The Influence Peddlers Page 2

  Ganthier’s plan was simple: he was going to offer this parcel in exchange for another that was located between his land and that of Mabrouk Belmejdoub. That would consolidate Ganthier’s land and cause the property of his neighbor and daughter to move toward the north. The parcel Ganthier was offering was larger, and Si Mabrouk had not been against the consolidation. Rania had been against it. Ultimately Ganthier would succeed in the exchange, of course. But while waiting, his workers, his machines, his animals had to cross the widow’s land, on a path that was three hundred yards from her veranda . . . No, she wouldn’t ask for any payment, that would have been beneath her, but Ganthier would have to request permission to pass, even for just himself, he who was so self-assured and so proud of the way he rode a horse. To those who expressed surprise at his patience, the colonist responded that one could not act with a former minister the way one could with a poor member of a tribe, especially when the former minister was what they called “a great friend of France.”

  Rania did not, however, spare the great friend of France some distress, as on the day he had learned that his daughter’s carriage had been recognized a few steps away from the courthouse of Nahbès, during the trial of the rioters of Asmira, in February 1922, peasants who had protested with stones and weapons the sale of a parcel of collective land. There was a large wagon in front of the carriage, with food that had been distributed to the families of the accused. The authorities had not intervened: to feed those in need was a sacred duty, even when it was the relatives of the rioters. In addition, journalists had attended the trial, including a woman who had come from Paris, where she had the ears of the powerful; they had to show that the arm of France was strong but not inhuman. And that daughter of Belmejdoub, she was after all the widow of someone who had died on the battlefield of honor. A report pointed out that, coincidentally, the journalist, yes, Conti, Gabrielle Conti, left in the carriage. Just in case, they put together a rather well documented file: “That Belmejdoub girl, she reads too much, she is only a Bovary,” the head commissioner had said, happy to show off his education to Ganthier. “A Bovary who reads Rousseau and Sheikh ‘Abduh,” Ganthier had replied, giving the police report back, “not novels for idle women. I’ve known her since she was a child; she is becoming dangerous.”

  Rania also read newspapers from Paris, L’Avenir and L’Illustration. She lingered on the photos, those of Latife Hanim, the young wife of the new leader of Turkey, Kemal Atatürk: she was wearing a black coat and an Astrakhan cap and was reviewing the troops in Istanbul, next to her husband, on horseback, without a veil. In other photos Latife Hanim was receiving ambassadors. There was also mention of preparing an official trip with her husband, a long trip, to Germany.

  Rania turned the pages. She had a favorite photo. She stared at it. That photo appeared in issue after issue of L’Illustration: a woman “seated in the back of a sedan,” said the ad. The woman looked like a princess; you could see her ankles and the beginning of her throat . . . “Chauffeur, on your way!” Rania began to dream of traveling to Germany while putting on her large, traditional robe meant to hide everything, a gray caftan that darkened her figure without hiding the movement of her hips, not a movement of a flirty woman, rather that of a tree in the wind. She wore a veil over her face when she was in town but not on the farm, or she would wear a veil in the Egyptian style, one that could be pulled up over the mouth and nose. She also dreamed of a satin slip. Gabrielle Conti was going to send her one from Paris, pale pink. They had long conversations, sitting on the veranda of the farmhouse; the journalist had been to Turkey, the entire Middle East. Rania talked to her about her own country; Gabrielle had promised never to cite her name, and Rania discreetly fed the journalist’s reports. She nourished her own thinking while feeding her thoughts to Gabrielle—men, their refusal of women . . . to act above all like . . . cite the Book . . . the scholars . . . shame them . . . L’Illustration was a colonial newspaper, but she liked to find some of her words in it.

  2

  THE BETRAYAL

  At the end of the spring of 1922, on avenue Jules-Ferry in Nahbès, Rania witnessed the sudden arrival of a group of noisy foreigners who were driving cars that were more beautiful than those of the French colonists, white convertibles with huge wheels with steel hubcaps and headlights as big as a horse’s head. They were wearing trousers and golf caps like the ones she had seen in magazines, and they called out to each other on the sidewalks as if they were at home. She found them unbearable. She was inside her carriage and was giving the driver the signal to leave when her cousin Raouf came up and spoke to her with due respect. She hadn’t needed to ask questions; at eighteen he was proud to know more than she did about them. Yes, those were Americans, they were there to film a movie, Warrior of the Sands. She was fascinated, and hostile, watched them silently, said to herself, These are people of the times to come . . . but they haven’t come like travelers to whom one can say “welcome” . . . nor like the French, mitl ennar ‘ala lkabid, like a liver on fire . . . Why am I watching them? Because the times that are coming have nothing else to offer me? What kind of car is that? I’m looking at it, I see it’s there . . . And those women, how did they do it? Do I want to become what I’m looking at, to bare my legs and strike a man’s back while I laugh? In public? Perhaps not in public.

  In the street, passersby, North Africans and Europeans, watched while pretending not to see, disturbed less by those wearing the golf caps than by the young women who were accompanying them, some of whom were driving; they were wondering who could have authorized this; the war hadn’t finished destroying the world, their dresses were revealing a lot more skin than the devil might have requested, and now they were sitting at outdoor cafés without men, which the most brazen of French or Italian women would never have dared to do.

  Raouf managed to give Rania some details: A film with a character who was a sheikh played by a famous star. There must be around fifty Americans. They were noisy, but it bothered the French the most. They didn’t like people watching people who were taller and richer than they were, and you know, I’ve heard that some of the Americans are against colonialism!

  After a while the young man began to tire of standing in front of the half-covered window of the carriage. Rania and he were relatives, but that was no reason. He assumed an affectionate air. Rania sensed what was behind it; the gentleman was about to take his leave. She then abruptly told him that she had to return to the farm, said good-bye, the little light-brown lace curtain fell back over the window, and the carriage left avenue Jules-Ferry, leaving the foreigners with the scandal they were provoking and the populace with novel emotions.

  In the days that followed, there was plenty of commentary in the town. At the Cercle des Prépondérants, where the most influential French people could be found, someone even said: “When the women sit down you can see everything!” and the governing board members of the Cercle decided they wouldn’t be inviting “those people” to any gatherings. They held to their decision until they learned that one of the American women, a public relations person who smoked in public, had said: “The most backward people in my country, those in favor of slavery, are more open-minded!” Fear then traveled through the little colonial world, the fear of being described in American newspapers as “more backward than slavery supporters.” The doors to the Cercle were opened to those young “flappers,” as the Commander de Saint-André, who spoke their language, called them. Someone said something that enabled them to save face and that made the committee laugh: “As long as they leave their negro servants in the kitchen with our fatmas . . .” One of the women of the Cercle, the wife of the lawyer Doly, a somewhat dotty, thin woman, with ears that almost touched her neck, asked the commander what the word flapaires meant, with the understanding that if the answer were to go beyond the limits of decency he should disregard the question. The commander reassured her: the word evoked the noise that the wings of a young bird make when it begins to fly. “Then, let’s welco
me the little birds!” Madame Doly concluded, her chin raised high.

  In the Cercle, the little birds behaved very well. They came in a group, wearing more fabric than usual. They showed that they knew how to take tea among people of good standing, carry on a conversation in flawless French, and remain seated on the edges of their chairs while Madame Doly explained to them what the word Prépondérants meant: It’s very simple. We are much more civilized than all these natives. We carry much more weight. Thus we have a duty to lead them for a very long time, because they are very slow, and we meet in the Cercle to determine the best way to do so. We are the most powerful association, organization in the country! The American women talked about Balzac and Ravel so well that they put their hostesses to shame, but they also fawned appropriately over the starched dresses and straw hats with red wooden cherries sewn on the edges, the height of fashion in the colonial world. All tension had dissipated. It was even hinted that the Americans should be invited to join as honorary members, a suggestion that was made at the moment of their departure as hands were shaken and cheeks were kissed.

  The American women had found the encounter “marvelous” and “fantastic,” but they didn’t return. They did not make the Cercle des Prépondérants their gathering place of choice. Their thés dansants, and especially their evening parties, were held in the salon of the Grand Hôtel, the most lavish and newest of the three hotels in Nahbès, on avenue Jules-Ferry, a huge salon, paneled in red cedar, whose bay windows looked out over a tree-filled garden.

  These American parties were soon the talk of the city. A betrayal! said the French ladies because, after a suitable period of waiting, many of the gentlemen in Nahbès began to frequent the Grand Hôtel. And the worst “betrayal” was that of the garrison officers, who should have been examples of reserve and aloofness. The officers defended themselves. It wasn’t a betrayal to go to these parties because they had been ordered to do so by command of the colonel in charge, to assert the presence of France, the protector of the country, to “fraternize” with the Americans who, since the declaration of their President Wilson, had a tendency to say whatever they wanted about the rights of people to govern themselves. And the officers would have been happy to bring their wives along if they hadn’t publicly said such bad things about those “easy gatherings,” an expression in which the adjective played a very important role because, although it primarily described “gatherings,” once it was spoken it could freely—in the silence of innuendo—apply itself to the young women who were the center of them.

  This outrage among the ladies of Nahbès was not, however, without certain disadvantages for them, because the presence of this large film crew had caused a crisis of inadmissible romance within their ranks, a crisis caused essentially by the presence of Francis Cavarro, the “star” of the film, as they said. All the women, even those who couldn’t stand the flapaires, dreamed of one day being able to talk to that star the way they did out loud in their dreams, the dreams one has when one’s husband is at work, the children are at school, and the maids are in the kitchen . . . to be the one who can catch Cavarro’s attention . . . to be singled out from everyone else in the group . . . Cavarro was the other Valentino. He was a much better actor. To get Francis Cavarro to smile while offering him a cup of tea, to brush his fingers under the cup . . . He was tall, his jet black hair slightly slicked back, with a Greek nose, blue eyes, long hands, filled with energy—he had been great in Escape from Zenda—and one could forget the empty years and talk to him, take him aside, be taken into his arms, or simply listen to him, because one evening he would agree to play the piano and sing while looking through a bouquet of roses at the one who would be his chosen one and whom he would take out in the mythical car that he had brought over with him to Nahbès, his Silver Ghost, a Rolls-Royce that he drove himself.

  Every day around 6:00 p.m., shortly after the end of the day’s filming that took place outside the city, the Silver Ghost could be seen, its top rolled down, rolling slowly along avenue Jules-Ferry. It was accompanied by a crowd of shouting children who fought in front of the hotel for the privilege of opening the doors of a Rolls, an incomparable car, so incomparable that the contrôleur civil, Claude Marfaing, who held colonial power over the entire region, when he knew that the Silver Ghost was approaching the town limits, avoided driving his own car, a Panhard & Levassor, nonetheless, but few women truly dreamed of watching a sunset sitting in the front seat of the contrôleur civil’s Panhard & Levassor, whereas the Greek nose, the jet black hair, the long hands, and the Rolls of Francis Cavarro were conjured every day by hundreds of female souls deprived of any emotional heroism but whose romantic dreams remained dreams, and the most unhappy of dreams, those that are within arm’s reach but that make you feel your inaptitude all the more.

  It was a regrettable situation, and more than one respectable woman among those who had condemned those “easy gatherings” had later sought to join them. None had found a way to do so, because in what was going on at the Grand Hôtel there was something worse than the liberal ways of young girls who would all the same end up getting married and having children like everyone else; something had happened that prevented every French woman concerned with her dignity and the exemplarity of her race to go down avenue Jules-Ferry when those gatherings were taking place, in one of the nerve centers of the city, a dual city, resting on a plateau on the shores of the sea and cut in two by a deep valley, perpendicular to the shore; a city that for centuries occupied only the right side of the valley, the left side having then been chosen exclusively by the French colonists; two very distinct cities: walls, the mosque, and the souks on one side, the post office, train station, hospital, and avenue Jules-Ferry on the other; a “native city” and a “European city” that could be separated in an instant, in the event of disturbance, by a company of Senegalese auxiliaries who were stationed over a ravine on the single bridge connecting the two sides, a dual city proud of what was called its “harmonious duality.”

  And this was exactly what prevented the French ladies from entering the salon of the Grand Hôtel. The Americans had become accustomed to inviting “natives” there—that was the word the colonials used to talk about the North Africans outside official discourse; they might also say “Arabs,” but that had the disadvantage of not including in their contempt the Jews native to the country. In short, the Americans openly treated the natives as equals in the European city, the most cultured natives, of course, those who had done or were doing their studies in French, the young bourgeois, but indeed the same ones who were pushing for a catastrophic change in the current state of affairs. And if in the modern European city there were already a few places where the paths of the two societies, the Europeans and the natives, crossed—certain cafés, for example—one didn’t find women there, and patrons sat in established parts of the room or the terrace separated by some half-dozen tables that as agreed would never be occupied and from which the waiters carefully avoided removing the dust that had settled on them.

  Up to then, the only worlds where everyone mingled were those of the Bolsheviks, the unions, the socialists, militants of all races who gathered to prepare a life that no one would ever have. They were small in number, and the regulations of the protectorate stated that, if need be, they could be either repatriated (city dwellers) or imprisoned (natives). There were also all the official events followed by a méchoui where everyone was invited, but here, too, things were perfectly regulated: each person had his rank, each person his zone.

  But the parties at the Grand Hôtel were different, a hodgepodge, as it was called, of Arabs, Jews, even Italians, who came to mingle with the French and Americans, with music, alcohol, dancing, the clicking of heels, bracelets, and mainly laughter, the too-free laughter and shouts of those women from across the Atlantic, a swarm of actresses, assistants, make-up artists, secretaries, publicity people, journalists, and daughters of producers, all young and lively, beautifully constructed with straight backs, straight
foreheads, straight noses, shapely legs, who put their hands on a man’s shoulders without even knowing his name, not concerned with his origins, and any man while dancing could put his hand on a woman’s uncorseted hip, even her bare skin, shimmering with joyful sweat.

  Only a small number of people were involved, but the damage had been done, and those people thought they were preparing the future! At meetings of the Prépondérants it was pointed out, moreover, that on the one hand the natives were careful not to bring their wives to those gatherings and that, on the other, the “true Arabs,” those of tradition, the believers—you know how they can believe here—the true Arabs, disapproved of those gatherings just as much as the most respectable French people did, and they wanted them prohibited, and the filming of that Warrior of the Sands, as well, a satanic undertaking, putting human beings on film. Without going that far, there was talk of putting pressure on the management of the hotel so those uncontrollable parties would have to be held at a private location instead of being the shocking attraction of the city center. Doctor Pagnon, who, with Jacques Doly, the lawyer, was considered one of the most influential of the Prépondérants of Nahbès, had alerted the heads of his organization in the capital, but they responded that they could not for the moment do very much: those people from Hollywood and New York had been received by the sovereign in the presence of their consul and the resident general of France, the sovereign had even decorated the film’s director, Neil Daintree, with the medal of the Ordre des Compagnons du Trône . . .