There’s no point in jumping ahead of things, I’m not ready to give the game away. It’s a matter of honour, and dignity …
From his cash till, our Arab on the corner can see everyone who comes out of our building. His shop isn’t actually on the corner but in the middle of the street, right opposite our block. Which means, properly speaking, we should call him the Arab opposite instead of the Arab on the corner. Then again, since the dawn of time, people have always talked about the Arab on the corner, and it’s not for me to snap my fingers and start a revolution. I mean, if we decided to question everything that reminds us of how unfair, or even offensive, the French language can be towards certain groups of people, well, we’d never hear the end of it. There would be civil wars in the former territories of the French Empire, and Gaul herself would be torn apart to fall into the hands of the Romans. We would have as many trials as there are dead leaves waiting to be shovelled up. We’d lose all track of who was complaining about what, not to mention the date of this or that injustice. So the Members of the Académie Française would finally have a full-time job on their hands. I’m imagining the prostitutes would be keenest to hold people to account because the French language is a real bitch when it comes to them. They might want to know, for example, why a man with the common touch is a national treasure while a woman with the common touch is a whore? Why is a man with an eye for the ladies a charmer while a lady with an eye for the men is a trollop? Why is a “courtier” someone who is close to power while a “courtisan” is a streetwalker? No, I don’t want to fight that battle. People talk about the Arab on the corner, and so do I, even if his shop is opposite our building, while down on the corner there’s a locksmith who’s your typical Frenchman, except that he hasn’t got a beret and a baguette …
If you’re not in the mood to greet our Arab on the corner, he’ll step outside and give you a curt lecture on good manners. Even when you think he’s got his back turned and you can dodge him, he manages to lay his hands on you. It’s as if he’s got a third eye in the back of his neck that’s more powerful than the Bible stories about the eye watching Cain. And since, like every Arab on the corner, ours doesn’t close shop until very late, about one in the morning, there’s no deceiving his lynx’s eye. His life is his shop, and vice versa. The kids who steal his bananas from the display stand outside have firsthand experience of this. He doesn’t say a word, he just watches and then waits for their parents to show up at his grocery store. And that’s when he gives them a remedial class in bringing up young people today. If the kids are stealing it’s because their parents have failed to educate them properly. So it’s not the children you should blame, but their mothers and fathers …
He eats behind his till, and he reads his old copy of the Koran there too. I sometimes wonder when he goes to the toilet. If he’s human like us, he must hear the call of nature at some stage in the day. But no, he’s there, unbudgeable, energetic, everywhere at once, never in the least bit tired.
The Arab on the corner is bald with a small paunch and a grey goatee. He’s got these thick hairs that have taken root in his ears and he tugs on them from time to time when he’s talking to you. The local residents can buy goods on credit at his shop, he has a large exercise book just for them. The surnames of slow payers are marked in red. He calls everybody “comrades”, and I’m treated to “my African brother” because according to him Africa is the land of helping each other out, it’s the continent of solidarity. He maintains that the first man on earth was African, the other races came later. So all men are immigrants, except for the Africans who are at home here down below. And what’s more, according to him, we Africans are Egyptians and we followed the Nile in order to spread ourselves across the continent. He whispers in my ear that the West will never be able to teach that fact because it would call too many things into question:
“For too long the West has force-fed us lies and bloated us with pestilence, my African brother! Do you know which black poet spoke those courageous words, eh? It’s not easy telling Europeans that in reality they are nothing but immigrants themselves and that their continent actually belongs to the Africans who were the first men on earth! Take that Senegalese man, for example, a great historian, a great scholar, I’ve forgotten his name … What was he called again? It’s on the tip of my tongue … Well, it will come back to me, and anyway it’s easy enough with the Senegalese, there’s no point in overcomplicating things, they’re all called Diop, what matters is finding out their first name. The Senegalese man I’m talking about was so strong, my African brother. When he demonstrated to the Whites, with scientific evidence to the ready, that there were plenty of Blacks in ancient Egypt, and that those Blacks were the masters, well, Europe categorically refused to recognise this. People claimed that the Blacks weren’t capable of building the pyramids, that they’d been cursed since the dawn of time when Ham, one of Noah’s sons, saw his father naked. The Blacks would therefore be condemned to the curse of Ham with a male organ so oversized that no underpants could ever conceal it. The Senegalese historian fought against these kinds of prejudices. At the Sorbonne, the Whites refused to let him defend his dissertation! Can you, in all good conscience, call that normal behaviour, eh? In your opinion, why does Europe behave in this way towards Africans, eh? Well, let me tell you: if the Europeans conceded that there were Blacks in Egypt, intelligent Blacks, Black leaders, Blacks with regular sized male organs, they would also have to concede that the European philosophers who’d been coming to Egypt since Antiquity did so in order to steal our ideas and go off to develop their own philosophy without so much as a by your leave. And that is why, my African brother, Europe will always tell you that Egypt is not Africa! But everybody knows now that Europe has, for a long time, force-fed us lies and bloated us with pestilence …”
* * *
I remember that when our daughter was born, the Arab on the corner used to come to our building in person to bring us mineral water, milk and Pampers. I had this idea that he was off-loading damaged stock in the same way that developed countries send their out-of-date medicines to underdeveloped countries. I was wrong and I felt ashamed for doubting the Arab on the corner’s generosity. He would knock on our door, stop to talk for a minute or two and treat us to his jokes, which were generally about the Jews and the Arabs. You had to laugh even if you didn’t understand them at all. And we would force out big guffaws and sometimes even tears of laughter. It wasn’t difficult for my ex because laughing came easily to her. And if I laughed it was because I was laughing at the way she laughed.
The Arab on the corner told us we should waste no time in moving apartments, that it would be hard when the child started moving on all fours. Our little one would break everything in the studio. He said that children like scampering about and poking their noses everywhere in the home. And in a space as cramped as ours, Henriette would feel like a prisoner in a cage. He promised to help us out because some compatriots of his worked for a property agency in Charenton-Le-Pont. But you couldn’t mention the banlieue to my ex, even if it was the closest one to Paris. Just hearing the word “banlieue” was enough to make her break out in cold sores …
So from time to time we got bottles, milk and nappies for free. I didn’t feel comfortable with it, but how could I say no to the Arab on the corner without offending him? We took it all and stored it in a corner of our studio. My ex was happy, but not me. To clear her conscience, she used to say:
“Why let it bother you? It’s not like we asked him for anything! He’s mainly doing it for our daughter because in the Bible or the Koran the children are the bosses. The Kingdom of Heaven is for them. Plus he knows that by giving to the children God will pay him back many times over, and that’s not counting the twenty-two virgins he’ll have automatic right to in Paradise as a reward for his upright behaviour on earth.”