Free Divorce Islamic Style by Amara Lakhous

country.
    Our apartment is no bigger than sixty square meters: kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms. There is constant activity, twenty-four hours a day—it’s like being in an emergency room. There are at least four of us who work at night, in restaurants.
    Sixty square meters! If you divided this space by twelve we’d have five square meters a person. This is the sort of calculation that’s usually made by lawyers on behalf of their jailed clients, to rouse the pity of judges and obtain a reduction in jail time, or to solicit the compassion of members of parliament and urge them to pass a law on pardons. But does this mean my room is a cell? Don’t be ridiculous.
    And yet the comparison between Teresa’s apartment and jail isn’t completely absurd. Besides the problem of overcrowding, there is a code of honor that has to be respected. My experience as an interpreter at the court in Palermo has brought me into close contact with the world of prisons, and I can decipher certain behavior easily. The code of honor is based on hierarchy and unwritten rules. Anyone who doesn’t understand or pretends not to understand runs the risk of being punished. The worst punishment is not violence but exclusion from the group. That is exactly what I would like to avoid at all costs. I want to be accepted and liked by everyone. So I stick to the code of honor unconditionally.
    Let’s see what I’ve learned. First, there is a hierarchy based on religion, even if we’re all Muslims. The observant have a privileged status; for example, they have precedence in the use of the kitchen and, especially, the one bathroom. The reason? The ablutions for performing the five daily prayers must be done at precise times. The
salat
, the prayer, is a sort of appointment with God, and it’s very important to arrive punctually, a mark of respect. So the line for the toilet is only for the non-observant like me. And if you wet your pants? That’s your problem! You have to cope by dashing out to some café on Viale Marconi. Luckily you can find one every two feet.
    Further, you’re strictly forbidden to bring alcohol, pork, or—above all—women into the house. Except for the tiny photograph of Simona Barberini in the room where I sleep (obviously not taken from the famous calendar in which Simona appears without veils), there’s not a trace of a woman in this lousy apartment.
    Smokers are tolerated provided they smoke outside, on the little balcony off the kitchen. And if it’s cold and raining or snowing? It’s their problem. Anyway, they should thank God that the fatwa declared by the Taliban against cigarettes hasn’t yet found adherents among the tenants. But you never know. The future, as they say, is unpredictable.
    Then, there is another hierarchy, of a different nature, based on native country: the eight Egyptians feel that they are the true landlords. Maybe they’ve been infected by that shitty virus that strikes all majorities, always and everywhere: screw the minorities!
    All the food cooked here is based on Egyptian cuisine. The paintings hanging in the kitchen and in the two rooms are reproductions of the Pyramids or some tourist village in Sharm. Above the refrigerator waves a small Egyptian flag. Clearer than that . . .
    It goes without saying that Egyptian Arabic is the official language within the walls of the apartment. The music is Om Kalthoum (she’s the Egyptian Maria Callas). I don’t like her because she always repeats the same passage over and over. Arabs are mad for repetition—is that why they accept being governed for life by the same people?
    In other words, we live in a sort of Egyptian enclave in Italian territory. The non-Egyptian tenants are divided into two categories. Mohammed, the Moroccan, and I are in second place; we’re Arabs and we can communicate linguistically with the majority, limiting insult and injury where possible. But for the Senegalese and the Bangladeshi there’s no escape: they’re at