Tahar Ben Jelloun - A Palace in the Old Village

Rahma: now there was a strong, capable, determined woman. When the couple were Mohammed’s neighbours, people used to say she beat her husband, but it was hard to believe, since in their milieu it was usually the other way round, and Ammar wasn’t the kind to complain and admit to any mistreatment by his wife. Although his pals suspected something, they didn’t dare broach the subject with him, but they could see he was unhappy, listless, in poor shape. Rahma was the one who handled everything; Ammar came home from the factory, ate, and wasn’t allowed to spend the family’s money in bars. She always took charge of his earnings, letting him have only enough to go to the café now and then. Whenever he dared protest, she’d shut herself up with him in their bedroom and whack him with the children’s big Larousse dictionary, and she must have had to buy them a new one, because the first one was a wreck. Physically she was stronger than Ammar, a peasant woman unfazed by anything, fearless, sure of herself, forging ahead, sweeping everything from her path. Ammar had thought about a divorce, but it was complicated, and besides, it just wasn’t done in his tribe — Rahma was a distant cousin. No one would have believed him if he’d admitted she beat him, so he kept quiet, submitted, and like all weaklings, ran away instead of standing his ground. He’d thought to get back at her by leaving some money on the kitchen table and taking off, never imagining she would follow him to foil his plan.

Smiling at the idea of the henpecked husband, Mohammed began to walk along, staring idly at the sidewalk, with his fists clenched in his pockets, as if following a doctor’s orders to get some exercise. When he thought about his children, he had the feeling he’d lost them. It was more than a feeling: a certainty, a definite certainty. It was as if he’d been pitched into a void, tipped into nothingness like a sack of trash. A sack full of useless junk. There was a dead rat in the sack, rotting away with a dreadful stench. I’m the sack and the rat, Mohammed told himself. I’m the rubble and the rusting iron. I’m the animal no one loves. He saw himself tossed onto a garbage dump, tumbling down its side with broken bits of things, old wires, debris, dust, and suddenly — oblivion. He no longer exists. No one thinks of him or wants to see him. He’s at the end of the long road: it’s over. None of his children has come to reclaim him from the dump. Then the rat woke up and scratched Mohammed’s leg, making him jump: it was a plant he’d just brushed by.

MOHAMMED’S SON MOURAD had a good position in a department store and had married Maria, a Spanish woman, born like him in France but whose parents had gone back home to Seville. Mourad was athletic. He could have been a professional soccer player, but he had a heart murmur, so he’d studied accounting and continued to play several sports. His greatest desire: to escape his suburban neighbourhood and everyone in it to go live in Paris. He was fond of his parents but loved his freedom more, the independence he’d won by working even while he was still in school. He kissed his father’s hand and his mother’s forehead, signs of respect but not submission. As soon as he had begun earning money, Mourad had decided to give some of it to his parents, for which his father had thanked him, saying that the money would go toward the construction of the house. What house? Mohammed had only gestured vaguely and turned away without another word.

After his marriage, Mourad had stopped spending his vacation back in the village, preferring his in-laws’ house in the mountains of the Alpujarras. He’d often wondered why the Spanish were more successful than Moroccans, and his wife had come up with an answer that shocked him: it was because of religion, because of Islam! Outraged, Mourad reacted as if he were an imam — although he himself never observed a single Muslim ritual. When Maria tried to clarify what she meant and described how Francoism had used the Catholic Church to cling to power, Mourad was hurt. Islam could not be a force for backwardness! Maria carefully explained that no religion on earth encouraged change and modernity, but Mourad had actually been thinking about his father, for whom Islam was more than a religion: it was a code of ethics, a culture, an identity. What would my father be without Islam? Mourad wondered. A lost man. He finds religion soothing. He loves his rituals; they bring him a peaceful sense of well-being.

One day Mourad’s father-in-law took him to visit the palace and gardens of the Alhambra in Granada, where the young man was fascinated by the beauty of Arab architecture. It was your ancestors, said his father-in-law, who built these magnificent things. That was a long, long time ago. What a lovely civilisation, and there’s nothing left of it. Luckily, we’re here to preserve these treasures.

Mourad was offended, yet unable to contradict his father-in-law. Facts were facts. What could he possibly say?

Mohammed no longer saw his eldest girl, Jamila, who had defied her parents and married an Italian. So painful had it been for him to see a non-Muslim enter the family that he’d behaved as if she were no longer his daughter. At first he’d tried to reason with her, but Jamila was in love, refused to discuss anything, and had tantrums the like of which he’d never seen before. It’s my life, not yours! You’re not going to keep me from living simply because we’re Muslims! And just what kind of a religion is it that lets men marry Christian or Jewish women but won’t let its women do the same with men? Well? You think I’ll be happier with some countrified jerk, one of those lousy peasants who’ll lock me up while he goes out to get drunk with his pals? No thanks, Papa, wake up: I decide how to live my life, so you can give me your blessing if you want, and if you don’t approve, there’s nothing I can do about such garbage! You’re sick — you need to get help!

Mohammed had bowed his head and walked away with tears in his eyes. Trying to comfort him, his wife told him it would all blow over, and Jamila would soon come back home. Mohammed kept repeating, almost in a daze, But what’s this being in love? What is this thing that’s collapsing on me like a ruined house and breaking my back? Were we, you and I, in love? I don’t know what that means, and you know how hard it is for me to talk about those things. Love: we don’t discuss that; we see it at the movies, not in real life. Being in love! It means she’s gone. She has fallen to the ground. It’s like that business with Fatiha, who suddenly fell in with a man and never again set foot in the village, a man from the city, with money, and she left with him even though she knew he was married with five children. No, if my daughter follows this stranger of hers, she’s not coming back to us again — it’s over, it’s him or us, it’s him or her father. I don’t want to see her anymore; she’s no longer my daughter. I’ll erase her from the family register, it’s finished. A daughter I spoiled, giving her everything she wanted, brings to my house a Christian who never goes to the barber and who asks for my blessing? It’s impossible, out of the question. I’ll do what Louardi did: he refused to sanction the marriage of his daughter to a non-Muslim and he was right — a year later she came home: It’s not working — we’re different, too different.

When Mohammed’s wife reminded him that Mourad had married a Christian woman, he shouted angrily, But he’s a man, the man runs the family, and that Christian woman will convert to our religion in the end. No Christian man has ever sincerely converted to Islam to marry a Muslim woman! They pretend, change their name, recite the shahada to profess their new faith — and think no more about it.* No: it’s the man who decides, not the woman.