A palace in the old village, April 30th 2011 P82 N3P106 書評 モロ ッコ移民の退職
After years of diligent, uncomplaining toil on the Renault assembly line, Mohammad has retired. But life at home in the Yvelines housing project, on the outskirts of Paris, is suddenly empty： his sons and daughters ignore him, and seem from another world. ゛My children have Arab features and gestures, but they claim they are ゛assimilated゛, a word I've never understood.゛ Only Nabile, the Down's syndrome nephews he treats as a son, gives Mohammad constant delight and unquestioning love. No wonder Mohammed's dream grow ever more insistent： he must return to the Moroccan village he left four decades earlier； he will use his pension to build the biggest house in the village； and all his children and grandchilmren will come to be with him.
So much for the dream. The reality of Mohammed's return (by train, boat, bus and taxi now that his car has been torched - among dozens of others - by the rampaging youth of the projects) is destined to disappoint him. As Tahar Ben Jelloun explains in this marvellously poignant novel (expertly translated from the French by Linda Coverdale), the illiterate Mohammed has never lost - nor wanted to lose - his Berber roots and devotion to Islam. By contrast, his children are French and Europe, and yet are not always accepted as such. In short, Mr Ben Jelloun, returning to a theme he has written on before, depicts the plight both of the immigrant and the child of the immigrant.
The book is not a polemic on the defects of modern France, with its Arab and African minorities crammed into the housing projects in the suburbs of its cities. The victory of the far-right's Jean-Marie LePen in the first round of the 2002 presidential election is mentioned in passing (゛I had a good laugh,゛ says Mohammed, ゛but my wife was afraid and wondered if we should start packing゛). The political context is less important for Mr Ben Jelloun than the personality of Mohammed himself： he is a genuinely good man, keen always to do his duty both at the factory and at home. Yet he is the prisoner of his culture, unable to adapt to the ways of France or to understand his ゛assimilated゛ offspring.
Mr Ben Jelloun, of course, has no such problem. Born in Fez in 1944, he came to France at the age of 27 and has long since been part of the French literary firmament (he won the Prix Goncouit in 1987 for ゛La Nuit Sacree゛). This latest book, published two years ago in France as ゛Au Pays゛, is proof that this particular immigrant's star still shine brightly.
