Tahar Ben Jelloun - A Palace in the Old Village

At the auto plant, the French and Portuguese workers welcomed the day when they could finally enjoy their leisure time, take trips, putter around the house and garden, read, even work on their own projects. They made plans, organised their lives as “young retirees.” As Marcel said: At sixty years we’re barely two-thirds of the way through our lives, so why bury ourselves? Life is for living!

Marcel had arrived in France right after the war; he must have been all of ten years old. A bon vivant, a champion drinker and talker, he was the scourge of the shop foremen. Of Polish birth, a Jew and an atheist, he sympathised with the Palestinian cause and didn’t understand why the Arab states were doing nothing for their brothers in the occupied territories. When Mohammed, who grieved over the Palestinians’ fate, said he couldn’t figure out politics at all, Marcel offered to teach him, but Mohammed wouldn’t budge; even thousands of miles from his village, he still feared the Makhzen. It was in France that he heard about human rights for the first time and learned as well that in his own country men died under torture or rotted in prison without benefit of trial. Marcel kept him up-to-date, telling him, Your country is marvellous, but it’s in the hands of some unsavory characters: the Moroccan police were trained by the French, who taught them how to torture, but the Moroccan system is based on fear, and even you are afraid. I understand you: you’re scared of being arrested when you go back home. It’s the same thing in Algeria, Tunisia — as soon as you protest against the politics of repression you’re done for and they pick you up at the border; that’s why immigrants don’t move around much. You, you keep quiet, and I know that what goes on in your country pains you.

Mohammed remembered the Koranic school and drifted off in distant memories of days when everything was simple, when he didn’t even know there were roads, tall buildings, lampposts illuminating streets where no one lived. The world was as big as his village. He had trouble imagining anywhere else. One’s native land always leaves a bitter aftertaste. Mohammed’s country was dry, bare; it had nothing, and this nothing had followed him even to France. This nothing was important. He had no choice: he couldn’t exchange it for another nothing that was perhaps a little more colourful, better equipped. He made do, with patience and resignation. In the end he’d stopped wondering about all that. What the police got up to in their far-off stations, well, he couldn’t imagine, and his village was light-years away from the city.

Did he want to live like the French? He considered his fellow workers at the plant and didn’t envy their lot. Each to his own life and way of life. He didn’t criticise them but was puzzled by how they treated their parents and children. The spirit of family, as he saw it, was no longer honoured in France. This slippage shocked him. He just couldn’t understand why girls smoked and drank in front of their parents and went out at night with boys. And why did huge billboards display half-naked women to sell perfumes or cars? Most of all, he was afraid for his own family and talked this over with his pals. They sighed, raising their arms to heaven in resignation. What could you do?

One Sunday he invited Marcel home to dinner. It was a holiday, and Mohammed told him, Bring your wife but no wine! Marcel agreed to skip his wine and merrily stuffed himself with the good things fixed by Mohammed’s wife. Marcel liked to tell his friend, Time, it’s us. It isn’t the watch face, no. It’s you who make time: when you close your eyes you’re in the past; when you close them again you project yourself into the future; when you decide to open them it’s no mystery that you’re in the present, the one that’s as thin as cigarette paper. You follow me?

Before going home to their families after their weekend French lessons, some of the plant workers went to see women in trailers and waited their turn shamefacedly. Mohammed had always refused this kind of distraction. He was afraid of diseases and of what his friends and neighbours might say. Something like a curtain of fog half veiled one late-afternoon memory, on a Sunday when boredom had played out in what Mohammed considered a bestial instinct. He’d been dragged along by an acquaintance whose name he had forgotten and who told him, Listen, if you don’t empty your balls now and then, it goes up to your brain and you go blind. Another time he said, Even our religion allows us to empty our balls: you simply write out a document and tear it up afterward. You know, the marriage for pleasure. You get married long enough to fornicate, then you divorce, and you’re all square with God and morality.* Mohammed had chuckled to himself and gone off with his chatty companion.

That Sunday there was hardly any line in front of Suzy’s small apartment. A bit fat, as vulgar as they come, Suzy seemed to have made an effort to exaggerate her appearance, as if that were part of whoring, but she was so nice, so human, that everyone overlooked her heavily rouged cheeks, her nauseating perfume, and the alcohol. Her eyes were never still but always vacant; she was there and elsewhere. She knew her work was unusual, and she too was looking forward to retirement because she’d had it with spreading her legs and squeezing immigrant balls. But she liked the men, even found their shyness and awkwardness touching, she said.

Mohammed’s guide explained the deal precisely. You go in, you smile at her (she likes men who smile), and you put your hundred francs in a bowl on the night table. There are licorice and mint candies in the bowl — the mint’s my favorite — to make your breath sweet, so you take one, and you also take a very thin sheath called a rubber that protects you from diseases and other complications; then you lie down on the bed and let her get to work: she’s quick, expert, efficient, and she has a fantastic technique to clean out your balls in a few minutes. You’ll see — you’ll feel a lot better. If you don’t know how to put on the rubber, she’ll take care of it, don’t worry, and when it’s over, hey, you’ll thank your pal!

The fog thickened; Mohammed hung his head, trying to chase away those images from so long ago. Still, he did remember that Suzy had been very kind to him. He’d never gone back, though.

He associated this memory with a more unpleasant one, a humiliating experience. The medical officer at the factory, Dr. Garcia, had been blunt with him when he’d reached fifty: Mohammed, you get up often at night to take a leak? Then you must have prostate problems. We’ll have to have a look at that.

At the appointment, the doctor told him to remove his trousers and underpants and to bend over as if he were praying. Mohammed just stood there, shaking his head. Growing impatient, the doctor pretended to suddenly understand, then said, I know, it isn’t easy, embarrassment and shame, hchouma . I know all about it. But I must examine you, and I can’t do it long-distance. Just trust me: it takes thirty seconds, then it’s over, doesn’t even hurt. Mohammed would have liked to tell him that it wasn’t a question of physical pain, no, but that he’d never shown his rear end to anyone. After a moment, Mohammed closed his eyes, quickly pulled down his trousers and underpants, and bent over. The doctor asked him to bend a little more. Raging inside, Mohammed did so. The doctor performed a rectal exam. Fine, your prostate’s a normal size for your age, but we’ll have to keep an eye on it, right, Mohammed? Let’s have you back here in one year.

When he left, Mohammed walked along staring at the ground. He was angry at himself and sorry he hadn’t asked Dr. Garcia to anaesthetise him for the exam. And he didn’t like the doctor telling him to bend over as if he were praying. He couldn’t bear it that a finger had probed his anus. He never mentioned the visit to anyone and from then on ignored his prostate completely.