Amalia Gkavea
‘’They were at once victims and murderers, companions and enemies, two hybrid beings incapable of giving a name to their loyalties. They were excommunicated; two worshippers who could no longer pray in any church and whose god was a secret god, a private god whose name they didn’t even know.’’
There are different kinds of bravery.
The bravery of soldiers who went to war to liberate the world from oppression. The bravery of revolutionaries who broke the shackles around the wrists of their homeland. And then, the quieter, more perilous bravery of women—women who abandoned everything familiar to follow their heart, to chase a dream rooted in a strange kind of love. A love between strangers, tethered to opposite faiths, opposite worlds, is no romantic walk in the park. It is a war within a war—one that no one speaks of. And that kind of “love” often becomes a form of oppression all its own. When you can’t see it, you’re not brave. You’re either a fool or a willing blind who puts children in danger because you once had an itch to scratch.
When you follow a handsome soldier, when you leave France for Morocco in one of its most volatile moments, when your faith and your sense of self are stripped threadbare—how can you convince any reader that you still have a trace of reason left in your head?
Easily. You are in love. That’s all that matters.
That’s Mathilde’s story.
‘’In the evenings, when she’d been picked up from school, her mother’s car would drive along the country roads, the lights of the city would fade behind them, and they would enter an opaque, dangerous world. The car moved through darkness like someone entering a cave or sinking into quicksand. On moonless nights, they couldn’t even see the thick silhouettes of the cypresses or the haystacks. The blackness swallowed up everything. Aicha held her breath. She muttered Our Fathers, Hail Marys. She thought about Jesus, who had been through such terrible sufferings, and she repeated to herself: I could never do that.’’
From the very first page, the theme of loneliness and isolation becomes evident. Primarily seen through the eyes of the women -since men are the ones who wish to dictate everyone’s fates in the story - the remoteness of Amine’s farm becomes a metaphor for Mathilde’s own isolation. In a crucible of faiths and cultures, you are lonelier than ever. How can you not feel lonely when every circumstance may turn against you? You do good? You are viewed with suspicion. You do nothing? You are reviled, an accomplish, an enemy. How can you play the game when all hands have been dealt?
With isolation comes the question of belonging. An issue that has to be faced by Amine and Mathilde alike. For Amine, belonging is having a land you can call your own. A few acres that cannot be claimed by the colonisers nor by the rebels. But how can she belong? How can her children belong? The offspring of two faiths, two opposing cultures, two opposing nations? The answer may come through Aicha, the brilliant little girl of theirs. She shows that the world may bully you, but God is always there for you. And I find the fact that Amine wished his daughter to be raised as a Christian truly remarkable, despite his occasional tantrums. Aicha shows everyone that it is better to become a ‘fanatic Christian’ than a common whore. She shows that you don’t need to pretend, to become a coward to save your life. You stand by your faith. Yes, you make sacrifices when you follow your heart, but if you end up renouncing your principles, you pay the price. And the price might be your soul. Then you become weak, not brave. Is any man worth such a sacrifice? I can’t give you the answer, I’m afraid, but I KNOW that I would never renounce my faith even for pretention’s sake…
And what about the isolation you feel within your own country? Your land is conquered, divided and sold to the highest bidder, and you need to sweat and bleed for a few meters of soil you can call your own. You are forbidden to speak your own language, you have no right to buy a first-class ticket even if you have the money to because the ‘ladies’ don’t want their space to be contaminated by the natives.
And have you ever wondered why in every case of regimes, the women of the enemy are those who behave in the most oppressive, despicable way towards the other women? So much for female camaraderie, eh? However, the occupied aren’t dissuaded from buying slaves for their estate, so life walks in ever-lasting circles….To the French, you are a traitor. To the Moroccans, you are the enemy, and vice versa. Instead of serving the oath they have given, doctors resent children who are the fruit of the union between a Christian and a Muslim.
‘’So, all this time, they’d just pretended to stop being savages…’’
And this is how violence is bred. Mix it with gender bias, the natural tendency of Muslims to disrespect women (especially Christian women…) because hey, we can’t change what Muhammed decreed, right? You get a nuclear bomb. This is Mathilde’s life, ladies and gentlemen. But in Slimani’s beautiful story, not all Muslim men are pigs like the ones who attack women and children in their cars. Pigs who beat their sisters. She doesn’t shy away from mentioning the infernal treatment of Christians at the hands of Muslims, as she doesn’t shy away from exposing the racism of the Christian French colonialists towards the Muslim locals. In addition, Muslims are murdering Jews, they are attacking Christians. There is a fine line between fighting for freedom and becoming a butcher, and in the story -as in History - the line has been crossed irreversibly. Too many times. And yet, no one speaks. Out of fear? Out of hatred towards the Jews and the Christians? Who knows?
BUT! There are those of us who do speak and who refuse to keep silent. And that’s a story for another time…
‘’She’d have stuffed those words back down her throat. She’d have returned all those blows that she’d received throughout her life. As an insolent little girl, as a lustful teenager, as a disobedient wife, she’d been slapped and bullied many times by angry men who wanted to turn her into a respectable woman. Those two young women would have paid for the life of domestication that Mathilde had endured.’’
Mathilde and Amine’s relationship is complex, powerful, full of lust and violence, and love. Contradictions? Naturally! They are a couple formed by contradictions. That’s why I love both of them, even though they are actually two weird human beings. In Slimani’s writing, sensuality and sexuality are done right. Mathilde is a woman deeply connected to her sexuality and desires. Amine is a force of nature - in every way, let me tell you…- and it was strange because despite his occasional questionable actions, he is fascinating, intriguing and super sexy (and that’s me NOT being professional now…) However, can the fact that a man makes all hot inside and outside balance the silence? The cultural gap? How can a marriage survive on silence? On ferocity alone and hot sex? The fact that they love each other is undeniable. Theirs is a complex dynamic and the heart of this fascinating novel. Perhaps only two people who love each other with such force and violence can find common ground when they come from two utterly opposing worlds. In the end, when the world burns, they only have each other.
Yes, that’s me being sentimental. I regret nothing.
Slimani’s writing is astonishing. I have read all of her works but Adele and Lullaby, though good and memorable, can’t hold a candle to this novel, the first in a trilogy. Morocco jumps from the pages, the tensions, the cultural implications, the careful dialogue, the lively descriptions. She creates scenes where sensuality and violence mix in the most beautifully twisted kind of antithesis, and tranquil scenes of summer bliss amidst the flames. I can’t find a single, teeny-tiny fault in this novel. It is perfect.
In the end, in the era the story is set - during the 1950s - I felt there are two great questions: We have a land that hasn’t lost connection with its past, where you can relive almost Biblical scenes in every step. But what about the future? And what future can there be for two souls that love each other fiercely, but the gap between them seems like a deep chasm?
‘’That’s how things are.’’
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/
‘’They were at once victims and murderers, companions and enemies, two hybrid beings incapable of giving a name to their loyalties. They were excommunicated; two worshippers who could no longer pray in any church and whose god was a secret god, a private god whose name they didn’t even know.’’
There are different kinds of bravery.
The bravery of soldiers who went to war to liberate the world from oppression. The bravery of revolutionaries who broke the shackles around the wrists of their homeland. And then, the quieter, more perilous bravery of women—women who abandoned everything familiar to follow their heart, to chase a dream rooted in a strange kind of love. A love between strangers, tethered to opposite faiths, opposite worlds, is no romantic walk in the park. It is a war within a war—one that no one speaks of. And that kind of “love” often becomes a form of oppression all its own. When you can’t see it, you’re not brave. You’re either a fool or a willing blind who puts children in danger because you once had an itch to scratch.
When you follow a handsome soldier, when you leave France for Morocco in one of its most volatile moments, when your faith and your sense of self are stripped threadbare—how can you convince any reader that you still have a trace of reason left in your head?
Easily. You are in love. That’s all that matters.
That’s Mathilde’s story.
‘’In the evenings, when she’d been picked up from school, her mother’s car would drive along the country roads, the lights of the city would fade behind them, and they would enter an opaque, dangerous world. The car moved through darkness like someone entering a cave or sinking into quicksand. On moonless nights, they couldn’t even see the thick silhouettes of the cypresses or the haystacks. The blackness swallowed up everything. Aicha held her breath. She muttered Our Fathers, Hail Marys. She thought about Jesus, who had been through such terrible sufferings, and she repeated to herself: I could never do that.’’
From the very first page, the theme of loneliness and isolation becomes evident. Primarily seen through the eyes of the women -since men are the ones who wish to dictate everyone’s fates in the story - the remoteness of Amine’s farm becomes a metaphor for Mathilde’s own isolation. In a crucible of faiths and cultures, you are lonelier than ever. How can you not feel lonely when every circumstance may turn against you? You do good? You are viewed with suspicion. You do nothing? You are reviled, an accomplish, an enemy. How can you play the game when all hands have been dealt?
With isolation comes the question of belonging. An issue that has to be faced by Amine and Mathilde alike. For Amine, belonging is having a land you can call your own. A few acres that cannot be claimed by the colonisers nor by the rebels. But how can she belong? How can her children belong? The offspring of two faiths, two opposing cultures, two opposing nations? The answer may come through Aicha, the brilliant little girl of theirs. She shows that the world may bully you, but God is always there for you. And I find the fact that Amine wished his daughter to be raised as a Christian truly remarkable, despite his occasional tantrums. Aicha shows everyone that it is better to become a ‘fanatic Christian’ than a common whore. She shows that you don’t need to pretend, to become a coward to save your life. You stand by your faith. Yes, you make sacrifices when you follow your heart, but if you end up renouncing your principles, you pay the price. And the price might be your soul. Then you become weak, not brave. Is any man worth such a sacrifice? I can’t give you the answer, I’m afraid, but I KNOW that I would never renounce my faith even for pretention’s sake…
And what about the isolation you feel within your own country? Your land is conquered, divided and sold to the highest bidder, and you need to sweat and bleed for a few meters of soil you can call your own. You are forbidden to speak your own language, you have no right to buy a first-class ticket even if you have the money to because the ‘ladies’ don’t want their space to be contaminated by the natives.
And have you ever wondered why in every case of regimes, the women of the enemy are those who behave in the most oppressive, despicable way towards the other women? So much for female camaraderie, eh? However, the occupied aren’t dissuaded from buying slaves for their estate, so life walks in ever-lasting circles….To the French, you are a traitor. To the Moroccans, you are the enemy, and vice versa. Instead of serving the oath they have given, doctors resent children who are the fruit of the union between a Christian and a Muslim.
‘’So, all this time, they’d just pretended to stop being savages…’’
And this is how violence is bred. Mix it with gender bias, the natural tendency of Muslims to disrespect women (especially Christian women…) because hey, we can’t change what Muhammed decreed, right? You get a nuclear bomb. This is Mathilde’s life, ladies and gentlemen. But in Slimani’s beautiful story, not all Muslim men are pigs like the ones who attack women and children in their cars. Pigs who beat their sisters. She doesn’t shy away from mentioning the infernal treatment of Christians at the hands of Muslims, as she doesn’t shy away from exposing the racism of the Christian French colonialists towards the Muslim locals. In addition, Muslims are murdering Jews, they are attacking Christians. There is a fine line between fighting for freedom and becoming a butcher, and in the story -as in History - the line has been crossed irreversibly. Too many times. And yet, no one speaks. Out of fear? Out of hatred towards the Jews and the Christians? Who knows?
BUT! There are those of us who do speak and who refuse to keep silent. And that’s a story for another time…
‘’She’d have stuffed those words back down her throat. She’d have returned all those blows that she’d received throughout her life. As an insolent little girl, as a lustful teenager, as a disobedient wife, she’d been slapped and bullied many times by angry men who wanted to turn her into a respectable woman. Those two young women would have paid for the life of domestication that Mathilde had endured.’’
Mathilde and Amine’s relationship is complex, powerful, full of lust and violence, and love. Contradictions? Naturally! They are a couple formed by contradictions. That’s why I love both of them, even though they are actually two weird human beings. In Slimani’s writing, sensuality and sexuality are done right. Mathilde is a woman deeply connected to her sexuality and desires. Amine is a force of nature - in every way, let me tell you…- and it was strange because despite his occasional questionable actions, he is fascinating, intriguing and super sexy (and that’s me NOT being professional now…) However, can the fact that a man makes all hot inside and outside balance the silence? The cultural gap? How can a marriage survive on silence? On ferocity alone and hot sex? The fact that they love each other is undeniable. Theirs is a complex dynamic and the heart of this fascinating novel. Perhaps only two people who love each other with such force and violence can find common ground when they come from two utterly opposing worlds. In the end, when the world burns, they only have each other.
Yes, that’s me being sentimental. I regret nothing.
Slimani’s writing is astonishing. I have read all of her works but Adele and Lullaby, though good and memorable, can’t hold a candle to this novel, the first in a trilogy. Morocco jumps from the pages, the tensions, the cultural implications, the careful dialogue, the lively descriptions. She creates scenes where sensuality and violence mix in the most beautifully twisted kind of antithesis, and tranquil scenes of summer bliss amidst the flames. I can’t find a single, teeny-tiny fault in this novel. It is perfect.
In the end, in the era the story is set - during the 1950s - I felt there are two great questions: We have a land that hasn’t lost connection with its past, where you can relive almost Biblical scenes in every step. But what about the future? And what future can there be for two souls that love each other fiercely, but the gap between them seems like a deep chasm?
‘’That’s how things are.’’
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/