The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers

by Fouad Laroui

  What would it be like, he asked himself, walking slowly in the direction of his house, where his wife Anna was waiting for him—sweet, kind Anna, whom he had ended up marrying in order to settle down (isn’t that what it was called, in times past, in the world of Parisian courtesans?—Oh Maati, you and your French references…and sometimes she would add: You aren’t even French, you’re Moroccan.)—a world where everything was foreign?

  Deep Vellum Publishing

  3000 Commerce St., Dallas, Texas 75226

  deepvellum.org · @deepvellum

  Deep Vellum Publishing is a 501c3

  nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2013.

  Copyright © 2012 by Editions Julliard, Paris

  Originally published in French as L’étrange affaire du pantalon de Dassoukine in 2012

  English translation copyright © 2016 by Emma Ramadan

  Introduction copyright © 2016 by Laila Lalami

  First edition, 2016

  All rights reserved.

  978-1-941920-27-5 (ebook)

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2015960722

  —

  Cover design & typesetting by Anna Zylicz · annazylicz.com

  Text set in Bembo, a typeface modeled on typefaces cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldo Manuzio’s printing of De Aetna in 1495 in Venice.

  Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution.

  Table of Contents

  —

  Introduction by Laila Lalami

  The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers

  Dislocation

  Born Nowhere

  Khouribga, or the Laws of the Universe

  What’s Not Said in Brussels

  Bennani’s Bodyguard

  The Invention of Dry Swimming

  Fifteen Minutes as Philosophers

  The Night Before

  Works Cited

  INTRODUCTION

  Laila Lalami

  A Saturday morning in Casablanca. Nagib and Hamid sit in a café, bored and about to have a pointless argument about an article from Le Matin du Sahara, when their friend Dadine offers to tell them a story instead—the story of Bennani’s bodyguard. A bodyguard, they ask in amazement. A bodyguard, here in Casablanca? As Dadine tells it, this Bennani fellow was one of those rich teens from the Lycée Lyautey, and he turned up to a celebration the less fortunate students had organized with a bodyguard in tow.

  This was in the old days, Dadine continues, when high school students could still host a dance party in Casablanca without worrying about who might notice their beer, or who might blow themselves up in a crowded street. In the old days, when even the children of the poor could attend an institution like the Lycée Lyautey. “Happy days!” Nagib and Hamid say. “Joyous age!” Yes, Dadine notes wryly, this was in “an age when three people out of two were in the police, where snitches abounded, where you could be denounced by your own shadow—the bitch.”

  “Bennani’s bodyguard” is pure Fouad Laroui. Told mostly in dialogue, with the reader in the position of an eavesdropper, it gives us characters who are caught between rosy nostalgia and dark humor. Laroui’s prose moves fluidly between languages, between high and low culture, between affecting personal commentary and sharp cultural observations. This constant code-switching is no doubt a testament to a life lived between cultures, and made all the richer for it.

  Laroui was born in the border town of Oujda, in eastern Morocco, in 1958. After completing his high school baccalauréat in Casablanca, he trained at the prestigious École des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, then returned home to Morocco, where he worked for the Office Chérifien des Phosphates in the small town of Khouribga. But in 1990, he moved to the Netherlands and taught himself Dutch, reportedly by reading the newspaper and watching television. He is currently a professor of French literature at the University of Amsterdam and writes frequently, often in a contrarian tone, on subjects ranging from economics to immigration.

  Laroui’s first novel, Les Dents du topographe, was published in 1996 to wide critical acclaim and helped make his reputation, both in his native Morocco and in France. The narrator of Les Dents is a high school student who is arrested as a subversive because he started something called PAP (Parti Anti-Publicité or Anti-Publicity Party), mostly in an effort to rid his town of posters. He is questioned and later released, but he decides to leave Morocco for Europe, where he finishes his studies, then returns, years later, as a college graduate. His old friends, meanwhile, have not fared so well, ending up dead, in jail, or under the power of religious fanaticism.

  The political agitator turned disillusioned graduate is a familiar character in post-independence Moroccan fiction (and nowhere is this character more brilliantly realized than in Driss Chraibi’s The Simple Past), but in the case of Fouad Laroui, the story is told with an eye on the absurd, and laced with caustic humor. Les Dents du topographe was followed by some twenty other novels, story collections, and collections of poetry, including, most notably, Méfiez vous des parachutistes (1999), Le Maboul (2001), La Fin tragique de Philomène Tralala (2003), and Tu n’as rien compris à Hassan II.

  Ten years ago, after lively discussions with Fouad Laroui on religion and secularism in Amsterdam, I tried to interest American editors in his De l’islamisme. Une réfutation personnelle du totalitarisme religieux (On Islamism: A Personal Refutation of Religious Fundamentalism). But all this was to no avail. So you can imagine my delight that Deep Vellum is finally introducing the American public to this original, independent, and multitalented writer.

  The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers is a comic book, occasionally even a farce. The title character, for example, is a government official who lands in Belgium with the intent of buying 20 million pounds of wheat (or is it 200 million pounds?) for Morocco, but his trousers—the only pair he has brought on his short trip—are stolen. Now he must show up to his minister’s meeting in golf pants purchased at the Oxfam store around the corner. The European delegates greet him with shock and, depending on their country of origin, think of him as a thief, a freeloader, a hoaxer, or a “Moro.” But beneath the humor is Laroui’s constant concern with power and displacement. His prose is delightfully energetic, filled with double entendres, and he is not afraid to experiment with syntactic structures, as he does in the story “Dislocation.”

  In its exploration of culture, identity, and religious dogma, Dassoukine consistently make us laugh while it makes us think. Laroui turns his appraising gaze on the foibles and foolishness of his characters—with irreverence, but never without tenderness.

  Santa Monica, January 2016

  THE CURIOUS CASE OF DASSOUKINE’S TROUSERS

  “Belgium really is the birthplace of Surrealism,” sighs Dassoukine, staring into the distance.

  I don’t respond because this phrase seems like a prologue—and in the face of a prologue, what can you do but await what follows, resigned. My commensal examines his mug of beer suspiciously, even though we are, after all, in the country that saw the birth of this pretty blonde, sometimes brunette, child—in an abbey, I’m told. The server eyes us. In this superb spot situated on the Grand Place of Brussels, opposite the Maison du Cygne, we form a trio hanging on this thesis: “Belgium really is the birthplace of Surrealism.” This incipit is still floating in the air when Dassoukine decides to elaborate.

  “What just happened to me, in any case, exceeds all bounds.”

  I restrain myself from adding: “And when boundaries are crossed…”

  He begins:

  “So, I set out yesterday from Morocco on a very delicate mission. You know the grain harvest is off to a bad start in our country—it h
as rained, but not a lot. We are in desperate need of flour, but where to find it? Ukraine is in flames, the Russians cling tightly to their crops, it’s a long way to Australia. There’s only one solution: Europe. The government sends me to buy flour from Brussels. They’ve entrusted this mission to me. The country’s future is at risk. At the airport, in Rabat, they’re all on the tarmac, the ministers standing straight as yews, to bid me bon voyage as if their fate depended on little old me. Well, little…I’m taller than all of them by a head. The prime minister shakes my hand while the airplane engines roar and my eyes blur:

  “‘Get the best price, my boy, the best price! The budget of the state depends on your negotiating skills.’

  “He nearly pulled my ear, as if to say, ‘the homeland is counting on you, grenadier.’ I board the plane and set sail for the haystacks. On the Place Jourdan in Brussels I get a room in the hotel where high-flying diplomats normally stay. Check-in, shower, quick glance at the TV—the world still exists. I’ll spare you the details. I go down to have a drink at the bar. Surprise! While I’ve come to the land of Tintin to buy wheat, suddenly I find myself on the first floor at a soirée whose theme is—adjusting our glasses and leaning in to look at the placard—‘the promotion of Alsatian wine and cuisine.’ Curious. I had thought the gastronomy on the borders of the Rhine could stand up for itself—didn’t the Maginot Line used to be there? But anyway…I mingle among the guests. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves and no one seems to notice this tall freeloading foreigner who tomorrow will be buying twenty million pounds of wheat. No one…except for two gentlemen.”

  “Two gentlemen?”

  “Yes, one plus one.”

  “You pronounce the ‘t’ when you say it?”

  Dassoukine looks at me, dumbstruck.

  “I’m telling you about the fiasco of the century and the only thing you’re worried about is whether you say ‘two gentlemen’ or ‘two gennelmen’?”

  “Apologies.”

  “So, two gen-TUHL-men. The first one is a waiter who asks me politely if I might lend him a hand, he has to change a tablecloth, I don’t know why. Possessing, like all servers from Brussels, only two arms, he hands me his tray, full of petits fours, for the time it takes him to carry out the operation he’s determined to accomplish. It’s then that another guy (the second one I mentioned), a tall string bean, clumsy but perfectly well-bred, hits me with his elbow, while I balance the tray on my open palm, as if I had never done anything else in my life—me, the grandson of a kaid and the son of a prime minister.”

  “No one’s denying that.”

  “Except for the second guy, who, after apologizing for having (nearly) knocked over my tray—why am I saying ‘my’ tray, it’s mad how we adapt to degradation—babbling in multilingual apologies—I detect some Hungarian in his English accent and some Latvian in his fumbled French; so, after babbling a number of apologies as if he had surprised Sissi naked in a back alley, what does he do?”

  “What does he do?”

  “Well, he picks up a mini-toast from my tray and thanks me while bowing slightly.”

  “Indeed a polite man, then, albeit Hungarian.”

  “That’s not the problem, idiot! He thanked me as if I were a waiter.”

  “There are no dishonorable jobs.”

  “In the absolute sense, no. Perhaps. But come on, I’m in Brussels to buy two hundred million pounds of wheat!”

  “Inflation.”

  “Around ten o’clock, after savoring the dishes prepared by some of the best chefs—might as well—and after wearing out my tongue appreciating wines that I didn’t even know existed, I decide to go back to my room. Brussels is going through a heat wave: it’s still 102 degrees outside. Unable to sleep in such heat, I read the Mémoires of the Belgian king. And because I’m not crazy about air conditioning, I turn it off, like the peasant I am, opting to open the big window instead. My room is on the second floor…”

  “Do I need every detail?”

  “…but here the floors are high, so it was really the third floor. Just after midnight, I turn out the lights and contemplate wheat and wheat farms. That’s me: professional down to the muslin. Not long after, half asleep, I hear the window bang and the curtains move, like in those horror movies that that can’t even scare a cat. I say to myself that the long-awaited storm has finally arrived—Levez-vous vite, orages désirés…—and that the atmosphere will cool down. I nestle into my bed and dream of haystacks. A few minutes later, I’m woken up again, this time by the sounds of metal. Clang! Clang! What’s going on now? I open my eyes and, stupefied, I see a hand hanging from the window railing! I sit up bellowing (What is that racket?) and jump out of bed. The hand disappears. This is bad. Should I lean out the window and risk finding myself face to face with Dracula or Peter Lorre? I’m brave—you know me—but I have my limits. So I call reception. The operator picks up right away—we are, after all, in a nice hotel—I inform him in two words of the incident, he asks me if it’s room service that I’m trying to reach, I add some details, he tells me that, yes, they have fries, I tell him about the wandering hand, he replies mayonnaise, I start over, enunciating my words; after a stunned silence, the man gets a hold of himself and tells me he’ll call the police right away.

  “After replacing the receiver, I go to look out the window anyway, armed with the Financial Times rolled up into a bat, in case the salmon color should frighten away the zombies. I see nothing, no one in this serene, Belgian night. My room looks out onto the Etterbeek, there are some bushes, but I search far and wide; the cat burglar has disappeared. Roughly speaking, there’s a good thirty feet between my bedroom window and the ground. The wall is made of brick, there’s no gutter, nothing for a person to hang on to. There’s a little ledge under my window, but it’s narrow. And even then you still have to get there, and somehow stay there.”

  “Thorough report.”

  “The police arrive rapidly and get to work. There are four of them, debonair but industrious. They survey the surroundings of the hotel with flashlights, they smoke out some cats, drive out three spiders, cry out in bruxellois, but they don’t find anything human. They leave, taking down my statement. According to them, it must have been like in a circus act: three or four men climb on one another’s shoulders, the one on top reaches the window, enters the room, and grabs any objects of value. Then they disappear into the neighboring thickets—beautiful thickets, by the way, I recommend them, look up the Parc Léopold. I think to myself that I dodged a bullet, given that my laptop was on the shelf right by the window. All the secrets of the Kingdom—ours, not Belgium’s—will remain secret. I go back to sleep, pretty perplexed.”

  “And the metal noises?”

  “Forgotten! I had more important things to do than wonder about the whisper of the world. The next morning: toilet, shower, shave, after-shave—the ritual of a minister on a mission. I start to get dressed and then, stupor and shudders, as a local author once said: no more trousers! Nada, niente! I had left them folded, flat on the suitcase, close to the window. And at that hour, they were conspicuously absent! In a flash, I understand everything: the thief had taken my trousers, in which I had left a pile of change. And it was these coins, falling out of the pockets, that had woken me up!”

  “Voilà, mystery solved.”

  “One hell of a lucky break, I said to myself in petto. Normally, I empty the pockets of my trousers before folding them at night. But that night, for whatever reason, I hadn’t. The noise woke me up and the thief left without my computer, which holds the plans for the nuclear missiles stashed under the Place Jemaa el Fna in Marrakech. However, I had also left some bills in the pockets, and so I’m out 320 euros. Bah, money isn’t everything…The problem—or should I say the tragedy?…the catastrophe?—is that I don’t have any other trousers. For the two-day trip, I had brought only the saroual I was wearing. Why complicate things? Two shirts, yes, but only one pair of pants: I’m not Patino the Tin King, or an English lord. So
, nix pairs of trousers and Europe awaits me at nine o’clock sharp. I go down to the reception in my pajamas. The manager is there, impeccably dressed. He is already up-to-date on my misadventure. Alas, he tells me, all the stores are still closed at this morning hour. Brow furrowed, he thinks through a few different possibilities. He could go to his house and bring me one of his pairs of trousers, or he could ask the employees, but these suggestions, born of Belgian goodwill, come crashing down when faced with this irrefutable reality: I am taller than all these Samaritans. I would look like a half-drowned Nixon! Standing in the hotel lobby, we look at each other, sheepish, and the seconds pass.

  “‘I hardly dare suggest it to you…’ he says to me while adjusting his glasses with an extremely distinguished air.

  “‘Go on, go on! Anything would be better than being stark naked or wearing a barrel around my waist!’

  “‘Two minutes from here, at the corner of rue de l’Étang, there’s an Oxfam Solidarité shop that sells used clothing.’

  “‘But it’ll be closed!’

  “‘My aunt is the manager, call her, she’ll open the shop. She lives right around the corner.’”

  Dassoukine swallows a mouthful of coffee and assumes a tragic air.

  “He who has never crossed the Place Jourdan in his pajamas, hair disheveled, searching for an act of charity even though he is the grandson of a kaid, has no concept of the absurd. I rush into the shop where an old woman is waiting for me with an angelic smile.

  “‘My God, you’re a giant,’ she chirps, panicked.

  “‘At your service, madame.’

  “‘The only thing we have in your size is this.’

  “She unhooks a rag and hands it to me. Prepare the funeral arrangements! They’re golf trousers, the work of a mad tailor, the trappings of a clown. Oh they have lived, possibly several lives, and hard ones at that. The original colors are now faded but it’s obvious they must have clashed violently in the old days. You can see beneath the fabric, beneath the canvas, I should say, a yellow, a yucky brown, an evanescent green, a burnt amber, red diamonds layered on top…but we mustn’t entirely write off the wreckage, because there is one undeniable advantage: they are exactly my size. I throw five euros on the counter, I forget my pajamas and rush toward the assembly hall: it’s right around the corner, at the end of rue Froissart. The orderly raises an eyebrow when he notices my trousers but my papers are in order and he grants me entry while deploring in a low voice the end of European civilization. I enter the hall, where my interruption causes a sensation. The members of the committee, who are already there, on a sort of platform, gawk at me with bulging eyes, looking only below the belt, as if I had been reduced to two legs.”