Children of the New World

3. Salima

3 SALIMA ... Having hosed down the courtyard and abandoning in the kitchen the meal to be prepared, Cherifa sat down in her room with the twins beside her as the spectacle began, as if it were an enormous circus watched by a female audience of the old quarter. That same morning, Hakim, the policeman, came home at a most unusual time: not quite ten o’clock. Cherifa barely had time to lower the curtain to her room and keep Hassan and Hossein from going to their father, who seemed to be in a rush. From where she sat, she heard the sound of the parked jeep, its motor still running. Cherifa could well imagine how all the women of the neighboring houses must be trembling while their men, outside, have to remain where they are, most of them lying low in their shops, others coming to a stop in the street, still others . . . Hakim, in uniform, however, has the authority to come and go without fear. Probably one of the old women has already started muttering verses of the Koran through her missing teeth, because she dares not think about what a man in uniform might see, hear, or do in these violent times. Cherifa herself is not thinking about anything. She doesn’t judge. She could almost feel sorry for Hakim. He’s not really to blame for having chosen this profession ten years ago. Four children and a wife to feed; and then there is an old mother, unmarried sisters, and a 45 ... 3 young brother in a different house, even more dilapidated and humid than this one. Cherifa doesn’t want to judge. Neither does Youssef, she knows that. She has never heard him criticize Hakim, he simply doesn’t talk about him and no longer addresses him. This has developed wordlessly between the two men; and wordlessly they let their wives live together, as one lends the other a dress, a veil, or else some sugar, some coffee, or a cup of oil. Outside, the motor is turned off. The jeep does not start up again. “It’s waiting,” Cherifa says to herself. “Hakim will soon leave, he probably forgot something.” She notices the sound of voices, murmuring. She keeps the children close by her side. Every now and then Hakim’s voice rises but she can’t make out any words. Perhaps he is arguing with his wife. Hakim is a gloomy man with a taciturn personality, but he’s not a violent husband. Amna has never complained ; when she does sigh, it is from the exhaustion of her difficult pregnancies, and often because of financial worries as well—she has never grown accustomed to Hakim’s habit of sharing his salary at the beginning of every month, half of it going to the other house, to his mother, sisters, and brother. Amna always grumbling (not to her husband, which she wouldn’t dare, but she has to let off steam to Cherifa): “As his own family, shouldn’t his children come first? I’m not even speaking for myself. His brother is twenty-four years old, he’s a man now! Why doesn’t he work too? Why doesn’t he take care of the rest of the family?” She knows her protestations are pointless. Hakim made his decision and will tread the same path for a long time to come if need be, so that his brother can continue his studies in France. (“Over there,” he likes to proclaim, “there is no racism; at the university everyone is the same. Professors don’t think, ‘That fellow over there, what’s his name? Ahmed . . . I’ll remember that.’ Everyone is equal in that country.”) Hakim himself will go on with his lousy job (and he repeats, “Lousy job”) for as long as it takes. Cherifa thinks, “As soon as he’s gone I can raise the curtain again and go back to watching the show. It’s a vast operation today. Please, God, let it be calm in the city. I’ve never seen as many planes as CHILDREN OF THE NEW WORLD 46 today and they started early, too.” Had Youssef still been home, she would have begged him to stay, she would have found some pretext to keep him there: “It seems that now they’re coming right inside our homes, entering and frisking us! They have a woman with...