by Faïza Guène
‘Don’t forget to call me when you’ve read the book!’ she added.
I walked her to a taxi rank, where she stepped straight into a black Skoda at the front of the queue.
‘See you soon, li’l brother!’ she smiled, giving me her famous wink. She had reinstated a sort of complicity between us. It was like daytime drama on Dubai TV.
Blood ties, hey?
Back to School
Miloud and Liliane had made up.
Again.
They spent a week away from Paris to ‘re-connect’ and ‘check in’ on their relationship. A suite at the Royal Barrière in Deauville, some luxury treatments at the hotel spa and they were ready to start over – fresh as ’55, the year Liliane was born.
Since returning, they were like teenagers glued to one another. And Miloud had finally agreed to Liliane undergoing a gentle facelift, care of the reputable surgeon her girlfriends had been hotly recommending for months.
Out of curiosity, I typed ‘facelift’ into YouTube and landed on a gruesome video uploaded by a Spanish surgeon. He stretched his patient’s cheek so taut he could have used it as clingfilm to wrap his leftover tortilla.
He started cutting in a straight line using a pair of golden scissors. A strip of skin, two centimetres wide, fell to the tiled floor like a piece of tagliatelle al dente. Next, close to the ear, he stitched a hem worthy of a Sri Lankan seamstress. Everything was visible beneath the skin. The Spanish surgeon had scalped this poor woman as if he were a free-market Sioux chieftain.
In the background of the operating room, I Just Called To Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder was playing. Bleak.
I felt the same as when I walked past the horse butcher’s near our house, in Nice. There are some things you should never see.
That morning, I had risen before dawn. Mario was already up.
It doesn’t matter what time you wake, Mario is always up. I don’t think he ever sleeps. He’s a robot. No emotions, no signs of fatigue, no opinions. He glides, wafting about this outsize apartment like a ghost. There’s never a crease on his shirt. He never frowns. Or smiles. And you won’t hear him cough or sneeze.
It’s a mystery to me. Not even Liliane knows anything about him, and she’s been his boss for several years. She found it odd when I questioned her on the subject. Perhaps one isn’t supposed to show any interest in the lives of domestic staff?
I had been on the toilet for nearly an hour, praying for the Immodium to take effect. My head kept overheating and I was writhing like a worm. Or a deposed king struggling to leave his throne.
I couldn’t swallow any of the stylish breakfast that had been carefully prepared by Mario.
My thoughts turned to my mother. I missed her, perhaps for the first time since coming to Paris. A comforting word from her, a token of encouragement, anything would have been welcome.
Commuting to school meant travelling from Liliane’s, near the Arc de Triomphe, out to Montreuil in the banlieue. Using the journey planner on the RATP website, I’d mapped my route via public transport. I printed my itinerary, tucked it into my jeans pocket and tied the laces of my new shoes. They were brown suede moccasins by a famous Italian brand, a generous present from Liliane for my first term as a student teacher.
My first term as a student teacher… If I said those words one more time, I’d have to swallow the entire pack of Immodim.
And today was only the first day back for the teachers.
I dreaded to think what state I’d be in when it came to facing my students.
Things had got off to a rough start. At the end of August, I had attended an induction session care of Creteil education authority that was worthy of sponsorship by Prozac. Neglect hung in the air. I soon realised the transition would come as a rude shock: we were being asked to go cold turkey as we made the radical switch from student to teacher.
As in all good detective stories, there was a good cop and a bad cop. Good cop opened the proceedings, sweating magnesium, vitamin C and enthusiasm from every pore. ‘Many of you won’t have chosen to be here,’ he began cheerily. Next up was some baloney, in the vein of: We need you! This Uncle Sam, sent by the Department for Education, had a flair for faking joy. He was the kind of man who thinks all babies are beautiful. He also held that Creteil education authority was run with dynamism and passion. What can I say?
Bad cop, who kept his arms crossed throughout, stared at us for some time before glancing up at the strip-lighting and taking a deep breath.
‘Being a teacher is a form of bereavement,’ he declared, walking between the rows. ‘That’s right, bereavement. It means saying goodbye to your passion for literature, and mourning the loss of everything you’ve learned at university…’
As he glided between the chairs, he rattled off the list of what we’d have to give up. Then came the reassuring bit: we’d be attending a training day, once a week, at the university institute for teacher training (IUFM) while, back in our host school, we’d be mentored by a teacher from the relevant department.
What can I say?
If we were being so well supported, why was the session entitled How to give your first lesson programmed for November? Just asking.
As I prepared for my ‘bereavement’ job, the days kept passing and there was still no information about the start of term, so I decided to phone my school-to-be.
My voice quavered when I asked to speak with the head, Monsieur Desclains, who, by contrast, sounded laid back.
‘No cause for concern! It’ll all be fine,’ he kept saying.
At one point, he even laughed as if we were good friends. Ho ho ho, went his laugh. The laughter of men in positions of power is often ho ho ho. Take Father Christmas, for example, or the male bosses of top 40 companies listed on the French stock exchange, or any number of European heads of state.
The chattering classes, on the other hand, laugh with more of a ha ha ha, while marginalised communities go he he he.
He he he is definitely for minorities.
‘Ho ho ho! Feeling anxious is perfectly normal! You’ll enjoy yourself at our school, you’ll see. The team at Gustave-Courbet is very friendly!’
When he said ‘Gustave Courbet’ I thought of that painting again, The Origin of the World. It was beginning to stress me out. What if I pictured it every time someone said ‘Gustave Courbet’? Which, let’s face it, was bound to happen a lot this year. As for the woman in the painting, I’d heard on the news that they’d located her face. Perhaps one day they’d locate her underwear too.
‘I don’t know what classes I’ve been assigned yet…’
‘You’ll have Year 7s and Year 9s, Monsieur Chennoun.’
‘And what about the textbooks?’
‘Well, normally speaking, we lend you those. You’ll need to collect them from the library and learning resources centre.’
‘Fine. When?’
‘On the fourth of September.’
‘So, that’s on the first day of term, right?’
‘Ho ho ho! Absolutely right. The first day of term.’
He didn’t seem to think this was too late. Max relax.
In the end, I asked for details of the textbooks, which I bought in a bookshop, the Saint-Michel branch of Gibert Joseph.
Their titles? The Eye and the Quill. And the blockbusting, Ink in Bloom.
They must have found these in the Directory-of-Book-Titles-Rejected-at-the-Last-Minute.
Had that directory existed, its purpose would have been to index every author’s ill-advised book title ideas. People could dip into it when stuck for a title for a text book, or on the hunt for an election campaign slogan.
Sitting in the métro with my journey planner, I worried about a violent onset of diarrohea the moment I had to introduce myself to my colleagues.
I must have re-read the summons for the teachers’ INSET day 20 times. So I decided to take my mind off things by opening Dounia’s book, making sure to keep it hidden behind my document wallet.
It started with a q
uote: A touch of madness is almost always necessary for constructing a destiny. Marguerite Yourcenar. Under it, Dounia had written in my copy: ‘I’d have liked for mine to have been constructed out of serenity. I’ve missed you.’ On the next page, the book was dedicated to one Bernard T. T as in Tantalising. T as in Tell us Who You Are.
Chapter one began as follows: ‘My father was a cobbler, but I haven’t followed in his footsteps.’
I scanned the cover to check if Dounia hadn’t co-written her book with a clown. No, she appeared to be the sole author responsible for this lame play on words. I tried reading a few lines as we trundled through two, then three, métro stations, but I was in no mood to concentrate. So I put the book away, while still worrying about my first day at work being ruined by acute diarrohea. I’d discovered that it was a genuine phobia. And a serious one at that. It even had a name: laxophobia.
I had finally reached the right place. After the métro, a bus ride. After the bus ride, a ten-minute walk.
There was a gigantic sign in front of the building, bearing the name of the collège (which I couldn’t read because of the painting in my mind) and, hovering above the name, the logo for the departmental council of Seine-Saint-Denis. I buzzed at the gates which groaned on opening, like the review of a bad film.
Eight o’clock in the morning. Nobody around. Looks like I’m the first person here, I thought.
The main reception was deserted and I stared at the green lino, which was identical to the floor of the Neurovascular Unit at Nice University Hospital. It occurred to me that, right now, Big Baba would be eating his breakfast using his left hand; perhaps he’d spilled some coffee on its way to his mouth, or given up on buttering his toast.
I pictured him waking up, bleary-eyed, after nightmares filled with scary birdsong at dawn. Maybe it was just my nerves, but I felt a lump in my throat. Not that I cried, of course, because we all know that… Enough already.
Just then, in the distance, I spotted two strapping guys in tracksuits. One black, the other white. They were heading casually in my direction. The black guy whistled while the white one jangled his keyring. The sounds rang out in the empty reception area. They both had shaved heads, were tall and built like tanks. I remember thinking, I bet they’re the P.E. teachers.
‘Ha! On time?’ the black guy got in first. ‘So you’re the new teacher, right?!’
I grinned idiotically and muttered a ‘hello’.
‘Ho ho ho! We spoke on the phone! You must be Monsieur Chennoun?’ he said, with a firm handshake and a genuine smile. ‘I’m Monsieur Desclains, the head.’
‘Pleased to meet you’, I replied.
Next, after stuffing his keyring into his tracksuit pocket, it was the white guy’s turn to shake my hand: ‘Hello! Monsieur Diaz, deputy head.’
‘Nice to meet you. And I’m Monsieur Chennoun.’
‘Welcome!’
‘Thank you!’
In the middle of the reception area there was a table laid out with food: patisseries, orange juice and an enormous thermos of coffee.
‘Go for it!’ Diaz told me. ‘Be our guest. Get stuck in!’
‘Great!’ I said, calculating that neither the coffee nor the orange juice would help my laxophobia.
The head and his deputy started joking about an ugly Spanish teacher with curves in all the right places.
‘Her rear asset’s worth a fortune,’ Desclains joked to Diaz, as if I wasn’t there, ‘but her face is fit for bankruptcy.’ They burst out laughing, Desclains’s ho ho ho in harmony with Diaz’s ha ha ha. Talk about misogynistic banter, I didn’t know where to look.
My staffroom colleagues-to-be were arriving, one by one. They talked about their summer in Noirmoutier and compared notes on the progress of their offspring. I stood in one corner, chewing on a croissant, as overwhelmed as a timid son-in-law meeting his prospective family for the first time.
Three guys turned up together, looking like sales reps. Dark suits, pointy shoes and cheeks as smooth as the suave rally driver in that ad for electric razors. The oldest one had tightened his belt and hoisted his trousers well above his navel. A tribute to Jacques Chirac?
‘Hey, here comes the sports crew!’ someone called out.
If I’d got this right, the P.E. teachers were in suits and the head was in sportswear. Was I losing my grip? But the school term hadn’t officially begun yet, and I sensed that everything would fall back into place tomorrow.
My soon-to-be colleagues stared at me from a distance. From time to time, a slim woman with brown hair flashed me a sympathetic smile. She was wearing a navy suit with ballerina pumps and her hair was pulled into a chignon. She reminded me of the Air France airhostess who gave me a colouring activity pack when we flew from Paris to Algiers in 1994. I had been enthralled by her beauty and kindness, to the point of confiding in Big Baba, ‘I want to marry that lady!’
I remember it was only a few weeks before the hijacking of Air France flight 8969. My mother, who couldn’t believe her eyes, was glued to the television right up until the moment when the plane was stormed by the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN) in Marseille. As a small boy, I was fascinated to watch the elite special forces, with their balaclavas and weapons, enter the plane. The list of hostages who had been killed was growing. The journalists were counting the number of gunshots fired. I kept thinking about my airhostess; about her smile, about how kind she’d been, and about my colouring activity pack.
On the news, we could see our Corsican interior minister, Charles Pasqua, commenting preacher-style on the armed intervention. Air France flights to Algeria were suspended after that.
‘This time, it really is war,’ Big Baba had proclaimed.
My cute colleague, who reminded me of the Air France airhostess, left her group to come and join me.
‘Hi, I’m Hélène,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘English teacher!’
It was funny, the way she introduced herself according to subject. She could as easily have said: ‘Hi, I’m Hélène, European swimming champion.’
‘Hi! And I’m Mourad, French teacher!’
‘Aha!’ she smiled. ‘I knew it!
Turning to her group, she called out: ‘You see! I was right! I win!’
She smiled at me again: ‘It’s just a little game we play, every time there’s a new teacher.’
The game was to guess the subject taught by the fresh-off-the-boat kid.
‘Don’t stay on your own, come and join us!’ urged the winner, patting me on the shoulder.
I glided after Hélène as if I were Mario, while other groups of teachers were clustering around the continental breakfast.
‘Hey hey! She gives me moneeeey, when I’m in neeeed…’ sang the English teacher in tribute to Ray Charles, as she held out her hand to her three colleagues. They each parted with €5, whether in note-form or as coins. After winding up her rendition of I Got A Woman and stuffing her winnings into her jacket pocket, Hélène introduced me to the rest of the team.
‘So, this is Claude! History and Geography teacher! On his left, Caroline, Art teacher, and this is our friend Gérard, your fellow French teacher!’
‘You’ll see, it’s friendly here,’ said Caroline, who was small, blonde, barely older than me and wearing lots of colourful handmade jewellery. ‘It’s only my second year as well…’ I stared at the two bright red lines emphasizing her lack of lips.
Gérard, in his fifties, cradled his bag as if it were a baby. I tried not to home in on his salt-and-pepper hair, because it made me faintly sick. That combo of natural graying mixed in with the original hair colour was the stuff of my worst nightmares, the colour of the obese old saddo.
‘We’ll see how long you last…’ he said, looking me straight in the eye, no smile. Then he headed off to pour himself another cup of coffee.
The other three burst out laughing. He was clearly the group joker. The one who never missed a chance to make a snide remark as evidence of his brilliant mind.
>
Diaz clapped his hands four times to attract our attention.
‘Dear friends, I’m going to ask you to follow me, please. We’ll hold our meeting in the cafeteria.’
Instinctively, the teachers lined up in pairs. Professional conditioning. Next, we sat down at tables arranged in a U-shape, and Desclains handed everybody their personal timetable for the year.
‘We’ve done our best to satisfy everybody!’ he said, cocking an eyebrow.
I scanned mine. I would be working Tuesday to Friday. Mondays, my day of respite, would be reserved for my teacher training days.
‘Oh my! They’re not giving you an easy ride this year…’ Hélène whispered over my shoulder.
Next, Diaz passed each of us a small file containing headshots of the students in our classes. The teachers were like over-excited teenagers experiencing sudden hormone releases.
‘Fuck me!’ someone exclaimed, staring at the mugshots in front of him. ‘This can’t be true? What’ve I done to deserve this? Another year with Mehdi Mazouani?’ He pointed to one student’s photo. ‘D’you really want my suicide on your conscience?’
A few chuckles.
I checked the photos and names in front of me and noticed that Mehdi Mazouani, the boy apparently capable of driving a man to suicide, also appeared on my Year 9 class list.
The more I scrutinised the faces of the students I was about to teach, the more I realised how unattractive teenagers can look. Greasy skin, dubious hairstyles, vacant eyes. That’s how I looked at 14.
When it came to my turn to introduce myself, I didn’t suffer from instant and debilitating diarrohea. I listened to my fellow teachers. They talked about breaktime, about supervising this or that strategic area, about when the school nurse was on duty and about everybody contributing to the cost of the Senseo coffee pods for the staffroom coffee machine.