Born in Morocco, she fled to Paris to escape poverty after her father’s suicide. The novel adopts the perspectives of several characters, but Zahira is its heart. “His life, which he creates with me, in front of me. “I live through ,” Zahira says once of a man she takes into her home. And in place of native soil, they root themselves to one another. This scene appears in Abdellah Taïa’s newly translated A Country for Dying, a fable of contemporary immigrant life set mostly in Paris and peopled by men and women who send money home to countries they may never see again and consider it their fate “to pay with our bodies for the futures of others.”įrance offers them no succor, so they sustain themselves on a diet of fantasy, soul-deep hatred, force of will, and spells of love and longing cast by sorcerers-for-hire. It sounds “obvious” in Zahira’s mouth, Zannouba thinks. “I know that miracles happen.”Īs she departs, Zahira kisses her friend on each cheek and uses her new name. She was destitute, working as a barmaid and offering herself to anyone who would have her, but now she’s married and owns two homes. Her friend Naïma, once a prostitute herself, was rescued by a wealthy suitor, Zahira explains. Then she tells a tale intended to bring them both comfort - a message of hope, a dream made manifest. They watch a Bollywood movie, and because Zannouba is obsessed with it, Zahira relays, again, the story of an aunt who disappeared mysteriously decades earlier. The women spend the remainder of the evening communing. But Zahira, the older of the two, rejects each in favor of Zannouba - a decision she announces with such confidence that its selection seems fated. And an a.” They consider Zahra, ZouZou, Zhira, Zohra, and Zineb. “You have to pick me out a first name like yours,” Aziz insists.
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