I Die by This Country by Fawzia Zouari (review)

Originally published in French as Ce pays dont je meurs in 1999 by Éditions Ramsay, I Die by This Country is Fawzia Zouari's first novel available in English translation. Born in 1955 in the small Tunisian town of Dahmani located about 225 kilometers southwest of Tunis, Zouari has been working in Paris as an author and journalist for the past forty years. Ce pays dont je meurs is her second fictional work. Based on a French news report from November 1998, Zouari's novel imagines how two young Algerian women could die from starvation in their Parisian apartment despite the abundance of food and social services the country has to offer them. Included in this CARAF edition of The University of Virginia Press is Susan Ireland's afterword in which the renowned scholar proposes an insightful critical analysis of the novel. In addition, her contribution serves as an excellent introduction to Zouari's fictional and non-fictional works as a whole. Given Ireland's thorough interpretation, the present review attempts to limit comments to those not evoked in the afterword.

Structured as a frame narrative throughout in which the first-person narrator (Nacéra) recounts the story of her family to her younger sister Amira, I Die by This Country denounces French integration policies predicated on the cultural assimilation of immigrants. Unfortunately for Nacéra who immigrated to France at an early age and Amira who was born in France, colonial culture and systemic racism have made their attempts to integrate French society unsuccessful. Due to their name and cultural heritage, the two will never be French enough. Branded as other, the Touirellils eventually succumb to the psychological, physical, and material consequences of dehumanization. Yet the narrator also eschews idealized depictions of Algeria. Through Nacéra, Zouari problematizes various practices undergirding Algerian culture, most notably the emigrant's desire to maintain appearances regardless of the cost. Nacéra and Amira's mother Djamila, for example, frequently splurges on material gifts destined for family and friends in Algeria so as to conceal her diminished social status and feelings of disillusionment. Once the esteemed daughter of a marabout, Djamila is now "a banal immigrant" (43). Indeed, this family saga disturbs because of how ordinary it is made to appear.

Reinforcing the author's social critique of contemporary France and Algeria are the novel's form and content. The framing device recalls One Thousand and One Nights in which Scheherazade must entertain the Sultan via storytelling to save her life and those of other women. In Ce pays dont je meurs, Nacéra plays the role of storyteller. Aware that the police will eventually find them, Nacéra—contrary to Scheherazade—relates their family's story to her dying sister "in order to kill time" (4). Convinced that they "only have reasons to die" (63), she uses storytelling to explain how they arrived at their present "state" (121).

As the novel progresses, the sisters are abandoned by family members, friends, boyfriends, teachers, and coworkers only to find themselves destitute and alone. In the end, all that remains are their undernourished bodies whose protruding bones and atrophied muscles mirror the physical deformation their parents had undergone before them. "[B]uilt like a Berber warrior" in his youth (34), their father Ahmed is later confined to a wheelchair after a work-related accident paralyzes him. Similarly, Djamila's once henna-tattooed soft hands begin to crack as she works as a maid. This maiming of the body leaves the family without a reliable source of income. And after Nacéra falls victim to institutional racism upon losing her job, she becomes acutely aware of her own handicap: her Algerian name and, by extension, origins.

If Zouari's critical hand falls more heavily on France than on Algeria, both are to blame...