Summary
Bus Rides
Halima takes her two children to her mother after her husband beats her again with an extension cord. Fatiha is unfazed and tells her daughter to be patient, which makes Halima wonder how long the Lord wants patience from those who suffer. Fatiha also tells her daughter that she has to learn to handle her husband, and she will get her something from a new sorceress she visited the other day. Halima sighs and says no; she wants a divorce. Fatiha exclaims that she will not be able to support herself, but Halima replies that she is the one who supports the family already because Maati only drinks away his wages. Eventually Halima agrees, albeit reluctantly, to consider the sorceress, though it is so expensive that she grumbles she could get a divorce for that amount.
After a few more weeks and three more beatings, Halima has enough money to visit the sorceress. She dissolves the powder in the rghaif; it cannot be seen or tasted. Her children come home, first Mouna her daughter and then Farid and Amin her sons. The children play cards until her husband comes home.
Maati actually comes in with an apologetic look on his face, which is not common after a beating. He kisses her neck and she is embarrassed that he still makes her lustful even though he is cruel to her. He compliments the dinner and does the dishes, and she thinks the magic is working.
The next day, Halima finds a bit of money and remembers how Maati promised to quit drinking—it seems her luck has turned. She splurges at the fish stall and cooks a delicious dinner. Maati is late, though, and she stresses about when exactly to put the fish in. When he comes home, he is quiet. He later tells her he lost his job and her disgust rapidly overcomes her initial pity. When she grows angry and asks how they will survive, even impersonating his feeble proclamations of what he will do to help, he hits her very hard and then storms out of the house. She is bitter, wondering where the man she married is.
Halima waits for a bus to take her to a judge’s house in the posh neighborhood of Anfa. She had borrowed money from her brothers, whom she’d written after she started the divorce proceedings. The bus ride is full of beggars and vendors and she clutches her purse tightly.
She finds the villa and a maid tells her the judge wants her to wait outside. She complies, but the judge comes out and tells her she can come in the yard. He asks if she has the money and she gives it to him. He sighs and says next time she should not bring small bills. “Next time” bothers her. He explains that she needs to be on time for the hearing and will get her divorce this week.
When she realizes the conversation is over, she is nervous she gave him all the money right away. What guarantee did she have of success? She asks him this, and, irritated, he tells her to go before he changes his mind. Halima does not want to leave with this lack of assurance and decides she cannot trust him, just as she should have not trusted the sorceress. She demands the money back and he throws it all at her. It tumbles to the ground and she goes to pick it up. He moves to push her and she elbows him in the gut with all the power she has. She takes what money she can and leaves quickly.
A few days later, Halima goes to her janitorial job. She cleans the offices of Hanan Benamar, a translator who works on immigration documents. Every time she is in Hanan’s presence, she thinks that she could have been her if she’d gone to a real school or married a different man. She also wonders if she should have gone to Europe like her brothers. She begins to inquire about immigrating and Hanan is reluctant to engage in the conversation. She seems to talk down to Halima and Halima wishes she had said nothing, but she knows now that “she had to do something for her future—today” (73).
Acceptance
Aziz Ammor is ready to immigrate, and has been saying all his goodbyes. He is mostly met with silence, but Lahcen, his best friend, is much more vocal about his opposition to the idea. Aziz and Zohra, Aziz’s wife, visit Lahcen at his place, where he lives with his parents and four sisters.
Zohra had also tried to dissuade Aziz, but now she jumps in and says at least he will make a living in Spain. He knows her parents, who do not like him, have been nagging her about his joblessness. Aziz tells Lahcen he will be back in two or three years, and Lahcen shakes his head that no one comes back. Lahcen tries to suggest other opportunities for Aziz, but Aziz gently rebuts them all. Both men had flunked their high school exams a few years back and could not go to university. Lahcen started a phone card operation but Aziz went to trade school and nothing materialized.
Aziz’s parents were also against the idea of immigration, warning him of bad wages, death, delinquency, and more, but he weighed this all against “the poorest of years of idleness, years of asking them for money to ride the bus, years of looking down at his shoes or changing the subject whenever someone asked him what he did for a living” (79). Lahcen suggests he can help him find work.
After dinner, Zohra wonders why Lahcen was so nosy, but Aziz replies that he was just concerned. She sighs that everyone is concerned and asks if Lahcen can really help. Aziz shrugs that if he could, he would have helped himself.
The next day, Lahcen shows up in a suit he’d purchased at a swap meet and tells Aziz he is coming with him to a “meeting.” He says a woman who buys minutes from him works for a dentist whose chair is broken—Aziz can fix it and then the dentist will tell all his friends about him. Aziz is skeptical about this, but Lahcen urges him to go because it could be something.
The afternoon drags on while they wait in the office. Finally the dentist comes out, and while Lahcen chats with him, Aziz inspects the chair. He sees that the power simply wasn’t on. Lahcen launches into a speech about how capable Aziz is. After they leave, Aziz tells him it was a waste of time.
Aziz begins to pack. Lahcen comes by and the two get coffee. Lahcen again starts remonstrating with Aziz about not going and Aziz tunes him out. He notices a gay couple nearby and starts to think about some of the ways Lahcen behaved with him in the past. They continue talking and Aziz tells Lahcen not to worry about him, but to worry about himself instead. This surprises Lahcen.
A few days later, Aziz visits Lahcen at the payphone where he camps out to do business. He tries to give Lahcen a taekwondo card he won’t use up and a few shirts, but Lahcen says he does not want either. They get coffee again, but this time Aziz steers Lahcen to a different cafe because Zohra is meeting them there and bringing a coworker of hers.
Her name is Malika and she is pretty and charming, but Lahcen says nothing. After the women leave, Lahcen shrugs that she is not his type. Aziz apologies and sits his friend down and asks what he is going to do, insinuating he knows that Lahcen is gay. Lahcen says he isn’t going to do anything. Aziz asks about his parents, and Lahcen thinks maybe they already know.
On the morning of his departure, Aziz embraces Zohra tightly and thinks that if she asks him to stay he would not be able to refuse, but she does not. He promises to come home. Having breakfast with his parents one last time, he tries to soak up every sensation to remember his life here in Morocco.
His last stop is Lahcen’s, and he gives his friend a gruff hug as men do, and leaves.
Better Luck Tomorrow
Murad waits for the tourists in Tangier and asks if they want to see where Paul Bowles lived. This usually works with the hippie types, and it makes him a bit of money. He tries a particular couple who have a “Backpacking in Morocco” book in their backpack, but they are not interested no matter how many things Murad offers to show them. He sees them walk away and tries one more thing—hashish—but they still do not take him up on his offer.
He sighs. The tourists will be gone now. He heads home empty-handed, which is how it has been all week. He greets his mother, who is ironing. She tells him tomorrow will be better but Murad cannot believe her. He is living with his mother, his sister Lamya, and his brother Khalid; the twins had just gone off to medical school in Rabat on scholarship. The house is crowded, and Murad and Khalid sleep in the living room.
His mother tells him someone asked her and Murad’s uncle for Lamya’s hand today, which irritates Murad because he is supposed to be the man of the house since his father died three years ago. Murad thinks of how his siblings are moving on with their lives and wonders why he bothered to go to college and study English. He had thought there would be jobs when he graduated, but he applied for months and then years and there was nothing.
In the early evening he heads to Cafe La Liberte. He sees a man sit down near him and smile. Murad knows him—it is Rahal, the captain of the Zodiac lifeboat, and he has been encouraging Murad to immigrate to Spain. He reminds him he can get a job there, and he is confident Murad, unlike others, will make it. Murad is reluctant to engage but finally asks how much. It is a lot—twenty thousand dirhams—and Murad bursts out that he does not have that and his family does not either. He suggests he might have eight, and Rahal laughs that it is not a game. He explains he needs the fuel and the payoffs for the police, and begins talking about someone who made it over and sends his family money every month. Murad “never tired of hearing stories like that” (106-107). People passed around those stories as well as the horror stories.
Murad decides he will talk to his uncle, who will surely understand him. Rahal says if he can make it twenty, he will guarantee him a job. Murad agrees.
When he leaves the cafe, he heads down to the beach and watches the twinkling lights on the Spanish side. He thinks of all the work visas he applied for, and knows in his heart that if he can get there he will be successful.
Walking home, he wonders about the tourists who have comfortable lodgings but come down here looking for “something exotic” (108). He sees the woman from earlier and “saw the ease with which she carried herself, the nonchalance in her demeanor, free from the burden of survival, and he envied her for it” (109). She asks if he knows where a cafe the Beats used to frequent is, and he points the way. He is already thinking about “his new beginning, in a new land” (109).
Analysis
Lalami accounts for the other three characters’ backstories using their own thoughts and feelings (unlike the first narrative for Faten), exploring their desires for economic opportunities, freedom from domestic violence, and personal pride. She writes them all with empathy and nuance; for example, while Murad may have unappealing, traditional gender views, his dream to have a life of his own, free from dependence on his family, is completely relatable.
In her article on the three female characters in Hope–Faten, Halima, and Zohra—Cristian H. Ricci provides some context for Halima’s sections, writing, “the two parts of the Halima’s story coincide with the former Mouadawana, the Moroccan Family Code that impeded women’s equality to men before the law, by curtailing their divorce rights, property ownership, inheritances, and by dismissing Mohamed VI’s 2004 issuance defining a family as one composed of two equal partners before the law, a husband and a wife. At any rate, after the Reform of 2004, Moha Ennaji, Guita El Khayat and Khadija Ryadi concur that family members carry out most of the violence against women, and that violence permeates all social groups. As long as the present system of domination remains, and legal and social inequality continues, both men and the State will feel legitimized to pursue violence against women.”
Ricci’s historical background is clearly manifested in Lalami’s story of Halima. Halima’s husband beats her with impunity, and even her mother can only suggest that “A woman must know how to handle her husband” (53) and “be patient with your man” (54). Fatiha also references another woman who tried to get a divorce but her husband wouldn’t agree to it: “Now she lives alone. She’s neither married, really, nor free to remarry” (54). Halima doesn’t care, though, and retorts, “Better than living with a son of a whore” (54). Fatiha’s response of “See? This is why he beats you. You talk back” (54) indicates how a woman is supposed to be—meek, pliable, agreeable, tireless, nurturing, etc. Halima has reached her breaking point, though, and doesn’t accept that she has to be self-abnegating, the primary supporter of the family, and amenable to any verbal or physical abuse Maati throws at her.
But Halima has no economic opportunities in Morocco beyond cleaning offices and realizes, after her frustrating experience with the judge, that the judicial system is corrupt and can do nothing for her. Furthermore, legal ways of immigrating are closed to her, a fact reinforced by her dispiriting conversation with Hanan Benamar, the translator whose office she cleans. Importantly, though, while Halima has a lot stacked against her, she is not passive. First, she does talk back to Maati even though she knows what will happen. Losing his job and leaving the family even worse off than they already are is untenable to her; she bitterly tells him that “We’ll be stuck here till the day we die. Soon we’ll be begging at the door of the mosque on Fridays” (62), and when he hits her, she “threw his shoe back at him” (62). When she visits the judge and realizes he is going to take her money and probably do nothing for her, she not only demands the money back but, when he pushes her, “She drove her elbow into his gut with all the force she could gather” (69). Halima knows she can only rely on herself: “It was a mistake to have thought that Hanan or that judge or that magic powder could get her out of her situation… She had to do something for her future—today” (73).
As for Murad and Aziz, their stories have some similarities. Both men do not have jobs, have tried without success to achieve economic autonomy, and, not being able to do so, see Spain as a place of opportunity. They dream of jobs, cars, wives, and material comfort. They want to feel pride in themselves and either support their family (Aziz) or stop being a drain on them (Murad). Aziz received many warnings about the dangers of the crossing and of Spain, but “he had weighed [his parents’] warnings against the prospect of years of idleness, years of looking down at his shoes or changing the subject whenever anyone asked what he did for a living, and the wager seemed, in the end, worthwhile” (79). Murad “knew, in his heart, that if only he could get a job, he would make it, he would be successful” (108). Both men choose to ultimately disregard warnings and horror stories to put their faith in a future in Spain, which, Lalami suggests, isn’t so much foolhardy as it is the only thing people in their position can do to prevent themselves from succumbing to despair or lassitude.
