In the Country of Others Read online

  Sister Marie-Solange lay her down in the small room that served as the infirmary and kissed her cheeks and forehead. She wasn’t really worried about Aïcha’s health. Her fainting was simply proof that a dialog had begun between this puny little girl and Our Lord, the depth and beauty of which Aïcha herself could not yet comprehend. Aïcha sipped the warm water but pushed away the sugar cube that the nun offered to let her suck. She said she didn’t deserve such a treat. Sister Marie-Solange insisted and Aïcha stuck out her pointed tongue then crunched the sugar cube between her teeth.

  She asked to go back to class. She said she felt better, that she didn’t want to be late. She sat at her desk, behind Blanche Colligny, and the rest of the morning passed calmly and uneventfully. Aïcha stared at the back of Blanche’s neck, which was plump and pink and covered with light blond down. Blanche wore her hair in a bun, high on her head, like a ballerina. Every day Aïcha would spend hours contemplating that neck. She knew it by heart. She knew that whenever Blanche leaned down to write, a little roll of fat would appear just above her shoulders. During the heat of September, Blanche’s skin was covered in little red patches that itched. Aïcha would observe the girl’s ink-stained fingernails scratching until they drew blood. Drops of sweat trickled from the roots of her hair down her back, soaking the collars of her dresses, which gradually turned yellowish. In the sweltering classroom her neck would twist like a goose’s as her attention wavered, as tiredness overpowered her, and sometimes Blanche would fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon. Aïcha never touched her classmate’s skin. Occasionally she wanted to reach out and stroke the bumps of Blanche’s vertebrae with the back of her hand, to caress the strands of blond hair that escaped her bun and reminded Aïcha of a chick’s soft feathers. She had to force herself not to move her nose close to that neck so she could breathe in its aroma, to stick out her tongue so she could taste the sweaty skin.

  That day, Aïcha saw the neck shudder suddenly and pale little hairs rise up like the fur of a frightened cat. She wondered what could have provoked such a reaction. Or was it just the cool breeze blowing through the window that Sister Marie-Solange had opened? Aïcha could no longer hear the teacher’s voice or the squeak of chalk on slate. That patch of pink skin was driving her wild. She couldn’t hold back. She grabbed her compass and stabbed the point into Blanche’s neck, withdrawing it almost immediately and smearing a drop of blood between her index finger and her thumb.

  Blanche cried out. Sister Marie-Solange turned around and almost fell off the rostrum. “Mademoiselle Colligny! Why on earth are you yelling like that?”

  Blanche threw herself at Aïcha. She pulled her hair. Her face was deformed with rage. “It was her! It was this little bitch! She pinched my neck!” Aïcha didn’t move. She just lowered her head, hunched her shoulders and kept silent. Sister Marie-Solange grabbed Blanche by the arm and dragged her to her desk with a brutality that shocked the other pupils.

  “How dare you accuse Mademoiselle Belhaj? As if Aïcha would ever do such a thing! You’re jealous of her, aren’t you?”

  “No! I swear!” Blanche shouted, putting her hand to the back of her neck and examining her palm in the hope of finding a trace of blood. But there was nothing, and Sister Marie-Solange ordered her to write lines: I will not accuse my classmates of imaginary crimes.

  At break time Blanche stared daggers at Aïcha. “You’ll get what’s coming to you,” that look said. Aïcha regretted that the attack with the compass had not had the effect she’d been hoping for. She’d imagined Blanche’s body bursting like a pricked balloon, leaving only a limp flap of skin. But Blanche was still alive. She was jumping around in the schoolyard, making her friends laugh. Leaning against the classroom wall, face turned to the winter sun that warmed her bones and calmed her, Aïcha watched the little girls playing in the patch of ground bordered by plane trees. The Moroccan girls put their hands around their mouths and whispered secrets. Aïcha thought them beautiful with their long, dark, braided hair held in place with a thin white headband on the forehead. Most of them boarded at the school, and on Fridays they would travel back to their families in Casablanca, Fez, or Rabat, cities Aïcha had never been to and which seemed as distant to her as her mother’s homeland, Alsace. There were two camps in the school—the whispering natives and the hopscotch-playing Europeans—and Aïcha belonged to neither of them. She didn’t know what she was, so she stayed on her own, her back to the hot wall. To Aïcha, the day seemed to drag on forever. She longed to see her mother again.

  That evening, the little girls ran yelling to the school gates. The Christmas holidays had begun. Polished shoes crunched gravel and white dust clung to imitation suede coats. Aïcha was elbowed and shoved by the buzzing swarm of girls. She walked through the gates, waved good-bye to Sister Marie-Solange, and stopped on the pavement. Mathilde wasn’t there. Aïcha watched as her classmates walked away, rubbing against their mother’s legs like cats. An American car slowed to a halt in front of the school and a man got out, wearing a red fez. He circled the vehicle, looking for one particular little girl. When he spotted her he put his hand on his chest and lowered his face in a gesture of respect. “Lalla Fatima!” he said to the approaching schoolgirl, and Aïcha wondered why that child, who drooled over her schoolbooks every time she fell asleep in class, was being addressed like a lady. Fatima disappeared into the huge car and some other students waved at her and shouted: “Have a good holiday!” Then the girlish twittering faded and ordinary life took over the street once again. Some teenagers were playing with a ball in the wasteland behind the school and Aïcha heard them insulting each other in Spanish and French. Passersby shot her furtive glances, looking around for some explanation of why this child, who was clearly not a beggar, was standing there alone, as if forgotten. Aïcha looked away. She didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for her or try to console her.

  Night fell and Aïcha leaned against the gate, praying that she would disappear into a breath, a ghostly puff of steam. It felt as if she was standing there for eternity, arms and ankles freezing, her entire being reaching out for her mother who didn’t come. To keep warm, she rubbed her arms and jumped from foot to foot. By now, she thought, her classmates would be safe in warm kitchens, their mouths full of hot pancakes and honey. Some would be doing their homework on mahogany desks in bedrooms that Aïcha imagined overflowing with toys. Car horns started to honk, men in hats and overcoats came out of offices, and Aïcha blinked in the glare of headlights. The rhythm of the city sped up to a frenetic dance. Those men walked confidently to heated rooms, happy at the thought of the night they would spend drinking or sleeping. Aïcha began to pace around like a jammed watch mechanism, praying to Jesus and the Virgin Mary, hands joined so tightly that her fingers turned white. Brahim didn’t say a word because the Mother Superior had forbidden him to speak to the schoolgirls, but he reached out a hand to her and Aïcha held it tightly. Standing by the gates, they both stared at the crossroads until Mathilde finally appeared.

  She leaped out of the old van and swept her daughter up in her arms. She thanked Brahim in Alsatian-accented Arabic, then began patting the pocket of her dirty coat, presumably in search of a coin to hand to the caretaker. But the pocket was empty and Mathilde blushed. Inside the van Aïcha didn’t answer her mother’s questions. She said nothing about the hate that Blanche and the other girls felt for her. Three months earlier Aïcha had wept outside the school because a girl had refused to hold hands with her. Her parents had told her not to worry about it, that it didn’t matter, and Aïcha had been hurt by their indifference. But that night, unable to sleep, Aïcha had heard her parents arguing. Amine had raged at that Christian school where his daughter didn’t belong. Mathilde, sobbing, had cursed their isolation. So now Aïcha didn’t tell them anything. She never mentioned Jesus to her father. Her love for that bare-legged man who gave her the strength to master her anger had to remain a secret. And she never admitted to her mother that she hadn
’t eaten anything at school since discovering a tooth in the mutton-and-bean stew. It had not been a small, white, pointy milk tooth like the ones she’d lost that summer and put under her pillow for the tooth fairy to take in return for a praline. No, it had been a large, black, hollow tooth that looked like it had fallen straight from some old man’s rotten gums. Every time she thought about this, she felt sick.

  Back in September, while Aïcha was starting school, Amine had decided to buy a combine harvester. After all the money he’d spent on the farm, the children, and the house, he had so little left that he went to see a crafty old scrap merchant who promised him an exceptional machine straight from an American factory. Amine silenced the man with a brusque hand gesture. He didn’t want to listen to his sales patter. Anyway, this machine was all he could afford. He spent whole days perched on the harvester, unwilling to let anyone else use it. “They’d mess it up,” he explained to Mathilde, who watched anxiously as her husband lost weight. His face was worn with fatigue and sun; his skin was now as dark as the African infantrymen he’d once fought alongside. He worked relentlessly, monitoring every movement his laborers made. Until nightfall he would stand there, supervising the loading of the bags, and often they would find him asleep behind the wheel of his van, too tired to make it back to the house.

  For months now, Amine had not been sleeping in the conjugal bed. He ate standing up in the kitchen, while talking to Mathilde in terms that she didn’t understand. There was something crazed about him, his eyes bloodshot and bulging from their sockets. He obviously wanted to tell her something, but all he could do was wave his arm strangely, as though throwing a ball or preparing to stab someone to death. His anguish grew all the more painful because he didn’t dare talk to anyone about it. Admitting that he’d failed would have killed him. The problem wasn’t the machines or the climate, or even the incompetence of his farmworkers. No, what ate away at him was the fact that his own father had been wrong. This earth was good for nothing. Only a thin layer of it was cultivable; below that it was tuff, the solid, impenetrable rock against which all his ambitions shattered.

  Sometimes he was so oppressed by exhaustion and worry that he wanted to curl up in a ball on the ground and sleep for weeks. He wanted to cry like an overtired child. Perhaps the tears would loosen the vice around his heart. The endless sun and the sleepless nights were going to drive him insane, he thought. Darkness filled his soul, where memories of the war mixed with fears of impending poverty. Amine remembered the era of the great famines. He’d been ten or eleven when he saw all those families coming from the south with their animals, so skinny and starved that they couldn’t make a sound. Heads ravaged by ringworm, they were migrating toward the cities with their silent supplications, burying their children by the roadside as they went. It seemed to him that the whole world was suffering, that hordes of the hungry were pursuing him, and that he could do nothing about it because soon he would be one of them. This nightmare haunted him.

  * * *

  But Amine did not give up. After reading an article, he decided to start cattle farming. One day, on her way back from school, Mathilde spotted him by the side of the road, more than a mile from the farm. He was walking beside a thin man dressed in a filthy djellaba and a pair of cheap sandals that made his feet bleed. Amine smiled and patted the man’s shoulder. They looked like old friends. Mathilde stopped the car and got out, smoothed down her skirt and walked toward them. Amine looked embarrassed, but he introduced them. The man’s name was Bouchaib and Amine had just made a deal with him. He seemed so proud as he told her that he planned to use their few remaining savings to buy four or five oxen, which the peasant would lead to pasture on the Atlas Mountains to fatten them up. Once the animals were sold, the two men would share the profits.

  Mathilde stared at the man. She didn’t like him: there was something sneaky about his smile, and when he laughed it sounded like a man having a coughing fit. She was repulsed by the way he kept rubbing his face with his long, dirty fingers. Not once did he look her in the eye and she knew it wasn’t just because she was a woman or a foreigner. That man was going to swindle them, she felt sure. That evening she spoke about it to Amine. She waited until the children were asleep and her husband was relaxing in an armchair. She tried to convince him not to go into business with the peasant. She felt a little ashamed of her own arguments, ashamed that she was saying all of this only out of some sixth sense, a bad feeling, the peasant’s unprepossessing appearance. “You’re just saying that because he’s black. Because he’s an uneducated hick who lives in the mountains and isn’t used to city manners. You know nothing about people like that. You can’t possibly understand.”

  The next day Amine and Bouchaib went to the animal market together. The souk was at the end of a road, between some trees and the ruins of a wall that had once protected people from tribal razzias. The mountain people had laid some rugs down near the trees. It was stiflingly hot and Amine was stunned by the smell of cattle, of shit, and of the peasants themselves. Several times he lifted his sleeve to his nose because he feared he was going to vomit or faint. The skinny animals stared placidly at the ground. The donkeys, the goats, and the few cattle seemed aware of how little the human beings cared about their feelings. They chewed listlessly at the yellow grass, a few dandelions, odd bunches of bakkoula. They waited, calmly resigned, to be passed from one cruel master to another. The peasants moved around, shouting out the animals’ weights, prices, ages, uses. In this poor and arid region it was a struggle to grow anything, to harvest anything, to take care of the animals. Amine stepped over the large jute bags on the ground, taking care not to walk in the turds that were drying in the sun, and went directly to the western side of the market, where a herd of oxen was gathered.

  He greeted the owner, an old man with a bald head covered by a white turban, and interrupted—a little abruptly for Bouchaib’s tastes—the blessings that the man gave him. Amine spoke about the animals like a scientist. He asked technical questions that the old man couldn’t answer. Amine was making it clear that they were not from the same world. The man became irritated and started chewing at the stem of a wildflower, making the same noises as the cattle he was selling. Bouchaib took matters in hand: he stuck his fingers in the animals’ nostrils and stroked their rumps. Then, patting the man’s shoulder, he asked him about quantities of grain and excrement and congratulated him on the good care he had taken of these animals. Amine took a few steps back. With difficulty, he concealed his anger and impatience. The negotiation went on for hours. Bouchaib and the owner exchanged so many empty words. They would agree on a price, then one of them would change his mind and threaten to walk away, and then there would be a long silence. Amine knew that this was how deals were done here, that it was a game, a ritual, but more than once he wanted to yell at them to cut short these ridiculous traditions. It was late afternoon and the sun was starting to vanish behind the Atlas Mountains. A cold wind blew through the market. They touched hands with the peasant, who had sold them four healthy oxen.

  Bouchaib was very friendly as he prepared to leave his business partner and take the cattle up to his village in the hills. He complimented Amine on his manners and his negotiating skills. He gave a long speech about the meaning of honor among the mountain tribes, about the importance of a man’s word. He insulted the French, who were mistrustful people, obsessed with rules. Amine thought of Mathilde and nodded. He was exhausted by the day and now all he wanted to do was go home and see his children.

  In the weeks that followed, Bouchaib would regularly send a messenger to the farm: a young shepherd with scabies on his calves, his eyes so ringed with pus that they attracted clouds of flies. The boy, who had probably never had a full belly in his life, spoke in poetic terms about Amine’s oxen. He said that the grass up in the mountains was so fresh and thick that the animals were fattening up before their eyes. As he uttered these words, he saw Amine’s face light up and felt happy at having brou
ght some joy to this house. He came a few more times after that and slurped greedily at the tea into which Mathilde had, at his request, poured three spoonfuls of sugar.

  Then the boy stopped coming. Two weeks passed and Amine started to worry. When Mathilde asked him about this, he flew into a rage. “I already told you to mind your own business. That’s just how things work here. You really think you can teach me how to run a farm?” But doubt tortured him. At night he couldn’t sleep. Exhausted and wild with anxiety, he sent one of his laborers to ask for news, but the man came back shaking his head. He had not been able to find Bouchaib. “It’s a very big mountain, Si Belhaj. Nobody’s heard of him.”

  One evening Bouchaib returned. He stood at the front door, red-eyed and miserable. When he saw Amine coming toward him he slapped his head with both hands, scratched his cheeks and howled like a hunted beast. He struggled to catch his breath and Amine found it impossible to understand what he was saying. Bouchaib repeated: “Thieves, thieves!” and his eyes filled with terror. He explained that a gang of armed men had come in the night, that they’d beaten the guards then tied them up, loaded the entire herd into the back of a truck and driven off. “There was nothing the shepherds could do. They’re good men, good workers, but what can a few boys do against men with weapons and a truck?” Bouchaib collapsed into a chair. He put his hands on his knees and sobbed like a child. He said he was eternally humiliated, that he would never recover from the shame. After drinking a mouthful of tea—with five spoonfuls of sugar in it—he sighed: “This is a terrible misfortune for us.”