Le jour où Malika ne s'est pas mariée by Fouad Laroui

Abstract

I, Kwahul?, a prize-winning dra 1 matist, portrays his characters , through the rhythmof their speech. 1 Much of the power of the novel I results from the playful use of lan 1 guage. "Monsieur" makes lists com i paring various phenomena, lists [ interruptedby his asthmatic cough ? ing. He speculates about what will , happen to the disease when the patient dies; he says his landlady i cannot be called obese because she 1 is not American. He describes how I milk "vomits" when boiling. The j concierge also indulges in repetitions I and unintended comic compari , sons; her simple-minded daughter ' believes in "flies that fart." I Only at the end do we realize 1 that "Monsieur's" long monologue i toMonsieur Ki is really an attempt ! togain timebefore his suicide. Kwa i hul? leaves us to decide how "Mon , sieur's" story ends. Is the suicide a 1 result of his suffering fromasthma, f or because he has been "called" to 1 return to Africa to take his place I wearing amask embodying religious 1 powers? His interlocutor, "Monsieur i Ki," may be the "Ancestor with a j Cynocephalus Head" who has come ? to takehim home. While he thought , his studies in France would contrib 1 ute to the welfare of his commu i nity,was he really needed to fulfill 1 a ritual role?KoffiKwahul? calls his I novel a "Parisian rhapsody to make J us smile." In thathe succeeds well. i Adele King I Paris Ii Fouad Laroui. Le jour o? Malika ne 1 s'est pas mari?e, Paris. Julliard. 2009. I 203 pages. 17. isbn 978-2-260-01813-1 i In this collection of eight short sto , ries, a group of young men seated * at a caf? in Casablanca try to pass , the time (the one thing they seem 1 to have no lack of) by indulging in storytelling. The result is an often sardonic, sometimes tragic depiction of aMoroccan society tornbetween dying traditions and the increasing ly illusory promises of modernity. The firstof the short stories (which has the same titleas the collection) describes the day when Malika turned down a marriage proposal. The sixteen-year-old, who wants to study and have a career, cannot take seriously the unexpected offer of a ratherhomely young man who wants her to become a traditional, submissive wife and mother. The main characters, however, are nei therthe teenage girlnor thespurned suitor. Instead, Malika's mother, Zaynab, a widow who had endured an arranged marriage, and Si Mah moud, an elderly neighbor who delivers the young man's proposal to Zaynab, each personify either the changing or theunbending atti tudes of an older generation toward the new aspirations of a younger generation. With a keen sense of irony, Fouad Laroui juxtaposes the elegantly cadenced but rigidly for mulaic speech patterns of Si Mah moud and the slangy, streetwise inflexions favored by Zaynab's inde pendent-minded daughter. In only a few pages, during the dialogues between the man who steadfastly rejects any form of social change and the woman who attempts to understand her daughter's hopes for the future, the author manages to convey a sense of the situation's inherent absurdity and maintain a humorous tone without belittling either character or turning them into caricatures. Most of the other short stories in this collection follow thispattern of inserting ordinary characters into believable but somewhat bizarre sit uations, leading to an aftermath illu minated by insightful irony. Even l'OU il* I La roui the more tragicof these short stories display some formof absurd humor (which in thiscase would not, how ever, qualify as comic relief). "?tre quelqu'un" (To be someone) follows Lahcen, an unemployed young man who dreams of crossing theMediter ranean, of reaching what appears to be the promised land of prosperity inEurope?and who will find only a watery grave during a disastrous journey in a tiny boat. His desper ate pleading and ranting to a god he feelshas forsakenhim,while the waves threaten to capsize the boat he shares with twenty other would be immigrants, lead only tohis sym bolic erasure from the temporary community. When they are captured by the...