The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris

by Leila Marouane

  I slotted the capsule in the coffee machine, he said, put a cup below the spout, and pressed the button. I watched the liquid drip into the cup and thought to myself that I was lucky to have good coffee to drink, and that it was pleasant to see the daylight filtering into the room. Autumn was coming. The days were getting cooler. And the fireplace. All the flames would help. Would kindle. Naked as on the day I was born. Plus carpet. Nest. Little Versailles. Call a chimney sweep. Order firewood. I'm really settled in and, my God, it's in the bag. Or nearly in the bag.

  Her name was Djamila. But she went by Jamo. It's more practical, she said. If it had been up to Camus, whose novels she adored, devoured, to baptize the Algerian Arabs, maybe the ones now in France would not be blushing about their names, she said.

  Whatever the case may be, she continued, she never showed herself to photographers or critics, who, uncertain as to the exact origins of the "talented Jamo," praised and celebrated her work, comparing it to Frida Kahlo's. And, God be praised, her canvases sold well. Even in New York, she added. Then she filled up our glasses. She liked champagne. Champagne was the only real thing.

  Momo and Jamo. That has a nice ring to it, I thought, as I lit a cigarette. But not for founding a family, whispered the voice in my right ear. No, of course not, I said. Can you imagine your kid saying, Hi, I'm Momo and Jamo's son? No, no, I said. The woman who will bear your children, with whom you'll celebrate your Fatiha, in due time, in the presence of your loved ones and the imam who married your sister to Alain also known as Ali, as well as Driss and his two wives, will not have a nickname. Besides, who, in your opinion, would marry a girl he'd met at a party that was a borderline orgy? And who, without batting an eyelid, took you home? into her bed? Even a Swede in the seventies wouldn't go for a marriage like that. Never mind if the woman in question has talent or travels around the world and all that. The voice seemed so real, so strident, that I shook my head and waved my arms. And silence returned. I swallowed my hot coffee down in a gulp and crushed my cigarette in the designer ashtray—a present from my exgirlfriend Samira, also known as Khadija, that virgin who went to bed wrapped up in pink pajamas and who no longer answered my calls—and I went into the living room. I put on a record, the same one as the last time she came over, a week ago now, and I listened to the messages flashing on my machine. Five, all from my mother, and I erased them right away. I took a swallow of scotch and dialed the young woman's number. While it rang in the void, I realized bitterly that she no longer switched on her answering machine, and I hung up. I took a Stilnox and turned off the music. Taking the telephones with me, just in case she happened to be reminded of my existence, I went into the bedroom. As I pulled off my jeans, I noticed that my underpants were gone. The girl called Jamo had kept them. "I collect them," she had said, inhaling the depths of my shorts with a satisfied air. "I love the way men smell here, like toasted hazelnuts …"

  During foreplay, while she tore off my shirt, then my pants, and finally my boxer shorts, several times over, with that same satisfied expression on her face, she had sniffed me and licked me, taking her time over my cock, comparing it to an eggplant, stroking the perfection of the glans …

  She went on and on, saying that foreskins were great for caresses, any woman would agree, but that coming across a circumcised man from time to time wasn't bad. Then off she went sniffing me again and licking me and lapping me. Warm saliva moistened my testicles, and a slow burn spread through my gonads all the way to my rod, then every square millimeter of my body. But the moment Ihad (successfully) unfastened her bra, and was starting on her panties, she pushed me away. It really is a fine one, she said. But it was too big and too long for her condoms. She was about to get her period, she added, and if I penetrated her it would surely start her bleeding, she claimed, introducing my index finger into her vagina, which was indeed tight, but so wet, so warm. A steam room. Sitting up, she eventually took off her panties and spread her legs. Staring at my rod, while a shadow of extreme martyrdom crossed her large, dark eyes, ringed with fatigue and makeup, she said, "You can look, or touch, or nibble, as much as you want. Take your time." Nosooner said than. My lips sucked on her clit, my tongue dug about in the depths of her sex. Relentlessly. Indefatigably.

  You would have thought I was an expert. Never suspecting for an instant that, thanks to her, I was receiving my baptism of flesh, and none the wiser, so to speak, she sighed noisily. A moment later, assuaged, with the dexterity of a pro she began massaging my sex with her feet and with such fervor that I felt faint. She then moved my head away from between her legs and, pushing me over onto my back, she grabbed my rod, which was about to explode. What a marvel, she said, sitting on top of me. She placed the glans against her clit, and slid it slowly to the opening of her vagina, ready to put it in, then, changing her mind, she brought it back against her vulva, which was tauter and wetter than ever. And while I was reciting, in a scarcely audible voice, in Arabic, a passage I had learned years ago, one I thought I had forgotten, my seed splattered all over her tuft, which was not black, but white. "Next time we'll put it in," she said, wiping herself off with a Kleenex. Then she asked me what it was I had been reciting, it was lovely, could I recite it again? "What, now?" I asked. "And the other times," she simpered. "In Arabic or you want me to translate?" I said, looking at my sated sex, enormous, it's true, but immaculate, unburdened of its knowingly trimmed hairs. "My Arabic hasn't completely gone to seed, I'm originally from Biskra where, unlike in Algiers, people speak perfect Arabic. Did you know that the Orientalist Jacques Berque learned fluent Arabic while he lived with Bedouins in my region?"

  "I didn't know that …"

  "So, will you recite it for me, the text?" I cleared my throat and began to declaim: "Every time one sleeps with a houri, she is a virgin. The rod of the Chosen One does not decline. The erection is everlasting. To each coitus corresponds a pleasure, a delicious sensation so unusual for this base world that if a man were to feel it on earth, he would fall down in a faint."

  "That's hot," she murmured. "Is it in the Koran?"

  "It's by a famous theologian and poet who was inspired by the Koran. His name was Abd al-Rahmane al-Souyoûti."

  "Is he dead?"

  "Oh, yes, he died at least five or six centuries ago."

  "Are you a believer?"

  "I was. But that's finished. And you?"

  "I'm not really sure, but I do sometimes feel like packing it all in—painting, the exhibitions, travel, all the society stuff—to going back to basics. Start with a pilgrimage, to purify my bones, so to speak, and then settle somewhere in a cave or an igloo, to expiate my sins until the end of my days."

  "A Sufi life, basically …"

  "Who's ever seen a female Sufi, let alone a female imam? I'm sure some crazy would tear me to pieces."

  "Oh, but you're wrong. I could list over fifty Sufi women from throughout history. From Amina al-Ramliya to Maryam al-Basriya by way of Rabia al-Adawia or Majida al-Qorayshiya. Unrivalled in their devotion, acknowledged and revered by the greatest ulema on earth."

  "Oh, really?"

  "Absolutely. Women who devoted themselves to God, unconditionally."

  "Djamila al-Biskriya for posterity," she cried, exultantly. "That's far more honorable than Jamo, at any rate. But my sins are so great that one life would not suffice to expurgate them. Abortions like there's no tomorrow, booze, unclean meat, forgetting Ramadan and all the religious holidays. Not to mention achild out of wedlock …"

  "He who renounces sin and returns to the Way shall know absolution. For God is mild and merciful," I declaimed. "But are Sufis obliged to get married?"

  "Of course."

  "Women, too?"

  "A good Muslim woman, like a good Muslim man, is obliged to marry and procreate. And the pleasures of the flesh are not proscribed," I said, giving her a sidelong glance. "Islam is the only religion where sex pleads not guilty," I continued, carefully enunciating each syllable, thus allowing my ulterior motive to filter th
rough, but my semi-mistress did not pick up on it. "Are you married?" she asked. "I haven't had time," I said. "Me neither," she said, thoughtful, "and I don't think it will ever happen."

  "You're young …"

  "Thirty-nine … and a half. I'll be hitting forty in just a few days …"

  "Khadija, the Prophet's first wife, was forty, actually."

  "But where can I find a prophet in this day and age?" she said. Without laughing. I was about to volunteer, and reveal the erudition I had inherited from my revered ancestor, as well as my strong poetic fiber, and tell her that we could become the most famous Sufi couple of modern times, that we could live in a cave or an igloo, and everyone on earth would make the journey to observe us, that we would set the example for the oumma of the Rasul, may peace be upon Him, and we would assuage hearts and minds, we would convert millions of souls, and on the Day of Judgment the balance would weigh in our favor, and so on. It was not that I found her beautiful; in actual fact there was nothing exceptional about her, she had neither blue eyesnor the mane of a queen, she was even a bit ravaged, with thin, tiny breasts, more like prunes from the larder than apples from the Garden, her legs were dry with no calves, like the legs of a little girl from the arid regions of the Sahel—a survivor—butshe did have something, something indefinable, something about her eyes, something about her sex in my mouth, her hormones making their way into my cerebellum, percussing my pituitary gland. In short, for the reasons I have just enumerated, I was going to submit my application, but, loyal to my (recent) resolutions as an emancipated man, I thought better of it and said, "I've heard there's a prophet in Greenland."

  "Who spends his time with a compass in his hand, trying to determine which way Mecca is?" she said with a burst of laughter. "That's the one," I said, with sudden, inexplicable gravity. "And converting the Inuit tribes. But because the day is so short in winter, the five prayers have to be recited without taking a breath in between. And in summer, because the sun hardly sets, they are so far apart that people get tired and get fed up waiting. So the proselyte got discouraged and went back to Paris, where he had to deal with his mother's whims, she's a widow who used to be very pious and a real stickler for principles, the daughter of a Sufi master, in fact, who moved in with her son to remove some spell or other that he was under, and then discovered the lights and the splendor of Paris, and began to hang out with the concierge of the building and changed course overnight, turning into a die-hard Westerner—"

  "I didn't know he'd come back," I interrupted, somewhat dazed. "So you didn't read the book right through to the end?" she asked. "Which book?"

  "The Sultan of Saint-Germain."

  "Uh … no."

  "You don't know Loubna Minbar?"

  "I've heard the name …"

  "She got along really well with Driss until the novel came out, because your cousin has been stubbornly insisting that he is the main character. Which is why they've fallen out, I think. Butyour cousin is no Islamist. He's an inveterate hedonist."

  "A true Muslim, a good Islamist, is a hedonist …"

  "Whatever the case may be, to get back to your cousin's paranoia, if it were me, frankly, I wouldn't give a fuck about finding myself in a book. And anyway, I expect to, every time I open a book by Loubna Minbar. Diddly-squat. Although I've known her since childhood."

  "Oh, really?"

  "We were at school together in Biskra. I knew her family, too. In those days her name was Louisa Machindel. At school, and then later at boarding school in Algiers, we made fun of her name, we changed it to Machandelle or Fernandel, and we even made up rhymes and shouted them in the stadium at the lycée, something like this: Machindel made a scandal with the vandal. Which humiliated her beyond belief. To the point where Bencouscous or Boumerguez would have been dream names for her, so she told me. The Arabic teachers only spoke to her in French and wouldn't let her say anything, and they even let her skip class. I can still hear one of them saying, You may leave now, Miss Machin-thing, the headmaster won't be informed … You have to admit no matter how you try to pronounce her name in Arabic or in Berber, it makes no sense. Even today, there are those who won't miss an opportunity to try to make her squirm, like that guy who shouted in front of a whole bunch of people that she wasn't even Algerian, and he called her Madame Alas."

  "I've already heard that somewhere …"

  "You're bound to have. He wrote it in a book. And because Louisa's family didn't have a zawiya1 the way most families in North Africa do, they say that her ancestor was a Christian from the West, that he set off for the East and converted when he married a Muslim woman, from Ethiopia or Somalia, then he came to Algeria with his Negress to scatter his offspring. Which could explain the fleshy lips and flat nose and dark dark skin that Loubna inherited. At any rate, I knew her really well, we were close friends, she lent me books, she came to my place, I went to hers. One of my brothers was crazy in love with her. It's true that when she was young she was a knockout. Tall, slim, a dream body, a set of teeth to die for, skin like a baby. You wouldn't know to look at her today, would you?" she asked, as if I already knew you. Later on, she continued, her brother found you at the medical school in Algiers. But he was already engaged. His mother, who generally couldn't stand for her eldest daughter to have girlfriends, actually liked you, she said. She welcomed you with open arms. And it was in a way thanks to your parents that she came to France. She was fourteen, she had just had a rotten summer. It was a long story. Through her brother, she found you in Algiers where, twenty years or so ago, she had ended up teaching at the fine arts school. At that point you had quit your medical studies and started studying literature, and you were working for a newspaper. And living in a house by the sea. Alone. Against your parents' wishes, and your neighbors', and everybody's. And it caused you no end of trouble. But together you made good use of the garden—barbecues, suntanning on the terrace, until it all fell apart and it was run for your life, fear, blood, the arbitrary nature of things, so she described it. Without emphasis or pathos. And then she lost track of you once again, until she found you completely by chance in Paris. "As soon as she recognized me—it was at a party at Driss's—she said, ‘Hey, I was just thinking about you.' She was working on a novel …"

  "Djamila and Her Mother?"

  "Have you read it?"

  "Uh, no."

  "After that, we met every day, brunch at a sidewalk café, dinner at her apartment, she was working on her novel like a crazy woman, her right hand was oozing, even cortisone didn't help … And then, just before Djamila and Her Mother came out, boom, she vanished, not a word. Moreover, no one sees her anymore. Not even Driss, who never found out what had driven her to steal his life. They say she moves around all the time and when she's in Paris she goes into hiding."

  "To write?"

  "And she's just had a kid, a girl, she named her Pauline but no one has seen her. Madness, don't you think? She swaps Machindel for Minbar, and then burdens her kid with a name like that. Just imagine the poor kid in Algiers or Tunis or Cairo with her little Arab face saying, My name is Pauline … Not one of us has ever given a Christian name to a kid. My daughter, for example, who was born in Sydney, with a Catholic father as white as snow, is called Yasmine. Hadda's daughter is called Nedjma. Fatima, who is pregnant at last, has already chosen the names. At birthday parties, you can easily number four little Yasmines, just as many Nedjmas and Myriams, Marwans and Samis, Elias and Yanis. But Pauline—what was she thinking? If you want my opinion, Loubna knows she's sold her soul to the devil, and that's why she isn't showing her face. And anyway, when it's all over, she moves on …"

  "When it's all over?" I said, struggling against dizziness, blaming it on the champagne that we were drinking like soda pop. But she did not answer my question. "Anyway, I am very flattered to have been compared to a houriate-al-jana," she said, in Arabic. Then, gulping down her drink, she jumped out of the bed anddisappeared behind the bathroom door. When she came back, I'd already forgotten our chat
ter, her blah blah, and I was beginning to fall asleep, sure of spending the rest of the night in my hostess's warm sheets, sure we'd have another round of little fantasy, one where she wouldn't stop me at the entrance to her pussy. But she shook me gently and asked me to leave. She needed a few hours' sleep before taking her plane later that evening. And then, once she'd confiscated my boxer shorts, with their evocative smell of toasted hazelnuts and all that, she went with me to the door, and talked to me again about her birthday, said she really wanted me to be there, she would be having a party in two weeks' time, when she got back from Mexico, where an artists' foundation, she said proudly, had offered her a stay in a house not far from where Frida, the very same, used to live …

  1 In North Africa, a Sufi religious community's mosque, especially when containing the shrine of a holy person (T.N.).