Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow

Doria notes that Ramadan has begun, and describes how she had to bring a form, signed by her mother, excusing her from the school lunches, to her principal M. Loiseau. M. Loiseau thought Doria had forged her mother’s signature because Doria’s mother, who is illiterate, can only make a squiggle on the form. Doria says that M. Loiseau can only imagine illiteracy as existing in Africa, “like AIDS.”

Doria’s mother has recently begun working as a cleaning lady at a motel and Doria sometimes hears her crying at night. Doria’s mother is unable to take a break to eat when the daily Ramadan fast ends. Her boss, M. Winner, addresses her as “Fatma,” using a stereotypical Arab name in place of her real name, Yasmina. He does the same with other employees, calling all Africans “Mamadou” and all Chinese “Ping-Pong.” But when Yasmina mispronounces M. Winner’s Alsatian surname, he scolds her for disrespecting him.

Doria describes the social workers who’ve become part of herfamily’s life since her father left. The most recent is a smiling young woman whom Daria refers to as Mme. DuSomethingorother, or by similar nicknames, claiming not to be able to remember the woman’s name beyond the “Du,” which indicates a proper French heritage. Doria scornfully rejects Mme. Du’s initial offer of friendship, annoying Yasmina. Doria compares Mme. Du favorably with their previous social worker, a man who saw them as exotic Arabs and expressed surprise that Yasmina had only one child. Doria heard that he left to live in the country, and she imagines him selling traditional French foods from a van at village markets, far from the suburban projects. 

When Mme. Du asks Doria to name the last book she’s read, Doria shrugs. She hides the fact she’s just read a Moroccan novel, The Sand Child, whose female protagonist is raised as a boy because her father wanted a son, a situation she relates to her own. Yasmina believes that their abandonment by Doria’s father was mektoub, or fate. Doria doesn’t question this, but she does resent the fact the “script” they’re doomed to play out doesn’t seem to have a happy ending.

Doria describes how disillusioned Yasmina was when she arrived in the Parisian suburb of Livry-Gargan, which fell short of the idealized image of France she’d built up from movies and television as a girl in Morocco. In contrast, Doria recalls how “dazed” she felt on their last visit to Morocco, surrounded by tattooed women eager to marry her off to a village boy known as Mule-head Rachid. But she and her mother are unlikely ever to go back to Morocco now, because they have no money and because her mother has suffered the humiliation of being abandoned by her husband.

Doria describes her worries about the future and its uncertainty. She recently dreamed about her own funeral, attended only by her mother, Mme. Burlaud, her building’s cleaner, Leonardo DiCaprio, and an old friend who has moved away. Noting her father’s absence, she imagines him back in Morocco, preoccupied with his new bride and their son. Doria hopes that her father’s son will be even less attractive than Mule-head Rachid, and assumes he will, because “in this family, being a stupid bastard is passed down from father to son” (10).

Doria has trouble envisioning her own future and admits that she does poorly in all her classes except Art and Design. She imagines ending up in a fast-food restaurant, being told off by her boss for giving extra fries to a customer on the chance he could be the man of her dreams, ready to sweep her off her feet and take her home to a five-room apartment.

Doria tells the reader that she and her mother have received their welfare stamps, which will save them from the humiliation of shopping at the charity store. Once they ran into a neighbor, Nacéra, who has lent Yasmina money in the past and who pointedly comments that she is there to donate, while Doria and Yasmina are there to buy. Yasmina leaves without any new clothes, rather than risk ending up with Nacéra’s castoffs. Doria expresses pride in her mother’s decision.

Doria notes that her civics teacher, M. Werbert, has given her class an assignment on the topic of respect. M. Werbert tries to encourage and support Doria, but she avoids him because his attention feels pitying to her, like the looks she and her mother get at the thrift store. She feels he only teaches at her school because it flatters his self-image. Doria declares that none of the teachers at her school feel respect for their students and imagines them leaving homework unread so they can return to their comfortable middle-class lives. Doria says she’s had enough of school and wants to drop out.

The only people she can talk to, Doria claims, are Mme. Burlaud, and Hamoudi, a neighbor and small-time drug dealer in his late twenties who spends his days smoking hash. Hamoudi and Doria sometimes talk for hours, as they both feel trapped by circumstances and share a disillusioned outlook on life. Hamoudi has a prison record but came close to attending university and loves poetry. He recites the poems of Arthur Rimbaud to Doria, something she thinks of whenever she sees the police hassling him.

Doria takes a ride on the metro out of boredom, with no destination, and encounters an old gypsy man playing the accordion for passengers. She follows him from car to car and fantasizes about the romantic nomad life she imagines he’s led, then feels ashamed when he holds out the McDonald’s cup in which he’s collecting change. With no change to give, she pretends not to see him.

Doria thinks that if she won the lottery, she’d buy the gypsy musician a motor home like the ones given as prizes on The Price is Right. She’d buy new mittens for herself, and get her mother a manicure to repair the damage done by the “made-in-Chernobyl” cleaning products she uses at the motel (18). She thinks of the contrast between her mother’s hands and the freshly-manicured hands of Madame Du, but is cheered up by the cries of two Pakistani men selling roast nuts on the street.