A Palace in the Old Village Read Online Free PDF Page B

and even his eldest daughter, Jamila, consulted a certain Allam, who extracted tidy sums from them in exchange for talismans to carry or hide among their belongings.
    One day Jamila had been pulled aside by security agents at Orly Airport: in her purse, wrapped in tinfoil and duct tape, was a small unidentified object that the agents suspected was drugs or an ingredient for a bomb. They had active imaginations. Jamila had opened the wad to reveal a strip of brown fabric on which Allam had scribbled in Arabic a protective talisman that had unfortunately proved powerless to deflect the attention of the security staff. During the flight, his daughter had reflected on how ridiculous it was for a modern young woman like her, born in Yvelines, to be carrying in her purse—along with (among other things) a mobile phone, a bottle of perfume, some lipstick, and a PDA—a scrap of dirty material for her mental and physical safety! But a little later, when the plane encountered some frightening turbulence, Jamila couldn’t help halfway blaming the storm on the fact that the talisman had been opened and incorrectly closed. I was sure born in France, she concluded , but my genes come from the old country!
     
    What could Mohammed do? His entire village practised this kind of magic. His wife occasionally burned herbs with a suffocating smell and asked him to stand in the smoke for seven minutes. Because he avoided conflict, he did as she asked instead of arguing; he had no choice if he wanted peace in his home. He walked around and around the little brazier so the nauseating herbal odours could affect the course of his life. His wife was a good woman, though; illiterate perhaps but intelligent, courageous , and thrifty. She never became angry, patiently put up with her children’s behaviour, and served her husband without grumbling, of course: protest was useless. She’d seen what had happened to Lubna, a young village woman who married too young and was taken to France by her husband. Lubna had tried to rebel, refusing to cook and clean the house, but her husband had boxed her ears so hard that she’d been deaf for a good hour. When she went to the police, the husband denied everything , then sent her back to the village as a repudiated wife. He’d written ahead to ask her father to take away her passport and throw it in the fire.
     
    Mohammed preferred the Book. He liked things to be simple and obvious. He was fond of the olive oil and pure honey his elderly uncle brought him. Although Mohammed was diabetic, his uncle had persuaded him that pure honey was completely compatible with diabetes : You can eat as much of this as you want; honey is wonderful for the health. What you should avoid is white sugar, city sugar. Honey can only do you good! Allah talks about it in the Koran: there will be exquisitehoney in paradise, rivers of honey—it can’t be bad for you. So Mohammed ate some every morning before going to the plant. His diabetes was getting worse, drying his mouth, but he would not give up his honey. Hot bread soaked in olive oil then dipped in a bowl of honey—that was his treat, his pleasure.
    Mohammed took medications, and his wife had given him a talisman tightly sewn up in a scrap of grey cloth, probably the same kind his daughter carried. It will protect you against illness, the evil eye, and even against the heat in the plant! He pretended to believe her; he didn’t want to give up his morning feast. As for the Book, enveloped in a swatch of the paternal shroud, every day he slipped it inside a plastic bag bearing the logo of a local supermarket. Whenever he opened the book and brought it to his lips, he was no longer alone. No need for the services of al-Hajj, the sorcerer of the Porte de la Chapelle neighbourhood in Paris; no, he refused to go see him, and although Mohammed carried the man’s talismans around with him, that was because he didn’t want to hurt his wife’s feelings.
    Avoiding arguments with his