The best in Picardy? My mother is happy. My father doesn’t congratulate me, but I make the best of it, convinced that for my whole life I mustn’t owe him anything. Mustn’t owe anyone anything. I’ve already stopped speaking to him. My behavior is an affront to his sense of honor. He reproaches me for going to school and the havoc it wreaks within me. He wants to bring me back in line. He forbids me the things that I enjoy. Scarred by his past, he tells me, “Here, you will be nothing. You are nothing.” I seek out my mother even more. I claim to need a bedroom with a desk, with my eye on a room on the ground floor that will allow me to come and go without their permission. I obtain the bedroom, but I’m not fooling myself. No career path appeals to me. Apart from telling stories to my younger brothers, nothing suits me.
In junior high, my experience with education leaves me feeling extinguished. Around me, no one is dreaming of a better future. There are no scholars or artists in the village. No passion. People are factory workers during the week and farm laborers on the weekend. An interest in their children might have paved a path to dialogue between our generations. But most of our fathers are nowhere to be found apart from the local bars. Once uninhibited by alcohol, they allow themselves a lustful glance, telling me, “Sweetheart, I’d love to jump in bed with you.” These men are happy to see me hanging around outside, and satisfied that I find pleasure in their company. Understanding that I am worth something, for a time I help them build some self-respect, degraded as they are to be men who count for little. They spend the winter outside, pouring the needed harvests into the ovens at the beet plant or braving the freezing cold to cut down poplars whose offshoots will be cultivated in the frigid, water-drenched soil. It’s when their hands can make up for what they spend that these men, through their skills, regain their dignity. But beyond auto mechanics, home improvement, and the seasonable expertise of farming, these workers can’t hold a conversation. In an effort to fight back against the ignorance enveloping them, they attach an obsessive importance to their own merits, namely the ability to take a blow. They are distrustful of my generation and turn up their noses at the awareness emerging within us and its reliance on foreign cultures. Like my father, they don’t know what paternity can be. They go home exhausted, conscious of what has been made of them. Sitting at the table in silence, scrubbing off the dirt so they can take their wives properly, playing their masculine role for a moment in front of their kids, then sprawling on the couch with heavy weariness. Countless times, embarrassed, I hide with my friends in their bedrooms in order to shut out this unhappiness.
We live in a world without resources. It’s decaying. Jobs are limited to the preparation and transportation of goods. The growing number of women who work reupholster chairs or make curlers. No revolution has affected them. We can’t talk to them of politics or culture, and they don’t know the name of a single philosopher or writer. Their daughters, whom they dress in acrylic sweaters and pleated miniskirts that excite the sons as much as the dads, dream about the singers of the era: Mike Brandt, Johnny Hallyday, Frédéric François. When some of us choose to cover up our bodies with layered skirts dyed in India, eyes lined in black powder, curled hair reeking of patchouli, our fathers start to hate us with a passion, questioning what possible role we can fill dressed like this. The violence dealt us—“the degenerate junkies”—is meant to drown out any response and weaken our desire to break free.
The young people in the village foresee a future much like that of their parents, who are completely satisfied with the comatose lives they lead. A little like the long duration of the Cold War that will eventually eclipse all the significance of the victory achieved by the Allies. Mainly the Americans who, envied for their flamboyance, are on occasion more disliked than us, “the Arabs.”
What saves them is elsewhere. In the perpetuation of agricultural expertise and its benefits.
Unlike me, all the villagers know the taste of blueberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants, and wild mulberries. They know how to recognize with one glance the slightest sign of vegetative plants. Starting in March, the countryside comes to life with activity that occupies many of the children. Everyone has to do his or her part of the hard work, the planting, weeding, watering, and maintenance, which they learn by listening and observing. I owe the diligence I apply to being a good gardener to my sister, whom I avoid like the plague. On days with no school, I earn money to give to my family. I refuse to be judged poorly for working. I learn a lot about gardens. First from curiosity and then from inclination. My mother leaves the upkeep of the house to my sister (who spends most of her time there) and is solely concerned with logistics, our happiness, and her vegetable garden.
She works there from morning to night and through her exertions reawakens something inside herself. She greets each plant and flower at length, and talks to the hens and the few caged rabbits. When they become too numerous, she lets them out. Cheep, cheep, and off they go toward the fields.
“Maman, the hunters will kill them.”
“No.”
The day she decides to free all the caged animals is etched in my memory. My brother Ammar had dropped off his friend’s aviary for the summer. Twenty-four birds. Two lovebird couples and some parakeets. Cheep, cheep, cheep, and up and away.
“Maman, they’re going to die. They can’t live in the wild.”
“No.”
As a child, my mother used to have a pet rabbit. She can’t imagine that people eat rabbits in France. She also had a donkey, a horse, and a goat. She asks my father for the latter. Everything is coming alive for her. The Oise region, despite the climate, is enough for her to relive the joys and tastes of her childhood. She is so insistent about getting her goat that my father finally brings home a lamb. But he made an unfortunate assumption. Scooby-Doo will not be eaten. The lamb accompanies my mother as she works and sometimes follows us along the path to school. At night, he knocks at the front door with his small hoof. We open it and he enters the living room, settles down in his chosen spot, on a sheepskin, and watches the evening news with us. We are moved by his kindness and intelligence. He is gentle, clean, and affectionate. One day, he follows me to the farm across the street, hesitates on the sidewalk, crosses too late, a car hits him. A loud noise, I backtrack, Scooby-Doo is dead. I blame myself, I cry. The driver tells me, “It’s okay, you can make roasted lamb out of it.” The man leaves me crying on the asphalt, holding Scooby-Doo’s bleeding head. We give him a dignified burial under the big tree in the garden. We throw flowers on him. Now that he’s dead, we want another one. My brother brings us a frail and abandoned poodle. A sad little face like you rarely see. We name him Izmir and I can say that, for fear that he’ll stray too far, the dog spends as much time in the garden as we do.
The garden is composed of four large plots. The main one is intended for potatoes, the second for onions and garlic, the third for staked crops and thin green beans, peas, and fava beans. We add peppers, chickpeas, and herbs. Coriander, cumin, and mint. The last plot is dedicated to carrots, turnips, artichokes, zucchinis, and other gourds. The provisions we accumulate for the year are enough to feed us. We unearth the potatoes, which we spread out in a storeroom. We let the onions dry for a few days, then tie them in braids to be hung up. When it’s time for the canning, together we peel the tomatoes dunked in hot water to make coulis. The children shell the peas and, if they’re dexterous, string the green beans. The gardening season always ends with preserves, which we store in a laundry room dedicated to that purpose. Then we let winter roll by. Once the cold is gone, we dig into the hard earth with a spade. Everyone has a go at it. They have to.