Tunis, May, 1984
The American cultural centre had become my life preserver, and I held fast to it with all my strength. Mother never missed an opportunity to scold me, to make me regret my reprehensible behaviour at the lycée. She would come into my room and find me stretched out on my bed, or at my desk studying the notes that Neila passed on to me, and exclaim derisively: “What’s the point of studying if you can’t graduate this summer? Can’t you get it through your head? You’ve been kicked out of the lycée!”
At first, I answered by saying: “I’ll graduate next year. Papa told me that the La Réussite academy would accept me.”
“Don’t count on it! Do you think your father can afford the cost of tuition? He’ll need a second salary. You should have thought of that before you insulted the instructor in front of the whole class.”
“He deserved it, the jerk!” I shot back, eyes filled with tears and voice angrier than ever.
“Well, he may be a jerk, but at least he became a lycée instructor. But what did you accomplish with that highfalutin dignity and integrity of yours? Why couldn’t you just keep your mouth shut? Answer me! Now you’re always around the house. Won’t be too long before you end up as a cleaning lady, scrubbing floors and washing walls, that’s what’s going to become of you!”
She rushed out, slamming the door behind her. I didn’t budge from my room. There was no way I could respond to her vicious attacks.
I wept and gnawed at my anger like a cow chewing its cud. Father didn’t say a word. TV. Armchair. Silence. That was enough for him.
Neila and Alex were all I had left, and Neila was encouraging me to learn computing.
“My cousin Mariam failed her baccalaureate twice, then she enrolled in a private school, actually a computer science institute. It looks like the thing right now. Why don’t you do what she did?”
I was stung to the quick.
“But Neila, it’s not the same thing at all. I didn’t fail my baccalaureate. They stole my right to take the final exam, that’s all there is to it. It’s not at all like your cousin’s case.”
“I know, you’re smarter than she is, I admit it. But the result is the same — you didn’t pass the exam.”
Everybody seemed to be saying that without my baccalaureate, I was worthless, that it was the end of the line for me, that I was on a collision course headed for the wall. In Mother’s eyes, I’d never be anything but a cleaning lady, and, for Neila, the best I could hope for would be to learn computing. Father had no career expectations for me. Or if he did, he hadn’t said a word about it. Only Alex had confidence in me. And if Mounir hadn’t been in prison, he would have encouraged me to keep going, not to give up, to enrol in an other private school and to try my luck the following year. He would have found a way to tell me that I could make it. He would have encouraged me to stand straight, to never bow my head to injustice. He would have talked to Neila, and she would have supported me.
My relationship with Alex was growing stronger by the day. There was no denying it: I loved him. I knew it from the way my heart began to pound whenever I saw him. I knew it from the endless hours I spent daydreaming about him. I knew it from the happiness I felt when I was together with him. But what about him? He told me nothing of his feelings, but I sensed that he loved me too. Or at least, that he was happy when we were together. Otherwise, why would he have suggested that I go to Canada?
Since our last meeting, Alex had said nothing more about his idea. But it was all I could think of, day and night. The idea was becoming an obsession. How would I get to Canada? On my own? With him? As what? His girlfriend? Everything was mixed up in my head. I made up my mind to clear things up with him.
One day at the cultural centre, as I was about to leave for home and he was going into his office, electric cables in hand, I went up to him.
“Hello, Alex! Still hard at work?”
“Yes, but I’m almost finished. Would you like to talk? We could go for a walk or a bite together. It’s such a beautiful day!”
I accepted his invitation. Instead of heading home, I sat down again, book in hand, until he finished his work.
I didn’t know whether it was because of most of the people around me were rejecting me, but I was getting more and more attached to Alex by the day. His voice touched me like a caress. His eyes embraced me with gentleness. His smile followed me everywhere in my dreams. Alex had become my dream. The dream that kept me alive. What should I do? Flee from him or flee with him?
Our walk that day was a pleasant one indeed. We first took the bus, then got off at Pasteur Square and walked to the Belvedere. It was a large park, full of tall trees and with a children’s merry-go-round and a zoo. I used to go often when I was a little girl. But it had been years since I’d last set foot there. I’d suggested the idea to Alex, and he’d agreed without a moment’s hesitation. There, at least, no one would stop us from entering, as the watchman had at Zitouna Mosque. Not to mention that it was a favourite spot for lovers, who could hide there from inquiring eyes.
“Are you hungry?” I suddenly asked Alex, as we passed a kaki vendor.
“A little.”
I rushed off and bought two small bags of dough balls the size of walnuts, flavored with anise and coarse salt, made in the city’s bakeries and sold by street vendors. Sometimes they came in the form of tresses or a round cake.
“What is it?” asked Alex, half-amused, half-concerned, when he saw the two little cellophane bags stuffed full of beige coloured balls.
“It’s kaki, taste one!”
I opened a package, took out a little ball and handed it to him. The warmth of his hand made me shiver. He crunched the dough ball between his teeth.
“They’re a little like chips,” he said.
Kaki crumbs drifted down onto his sweater as he continued to chew away like a little boy.
“What are chips?”
“They’re a little like kakis.”
We burst out laughing. Here, in this magnificent public garden, our different homelands and our different cultures were intertwining. Green grass carpeted the brownish-red earth, along with random scatterings of poppies, chamomile, and marigolds. Alex took my hand. I didn’t resist. The ancient trees protected us from the inquisitive eyes of passersby. The smell of the eucalyptus, of the mimosas, of the carob trees and the pines perfumed the spring air. I forgot my mother, my father, Neila, Monsieur Kamel, and my expulsion. I breathed in deeply; I felt like Nicole, the heroine of Tender Is the Night, alongside Dick. Alex was there beside me. Nothing else mattered.
“Nadia, I don’t want to force you, but I have to ask you a question: Will you come back to Canada with me?”
Alex’s words brought me back to earth. I turned to face him.
I wanted to answer, “No! How could I ever do such a thing to my parents?” but to my astonishment, I found myself saying: “How am I supposed to come with you? I don’t even have a passport.”
“The passport’s no problem. We can settle all the paperwork. Do you want to or not?”
We were seated on a wooden bench from which one of the back slats had been torn away. Before us, white swans were gliding majestically over the calm waters of the pond. The cries of wild birds from the nearby zoo broke the peaceful urban silence.
I clasped Alex’s hand.
“And where would I live in Canada? All alone? I don’t know anyone there. The only person I know is you.”
Alex smiled.
“But you’d be living with me, of course. What I mean is, we can get married and leave together. And live together.”
Marry Alex? Marry a gaouri? Neila was right to be suspicious. What would Mother think? Father? The neighbours?
My head was spinning. I wanted to pick up my purse and run. Forget all about Alex. Go back to my room, my bed, my books, to my cozy little cocoon. Go back to being the carefree little girl I was before the couscous revolt. Enrol in a computing academy and pick up my life where I left off. Maybe I could even become a secretary in an office somewhere. Keep my head down.
But something inside me was rejecting the fate that everybody seemed to have planned for me. Something weighty, powerful, as unyielding as an iron ball was struggling to break free from deep within me. It was made up of Mounir’s twisted face, Father’s terrifying silence, Sonia’s spiteful smile, Mother’s penetrating eyes, and the deafening sound of bullets on the day of the riots. I’d rejected injustice. I’d rejected the status quo. My expulsion was part of the price I had to pay for my failure to submit. Soon, the rest of the bill would come due. No, I would not be going back to where we began, as Bourguiba had enjoined us on television. There, seated on a wooden park bench, watching the swans glide like dancers waltzing across the water, I decided that my life must change. I knew then that I must make the most important decision of my life: to marry Alex and go with him to Canada.