The Country of Others

by Leïla Slimani

  As a teenager it had never occurred to Mathilde that it was possible to be free on her own. As a woman with no education, it struck her as inevitable that her fate should be intimately linked to that of a man. She realised her mistake far too late and – now that she’d developed some discernment and courage – it had become impossible to leave. The children were her roots and they attached her to this earth. Without money, there was nowhere for her to go. No matter how much time passed, she never seemed to get over it: her dependence, her submission, was like a rotting organ inside her body, something that left her disgusted with herself. Every time Amine slipped a banknote into her hand, every time she bought herself a chocolate out of desire rather than need, she wondered if she really deserved it. And she feared that, one day, when she was an old woman in this foreign land, she would own nothing and would have accomplished nothing.

  When he got home on the night of 23 December 1953, Amine was dazzled. He walked on tiptoe into the parlour, where Mathilde had left a few candles lit on a wreath of leaves that she’d made herself. On the sideboard a cake was covered by an embroidered cloth. Red tinsel, decorated with glass balls and velvet bows, hung from the walls.

  Mathilde had become the mistress of her domain. After four years of life on the farm, she had proved her ability to make the most of what little she had; to decorate the tables with bouquets of flowers picked from the fields, to dress the children like their bourgeois counterparts, to make meals despite the smoking cooker. She had overcome her fears: she crushed insects with her sandals now, and impassively butchered the dead animals that the peasants brought her. Amine was proud of her and he liked to watch her, sweating and red-faced, her sleeves rolled up to her armpits, when she cleaned the house or cooked. He was moved by his wife’s unflagging energy, and when he kissed her he called her ‘my love’, ‘my darling’, ‘my little soldier’.

  If he could, he would have given her a real winter with snow, and she’d have believed she was back in her native Alsace. If he could, he’d have built a wide, noble fireplace in the cement wall, and she’d have been warmed by it, as she had been in her childhood home. He couldn’t give her fire or snowflakes, but that night, instead of joining her in bed, he woke two labourers and made them follow him across the fields. The peasants asked no questions. They walked obediently and as they disappeared into the countryside, as the darkness and the sounds of animals surrounded them, they wondered if they were being lured into a trap, if the master was about to punish them for some crime they couldn’t remember committing. Amine had told them to bring an axe, and as they walked he kept turning around and whispering: ‘Faster! We have to get it done before daybreak.’ One of the labourers, whose name was Achour, pulled at his master’s sleeve. ‘This isn’t our land any more, Sidi. We’re on the widow’s property.’ Amine shrugged him off. ‘Shut up and keep going,’ he snapped, then pointed his torch through the dark and said: ‘There!’ Amine looked up; he stayed like that for several seconds, his throat exposed, eyes riveted to the treetops. He seemed happy. ‘That tree. We’re going to cut it down and take it back to the house. Quickly. And silently.’ For nearly an hour, the men took turns swinging the axe against the trunk of a young cypress with leaves as blue as the night. When they’d chopped it down, the three of them picked up the tree – one at the top, another at the roots, the third keeping it balanced in the middle – and carried it across the Mercier widow’s estate. If anyone had witnessed this scene, they would probably have thought that they’d gone mad, because the tree’s leaves concealed the men’s bodies and it looked as though the tree was moving on its own, advancing horizontally towards an unknown destination. The labourers carried their victim unprotestingly, but they had no idea what was going on. Amine had a reputation as an honest man, yet here he was suddenly transformed into a thief, a poacher, deceiving a woman. And anyway, if he was going to steal something, why not animals, crops, machines? Why this skinny tree?

  Amine opened the door and for the first time in their lives the labourers went inside the master’s house. Amine put a finger to his lips and took off his shoes. His men copied him. They put the tree in the middle of the living room. It was so tall that the top of it bent against the ceiling. Achour wanted to get a ladder and cut it off but Amine became annoyed. That man’s presence in his living room embarrassed him, and he sent him outside without another word.

  When he woke the next morning, worn out from his brief sleep and his sore shoulder, Amine stroked his wife’s back. Mathilde’s skin was hot and damp; saliva trickled from her half-open mouth, and he felt a violent desire for her. He nuzzled her, ignoring the words she stammered, then took her like an animal, blind and deaf. He scratched her breasts, he dug his black-nailed fingers into her hair.

  Mathilde had to stifle a cry when she found the tree in the middle of the living room. She turned to Amine, who was just behind her, and she understood that he had taken his reward that morning, that the rough sex had been a way of celebrating his victory. She walked around the cypress and picked off a few needles which she rubbed in her palm and held to her nose. She breathed in that familiar scent. Aïcha, who’d been woken by her father’s groans, watched the scene uncomprehendingly. Her mother was happy, and this surprised her.

  That day, while Mathilde and Tamo were plucking the enormous turkey that one of the labourers had brought them, Amine went to the Avenue de la République. When he went into the chic boutique owned by an old Frenchwoman, the two sales assistants sniggered. Amine lowered his eyes and regretted not changing his shoes. They were covered in mud from his adventures in the night and he hadn’t had time to get his shirt ironed. The shop was packed with customers. There was a line of ten people at the cash registers, all holding packages. Elegant women tried on hats or shoes. Amine slowly approached some glass display cabinets on the wall; inside were various styles of women’s shoes. ‘What do you want?’ asked one of the young saleswomen, her smile at once mocking and lewd. Amine almost told her that he’d come to the wrong shop. He was silent for a few seconds, wondering what attitude to adopt, and the young woman opened her eyes wide and tilted her head. ‘What’s up, Mohamed, don’t you understand French? Can’t you see we’re busy here?’

  ‘Do you have my size?’ he asked.

  The saleswoman turned to the display that Amine was pointing to and frowned.

  ‘That’s what you want? A Father Christmas costume?’

  Amine bowed his head like a naughty child that’s been caught red-handed. The woman shrugged. ‘Wait here.’ She walked across the shop and went into the storeroom. This man, she thought, didn’t look like a servant, more like a weird master who has to wear that kind of stuff to amuse his children. No, actually, he looked more like those young nationalists who were always being arrested in the cafés of the medina and with whom she fantasised about sleeping. But she found it hard to imagine one of them wearing a white beard and a ridiculous red hat.

  Amine tapped his toes impatiently beside the till. With the package under his arm he felt like he was committing a crime, and he started to sweat as he imagined an acquaintance finding him here. On the way back home he drove fast, thinking how happy the children would be.

  He put on his costume in the car and entered the house like that. When he opened the door to the dining room, he cleared his throat noisily and, in a warm, deep voice, called the children’s names. Aïcha couldn’t believe it. She kept turning to look at her mother and the laughing Selim. How could Father Christmas have come all the way here? The old man in the red hat patted his belly and guffawed, but Aïcha noticed that he wasn’t carrying a sack over his shoulder and felt disappointed. There was no sign of a sleigh or reindeer in the garden either. She looked down and noticed that Father Christmas was wearing the same shoes that her father’s labourers wore: grey rubber boots, covered in mud. Amine rubbed his hands. He didn’t know what to do or say and he suddenly felt silly. But he turned to Mathilde and his wife’s enchanted smile gave him the courage to go on. ‘So
, children, have you been good?’ he asked in a cavernous voice. Selim went pale. Pressing his little body against his mother’s skirt and lifting his arms up to her, he burst into tears. ‘I’m scared!’ he cried. ‘Mama, I’m scared!’

  Aïcha was given a rag doll that Mathilde had made herself. For the hair, she’d used brown wool that she wet and then soaked with oil and braided. The body and the face were made from an old pillowcase on which Mathilde had sewn asymmetrical eyes and a smiling mouth. She’d even perfumed it with her own scent. Aïcha loved that doll. She also received a jigsaw puzzle, some books and a packet of sweets. Selim was given a toy car with a big button on top that, when you pressed it, lit up and made a loud noise. To his wife, Amine gave a pair of pink mules. He handed her the package with an embarrassed smile and Mathilde, after tearing off the wrapping paper, stared at the mules and pursed her lips to stop herself crying. She didn’t know if it was because the slippers were so ugly or too small or if it was simply the awful banality of them that threw her into such a state of sadness and rage. She said, ‘Thank you’, then locked herself in the bathroom, held the pair of shoes in one hand and smacked the soles against her forehead. She wanted to punish herself for having been so stupid, for having expected so much from this holiday when Amine didn’t understand anything about it. She hated herself for not having given up on the idea, for lacking the selflessness of her mother-in-law, for being so obsessed with pointless, trivial things. She wanted to cancel the Christmas dinner, to hide under the sheets and sleep until tomorrow. The whole charade seemed ludicrous now. She’d made Tamo wear a black-and-white maid’s costume. She’d worn herself out cooking dinner and now she felt sickened at the thought of eating the turkey that she’d spent so long stuffing, burying her hands inside the bird’s belly, exhausting herself over these invisible, thankless domestic tasks. She walked to the table like a prisoner walking to the scaffold and she stared at Amine with wide-open eyes to push the tears back and make him believe that she was happy.

  IV

  In January 1954 it was so cold that the almond trees froze and a litter of kittens died in the kitchen doorway. At the school, the nuns agreed to make an exception to their usual routine and they kept the stoves in the classrooms lit all day long. The little girls kept their coats on during their lessons and some of them wore two pairs of tights under their dresses. Aïcha was starting to get used to the monotony of school and in a notebook that Sister Marie-Solange had given her she listed all the things that made her sad and happy.

  Aïcha did not like: her classmates, the cold in the corridors, the food at lunch, the interminable classes, the warts on Sister Marie-Cecile’s face.

  She liked: the peacefulness of the chapel, the music they played on the piano on certain mornings, the physical education classes when she ran faster than the others, climbing to the top of the rope before her classmates had even touched the bottom.

  She didn’t like afternoons because she was always sleepy, or mornings because she was always late. She liked it when there were rules and people followed them.

  When Sister Marie-Solange complimented her on her work, Aïcha would blush. During prayers Aïcha would hold the nun’s rough, cold hand. Her heart filled with joy whenever she saw Sister Marie-Solange’s face, with its clear, homely features and its skin damaged by cold air and bad soap. It looked as though the nun spent hours cleaning her cheeks and eyelids, because her skin was almost translucent, and her freckles – which would normally have given her some charm – were practically erased. Perhaps she was striving to rid herself of all spark, all femininity, all prettiness and, consequently, all danger. Not once did Aïcha think that her teacher was a woman, that beneath her habit was a living, pulsating body, a body like her mother’s, capable of yelling with anger, moaning in ecstasy or bursting into tears. When she was with Sister Marie-Solange, Aïcha left this earthly domain, she left behind the pettiness and ugliness of men, and floated through an ethereal universe in the company of Jesus and the apostles.

  The pupils all closed their books at the same time and it sounded as if they were applauding. They started chatting. Sister Marie-Solange told them to calm down, but her words had no effect. ‘Stand in line! You won’t be leaving this classroom, ladies, until you do.’ Aïcha rested her head on her hand and stared dreamily out at the schoolyard. She tried to see as far as she could, beyond the tree that had lost its leaves, beyond the wall, beyond the workman’s hut where Brahim was allowed to take a break when it was cold. She didn’t want to go outside, didn’t want to hold hands with a little girl who would sneakily dig her fingernails into Aïcha’s flesh and start giggling. She hated the city, and the idea of going through it – through that swarm of strangers – made her anxious.

  Sister Marie-Solange stroked Aïcha’s back and told her that they would walk together, leading the class, and that there was nothing to worry about. Aïcha stood up, rubbed her eyes and put on the coat that her mother had made, which was too tight around the armpits and made her walk in a strange, rigid way.

  The little girls gathered outside the school gates. They tried to stay calm, but it was obvious that this legion of schoolchildren was in a state of hysterical excitement, that a riot might break out at any minute. Nobody had listened to Sister Marie-Solange’s lesson that morning. Nobody had heeded the warning that she’d concealed in her religious discourse. ‘God,’ she’d said, in her fragile voice, ‘loves all children. There is no such thing as an inferior race or a superior race. Men are all equal before God, even if they are different.’ Aïcha didn’t know what the nun meant by this either, but those words had made a strong impression on her. What she drew from them was this: only men and children are loved by God. It seemed clear to her that women were excluded from this universal love and she began to worry about what would happen when she became one. This destiny struck her as horribly cruel and she thought again about Adam and Eve, who had been exiled from Paradise. When the woman inside her hatched out, she would be condemned to this arid existence, deprived of divine love.

  ‘Forward, ladies!’ Sister Marie-Solange made an expansive gesture with her arm, inviting the children to follow her to the bus parked in the street. On the way she gave them a history lesson. ‘This country,’ she explained, ‘which we all love so much, has a very old history. Look around you, ladies: that pond, those walls, those doors are the products of a glorious civilisation. I have already told you about Sultan Moulay Ismail, who was a contemporary of our Sun King. Remember his name, girls.’ The children laughed because their teacher had insisted on pronouncing the Moroccan king’s name with the guttural sounds of Arabic. But nobody said anything because they all remembered how angry Sister Marie-Solange had been that day when Ginette said: ‘Oh, are you teaching us to speak like darkies now?’ The look in her eyes had been so scary that the little girls had thought Ginette was going to get slapped. But presumably the teacher had remembered that Ginette was only six and that she needed to show patience in educating her. One evening Sister Marie-Solange had confided in the Mother Superior, who listened as she ran her rough tongue along her lips before nibbling off pieces of dry skin. Marie-Solange told her that she’d had a vision – yes, an illumination – while she was walking to Azrou, under some cedars that grew beside a mountain stream. Watching the women walk carrying their children on their backs, colourful shawls covering their hair; watching the men leaning heavily on their wooden staffs, guiding their families and their flocks, she had seen Jacob, Sarah and Solomon. This country, she’d exclaimed, offered scenes of poverty and humility worthy of Old Testament engravings.

  ***

  The class stopped outside a dark building. Impossible to tell what it was for or what lay inside. A man in a navy-blue suit was waiting for them outside the ‘door’, a hole dug into the wall. The guide held his hands tightly together in front of his crotch. He looked anxious – terrified, even – when he saw the swarm of schoolgirls approaching him. In his high-pitched, quavering voice, he tried to make himself
heard above the hum of other voices, but in the end the nuns had to shout at the children to make them shut up. ‘We’re going to go downstairs. It’s dark and the floor is slippery. I would ask you to be very careful.’ As soon as they entered what appeared to be a cave, the girls fell silent, rendered mute by fear, the icy cold that emanated from the earthen walls and the place’s gloomy, subterranean atmosphere. One of the girls – nobody could tell which one, in that dim light – made a sinister howl, imitating a ghost or a wolf. ‘Show some respect, please, ladies. Many Christian brothers suffered terrible torture in this place.’ They walked in silence through a maze of corridors.

  Sister Marie-Solange told the young guide that he could speak now. He was surprised by the youth of his audience and couldn’t think what to say to such impressionable souls. Several times he stammered over his words, backtracked, apologised, wiping his forehead with a frayed handkerchief. ‘This place is known as the Christians’ prison.’ He pointed to the wall facing them and they cried out when they saw the inscriptions left there by prisoners centuries earlier. After a while he turned his back on the schoolgirls and forgot their presence to the point where his words flowed more confidently and eloquently. He told them about the sufferings of those men – ‘almost two thousand of them by the end of the seventeenth century’ – imprisoned here by Moulay Ismail, and he emphasised the genius of this ‘sultan and builder’ who had ordered the construction of miles of underground tunnels through which the slaves were dragged, dying, blinded, trapped. ‘Look up,’ he told them with what sounded almost like real authority, and the little girls silently lifted their faces. A hole had been dug in the rock above them; it was through this hole that food had been tossed down to the prisoners, in meagre quantities barely sufficient to keep them alive.