Free A Palace in the Old Village by Tahar Ben Jelloun

for evil but believe in his justice, for he avenges the robbed and betrayed orphan, and all who are wronged. If I were to meet that jolly Marrakechi dwarf and have the chance to run him over with my jalopy, would I? The thought of seeing him in agony is tempting, I admit, but I’m losing my mind: bastards are better left in the hands of God.
     
    At the auto plant, the French and Portuguese workers welcomed the day when they could finally enjoy their leisure time, take trips, putter around the house and garden , read, even work on their own projects. They made plans, organised their lives as “young retirees.” As Marcel said: At sixty years we’re barely two-thirds of the waythrough our lives, so why bury ourselves? Life is for living!
    Marcel had arrived in France right after the war; he must have been all of ten years old. A bon vivant, a champion drinker and talker, he was the scourge of the shop foremen. Of Polish birth, a Jew and an atheist, he sympathised with the Palestinian cause and didn’t understand why the Arab states were doing nothing for their brothers in the occupied territories. When Mohammed, who grieved over the Palestinians’ fate, said he couldn’t figure out politics at all, Marcel offered to teach him, but Mohammed wouldn’t budge; even thousands of miles from his village, he still feared the Makhzen. It was in France that he heard about human rights for the first time and learned as well that in his own country men died under torture or rotted in prison without benefit of trial. Marcel kept him up-to-date, telling him, Your country is marvellous, but it’s in the hands of some unsavory characters: the Moroccan police were trained by the French, who taught them how to torture, but the Moroccan system is based on fear, and even you are afraid. I understand you: you’re scared of being arrested when you go back home. It’s the same thing in Algeria, Tunisia—as soon as you protest against the politics of repression you’re done for and they pick you up at the border; that’s why immigrants don’t move around much. You, you keep quiet, and I know that what goes on in your country pains you.
    Mohammed remembered the Koranic school and drifted off in distant memories of days when everything was simple, when he didn’t even know there were roads,tall buildings, lampposts illuminating streets where no one lived. The world was as big as his village. He had trouble imagining anywhere else. One’s native land always leaves a bitter aftertaste. Mohammed’s country was dry, bare; it had nothing, and this nothing had followed him even to France. This nothing was important. He had no choice: he couldn’t exchange it for another nothing that was perhaps a little more colourful, better equipped. He made do, with patience and resignation. In the end he’d stopped wondering about all that. What the police got up to in their far-off stations, well, he couldn’t imagine, and his village was light-years away from the city.
    Did he want to live like the French? He considered his fellow workers at the plant and didn’t envy their lot. Each to his own life and way of life. He didn’t criticise them but was puzzled by how they treated their parents and children. The spirit of family, as he saw it, was no longer honoured in France. This slippage shocked him. He just couldn’t understand why girls smoked and drank in front of their parents and went out at night with boys. And why did huge billboards display half-naked women to sell perfumes or cars? Most of all, he was afraid for his own family and talked this over with his pals. They sighed, raising their arms to heaven in resignation. What could you do?
    One Sunday he invited Marcel home to dinner. It was a holiday, and Mohammed told him, Bring your wife but no wine! Marcel agreed to skip his wine and merrily stuffed himself with the good things fixed by Mohammed’s wife. Marcel liked to tell his friend, Time, it’s us. Itisn’t the watch face, no.