Summary
The Saint
Farid was only ten but he saved his mother by pulling a stick that she clung to all the way to shore. Many thought it was impossible, but he had done it. It was like a miracle, people began to say. Even Maati, who kicked the TV over in anger when he heard what Halima had done, was proud of his son.
When Halima returns to Casablanca, she takes the children to a slum outside the city. She refuses to stay with Maati or live with her mother. Unlike before, she cannot find a janitorial job so she hires herself out for odd cleaning jobs. Sometimes she wishes Farid hadn’t saved any of them.
One day, Maati shows up at her door. She braces herself for the blow but it does not come. He tells her she has her divorce, spits on her, and throws the papers at her. She is stunned, then completely elated. She wonders what changed, if he wants to start with someone new.
Halima’s mind turns to a memory of a bleeding tree from her childhood, which people thought was sacred. A scientist came and said it was just what the tree did, but Halima’s mother gathered sap anyway. She hoped her arthritis would improve, which it did for a bit. When it flared up again, she claimed it was because the tree had been torn down. No miracle for her mother, and no miracle for her.
But that night she thinks about how crazy it was that Maati changed his mind, and perhaps that she had missed other miracles. Farid had told her he wished Maati had granted her a divorce when she first asked, and once the boy had pulled her back from stepping into traffic and getting hit. He must be a “mardi, a blessed child” (120).
Khadija, the neighbor, comes over and says her son Adnan is about to take his grade school exams and needs help, and she hopes Farid will bless him. This is surprising to Halima, but she has to admit to Khadija when the woman presses that yes, Farid saved her life. Farid is sitting there listening and is embarrassed, and Halima grumbles that if Adnan only studied he would pass, but after the silence grows heavy, Farid touches the boy’s head.
When the neighbor is gone, Farid asks his mother if he is a saint. She shakes her head that the woman is crazy, and he needs to take the trash out. His siblings start teasing him.
Halima still has to make a living, so she starts selling beghrir at the market. She learns that Adnan passed his exams. Khadija stares in wonder at Farid. Halima sighs that now other people are going to want “blessings.” Farid smiles and says it can’t hurt.
A week later, Fatiha comes to visit her daughter. She is grumbling and melodramatic as usual, but she finds her daughter’s cooking delicious. She is uncomfortable and Halima tells her she will take her to the doctor and she will pay. She touches her mother's arm in comfort. As she turns, there is a “fading afternoon light” that “lengthened the shadows behind her, framing her body like the arches of a shrine” (126).
The Odalisque
Faten’s favorite customer is a teenager named Martin. He is different than the others, and she likes not knowing when he will stop by because it is something to look forward to. She knows he attends the Universidad Complutense but she does not like to hear about it because she does not want her own memories of college life to come back.
Martin reminds her of a neighbor she had a crush on when she was little. She went to live with her aunt in Agadi because her mother could not afford to take care of her in Rabat when her father left. She was then sent back to her mother and they lived in a slum. She found God, went to school, and joined the Islamic Student Organization. She made a comment about King Hassan within earshot of a snitch but a friendly tip saved her, and she decided to immigrate at her imam’s suggestion. She did as she was told, but no one helped her when the Spanish coast guard caught her and the other immigrants.
Tonight is lucrative enough, and Martin is her last client. He just wants to talk, and asks her about herself. She playfully answers him and wonders if there is something there in his behavior—something mischievous, interested. She asks about his father, whom he bitterly calls a fascist. The man served under Franco, she learns, and hates immigrants. Martin proclaims he is not like his father. He tells her he knows people in law and can help her get her papers. When Faten hears these promises, she is not sure what to think—should she laugh or say thank you? For a moment she dreams of a new life.
Martin continues to ask her questions, seemingly wanting her to act a certain way. Finally he announces he wants to have sex, which catches her a little off guard. She feels a sense of sadness but complies.
Faten arrives at the apartment she shares with Betoul, who works as a nanny. Betoul is from Marrakech and sends money home to her family. She cannot put on airs here, and lives with Faten as she would not have in Morocco. The two aren’t very close and Faten wishes she didn’t have to room with her. When the two bicker, Faten tells her she does not have to stay here and she can leave if she wants. Betoul storms out.
This morning, Faten does not do the things she normally does when she does not have to work. She thinks of her religiosity and her old friend Noura and realizes how foolish she was. At least Noura had the privilege to be religious or not. She also knows Noura’s father must have had something to do with her not graduating.
She gets herself a Valium and notices on Betoul’s calendar that it is almost Eid. She remembers that holiday with her mother with fondness.
A week later, Martin shows up, but this time she is not as pleased. He wants to ask her more questions, but she knows he wants the exoticized answers. She gives them to him.
Her mind flicks to her first john. In the holding cell after being caught, she saw a guard staring at her and remembered her imam saying desperate times called for desperate measures. The guard took her to another room and had his way with her, calling her by a different name and acting out his fantasy. Men were like this, she had come to know. If she’d finished her degree, she would have called these “odalisque dreams” (141).
Faten asks Martin why he chose her and he shrugs that women in this country do not know how to treat a man but “Arab girls do” (142). He says he had been reading in the Qur’an about “the duties of the woman to the man and all that” (142). Faten is angry as she listens to him tell her “he knew things about her and her people” (142). He is no different from his father, she realizes. When he starts talking about getting her papers again, she tells him she doesn’t need his help. She then tells him his time is up and the chitchat is extra. As she gets out of the car, she announces he should find someone new for next time.
Faten has not seen Betoul for ten days, as their sharp exchange resulted in Betoul altering her schedule a bit. Faten decides to cook a meal for Eid for her and Betoul. She thinks of her mother.
Betoul comes home, exhausted. Faten tells her she should rest because she has made dinner for Eid. Betoul looks “like she would rather sleep than eat, but she said thanks” (144) and sits down. Betoul says the lamb is a little salty, and Faten smiles, “grateful for the truth” (145).
Analysis
Both Faten and Halima undergo major adjustments to their expectations and dreams of a better life after the crossing; just because Faten actually made it into Spain does not mean she has a better life, and Halima being prevented from making it into Spain doesn’t mean her life is an utter misery in Morocco.
Faten’s opportunities in Spain were always going to be limited, but it is particularly troubling to see that she has to turn to prostitution to make it into Spain and to support herself staying there. Given her earlier religiosity, there are two ways to read her choices: 1) she is a hypocrite and an opportunist, or 2) she has to do what she has to do to survive, and only rich girls like Noura “had the luxury of having faith… [and] also had the luxury of having no faith” (138). Ilham Boutob takes a slightly dim view of Faten, more akin to the first judgement, writing that “Before the adventurous journey, Faten appears to be a devout Muslim… But no sooner has she arrived in Europe than she not only throws off her veil, a clear symbol of her Islamic identity, but also prostitutes herself to a Spanish policeman in exchange for admission to Spain… The grave deal Faten makes with this stranger marks the end of her innocence and the collapse of her original identity. Instead of maintaining her religious principles, she interprets the words of her imam toward her own purpose and barters her virginity for the opportunity to enter Spain without legal documents. This sexual act inaugurates a new phase in her life during which she rejects her previous values.”
Christian H. Ricci is more sympathetic, arguing, “Faten transcends cultural and religious boundaries articulating a hybrid identity that resists fixedness, stability, patriarchy, and thus expresses a new mobile, unstable and liberal subjectivity that responds to the calls of ‘modernity’ in twenty-first century Morocco.” Faten does this by resisting the parameters imposed upon her identity by Martin. Though she initially goes along with Martin’s request to hear her exoticized answers to what her life was like in Morocco, she ultimately rejects this falsehood and tells him to seek out another girl. She also decides to celebrate Eid, seeing no conflict between this and her job as a prostitute. Faten’s life is by no means easy, but she is defining a new sense of self.
Halima is also coming to terms with who she is and what she believes, having already demonstrated an almost syncretic approach to religion—blending Islam, secularism, and premodern “magic.” She is skeptical that Farid is actually a saint, but doesn’t shut herself down for thinking that just maybe he might be after Maati gives her the divorce she wanted. She accepts that the crossing did not succeed, and instead of trying to cross again, dedicates herself to making life work in Morocco for herself and her children.
By the end of her story, Lalami shows us through simple words and actions in regards to Fatiha, Halima has constructed an identity and community for herself. Ricci writes that the “empowerment and the healing of Halima’s trauma could only occur in her own country,” and links Halima’s story to the fictional Jenara’s in Murad’s tale, noting “At the end of the story, when Halima becomes a role model in her community and finds money to take her mother to a doctor to cure her arthritis, she builds a women-centered community of her own like Jenara’s harem.” Kimberly Segall agrees, arguing that “Halima’s liberation is not contingent on re-location; instead, freedom eventually materializes from a surprising source—from a labyrinth of personal and communal beliefs.”
