In the space of a few moments, I had become a model at the mere age of seventeen and a half! An exceptionally good job that meant I left each shoot with armloads of presents. My parents turned a blind eye to all of this. On one condition: that I wouldn’t fail my final exams. I didn’t listen to their advice and in June I was forced to take remedial classes. It was a slap in the face. I’d never thought of myself as a poor student. I hadn’t realized how many significant gaps there were in my learning. I was so arrogant that I thought I’d be able to catch up in no time. After all, it wasn’t my fault that I’d had such a chaotic and troubled education. I didn’t even know who I was anymore! Was I Lahbib Wakrine’s daughter, or did I belong to Mr. and Mrs. Lefranc? Was I Arab or Berber? French or Belgian? Mrs. Lefranc had Flemish roots …
I attended my remedial classes and managed to barely pass my exams. My French parents had nothing to say in that regard. I enrolled at the university, but never set foot there. I preferred to waste my time on far more futile endeavors and went to photo shoots. I was an adult by then and I didn’t realize how time was slipping through my fingers.
Although I’m not exactly sure as to how it happened, my Armenian friend got herself sucked in by a producer and featured in some explicit scenes in movies that were never shown in Marseilles’s bigger cinemas. She got into a big argument with her parents and disappeared. That drama made me snap out of my waking dream. I left that filthy scene behind and started taking my art history course seriously.
But all of a sudden, from one day to the next, I found myself on my own. My French parents wound up separating, and I barely noticed, since truth be told I’d been spending so little time at the house. They divided up all their possessions and I got caught in the middle. Mrs. Lefranc asked me if I wanted to go live with her or stay with her ex-husband. I was embarrassed. But as luck would have it, everything worked out: a court decree authorized my right to family reunification. My father, who’d set himself up in Clermont-Ferrand, sent for his wife and two of his other children. Forgetting all the sadness I’d suffered in the past and the pain I’d felt when I was abandoned, I suddenly felt the urge to join them. The botched adoption had merely been an interlude that had allowed me to have a fairly normal education. My parents were still my parents. My name was Amina Wakrine even though the Lefrancs called me Nathalie. As it happens, I never figured out why they’d chosen that name. At school, everyone had called me Natha. As for the guy with red hair, he wanted to call me Kika. And why not? My name seemed to change all the time, but I was still the same person, my parents’ daughter.
Once I got to Clermont-Ferrand, I felt like I was having a panic attack. That city felt like a prison to me. It was ugly, gray, and stifling. I wanted so badly to leave it and never return. Seeing my distress, my father decided not to say anything and allowed me to leave for Paris so that I could continue the studies I’d begun in Marseilles. He opened a bank account for me and deposited some of the money that the French couple had given him. It was a considerable sum, especially since it had been supplemented by the money orders that Mrs. Lefranc had been sending me ever since she’d gotten divorced. Leaving for Paris was a turning point for me. I was finally independent and free of all the guilt I’d ever felt toward my parents. I was determined to make the best of it. I would never have dreamed at that time of the monumental failure that would await me with the painter many years later.
I must admit that it wasn’t very long after I’d moved to Paris before I’d acquired a lot of boyfriends. But I remained a virgin, as I wanted to save myself for marriage. Go figure why a rebellious girl like me who’d known such a difficult life would care about keeping her hymen intact. Traditions and customs appeared to be stronger than I was.
My future husband never knew any of this. I never wanted to tell him and he hardly ever asked me any questions about that time in my life. Maybe he thought that everything that had happened before we met was ancient history — Jahiliyyah, the time of ignorance, as the Muslims call the centuries before the arrival of the Prophet Mohammed.
I only saw Mrs. Lefranc one last time after that, when she was in an old people’s home. She wasn’t even that old by then, but she had nobody to look after her or keep her company. She hugged me tight and I could feel her crying. When I left, she gave me a little suitcase. “You’ll open it on the day you get married,” she told me. But I couldn’t resist the urge. I opened it as soon as I got home. I was impressed: it was filled with jewelry, photos, a notebook with addresses, some of which had been scrawled out, a Moroccan dress that she must have bought at the souk on Place de la Kissaria in Rabat, and lastly a letter addressed to Maître Antoine, Esq., 2 bis Rue Lamiral, etc. I didn’t open it and I still have it somewhere in my files. One day I’ll go visit this Maître Antoine …
The Secret Manuscript
You must be asking yourself: how did I come to learn of the existence of the manuscript you’ve just finished reading and which I’m now rebutting point by point? By stealing it. Yes, by stealing it. I knew that one of his best friends, an amateur who wrote in his spare time, was up to something. But I suspected that they would try to conceal the fruit of their labors. So I started spying on them, taking care that they didn’t notice anything. Here’s how they went about it. Over the space of six months, his friend would come visit him very early in the mornings. They would spend hours talking and then he would pull out his laptop and edit their conversation, polishing it up into a proper text. When he was satisfied with the results, he would immediately print out the pages of that strange kind of biography and locked them up in the studio’s safe, to which I had neither the combination nor the key. A month ago, I took advantage of the fact that my husband would be spending the day at the hospital to run some tests and I called a locksmith to open the safe for me. After all, there was nothing strange about that, it was my own house and no locksmith would refuse to open up a safe, simply assuming I’d lost my key to it. I raided its contents and grabbed everything inside it. Before leaving, the locksmith asked me to think up a new combination code and so I’m now the only one who can access the safe. The manuscript was inside a folder marked “confidential.” I had a blast reading it. I breezed through it and made notes on it in the space of a single night. I was beside myself with rage, but for the first time my desire for vengeance was well-founded. His friend never came back. I believe he fell gravely ill. My prayers bore their fruit.
When my husband realized what I’d done, he didn’t do anything. I thought I heard him complaining to himself. I brought him an herbal infusion, but he gave me a look to signify he didn’t want it and then made it clear that he wanted me to leave. On my way out, I deliberately knocked a pot of paint onto an unfinished canvas. I regretted having done something so petty. I ruined a painting that could have one day made me a lot of money. Now let’s move on. We never act the way we should. My instincts often trump my ability to think rationally.
Foulane owned a collection of rare Arabic manuscripts. He was very proud of it, he would show it to his visitors and talk about it at length. I took advantage of him leaving the house to go for a medical checkup to steal them. I hid them at Lalla’s, since she owned a large chest. I will use them as a bargaining chip one day or another. I made sure he noticed their disappearance, which sent him into a fury. He went all red in the face and his body started shaking as though he’d been having an epileptic seizure. I stood right in front of him, and savoring my victory over him, I said: