Hope Has Two Daughters Page 14

  She didn’t seem all that convinced, but she didn’t say anything else. She leaned over the tray and handed me a second saucer.

  “Have another. Looks like you’re taking to drôo. I’ll make you some every day if you like.”

  I took the saucer and began eating eagerly. Mouth full and tongue burning, I asked her: “Don’t you like it? It’s really delicious. I never tasted anything like it before, like toasted almonds.”

  Once more, a shadow passed over her face, then she smiled a sad smile.

  “I had too much when I was a little girl. Mother, may God bless her soul, prepared it for me on winter mornings. My father . . .” She fell silent, then resumed: “He made us eat it all winter long. But I couldn’t stand the taste — it made me sick to my stomach. I’d fill my mouth with drôo, then leave the table and go spit it out in the toilet.”

  She shivered, and I decided it would be best not to ask her any more questions.

  Uncle Mounir smiled.

  “Look how delicate your Aunt Neila is, Lila. She eats only the finest foods: Swiss chocolate, buttery croissants, candied orange peel, and such. At our place, we ate everything, even mouldy bread. Same as we fed the animals. No difference. We didn’t have a choice — we had to live.”

  I realized from Uncle Mounir’s sarcastic tone that he wanted to tease his wife. And now, she was smiling.

  “Yes, that’s it, you play the victim, as though my parents were rich people.”

  “Compared to mine, they certainly were!”

  “Fine, I’ll grant you that, but I’m not quite as delicate as you claim. I’m no princess. The taste of drôo brings back bad memories, why don’t we leave it at that?”

  Then she turned to me.

  “One day, when you ask your mother to tell you about me, you’ll learn the truth. Uncle Mounir’s got it in for me this evening. I’m not going to say anything more . . .”

  I finished my second saucer.

  “For sure, I’ll ask her to tell me everything.”

  Uncle Mounir picked up the tray and went off to the kitchen. The evening was ending. The atmosphere had turned melancholy. I said goodnight and retired to my room.

  Donia sent me an SMS: Come by tomorrow at 10, the party’s starting!

  What did she mean by “the party’s starting?” What if Aunt Neila was right; what if I should talk it over with Mom? I wasn’t sure about anything. No sooner had I put on my pajamas than I fell into a troubled sleep. A sleep populated with men in face masks, and police chasing them. I found myself swimming in a pool filled with drôo. The viscous liquid was dragging me under; I had to thrash around in order to keep afloat, while Aunt Neila and Uncle Mounir looked on silently from a distance.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Tunis, April, 1984

  They expelled me from the lycée. The decision was final. I would never attend a single class there again. All because of my rudeness and the way I’d so terribly insulted a member of the teaching staff. The news hit me like a thunderclap directly above my head. Monsieur Kamel had reported the way I’d insulted Sonia. Immediately after that, my case had come before the school’s disciplinary board. “The board of farce and injustice” is what it really was. I could not defend myself. Overnight, people turned their backs on me as if I had a contagious disease. I was the girl everybody was pointing at because of the terrible false accusations I’d made against my instructor. Those were things that could not be spoken aloud as I had done, but that people whispered in the hallways, and behind the backs of the instructors and the monitors.

  Still, everybody knew very well that Sonia was using her charms to wrap Monsieur Kamel around her finger and improve her grades. Everybody knew that he liked her infantile and dangerous games. But nobody would say a word. All the students wanted to do was to succeed, to go on to university. Everybody understood what you had to do in this country. Everybody but me. I wanted to play the heroine. I wanted to struggle against injustice. I wanted to avenge Mounir. And I’d failed. All the members of the board sided with Monsieur Kamel and against the pariah I’d become: a frivolous, spoiled brat. The parents’ representative on the board, who was also a member of the Destourian Party cell in our district, stated that I was a “microbe” and that I had “endangered the other students” and for that reason alone, I needed to be “eradicated.” My father told me the whole story. He had gone to the board meeting and done his best to defend me, the poor man. All for naught. He praised my good grades, my faultless academic record. It had been a youthful error, he said. I’d spoken up without knowing what I was saying; the board should pardon my bad behaviour and give me another chance.

  But Father’s words had simply evaporated without a trace. The decision had already been made; all that remained were the formalities. Nadia Mabrouk was an easy target. Father: civil servant with no political affiliation (doubtful case). Mother: housewife (even more doubtful). I was up against two powerful enemies: Monsieur Kamel, professor of Arabic for twenty years, and head of a family, married, a citizen beyond reproach. The second obstacle was even more formidable: Sonia Cherif. Father: Director of the Tunis police and member of the Central Committee of the Destourian Party. Mother: homemaker, French national permanently domiciled in Tunis following her marriage to a Tunisian. The game was over before it started. I should never have ventured into the enemy camp. It was too late. I’d lost. Now I would serve time in the prison of my family.

  When she heard the news, Mother almost had a heart attack. She nearly died. She who’d always believed that when I won my baccalaureate, it would boost our status in the neighbourhood. She had already begun planning the little party she would throw to celebrate my graduation. Everyone knew I was a good student, and that I would succeed without any problems. But the couscous revolt had transformed me, had made me a new person. No one had seen the change coming. Suddenly I was the school dunce. Expelled. A zoufri in a skirt! The shame of the neighbourhood.

  Father kept silent. But Mother, between bouts of lamentation, cries of rage and pain from her heart-attack symptoms, kept on repeating: “But what got into you? Are you crazy or what? Why did you curse out that girl Sonia? Why didn’t you just mind your own business, eh? You go to school to study, and you come straight home. That’s all. Just like everybody else! Why aren’t you like everybody else? Why?”

  “Because it’s the truth. I told the truth! Everybody knows it’s the truth, but nobody dares to say it.”

  Mother let out a curse. She got up from the armchair she’d slumped into a couple of minutes before. She would have liked to grab me by the hair. Hit me. She’d never struck me before, but on that day, it was different. I’d destroyed her dreams. Now it was time for her to put my rebellion to an end.

  Father, who seemed to be in another world, suddenly reached out and caught her arm.

  “Nadia is eighteen. She’s a grown-up young woman, you can’t hit her.”

  “So that’s it? There’s your education for you! You’ve always spoiled her and now look at her! Kicked out of the lycée just a few months before she graduates. Now what will become of her? Secretary? Cleaning lady? Even for those miserable jobs you need a baccalaureate these days.”

  Mother was exaggerating and I knew it. My Auntie Rafika’s cleaning lady only finished primary school. She could read, and write letters to her cousin in the village. I knew because I helped her write those letters. She wrote them in Darija, the Arabic dialect that everybody spoke, and not the classical Arabic we studied at school, but it was better than nothing. She could read the local news in the newspapers that ran rape and robbery stories. She would tell me all about them each time we visited my aunt, and she was busy hanging the laundry on the veranda, singing the same old ballad of the two lovers meeting at night by the well.

  But I didn’t want to become a cleaning lady or a secretary. I knew I could continue with my studies. In fact, I was determined to.

&n
bsp; As if Father had read my thoughts, he said to Mother: “Tomorrow, I’m going to visit a private school called La Réussite. I know the headmistress’s husband. He’s an old friend. We grew up on the same street, played ball together in the back alleys. I’ll ask him if his wife will accept Nadia into her school. It’s a long shot. The school year ends in two months. I don’t know if she’ll be accepted. But I’ll try —”

  “So now you’re going to pay to get Nadia into a private school?” Mother interrupted. “After all, she brought it on herself. She makes the mistakes and we pay for them, is that it?”

  I wept for joy. Father would save me. I didn’t want to hear Mother’s harsh words any more. And in any case, she was never satisfied. But I would show them that I could succeed, that my expulsion was the worst injustice in the world, and that my revolt had a positive outcome: to humiliate Sonia, the daughter of the Tunis police director. The person who had ordered Mounir’s arrest.

  I thought back to Neila. What would become of her without me? We would be separated. She was the one who didn’t want to keep up her studies, after all. How would she manage two separations at the same time: from Mounir and now from me?

  TWENTY-TWO

  Tunis, December 29, 2010

  Tunis was holding its breath. The revolt was heading straight for the capital at full speed. I could feel it in the air and see it in peoples’ eyes. Demonstrations were breaking out in the poor districts, Donia told me. We should be getting ready to take to the streets. Mom was right, after all — or rather, her sources were more reliable than ours, here, on the ground. The Internet wasn’t filtered in Canada. It was another story altogether here. In the newspapers, on radio and television, it was always the same old messages: “Our president is the greatest,” “Our country is experiencing great economic success,” “Tunisia is a rampart against fundamentalism and obscurantism.”

  I wasn’t making anything up. Uncle Mounir confirmed it this morning. We were in the kitchen. The radio was on. I could hear the nasal voice of the president, speaking with the intonations of a robot.

  “What did he say?” I asked, curious. “I can’t catch everything.”

  “It’s a replay of his speech yesterday. We missed it on TV. He says violence won’t be tolerated, and that the law will be applied firmly to anyone who uses —”

  “What about police brutality, about the people who are attacking the demonstrators?”

  Uncle Mounir smiled a sad smile.

  “Not a word. He couldn’t care less. He was a cop before he became president.”

  I kept quiet. Just a few weeks ago, that tone of voice and those words would not have meant a thing. But it was different now. It was as if I belonged a little more to this country, to its people. I couldn’t tell whether I’d adopted Tunisia or whether the country had adopted me. One thing was certain: it was time to act.

  “They’re predicting demonstrations downtown. Are you going to go?”

  I wanted to see his reaction. He switched off the radio. He was standing in front of the range, reaching for the zézoua. The sound of coffee coming to a boil was the signal to lift the little pot from the burner. The Turkish coffee was ready. Its odour wafted through the kitchen. Uncle Mounir had still not answered.

  I asked him again, in a soft voice, “Are you going to go to the demonstration today?”

  “What demonstration?” he replied, as if suddenly brought back to earth.

  “Donia told me there will be a monster gathering of workers and trade unionists in front of UGTT headquarters, the one you told me about the other day. I don’t remember the exact name of the place.”

  Uncle Mounir’s face lit up.

  “Of course! It’s Mohamed Ali Square. How well I know it! It’s named after Mohamed Ali El Hammi, a great nineteenth-century labour organizer who’s considered the father of Tunisian trade unionism, and it’s always been the symbol of the workers’ cause. He’s one of my heroes.”

  Uncle Mounir’s enthusiasm seemed to overflow as he described the life and struggle of a man I’d never heard of before.

  “We can go together. I’ll ask Neila. Maybe she’d like to come along too. It might stir up some old memories. Who knows? She might even do something she couldn’t when she was young.”

  Aunt Neila had just come into the kitchen on silent feet. Her eyes were puffy, as though she’d slept badly.

  “Go where?” she asked, without much conviction.

  “Mohamed Ali Square. There’s going to be a huge dem —”

  She cut him off. Her face turned white. “You can’t be serious, Mounir. What about the police? And if things turn nasty, do you think it’ll be kids’ games? It might be risky for Lila! No, you shouldn’t go!”

  Uncle Mounir winked at me, as if to say that Aunt Neila was exaggerating, that she was overdoing the fear, that I shouldn’t pay too much attention.

  Silently I observed the couple. Two people who loved each other, two people who saw life differently. He was the kind of man who rushed ahead without thinking about the consequences, while she was cautious, wary of anything and everything. Each of them stood firm on their convictions. Even after years of separation and suffering, their souls had not changed.

  I said nothing, not wanting to start a fight. I finished my glass of milk in silence. My phone began to vibrate in my pocket. I checked: it was Donia.

  I’ll be waiting for you at my place in fifteen minutes.

  “I’m going to Donia’s,” I said, trying to mask my emotions.

  Uncle Mounir said nothing.

  Not so for Aunt Neila: “Be careful, call me, and above all, don’t go near Mohamed Ali Square. It’s full of zoufris, of people from the unions. It’s no place for a young girl. You listen to me, Lila. I know what I’m talking about. Don’t go, alright?”

  She was all but begging. But my mind was made up. It was clear Aunt Neila was being overprotective, even though I could understand her better now. Mom trusted her, and she didn’t want anything to happen to me.

  What could possibly happen, though?

  I was bursting with energy and confidence, ready to take on the world. The disturbances were coming like winds of change. It wasn’t time for me to start backing down.

  Donia was waiting for me in front of her house, checking her cellphone. When she saw me coming, she smiled, stretched out her arms and said: “I promised to meet Jamel downtown. He’ll be taking photos, and I’m going to write an article to post on Facebook. You’re coming with us, right?”

  I was still hesitant. Aunt Neila’s voice was still ringing in my ears. Donia looked me in the eye.

  “Listen, Lila, no one’s forcing you to say yes. But the last time we met, at Jamel’s, I had the feeling we understood each other. Whatever you make up your mind to do, you’ll always be welcome.”

  What if we’re arrested? And what if it really is a dangerous place, swarming with zoufris, those low-lifes who harass girls and snatch purses? Aunt Neila’s words wouldn’t stop running through my head. And Mom, what would she do if she knew I was participating in demonstrations? Donia sensed my apprehension.

  “Sure it’s dangerous, and I know it. But remember, we discussed it all with Jamel. We’re ready for a change, isn’t that right? Nothing can stop us!”

  She threw me a defiant look. That old fox Am Mokhtar was pacing back and forth in front of his cybercafé. The morning breeze had ruffled the few strands of hair he combed across his glistening bald patch. I couldn’t have cared less. My doubts had vanished. Optimism had won the day. The winds of enthusiasm that were carrying me along swept Aunt Neila’s words of caution away.

  “You’re right, nothing can stop us. I’m ready for anything. We’re in this together.”

  Donia let out a cry of delight that made Am Mokhtar jump right as he was about to sit down in his plastic chair.

  “Is everything okay, binti
Donia?” he asked deviously.

  “Just fine, Am Mokhtar,” she shot back without even looking at him.

  “I wish you a morning full of joy and jasmine, my little one,” he answered, opening his newspaper and pretending to read.

  Am Mokhtar’s prayers were not answered. There was neither joy nor jasmine that day. Donia left her car in a parking lot, and we walked. I had no idea where I was going, and I followed Donia unquestioningly. I didn’t recognize a single one of the streets or alleys that we crossed, one after another. Around us flowed a procession of people, of cars, of shops and cafés. I felt lost in the onrush of strange faces and places. After a good fifteen minutes we reached the famous square, surrounded by colonial-era buildings. The French doors and balconies were painted sky blue, faded now to a weather-worn grey. A few red flags with the star and crescent in the centre were fluttering in the wind. The shops at street level had lowered their metal shutters, but their signs were still visible. I recognized one of them: Tunisiana, where I bought my phone cards. Aunt Neila was right. In front of us was a shifting, rising, and falling tide of men. They all looked alike to me: black mustaches, blue jeans, leather jackets. Here and there was a head wearing a woollen cap, a grey beret, or a red chéchia. People were pushing and shoving. Cardboard picket signs began to appear. I couldn’t read a word; my Arabic was not equal to the task. Then Jamel popped up, seemingly out of nowhere. Face gleaming with pride, he held his phone in one hand as he filmed the moving crowd.

  “You showed a lot of courage, girls! We’re making history, I just know it! I’m going to record everything and broadcast it online. People all around the world must see the brutality of the regime for themselves, and the dignity of our people.”

  Donia’s eyes were gleaming with admiration. She threw her arm around his neck and kissed him on the cheek.

  Jamel kept on filming unbothered. The crowd was growing larger, and I could feel a sense of acute discomfort creeping over me. What was I doing here, in this demonstration? Was it true, what Aunt Neila said, that I shouldn’t have come in the first place? Then the slogans the crowd was chanting drove my anxiety away. The voices mingled then winged their way skyward as if they would reach all the way to infinity. A few people were standing on the balconies, looking dazed as they watched the crowd suddenly get underway. People marched slowly at first, then faster and faster. Donia was holding my hand. I could feel her close to me. The revolution was bringing us together. Her shoulder rubbed against mine. She repeated the chant: “Tounous horra horra . . . wanidham ala barra.”