For a long time, Hay Salam our house in Salé, was nothing more than a ground floor dwelling with three rooms, one formy father, one for my older brother Abdelkébir, and the lastone for us, the rest of the family, my six sisters, Mustapha, mymother and I. In that room, there were no beds, just threebenches that served as our living room couch during the day.

We spent all of our time in that room, where there was also this monstrous, gigantic old cupboard, all packed intogether: we ate there, sometimes made mint tea, went overour lessons, entertained guests, told stories that never ended.And, yes, that’s where we’d argue, politely or violently dependingon the day, our mental state and, most importantly, ourmother’s reaction.

For several years, my childhood, my adolescence, the essential part of my life occurred in that room facing thestreet. Four walls that didn’t really protect us from outsidenoises. A small roof to live under, storing in our memory,beneath our skin, what made up our life, experimentingeverything, feeling everything and later, remembering it all.

The other two rooms were almost beyond limits, especially Abdelkébir’s. He was the oldest, almost the king of the family. My father’s room was at once the reception room, thelibrary where he stored his magnificently-bound Arabicbooks, and his love nest. That’s where my parents made love.And they did it at least once a week. We knew. We kneweverything that happened at home.

To communicate his sexual desire to my mother, my father had perfected his own techniques, his own strategies.One of them consisted simply in spending the evening with us,in our room. My father, who was a great talker, who commented on everything, would suddenly fall silent. He wouldnot say anything, no word or sound would cross his lips. Hewouldn’t even smoke. He’d huddle in a corner of the room,alone with the torments of his desire, in the first stages of thesex act, already in a state of pleasure, his arms around his body.His silence was eloquent, heavy, and nothing could break it.

My mother would get it pretty quickly, and so would we.

When she accepted his silent proposition, she’d enliven the evening with her village tales and outbursts of laughter.Tired, or angry, she would be silent as well. Her refusals wereobvious, and my father would not insist. Once, upset, hetook his revenge on her, and on us by the same token(although we maintained complete neutrality in terms oftheir sexual relations, or at least tried to) by cutting off theelectricity to the entire house. He thus cruelly kept us fromthe international variety shows that we followed with greatinterest every week on television. He made us as frustrated ashe was. Nobody complained. We understood perfectly: nopleasure for him, no pleasure for us.