The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris

by Leila Marouane

  A few hours later, said he, at around one o'clock in the morning, I came in and closed the door of the apartment in the Saint-Ouen projects. Without switching on the light, I put down the bag full of your books—which I had just bought at La Hune, for the bookstore was open until midnight, or so I had realized with delight upon entering—then I untied my laces and thought back on the nice little evening that I had spent in the company of my first conquest, not yet possessed, but the labyrinths of whom I had the firm intention of exploring. Clefts and slits. Etc.

  For our first encounter, given the lack of furniture in my abode, and because the moment did not seem apposite, and as on all the (rare) times that I had gone up to a woman—thanks in particular to my sister who was in a hurry to see me leave the four walls of our "old lady" behind—I was content merely to listen to her.

  With grace and levelheadedness—her eyes, her lips, her nose that up to now I had not fully appreciated, grew lovelier by the minute—she told me about the life she used to lead in Algiers. And then the circumstances, ten years ago now, which had compelled her to leave—fear, blood, the random nature of things, she said. Without any particular emphasis or pathos.

  She suddenly stopped talking about herself and began to show an interest in me. What did I do in life, where did I live? For the same reasons that prevent me from knowing why I found her moving, when I had patently decided only to dally with white women—whatever Driss's views on the matter—I don't know why I omitted to talk about Saint-Ouen. I claimed that I had always lived in this neighborhood, around the 7th or 6th arrondissement, and I left things utterly ambiguous regarding the actual date of my arrival in France. All I told her was that originally I was from Blida.

  She said, "Oh, the city of Roses and of Jean Bensaïd also known as Jean Daniel. But now, alas, it is the capital of the Triangle of Death. You know …"

  I knew, because my sister, the walled-up one, lived there, in the Triangle of Death, and because my family, since my father's death, but also because everything was going up in flames, had gone less and less often to visit and finally stopped going altogether—but I kept silent about these details, and about my father's profession and his death and the circumstances thereof, and about my relationship with my mother, and my brother's little beard and his friends from the mosque, and my former life as a "good Muslim," and the plans I had for my book. And about my white name, as well. I did let her think that white blood flowed in my veins, inherited from a Norman grandmother, whom my grandfather is supposed to have met during the Second World War and whom he brought to Algeria.

  To which she replied by alluding to my "fairly typical physique, all the same." Which left me speechless, sending me back to the memory of Mademoiselle Papinot's eyes and then theevanescent gaze of her double, still seated on my right, sipping on her drink with her eyes trained on the door.

  To change the subject I began to talk about the history of the café: Sartre, Beauvoir, Boris Vian, Juliette Gréco … She knew all that, she said, laughing in my face. She hadn't been buried in a cave, she was from Algiers the White, the city where, along with other world monuments, Montherlant had found refuge and asserted his misogyny, she said with a smile, and she informed me that she had a degree in modern literature and that, in any case, for us, for Algerians, Paris held no secrets. Nor did the language of Voltaire, she continued soberly. And she declared, "Algiers was the extension of Paris, and Paris received the waves and echoes of Algiers, as if the sirocco were blowing on the trees of the Tuileries, bringing with it the sand of the desert and the beaches …"

  "Voltaire?" I asked. "Modiano," she replied. "Whom I would gladly marry, just as I would gladly marry Marguerite Yourcenar, if she were still here on earth," she added with half a smile. And thereupon, instead of heading for home to ease my mother's distress, which I imagined must have reached its paroxysm, I switched off my cell phone and invited her for dinner. In quieter surroundings, I suggested. She confessed she only rarely came to the Flore, and each time it was by chance, that the place, despite the presence of the Japanese, was a bit too "white" for her. But as she had to be home by midnight, why not have dinner there after all, she said, lighting a cigarette. I agreed and we had dinner. I ordered the Welsh rarebit, melted cheese on white bread, the specialty of the café, and she was content with a salad of green beans, although she did not skimp where the choice of wine was concerned. And it was excellent wine, moreover, just as the bill, when it came, was steep.

  Whatwas it? I wondered as I hunted for my slippers in the dark apartment. That girl deserved better. Her mere presence in the café had gone a long way toward reinforcing my aptitude for pleasure and wonder. In other words, the little doubt that still subsisted regarding my dissidence, thanks to her, thanks to her own emancipation, not from a mother and a brother, but from an entire society, had vanished without trace.

  In addition, her body, through the rhythm of her gestures beneath her white shirt, seemed to me the most wonderful thing on earth. And when she agreed to see me again, I was that close to jumping for joy (as I anticipated the moment when I would strip her bare)—even though, through the snatches she had revealed about her life, I had matched up dates and added up years and very quickly realized that she must be close to forty. Therefore, instead of keeping it to myself, I shared my calculations with her, chuckling, adding that I was an uncommon financier. Ha, ha.

  Her cheeks pink from the wine, and also from my tactlessness, of which this would not be the only instance, she confirmed that she was forty-four, to be precise. Forty-four! I whistled. Suppressing the phrase that was at the tip of my tongue (You could be my little sister's mother), and clearing my throat, I said, "You don't look it."

  Which, as I stated above, was certainly true. But all the same. Forty-four years old! A forty-something, I thought, shoving my feet in my slippers. And then, taking hold of my bag of books, I left my chair. Staggering, and trying not to bump into the walls, groping my way about on tiptoes, crossing my fingers that my mother would not suddenly appear and see me in this state of inebriation, I found my way to the hall and made it to the bathroom without incident. As I was trying to relieve my stomach, unfairly blaming the quality of the cheese, underestimating the number of glasses I had imbibed, I heard steps in the hallway. Immediately afterward, a murmur came through the locked door. "Apple of my eye, is that you? Are you all right?" My mother who, obviously, once she was reassured, rebuked me for switching off my cell phone—she had feared the worst, she had been on the verge of calling the police and the hospitals, I had no right to get her into such a state …

  I went closer to the door and murmured something that might pass for an excuse. And my mother went away again, praising Allah, rendering grace to her deceased, thanking Him for having restored the apple of her eye to her safe and sound. Etc. When I went into the bedroom, my younger brother's snoring was at its pinnacle. I switched on the little night-light, hid the bag of books under the bed, and began to get undressed. As I slipped on my pajamas, I thought about my apartment, and my future life, and then I thought again about the fortysomething's body. And about our next, imminent, meeting. For, despite my tactlessness, not only had she accepted to see me again, but also, or so it seemed to me, this meant to her that we had laid the foundations of some sort of relationship. It goes without saying that I had no intention of having anything lasting with her. Or with anyone else, for that matter. My objective was, as I have already pointed out, to have my way with as many women as possible. To have relationships as brief as they were volcanic. To immerse myself in debauchery and luxury. Unto satiety, I said again, carefully folding my clothes. Until depletion. Of the senses. And of that store of hormones that each man owes it to himself to evacuate. It was then that I remembered she had not told me her first name. Let alone her family name. And that she had not given me her telephone number. However, she had taken mine down. My cell phone number. And what if, after all that, she didn't contact me? Suppressing a desire to smoke, I swallowed a S
tilnox and switched off the night light. As I rehashed my day, sleep took overat the point where Mademoiselle Papinot's breasts began to quiver like young pigeons …

  I was dreaming about a blonde, he said, a blonde with firm round breasts, when my mother pulled open the curtains. "Good morning, apple of my eye," she said. Still queasy from all the mojitos and Bordeaux of the previous night, and fearful of the whiffs of rum and wine in my mouth, I kept silent and closed my eyes, with no aspirations beyond a delicious lie in.

  "It's almost nine o'clock," she said, just as I was pulling the sheet over my face and begging for a moment of respite. "Your sister and brother-in-law are coming for lunch," she reminded me. "I worked all night long," I muttered through the sheet. "Mahmoud has been up since the first prayer," went my mother, with a note of reproach in her voice. I mustered all my strength and dragged myself out of bed. Ina fraction of a second I had picked up my clothes, deposited a semblance of a kiss on my mother's forehead, and headed through the apartment to the bathroom.

  After I had showered and brushed my teeth thoroughly, I went into the kitchen where my brother, with his elbows on the table, was immersed in reading the yellowing pages of a Hadith book of saints, one that I myself had bought, some years earlier, at the Avicenne bookshop in the 5th arrondissement.

  My mother served me a coffee and I sat down across from my brother. Without lifting his eyes from his book, he replied to my good morning. I drank my coffee and took a good look at him in his outfit for the mosque—skullcap, baggy pants, and tunic in the Afghan style, immaculately white—and I felt a sort of need, gratuitous but pressing nonetheless, to lead him astray.

  "You want to come with me to the market, brother?" I said. Somewhat surprised by this sudden and unusual request on my part, placing his hand on his freshly pruned little beard, he said, "I'm already dressed for mosque, you can see that, Mohamed."

  "Yes, I see that, little brother," I replied, pretending to be disappointed. "You don't really expect your brother to hang around the market at Saint-Denis in his Afghan clothes and get himself arrested like some vulgar terrorist, now do you?" interrupted my mother as she handed me the shopping list. "True enough," I agreed. "I have yours washed and ironed," said my mother. "You'll put it on when you get back." Ordinarily I would acquiesce and then find a way, when the time came, to sidestep the issue. But this morning, still addlebrained from my very first libation, I said, "I'm not going to themosque." My brother looked up again, opened his eyes wide, then returned to his book. Dumbfounded, my mother said, "What will your brotherin-law say?"

  "Tell him I'm tired."

  "And he's not even a Muslim," mumbled my mother. "He is now," I corrected, directing my gaze toward the jar which stood imposingly on the kitchen buffet. An erstwhile pickle jar, where now my brother-in-law's foreskin bathed in formaldehyde, and which my mother had placed on exhibit for neighbors and other close friends who had the nerve, or the tactlessness, to emphasize the fact that her daughter's husband was no more than a roumi, thereby reminding her that an alliance of this nature, had her men still been alive, i.e. her husband and her noble father, would never have come about. Had she forgotten the grounds for her elder daughter's expulsion? Or for the banishment of the youngest? What did her sons make of it, then, the elder above all, that specialist on hopeless fatwas without appeal … A roumi, but not a kafir, my mother would thunder. Converted and circumcised according to the rules. Every bit as Muslim as Yusuf Islam,1Muhammad Ali, and Malcolm X, she would enumerate, brandishing the jar. "Of course he's a Muslim," said my mother, close to moaning. "But if we don't set the example—"

  "I am not going to the mosque," I interrupted. "Yes, apple of my eye," she said, with a lost expression. "Right, I've got to go do this shopping," I said, getting to my feet. "Yes, apple of my eye," she said again, and by now her mouth was open, her expression distraught: you might have said the sky was gently falling on her head. Satisfied that I had been sufficiently firm with the shewolf, and avoiding the farewells and embraces she habitually bestowed upon me as if I were heading off for the ends of the earth, I left the house. As I shifted into second gear and lit a cigarette, I wondered when and how I would break the news of my imminent departure.

  1The singer Cat Stevens, revered in many North African families for his conversion to Islam (Mohamed).

  By around ten o'clock, he continued, I was unloading the trunk of my old Peugeot. This won't happen again, this is the last time, I ruminated, as I greeted the neighbors who were hanging around in the parking lot. Outside the elevator I smiled at two young girls who were examining me with lust so extreme as to be almost embarrassing. For—need I point it out?—in our neighborhood, despite my forty years or more and my graying temples, I continued to be considered one of the most desirable catches for these young damsels. And, if I am to believe my mother's statistics, or the ones put forward by the Ministry of Integration, there were not very many of us.

  No sooner had I crossed the threshold than my mother greeted me as if I had just returned from the ends of the earth, without even giving me time to unburden myself of the shopping, not the least bit spiteful, dismissing my behavior earlier that morning with a wave. Faced with such effusiveness, I again wondered when and how I would break the news of my imminent departure. And, above all, how she would take it.

  Why didn't I just leave? Use a trip out of town or abroad as a pretext? Insist upon it. Tell her my rank was at stake, or even my position. Settle in between my four walls. And then announce it to her by telephone? Or in a letter? A long letter, that would place her before the fait accompli.

  My mother, who was fairly educated, as I have already pointed out, was crazy about my letters; even the little notes I left for her on the refrigerator sent her into raptures, and she often expressed her nostalgia for the long and carefully written epistles that I used to send to her from summer camp.

  I extricated myself from my mother's embrace, put the shopping down at the door to the kitchen, and withdrew to my bedroom. A letter would simplify everything, I said to myself as I stretched out on the bed. Dear mother, sweetest of the sweet of all mothers.

  But when all was said and done, the letter was a very bad idea. Because, for my new life, I needed the blessing of the woman who had borne and raised me. And a letter would not elicit that vital blessing.

  In a parody of the character of Mario in La Terrazza, I chuckled to myself and wondered if it was admissible to be happy, even if it caused others to be unhappy. As the answer was yes, and too bad if there was collateral damage, I dozed off with the memory of the forty-something woman reading with delight the back cover of your book. A book which was now in my possession and which I had every intention of reading, just as I had every intention of devouring the others which were there, among my things, almost all packed and discreetly set to one side.

  An hour later I was wide awake, the aroma of couscous was tickling my nostrils, and the young newlyweds were ringing at the door.

  My sister was wearing her Sunday dress and headscarf, and her husband, his goatee meticulously trimmed, was sporting the Afghan outfit cut and sewn courtesy of my mother for the purposes of the aforementioned circumcision. An outfit which, I had to admit, applauding in my heart of hearts my younger sister's tastes, suited him to a T, as it emphasized his gray eyes and his smooth—naturally—and shiny black hair.

  Squeezing her son-in-law in her arms, calling him my boooy, my mother shot me a glance where I thought I could detect a glow of pride. Or of victory. Or, quite simply, she was trying to arouse my jealousy, the way a woman does with her beloved. My mother had been dispossessed of her youth, and to compensate for what had been taken from her she now confused me with the person she should have loved. That man who died the way he had lived, in sadness and solitude: I stumbled upon these thoughts just as the embraces were finally coming to an end. And my heart felt tight, then filled with a sudden vivid aversion toward this woman whose blessing I would very soon have to implore.

 
The women, he said, as you might have guessed, were busy in the kitchen, while we men sat down with our shoes off in the room reserved for special occasions, a place that seemed undecided between the atmosphere of a harem and that of a prayer room: Berber rugs, mattresses on the floor covered with red velvet, gold-embroidered satin cushions thrown here and there, pink and white copper trays, flamboyant wall coverings, prayer mats ready to be unrolled … On the wall there was a single portrait of my father, several of our august ancestor, and pictures of the Kaâba and the mosque in Medina … The perfectly ordinary living room of North African immigrants, said I to myself, while my brother painstakingly wedged cushions behind our brother-in-law's back.

  Once he too was settled, my brother immediately began his ritual lecture on the dogma and principles of Islam. This was more for my brother-in-law's benefit than mine. In vain, my claims that I performed my prayers at the bank in my office, like a Saudi emir or an Algerian minister—was I not master of my domain, I added, in response to my young brother's incredulous expression—or at the Grand Mosque which was now very near my work. In vain, my efforts to convince them by means of a few genuflections after the evening meal. In vain my tooth-brushing and candy-chewing, whenever I had had a beer or two. In vain my pleas of fatigue to avoid the neighborhood mosque: very quickly my brother had picked up on my loss of interest for everything which, once upon a time, had sealed our complicity, such as reading the Koran and the Hadith, and the apology and analysis of the holy sharia, whose laws we would enumerate and discuss.