Tahar Ben Jelloun - The Happy Marriage

He would never have imagined that this wedding celebration — which he now called a wedding damnation —would leave an indelible stain on their life, his life. The meeting of the two families had been a clash of classes, two entirely different worlds that could never be bridged. However, he hadn’t wanted to pay any attention to that at the time. He had thought that love would prove stronger than anything, just like in Douglas Sirk’s melodramas, which he adored. It was films rather than books that really influenced his imagination. In times of hardship, he’d often thought of Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass or George Stevens’s A Place in the Sun , and he had identified with the young hero who found himself caught in the middle of a confrontation between two families. Nevertheless, he knew that films were only dreams based on reality.

By the time the sun had set that evening, and despite having been told to keep quiet, the painter’s aunt had been unable to restrain herself any longer and she had voiced her opinions loud and clearly to the guests around her in an incredible display of arrogance. Without mincing her words, she declared that any kind of mixing was a betrayal of one’s destiny. She had employed blunt, brutal words, accompanied by grimaces, gestures, and pouts that amplified her meaning. Her contempt had been all too obvious. How could a lady who belonged to the cream of Fez’s upper classes possibly accept finding herself in the company of peasants who couldn’t even speak Arabic that well? How could her nephew have led himself so astray? There could only be one explanation! He hadn’t decided to get married, it had been decided for him. He hadn’t chosen to do anything, and someone else did all the talking for him. It was clearly a plot. The poor groom was like a lamb who’d been delivered into the hands of ignorant people who’d jumped at this unique opportunity to claim the elegance, charm, and highest traditions that were his birthright for themselves. His aunt had wanted to both wound and warn those people from the bled that even if those lovebirds had insisted on getting married, this did not mean the two families could ever come together.

His mother had remained silent throughout the party. Her sensitivity and memory had been offended by this union, but she had swallowed her anger. She had wept in silence behind her spectacles, from time to time directing her sorrowful glance toward her son, who she thought was making a fatal mistake. His mother had been known for her kindness and wisdom, and was simply incapable of speaking ill of someone or arguing. Nevertheless, she entertained simple certitudes, which were obvious.

The tone had been set. There had been no outstretched hands, or open arms, and no hypocrisy of any kind. The painter’s aunt had assumed the leadership of the refusers; she didn’t mince her words, even though she had purportedly only been addressing her sister, daughters, and nieces: “Look at those people! They’re not worthy of mingling with us! Look at that father who never smiles and who didn’t even have the decency to wear a clean suit, he just showed up in a crumbled gandoura and wants to speak to us as though he were our equal! As for the food, let’s not even go there. It’s quite obvious we don’t have anything in common, we don’t share the same tastes or even the same standards, we’re just strangers. It would have been better if he’d at least married a Christian girl, some woman from Europe. They don’t share our faith, but at least they have manners. One of my other nephews married a French woman and her family never gave us any grief. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I speak my mind, and simply voice what everyone else in the family is thinking. This story began badly and it’s going to end badly. Let’s hope he eventually wakes up and the scales fall from his eyes. Otherwise she’ll bear him even more children and it’ll be too late. It’s an old trick: each child weighs a ton, and so you’ll prevent your husband from ever leaving!”

Toward midnight, having made every possible effort to shield his wife from these hostilities, he had found her huddled in a corner crying. He’d dried her tears and consoled her. Had she heard his aunt’s malicious gossiping, or had the fact she was leaving her parents to start a family with him suddenly upset her? The painter recalled his sister’s wedding, where everyone had cried because her husband had come to take her away forever. That wedding had taken place in Fez a long time ago, and it had lived up to the purest of traditions, which his aunt worshipped. The two families had come together then. Everything had taken shape without anything being spelled out; everyone had known their role by heart, and the play couldn’t have failed because everything had been planned and calculated in advance, the ritual had unfolded without any hitches, the families had mingled and there had been no bad surprises, and nobody had made any inappropriate or tasteless speeches. Whenever anyone had made the slightest slip, there had always been someone who’d intervened and restored the balance.

Yet on that day, the painter knew why his wife was crying and could not answer him. The attitude both families had adopted had rekindled a feeling of rejection that she’d believed she’d overcome once she’d started living with the painter. The memories of those unbearable humiliations she’d suffered during her childhood due to the modesty of her background, as though a secret wound had suddenly ripped open again.

The painter had told himself that he should have defended her more. That he should have laid the ground before their marriage. Told her that he loved her regardless of what anyone in his family said, which he couldn’t have cared less about. He could have easily proven to her that their love was stronger than any bump in the road they might face. But he hadn’t taken those precautions, believing that his love was so obvious and visible that it would silence those malicious tongues. This marriage was like screaming his love from the rooftops, shouting to anyone who would listen that he loved that girl from the bled, publicly declaring how proud he’d been to defy a whole social caste for love.

Alone on the street, his fists in his pockets, his mind dwelled on those old stories as he vainly tried to find the means to bring their arguments to an end and recover the essence of the love they had for one another.

One day, when they’d been traveling around southern Morocco, they had passed through the village where she’d grown up before moving to France. He’d found his wife had suddenly become happy again, in a way in which he hadn’t seen her in quite a long time, her movements were carefree and she’d become sweet and generous. She’d been friendly, had spoken to him of the beauty of the light, and the kindness of the people who lived in those remote regions. She’d suddenly reminded him of the young woman he’d known before their marriage and whom he’d fallen in love with. Upset, he’d even considered settling there, since that part of the world worked such wonderful effects on her mood! He hadn’t been wrong because, by rediscovering her roots, his wife had found the reassurance she’d been looking for, allowing her to relate to others positively, rather than negatively or dejectedly. She’d spent hours talking to the women of the village, who’d told her about all their problems. She’d taken notes and had proceeded with a sociologist’s meticulousness, promising those women she’d return and help find solutions to their dilemmas. She’d brought clothes for the women she knew, which she’d carefully selected, as well as toys for the children and a parcel of medicine, which she’d given to the only young girl in the village who could read.