Peaches for Monsieur Le Curé

by Joanne Harris

  She was silent for such a long time that Omi broke in impatiently. ‘Who came?’

  ‘A committee of fools. My uncle. My father. My brothers. They told me I was better off dead than living in dishonour. That I was a whore, that I had abandoned hayaa. That only blood could cleanse the shame of what I had done to the family. That if I had worn proper hijab, and behaved with respect and modesty, then this would never have happened. And then—’

  And at that, Inès unpinned her scarf and drew aside her veil, and we saw – for the first time, I saw her: the Scorpion Queen, the Woman in Black, the ghost I have pursued for so long that I’d almost begun to doubt she was real—

  Omi gave a startled squawk.

  Sonia put a hand to her mouth.

  Inès remained impassive. Zahra did, too – which made me think that this wasn’t the first time she’d seen her unveiled – although her colours were shot with distress.

  As for myself, it took me a moment to realize what I was seeing. I’d expected Inès to be beautiful. Everything suggested it – her posture, the grace of her bearing, the colour and shape of those green-gold eyes – so that for a second I even saw the woman Inès might have been. Perhaps not as young as I’d guessed her to be, but remarkable nevertheless; the lustrous hair; the elegant neck; the astonishing cheekbones; the arched brows; the beauty that even at sixty – or seventy, or eighty – will still be anchored there, bone-deep, like a diamond inside a knuckle of stone—

  And then I really saw her. Like the optical illusion that takes a moment to slip into place – two lovers into a demon face, a profile into a butterfly – never now to be unseen.

  ‘They call it a smiley,’ said Inès. ‘You see them sometimes. In Tangier, in Marrakech – even in Paris or Marseille. They take a knife and they make a cut from here to here, from there to there’ – she spanned the distance with index and thumb between her earlobes and the corners of her mouth. ‘So that, for the rest of your life, you always remember to keep your hayaa. So everyone who looks at you will understand that you are a whore.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Saturday, 28th August, 10.45 a.m.

  HER COUSIN HAD called for a doctor. It was he who put in the stitches – nine on each side, in shiny black thread, which, when it was removed, left a kind of permanent stain between every little pebble of flesh. The result is the face of a rag doll that has been ripped apart, then clumsily put back together again without quite matching the broken seams. It’s gruesome and unutterably sad; one side of the face is lifeless, as if the woman has suffered a stroke; she tells us that this is because of the damage to the nerves. Without the veil, it is easy to see why her voice is so wooden and flat; she moves only the jaw as she speaks, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. The scars are over thirty years old; stretched and laddered and polished by time. Once seen, it is difficult to see anything but those grinning scars; they catch in the throat like a fishbone, making you gasp and struggle for breath. To think of those scars on a sixteen-year-old; on a child the same age as Anouk—

  ‘And so I went back to Agadir,’ Inès went on in her toneless voice. ‘I wore a veil, and slept on the street. There is no help in my country for dishonoured women. They have no rights, not even the right to give their child a surname. Religious charities do not acknowledge them. They are shunned by everyone. At last I found a day centre run by a Swiss foundation. The people there were good to me, although they were none of them Muslims. They helped me and looked after my child. They found me a job in a workshop, making clothes. I slept in the basement with Karim, and worked at a machine all day. I made dresses and saris and scarves, and stitched embroidered slippers. Karim grew. I worked hard. The couple who ran the shop were kind. The man was Amal Bencharki. I told him my husband divorced me. He didn’t ask too many questions.’

  When Karim was three, Amal Bencharki’s wife died. They had had no children. Amal Bencharki was fifty-two. Most of his family lived in France. Amal offered to marry Inès and give her son a name.

  ‘He didn’t care about my face. In any case, no one would see it. I wore a chadra all the time – that’s what they call the veil over there. Amal was lonely. He missed his wife. His family was far away. I think he just wanted company, and someone to cook and keep house for him. To be his maid. Well, I could do that. I’d had plenty of practice.’ Her lips twitched. It was almost a smile. Her mouth is very like her son’s – or would have been, without those scars. But while Karim’s is a slashed peach, hers is a grinning pumpkin, held in place by pulleys of flesh. Smiling makes it worse, of course.

  Omi grinned in sympathy. ‘You married him, then?’

  She gave that ghastly smile again. ‘I was going to marry him. But his family became suspicious. His brothers came round, asking questions. His father even came over from France. I didn’t have any answers for them. Finally, I told them the truth.’ She shrugged. ‘That was the end of it.’

  Amal Bencharki had given Inès money and papers to leave Agadir. The papers were in his dead wife’s name, and Inès’s photograph was in her passport. She had used them to give Karim a name, and to take them both as far as Tangier, hoping to lose herself in the big city.

  ‘I became Inès Bencharki. The widow of a textile merchant from Agadir. I looked after my son and made clothes on a sewing machine in my room. I told Karim the same story, but as he grew older he started to ask questions. I told more lies. I sent him to school. I gave him everything I had. I wanted him to go to mosque, to have good friends, to have respect. He was a beautiful little boy. I know I spoilt him. That was my fault. But my Karim was all I had. They say Jannah is at the feet of the mother. For me, Karim was my Jannah. Allah was good because he was there. I wanted my son to have everything.’

  She gave that dreadful rictus again. And yet, when she talks about Karim, I can see beauty in her face.

  ‘I needed more money,’ Inès went on. ‘So when Karim was old enough to look after himself for a while, I went to Spain to pick strawberries. It was hard work. The hours were long. But the money was so much better there than anything I could earn at home, that I could not resist it. Karim was a clever student. I wanted him to go to university. But these things cost money; more money than I could earn in Tangier, making clothes. I spent three months in Spain that year, leaving my son alone. I suppose I did not exercise enough control over Karim. But he always seemed such a good boy, always so respectful. The next year I went to Spain again. Karim was barely seventeen. And this time, while I was away, he raped a girl at knifepoint.’

  The girl was called Shada Idris; a twenty-two-year-old unmarried girl, whom Karim had met in a tea-house. A whore, by Karim’s reckoning, in her jeans and spiked heels, her hair tied up in a fashionable style beneath her multicoloured hijab. She had agreed to meet Karim. He and his friends had been waiting.

  At first he denied his involvement. He told Inès he’d only watched. But he’d kept a trophy – her bracelet – a single string of black jet beads. Inès had found it in his room and made him admit the whole affair.

  He had told the police she was asking for it; besides, she wasn’t a virgin. She lived with two other women near the big mosque in the city centre, and each took it in turns to mind the children while the others went to work. She already had an illegitimate child, a little girl whose name was Du’a—

  ‘My little peach!’ said Omi, glancing quickly at Du’a.

  Inès nodded. ‘Don’t worry, she knows. She has always known the truth. I brought up Karim in ignorance, and you saw what he grew into. But Du’a knows that zina is a slippery fish that will not be caught, but jumps from one hand to the other—’ She smiled again. ‘In any case, the child is not the criminal. I taught that lesson to my son, but the rest of it I left too late. I was ashamed, you see. I thought I could escape ever telling him.’

  Shada had called the local police to report the attack against her. But as in the case of Inès, the police seemed more interested in investigating Shada herself. She was arrested for prostitution,
and although the charge was dropped, it transpired that she had been living illegally in government accommodation. She and her child were turned out of their flat. Homeless now and desperate, Shada had gone to the housing association building, sat down in the middle of the square, poured a can of petrol over her head and set herself on fire.

  Inès looked round at the four of us. ‘What else could I do?’ she said. ‘My son must have a share in the blame. And so I told Karim the truth about his father – about myself; and I took the child Shada had left, and brought her up as my own. For a long time, Karim was angry. Angry at me for shaming him; still more angry at himself. He never looked at my Du’a, or spoke to her more than he had to. And yet she was a sweet little girl. I called her my little stranger.’

  That phrase. My little stranger. At first I thought I’d misheard her. That she should use the very same phrase I’d always used for my Anouk – and yet it was oddly appropriate. Inès is no longer the Woman in Black – she has a face, and in spite of those scars, I recognize it very well. We are alike, she and I. Both scorpions; both buffaloes.

  Inès gave me a curious look. Her eyes were dark as wild honey. ‘You see,’ she said, reading my mind. ‘We are not so different, after all. Some of us choose our family. Some of us are chosen. And sometimes the choice we have to make is between two halves of a broken heart. This has been my choice, Vianne. It has not been easy. Listen to me, and ask yourself if you would have acted differently.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Saturday, 28th August, 11.00 a.m.

  ‘KARIM WAS A beautiful boy,’ she said. ‘Soon, he became a beautiful man. Women liked him; so did men. He knew how to charm them. He wanted to study in Paris, he said: I gave him the money to travel. But a year into his college course, he wrote to say that he had dropped out; he wanted to marry a French woman he’d met while he was studying. The woman was older than he was – she worked at one of the embassies – and she had money. She was besotted. She gave Karim everything he wanted. I admit, I suspected from the start that this was why he was marrying her. It seemed her family did, too. One day I received a phone call from the woman’s mother. She had made inquiries. She knew that her daughter was not the only woman Karim was seeing. There were others – several others – and worse, there had been certain rumours—’

  Inès gave her harsh little laugh. ‘I recognized the story. A girl at a party had been raped; but she had been drunk, her account was unclear. Another student had been raped in a park, near a nightclub. Both were classmates of Karim’s. Both times, his name was mentioned. Neither incident was reported to the police. And yet, I knew. In my heart, I knew.’

  Inès had come to Paris and forced Karim to a confrontation. He’d denied the two assaults, but there was something in his eyes that told her he was responsible. Looking through his belongings, once more she found his trophies. A necklace; an earring; a headscarf that still smelt of perfume. They were just whores, he said sullenly. The capital was full of them. They had no shame or modesty; why shouldn’t he take advantage?

  ‘And yet I loved him,’ said Inès. ‘He was my gold and incense. I knew that I had been at fault. I had indulged him far too much; I thought that I could change him. By then he was twenty-three years old; Du’a was eight, and going to school. I thought that if I could get Karim to go to mosque more regularly, to study the Qur’an, to respect women and himself, then this behaviour would disappear. I made him come back to Tangier with me. I made him break off the engagement. I started to think that he had changed – but all of you have seen my son. He shows a golden face to the world. People want to love him. Time passed; I found him a job working for an importer of textiles. Karim was well spoken, intelligent; always polite and respectful. He often travelled on business; he always brought back gifts for me. Sometimes I was uneasy – once, when a girl in our apartment block was raped outside, by the rubbish bins; once more when a young girl came to the flat, asking for Karim. But my son always had an answer; an excuse; an alibi. I wondered if my suspicions were simply waswaas, unfounded fears. And then came Saïd Mahjoubi – first a customer, then a friend. They met on a trip to Mecca, and soon became close. At first I was glad. Saïd was a good man, honest and devout. I hoped he would be a good influence.’

  Instead it was the other way round. Karim was the one with the influence. Little by little, the younger man had worked his charm on the elder. Saïd was already susceptible; resentful of his father; jaded by current events in France; nostalgic for a country and a time that had never been his own. Karim fed him a pretty version of everyday life in Tangier; spoke of family and respect and of his return to Islam. Saïd was impressed, and within a year was talking about a possible marriage between Karim and his eldest daughter.

  At first, Inès was uneasy. But Karim had changed; he was sober; polite; he really seemed to be serious. Besides, she wanted to believe; she wanted him to be married. Sonia was a good Muslim girl from a decent family; and from the pictures she’d seen of her, she was also beautiful. Inès allowed her doubts to fade. The ceremony was arranged.

  One problem remained – her secret; the scandal of Karim’s parentage. He’d introduced himself to Saïd as the son of Amal Bencharki, and had allowed Saïd to believe that Inès was his widowed sister.

  ‘If Saïd had seen my face,’ said Inès, ‘he would have guessed the truth. And so I let him believe the lie. I became Karim’s sister.’

  The wedding had duly taken place. Inès had come over with Du’a for the ceremony. She had not intended to stay for good, but something had alerted her. Perhaps the easy atmosphere of the community of Les Marauds; the girls unveiled, in Western dress, some not even wearing hijab. She blamed old Mahjoubi’s leadership; the old man was no scholar, and his interpretation of the Qur’an was wholly unconventional. He allowed too much freedom to his flock; he was too lenient with zina. His rivalry with Francis Reynaud verged on the inappropriate; he was openly hostile to the niqab, read all kinds of unsuitable French books and was even rumoured to drink alcohol. She decided to stay, at least for a while.

  Karim was surprised and unhappy. But there was nothing he could say without giving away his secret. Over the months Inès had tried to combat the shortcomings of old Mahjoubi’s regime. She set up a school for Muslim girls; promoted niqab and traditional dress; and by her association with Karim, who had already won hearts and minds on both sides of the river, quickly became a prominent member of the female community of Les Marauds. She was an oddity to them – both virtuous and curiously liberated – living independently, but going to mosque every day and setting a good example. People started to copy her, then to compete with each other. Modest attire began to be seen as a statement, rather than a constraint. Gradually, the young women of Les Marauds began to look to Inès Bencharki as a role model and a guide.

  Meanwhile, Saïd Mahjoubi was doing his best to do the same with the men of the village. The gym had always been a regular meeting-place for them; with Karim in charge, it now became a magnet for bored and disaffected young men. Karim has a shine; I’ve seen it myself. Attractive to women; outgoing with men; deferential to his elders, but quietly unconventional enough to make an impression on the young. While Saïd preached a gospel of tradition, respect and a return to Islam, in the gym Karim used Islam to promote his own opinions; opinions formed on the streets of Tangier, where women who do not wear hijab are considered fair game to predators. To some of the men of Les Marauds, this kind of talk had subversive appeal. Young men who had once been shy acquired a certain swagger. Friendships between Les Marauds and Lansquenet gradually waned. Brothers became increasingly protective of sisters who did not wear hijab, and as the more traditional style of dress gained in popularity, the community became increasingly polarized. Saïd grew more outspoken in his disapproval of his father’s leadership, while old Mahjoubi fanned the flames of unrest by speaking out against the niqab and preaching integration.

  Within six months, the character of Les Marauds had subtly changed; and nobody r
eally understood how or why it had happened. Was it Karim’s influence? Was it Inès? No one knew. But beneath the surface of the quiet little community, something was gaining momentum; something that would soon become a war.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Saturday, 28th August, 11.10 a.m.

  ‘A WAR,’ SAID Inès. ‘Imagine that! A secret war between mother and son. Neither of us spoke of it. That would have been to admit that there was mistrust between us. But Karim hadn’t really changed; he’d simply become more careful. He had a new wife who adored him; even so it wasn’t enough. He praised the niqab in public, but his fantasies were of Western whores, and I knew it was just a matter of time before zina found him again.’

  Once more, Inès looked at Sonia. She had listened to all this without comment, but now she was shaking her head.

  ‘No. I don’t believe it. You are wrong. My Karim would never—’

  Inès put a hand on Sonia’s arm. ‘I know all this must be hard to believe. I know how cruel it must sound. I too found it hard to believe, once. I tried to blind myself to the truth. But it started with porn on the internet. I found it on his computer. After that, it was internet sex. I caught him at it one time, with a girl from the village. Her name was Marie-Ange Lucas, and her profile said she was sixteen. In fact, she was fifteen, but Karim didn’t care. She was a whore, he told me. Why else would she accept to meet a boy she didn’t know for sex? My intervention came just in time. Karim broke off contact with Marie-Ange. I thought he’d learnt his lesson, but he’d simply found more attractive meat. Your sister, Alyssa, whom he seduced, then drove to try and kill herself—’