15. THE NATION

Madame Pompestan, Ahmed.

Madame Pompestan and Ahmed come rushing in.

MADAME POMPESTAN. Over my dead body! Absolutely out of the question! I say this to you as the deputay for Sarges-les-Corneilles, as a member of the Decisional and Central Consortium of the Party for the Unification and Rehabilitation of France, as President and Secretary of the Parliamentary Club of High-Powered Women, as wife and adviser of Edouard Pompestan, CEO of Grand Nuclear Grid, which represents two-thirds of the global market in the chromium-carbon turbine industry, as an enlightened citizen, as a regular, well-rounded, well-adjusted woman who hasn’t stopped trying to be attractive, nor, for that matter, to be unattractive when necessary. We will not accept it. The answer is nyet, forget about it.

AHMED. Madame Pompestan! Permit me to lay out my case before you, as Ahmed, who neither is nor ever will be a deputay. But who exists, here, with his hidden resources. As Ahmed who neither is nor ever will be a woman of action. Although …

Improvisation on Ahmed as a woman of action.

Never mind. As Ahmed who neither is nor ever will be married to the boss of Grand Nuclear Grid. Who’s more likely to be stuck in the grimy daily grind. As Ahmed the earthworm, or just about, in love with a star, or almost.¹⁴ As Ahmed the intellect underneath his own swarthy complexion.

MADAME POMPESTAN. Now wait just a minute! To the issue we’re dealing with, my dear Ahmed, skin color is completely irrelevant. There are black skins that are perfectly French, white skins that are foreign, mysterious yellow ones that we keep an eye on, Redskins with their scalps, and some greenish people whose papers are in order. My cleaning woman is from the Philippines, and she’s a lovely woman, very well behaved, who wouldn’t steal a single egg from the refrigerator.

AHMED. Or a single leg from the prestidigitator.

MADAME POMPESTAN (nonplussed). What is this nonsense about shanks and pranks? You’ve lost your common sense! You’ve plunged back into your old fanatical background! I’ve said no, no, and triple no. End of story.

AHMED. In order to say “no,” one must know what “yes” one is talking about. Without a “yes,” there’s no “no,” you know? Tell me your “yes,” and I’ll tell you how it goes with your “no.” Say “yea,” and, hey, I’ll say if your “no” is a go. If your “yea” is more like a “nay,” hey, no way is your “no” a go.

Ahmed’s improvisation on “yes” and “no.”

Anyway. To what, Madame deputay Madame Pompestan, you who are so well-adjusted, so nuclear-powered, such a take-charge dynamo, to what, I say, do you say “yea,” on the issue that concerns us? If I may, pray, say “yea.”

MADAME POMPESTAN. I say “yea” to French law. The people, through my representative mediation, vote for the sovereign law that says who is who, who is entitled to what, who isn’t entitled to what, and who’s entitled to nothing, or even to less than nothing. The law that separates, on the one hand, the official and legal and the lawful worker whom Edouard Pompestan welcomes with open arms onto his factory floor. And, on the other hand, the illegal, the undocumented immigrant, the surplus worker, the shady character, the guy who’s been smuggled in from who knows where.

AHMED. Whom the police welcome with open clubs into their detention centers. The law … your yes, I guess, means that someone from here isn’t from here unless the law from here tells him he’s here? But, if he’s here, the law can’t say that he isn’t here! Or else your yes, I guess, isn’t a yes but a no. You say “yes” to no. You say “yes” to someone from here being told that he isn’t from here. The “no” comes before the “yes,” in your “yes” to the law from here. Since this law and all the damn cops behind it run like a pack of dogs after people from here, yapping that they aren’t from here!

MADAME POMPESTAN (somewhat bewildered). It’s necessary to separate those who are from here and those who, although they’ve come here for some shady reason, aren’t from here.

AHMED. But they are here. The fact is that they’re here. And you, you say “yes” to their not being here just because they’re not from here. But who is from here, then, if people who are here according to your yes, I guess, aren’t here?

MADAME POMPESTAN. Frenchmen, my dear Ahmed. And Frenchwomen, of course. Frenchwomen and Frenchmen are from here and are here.

AHMED. But who is French at the end of the day?

MADAME POMPESTAN. Those whom the law says are French, like me and Edouard, French since the Middle Ages and even before then.

AHMED. French before the Middle Ages? And by law? Gadzooks! The Pompestans invented both France and the law! But wait a minute! Wait a minute! I sense a circle here! A vicious circle!

MADAME POMPESTAN (slightly lewd). Edouard always says: “Caress a circle, it’ll get vicious.”¹⁵

AHMED. That one must have been caressed for a long time. ’Cause it’s vicious with a vengeance.

Improvisation, throughout what follows, on the idea of a vicious circle.

The law comes along and says, one day: “Those who are here are from here, they’re French.” And then the law says: “I see some people who are here, but who aren’t from here. Not French.” But “not French” has never meant anything other than “not here.” Or else, it’s about skin, race, smell … But when you say no, I hear the “yes” in this “no” from your sweet lips, on the subject of the Philippina who steals pegs from the defibrillator! Not skin, not race, not smell! Just the law! Which says that here are the French, that the French are here, and that if one is here, one is from here, necessarily, whenever and forever. Eventually, the law, however worn-out and senile it becomes, still can’t say, caressed and vicious as it is, that here isn’t here or that being from here isn’t here or that somewhere else has come here!

MADAME POMPESTAN (stupefied). But what are you proposing, when you get right down to it?

AHMED. A very simple “yes” whose “no” is a no-show. Someone who’s here is from here.¹⁶ Someone who lives here, leave him in peace, for crying out loud. A country, this one or any other, is made up of the people who live there. That’s all.

MADAME POMPESTAN. Never! Never this “yes”! No and double no! With a platform like yours, I’d get clobbered in the elections! Just think! Everybody from somewhere else whom we’re going to say is from here! It’s a nightmare! It’s the end of the French race!

AHMED. Oops! Race! You said it! Race! I thought there was only the law!

MADAME POMPESTAN. Get lost! You swarthy little motherfucker!

AHMED. Whose mother, may I ask?

MADAME POMPESTAN (lunging at him). You’ll see! Give me that “Someone who’s here is from here” crap!

AHMED (taking out his stick). Here, my little stick! I’m from here! I’m here and I’m staying here! Ah! The law gets caressed! It’s made vicious like a circle! I’ll give it a good caress right in the ribs! I’ll straighten it out, the law from here! Here! Here!

Madame Pompestan flees, pursued by Ahmed smacking her with his stick.

AHMED (returning breathless). Score a victory for the grimy daily grind in its epic struggle against the Grand Nuclear Grid. It’s really complicated, the whole national question. It’s like, in order to be from here, truly from here, you have to have this (he points to his forehead) and this (he shows his stick). Thought and force. Just to be from here, when you are here. A perpetual battle just to be where you are! And without even knowing if it’s worth it, when you get right down to it. It would seem that we’re determined, we others, philosophers born somewhere else or from here, to stay here. And why are we so determined, I ask you? Because we’re here. By sheer hard work, we’re here. And with considerable help from subtle thought and complicated existence. Here we are. And will stay. The vicious and circular law can’t do anything about it either. Thought keeps watch. And the stick too. The thinking stick. There’s a great philosopher, Pascal, who said that man is a thinking reed. Me, Ahmed, so that I can be from here, and so that everybody, here, can be here like me, I’m turning into a thinking stick! The strongest kind there is. OK, people from here! Stay here! Have no fear! I’ve got your back.