A Country for Dying

by Abdellah Taïa

  Barmaid in the evening and into the night. Maid at a hotel in the fifteenth arrondissement, near the Convention metro stop. That’s how she got by, more or less.

  The owner of the hotel was Algerian.

  Later, once they were married, he told her that he had fallen in love with her when they first met. At first sight.

  She didn’t believe him. He never stopped swearing it to her. Love, immediately.

  In reality, Naïma spent only two months at that hotel. It was too tiring. Backbreaking. She preferred to go back to babysitting while continuing her work at the bar.

  Two years later, the Algerian came to have a drink at the bar where she was still working at night.

  “You don’t remember me?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Look closely . . . Am I nice?”

  “Yes, very nice.”

  “Are you mocking me?”

  “Just a little bit.”

  “You don’t remember nice men?”

  “I haven’t come across any for a long time. I think that’s all over now.”

  “What’s over?”

  “Nice people.”

  “I’m a nice man.”

  “I believe you.”

  “You should believe me . . . Naïma . . .”

  “You know me? You know my name?”

  “I never forgot it.”

  “Stop pulling my leg.”

  “I’m serious, Naïma. I’m the Algerian who runs the Hôtel Astoria where you worked two years ago. Do you see now?”

  “I see, yes . . . I see . . .”

  “That makes me happy.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re not going to ask my name?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “My name is Jaâfar.”

  “Nice to meet you, Jaâfar. I’m Moroccan.”

  “I know, Naïma.”

  “You want a glass of wine? On me . . .”

  “I didn’t come here for that . . . I don’t drink in any case.”

  “Why are you here, then?”

  “To see you. To find you again. Ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Say my name . . . Please . . .”

  “Jaâfar.”

  “One more time.”

  Jaâfar had truly fallen in love with Naïma from the first day they met. Madly in love. But he hadn’t said anything to her at the time. He was married. His wife was dying in the hospital. He knew perfectly well what was happening to him, the love that was making its way into his heart with a loud bang.

  He didn’t hesitate to do what needed to be done. Accompany his wife to the end, to the door of the sky. Not disavow her while she was still alive.

  So he revealed nothing to Naïma, didn’t let her see a thing.

  Two years later, after his wife died, he sold everything he owned in Paris: the hotel and three apartments. He wound up with a nice little fortune. He shared half of it between his two children, who each had their own families.

  And he set out to find Naïma.

  Jaâfar wasn’t really an old man. He was only fifty-six.

  Naïma considered herself finished, one of the living dead, when the Algerian found her again. What he told her, in the sordid bar where she was drowning in her misery, more than surprised her. She had a hard time believing him.

  She told him so. Jaâfar’s short response shook her and, at the same time, opened up something new in her.

  Jaâfar said:

  “I might be a liar, but here, before you, I am speaking the truth. For more than two years, I’ve dreamed about you day and night. You have to believe me.”

  He said it in Arabic, with an Algerian accent.

  Naïma’s heart suddenly softened without her permission.

  Never before had anyone made a sincere declaration of love to this woman.

  She was happy. Of course. She couldn’t think of anything to say to Jaâfar. She simply lowered her eyes. And she let a tear run down her cheek. Jaâfar got up and, courageously, dared to dry that tear. The Arabs who were in the bar that night couldn’t believe their eyes. One of them applauded. A second. The whole bar.

  Naïma says that miracles happen. Now her family is proud of her.

  Naïma brought Jaâfar to Casablanca. They had a big wedding. They bought a house in El Jadida, Naïma’s birthplace. But both of them love Paris. That’s where they dream of going to try their luck till the very end.

  I don’t know if I want to be like Naïma. I’ll never have her luck. But I believe in her miracle.

  And, like her, each morning I tell myself that no matter what happens, Paris is mine. Ours. Yours, too, Aziz.

  Do you agree?

  PART II

  Paris, August 2010

  1. In the Clouds

  I am a woman. I became a woman. It’s been two months now.

  I’m talking to myself.

  Without looking at myself in the mirror, I know, I am the changes that are taking place in me. And I am talking.

  I see no one. I don’t want to see the monster I have become reflected in the eyes of others. Their fake comprehension. Their pity. Their unease. Their forced kindness. So I distance myself from everyone. I stay alone in this overly large apartment, decorated in an overly French style by my friends Jean-Jacques and Pierre. Even Zahira, I don’t want her to visit very often. Twice a week. No more. She buys groceries for me. Prepares my food for the next several days. Cleans what needs to be cleaned. Tidies what needs to be tidied. Gives me three kisses on each cheek before leaving. Calls me by my new name.

  Zannouba.

  “Zannouba” comes out of Zahira’s mouth as though it were obvious. A smile that comes from far away. Me in a past life. Once more in the reality of the world.

  Apart from Zahira, the others can go to hell. I don’t need their solidarity, or their support. Let them keep their good wishes and their bullshit to themselves.

  What I need is a gaze that is true, free, that doesn’t judge me, that sees me and nothing more.

  Zahira. Always and forever her. Zahira is the only one capable of that. A hand on my forehead. A kiss on my hand. A word that makes me come to life again. Khti. My sister.

  I believe her.

  I’ve always believed her. Even when she makes fun of me, I stick with her through her outbursts and her sadness.

  Zahira understands that I don’t want people to call me right now. There’s nothing to say. The operation happened. They changed my sex.

  I should feel like a woman. Be happy. Joyous. Throw a party. Be light, as before. As in my dreams from before.

  The opposite is happening to me.

  I cry day and night. Night and day.

  Below, between my legs, what was heavy, cumbersome, is gone.

  They cut it off. In me, in its place, there is an opening. But I feel nothing.

  Nothing.

  Air enters. Passes. I should shiver. Tremble. But no. Nothing.

  I don’t hear anything below.

  Even when I piss, there aren’t those little delicate noises I was expecting. In its place, a strong stream of water. It comes out, strong. As before, strong. It’s not a woman pissing. No.

  Great despair.

  I go to the bathroom countless times per day. I try to solidify my idea of womanhood through that ordinary, repeated act. I try to summon up sonorous memories of my mother pissing freely, with no shame. Rediscover that particular sound.

  TSSSSSTSSSSSTSSSSS.

  Impossible! I never succeed.

  The yellow water that flows from me is like a torrent. It’s pushed out and surges with a powerful energy that I know too well and in which I never recognized myself. Like a waterfall in
the middle of a river.

  I’m ashamed.

  I stop pissing. I hold my head in my hands.

  I’ve become a woman. On the outside. The cock and balls are gone, I buried them myself. Deep down, all the way down, there is still, and there will no doubt remain, a current of masculinity that was always more than foreign to me.

  For years, as soon as I made a bit of money in Paris, I did everything I could to mask that intruding manliness. Creams. Makeup. Clothes. Waxing. Wigs. Shoes with incredibly high stiletto heels. Hormones. Injections.

  That hid things, somewhat. Never completely. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.

  What happens inside me escapes me.

  I obeyed my deep nature, what I always felt inside my secret heart: I am not a boy, I am a girl.

  I had to have the operation. This change that wasn’t one. Not to go from boy to girl. To become the girl I had always been, long before I came into the world.

  Now that it’s happened, the obvious transformation, the more-than-necessary repair, I find myself unsatisfied again. Completely overwhelmed by the manly side that still runs through me, in my veins, that dominates my genes.

  What am I going to do now?

  I can’t go to the bathroom anymore. I don’t want to anymore. And to avoid needing to piss, I’ve decided to stop drinking water.

  Little by little, I wither. Body. Heart. Spirit. I no longer know what to do nor how to do it.

  Am I a woman, completely a woman?

  No.

  Am I still a man?

  No.

  Who am I, then?

  I don’t regret anything that I’ve done. I wanted this operation. This disappearance, I’m the one who planned it, orchestrated it. Brought it to fruition. I thought of everything. But not of the essential: how to be a woman? I mean, beyond clothing and makeup, what is a woman?

  Why, before the operation, did I know all the answers to these questions? And now: nothing?

  Each day I lose the joy from before, this desire from before that gave me a reason for existing. Revealing my true identity. Making all the sacrifices for it to happen. Not a miracle but reality, just reality. The project of a life becoming concrete, true.

  Was it a mistake?

  In my huge bed, I no longer know how to calm myself down, reassure myself with dependable, definitive answers that will never come.

  I’m in the void. I can’t manage to fill it.

  Who to imitate? Who to model myself after? Where to find good advice, the word that makes things right, the gesture that reconciles, the look that loves without expecting anything in return? Where?

  Who will guide me?

  No one talks about what’s happening to me in this moment. No one has dared to describe this territory where one is no longer at all defined. Where one is outside of every category, yesterday’s and today’s.

  What to do with myself now? I can’t stop turning the question over in my head, and now it has nothing to grab onto.

  Why not go to a bookstore and look for a book that really addresses this subject, me in this moment, without a condescending voice, without too many empty theories?

  That book doesn’t exist.

  And films? There has to be one that addresses situations like mine. I’m sure of it. But which one? I should call Dr. Johansson. He’ll tell me. Except he must still be on vacation. What to do, then? Who to call for help? Zahira only knows and only likes Indian movies. She’s basically a specialist in the genre, she can always find something that sweeps her off her feet, makes her believe that other lives are possible elsewhere.

  I think of the little Algerian boy who didn’t feel like a boy. Among girls, his sisters, he would open up, he would laugh, he would dance, he was in heaven.

  I see now what he’s become. He’s in purgatory.

  He. Her. Is it true?

  “What if I called my sisters?”

  “Yes, that’s it . . . That’s a good idea, Zannouba. Call them all, right away, tell them that you’ve become like them, exactly like them . . . Go on . . . Go on . . . Go ahead . . . Be brave! Embrace your new condition! Call them, they’ll be able to comfort you . . . Go ahead . . . Go ahead, for goodness’ sake!”

  “You’re wrong, Aziz. Your sisters can’t do anything for you. You know what Algerian society has turned them into: veiled women, slaves to their cowardly husbands. The living dead.”

  “Are you listening to what you’re saying, Zannouba? What do you know of their lives, of their day-to-day, of their problems? You really think that just because they’re veiled, they’ve automatically lost their liberty!”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Don’t make me laugh! You’re talking like all those sanctimonious Westerners, now. To comfort themselves, prove to themselves that they’re the ones in the right, they seek examples in other places of people who, according to them, lack freedom . . . Arab women, for example.”

  “But they’re right. Arab women lack freedom. That’s the reality.”

  “Are you listening to what you’re saying? What’s going on with you?”

  “That’s exactly the problem . . . I don’t know what’s going on with me.”

  “You wanted to become a woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are one.”

  “You think?”

  “You are one, I’m telling you. You are an Arab woman . . .”

  “You’re making fun of me!”

  “Not at all. You’re right to think of your sisters in Algeria. In your memories of them, you will find salvation. The example to follow.”

  “Veil myself like them?”

  “Why not?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Sérieuse, you mean. I’m you—have you forgotten? My wee-wee’s gone, just like yours.”

  “You regret it, it seems.”

  “Yes, a bit. I’ll admit it.”

  “I don’t regret it at all. Not at all.”

  “You’re lying. As usual, you’re lying. The truth is right in front of you and you refuse to see it. That’s so typical of you! Fleeing. Always fleeing. Now, you have to own it, poor thing. You wanted to become the woman you always believed you were deep down? Well, look at yourself in the mirror: you are, you’ve succeeded. You’re beautiful. You’re magnificent. Ravishing. The Parisians are going to adore you. Make you into an example of a liberated Arab, who’s not ashamed. Not like the others, those from the village, who’re still rotting in ignorance and submission. You’ve succeeded, my dear! Bravo! Bravo!”

  “Enough! Enough!”

  “I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

  “Enough, I said!”

  “Are you threatening me? You can’t do anything to me now . . . You’re a wreck . . . A lowlife, the lowest . . .”

  “Enough!”

  “You’re nothing . . . You’re the lowest of the low now . . . I’m not okay with what you’ve done to me . . .”

  “I’ll kill you!”

  “Go ahead. I’m waiting. I have nothing left to lose. You’re already hit rock bottom. I’m there with you, unfortunately for me. Might as well end it here, right now. You want to drag me with you through this life that you think is free, but I don’t want that. Come on, then. Kill me. Kill us. Come on. Come on. Are you scared?”

  “I love you!”

  “What? What did you say? You’ve gone insane, apparently.”

  “I love you!”

  “Bullshit! You’re killing me, you’re cutting me off, you’re erasing my existence, and you tell me that you love me . . . Yeah right, Zannouba! Yeah right!”

  “It’s true, I love you. You’re just a little boy. It has nothing to do with you, this tragedy. It’s not your fault at all.”

  “I don’t understand these mysterious words.”

 
“You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play games with me, Aziz . . . Please . . .”

  “I’m not playing. I’m not Aziz anymore. You killed me. You removed me from you. From your body. I’m nothing. Where should I go now? I’m in a situation worse than yours. I no longer exist. You, at least, can play the depressed, crying diva. You exterminated me. You have no pity for me. You don’t think of anyone but yourself. Become a woman. Become a woman. Now that you are one, you should be elated. You should believe in Allah again. Do it. Do it. He is the one who allowed this to happen. But, of course, narcissistic as you’ve always been, you think only of your own trivial unhappiness, your small negligible scars, your lost rhythm. And me? ME, AZIZ? Do you still think of me? Of course not. You’re too busy becoming a madame. A madame like all those floozies hanging around this shitty city! Is that life, the future, emancipation? Becoming like the others around here? Is that it? Answer me! Say something. Look at me. Look at me and tell me you regret it . . . Say it . . . Say it . . .”

  “No. I can’t say it.”

  “You’re heartless. You’re letting me die. And you’re crying over yourself.”

  “You don’t understand, Aziz.”

  “Of course I don’t understand, since I’m dead. By your hand, dead. By your hand, executed. Do you still remember, the crime you committed just two months ago?”

  “It wasn’t a crime. I had to find peace.”

  “I’m happy for you, Zannouba. I see how much good this peace has done you.”

  “Don’t joke . . . Don’t joke, please . . .”

  “I’m not anything anymore. Not a little boy dancing happily with his sisters, nor a free soul still blissfully ignorant. You destroyed everything with your crazy desire to become a woman. You finished me. You ended all my opportunities, on earth and up above . . .”

  “You will always be a part of me, Aziz.”

  “You’re deluding yourself, Zannouba. Soon you will even have forgotten my name. Our name. Aziz. You’ll trample me, my heart, my cock. Now all you see is you: woman. The traces of us, little boy, man, are still here, in you. But rest assured, they will soon disappear. From where I am, from where I’m speaking to you, I see your future. I cursed you as a man. I cursed you as a woman. And, despite myself, I will continue to watch over you . . . Goodbye . . . Goodbye, Zannouba . . .”