by Karine Tuil
* * *
There is a question she’s dying to ask him. But she hesitates, out of fear she will hurt him, before finally phrasing it: “Didn’t people ever think you were an Arab? I mean, I look at you and I can tell right away that you’re North African . . .”
“Of course they did, yeah. I had to justify myself. But I didn’t have that problem with Jews because they just saw me as a French Sephardic Jew. My skin is dark, I’ve got a hooked nose—I fit the type, basically. But yeah, non-Jews thought I was an Arab all the time.”
“Did that cause you problems?”
“Not until September eleventh, not really. In the U.S., there’s the whole melting-pot thing where people don’t really look at each other that way. But after the Twin Towers attack, yeah. It was terrible . . . Even that day, while I was still traumatized—I had several friends who worked in the World Trade Center, at Cantor Fitzgerald—anyway, I was walking the streets of New York, in shock . . . I felt like screaming but I couldn’t even speak. And yet I really wanted to call my mother to let her know I was okay—I’d told her I was living in New York, although that’s pretty much all I’d told her about my life. All the lines were busy that day—it was hard for people to contact their loved ones, which only added to the anxiety. It was so terrible. You can’t imagine, really. I’m trembling now, just remembering it. But anyhow, I was lucky: I got through to my mother right away. And I was so emotional, hearing her voice, that without even realizing it, I started speaking to her in Arabic . . . I probably only spoke for a few seconds before I looked up and saw the looks of hatred on the faces of people around me. Suddenly I had become an enemy, a pariah. After that, I went through a very tough time: I was constantly stopped by police, especially in airports, and asked if I was a Muslim, if I was an Arab. And, each time, I would lie, and I would hate myself for it: I’d say I wasn’t an Arab Muslim, and sometimes I would even go further, like on one trip to Israel, by saying, No, I’m a Jew. Everywhere I went, I heard awful things: that the Muslims could never be assimilated, that sooner or later they would all become dangerous Islamists. That they could only live in dictatorships because they needed to be dominated. That they all looked the same. That they should be sent away, cleansed from American society. That they should never be trusted. I heard some incredibly violent and racist things. And what was worst was that, quite often, I found myself nodding in agreement! One day, when we were dealing with a case involving a Turkish doctor, my partner said something about how you could never trust an Arab, and I smiled. I smiled! Was I ashamed? Of course I was. But what else could I do? I was like one of those guys who pretend to be homophobic to cover up the fact that they’re actually gay! But at the same time, my opinions were not too different from all those people expressing their anger and their fear. I felt sickened by what had happened. What common destiny could I possibly share with the bastards who had done that? Their version of Islam was nothing like mine. But I also heard terrible things from the other side. Once or twice, for instance, I found myself near a group of Arab Muslims who didn’t know I could understand what they were saying, and they all seemed to believe that the September eleventh attacks were incited by Israeli secret services with the aim of justifying an American attack, that the Jews knew about it beforehand, that none of the victims in the Twin Towers had been Jewish . . . there were conspiracy theories everywhere! And, hearing that kind of disgusting anti-Semitism, I wanted to smash their lying faces . . . but I didn’t, of course. I listened impassively as they spewed forth their hatred, revealing the horrors of their obscene imaginations as if they were just passing the time of day . . . So, yeah, let’s say that I never really felt like I belonged to either side. I was alone.”
Nina sits up. Suddenly feeling emotional, she decides that she wants him to know about the sadness in her and Samuel’s life together: the genesis of their failure, their disillusionment. “I told you that Samuel was a social worker in a troubled area. A little while ago—three or four years—he began hearing anti-Semitic remarks. It began subtly, quietly, then it became more openly threatening. One morning he arrived and saw graffiti on the wall of the charity where he works: ‘filthy Jew’ and that kind of thing. He asked to be transferred to another city and they advised him not to admit that he was Jewish. Can you believe it? They told him to change his first name or to go by ‘Sam.’ In the end, he chose his father’s name, Jacques. He’s afraid of reprisals, so he doesn’t dare say anything.” “I don’t like it when you’re so serious,” Samir says abruptly. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he is moved, and in such moments of emotion, the only language he knows is sex. Come here—you talk too much. And he pulls her to him and takes her. She stops talking; closes her eyes and moans softly. The truth? What truth? Sex is all he has ever known. He is brutal, fiery, sensual, but also affectionate, demonstrative, passionate. Everything about him betrays his urgency, and no sooner have they finished making love than he is telling her it is time to go. He wants to be alone now. It’s late—I’ll call you a cab. For a moment, she had imagined she would spend the night with him, maybe even three or four days; that he would take her far away from the dreary pathos of her life . . . but no, he’s tired, jet-lagged, he has calls to make. She is still half naked, her body wrapped in a too-small towel, her skin afire. He says: Get dressed, and she gets dressed. She doesn’t feel angry or annoyed; she is not aggressively demanding with him. There is an attraction between them, maybe even a complicity, but beyond that their relationship is so complex that she doesn’t understand it, and she is not the kind of woman to analyze such things, to dissect his words and behavior in the hope of understanding his feelings for her. For a man like Samir, used to having to explain himself to his wife, to other women, this is perfect. He doesn’t want to be possessed. Watching her walk toward the door without making any gestures of affection or displaying any signs of discontent—her face as smooth and blank as a robot’s—he thinks: You behave like a man. He says he would like to see her again, touching her cheek, stroking her thighs through the soft fabric of her dress, and she doesn’t reply. This drives him crazy. Tell me you want to see me again—tell me! She laughs, and leaves without a word. When he’s alone again, he walks to the bed and grabs his phone: his wife has left him several messages; she wants to know how he is, to find out if he’s lonely without her. Yes, she misses him. She says this twice, then adds: “I wish I was in Paris with you now. If I could, I’d take the first plane out there.” Her obsessive, unconditional love for Samir. The way she still looks at him, ten years after they first met, as if she has just fallen in love with him for the first time—and there is nothing fake or calculated about it. She is not one of those women who like to appear passionately in love when people are watching, simpering in their beloved’s arms, their lips bubbling with sweet nothings and ridiculous nicknames. No, she is like that all the time. With him, she loses all the strength and haughtiness that characterizes her presence in society. With him, she feels vulnerable. Does she know that he cheats on her? Does she suspect? There is a kind of neurotic resistance in this love-blinded woman’s refusal to see the truth, given up completely to the desires of her chosen man; this woman who rules the social world like a queen, but who in private disappears into the shadows. She knows she is important to him, though, and this ambiguous relationship—so puzzling even to their closest friends—is the only way they can function together. She questions him, practically interrogates him, and Samir offers no reassurance at all. Because the truth is that this little game excites them both: she is completely dependent on him and, deep down, she likes it.
* * *
They speak for a long time. When they finally hang up, Samir checks the messages on his cell phone. Nothing from Nina. It drives him wild, this indifference of hers, and he can’t restrain himself from dialing her number. He wants to hear her voice. But she doesn’t answer. He tries three or four times—in vain. Then, suddenly, her voice at the other end of the line, a chilling and barely audible whisper: “
I can’t talk to you.”
12
Back at the apartment, she discovers Samuel, face reddened by alcohol, slumped asleep in front of his computer screen. Nina moves closer and sees a news page; she clicks on “History” and finds out that he has been researching Samir—his law firm, his wife, his children. It is obsessive, and she feels suddenly terrified as she realizes what is happening: history repeating. She could never have imagined that, twenty years later, all the old emotions would remain intact, that nothing would have changed—the desires and enmities unaltered by time, absence, distance. She gets into bed and is falling asleep when Samuel gently shakes her. He is above her, trapping her on the bed, his pupils dilated, something strange in his expression as if he is about to do something unusual. She pushes him away—it’s late, she’s tired—but he shakes her again, gently at first, You’re hiding something from me, come on, tell me, I want to know, tell me what happened, and then with increasing force. What is wrong with you? Tearful, she refuses, Leave me alone, I’m sleepy, but he insists, hammering away at her, haranguing her with questions, and delivering his unequivocal conclusion: You have to tell me everything. I know it’s a risk, but I’ll take it.
And then something surprising happens. Even though she knows she should just go back to sleep—because how could he really want to know what happened between Samir and her? How could she believe he would be able to hear about her betrayal without suffering?—she sits on the edge of the bed and answers his questions.
“We had a drink at the hotel bar.”
“And then?”
“We went out for a walk near the Tuileries Garden.”
“And then?”
“He suggested we have one last drink at his hotel.”
“And then?”
“I agreed.”
“Did he ask you up to his room?”
“Yes.”
“And did you agree?”
“Yes.”
“Did you show any reluctance?”
“No.”
“So you followed him up to his room . . .”
“Yes.”
“But were you expecting anything to happen?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Explain. I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really think about it. He asked me to go up to his room for a drink, and I agreed. I didn’t think about what might happen.”
“You go into a hotel room with a man—a man you once loved, a man you had a relationship with—you go into a hotel room with him and you don’t imagine what might happen. (I say ‘might’; I still don’t know what actually happened.) I find it hard to believe you . . .”
“Well, I thought about it, but . . .”
“Oh, so you did think about it.”
“Yes, I thought about it.”
“And what exactly did you think?”
“About what might happen if he was . . . forward, let’s say.”
“But you still went up with him?”
“Yes, I wanted to take the risk.”
“What did you do in his room?”
“We talked.”
“You talked. Is that all?”
“We talked. We had a drink.”
“What did you talk about?”
“About him, mostly. About his life in New York. And then . . . I wanted to find out how and why he built his new life on a lie by stealing your history.”
“And what did he reply?”
“Are you sure you want to talk about all this now?”
“Are you tired?”
“Yes. I’m tired and sleepy.”
With these words, Nina lies down, pulls the sheet up to her chest, and turns onto her left side, her back to Samuel.
“Did you fuck him?”
He asks the question in a harsh, icy voice. Nina doesn’t reply. She doesn’t move.
“Answer me. Did you fuck him?”
And so, without turning around, she replies in a monotone:
“Yes.”
13
Every time he sees his mother, Samir pulls out all the stops. The presents that he brings clink and rattle as she opens them, a symphony of heavy metal: ostentatious bracelets and silver clasps on purses. Nothing is too good for her. He brings her wads of dollar bills, euros too, gifts purchased in the best stores—costume/gold jewelry, black/white diamond pendants, silk foulards and scarves bought from Hermès or Dior, sometimes even dresses, when he has time: baggy, colorful smocks (always famous brands, because he knows that impresses her, that it reflects his success, makes her feel like she belongs), duty-free souvenirs (milk chocolates, mostly, but also perfumes, hand luggage, leather key fobs) . . . This is how he expiates his guilt, how he eases his conscience. So, this morning, as soon as he wakes up, he calls the concierge,1 asks for a car with a chauffeur, a bouquet of roses (the freshest, rarest, most fragrant they can find), and a Chanel handbag—a classic model, in quilted black leather with gold chains—money is no object, oh, and he’d like it all by noon, thank you. Certainly, sir. Always obsequious, always available: Samir enjoys these manifestations of subjugation provoked by his enviable social position; he revels in these flowerings of excessive politeness, interpreting them as a form of respect, the sycophancy demanded by his status as a customer—in a hotel, he is the king, and he wields power as he pleases: do this, do that, a bill subtly palmed, perfect, thank you. He had called his mother the day before, from the phone in his hotel room, to tell her he was in Paris: I’ll come and see you for lunch tomorrow. He never warns her in advance that he’s flying to France: he likes to surprise her, to hear his mother’s natural, spontaneous emotion on the other end of the phone line. Never—in any of the women he has hit on/loved/met—has he encountered that candor, which owes less to simplicity of character than simply to love, he thinks, to the purity of maternal feeling. And yet, she is the one he’s betraying. He is sitting on his bed now, in his underwear, the breakfast tray on his knees, the television showing CNN, and he is thinking about Nina. For a moment, he thinks about calling her again, but decides against the idea. Attachment—it’s a mental illness.
* * *
He has not seen his mother for two years. The last time he came to Paris, in the winter of 2005, he thought she looked older. She complained of chest and leg pains, so—suddenly afraid he might lose her—he took her to the American Hospital for three days of tests. Her hair was whiter, her body shrunken, and he noticed that, whenever she spoke, she seemed to be fighting against some invisible force that held back her thoughts. And yet she was a strong woman, in the prime of life. She was barely even sixty.
* * *
He always dreads these meetings, but he has never stopped visiting her. He could have. It was a possibility he considered when he first met Ruth and, in particular, Ruth’s father, and realized that there was no chance of him confessing the truth to these people; he had to make the resolution to live forever under the new identity he had inadvertently created. In fact, it would have been more opportune to stop visiting her. But he had not been brave enough to break off their relationship definitively—not because he wanted to protect her, but because he wanted to protect himself. He couldn’t live without her. Something powerful still connected him to her, even if he was incapable of saying exactly what it was. Filial duty? Neurotic love? Yes, probably: as for all sons raised on the milk of the purest human tenderness, his mother remained the most important woman in his life. But there was another reason for the survival of these ties that bound them: the fear of casting her aside too brutally; the dread of hurting a woman who had endured a hard life, a life full of humiliations, one of those miserable existences that makes you seek out, in vain, the person or persons responsible, makes you search for the root causes: a penniless childhood, a forced marriage, exile and poverty, manipulation—a shitty life. He could never think of his mother without feeling outraged and angry. Ultimately, even in New York, in the richest and most bourgeois surroundings—where people are only
allowed to enter after proving the prestige of their genealogy—he had never ceased to be Nawel Tahar’s glorious vengeance on the world, the son who would avenge his mother’s suffering. And every time he saw her, he was reminded of his broken promise: to keep her close by him in his hour of victory. He had won, of course, but elsewhere, without her. Each time he saw her now, she seemed slightly duller, as if another layer of dust had obscured the image of her he kept in his mind. But this impression was always tempered instantly by the affection she lavished on him; awakened by love, she was transformed—strength and color returned—and each time they were together after a long separation, she reacted the same way, with the same effusions of joy. She could spend hours in her kitchen, making the meals he loved, tidying her house, dressing in nice clothes, choosing the right perfume, for him. He had never told her that he’d had children, and she had never asked. Occasionally she would ask if he ever thought about settling down and starting a family, but that was all. He told her he’d met a few women, but had not loved any of them enough to marry. And generally, she did not press the point. Once—and once only—she told him how much she would love to have grandchildren, and he quietly, solemnly replied, “Insha’Allah, it will happen.”
