Tahar Ben Jelloun - A Palace in the Old Village

Lalla França pays well, but you mustn’t think that on Sunday people will invite you home for dinner — that, no, never, because over there each person is in his house, the door is closed, the windows too, but that’s how it is, period! That’s the way they live: they’ll never come bothering you, knocking on your door to ask for some salt or oil, no; that’s not done. Everyone stays home and each to his own. There’s not much hospitality over there, whereas hospitality is part of our way of life, one of our strengths, and sometimes we overdo it. Our houses are open to strangers — that’s perfectly normal; it’s our morality, our religion, which is why we have such trouble understanding why other people don’t behave as we do.

You’ll see, when you arrive you’ll be lost. It’s nothing like our countryside, nothing: climate, faces, landscapes, all different. You’d best get ready to enter a completely unknown world, as if you were in a dream in which we’re no longer ourselves. Over there, you’ll have free medicines and medical care, not like back home where there isn’t even a nurse looking in on you from time to time — of course when I say “free,” that means you cough up part of your paycheck every month, we all do, it’s like we say back home: “Hand in hand and God’s hand above all others.” That’s how the French understand solidarity, and if I weren’t afraid of asking for trouble, I’d say they’re almost Muslims.

And finally, remember: to avoid trouble, don’t mess with politics, stay out of the way, and never intervene in a fight. Respect, respect. They lump Tunisians, Moroccans, and Algerians together, to them we’re all Arabs, plus they don’t distinguish between Arabs and Berbers, they know nothing about all that, so pay attention.* LaFrance will never be your country, that’s for sure! LaFrance is LaFrance, a country that’s rich but needs us just as we need it.

The train station was between the beach and the harbour, and children were crossing the tracks, making obscene gestures at the locomotives. Arriving in Tangier in the early morning, Mohammed felt ashamed to be discovering the sea so late in life — a calm sea of limpid blue, transformed into a living mirror by the first rays of the rising sun. Mohammed also felt delighted. No one had ever told him anything about the sea. He’d known that Agadir was a seaside town, but he’d never been there, and now he had time to walk on the sand and even taste salt water. He was twenty and had never dipped a finger into the sea. Behaving like a child, he played with the sand, dabbled in the water, splashed some on his face, in his hair. It was a lovely day. He bought a bottle of Coca from a passing vendor, drank it, then filled the bottle with seawater and took it with him, knowing he couldn’t drink it, keeping it as a souvenir, to remind him of this particular day when he discovered the sea, the entire sea. When his companions made fun of him, he laughed. How could they understand, especially when some of them hailed from Casablanca or Bouznika, a little city right on the Atlantic coast?

The crossing was long and rough, thanks to an east wind that came up around noon. In the Spanish port of Algeciras, Mohammed was struck by the number of policemen. They were suspicious and aggressive, circulating among the passengers with muzzled dogs at their sides. Occasionally they demanded that certain suitcases be opened, and dumped the contents carelessly on the ground. Finding nothing, they’d simply walk away laughing, saying things in which the word moros cropped up often.* Mohammed found Spain not much more modern looking than Morocco.

The train trip was interminable: sometimes the locomotive sped up; sometimes it stopped dead because of work on the tracks. Mohammed tried in vain to sleep. Walking up and down the corridor, he watched the trees, fields, and houses streaming past. He thought about what their guide had said and prepared himself to live in a country where, no matter what happened, he would be alone. He couldn’t digest the fact that he would not find the tribe waiting for him, the family, the native countryside that was a part of his body and whole being. He sensed that something was leaving him, that the farther the train went, the smaller his village shrank and would go on shrinking, until it disappeared. When he thought about his family, their image became blurred; he did not realise that he was passing from one time to another, one life to another. He was changing centuries, countries, customs. He felt as if his head were too small to deal with all that, and he paced like a caged animal. Too many new and unexpected things. Too many changes.

When the train stopped in the middle of some fields, he felt lost and thought back over his life, his small, orderly life, in which nothing special had happened. He’d seen his father and grandfather live that way, so it had been only natural for him to follow suit. He wasn’t the first of his tribe to emigrate, however. Gripped with anguish, he understood that he was becoming an MWA, a Moroccan worker abroad. In time he would become an MRA, a Moroccan resident abroad. Where was the difference? “Resident” sounded better. But the way people looked at you was the same.

Mohammed still remembered precise images from his arrival in France: walls so grey they were almost black; impassive faces; a dense throng walking quickly, saying nothing; the strange smell of dust and stale perfume. People of colour swept the streets and the corridors of the métro . There were rich people, and others apparently not as rich, but all of them had cars that looked almost new. Large advertisements displayed scantily clad women; others showed animals praising the quality of washing machines. Mohammed couldn’t figure out what cats and dogs had to do with that. After stepping in some dog shit, he’d suddenly noticed that dogs were everywhere in this country. Why? Back home a dog was obviously an intruder, an animal to be driven away with stones. If a dog or cat walked in front of him while he was at prayer, he felt obliged to start all over again. To a Muslim, an animal is a carrier of dangerous germs, something to be avoided, and anyway there are no dogs in paradise. So this was Lalla França and its strange promise!

Time had engulfed these people, and he found their mystery unfathomable. Where were all these men and women going? Why in such a hurry? Where were their children? Why so many dogs? Why didn’t they chat on the bus or in the métro ? They ignored one another, read books or newspapers, but absolutely would not talk. He watched them and wondered if they noticed him. No, why would anyone pay attention to him? Was he special in any way? He looked at his face reflected in the window of the métro car and smiled faintly. At the Saint-Lazare stop a huge woman, an African in colourful clothing, got on with her healthy, laughing baby in a stroller. The child was happy and so was she. Paying no mind to anyone else, she took the boy onto her lap and began breast-feeding him. She was right at home. The other passengers looked on goggle-eyed. The firm and massive breast almost covered the infant’s head! While the baby nursed, the mother talked to him as if she were alone under a tree back in her village. Mohammed envied her freedom. That woman was magnificent. Smiling and at ease. Mohammed began to grin. She looked up at him and said, Welcome to France!

How had she known he’d just arrived? It must have been obvious from his posture, from his worried expression. He helped her get the stroller off at her station and walked with her to the exit, where she thanked him with a pat on the back. She was strong; Mohammed was thrown off balance, and now he was lost too, without any idea where he was. He’d come out of the métro just to take a little look at the city, to begin making the country’s acquaintance. He had to get back on the line going toward Gennevilliers, in the northwestern suburbs of Paris. He studied the métro map and felt even more confused. When a young man with long hair asked him where he wanted to go, Mohammed showed him a slip of paper with some words on it. He’d thought it was the name of a street, but it was a special housing project for immigrant workers, and on a weekday the place was almost deserted. A middle-aged man walking with a cane asked him grumpily, What are you doing in this country? Look at me: an accident at work, and no money. Go home, at least back there you’ll be with your folks, your family, whereas here — no family, no wife, no mosque, nothing, work, work, and then the accident! A bad omen, thought Mohammed. The other man went on his way, balancing a big suitcase on one shoulder. A Frenchman showed Mohammed to his room; it was tiny, gloomy, with a low ceiling and walls so thin he could hear his neighbours breathing. The man said, Room 38. Here’s the key, and remember: no women, no trouble, buy a lock or you’ll get robbed. The toilet’s over there, so’s the shower. Okay, Mokhamad, welcome! Mohammed later learned that he called all the immigrants Mokhamad.