d’identity?’
“It’s an international incident. I straighten up, tall in my multicolored breeches, and I play out a great scene of Third World indignation in the face of Western arrogance. What is this, huh? I must be dreaming! Would you demand to see the papers of an American or Russian minister? Or even Albanian? Shall I, while we’re at it, produce my anthropometric measurements? My criminal record? My vaccinations for dengue fever and cholera? The Hungarian, miming gestures of appeasement, motions for me to sit back down, and snubs perfidious Albion, now muttering threats.
“I go back to my discourse on wheat, ‘which we formerly exported to the Roman Empire,’ but no one is listening to me, no one cares about the Rome of antiquity. Then the Hungarian makes an imperial gesture and adjourns the session. These messieurs-dames are going to make a decision. They ask me to wait in an adjoining room, where they serve me coffee and chocolate—go on, have a bite, it’s Belgian. Half an hour later, an usher comes to fetch me: the committee has come to a decision.”
“Well?”
“Well, I got the flour for nothing. They remembered, quite pertinently, that there was an emergency stock for desperate cases, like for Somalia, Chad, and other countries where the ministers dress in rags. Pounds of grain for free! Tonight they’re throwing me an extravagant reception at the Rabat airport. ‘The man who saved his country a hundred thousand euros!’ It’s really my trousers they should be honoring.”
He looks outside, pensively. The façades of the Grand Place glisten. Dassoukine sighs.
“The most beautiful place in the world, they say. And they’re right. But I remember only the Place Jourdan, where I found myself dressed as a clown and a servant in order to better serve my country. Who will ever believe that?”
What would it be like, he asked himself, a world where everything was foreign?
What would it be like, he asked himself, walking slowly in the direction of his house, a world where everything was foreign?
What would it be like, he asked himself, walking slowly in the direction of his house, where his wife Anna was waiting for him, a world where everything was foreign?
What would it be like, he asked himself, walking slowly in the direction of his house, where his wife Anna was waiting for him—sweet, kind Anna—a world where everything was foreign?
What would it be like, he asked himself, walking slowly in the direction of his house, where his wife Anna was waiting for him—sweet, kind Anna, whom he had ended up marrying in order to settle down (isn’t that what it was called, in times past, in the world of Parisian courtesans?)—a world where everything was foreign?
What would it be like, he asked himself, walking slowly in the direction of his house, where his wife Anna was waiting for him—sweet, kind Anna, whom he had ended up marrying in order to settle down (isn’t that what it was called, in times past, in the world of Parisian courtesans?—Oh Maati, you and your French references…)—a world where everything was foreign?
What would it be like, he asked himself, walking slowly in the direction of his house, where his wife Anna was waiting for him—sweet, kind Anna, whom he had ended up marrying in order to settle down (isn’t that what it was called, in times past, in the world of Parisian courtesans?—Oh Maati, you and your French references…and sometimes she would add: You aren’t even French, you’re Moroccan.)—a world where everything was foreign?
What would it be like, he asked himself, walking slowly in the direction of his house, where his wife Anna was waiting for him—sweet, kind Anna, whom he had ended up marrying in order to settle down (isn’t that what it was called, in times past, in the world of Parisian courtesans?—Oh Maati, you and your French references…and sometimes she would add: You aren’t even French, you’re Moroccan. He had tried one day to explain to her that he was Moroccan by birth, in body, but “French in the head.”…She had laughed in his face, and even he wasn’t very convinced by his pro domo plea)—a world where everything was foreign?
What would it be like, he asked himself, walking slowly in the direction of his house, where his wife Anna was waiting for him—sweet, kind Anna, whom he had ended up marrying in order to settle down (isn’t that what it was called, in times past, in the world of Parisian courtesans?—Oh Maati, you and your French references…and sometimes she would add: “You aren’t even French, you’re Moroccan.” He had tried one day to explain to her that he was Moroccan by birth, in body, but “French in the head.”…She had laughed in his face, and even he wasn’t very convinced by his pro domo plea. But here, for God’s sake! Here, in Utrecht, wasn’t he ten times more of a foreigner than he would have been if he had moved to Nantes or Montpellier?)—a world where everything was foreign?
What would it be like, he asked himself, walking slowly in the direction of his house, where his wife Anna was waiting for him—sweet, kind Anna, whom he had ended up marrying in order to settle down (isn’t that what it was called, in times past, in the world of Parisian courtesans?—Oh Maati, you and your French references…and sometimes she would add: You aren’t even French, you’re Moroccan. He had tried one day to explain to her that he was Moroccan by birth, in body, but “French in the head.”…She had laughed in his face, and even he wasn’t very convinced by his pro domo plea. But here, for God’s sake! Here, in Utrecht, wasn’t he ten times more of a foreigner than he would have been if he had moved to Nantes or Montpellier? Over there, the trees would have had familiar names, the trees and the animals and the household items at the supermarket; over there he wouldn’t have needed to consult a dictionary to buy a mop)—a world where everything was foreign?
What would it be like, he asked himself, walking slowly in the direction of his house, where his wife Anna was waiting for him—sweet, kind Anna, whom he had ended up marrying in order to settle down (isn’t that what it was called, in times past, in the world of Parisian courtesans?—Oh Maati, you and your French references…and sometimes she would add: You aren’t even French, you’re Moroccan. He had tried one day to explain to her that he was Moroccan by birth, in body, but “French in the head.”…She had laughed in his face, and even he wasn’t very convinced by his pro domo plea. But here, for God’s sake! Here, in Utrecht, wasn’t he ten times more of a foreigner than he would have been if he had moved to Nantes or Montpellier? Over there, the trees would have had familiar names, the trees and the animals and the household items at the supermarket; over there, he wouldn’t have needed to consult a dictionary to buy a mop—a mop, goddamnit! It had come to this, he who had dreamed of “changing the world”—what was it again, that Marx quotation he had repeated with elation, with a sort of pride by anticipation—like a program, like a project…ah yes: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it!” He added long ago, a bit of a pedant, but a winning pedant: “the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach,” yes, yes: “the point is to change it!”)—a world where everything was foreign?
What would it be like, he asked himself, walking slowly in the direction of his house, where his wife Anna was waiting for him—sweet, kind Anna, whom he had ended up marrying in order to settle down (isn’t that what it was called, in times past, in the world of Parisian courtesans?—Oh Maati, you and your French references…and sometimes she would add: You aren’t even French, you’re Moroccan. He had tried one day to explain to her that he was Moroccan by birth, in body, but “French in the head.”…She had laughed in his
