Free Divorce Islamic Style by Amara Lakhous Page A

the bottom. They have to submit or leave. To be Muslim isn’t enough. It’s better to be an Arab Muslim, but it would be fantastic to be an Egyptian Arab Muslim!
    Finally, we have a third hierarchy, this one imposed from the outside. We live not on an autonomous island but, rather, in a society that conditions our choices and limits our freedom. So we are divided into illegals, on one side, and legals, on the other.
    The former live in panic; they are terrified by the idea of being arrested, shut up in some camp, and expelled. They talk obsessively about an amnesty that would enable them to obtain a residency permit. They wish to be out in the open—they don’t want to hide as if they were criminals. They are always afraid of the police and especially the carabinieri. They’re constantly being blackmailed.
    “Now I’m calling the police!”
    “Please, don’t ruin me.”
    “So you’re afraid of the police? And if I call the carabinieri, you’ll piss in your pants?”
    “Please don’t, I implore you, on my knees.”
    The legal immigrants, on the other hand, can take advantage of a discount of fifty euros on the rent (this was established by the finance company Teresa alias Vacation). An even greater advantage is that they don’t have to tremble with fear when they hear words like police, carabinieri, expulsion, detention center, Northern League, and so on.
    “Now I’m calling the police.”
    “I’ll give you the number, you piece of shit.”
    “I see, you’re not afraid of the police. Then I’ll call the carabinieri!”
    “What are you waiting for, asshole?”
    I share a room with four Egyptians and the Senegalese. I immediately hit it off with the Egyptian Saber, who sleeps in the bed under mine. I like him a lot; he’s very entertaining. He was born in Cairo twenty-three years ago. He’s the typical boy next door: fashionable clothes, hair styled with gobs of gel, latest-model cell phone. Physically, he looks like an Italian, let’s say a southerner, a handsome, dark Mediterranean—like me! He could pass for a purebred Italian if he kept quiet, but that would be impossible, because Saber is an incurable chatterbox. His problem is that he can’t pronounce the letter “p,” and to survive linguistically he clings, like a desperate shipwrecked sailor, to the “b.” When he says the word “brostitute” people think he’s Sicilian, otherwise it’s kind of a mess. He’s lived in Rome for four years, but he doesn’t have a residency permit. He works as an assistant pizza maker, hoping he’ll soon be promoted to pizza maker and earn a little more.
    Saber has asked me to talk to him in Italian. “Because I communicate in Arabic, and work and live with Arabs, I forget I’m in Italy!” he says, laughing. He is constantly talking about girls and soccer. His great dream is to become a famous soccer player. Next to the bed, on the left, is a poster of Paolo Maldini. Saber is a fan of Milan. I, like many Sicilians, root for Juve. Luckily I don’t have to hide this passion. I’m not in the least worried: there are plenty of Juventus fans among the immigrants.
    Soccer is not Saber’s only passion. The other is called Simona Barberini. Next to the bed he has a small photograph of her cut out of a magazine. Before he goes to sleep he gives her a good-night kiss, and when he wakes he opens his eyes to her smiling face.
    “You see how beautiful Simona is? Someday she’ll be mine.”
    “Be careful, too much dreaming can be dangerous.”
    “Issa, all I need is a minute to win her over. You’ve never seen me at work. When I enter the field there’s no room for the competition.”
    “How will you get to her?”
    “No broblem. She’ll come to me.”
    Saber explains his theory, letting me in on a few things I didn’t know about Simona Barberini. This beautiful Italian girl falls in love easily with rich and famous athletes. Also, she had a love affair with an Arab emir a few years ago. So she