Sex and Lies by Leila Slimani

Author:Leila Slimani [Slimani, Leila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

F

‘WHO’D WANT A GIRL LIKE ME?’

F is a prostitute. I’ve no need to ask her to be sure. I’ve only to watch her, as the men in the room are doing. She is sitting at a hotel bar in Casablanca. She’s a pretty girl, wearing too much make-up and looking altogether too polished. Perhaps she’s trying to look like one of those Arabic pop stars our Moroccan boys dream about. F is twenty-five and looks much older.

My parents came to Casablanca when they were young, to get out of poverty. They’re from the south of Morocco. They are country people and, though they’ve been living in the city a long time, at heart they haven’t moved far. I grew up in a poor neighbourhood, with three sisters and two brothers. My parents are illiterate and they didn’t take much interest in our education. I stopped school young, but I like reading and seeing films. I think I could have been a good student with a bit of help. You know, every day you’re meant to kiss your parents’ foreheads in thanks for being able to study. But I’m ignorant and there’s nothing I can do.

We didn’t talk about sex or love with my parents. There are things you don’t do. They were working long hours, they were always worried, always tired. They brought us up the hard way. They yelled at us all the time. And they used to hit us. My sisters and I helped our mother with the house and looking after our brothers. By twelve I could do everything, I knew how to keep a household.

I hated it where we lived. I used to get hassled by the boys, there were lots of drugs and lots of violence. When you’re a girl, you have to fight to make people respect you. I always wanted to come here, to the centre of Casablanca, where the shops and the best restaurants are, where I could have worked in a shop or as a waitress.

In my neighbourhood everyone knew some girls who went with men. Young girls and older ones. I remember one woman whose husband had left her. I think she had two or three children. Everyone knew that that was how she could afford her children’s milk. You mustn’t think people don’t know. Even my mother knows perfectly well what I do.

I started working in a hair salon when I was seventeen. I was already quite mature: I had breasts, I looked older than I was. But I didn’t like the work and I wasn’t very good at it. It was my boss who found a way for me to do massage instead. And that’s how it started. In the beginning I was doing massages at a hotel, and from there I got some regular clients. My mother would like me to marry a foreigner so I can get the papers and go abroad, so she doesn’t complain. She’s pretending not to know.

I’ve met some very kind men. There are older ones who give me presents and help me.

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