The Happy Marriage

I must admit that the dresses his female relatives wore — his mother, his aunts, his sisters — were incredibly beautiful and expensive. Our own dresses were no match for theirs. We were of humble stock, yes, but we were also proud. What did we have to be ashamed of? Of being who we were? Never. I don’t think Foulane ever understood this character trait that was shared by all members of our tribe. We were incredibly proud. We had our dignity and our honor. All their pomp didn’t make our heads spin.

The time came for the signing of the marriage contract. I had to say “yes” and then sign it. We were kept in different rooms. A door stood between us. I clenched my mother’s arm until it hurt her, and I cried like a little girl whose doll had been stolen from her. I saw Foulane’s father grimace as though to indicate his disapproval. One of his friends kept tugging at his sleeve to remind him not to make a scene. I would have really liked him to. It would have saved me, and frankly it would have also saved his son.

I wiped my nose, dried my tears, and whispered, “Yes.” I had to say it again, then I covered my head and signed the certificate of my slavery, confinement, and humiliation.

The men prayed for the groom and the bride to be blessed by God and His Prophet, to keep them on the right path, to retain their faith, and for their souls to be cleansed of all impurities, and for them to be worthy of the happiness that God had in store for them!

Then they raised their hands to the heavens and began to recite verses from the Qur’an, then exchanged greetings amongst one another, with each family wishing the other a happy and prosperous life.

Our village orchestra played a selection of songs that belonged to our heritage. My relatives started to sing and dance, while his remained trapped inside their fine clothes. One of his aunts motioned me to come over to her and said: “Why have they been playing the same song over and over again?” How could I explain that the musicians had played at least twenty different songs? She then ordered me to sit beside her and said: “Do you know whom you’ve had the privilege to marry? Do you know what kind of family you’ve become a part of? Why can’t you speak Arabic properly and what’s up with that accent? Are you Moroccan or half French? Very well, you must come stay with us in Fez so that I can teach you how to cook, how to comport yourself, and how to address people when they speak to you.”

I was stupefied. I burst into laughter, nervous laughter. I laughed until I started to cry, not knowing whether they were tears of happiness or sadness. Repressed anger. Subdued wrath. I didn’t answer her but kept my gaze fixed on the floor, like a mad, distraught woman.

Dinner was served late. The women didn’t like our cooking. The plates had been barely touched by the time they were sent back to the kitchen. The men ate as normal. My father, who hadn’t had the time to change, was exhausted. My mother, poor thing, was very unhappy. My aunts stared at me as if to say, “Serves you right!” I observed my husband from afar and noticed how unhappy he looked. He wasn’t smiling and wasn’t eating. Maybe he wanted to run away. He would have done us a great service if he had. He came to take me away at around four o’clock in the morning, as per our custom. His friend dropped us off at our hotel. The room was a mess. There weren’t any flowers, no chocolates and no greeting card. This time it wasn’t Foulane’s fault, but rather that of the hotel, which didn’t deserve its five stars. Our wedding night had begun with bad omens. There were even cigarette butts floating in the toilet bowl. But who could we talk to at that hour? Foulane sent the hotel manager a fuming letter the following day. The party was over. In fact, there had never been a party in the first place, just a ceremony that we had to fulfill out of a sense of duty.

A photographer friend had spent the entire evening taking shots of us. My husband had some of them enlarged. We hung them up in the living room of our first apartment in Paris. The people who came to visit us would look at them transfixed: “Oh, it’s like One Thousand and One Nights! How pretty the bride looks! How young! You look ravishing, darling, why didn’t you invite us? What a shame! A big Moroccan wedding! What a party it must have been! And how happy you look!”

Nobody knows how to really read a photograph. How badly I’d wanted to tell those people: “But you’re completely wrong! It wasn’t a party, just a chore where everyone was uncomfortable, unhappy, and outside their comfort zone, which was celebrated to the sounds of Berber drums and flutes, which it turns out was a mistake, a monstrous mistake. What you can see in our eyes is a profound sadness, deep regret, and a crushing sense of fatality.”