Free Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow by Faïza Guène

the whole story. She'd have felt like it was her fault. And, anyway, she was checking out these bunches of vegetable peelers for one euro, so I didn't want to disturb her. At times like that, I would like to be stronger, to have a protective shell to keep me safe all my life. Then nothing could ever hurt me.
    ***
    The whole neighborhood went to Aziz's wedding. They held it in this big reception room in Livry-Gargan with a real orchestra from Fez that came over just for this occasion. Aziz hired two
négafas,
married women in charge of organizing the party: decorations, clothes, makeup, the bride's jewelry, food, all that kind of stuff. It was a big grand wedding all right. Aziz really put on a show. Anyway, that's what I heard, because, in the end, we weren't invited.
    We don't see that social worker Mme DuDoodad anymore because she's on maternity leave. She said she'll be back after her baby's born. It annoyed me when she said that, because it sounded like: "No matter what, in a year you'll still be poor, you'll still need me." Worse, while we're waiting for her to come back, we're stuck with this shady replacement. She's always got her eyes half shut behind these massive bottle-bottom glasses with chunky pink frames. Plus, she talks very slowly in this scary voice, the kind of voice you can imagine saying: "I am Death! Follow me, it's your time!" But, fine, I'm not so bothered by all that. Don't give a shit, to be perfectly honest. The thing that gets me is that with her, I feel like Mom and me, we're just random numbers in her file. She does her job like an automaton. She could be a robot programmed to do this. I'm sure that if you scratched the skin on her back, if you really broke past the epidermis, you'd find an aluminium coating, some screws, and a serial number. I'm calling her Cyborg Services.
    This week I'm not going to watch Sarah because her mom's on vacation and the two of them are going to Toulouse to Lila's sister's house. It's hard being separated from people who matter to you...
    I'm thinking of Aunt Zohra and Youssef and some other people too...
    Speaking of Aunt Zohra, she found the courage to tell her old crazy husband the whole story. Things got violent between them when he found out and the old wacko hit Aunt Zohra. He stopped after a minute because he'd had enough, his arms hurt too much, and he had heart palpitations. So he sat down and asked her for a glass of water to calm him. She went to get him his drink and that's how the whole thing ended...
    She told us everything. Every day she prays to
God for her husband to go back to where he came from. And to think that only a little while ago, Mom was praying for that other man to come back.
    These days I can see she's not so lost in her thoughts. She looks better. She's beginning to read a few words and she's so proud that she can write her first name without any mistakes. At first, she used to write
S
backward, like little kids do. It's true that from time to time I can see she's still anxious, like when she sits watching the turned-off TV. But it happens less often now. And also she's active and free to do anything she wants now while before that was definitely not the case. When Dad lived with us, there was no question about her working even though we were seriously broke. Because for Dad women weren't made for working in the outside world.
    By the way, yesterday Hamoudi told me he'd found a job. He stumbled on this ad in that free paper
Paris Boum Boum.
This stereo-, video-, and computer-equipment rental company was looking for someone to do security. He called up right away, had an interview, and, bam, he was hired. Fine, he says it's kind of a pain because it's at night, but he's happy he's found real work, and it's better that way. He said he
also feels like he's been hired to act like their guard dog, but he doesn't give a shit...
    It makes me think of some of those houses in the Rousseau development where they put a sign up with a photo of a