by Faïza Guène
That was when I started having flashbacks to Eid el-Kebir. Now I get it, I thought, they’re going to slit my throat!
I had already been experiencing night terrors, given all my grandmother’s tales about the men from the east of the country slitting the throats of village babies, and my mother had been having a dreadful time calming me down afterwards….
My turn has come, I thought. Maybe there’s a shortage of sheep in the region, so they’ve dressed me in white to make me look like a lamb, and one of my uncles, the one who never smiles, will sharpen his big knife against the stone stairs, and then, schlack!, he’ll slit my throat just like that!
Shortly afterwards, we heard the women making their youyous. Then the men pinned me down by the arms and legs. I put up a bit of struggle, although not much of one, looking back on it.
The sheikh with his small round glasses had smiled as he stroked my head, temporily reassuring me. Next, he took out his shiny scissors and cleaned them. Why are they doing this to me? I remember thinking. I haven’t done anything wrong today! I didn’t even wet my bed! It’s not fair!
When I felt the sheikh’s dry hands, it all became clear. I started crying and looking to Big Baba for support, but he did nothing to help.
‘Don’t cry, don’t cry…’ was all he could say. Same as always.
If you’d given me the choice there and then, I’d have opted to have my throat slit. Now that I’m an adult, and with the benefit of hindsight, I’m glad to have got rid of that thing.
My mother was making eyes at my father from a distance and miming the action she required of him: ‘Pick up the foreskin! Pick it up, Abdelkader!’
My father rolled his eyes at what he deemed an idiotic request, but he still bent down with a sigh to pick up my foreskin from the rug and carry it over to my mother.
‘This is insane! You need treatment!’
Maman placed this peculiar trophy in a paper handkerchief.
I was given special treatment for several days. I had been brave and it was as if I finally deserved respect.
I regaled Ismaël, my younger cousin, with my epic story. I could read the fear in his eyes, and it made me feel strong and important.
A beautiful winter light filled the room in the clinic. We could now see the whole truth of Liliane’s face.
Miloud managed to hold back his laughter, but he couldn’t stop himself from whispering in my ear, ‘She looks like a white Mike Tyson!’
Liliane seemed dissatisfied, and not even the triangular smiles of Doctor El Koubi, hovering behind her like a small demon in the mirror, could convince her that the operation had been a success.
I had forgotten to bring my mobile with me. Not that anyone ever rang it.
Once we were back at Liliane’s apartment, I was stopped in my tracks by the display of ‘17 Missed Calls’. I felt as if the Red Army Choir were inside my chest.
My voicemail chopped up every syllable in its distinctive voice, while declaring: Un-worth-y son, you’re in for a do-zen mes-sag-es from your hys-ter-i-cal mo-ther, good luck!
‘You’ve seen it? You’ve seen it, the newspaper?’ began the first message. ‘Mina read the whole thing out loud to me! Yééé! Ya Rabi! H’choumaaaaaa! Dig my grave now! Bury me alive! In a hole, somewhere in the garden!! Hide my face! Cover me with earth! I’m already covered with shame!’
A voicemail-Greek-tragedy mash-up. All that was missing was: ‘Call me back, lots of love – it’s Phaedra, by the way.’
‘So I’ve suffered all my life to endure this?’ went Maman’s second message. ‘Why did I come to this ungrateful country? Why did I follow a countryman from the West I didn’t even know? Do you realise how beautiful I was as a young woman? I could have married the Algerian Minister for Gas and Petroleum! I could have married a prince! Instead of which, I married a cobbler! A cobbler who nailed me to France! He nailed me here, just like he nailed his shoes! And now I’ve been humiliated by the monster I gave birth to! She talks about marriage! We didn’t force her to do anything! He was a boy from a good family! She agreed, and then she changed her mind from one day to the next! No one held a knife to her throat! And the photo! Have you seen it?! She’s cut her hair! She looks like a boy! Tffffou!’
I’ll spare you the third, fourth and fifth messages, which were variations on a theme.
The sixth doesn’t count (two minutes twenty-eight of sobbing).
The seventh and eighth were overly violent and not adapted for modern civilisation.
The ninth message got my undivided attention:
‘It’s my fault. I’ve ruined everything. I didn’t want my children to be good people, I wanted my children to be perfect! I expected too much of them! Too much!’
Self-doubt. For the first time! If I’d been my mother, I’d have said ‘H’marmette’. Given the singular rarity of this event, her message didn’t just mark one donkey dying, but the entire species disappearing for good.
To-save-press-one instructed the mocking voicemail, and of course I pressed one (unlike the other messages which I deleted by pressing two).
To start your life ov-er and be-gin ag-ain from ze-ro, press four, is what I’d like to have heard the cold automated voice saying. Like a fool, I’d have pressed four, only to hear the same voice laughing: Huh huh huh, id-i-ot, no-bo-dy can e-ver be-gin ag-ain from ze-ro, not ev-en the A-ra-bs who in-ven-te-d it, as your Big Ba-ba would say…
My mother had said ‘too much, too much’ as if she were suffocating.
Too much suffering? Too much love? Too many rules?
Not that I’m convinced too many rules leads to breaking them. If they’re fair, there could be a heap of rules for everything under the sun and it wouldn’t bother anyone.
It’s the excess of love I find frightening.
‘El kebda, el kebda.’ This display of guts and intestines is damaging. It comes with impossible demands and culminates in a despotic regime. The upshot? A woman in her thirties with sorrowful eyes, reduced to skin and bones. And there’s the heart of the matter: a lack of flesh arising from a lack of love. A woman who feels unrecognised and forsaken, making front page headlines to tell the whole world what she couldn’t say to her own mother and father, despite their love and good intentions.
But good intentions aren’t always enough. Some things need saying.
I don’t know why, but I thought of little Asma in my Year 7 class, with her multi-coloured scunchies. Did she too have a mother so crushing she had developed asthma?
Mario interrupted me while my ear was still glued to my mobile. I had my back to him and he couldn’t see that I was otherwise engaged, or he would never have disturbed me. He was too qualified for that, too squeaky clean. Someone had disinfected him at birth. He’d been bottlefed bleach as a baby.
‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘I’ve prepared rhubarb brioches and tea for you.’ He might as well have said: Monsieur, I’ve prepared some solace for you.
Yes, I seek solace in food. And the more of it, the better. If I didn’t have books as a source of consolation, I’d already look like the obese saddo who stalks my nightmares.
When I called my mother back, I’d barely said ‘Hallo?’ before she started crying and gasping for air.
‘Maman, calm down, catch your breath, think of your blood pressure!’ I shouted into my mobile.
‘Even back in the bled, they know!’ she wailed, repeating the contents of her eleventh message. ‘The whole family has heard about it! It’s all over for me back there! I should rip up my passport right away! I’ll never dare set foot in Algeria again! You can hide the truth, you can hide it for a long time, but the day it gets out it’s big and it’s bare!’
I asked to speak to Mina, on the basis that she’d adopt a calmer approach.
And yes, Mina was calm, serene even, as she said to me: ‘If she was in front of me, I’d lynch her.’
The Bud that
Destroys the Tree
The mystery has been solved. The famous Bernard T., to w
hom Dounia dedicated her autobiography, is none other than the former interior minister, Bernard Tartois. The rumours were doing the rounds before it was finally confirmed: they’re an item. A pundit spilled the beans on the radio yesterday morning.
I bet Dounia’s happy.
And I bet my mother now needs a new and long prescription.
Thank goodness she was still on a hundred percent. All medical expenses covered. What a blessing!
Tartois, from what I remember, was the sensation of the last government and the darling of the media. He was forever being featured on the glossy covers of Gala, Paris-Match and co. In the summer, there would be photos of him relaxing on the beach in his swim shorts.
His looks gave him a head start. Compared to other ministers at the time, he was Brad Pitt. I’m thinking of Regis Endeleau, for example, the former minister for foreign affairs, who was gangly and with the ruddy complexion of a newborn.
Tartois is the kind of guy who drools while speaking. When you watch him, the first thing you notice is his secretion problem.
Every time I landed on him during a televised political debate, I had to stop myself from throwing up. I couldn’t help staring at his drool-filled mouth. I imagined him forgetting to swallow it one day, and spitting foam instead.
My sister Dounia was in a relationship with Bernard Tartois… Holy shit! Why?
My thoughts returned to my sobbing and wailing mother. I listened again to her message, which I’d carefully saved – even after listening to it thousands of times, it still had the same effect on me.
I decided to text my sister: Bernard Tartois. Holy shit! Why?
I’d gone into Miloud-mode, writing exactly what I thought. No tact, no pity. For once, it felt good to part ways with my politeness. She replied within the minute.
He makes me happy.
Our parents did their best to make you happy, Dounia, but that was never enough for you. And now you expect me to believe this big spittle-drooler-of-a-Tartois fills you with joy?
Tell me the truth, the one that hurts, big and bare, as Maman would say. Go on, admit it, given your unfettered ambition! You figured a former minister could do you no harm, didn’t you, what with all the perks and his fat address book? Be honest, you enjoy that reflection of success. You love what you represent in the eyes of those people: the courageous daughter of immigrants, who started out with nothing and is now such a success story.
As for your book, the least I can say is you’ve bled the lexical battlefield dry. I highlighted in yellow all the times you used words such as fighting… beaten… combat… struggle… battle… Like any teacher worth their salt, I was this close to writing ‘superflous’ in red pen in the margins.
And when I think how I used to admire your gutsiness….
The truth is, you’re not strong. Quite the opposite. You’re weak. You’re the weakest out of all of us.
‘I wasn’t made to be submissive’, you write on page 47.
Well, we’re all submissive, whether we like it or not. There are those who submit to God, with total and visible submission. And there are those who do so in spite of themselves, submitting to the laws of the financial markets, to the dictates of fashion, or to being loved.
You have become a rare kind of submissive, Dounia, in spite of yourself. The kind of submissive who thinks they’re a rebel. And who seeks out other submissives to rescue.
It reminds me of a joke our grandfather, Sidi Ahmed Chennoun, used to tell, the one about the dromedary who mocks the dromedary in front for having a hump.
So yes, I’ve read your book, and it was dross. Badly written and pretentious. If you ask me, you’re emulating Tartois the gobster: you spend your time spitting.
You spit on your parents, on Muslims, on Arabs, on marriage, on traditions, on yourself.
You spit on everything that makes you who you are.
You are the bud that destroys the trunk.
At the end of the book, you thank the Republic for inculcating you with its values. You claim that it nourished you. Well, judging by the results, it offered scant sustenance. And you reproach Maman for force-feeding you….
Your lack of gratitude disgusts me. The only word that comes to mind is: ‘Tffffou!’
Despite the rift between the two of you, Maman loves you more than the Republic, and all the Tartois apparatchiks it produces, ever will.
Mehdi Mazouani
At school, aside from a few isolated incidents, I was making headway with my tough soviet line. My avatar of a heartless Vladimir, raised in the tundra by a pack of wolves, was proving a strong ally. Especially with my Year 9s.
I had finally met the notorious Mehdi Mazouani. He hadn’t shown his face at school since the beginning of term.
Then the deputy head, Monsieur Diaz, pinned a message on the noticeboard: ‘Mehdi Mazouani will be rejoining us at the end of October. Champagne.’
It didn’t take me long to discover the reason for his sarcasm.
I asked Diaz where this student had been for the past two months.
‘Look, his father’s… one of a kind… so he sent his son back to the old country to tighten a few loose screws. Those are his words.’
At 15 and a half, Mehdi Mazouani is the oldest and tallest in his year group. When he walked into my class for the first time, he had a defiant look in his eye, a cigarette wedged behind one ear and the beginnings of a beard.
He sat at the back of the class, dumped his backpack on the table and started tagging with Tippex.
If you analyse where students choose to sit in class it can lead to some highly deterministic conclusions. At one level, they’re already choosing their standing in the world.
Luckily, there are always exceptions to the rule.
I asked the other students to recap what we’d studied so far. As usual, Sarah Zerdad, one of the front row faithfuls (and the big sister of Asma, the little asthmatic girl in my Year 7 class) was the first to raise her hand.
‘We looked at how to construct an argument, sir!’
‘Yes! And can you explain what an argument is?’
‘An argument means explaining and giving evidence to support an idea…’
‘Excellent, Sarah!’
Mehdi Mazouani raised his eyebrows without bothering to glance up from his Tippex work of art.
As long as he doesn’t disturb my lesson, I thought, but realised how cowardly I was being. So I went for it.
‘Mehdi, we’re re-capping on the lessons for your benefit. Please sit appropriately, put your bag on the floor and take off your jacket!’
He did as he was told, without batting an eyelid.
Once he was sitting properly, he broke into a sneer. ‘Like, do I even givva-shit? This is bare long, innit.’
Armoured vehicle. Tank. Armoured vehicle.
‘Kindly change your tone of voice when speaking to me.’
‘Why? Who even are you man? What’s your life to me, wesh? You aint my dad, innit, so don’t talk to me, yeah.’
‘I’m your French teacher and you’re to speak to me with respect, is that clear? To start with, you should be addressing me as ‘Sir’!’
‘Or what? You think I’m scared of you? Come outta my way, man, like it’s not so deep.’
‘If you continue like that, I’ll have to report you to the Head.’
‘Go on then! These roolz are wack anyway, innit? Like ’low it, man, I swear. Do I even givva-shit?’
He was making chewing-gum out of the words ‘givva-shit’.
‘Don’t bust my balls, wesh. I’m here already, innit. Tfffff. Who are yoouuu, fam?! Raaaah, I swear, is this guy for real?’
Immodium. Immodium. Immodium.
I’d have given anything for a talented film director to intervene.
Cut! CUT! We’ll do a retake, okay! This isn’t working, kiddos, let’s try again! Mourad, sweetie, I didn’t believe in you! Stand your ground, be authoritative! We need to sense you holding it together – you were too fragile there, love
y… Right, let’s go again, and this time show us your tough side. All right, poppet? You’ve got to be a wall, I want a wall in front of me! That’s the idea! Think Berlin Wall, think breeze-blocks, think bricks and mortar, okay? Mehdi, darling, perfect, don’t change a thing, so raw, the tough kid with no scruples… genius! Do exactly the same again, I love the emotion you’re giving it! Make-up, can we powder a few faces before they start going shiny! Thank you! Right! Can someone get me a coffee, for fuck’s sake?! I’ve been asking for the past hour! Where did that intern go…? What’s his name again? Amadou? Amadi? Kid like that should jump at an opportunity like this. All right, everyone ready? Let’s go! Lights… Camera… Action!
But Mehdi carried on tagging his backpack with his wretched Tippex tube that was at the end of its life, squeezing it every which way to extract the final drops.
While the other students were enjoying the show, I was picturing them turning their thumbs down to signal I should be put to death.
‘You’ll stay behind at the end of class, Mehdi, I’d like a word with you in private.’
‘Yeah, yeah… whatevva… like do I even givva-shit?’
Sarah’s eyes, big and shiny as two moons, met mine. In them, I read the despair of the good student. I recognised her exasperation at having-it-up-to-here. My own eyes were filled with that feeling too, at the same age.
I tried to finish off my lesson as best I could by ignoring Mehdi’s multiple provocations.
Aladji, one of the jokers in the middle rows, read out a text about a sailing resort. He said ‘yacked’ instead of ‘yacht’, which got a laugh from the five intellects in the class.
When the bell finally rang, it boomed inside my ribcage in Dolby surround sound.
The students filed out of the classroom in clusters of twos and threes.