Tahar Ben Jelloun - A Palace in the Old Village

When his wife had first set eyes on the huge house, she’d let out a loud whinny of surprise, and then, thinking he might turn it into an amusement park for the children when they came on vacation, she asked him what he was planning to do with it. Live in it, he’d answered. You, me, and all our children. It’s simple: this house is our star, our most precious treasure, since each stone is a drop of my blood, every wall a slice of my life, and we will finally be reunited to live as before, as I lived, as my father lived, for I am only following the path laid out by those who came before us and who know better than we do what is good for our offspring. I’ve provided for everything: everyone has a bedroom with a bathroom, wardrobes for storing winter clothes, and I’ve bought a giant television for the patio, where together we’ll watch entertaining shows, you’ll see, plus I’ve built a hammam and a prayer room, so this will be the house of happiness, and I’m even thinking of installing an intercom, like the one we have in the building in LaFrance, because it would be nice to ring the children in their rooms before going there, and I’ve also planned — right next door — a poultry yard with the best roosters and hens, and although there won’t be any rabbits because I know you don’t like them, there will be other animals: ewes, lambs, one or two cows. So no more reason to go to the supermarket — that’s nice, right? I’m very pleased. And you, you’re pleased, I’ve done well, don’t you think? I’ve sunk almost all my savings into this and even borrowed a bit. Stone, land, they’re solid, much better than money. Look around you: no one has a house as grand and beautiful as this. I’ve succeeded, yes, I’ve made a success of it — proof that a man can go abroad and return to his village unchanged; it’s wonderful. Me, I figured it all out: to work and save money we needed LaFrance, but LaFrance is good for the French, not for us. We don’t belong over there. They have their religion, they marry and divorce like anything, but then there’s us, who have our religion, and when we marry, it’s for life, for always. So you understand: I’m going to save our children, I’ll rescue them from the other religion, bring them back to us to keep living the life our parents and grandparents did, because the solution is definitely nowhere else but here, where there is plenty of space, and besides, here the earth is good. See how those plants have grown. The drought is over; there’s no reason for our children to live far away from us. No, no reason…. He kept saying that, with a strange gleam in his eyes. He was possessed, haunted by an obsession, repeating words endlessly, talking to himself, scratching his head, stopping only to gaze at the sky and talk to the rare clouds drifting by.

Afraid of shattering his hopeful enthusiasm, his wife said nothing. She had nothing to say. As usual. She was not supposed to contradict her husband: that was their pact. Perhaps he was losing his wits, but how could she help him, bring him back to reason? She didn’t know. She placed her problem in the hands of God, because she knew that he never abandons those who worship and pray to him.

THE HOUSE WAS BIZARRE. It looked like an overloaded truck or a poorly tied-up package. It was a blot on the landscape. Tilting to one side, it seemed about to fall and crush Mohammed, whose disorganised instructions had been closely followed by the mason. Right, he’d say. Here we need a nice, big room for my oldest son and his wife. She’s a foreigner and I’d like to please them, show them that even though we’re poor we have large hearts, so the bedroom must be as big as my heart, you understand; then next door we need more rooms, everyone gets one, and don’t forget the hammam, the oven, a place for the hens and the sheep because, you see, the house should be like a little palace, a poor man’s palace but handsome, welcoming, spacious, magnificent, so go to it, draw, do your work, and don’t forget the windows and the fans for summer, since the children come mostly in the summer. See if you can make me a small swimming pool — I know, there’s no water, but by the time you finish building it the water will be here.

What a house! A mistake, a folly. The balconies were narrow, the windows tiny, and the front door immense. In the middle was a courtyard, a sort of Andalusian patio, where Mohammed had planted a shrub doomed to certain demise in that arid climate. The floor was of the finest quality concrete but still waiting for the zelliges , glazed mosaic tiles that had been ordered from Fez, or at least that’s what the mason claimed. The walls were of tadelakt , a gleaming, moisture-resistant plaster, and some of them were whitewashed. From the ceiling hung electric wires without bulbs; electricity was one of the village caïd ’s promises. The bathrooms were fully equipped, but running water was another of those promises. That said, no one importuned the caïd for anything anymore, knowing that results did not depend on him and, in any case, everything came from Rabat.

But who could he be, this improbable character off somewhere in an air-conditioned office, who one morning would entertain a tiny thought for the inhabitants of this hardscrabble village, and who then might actually help out Mohammed in his quest to remedy the absurd injustices of a life in exile? Best not to think about that! The image of that petty bureaucrat in Rabat bedeviled Mohammed. He imagined him, saw him, smelled him. He wears a dark brown suit, a grey shirt he hasn’t changed in four days, a black tie. He raises an arm occasionally to sniff his armpit. He perspires and has no deodorant to dispel the odour of accumulated sweat. Once he tried a bottle of perfume bought from a specialist in fake luxury goods; it gave him an itchy rash of pimples. This bureaucrat smokes and complains constantly about his meagre salary. Less gifted than his colleagues, who have managed to build up nice little nest eggs by selling promises here and there, he doesn’t know how to lie and is unfamiliar with the tricks of his trade, for making money on the side in the Ministry of Public Works. This gives ammunition to his wife, who wages domestic guerrilla war on him every day. So how do you expect this man, a decent sort on the whole, to consider the problems of a thousand peasants who’ve acquired the habit of living without water or electricity? He thinks instead about earning himself a little money and his wife’s respect, which are more important than the house of Mohammed Thimmigrant.

The petty bureaucrat scratches his head, rubs his hand over his greasy hair, picks at a pimple, opens a file, flips through the pages, pretends to search for a word, looks up, notices a spiderweb in a corner of the ceiling, looks down, resigned, then underlines Mohammed’s request with a red pen. He wants potable water! And why not enough to fill a swimming pool! Water! Do I demand champagne when I get home? These peasants who don’t realise that the state can do nothing for them — they emigrate, make a pile of money, and arrogantly demand water and electricity from us as if they lived in the city! Since time immemorial the country people have lived with well water and used candles for light, a bottled-gas generator to run the TV, and just because they’ve lived in Europe doesn’t mean they have the right to pester us. I mean, I’m willing to make an effort, but they don’t understand that they must contribute to the expense. I’d like to emigrate too. My wife would be delighted; she could even consult some fancy doctors and finally have children. She says it’s my fault — I had to knock up the maid to get her to give up that argument. Luckily, the maid had a miscarriage, and my wife fired her after a detailed interrogation. Well, that’s another story. I’m assigning this dossier to the “on hold” pile, which will soon be five years old! It’s part of the furniture, the landscape; I can’t imagine this office without that pile.