The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris

by Leila Marouane

  "Supremely logical," one of us would say. "Let's take repudiation," continued the other. "Is that not what a bad wife deserves?"

  "And what of the support that women, those fragile creatures, are granted for life?"

  "Can you imagine, if our sisters were left to their own devices, in this world of barbarians?"

  "And what about polygamy, isn't that what is best about our religion?"

  "It's the best way to populate the planet."

  "No better way to prevent a man from getting bored with one and the same wife."

  "And co-wives, after all, would be a great support to our mother, with all her menial chores."

  Thus, while my brother pretended to ignore me, I recalled all the texts we used to read to console ourselves for the chastity we endured unflinchingly—a chastity which we would put an end to soon enough by marrying young. It is a Muslim's duty to procreate as soon as possible, we read, emphatically. Our reading left us enthusiastic to the point of swooning. What marvels awaited men of good faith in the celestial Gardens!

  "A coveted place shall pass to pious men by right," one of us would remark. "In the Gardens there will be good and beautiful virgins, houris cloistered in their pavilions," continued the other. "Houris that no man, or demon, has ever touched."

  "Beautiful women with ripe breasts, all equally young."

  "Beautiful as rubies and coral."

  "Houris whom we have shaped to perfection."

  "Every man shall dispose of seventy alcoves."

  "In each alcove there shall be a bed."

  "On each bed a houri shall await the Chosen One."

  "Can you imagine, brother, seventy virgins for one man alone!" we would exclaim, raising our eyes from the Book.

  Then we would continue reading, and our reading led us until dawn. It should have led me to marriage with one, or several—what did my cousin Driss have that I didn't have?—of the beautiful women whom my mother had found.

  As I was the eldest, it was more according to tradition than to divine law that I ought, by right, to be the first to marry. My future spouse would be chosen, as the Law decreed, in keeping with one of these criteria: beauty, youth, or wealth. The fiancée's religion—unlike that of a fiancé—provided it be one of those of the people of the Book, mattered little.

  But this last criterion held no sway over my mother, for she refused to consider a Christian or a Jew, or even a Tunisian or Moroccan woman, let alone a Senegalese. In theory, my mother, as a believer, had nothing against blacks—was not Bilal, the first muezzin, a black man? she used to say. But a Negress, an excised woman, my son … she winced.

  In short, in my mother's eyes, and in her heart, only an Algerian would do. But woe betide any Algerian woman who was older than twenty-two. If they are still single past that age they become depraved, she asserted. It was not for nothing that the holy Koran recommended marriage at puberty, might she remind me. Well, in our day and age, twenty-two was all right, but it was the limit, apple of my eye.

  My mother, therefore, had scouted for girls from Blida to introduce to me, as well as others from the countryside, all of them Algerian and barely past adolescence, and they really didn't meet my expectations. Too curly-haired or too dark. A bit too dumb or a bit too smart, I would plead in earnest. More recently, somewhat gingerly, there had been the aforementioned mayor's daughter, who combined all three criteria; her photograph, forwarded by my mother's appointed matchmaker, always seemed by virtue of some mysterious miracle to be lying around in the house wherever I happened to be.

  And so, he continued, while my young brother was saying his homilies, I recalled those nights when I would struggle in vain against the demon that led my thoughts toward the lovely Eve and the handsome Adam, obliging my ignoble self to imagine the first creatures of the human race in the process of copulating.

  Adam on Eve, Eve on Adam, whispered the demon into my left ear. And my hand all sticky when I woke up. And my frantic sprint to the washing machine to hide the stained sheet. And the voice ringing in my right ear. The same voice that had caught me unawares on the balcony, that I had thought was gone forever. Expiate. Expiate, said the voice, drilling into me, all day long. Expiate, it whispered, while my prayers made medizzy until dawn. And my brother, who praised my piety at breakfast. My brother, who slept so soundly and never heard the echo of my ugly thoughts.

  All that seemed so long ago that I wondered whether my brother and I were still brothers. Or were we not, rather, a present-day incarnation of Cain and Abel?

  Who was Abel? Who was Cain? I still cannot say.

  But I know that my brother will never forget who was "one" and who was the "other." Mohamed, alias Basile, the master; Mahmoud the pure, the disciple. But the master lost his grip. From one day to the next. I cannot determine the precise moment when his renunciation began, how it wheedled its way in so successfully. No doubt at the very start of my professional life, when my eyes looked out onto the city, and I discovered the real city and all its mysteries, the real city and its lights. Or earlier, much earlier, at the moment of my father's death, and the revelations which followed. I know not. And what if, quite simply, I had never possessed the faith. What if it had been nothing more than the product of a long, assiduous education, merely glancing off my soul without ever burning into its fiber? The true fiber, the one you find in people whose souls are unfailing? How, in other words, could a person become so detached from something he had taken to be the very nature of conviction itself, I wondered—while my brother continued his palaver, beatific, as if he himself had converted that roumi. An act worth its weight in gold, and which, tomorrow, will prove very profitable to its author.

  My brother, he continued, was elaborating on I know not what precept when, discreetly, to avoid disturbing the discussion among the menfolk, my sister came into the room. After spreading a tablecloth onto the coffee table, she withdrew as discreetly as she had entered.

  Perhaps, I thought, watching her slip away, this distancing from my brother and from our discourse became inevitable because of the solidarity I felt toward my mother with my sisters with all the pious women on earth who shall not enjoy the equivalent of the seventy houris. Who will have to make do with whoever their husband happens to be. And if that husband is not admitted into the Gardens, well then, may they be reassured, affirms the Book: they will marry again, and will marry a Chosen One.

  Once they were joined to a Chosen One, whether he was their husband on earth or another one chosen from the innermost recesses of Paradise, it meant that these women, who submitted to Allah and to his men, would share their spouses with the seventy houris. Something which, in the end, would constitute a new form of polygamy, even more restrictive and unfair than the one already established on earth. First of all, because of the number of co-wives. Secondly, because of their esthetic qualities, something no Earthling, however beautiful she might be, could ever hope to compete with.

  I took a closer look at my brother, who was continuing his palaver, gesticulating, his forehead pearling with sweat, then turned to my brother-in-law, who was listening without saying a thing, without moving a muscle.

  And what if Alain also known as Ali had only come to Islam for the flesh and debauchery promised by the Book? And what if, despite his angelic air, this young man now unburdened of his foreskin was nothing more than a sexual pervert? sodomizing my sister? tying her up? gagging her? night after night? day after day? Following to the letter the verse inviting believers to labor 1 their wives and unaware, poor neophyte, of the one where sodomy is proclaimed to be strictly off limits.

  I then gave a sort of hiccup, like a chuckle, that distracted my brother from his homily. After a certain amount of time had gone by, and upon ripe reflection, he said, "Would you list for us the ninety-nine names of God?" I cleared my throat, ready to comply, and then I gave up. My brother, given my silence, grew rather irritated. "Could it be you have forgotten them, brother?" I had not forgotten them, and I would never forget them.
I could, therefore, list them for him, in due time and in order, and remind him that "Allah" was the hundredth name, and that those Muslims who knew the names would enter Paradise unconditionally. Just as I could remind him of every name of every angel or demon created by God, from Jibril, the archangel with six hundred wings, councilor and helpmate to the Prophet, to Iblis, the disobedient one, who refused to bow down before man, as embodied by Adam, God's preferred creature. Or I could give him a detailed lecture on the life and conception of thedjinns, who were subordinate to Iblis, the same, these creatures who resemble us, who see us, and whom we humans,

  1"Your wives are your field: go in, therefore, to your field as ye will," in the Koran (Mohamed) with few exceptions, do not see. Or I could give him a lecture on sexuality, while we're at it, which would fortify our brotherin-law upon his entry into the sexiest religion of all, emphasizing all the while the absolute irrevocable prohibition where sodomy was concerned, bro …

  But I felt no desire to vaunt my erudition, neither for my brother's satisfaction nor to improve the neophyte's knowledge, so I pleaded a headache and, therefore, my inability to fulfill his request.

  Ruffled, my young brother turned again to our attentive brother-in-law: "Mohamed is very clever at religion. He masters the rules and the dogma probably just as well as the Imam el-Ghazali himself. He owes it to our grandfather, may Allah receive him in his Gardens, a good man of great learning, one of the rare men of letters in Blida. He had completed his Islamic studies at the Zitouna, the famous school in Tunis, which unfortunately no longer exists. Once or twice a year his fellow students came from all four corners of the Maghreb to meet him. For days they held meetings which lasted until morning. This is the master who gave Mohamed the teachings of the Mashaf, who initiated him into the doctrines of renowned ulemas and faqihs such as el-Ghazali, and who accompanied him in person to Koranic school every morning at dawn, and also went with him to the public school and insisted that the teachers do a good job teaching him French, because his grandson might be called upon to join his father in France. Not to mention the preIslamic poetry, including that of the Andalusian era, that he introduced Mohamed to, quite brilliantly … Do you know, my brother Ali, that the Prophet, may peace be upon him, was a passionate admirer of poetry? That the poets came all the way to his dwelling-place to recite their lyrics?" Our brother-in-law shook his head, and my young brother continued, "Whatever the case, Mohamed is the only one of us who was able to benefit fully from our grandfather's great store of knowledge, and to go to the madrasah, and to read and write Arabic like a graduate of the Zitouna." And he shot me a dark look. "That's very fortunate, isn't it?"

  "Very," I replied, nonchalantly. "If I had been that fortunate," continued my brother, "today I would be a member of an eminent Sufi brotherhood, like our late lamented grandfather, or a renowned theologian. But I'm still young, and Allah will help me, inshallah, to stay on the straight and narrow," he went on, firing another pitchblack look in my direction. "Inshallah," I murmured. "Inshallah," murmured my brother-in-law. "Unemployment will eventually prove to have a silver lining," said my brother, indefatigably. "I have all the time to read and improve my learning, and one day I will be able to enroll in a great Islamic school in Damascus or Cairo. Inshallah."

  "Inshallah."

  "Inshallah."

  At this juncture, he said, my mother and sister came in. While they were setting the table, my brother got up and switched on the radio, where an Oriental melody was playing. He turned down the volume and came back to join us at the coffee table.

  The bismillah was recited in unison, and, with the meal blessed, we began our lunch. In the middle of the meal, as was her wont during Sunday dinner, my mother put her spoon down and let out a sigh that was audible enough to cause us to look up from our plates.

  "Only your father is missing, may he rest in peace, and my poor daughter in Blida, that hellhole." My sister, as was her wont, took my mother's hand and with another litany declaimed, "Fatima is doing all right in Blida."

  "Ameen," whispered my mother, with that expression full of contrition that we knew so well. "She's been there so long now," added my sister. "Ameen," repeated my mother, her face now crumbling with pain. "You have to see it as good fortune, mother dear, the fact that she is living in a land of Islam," continued my sister, her voice trembling slightly. "A country where Muslims kill each other does not qualify as a land of Islam, sister," said my brother at that point, in his professorial tone. "Don't squeeze my heart more than it has been already, my son," moaned my mother. And then, as if she were suddenly getting a grip, she removed her hand from her daughter's, picked up her spoon, and said, "If she hadn't insisted on always having her own way, we wouldn't have had to marry her off back there."

  "A forced marriage is still a forced marriage," said my brother. "The fact is that Fatima has held out for more than fifteen years now," added my sister. "Her children are well brought up, and even if he is a bit strict her husband is a good sort."

  "Often," said my brother, "if not always, a forced marriage turns out to be more enduring than a so-called love marriage, which is nothing but a Western invention." My sister looked furtively at her husband, and said nothing more. "Allah knows best," murmured my mother. And the lunch continued to the lament of the oud on the radio, interrupted now and again by (religious) anecdotes recounted by my brother, then commented upon by my mother with such sincerity and ingenuity that for a moment I thought of giving up my plans to move away. I could call the Sèvres agency on Monday. I could cancel the lease. I could try to get the deposit and the rent checks back. Never mind if they didn't return them. My mother's well-being was worth so much more.

  But, he said, when the time came for the mint tea, the voice in my left ear banished the tinnitus in my right ear, and I took the plunge.

  "I'm going to be moving to Paris," I said, staring at the makrout pastries oozing honey and butter. "Oh, really?" said my brother. And he choked on his tea. My sister and brother-in-law exchanged a glance and my mother put down her glass and the pastry she had been about to bite into. With her mouth open, she began to stare at her hands as if she were hunting for the words that she couldn't find. "I'm worn out by the commute to Paris," I improvised. "Why don't you just transfer back to Saint-Denis," said my brother, slowly chewing his makrout. "I can't …"

  "You want to leave me, and you're not even married?" said my mother eventually. "Precisely. First an apartment, and then marriage," I replied hastily. "That's unheard of," said my brother, wiping his lips. Looking at our mother, in a lifeless voice he added, "He won't go far, mother. In Paris, they don't rent out apartments to the likes of a Mohamed Ben Mokhtar." Mohamed Ben Mokhtar alias Basile Tocquard almost burst out laughing at that point. And what if he were to tell them, there and then, on the spot, that he had changed his name? His brother would pass out, his sister and brother-in-law would despise him, and his mother would banish him from her life forever. Or maybe not. Was he not the apple of her eye? Was she not extremely forgiving where her sons were concerned? Golden coins that nothing could sully, as my mother liked to say, whereas her daughters were constant bombs, one day they went boom, right in your face, and it had to be said that she was the one who had had to pay. Be that as it may, I thought, I shall keep my secret unto death. Until my death or hers. You will, if the she-wolf devours you down to the last toe. She will, if you turn into the baby scorpion. As if rushing to my assistance, my brother put an end to my cruel thoughts. "No matter how you much whiten your skin and straighten your hair," he said scornfully, "your name will always catch up with you." Somewhat taken aback by such provocation, and ready to do battle, I frowned and clenched my fists. But I refrained. What would the neophyte think of his in-laws? Moreover, my brother and I had never come to blows—at the most, since our estrangement, he would make a few cutting remarks from time to time, but nothing of consequence. So I kept my composure, and my mother, serene, applauded: "Your brother is right, you will waste your time to
no avail."

  "The thing is, I've already found an apartment …" Without warning, or even taking into account the presence of her son-in-law, who was an outsider, my mother the civilized woman, just like the grandmother in my memories, began to beat her breast. "Oh, my God!" she cried out, in Arabic, "Are you really going to leave me?"

  "It's a very nice big two-room apartment, just a few minutes from my work …"

  "I don't want to know!" she shrieked, slapping each of her cheeks with such violence that she knocked her headscarf off. Then, forcibly regaining her calm, wrapping her hair up again—it was long and wavy, gray, almost white—she murmured in French, "You didn't say a word, during the entire meal, and when finally you open your mouth it's to break my heart."

  "Ali isn't very talkative either," said my sister. "Ali is my son-in-law and he is our guest. I am talking about my son, the flesh of my flesh, and his behavior toward the woman who gave birth to him and sacrificed her life for him." Turning to address her son-in-law, who sat so rigidly that you began to wonder whether this graduate from the prestigious political science institute wasn't a bit thick, she cranked up the refrain that was the story of her life. "I may not look it, Ali my son, with my dresses and scarves andshut in all day long in this low-income housing unit, washing and mending and ironing and cleaning and cooking, but I was educated at the best girls' school in Blida. And in addition to my knowledge of theology and my passion for Arabic poetry, I was good at everything, above all literature. I read Colette and George Sand, Pierre Loti and André Gide, Victor Hugo and Lamartine, and many others. I had every chance of getting my baccalaureate and becoming an educated, independent woman, like so many of my old classmates who are now secondary school teachers at the very least. And, can you imagine, Ali my son, there is a member of the Académie Française who went to that very lycée. Yes, Ali my son." Alain, also known as Ali, who had already had his share of his mother-in-law's reminiscing, was full of love for his wife, and listened to my mother with a display of unflagging interest. "But fate decided otherwise," continued my mother. "I married, in keeping with my father's wishes, may God receive him in his Paradise, two summers before I would have graduated, and I have had no other occupation in life than to raise and educate my children with respect for their religion and their family." Ordinarily, my mother's reminiscing stopped there. But that day, in honor of the announcement of my departure, she added, "My husband, who was also my cousin, an orphan whom my father had taken in, was already old, thirty-two years, and I was barely half his age, and he had very little education. But his wisdom and honesty were unequalled. A wisdom which, in the end, only Mahmoud has inherited—and Ourida, of course, my youngest who, praise be to God, has brought you, Ali my son, to our noble religion. Whereas Mohamed, my adored eldest, for whose sake I have bled myself dry, for whom I, the daughter of the master the entire city bowed down to, have ruined my eyes and broken my back, bending over a sewing machine, yet I would have done even more for him, even housecleaning, if I had not promised my late husband that I would never work outside the home, and now my son who has never ever been denied a single thing ends up going to live like a kafir in Paris."