Tahar Ben Jelloun - A Palace in the Old Village

FOR THE FIRST TIME in his life abroad, Mohammed did not drive on and on (as he had put it) to get back home. He had already forgotten his ruined car and bought his train ticket but was in no hurry. Retirement meant time he now needed to occupy, to fill with projects. He spent all night planning how he could finally gather his entire little family back around him. Although tempted to curse Lalla França for stealing his children, he pulled himself together and asked God to return things to normal. And for him, normal meant that the children would stay home, even when married; that they should come visit him often in the village; and that they should make plans together. For instance, what if they all went to Mecca as a family? Mohammed daydreamed about this expensive trip, imagining everyone going around the Kaaba and praying. Folly? Madness? Not at all: the duty of every Muslim. But he was not in a Muslim country. He had to abandon such ideas and find more viable projects. Open a grocery store? No, wouldn’t work. Why not offer his family a complete tour of Morocco, from north to south, like those French families who visit the country by stopping everywhere, staying with the locals, eating in little restaurants, and having a ball? He’d buy a small van, and they’d go off on an adventure! Since his children all worked and couldn’t schedule their vacations on the same dates, he’d do the trip two or three times, showing off the country, meeting its people, admiring its beauty and wonderfully varied landscapes. The travellers would talk to one another, camp out, invent games, spend many happy hours together. Why didn’t I do that when the children were little? I never thought of it. I followed the same ritual every year from July 15 to August 28, doing the same things. That was our destiny. We had to accept that, without any questions. I don’t know of a single emigrant who has toured Morocco with his family. We’d leave the 78 and head for the village, a place without a number, in the back of beyond.

He would tackle the construction of the house as soon as he returned to the village, in that flat, arid, pitiless countryside without a trace of green. No tree had ever survived out there; no vegetation had ever managed to thrive. All along the road were thistles, thorn bushes, grey shrubs with stalks like slender knives, and big stones, yellow dust, flies — flies everywhere, especially on days when a sheep’s throat was cut. When it’s hot, people go to ground in their homes until dusk, learning to wait, learning to do nothing. They don’t talk about the climate and its hardships. They sit cross-legged on mats, shifting positions, then changing places. They don’t even look at the sky. They cover the well, afraid that the water will evaporate, and they forget about the hours that drag by. Instead of passing from one person to another, words seem to bump into the walls and crumble away. So no one speaks. There’s nothing to say, nothing to do. Perhaps folks following the progress of a line of busy ants will watch a few stragglers tumble into crevices, and let them die. Such harshness hardens hearts. Codes of behaviour are cold and rigid. A disobedient child gets slapped silly. A girl who looks too noticeably at a man is shut away. No argument, no negotiation. Life is simple, and simply terrible. A tiny window onto the outside world came only with the first butane-gas-powered television sets, but people laughed as they watched them, seeing an exotic world even more savage than their own flicker into the village on the black-and-white screens. Everyone watched films, and whenever a man and woman held hands, our women would veil their faces, some of them exclaiming, These Christians have no shame! No modesty at all. We’re better off here at home. But what do our men get up to in those countries? Do they let these scrawny shadows seduce them into vice? Do they squander their money on these loose women?

Begun five years earlier, work on the house had stopped for lack of money. Now that Mohammed was determined to finish it, his life in retirement had meaning. He no longer saw time as a terrifying spectre: time had expanded, grown light, colourful, airy; he imagined it as a kite on a soft breeze in a clear sky. Time had let go of him, allowing him a second chance. Perhaps he had failed somehow in France, but time was letting him pursue a different success in Morocco.

Mohammed envisioned a big, handsome house, full of light and children; he’d never been bothered by the shouts and rambunctious antics of youngsters. He smiled. He drew the house in his head, left enough space for the flower garden, counted the trees to be planted, reviewed the varieties of roses to be ordered at the market in Marrakech, and organised the kitchen garden, which he decided to entrust to Nabile, who would certainly take good care of it.

Tears welled in his eyes as he thought of the boy, but he blinked them away. Nabile had a winning personality, lots of imagination, and he made Mohammed laugh, helping him forget his conflicts with the other children. Mohammed saw him as a prince in the new house, a prince and a leader. Nabile was the only one he could count on. The boy liked to be trusted, to be given things to do. He had always wanted to grow up, to be an adult at an early age and leave behind the childhood he associated with his own backwardness. By growing up, Nabile thought he would become like everyone else. He used to say, Me mgolian? Head’s mess up? Me sixteen, champion, fishing! So, Grampa, we go?

The closer Mohammed came to the Moroccan frontier, the larger the house became, the taller the walls rose, the bigger the bedrooms grew, while the ivy climbed faster, plants swayed, birds sang. Mohammed could even hear the soft sound of the fountain he would install in the courtyard. It wasn’t a house anymore; it was a corner of paradise, a kind of palace with gardens, parks, animals of all kinds. A tale from One Thousand and One Nights . A huge carpet woven by hundreds of hands. All that was missing was Harun al-Rashid and his court. Nabile would play his role perfectly, since he adored acting and conjuring tricks.

All alone, Mohammed was dreaming and laughing, seeing himself dressed in white, welcoming the authorities arriving to inaugurate the ideal house built by the model emigrant, who had always sent part of his salary home to Morocco, who had invested in his country and intended to repatriate his entire family. On the day celebrating the Feast of the Throne, commemorating the accession of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, the king would bestow a decoration on the model emigrant, who would appear before him in his grey suit (slightly rumpled), a brand-new white shirt, and a flowered tie. Placing a hand on his shoulder, the king would walk a few paces with him in front of the television cameras, filling Mohammed with such pride that his problems would melt away, and the sovereign would send a special plane to bring his children and their mother back to Morocco.

Mohammed saw himself as tall, slender, his pockets stuffed with money for him to distribute to the needy. He was wild with joy. He envisioned himself running through fields, leaping in delight like a carefree child. That’s what it was to please oneself, to arrange things so that life now offered him a superb gift. He had always felt that God had been lenient with him by making him a good father and husband. None of his children had ever been involved with the police, and he thought of poor Larbi, whose eldest son was in prison for armed assault, while the youngest boy suffered from that disease Mohammed was too superstitious to mention. Mohammed considered himself lucky. He thought of his youngest daughter and was determined that she should study veterinary medicine.

Someone at the auto plant, an activist who strongly opposed the politics of the French state, had explained to him why almost no sons of immigrants attended French universities: You see, our children aren’t dumber than others; it’s that they’re discouraged from primary school on, quickly channelled into technical schools. And I’m not saying that’s bad, but why can’t our children go to the competitive state-run universities, you know, the ones where they wear uniforms as though they were in the army? Why aren’t they in banking, doing research, involved in the big doings of this fucking country? I’m not talking about our friends on the left who’ve done zip; I mean, in Holland and Belgium there are deputies — yes, deputies! — with roots in the Maghreb, and there’s even a young woman of Moroccan background who’s a minister of culture in Brussels, while here, in France, we have the right to fill up the prisons, wait around in police stations, and be harassed as soon as we speak up. That’s what disgusts me, and our generation. We’re done for, but why should our sons suffer the same fate? You know what? It’s the old colonial reflex: doesn’t matter how perfect you are; you’ve always got to jump higher and farther than their champions, that’s how it is, that’s our lot. So the kids get scared, pissed off, feel lost. They try to set everything on fire. They burned my jalopy, and the insurance people told me “no coverage,” “exceptional circumstances,” “kiss your car good-bye.” And the kids don’t go to ritzy Neuilly to put on their act, no, they burn their schools, our buses, our cars, they hurt themselves — then get labelled evil immigrants. And do you think my son’s an immigrant? He’s never left the 78. He’s a Frenchy, 100 per cent.