Tahar Ben Jelloun - The Happy Marriage

“You ate him, you really ate him?”

“I did, I ate him all up. He’s right here inside me, and he only comes out when I want him to. I had no choice. It was either that, or I would have wound up being his dog, at his beck and call, so he could mercilessly exploit me or beat me up whenever he wanted. And I never would have had an orgasm either!”

“Are you planning to have children with him?”

“Not for the time being. I’ll exploit him as much as I can for now, and then we’ll see. If we have children, there’s a risk he’ll escape. At which point I’ll have to come up with another scheme to keep him completely submissive. I’ll ask my mother, who will ask her mother, but I must be quick about seeing as how she’s dying.”

A few days later, Habiba went to see her grandmother. She was over ninety years old, tiny, frail and thin, but her eyes were still sharp and bright, and she didn’t mince her words: “All men are bastards and cowards,” she told her, “they’ll make your life miserable if you don’t keep them in check. Marriage is nothing but a declaration of war celebrated with music, good food, perfumes, incense, pretty clothes, promises, songs, and so forth. There’s only one way to keep a man in check: you have to eat him.” She visualized her words by bunching her fingers and pointing to her open mouth. “Sometime you can’t do that, but you shouldn’t give up, there are other options. Your grandfather, for example, was completely uneatable. He was hard as a rock, it was impossible to swallow any part of him. So I pretended to be his slave for many months. I did whatever he wanted me to, and crawled on all fours in front of him, never refused anything he asked of me, and did anything I thought would please him. After a few years of careful training, he could only find pleasure with me. Now that’s what I call keeping a man. He never cheated on me. I’m sure of that because I hired a number of spies to keep me informed. He went from the shop to the house and from the house to the shop. He never once paid a visit to those disloyal women who cheat on their husbands. No, he was immune to that. When he was dying, he spent the whole night crying, saying he would be unhappy without me in heaven. I don’t know if God sent him to heaven, but wherever he is, I know that he’s waiting for me. I’m in no hurry to join him. I still have a few years left to live and places to see. God will surely have taught him to be patient .

“That’s the way you make a marriage work, my daughter, that’s the only way. And don’t forget that your husband will take advantage of you the moment you lower your guard. Marriage is a small war that is won through subterfuge, because when the shouting starts and you’ve run out of arguments, then it’s the beginning of the end. When I look around me, I see nothing but failures. Women cry and men triumph. It’s not fair. If everyone followed my example, that kind of thing wouldn’t happen anymore.”

Habiba had listened closely to her grandmother and had kept her lessons closely in mind. After a year of married life, however, Habiba started to get bored. She was no longer attracted to her obedient husband. Habiba only had to make a gesture and he would start to please her right away. She even started to throw up. She wasn’t pregnant, she was just fed up. A man who did whatever she wanted, was always at her mercy, and was only devoted to her was like a dish without any spices, completely devoid of surprises .

Habiba chose to act, and to make changes to the wonderful world of the women who’d eaten her husband. Her mother suggested throwing him up a little. She thought it was time for the next stage of the plan: to give him a little freedom, let him go somewhere on his own, perhaps go on some adventure, and to let him sleep with another woman to put the spark back into their relationship .

Habiba listened to her mother’s advice and spent the entire day throwing up. She felt lighter that evening. After a few days, her man was standing right in front of her, completely free, but she couldn’t bear to look at him. She wasn’t interested in him anymore. She felt better whenever he wasn’t around. She told him that he was free to leave and that she wouldn’t try to keep him anymore .

Habiba decided to gobble up another man. She set her heart on a man who had been married to one of her cousins, who was an invalid, thereby ensuring her new man would come out of a marriage that hadn’t worked. Before her death, Habiba’s cousin had told her: “I’m warning you, he’s tough. Brutal. Don’t try to swallow him on the first night, otherwise you’ll get indigestion. That’s how I got sick. Trust me, take care!”

But Habiba’s legendary beauty triumphed over that young man and overcame his resistance. She ate him up, turned him into her plaything, and did whatever she liked with him. Other women followed her example and that’s how the tribe of man-eaters was born. Ever since then, peace has prevailed in this country where the swallowed men no longer have a say .

After a moment’s silence, Imane burst out laughing, as did the captain.

“Did you really hear that story at the hammam?” he asked her, “I actually think you made it up yourself. You should write it down, work on it and turn it into a novel. I’m sure it would be very successful.”

Imane had wanted to be a writer ever since she’d been a little girl. She never dared to talk about her ambitions, but always told people her stories whenever she had a chance. When she couldn’t sleep at night, she would let her imagination run free. She would look out of her window at the sky, count the stars, give the clouds names and think up characters and plots featuring them.

On her way out, she leaned down toward him and said:

“You’re right, I didn’t hear that story at the hammam, but I didn’t make it up entirely. Isn’t that what artists, what writers do? See you tomorrow, captain.”

She left the trail of her perfume behind her, and since the painter was a daydreamer, he became melancholic.

His feelings for that young woman were unlike any he’d experienced before. He’d desired other women and had done all he could to be with them, and for a time, be it a few days or a few weeks, he’d fallen in love with them; but none of that had happened with Imane. He needed her, and not just so she could look after his health. He needed to see her, to hear her tell her stories, to confide in her. It was all he wanted.

By the time his lawyer came to see him, so they could take stock of how the divorce proceedings were going, the painter was fully immersed in his work. He was painting a crinkled linen tablecloth that he’d reproduced in all its minutiae with a painstaking attention to detail. It was impressive work.

“If you didn’t replicate the pleats and folds with such accuracy, nobody would know the difference. Besides, you’re the one who rumpled it up, right?”

“That’s right, I did, I realize that, but that’s not the way I do things, it would be like tricking people, and I wouldn’t even need a tablecloth in front of me to paint it. I can paint any kind of tablecloth, but this painting depicts this particular tablecloth and you couldn’t confuse it with any other tablecloth on earth. And once I’ve finished painting it, what you see in front of you won’t be a tablecloth, it will have transcended it and become something else.”