Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow

by Faïza Guène

  My mom told me that back in her country, when she was still at her parents' house, her aunt and their neighbor took her to see a clairvoyant. Everyone was all worried because Mom refused to get married. The clairvoyant told her that the man she was destined to marry would come from the other side of the sea to find her and that this man worked with earth and stone. In the end, it was my dad. It's true: He came to find her from the other side of the sea, from France; and by boat because it was cheaper than the plane. It's also true that he worked with earth and stone because, back then, he was in public buildings and works. But the clairvoyant, she kind of forgot to mention how it was going to end. People like that only say what you want to hear.

  Take Shérif. Shérif, this guy from the neighborhood, he turned up from Tunisia about six years ago. Everyone calls him Shérif because he's got a real cowboy look going on. Plus, he always wears a red cap with a star printed on it. He looks like he came straight out of a Western, with his black hair and mustache. So this guy went to see a clairvoyant who told him that soon he'd be very rich. It's been years since she told him that. Maybe she should have been more specific about what she meant by "soon." So basically, ever since then, Shérif puts money on a trifecta for the horses every day, and he'd bet his life on it making him rich. He goes to the bar in the square to get the results. And since he loses every time, he gets jittery. Shérif, he's a Mediterranean guy, right ... So when he doesn't win, which is every time, he crumples his cap, shouts all these curses in Arabic, and storms off. It's been like that a long time.

  Sometimes I tell myself life's kind of lucky all the same. We think we don't have much, but we don't think about those people who have even less ... Yeah, yeah, they do exist. Like that boy at my primary school who always got beaten up. Small blond kid with glasses, had a season ticket for the front row in class, always got the top grades, used to give the teacher pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, and ate pork in the school canteen. Your ideal victim.

  Mom's started her new training. She likes it a lot, from what she tells me. She's even made friends with two other women: a Moroccan from Tangier and a Norman grandmother Mom calls "Jéquiline." I guess Jacqueline's the teacher. It reminds me that my mom's social, unlike me. When I was little and Mom took me to the sandbox, none of the other kids wanted to play with me. I called it the "French kids' sandbox," because it was right in the middle of a development with houses instead of towers and there were mostly full-blooded native French families living there. Once, they were all making a circle and no one would hold my hand because it was the day after Eid, the festival of the sheep, and Mom had put some henna on the palm of my right hand. Those morons thought I was dirty.

  They didn't understand the first thing about social diversity and cultural melting pots. Then again, it wasn't really their fault. There's still such a well-drawn line between the Paradise Estate where I live and the Rousseau housing development. Massive wire fencing that stinks of rust it's so old and a stone wall that runs the whole length of the divide. Worse than the Maginot Line or the Berlin Wall. On the project side, the divider is covered in tags, drawings and concert posters and flyers for different eastern-themed evenings, graffiti praising Saddam Hussein or Che Guevara, patriotic signs, VIVA TUNISIA, SENEGAL REPRESENT, even rap lyrics with a philosophical slant. But me, what I like best on the wall is an old drawing that's been there for a really long time, long before the rise of rap or the start of the war in Iraq. It's an angel in handcuffs with a red cross over its mouth.

  In my building, there's a girl being held prisoner on the tenth floor. Her name is Samra and she's nineteen. Her brother follows her everywhere. He stops her from going out and when she gets back from school a bit later than normal, he grabs her by the hair, then the dad finishes the job. Once, I even heard Samra screaming because they'd locked her in the apartment. In their family, the men are kings. They do serious close surveillance on Samra, and her mom can't say anything, can't do anything. So it's truly bad luck to be a girl.

  Except a few days ago, some neighbors told Mom Samra escaped. For the last three weeks everyone's been looking for her. Her dad even put in a police report. They stuck up posters all over, in shops, post offices, building lobbies, schools ... The photo's from when Samra was in fifth grade. Her braces, they don't photocopy so well.

  This makes me think of that TV show with Jacques Pradel where they would find people: Lost from Sight. There were even guys who hadn't seen members of their family for over twenty years. This show was too much. They managed to find people even if they'd changed their faces, names, and everything. Apart from when they were dead, it went like clockwork every time. Afterward, when they did the reunion bit, people were blubbering and fainting. It made the show feel kind of like a big spectacle. One time, they dug up this cousin in Sydney, Australia. They filmed his place, his new family, new job, and all that. I thought it wasn't so cool to show the guy who'd been cut up about the disappearance all those years, who had busted his ass to find his cousin only to realize the guy never gave a shit and had a great new life without him.

  So, anyway, right now in the neighborhood, nobody talks about anything except Samra's disappearance. They're even saying people have seen her in Paris with a belly bump. Like she's already pregnant ... The rumor goes from the grocery store to the school gates via the dry cleaner. When Samra was locked up at home in her concrete cage, nobody talked about it, like they found it completely normal. And now that she's managed to free herself from that dictator of a brother and torturer of a father, people are condemning her. I don't get it.

  Now Youssef, he can't escape. Aunt Zohra called us again to tell us about her last visit. She never stops saying how he's getting skinny and his eyes are empty. She doesn't recognize her son anymore and I think it really scares her. Still, it seems to me like she's getting braver. She's putting on a better face about this whole ordeal than she did at the beginning. It took her a little time to get used to it, that's all. It's horrible to think how, if forced to submit, you can get used to anything, even the worst of it.

  In two weeks Youssef's dad's coming back and I'm really wondering how that's going to go. Mom's helping Aunt Zohra come up with a plan. She says it's all about the way you announce these things. For bad news, you've got to get your inspiration from TV. Like Gaby's courage and tact on Sunset Beach when she tells her jerk of a husband that she cheated on him with his own brother. Oh yeah, and the brother was a priest. Even worse. So next to that, telling Youssef's dad his kid's in prison until next spring, it's a piece of cake. Like when I'm going to tell Mom I've got to repeat my classes from this year. First I'll have to explain what repeating means, because she hasn't got a clue when it comes to the school system. And then I'll tell her it's so I'm more successful. For her, success means working in an office with a chair that swivels and rolls, a telephone, and a radiator not too far from the chair that swivels and rolls.

  The other evening, I hung around on the landing a little while shooting the shit with Hamoudi. We were talking about parents and the adolescent crisis because Mme Burlaud had explained to me what that meant.

  Hamoudi thinks it's just an excuse, made up by Western parents who messed up raising their kids. I don't agree. Sometimes Hamoudi really goes to the extreme. He told me he wouldn't even have begun to think about having a tenth of an adolescent crisis because his dad would have known right away how to calm him down. He also told me it's over with Karine, that dumb blond I saw at the summer fair. When he said that, there was a little sadness in his voice. I know it's not right, but, deep down, it gave me a little pleasure. I was thinking how with Hamoudi and me, it was going to be the same as before. To cheer him up, I told him that, anyway, she had a face like a Frisbee. That cracked him up. Didn't tell me why they split up, though. I don't think she cheated on him with Hamoudi's brother who's not a priest.

  He didn't tell me because he thinks these stories are for adults and none of my business. That's not completely wrong.

  The other evening, th
at fat loser Nabil came over to help me with my civics homework. The subject sounded like one of those special reports on TV: "Why Don't People Vote?"

  Lame-o Nabil and I really talked about it. For example, he says that a guy from the Paradise projects who left school a long time ago, who can't find a job, whose parents don't work, and who shares a bedroom with his four younger brothers: "Why would he give a shit about voting?" Nabil's right. The guy already has to fight daily just to survive, so you can forget about his duties as a citizen ... If his situation improved a little, maybe he would want to get out and vote. Still, I can't really see who'd make him feel represented. So there you go: This guy's the one to ask: "Why Don't People Vote?" Not a class of zit-faced fifteen-year-olds.

  I wonder if this is why these housing developments are left to decay, because so few people around here vote. You have no political usefulness if you don't vote. Me, when I'm eighteen, I'll go vote. Here, a person never gets a chance to be heard. So when we get the chance, we have to take it.

  Anyway, that evening, instead of leaving as soon as we'd finished and going back to his mom's house, Nabil just sat there, talking, finishing off the package of crackers on the table. I thought those crackers would last the week, but fine, too bad ... When this lameass finally decided to take off, I walked him out, and right at the door his expression suddenly completely changed. His face got all serious, he came right up toward me, and he kissed me right on the mouth. For real.

  Not only does he stuff his face with all my crackers but then he dares to kiss me without asking my opinion! The worst is that, like a dumb animal, I couldn't think of anything to say. I just got all red like the peppers my mom uses for sauce and blurted a barely audible "see ya" while I shut the door. After that, I ran and drank a giant glass of mint soda and brushed my teeth twice to get rid of the taste of Nabil.

  What am I going to do now? I could try to make everyone believe that after falling off my bike, I lost consciousness and woke up with amnesia, that I don't remember anything else, really not one thing at all ... The problem is that the story isn't credible. Everyone knows I don't have a bike or the money to buy one. Or wait, maybe I could get plastic surgery and become someone else so he doesn't recognize me and never tries gluing his fat chapped lips against mine again. Yuck.

  It wasn't anything like how I'd imagined my first kiss. No, I saw it more in a dream setting, at the edge of a lake, in a forest, at sunset with a super guy who would look a little like the dude in the vitamin ads, the one who makes a little half turn in his chair, faces the camera dead-on with his toothpaste-white smile, and says: "If you're feeling well, it's Vitawell." My guy, he'd be in the middle of explaining how to start a fire with a nail file and a stone when, in the midst of our philosophical discussion, we'd start toward each other, all gentle-like, and we'd kiss, like it was the most natural thing in the world, like we'd been doing it since forever. Of course, when I imagine this scene, I've got a real hairdo, I'm all stylish, and my chest is a little bigger.

  No one is in the know on the sad story of Nabil's mouth. It's too nasty. Not even Mme Burlaud knows and especially not Mom. If she finds out, she'll kill me. I've got a grudge against Nabil for stealing my first kiss and downing my package of saltines, but not as much of one as I'd thought I would have. Well, I know what I mean.

  Monday, at Mme Burlaud's, we did something new, like a game. She was showing me these large-format photos, flipping through them pretty fast, and I had to say "like it" or "don't like it."

  Most of the time, since it was going so fast, I answered automatically without really having time to think. So for example, I found myself saying "don't like it" to the photo of a little baby. Mme Burlaud, playing like it was by accident, stopped on that photo. Like I hadn't seen it coming, she started talking about my so-called little half brother. Subconsciously, that's why I said: "Don't like it." Now, Mom and me, we know for sure it's a boy. A neighbor from Morocco sent us a letter. To make it even more humiliating, the letter was in French. I had to read it to her.

  But seriously, why make something out of nothing? I told Mme Burlaud that the baby had nothing to do with it, that she was just going too fast and I didn't see the photo very well. I made a mistake, that's all ... Well, shit. Nobody's obligated to like babies. Babies cry all the time, they stink and dribble and poop in their diapers ... Plus, the baby in the photo was nasty ugly, like a fat croissant.

  And, also, that brat isn't my brother. He's just the son of my father the Beard. It's not the same. Frankly, Mme Burlaud's tripping when she makes out like she's got an answer for everything and pastes that smug grin on her face like Harrison Ford at the end of every Indiana Jones movie. Right now, she's always telling me that I'm growing up and it's normal to have questions. I'm growing up ... Shit, it's time she changed her glasses! I've been five foot two and three quarters a while now, and nothing's changing. Or maybe she meant growing up in my head. It must've been that...

  ***

  To check Sarah's growth, Lila makes black pencil marks on the bedroom door and writes the dates next to them. It's funny, the door's covered in these little lines, one right on top of the other. When Sarah gets a little older, she'll get a kick out of seeing it again. And over at Sarah's there are photos everywhere of her from when she was tiny right up to now.

  She's lucky. I don't have a single photo of me before I was three. After that, there are school photos ... It makes me sad to think about, feels kind of like I don't completely exist. Bet if I'd had a dick, I'd have a big fat pile of photo albums, filled with pictures of me.

  One day, coming back from the rec center with Sarah, we stopped to say hey to Hamoudi.

  "So, princess, you're Sarah?"

  "Yes."

  "You're really cute in your pink dress, like a fairy..."

  "Well you, your teeth aren't so nice, you should ask the tooth fairy to come visit you..."

  I kind of let Sarah have it. I told her it wasn't nice to talk like that. But Hamoudi couldn't have cared less. In fact, it made him die laughing. Fine, it's no lie Hamoudi's teeth are kind of busted. But they're not a complete disaster. Anyway, you'd expect it with everything he's smoked over the years...

  So, anyway, that scene didn't stop him from being crazy about Sarah. He told me there's nothing more fresh than a kid, because they're sincere, spontaneous, genuine, you know..."They're the most honest thing in our hypocritical and corrupt society." Maybe Hamoudi's right ... He's been really serious these days. Also, he's been looking hard for a job. Or that's what he told me. He has to go straight for a while because dealing is getting dangerous. And like he says, "I'm not seventeen anymore..." When he said that, he had regret in his eyes. "I'm nearly a third of the way through my life, and I've done nothing. Nada..." I told him it wasn't too late and if he was talking like that, maybe it was because he was scared of changing things. Don't know where I got that from. It has to be from watching daytime talk shows with themes like: "He cheated on me and yes it's my business." Still, it's strange Hamoudi's thinking that way because there's always been a fair amount of freedom in his family, he could do whatever he wanted. There was only one thing he couldn't do: cry. Because he's a man and Hamoudi's dad says men don't cry. Maybe that's what did it. People don't realize how important it is to cry.

  It's already summer vacation. This afternoon I saw the Alis leave for Morocco. They've got this big red van and every year they cross France and Spain to get back to the bled and spend two months there. I was watching them from my window. They took at least an hour to load up. The kids were all dressed sharp. You could see from their faces how happy and excited they were to be leaving. I envied them. They were taking tons of luggage. Three quarters of those bags must have been full of presents for family, friends, and neighbors. It's always like that. The Mom Ali was even taking a vacuum cleaner. Rowenta's latest model. She'll get major respect over there with that thing.

  ***

  Plus, they're going to see their place all finished. If you ask me, the
fact that they built a house back in the bled by surviving on rice and pasta every meal so they could send every penny to the builders, and now the mom's taking a vacuum cleaner, it means they're planning on staying there. Bet it didn't even cross the kids' minds. But the parents, they must have been thinking about it ever since the first day they arrived in France. Ever since the day they made the mistake of setting foot in this crappy country they thought would become theirs.

  Some people spend their whole lives hoping they'll make it back home. But a lot of them only go back once, in a coffin, shipped by plane like they're an export product or something. Apparently, they find home soil again, but it's definitely not the way they were expecting...

  Then again, there are some who do manage to get back. Like the one who used to act the part of my dad. Except he left without his luggage.

  Sometimes I try to imagine how I'd be if I were Polish or Russian instead of Moroccan ... Maybe I'd do ice dancing, but not in those cheapskate local competitions where you win chocolate medals and T-shirts. No, real ice skating, like in the Olympics, with the most beautiful classical music, guys from all over the world who judge your performance like they do at school, and whole stadiums to cheer even if you go splat like a steak. Anyway, the most important thing is to do it with style. It's true that skating is the coolest: dresses covered in sequins, lots of organdy and colors ... The trouble is that because of the outfits, you can always see the girls' underwear. So my mom, it wouldn't make her all that happy that I was ice dancing on TV. And another thing, if I were Russian I'd have a name that was all complicated to pronounce and I'd definitely be blond. I know, they're shitty prejudices. There must be Russian brunettes out there with names that are super simple to pronounce, so simple you'd shout them out for no other reason than the fun of saying such an easy name. I guess there even could be some Russian girls who have never laced up a pair of skates in their life.