Tahar Ben Jelloun - The Happy Marriage

I must admit that it wasn’t very long after I’d moved to Paris before I’d acquired a lot of boyfriends. But I remained a virgin, as I wanted to save myself for marriage. Go figure why a rebellious girl like me who’d known such a difficult life would care about keeping her hymen intact. Traditions and customs appeared to be stronger than I was.

My future husband never knew any of this. I never wanted to tell him and he hardly ever asked me any questions about that time in my life. Maybe he thought that everything that had happened before we met was ancient history — Jahiliyyah, the time of ignorance, as the Muslims call the centuries before the arrival of the Prophet Mohammed.

I only saw Mrs. Lefranc one last time after that, when she was in an old people’s home. She wasn’t even that old by then, but she had nobody to look after her or keep her company. She hugged me tight and I could feel her crying. When I left, she gave me a little suitcase. “You’ll open it on the day you get married,” she told me. But I couldn’t resist the urge. I opened it as soon as I got home. I was impressed: it was filled with jewelry, photos, a notebook with addresses, some of which had been scrawled out, a Moroccan dress that she must have bought at the souk on Place de la Kissaria in Rabat, and lastly a letter addressed to Maître Antoine, Esq., 2 bis Rue Lamiral, etc. I didn’t open it and I still have it somewhere in my files. One day I’ll go visit this Maître Antoine …

You must be asking yourself: how did I come to learn of the existence of the manuscript you’ve just finished reading and which I’m now rebutting point by point? By stealing it. Yes, by stealing it. I knew that one of his best friends, an amateur who wrote in his spare time, was up to something. But I suspected that they would try to conceal the fruit of their labors. So I started spying on them, taking care that they didn’t notice anything. Here’s how they went about it. Over the space of six months, his friend would come visit him very early in the mornings. They would spend hours talking and then he would pull out his laptop and edit their conversation, polishing it up into a proper text. When he was satisfied with the results, he would immediately print out the pages of that strange kind of biography and locked them up in the studio’s safe, to which I had neither the combination nor the key. A month ago, I took advantage of the fact that my husband would be spending the day at the hospital to run some tests and I called a locksmith to open the safe for me. After all, there was nothing strange about that, it was my own house and no locksmith would refuse to open up a safe, simply assuming I’d lost my key to it. I raided its contents and grabbed everything inside it. Before leaving, the locksmith asked me to think up a new combination code and so I’m now the only one who can access the safe. The manuscript was inside a folder marked “confidential.” I had a blast reading it. I breezed through it and made notes on it in the space of a single night. I was beside myself with rage, but for the first time my desire for vengeance was well-founded. His friend never came back. I believe he fell gravely ill. My prayers bore their fruit.

When my husband realized what I’d done, he didn’t do anything. I thought I heard him complaining to himself. I brought him an herbal infusion, but he gave me a look to signify he didn’t want it and then made it clear that he wanted me to leave. On my way out, I deliberately knocked a pot of paint onto an unfinished canvas. I regretted having done something so petty. I ruined a painting that could have one day made me a lot of money. Now let’s move on. We never act the way we should. My instincts often trump my ability to think rationally.

Foulane owned a collection of rare Arabic manuscripts. He was very proud of it, he would show it to his visitors and talk about it at length. I took advantage of him leaving the house to go for a medical checkup to steal them. I hid them at Lalla’s, since she owned a large chest. I will use them as a bargaining chip one day or another. I made sure he noticed their disappearance, which sent him into a fury. He went all red in the face and his body started shaking as though he’d been having an epileptic seizure. I stood right in front of him, and savoring my victory over him, I said:

“Now you’re going to pay. I’ll never let you go and this is but a taste of what’s to come. You’ll never see your precious books again. When I decide to burn them, I’ll wheel you out to see it so you can watch them burn! You’ll be stuck in your chair and won’t be able to do a thing about it!”

I’ll start from the top, just like in a police report. No hesitations, emotions, or concessions. Reading that manuscript left me feeling unexpectedly invigorated. Being at war suits me just fine. I feel alive. I’m ready to kill and I’m always sharpening my blade. It’s going to be a fight to the death. After all, after having read about all he’s said and done, I have no qualms about speeding up his demise. I’m not well educated, I don’t have any fancy degrees, and I’m not sophisticated; I’m straight up, direct, and sincere. I can’t stand hypocrisies. I don’t try to sugarcoat things. His family’s always done plenty of that. Let’s go straight to the facts.

I hope you noticed that he never referred to me by my name throughout the entirety of his manuscript. I was nothing to him, a gust of wind, a smudge of dew on the window, not even a ghost. Just like his father, who never called his wife by her name. He would just shout, “Woman,” and she would come running. Very well, I’ll do the same. From now on, I’ll refer to my husband as Foulane, an Arabic word used to refer to “any old guy.” I know, it’s a little contemptuous, perhaps even a little pejorative. “Foulane” means someone who doesn’t really matter, a man just like any other, without any distinctive characteristics. When people are talking quickly, they often drop the “ou” in “Foulane” and pronounce it “Flane,” meaning someone whose actual name and origins are unknown. Besides, it was precisely his origins and roots that led to the failure of our marriage. He often spoke of how important his roots were to him and talked about them as though he were a philosopher: “Our roots follow us wherever we go, they reveal who we really are, they show our true colors and subvert our attempts to try to be something we’re not.” One day, I finally understood that despite all his gobbledygook, he’d always looked down on my peasant origins: on the fact I was the daughter of poor, illiterate immigrants. He disliked the poor. He gave out alms, but always wore an expression of disdain. He would give his driver some money and tell him to distribute it among the beggars at the cemetery where his parents were buried. On Fridays, he would ask the cook to prepare large quantities of couscous for the needy, thus performing his duty as a good Muslim. After which his conscience would be clear and he would be able to devote himself to his paintings where he imitated photographs and gave them such shameless titles as “Shanty-town,” “Shanty-town II,” and so forth.

What exactly was he hoping to accomplish with this novel — what I read of it clearly indicates that it is a novel, especially since his friend the scribe called it such below that ridiculous title, The Man Who Loved Women Too Much ? Did he want to publish it? Why? Who would bother to read such a pointless web of lies? There isn’t an ounce of truth or originality in it, starting even with the title, which is a rip-off of François Truffaut’s film, The Man Who Loved Women . Foulane simply added his two cents and tagged “too much” on the end of it to be a smart-ass. As for his friend, he was hardly a great writer. He self-published his books and nobody read them, so the copies just piled up in his garage. The book is just a series of falsehoods and allegations, each more intolerable than the last before it. Doesn’t one get the distinct impression that I caused his stroke by the time one gets to the last page? It’s a terrible insinuation. Isn’t it criminal and irresponsible? I may have been nasty and devilish, but certainly never criminal, not even close!