes out at dawn. Not to mention the roar of faucets, of chairs being dragged . . . The result is that I’m suffering from insomnia, a problem I’ve never had before. I’ve always slept easily, even when I’m traveling and constantly sleeping in a different place. The discomfort is obvious, it’s not just a whim of mine. I’m not just playing the spoiled child, used to luxury. This is a serious problem. If I don’t sleep well I’ll have some trouble concentrating on my mission, won’t I?

  Don’t complain, little one, as my grandfather Leonardo used to say, may his soul rest in peace. Let’s look at the glass half full. One of the positive things about this complicated week is that I’m gradually starting to know all eleven of my fellow-tenants: eight Egyptians, a Moroccan, a Bangladeshi, and a Senegalese. I’m also busy getting familiar with the space. For example, I’ve noticed that the kitchen is transformed, in emergencies, into a makeshift dormitory to welcome a couple of guests—relatives, friends, or friends of friends of one of the tenants.

  Everyone knows that Arabs are very hospitable. For centuries they’ve cultivated this grand passion, helped by the vastness of the Sahara, by its immense spaces. What does it take to put up a tent and spread a carpet for guests? Nothing. What does it take to feed them? A cup of milk and some dates. Unfortunately, we don’t live in the desert, amid camels and palm trees. Hospitality has become expensive and has lost its deep value. In Italy you’re not allowed to put up someone at your house without declaring or reporting (what a terrible word) him to the local police station within forty-eight hours. This is a law that goes back to the seventies; its purpose was to combat terrorism. Hospitality no longer has to do exclusively with the private life of individual citizens; the State insists on knowing who sleeps at your house. Let’s be frank: for us Italians the existence of a law is one thing, its application another. The usual split between theory and practice, fed by our allergy to legality. In other words, in terms of public safety I and my eleven fellow-tenants are illegal residents; none of us have the proper requirements to live on Viale Marconi.

  I’ve noticed that in our building there are a lot of students (mostly girls), owing to the proximity of Roma Tre University. The other day I met a student at the entrance of the building, she had come for an interview about renting a place to sleep. An interview for a job? No, an interview for a bed. Just that. It seems like a mistake, but it’s not. She had tears in her eyes, because it hadn’t gone well.

  I stopped to listen to her; she really needed someone to talk to, right away. I did my best to hide my Italianness and play the role of the Tunisian immigrant. The girl had no prejudices: venting to a non-European was fine with her. Where had the problem originated? The landlord was looking for a student who would also do the housecleaning. Insane. There was something that didn’t make sense: was the poor girl supposed to study and graduate or was she supposed to be the domestic help? This shit went off his rocker, maybe the next time he’ll want a student who’s a belly dancer or a sushi chef or just gives blow jobs. All this for a damn wretched place to sleep.

  The girl asked me to help her look. I thought of giving her my place, but I immediately abandoned that idea. It can’t be done. An Italian girl together with five young men (of Muslim religion, a not negligible fact) in one room? I already see the newspaper headlines, unleashed like pit bulls: VIALE MARCONI. FIVE NON EU MUSLIMS RAPE ITALIAN STUDENT. No, that’s no good, it’s too long. You need something short but striking, like: MUSLIMS RAPE STUDENT. There, that would be the perfect headline, extremely suggestive and with many possible interpretations. For example, the word “Muslims” could be understood as “all Muslims,” that is, a billion and a half people! The result, in the mind of someone who’s already slightly prejudiced: throughout the world there are a billion and a half rapists who belong, without exception, to the same religion!

  Those poor students who come from outside Rome, taken advantage of by unscrupulous landlords. I should be compassionate toward them, because they have to put up with the same problem of lodgings as immigrants. In fact, maybe they’re in a worse position, because it’s really terrible to feel like a foreigner in your own country.

  Our apartment is no bigger than sixty square meters: kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms. There is constant activity, twenty-four hours a day—it’s like being in an emergency room. There are at least four of us who work at night, in restaurants.

  Sixty square meters! If you divided this space by twelve we’d have five square meters a person. This is the sort of calculation that’s usually made by lawyers on behalf of their jailed clients, to rouse the pity of judges and obtain a reduction in jail time, or to solicit the compassion of members of parliament and urge them to pass a law on pardons. But does this mean my room is a cell? Don’t be ridiculous.

  And yet the comparison between Teresa’s apartment and jail isn’t completely absurd. Besides the problem of overcrowding, there is a code of honor that has to be respected. My experience as an interpreter at the court in Palermo has brought me into close contact with the world of prisons, and I can decipher certain behavior easily. The code of honor is based on hierarchy and unwritten rules. Anyone who doesn’t understand or pretends not to understand runs the risk of being punished. The worst punishment is not violence but exclusion from the group. That is exactly what I would like to avoid at all costs. I want to be accepted and liked by everyone. So I stick to the code of honor unconditionally.

  Let’s see what I’ve learned. First, there is a hierarchy based on religion, even if we’re all Muslims. The observant have a privileged status; for example, they have precedence in the use of the kitchen and, especially, the one bathroom. The reason? The ablutions for performing the five daily prayers must be done at precise times. The salat, the prayer, is a sort of appointment with God, and it’s very important to arrive punctually, a mark of respect. So the line for the toilet is only for the non-observant like me. And if you wet your pants? That’s your problem! You have to cope by dashing out to some café on Viale Marconi. Luckily you can find
one every two feet.

  Further, you’re strictly forbidden to bring alcohol, pork, or—above all—women into the house. Except for the tiny photograph of Simona Barberini in the room where I sleep (obviously not taken from the famous calendar in which Simona appears without veils), there’s not a trace of a woman in this lousy apartment.

  Smokers are tolerated provided they smoke outside, on the little balcony off the kitchen. And if it’s cold and raining or snowing? It’s their problem. Anyway, they should thank God that the fatwa declared by the Taliban against cigarettes hasn’t yet found adherents among the tenants. But you never know. The future, as they say, is unpredictable.

  Then, there is another hierarchy, of a different nature, based on native country: the eight Egyptians feel that they are the true landlords. Maybe they’ve been infected by that shitty virus that strikes all majorities, always and everywhere: screw the minorities!

  All the food cooked here is based on Egyptian cuisine. The paintings hanging in the kitchen and in the two rooms are reproductions of the Pyramids or some tourist village in Sharm. Above the refrigerator waves a small Egyptian flag. Clearer than that . . .

  It goes without saying that Egyptian Arabic is the official language within the walls of the apartment. The music is Om Kalthoum (she’s the Egyptian Maria Callas). I don’t like her because she always repeats the same passage over and over. Arabs are mad for repetition—is that why they accept being governed for life by the same people?

  In other words, we live in a sort of Egyptian enclave in Italian territory. The non-Egyptian tenants are divided into two categories. Mohammed, the Moroccan, and I are in second place; we’re Arabs and we can communicate linguistically with the majority, limiting insult and injury where possible. But for the Senegalese and the Bangladeshi there’s no escape: they’re at the bottom. They have to submit or leave. To be Muslim isn’t enough. It’s better to be an Arab Muslim, but it would be fantastic to be an Egyptian Arab Muslim!

  Finally, we have a third hierarchy, this one imposed from the outside. We live not on an autonomous island but, rather, in a society that conditions our choices and limits our freedom. So we are divided into illegals, on one side, and legals, on the other.

  The former live in panic; they are terrified by the idea of being arrested, shut up in some camp, and expelled. They talk obsessively about an amnesty that would enable them to obtain a residency permit. They wish to be out in the open—they don’t want to hide as if they were criminals. They are always afraid of the police and especially the carabinieri. They’re constantly being blackmailed.

  “Now I’m calling the police!”

  “Please, don’t ruin me.”

  “So you’re afraid of the police? And if I call the carabinieri, you’ll piss in your pants?”

  “Please don’t, I implore you, on my knees.”

  The legal immigrants, on the other hand, can take advantage of a discount of fifty euros on the rent (this was established by the finance company Teresa alias Vacation). An even greater advantage is that they don’t have to tremble with fear when they hear words like police, carabinieri, expulsion, detention center, Northern League, and so on.

  “Now I’m calling the police.”

  “I’ll give you the number, you piece of shit.”

  “I see, you’re not afraid of the police. Then I’ll call the carabinieri!”

  “What are you waiting for, asshole?”

  I share a room with four Egyptians and the Senegalese. I immediately hit it off with the Egyptian Saber, who sleeps in the bed under mine. I like him a lot; he’s very entertaining. He was born in Cairo twenty-three years ago. He’s the typical boy next door: fashionable clothes, hair styled with gobs of gel, latest-model cell phone. Physically, he looks like an Italian, let’s say a southerner, a handsome, dark Mediterranean—like me! He could pass for a purebred Italian if he kept quiet, but that would be impossible, because Saber is an incurable chatterbox. His problem is that he can’t pronounce the letter “p,” and to survive linguistically he clings, like a desperate shipwrecked sailor, to the “b.” When he says the word “brostitute” people think he’s Sicilian, otherwise it’s kind of a mess. He’s lived in Rome for four years, but he doesn’t have a residency permit. He works as an assistant pizza maker, hoping he’ll soon be promoted to pizza maker and earn a little more.

  Saber has asked me to talk to him in Italian. “Because I communicate in Arabic, and work and live with Arabs, I forget I’m in Italy!” he says, laughing. He is constantly talking about girls and soccer. His great dream is to become a famous soccer player. Next to the bed, on the left, is a poster of Paolo Maldini. Saber is a fan of Milan. I, like many Sicilians, root for Juve. Luckily I don’t have to hide this passion. I’m not in the least worried: there are plenty of Juventus fans among the immigrants.

  Soccer is not Saber’s only passion. The other is called Simona Barberini. Next to the bed he has a small photograph of her cut out of a magazine. Before he goes to sleep he gives her a good-night kiss, and when he wakes he opens his eyes to her smiling face.

  “You see how beautiful Simona is? Someday she’ll be mine.”

  “Be careful, too much dreaming can be dangerous.”

  “Issa, all I need is a minute to win her over. You’ve never seen me at work. When I enter the field there’s no room for the competition.”

  “How will you get to her?”

  “No broblem. She’ll come to me.”

  Saber explains his theory, letting me in on a few things I didn’t know about Simona Barberini. This beautiful Italian girl falls in love easily with rich and famous athletes. Also, she had a love affair with an Arab emir a few years ago. So she wouldn’t have any prejudices against Arabs and Muslims. Truthfully, there has to be a difference (a great big difference) between an emir and an illegal Egyptian immigrant. But Saber doesn’t bother much with this detail, because he has worked out a plan that anticipates four phases. First: become a legal immigrant. Second: break in as a soccer player, preferably for Milan, but the important thing is to play in Series A. Third: get on TV a lot, in order to attract attention, ideally as a regular guest on some famous soccer talk show. The ultimate would be to get a part in a comedy with Christian De Sica. Fourth: win the heart of Simona Barberini.

  A perfect plan, no denying it, except for one small observation: wouldn’t it be useful to devote some attention to the pronunciation of Italian? Is there no hope of recovering that damn “p”? But I prefer not to be critical—I don’t want to ruin the magic.

  Our room resembles a warehouse. And this is because of Ibrahima, the Senegalese. His big bags of counterfeit goods are scattered here and there, under the beds and on top of the closet. If the police turned up, we’d all end up at the precinct.

  Ibrahima has been in Italy for fifteen years; he lived in the north for a long time, before settling in the Eternal City. He has no sympathy for the Lombards, but he can’t rid his speech of their slang and their locutions. He’s thirty but looks older. He belongs to that category of young men who seem in a hurry to get old. Young men let themselves go physically when they lose interest in courting the opposite sex, as happens frequently to those who are married. This I read in some magazine—another piece of intellectual bullshit!

  He has five children, who are with his wife, in Dakar. He was married when he was still a teenager; in Africa marrying early has a long tradition. Proudly, he shows me a photograph of his oldest son, who’s now in high school and in a couple of years will go to the university. Ibrahima’s dream is for him to be a doctor. But dreams are never free, you have to pay to fulfill them. He supports his family, thanks to the remittances he sends—two hundred euros every month. He’s a peddler of counterfeit goods, like the majority of his countrymen, running a thousand risks every day. He hates the local police and the customs police. Luckily he doesn’t know that my father, my real father, is a cop in Mazara del Vallo.

  “Brother, the cops are pieces of shit. They break your balls
every day. They treat us worse than thieves.”

  “Selling counterfeit goods is illegal.”

  “So, what the hell! We buy and sell, where’s the harm? It’s called commerce.”

  “But it’s against the law.”

  “Brother, the market and the sidewalks belong to the people.”

  “No, you’re wrong. They belong to the city.”

  “Come off it!”

  I immediately regret having acted the moralist. I could have spared him these fucking lessons on legality. The law is always on the side of the strong and the rich. I mustn’t forget I’m from Sicily. There’s quite a difference between those who can afford to pay an experienced lawyer and those who have to make do with some greenhorn chit. Like hell are we all equal before the law!

  I have to admit that I’ve always admired the foreign street peddlers like Ibrahima. They are true anarchists, revolutionaries in the field of commerce. They don’t give a damn about licenses or taxes; they do everything openly. The market should be open to all, it’s a place of meeting and exchange. I don’t understand why the city governments give the peddlers such a hard time. I recall the Francesco Rosi film I Magliari, with Renato Salvatori and the great Alberto Sordi. The story is set in Germany in the fifties and recounts the adventures of a group of illegal, crooked fabric merchants, in other words, Italian street peddlers.

  The third tenant I’ve socialized with in the past few days is the Moroccan, Mohammed. He’s forty-five and has been in Italy since 1988; until two years ago he lived in Rome with his wife and two children. They were evicted, so he decided to send the family home to Morocco, and he rented a bed. Mohammed feels this situation as an injustice; he doesn’t think he deserves it, since he has always been an honest worker. He’s also slightly depressed because he hasn’t received his new residency permit. He’s a carpenter, a dangerous job that requires intense concentration.