The Country of Others

by Leïla Slimani

  Achour, who had worked for her father since his first day on the farm, arrived on a grey-coloured horse with a muddy tail. Amine beckoned his daughter. They turned off the engine of the combine harvester and Aïcha walked fearfully towards the group of men. Amine had climbed on to the horse’s back and he was smiling. ‘Come on!’ Aïcha refused in her thin little voice, making the excuse that she liked to run, promising that she’d keep up with him, but her father wasn’t listening. He thought she wanted to play, the way he used to play when he was a child: violent games, war games, where they set traps for their friends and said the opposite of what they were thinking. He dug his heels into the horse’s rump and leaned forward, his cheek against the animal’s neck. The horse’s nostrils dilated and it began to run in circles around the child, raising dust and blocking out the sun. He was playing the sultan, the tribal chieftain, a Saracen warrior, and soon, victorious, he would pick up this child who was no bigger than a goat. With a single, steady hand, he grabbed Aïcha and lifted her up like Mathilde picking up one of the cats by the scruff of its neck. He sat her in front of him on the saddle and whooped like a cowboy or an Indian; he thought he was being funny, but the sound frightened his daughter. She started to weep and her frail little body shook with sobs. Amine pressed her firmly against him. He put his hand on her head and said: ‘Don’t be afraid. Calm down!’ But the girl gripped tightly on to the horse’s mane; she looked down and was suddenly overcome with vertigo. It was then that Amine felt a warm liquid running along his thigh. Aïcha was still sobbing as he roughly lifted up her body and saw the wet patch on his trousers. ‘I don’t believe this!’ he yelled, holding her at arm’s length as if she disgusted him, as if he was bothered not only by the dampness and the smell but by his daughter’s cowardice. He pulled on the bit and the horse came to a stop. He jumped down and put Aïcha on the ground in front of him. Father and daughter kept their eyes lowered. The horse scratched the earth with its hoof and Aïcha, terrified, threw herself at her father’s leg. ‘It’s not good to be scared like that.’ He grabbed hold of her arm and watched the urine trickle down the saddle.

  As they walked back to the house, several feet apart, Amine thought that Aïcha didn’t belong here, that he didn’t know how to handle her. Since Mathilde had gone to Europe he’d tried to spend time with his daughter, to be a good and loving father. But he was clumsy, nervous; this seven-year-old girl made him ill at ease. His daughter needed a woman in her life, someone who understood her, and not just the tenderness offered by Tamo, who was stupid and dirty. One day he’d found the maid in the kitchen, holding the teapot above her mouth and drinking straight from the spout, and he’d wanted to slap her. He had to remove his daughter from these harmful influences and yet, on his own, he could no longer keep driving her back and forth between the farm and the school.

  That evening, he went into Aïcha’s bedroom and sat on the bed. He watched her as she sat at her desk.

  ‘What are you drawing?’ he asked, without moving from the edge of the bed. Aïcha didn’t look up at him, she just said: ‘A drawing for Mama.’ Amine smiled and several times he tried to speak but gave up. He stood and walked over to the chest of drawers where Mathilde kept their daughter’s clothes. He took out a pair of those woollen knickers that his wife had knitted; they looked awfully small. He piled up a few items of clothing and stuffed them into a large brown bag. ‘You’re going to stay with your grandmother in Berrima for a few days. I think it’ll be better for you and easier for going to school.’ Aïcha folded her drawing in two, slowly, and picked up her doll from the bed. She followed her father into the hallway and went to kiss her little brother’s forehead as he slept on Tamo’s belly.

  It was the first time the two of them had been alone together in the middle of the night and they were both nervous. In the car Amine kept turning to smile reassuringly at his daughter. Aïcha smiled back, then – emboldened by the quietness of the night – she said: ‘Tell me about the war.’ She sounded like an adult when she said that, her voice deeper and more assured than usual. Amine was surprised. Staring at the road ahead, he asked: ‘Have you ever noticed this scar?’ He placed his finger behind his right ear and ran it along his skin down to his shoulder. It was too dark to see the raised brown scar, but Aïcha knew it by heart anyway. She nodded, filled with excitement at the idea that this mystery was finally about to be solved. ‘During the war, just before I met Mama …’ – Aïcha laughed softly at this – ‘I spent a few months as a prisoner in a German camp. There were lots of other soldiers like me, Moroccans from the colonial army. We were treated pretty well, for prisoners. The food was bad and there wasn’t much of it, and I lost a lot of weight. But they didn’t beat us or force us to work. In fact the worst thing was the boredom. One day a German officer summoned all the prisoners. He asked if any of us were barbers and, without thinking – I still don’t know why – I quickly pushed my way through the crowd, stood in front of the officer and said: “I was the barber in my village, sir.” The other men, who knew me, started to laugh. “You’re screwed now,” they said. But the officer believed me and he had a small table and a chair brought to the middle of the camp. They gave me some old clippers, a pair of scissors and this sticky stuff that the Germans like to put on their hair.’ Amine put his hand to his hair, mimicking the actions of the German officers. ‘My first customer sat down, and that, my sweet, is when my troubles began. I had no idea how to use those clippers and when I put them on the back of the German’s neck, they jumped out of my hand. A big bald patch appeared in the soldier’s hair. I was sweating and I decided the best thing to do was just shave off all his hair. But would you believe it, I couldn’t get those damn clippers to do what I wanted. After a while the man started fidgeting. He put his hand to his hair and he seemed upset. He was speaking German and I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Finally he got up, shoved me out of the way and grabbed a small mirror from the table. When he saw his reflection he started shouting, and although I still couldn’t understand him I knew he was insulting me. He brought over the officer who’d given me the job, and he asked me to explain myself. And do you know what I said? I lifted my arms in the air, smiled and said: ‘African haircut, sir!’

  Amine started laughing – he even banged his hand against the steering wheel to show his enthusiasm – but Aïcha didn’t laugh. She hadn’t understood the story’s punchline. ‘But what about your scar?’ I can’t tell her the truth, thought Amine. She was a little girl, not a barracks buddy. How could he tell her about the escape, the barbed wire digging into his neck, the flesh that stuck to it, the fact that he didn’t even feel it being torn away because the fear was stronger than the physical pain? He should keep that story for later, he decided. ‘Well, all right, then,’ he said, in a gentle voice that Aïcha had never heard before. The lights of the town were visible now and she could make out her father’s face and the swelling on his neck. ‘When I left the camp I spent a long time walking through the Black Forest. It was cold and I hadn’t seen a single living soul. One night, while I was sleeping, I heard a noise, like a roar, the roar of a fierce animal. When I opened my eyes a Bengal tiger was standing in front of me. He leaped on me and his sharp claw tore at my neck.’ Aïcha cried out excitedly. ‘Thankfully I still had my rifle and I managed to win our duel.’ Aïcha smiled and felt a desire to reach out and touch the long gash that ran from the roots of his hair to his collarbone.

  She’d almost forgotten the reason for this nocturnal journey and she was surprised when her father parked the car a few feet from Mouilala’s house. With one hand Amine carried the brown bag and with the other he held Aïcha’s wrist. Inside the house the little girl started screaming and she begged her father not to leave her there. The women pushed Amine out the door and cuddled the child. Then Mouilala grew tired of the spectacle of Aïcha rolling around on the floor, throwing cushions and angrily shoving away the plate of cake that they handed to her. ‘The little French girl has a nasty temper,’ she conclude
d.

  They put the child in the room next to Selma’s, and for that first night Yasmine agreed to sleep on the floor, at the foot of her bed. Despite the presence of the maid, the sound of whose breathing should have reassured her, Aïcha found it hard to fall asleep. She had the impression that this house was like the first little pig’s house in the tale of the big bad wolf: made of straw and liable to be blown away by a single breath.

  In class the next day, while Sister Marie-Solange was writing figures on the blackboard, Aïcha thought: Where is my mother and when will she be home? She wondered if everyone was lying to her, if her mother’s journey was the kind that you don’t return from, like the one taken by the Mercier widow’s husband.

  Monette, who shared a desk with her, whispered something in her ear, and the teacher smacked the edge of the table with a stick. Monette was a lively, talkative child and the tallest girl in the class. She seemed to have taken a liking to Aïcha that Aïcha herself couldn’t explain. Monette talked constantly, on the benches in chapel and in the schoolyard during break time, in the cafeteria and even when they were being quizzed by the teacher in the classroom. She got on the adults’ nerves, and one day the Mother Superior shouted, ‘For God’s sake!’, and her wrinkled cheeks blushed with shame. Aïcha couldn’t tell how much of what Monette told her was true and how much simply made up. Did Monette really have a sister in France who was an actress? Had she really been to America, seen zebras at the zoo in Paris, kissed one of her male cousins on the mouth? Was it true that her father, Emile Barte, was an aviator? Monette described him with such passion and in such detail that Aïcha ended up believing in the existence of this prodigy of the Meknes Flying Club. Monette explained to her the differences between T-33s, Piper Cubs and Vampires; she described the most dangerous stunts that her father could pull off. She said: ‘I’ll take you there one day, you’ll see.’ This promise became an obsession for Aïcha. There were only two thoughts in her head: an afternoon at the flying club and the return of her mother. She imagined that her friend’s father could go and fetch Mathilde in one of his aeroplanes. If she asked him nicely, if she begged, he would probably agree to do her this little favour.

  Monette drew in her prayer book. She added thick black moustaches to the paintings of saints and angels. After initially being shocked that someone could have so little fear of authority, Aïcha started to find her friend funny. Aïcha would watch, open-mouthed with admiration, as Monette played her little tricks. Several times the nuns begged her to tell on her friend. But Aïcha never did, and she discovered that she was loyal. One day Monette led her into the school toilets. It was so cold in there that most of the girls would hold it in for hours so that they didn’t have to undress, teeth chattering as they squatted above the hole. Monette looked around. ‘Watch the door,’ she told Aïcha, whose heart was close to bursting. Aïcha said: ‘Hurry up’ and ‘Have you nearly finished?’ and ‘But what on earth are you doing?’ and ‘We’re going to get in trouble!’ Monette took a glass bottle from under her blouse. She lifted up her woollen skirt and held the hem between her teeth. She pulled down her knickers and Aïcha, horrified, caught a glimpse of her bald vulva. Monette held the little bottle under it and pissed inside. The hot liquid ran from the neck down to the glass bottom and Aïcha started shaking, with fear and excitement. Then she felt her legs give way beneath her. She took a few steps back, getting ready to flee because she was starting to worry that she’d been lured into a trap and that Monette was going to make her drink the urine. She was too naive, she knew she was, and soon Monette would call out to the other girls in the class and they would all attack Aïcha, jamming the bottle’s neck against her teeth and shouting, ‘Drink! Drink!’ But Monette pulled up her knickers, smoothed down her skirt and grabbed Aïcha’s hand. ‘Follow me,’ she said, and they started to run along the gravel path towards the chapel. Aïcha’s job was to stand watch outside the door, but she kept looking inside to see what Monette was up to. And so it was that she saw her friend pour the bottle’s contents into the holy water font. From that day on, Aïcha would always shudder when she saw anyone, young or old, stick their fingers into the stoup and cross themselves.

  ‘How long is a month?’ Aïcha asked Mouilala as the old woman hugged her. ‘Mama will be back,’ her grandmother promised. Aïcha didn’t like the way her grandmother smelled, the long orange strands of hair that escaped her headscarf, the henna that she put on the soles of her feet. And then there were her hands, so callused, so rough that even her caresses were scratchy. Those hands with their fingernails eroded by the water she used to clean the house, with their skin covered in little scars. Here the trace of a burn; there a gash dating from the feast day when she cut herself in the scullery. Despite her revulsion Aïcha would always seek refuge in the old woman’s room when she was frightened. Mouilala laughed at her granddaughter’s fearful nature and attributed it to her European origins. When voices rose from the dozens of mosques in town Aïcha would start to tremble. And when the prayer was over the muezzins would blow into enormous trumpets and the cavernous sound they made would terrorise the child. In a book that one of the nuns at school had shown her, the Archangel Gabriel held a similar gold-rimmed instrument. He was waking the dead for the Last Judgement.

  One evening, as she was doing her homework with Selma, Aïcha heard doors banging and Omar yelling something. The girls abandoned their schoolbooks and leaned over the balustrade to look down on to the patio. Mouilala was standing next to the banana tree and in a low voice, with a harshness that Aïcha had never heard from her mouth before, she was threatening her son with reprisals. She walked over to the front door and Omar begged her: ‘I can’t send them out there now! This is about the future of our country, ya moui.’ He kissed his mother’s shoulder, then forcibly took hold of the hand she was refusing him and thanked her.

  The old woman climbed the stairs, muttering bitter insults. Her sons were going to kill her! How had she offended Allah, what crimes had she committed to deserve those two sons who lived in her house? Jalil was possessed by demons and Omar had always caused her so much anxiety. Before the war he’d gone to a school in the new town where Kadour had managed to get him a place thanks to the intervention of a European friend. But with his father dead and his brother at war, Omar had no longer been held accountable for his actions. Several times he’d returned to Berrima with his face bloodied, his lips swollen. He’d liked fighting and carried a knife in his pocket. A fatherless son is a danger to all those around him, Mouilala had thought then. For several weeks he’d hidden from his mother the fact that he’d been expelled from school, and then she’d found out from a neighbour that Omar had arrived in class with a newspaper under his arm, yelling triumphantly: ‘The Germans have taken Paris! That Hitler is a great man!’ At the time, Mouilala had sworn that she would tell Amine everything when he returned from the war.

  Omar was as handsome as his older brother but he had a stranger appearance: an angular face, high cheekbones, thin lips and thick brown hair. Above all he was much taller and the expression on his face was always so serious, so mean, that people often believed he was older than he really was. He’d worn glasses since the age of twelve, but despite being thick the lenses were not very effective, and that myopic look gave the impression that he was lost, that he was about to reach out and ask for help. That look frightened Aïcha. It was like being close to an animal that was starving or had just been beaten.

  He would never have admitted it publicly, but during the war years Omar was glad that his older brother was absent. He often dreamed of Amine’s corpse, ripped to pieces by a shell, rotting at the bottom of a trench. All he knew about war was what his own father had told him. The gas, the ditches full of rats and mud. He didn’t know that war wasn’t like that any more. Amine survived. Worse, he returned a hero, his chest weighed down by medals, his mouth full of wonderful stories. In 1940 Amine was taken prisoner and Omar had to pretend to be worried, upset. In 1943 he came home and Omar feig
ned relief, then admiration when his elder brother decided to return to the front as a volunteer. How many times had Omar had to listen to the stories of his brother’s heroism, the escape from the camp and through icy fields where a poor farmer pretended that Amine was his employee? How many times had he had to laugh as Amine acted out his journey in a coal wagon and described the prostitute in Paris who gave him shelter? When his brother made a spectacle of himself, Omar smiled. He patted him on the shoulder and said: ‘Spoken like a true Belhaj!’ But it killed him to see girls hanging on his every word, licking their lips, giggling and wishing they could be taken by a war hero.