The Country of Others

by Leïla Slimani

  He left the bathroom and walked down the hallway of this unknown house, guided by voices. He heard the child’s voice asking: ‘Who is that man?’ and ‘Tell me about the war again!’ He heard Mathilde’s voice, begging for the window to be opened because the cooker was smoking. And, at last, he heard Amine’s voice, impatient: ‘Where on earth’s he got to? Do you think I should go and make sure he’s all right?’ Before entering the kitchen where they were all gathered, Mourad stopped and observed them through the half-open door. His body was slowly warming up again. He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of coffee. A feeling of sweetness came over him and made his head spin. It was like a sob impossible to stifle. He cleared his throat and widened his eyes to rid himself of the taste of salt that had filled his mouth. Amine was sitting opposite his messy-haired daughter. It felt like centuries since Mourad had seen all this. A woman busy in the kitchen, a child smiling, gestures of tenderness. Mourad thought that he had, perhaps, finally reached his destination. That he had come to a good place where his nightmares would no longer pursue him.

  He went in and the adults said, ‘Ah!’ while the little girl stared at him. All four of them sat around the table, which Mathilde set with a tablecloth she’d embroidered herself. Mourad drank his coffee, sip by sip, his hands gripping the enamel cup tightly. Amine didn’t ask him where he’d come from or what he was doing there. He smiled and put his hand on Mourad’s shoulder and kept repeating: ‘What a wonderful surprise!’ and ‘I’m so happy to see you!’ All evening long they shared memories as the little girl listened, fascinated, and begged them not to send her to bed. They talked about the boat trip that had taken them towards civilised, warlike men in September 1944. At the port of La Ciotat they’d sung together to give themselves courage. ‘Are you a good singer, Papa? What did you sing?’

  Amine had made fun of his aide-de-camp, Private Mourad, who was amazed by everything and kept tugging on his sleeve to whisper questions. ‘Do they have poor people here?’ he’d asked. In the fields of southern France he’d been surprised to see white women, women who looked just like the ones in his country, who never spoke to him unless they were forced to. Mourad liked to say that he had enrolled to defend France, this country he knew nothing about but which – he didn’t know why – governed his destiny. ‘France is my mother, France is my father.’ The truth was: he’d had no choice. When the French had arrived in his village, fifty miles from Meknes, they’d gathered all the men who were not too old or too young or too sick and pointed at the back of a van. ‘Go to war or go to prison,’ they’d said. So Mourad had gone to war. Not once had it crossed his mind that a prison cell might have been more comfortable or safer than the battlefields of that snow-covered land. Anyway, it wasn’t their blackmail that had convinced him. It wasn’t the fear of shame or incarceration. Nor was it the bonus he was given for joining the army or the wages that he could send home to his family, for which his mother was so grateful. Later, when he joined the Spahi Regiment where Amine was a lance corporal, he realised that he’d been right. That something great had happened to him. That he’d given his life – his poor, ordinary peasant’s life – an unexpected grandeur, a nobility of which he wasn’t even worthy. Sometimes he had no longer been sure if it was for France or for Amine that he felt ready to die.

  When he thought back to the war, Mourad was struck by the memory of silence. The noise of bombs, rifles and shouting had faded away and all that remained in his mind was the memory of things unspoken, of those men of few words. Amine had told him to keep his head down and not do anything that would get him noticed. They had to fight, win, and then go home. Don’t make a scene. Don’t ask questions. From La Ciotat they’d travelled east and been greeted as liberators. Men had opened the best bottles of wine in their honour and women waved little flags. ‘Vive la France! Vive la France!’ One day a child had pointed at Amine and said, ‘Negro.’

  Mourad had been there when Amine saw Mathilde for the first time, during the autumn of 1944. Their regiment was stationed in a small village a few miles from Mulhouse. She invited them to dinner at her house that evening. She apologised in advance: ‘Rationing,’ she said, and the soldiers nodded. They were shown into the living room and it was full of people. Villagers, other soldiers, old gentlemen already struggling to walk straight. They gathered around a long wooden table and Mathilde sat facing Amine, watching him greedily. To her, this officer seemed heaven-sent. What upset her at that time was not the war but the absence of adventures. She’d been walled up for four years with no new clothes to wear, no new books to read, and Amine was like the answer to all her prayers. She was nineteen and hungry for life, and the war had taken it from her.

  Mathilde’s father entered the living room singing a dirty song and everyone joined in. Amine and Mourad remained silent. They stared at this giant with his huge belly and his black moustache without a single grey hair. They all sat down for the meal. Mourad was pushed ever closer to Amine. A man sat at the piano and the guests linked arms and sang together. They called for food. The women, their cheeks covered in rosacea, put large plates of cold meat and cabbage on the table. They served tankards of beer and Mathilde’s father yelled for schnapps. Mathilde pushed the plate to Amine. They were the soldiers of the Liberation, after all, so they should be served first. Amine stabbed a sausage with his fork. He said, ‘Thank you’, and ate.

  Beside him Mourad trembled. He was as pale as a ghost and sweat was pouring down the back of his neck. All this noise, these women, the indecent songs … It all made him uneasy and reminded him of the Bousbir in Casablanca, the red-light district where some French soldiers had once taken him. He’d been haunted ever since by those men’s laughter, by the brutal way they’d acted. They’d stuck fingers in the vagina of a girl his sister’s age. They’d pulled the prostitutes’ hair and sucked their breasts, not with sensuality but as if they were purging an animal’s teats. The girls’ bodies had been covered in purple love bites and red scratches.

  Mourad pressed close to his commander. He tugged on his sleeve and Amine grew annoyed. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked in Arabic. ‘Can’t you see I’m talking to someone?’ But Mourad insisted. He looked at Amine with panic-stricken eyes. Pointing at the plates on the table, he said: ‘That’s pork, isn’t it? And that …’ – here he gestured with his eyebrows at the glasses – ‘… that’s alcohol, isn’t it?’ Amine stared at him and said coldly: ‘Shut up and eat.’

  ‘What’s the big deal?’ he asked later, while they were walking through the dark village streets to their barracks. ‘What are you scared of? Going to hell? We’ve already been, remember, and we got out alive.’

  Hadn’t they dreamed of a warm room, a full plate, a young woman’s smile when they were marching behind the SS, who’d taken them prisoner after the battle of La Horgne in May 1940? They’d walked for hours, days, and Mourad had insisted on carrying Amine’s kit. What did any of this have to do with them? All they’d wanted was a small farm, on a hill far from this land. They had no enemies they could name and, faced with giant men who spoke an unknown language, they’d thrown down their weapons and stood in line. One night when they’d stopped beside a field, they’d scratched at the icy ground in total darkness. Silently they’d dug up tiny potatoes and eaten them, taking care not to make any noise as they chewed. That night all the men had vomited and some had soiled themselves. When day broke and they were told to start marching again, they’d taken one last look at the field. It was criss-crossed with thin, ragged furrows, as if small creatures with sharp claws had been tearing at the earth. Then they had taken a train to a POW camp near Dortmund. ‘Tell me about the camp!’ Aïcha asked now, fighting against her heavy eyelids. ‘We’ll save the camp stories for later,’ Amine promised. He was exhausted by these reminiscences.

  Amine guided Mourad to the end of the hallway and opened a door into a small bedroom with floral-print wallpaper. Mourad didn’t dare go inside. He was embarrassed by the room’s delicate femininity.
On the bedside table was a carafe of water with a bouquet of violets painted on its side. Mathilde had made frilly curtains for the windows and the bed was covered with a pile of colourful cushions. Mourad, who’d been expecting to sleep on a bench or even the kitchen floor, was dumbstruck. ‘Stay with us as long as you like,’ Amine told him reassuringly. ‘I’m glad you came.’

  Mourad undressed and slipped between the fresh sheets. The house was perfectly quiet but he couldn’t sleep. He opened the window, threw the sheets on the floor, but nothing could calm his anxiety. He was in such a panic that he felt like getting out of bed, putting on his drenched jacket and vanishing into the night. This sweetness, this brightness, this human warmth … It was not for the likes of him. He had no right, he thought, to bring his sins here, to stain these people’s lives with his secrets. In his bed Mourad felt ashamed of not having told Amine everything. When he discovers the truth, Mourad thought, he’ll kick me out, insult me, accuse me of taking advantage of his generosity.

  Mourad wished he could put his hand on Amine’s and let his head rest on his commander’s shoulder, breathe in his scent. He wished that their embrace, on the doorstep, could have lasted forever. He’d pretended, like the hypocrite he was, to be delighted to see Mathilde and the children, but in fact he’d have preferred it if they weren’t there, if there’d been nobody in this house but him and the commander. Earlier he’d worn Amine’s vest and shirt and felt a dizzying lust that he repented now. How shameful this was! Tears rose to his eyes as he felt his cock harden, his guts twist with desire. He tried to rid his mind of the images. He bit his hand. He had to stop thinking about this, just like he had to stop thinking about the corpses, the torn bodies rotting in muddy pools, the terrible monsoon that drove his comrades mad in Indochina, the dark oozing blood of those who’d decided to kill themselves rather than go back into battle. He had to stop thinking about the war and he had to stop thinking about the crazy, overpowering need he felt to seek tenderness in the arms of Amine.

  He had come to this place and now it was impossible for him to make the decision to leave. The truth was that he had deserted with only one thought in mind, only one objective. All those nights that he’d spent walking, that he’d hidden in cattle wagons, in barns and cellars, all those days when, dazed with fatigue, he’d fallen asleep in train stations, forgetting even his fear, it had been Amine’s face that led him onward. He thought about his commander’s smile, that lopsided smile that showed only half of his white teeth. He’d have crossed another continent for that smile. And while the other soldiers held photographs of bare-legged dolls to their hearts, while they wanked over memories of some whore’s milk-engorged breasts or some vague fiancée, Mourad had sworn to find his commander again.

  The next morning Amine was waiting for him in the kitchen. Mathilde was sitting with Aïcha on her lap, the two of them deep in contemplation of an anatomical drawing of the kidneys. Selim, who smelled of urine, was playing on the floor with some empty saucepans. ‘Ah, there you are!’ said Amine. ‘I was thinking about this all night, and I have a proposal for you. Come on, let’s talk while we walk.’ Mathilde handed Mourad a cup of coffee, which he downed in a single mouthful. Amine picked up his jacket and sunglasses, kissed his wife on the shoulder and gently stroked her bottom with his fingertips. ‘Go on, get out of here,’ she said with a laugh.

  They walked towards the stables. ‘I wanted to show you everything I’ve done here in only five years. A few months ago I hired a foreman, a young Frenchman recommended by my neighbour, the Mercier widow. He was a good boy, honest and hard-working, but he went back to France not long ago. There’s a lot of work here and a lot of potential. I’d like you to help me. If you can stay, I’ll make you my new foreman.’ Mourad walked in silence, in step with his commander. He knew nothing about agriculture, but he’d grown up in the countryside and no mission seemed impossible to him if Amine was the one giving him orders. Amine showed him the plantations of fruit trees that now covered a large part of the property. He talked about his passion for the olive tree, a noble tree on which he was attempting several experiments. ‘I’d like to build a greenhouse to grow my own plants and increase productivity. We’d need to create a nursery and install a heating and humidification system. And I need time to devote to my studies and to the development of new varieties.’ Face red with excitement, Amine squeezed Mourad’s hand. ‘I have a meeting with the Chamber of Agriculture today. We can talk more about this when I return, if that’s all right?’

  That evening Mourad accepted the offer and moved into the storeroom near the giant palm tree, ten feet from the house. At night he could hear the sound of rats climbing the creeper that wound around the huge trunk. He had few needs: a camp bed, a blanket that he folded every morning with irritating care, a mess tin and a large pitcher of water to give himself a cursory wash. He would not have been shocked or put off had they told him to shit in the fields, but he was allowed to use the outside toilets, which had been set up in the kitchen courtyard for Tamo, the maid (who was not allowed to piss in the same place that Mathilde pissed). Mourad treated the labourers with mili tary strictness, and in less than three weeks the whole village hated him. ‘The secret of all victorious armies is discipline,’ he repeated. He was even worse than certain Frenchmen, the ones who locked shirkers in a box room or whipped them. This man, the fellahs complained, was worse than a foreigner. He was a traitor, a sell-out, and he belonged to the race of slave traffickers who built empires on the backs of their own people.

  One day, while Mourad and Achour were walking past Mariani’s farm, the labourer noisily cleared his throat and spat on the ground. ‘A curse on you!’ he yelled, staring at the property’s fence. ‘Those colonists took our best land, our water and our trees.’ Mourad told him to shut up, then asked, in a serious voice: ‘What do you think there was here, before he came? They’re the ones who drilled for water, they’re the ones who planted the trees. They lived in poverty when they first came here, didn’t they? In mud huts with corrugated-iron roofs? Huh? So shut your mouth! We’re not here to talk politics, we’re here to work.’ Mourad decided to take a roll call every morning and he blamed Amine for never having formalised the labourers’ working hours. ‘Without authority there’s only anarchy. How do you expect your farm to flourish if you let them do whatever they want?’

  Mourad would be out with his machines from dawn until dusk and he didn’t even leave the fields to eat lunch. The labourers didn’t want to eat with him, so he sat alone in the shade of a tree, chewing his bread and staring at the ground so he wouldn’t see the taunting eyes of his men.

  In the days after he started working at the farm, Mourad set about solving the water problem. With an old Pontiac engine he created a pump house. He hired a few men to drill for water. When it started spurting out of the earth the workers yelled with joy. They held their callused hands under the jet, splashed the cool water over their wind-burned faces and thanked God for His generosity. But Mourad was not as magnanimous as Allah. At night he organised ‘water guards’ to protect the well. Two trusted workers took it in turns to stand in front of the hole with rifles on their shoulders. They’d light a fire to keep the dogs and jackals away and fight to stay awake until the changing of the guard.

  Mourad wanted Amine to be happy and proud of him. He didn’t care if the labourers hated him; his only obsession was satisfying his commander. Every day, Amine delegated more and more tasks to Mourad, devoting himself to his experiments and numerous meetings with the bank. He was often absent, leaving Mourad in despair. When he’d accepted this job, Mourad had imagined being as close to Amine as he’d been during the war, the two of them enjoying the country air, walking for hours, confronting danger together and laughing, as men do, at stupid jokes. He’d thought that their old complicity would return and that – despite the permanently hierarchical nature of their relationship – they would be the best of friends again, a friendship that would exclude Mathilde, the labourers, and even Amin
e’s children.

  He felt a surge of joy when, in the middle of December, Amine offered to help him repair the combine harvester. They spent three afternoons in the hangar together. Amine was surprised by Mourad’s enthusiasm, the way he whistled cheerfully as he hoisted himself up on to the enormous machine. Mourad had always been the one to repair tanks during the war. One evening, his face smeared with grease, his hands shaking with fatigue and frustration, Amine threw a tool at the wall, furious at having wasted his time and money on this machine. He was missing certain parts and no mechanic in the region could supply him with them. ‘Let’s just forget it. I’m going home.’ But Mourad stopped him and, in a loud, comical voice, encouraged Amine to be brave and optimistic. He was convinced that he could manufacture the missing parts himself, and he said that if it would genuinely help make the harvester work again he would gladly cut off one of his legs or arms. This made Amine laugh, and back then Amine didn’t laugh very often.

  Amine was delighted by his foreman’s efficiency but he worried about the oppressive atmosphere created by his military methods. The labourers would often come to him to complain. Mourad was always insulting the nationalists and the men had seen him walking on the main road, his little finger entwined with the little finger of the moqaddem, the local government’s chief of intelligence. The foreman boasted about being an agent of order and prosperity. When Amine became concerned about the fighting that was breaking out more and more often on the farm, when he expressed regret at seeing the sad, angry expressions on the peasants’ faces, Mourad reassured him: ‘This is not the moment to be weak. All over the country young people are creating disorder. We have to be firm with them.’