Also by Leila Slimani

  The Perfect Nanny

  Adèle

  Sex and Lies

  In the Country of Others

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2022 by Éditions Gallimard

  Translation copyright © 2023 by Sam Taylor

  Originally published in France as Regardez-nous danser by Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2022

  This translation originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Faber & Faber Ltd., London, 2023

  First United States edition published by Viking, 2023

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

  Names: Slimani, Leïla, 1981– author. | Taylor, Sam, 1970– translator.

  Title: Watch us dance / Leila Slimani ; translated from the French by Sam Taylor.

  Other titles: Regardez-nous danser. English

  Description: First English-language edition. | New York : Viking, 2023. | Series: In the country of others ; volume two | Originally published in French as Regardez-nous danser by Éditions Gallimard, Paris |

  Identifiers: LCCN 2023004996 (print) | LCCN 2023004997 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593493304 (hardback) | ISBN 9780593493311 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Slimani, Leïla, 1981–—Family—Fiction. | Women immigrants—Morocco—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. |

  Morocco—History—1956–—Fiction. | Meknès (Morocco : Province)—Fiction. | LCGFT: Biographical fiction. | Historical fiction. | Novels.

  Classification: LCC PQ2719.L56 R4413 2023 (print) | LCC PQ2719.L56 (ebook) | DDC 843/.92—dc23/eng/20230206

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023004996

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023004997

  Cover design: Julianna Lee

  Cover images: (woman) Ruslan Ivanov / Getty Images; (desert wildfire) Stephen Zeiglier / Getty Images; (swimming pool in the desert) ballyscanlon / Getty Images

  Designed by Meighan Cavanaugh, adapted for ebook by Cora Wigen

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_6.0_143817171_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Leila Slimani

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Dramatis Personae

  Part I

  Part II

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  _143817171_

  To Bounty,

  without whom

  nothing would

  be possible

  Dramatis Personae

  Mathilde Belhaj: Born in Alsace in 1926, she met Amine Belhaj in 1944 while his regiment was stationed in her village. She married him in 1945 and, a year or so later, joined him in Meknes, Morocco. After three years at the family house in the medina, they moved to a remote farm, where Mathilde gave birth to two children, first Aïcha and then Selim. While her husband worked furiously to make the farm a success, she turned her home into a clinic to care for the health of the peasants from the surrounding area. She learned the Arabic and Berber languages and, despite many difficulties and her opposition to certain traditions, particularly those concerning the status of women, grew to love Morocco.

  Amine Belhaj: Born in 1917, the eldest son of Kadour Belhaj, an interpreter in the colonial army, and Mouilala, he became head of the family after his father’s death in 1939. He inherited Kadour’s lands but, when the Second World War broke out, chose to enroll in a Spahi regiment. Along with his aide-de-camp, Mourad, he was sent to a POW camp in Germany, but managed to escape. In 1944 he met Mathilde, and they were married at a church in Alsace in 1945. In the 1950s, while Morocco was in turmoil, he devoted himself to the farm, which he dreamed of turning into a prosperous, modern business. He developed new varieties of olive and citrus fruit trees, and, after years of setbacks, his partnership with the Hungarian doctor Dragan Palosi finally enabled him to start making a profit.

  Aïcha Belhaj: Born in 1947, she is Mathilde and Amine’s only daughter. She went to a French convent school, where she finished at the top of her class. A shy, mystical child, she is her parents’ pride and joy.

  Selim Belhaj: Born in 1951, he is Mathilde and Amine’s only son. Spoiled by his mother, he too went to a French colonial school.

  Omar Belhaj: Born in 1927, he is one of Amine’s brothers. As a child and a teenager he felt a complex mix of admiration and hate for his elder sibling. He resented the fact that Amine fought for the French army and that he was their mother’s favorite. An impulsive young man, he joined the nationalists during the war. In the 1950s he became a leader in the anti-colonialist rebellion and was involved in the violence that preceded Moroccan independence.

  Jalil Belhaj: Born in 1932, he was the youngest of Amine’s brothers. Suffering from mental illness, he lived his life alone in his bedroom, staring endlessly into a mirror. When his sick mother moved to Amine and Mathilde’s farm, he was sent to stay with an uncle in Ifrane. After refusing to eat, he died of starvation in 1959.

  Mouilala Belhaj: Born at the start of the twentieth century, she married Kadour Belhaj. Though her family was middle class, she never learned to read or write. Many of her ancestors were mentally ill and would run naked through the streets or talk to ghosts. She gave birth to seven children, four of whom survived: Amine, Omar, Jalil, and Selma. A courageous, loving mother, she adored her eldest son and admired his French wife, Mathilde, for her freedom and education. Around 1955, starting to show the first symptoms of dementia, she left her house in the medina to live out the rest of her life at Amine and Mathilde’s farm. She died a few months before her son Jalil, in 1959.

  Selma Belhaj: Born in 1937, she is the sister of Amine, Omar, and Jalil. Cosseted by her mother, this radiantly beautiful girl was jealously guarded by her brothers and regularly beaten by Omar. An inattentive student, she frequently played truant from school, and in the spring of 1955 she met the young French pilot Alain Crozières and became pregnant by him. To avoid scandal and dishonor, Amine forced her to marry his former aide-de-camp, Mourad. In 1956 she gave birth to her daughter, Sabah.

  Mourad: Born in 1920, he is from a small village about fifty miles from Meknes. In 1939 he joined the army and was sent to the front, where he became Amine’s aide-de-camp before being promoted. Secretly in love with Amine, he was jealous of Mathilde. When the war ended he went to Indochina with a Moroccan regiment. Sickened by the violence, he deserted and found his way back to Morocco, where he took refuge with Amine. Given the job of foreman on the farm, he carried out his duties so zealously that his underlings hated him. He married Selma in 1955.

  Monette Bart: Born in 1946, she is the daughter of Émile Bart, an aviator at the base in Meknes. A student at the convent school, she became close friends with Aïcha. Her father died in 1957.

  Tamo: The daughter of Ito and Ba Miloud, two workers living in the douar near the farm, she was hired as a servant by Mathilde. Although treated harshly by the Frenchwoman, she found her place within the Belhaj family and worked for them until the end of her life.

  Dragan Palosi: A Hungarian gynecologist of Jewish origin, he took refuge in Morocco with his wife, Corinne, during the Second World War. After a bad experience at a clinic in Casablanca, he decided to move to Meknes, where he opened his own practice. In 1954 he persuaded Amine to go into business with him, exporting oranges to Europe. He became friends with Mathilde and helped her when she felt overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for the health of the local peasants. He took young Aïcha under his wing, giving her books to help quench her thirst for knowledge.

  Corinne Palosi: A Frenchwoman from Dunkirk, she is Dragan’s wife. Her voluptuous body provoked lust in men and suspicion in women. She suffered from her inability to have children and lived a somewhat solitary life in Meknes.

  I

  The times pay no heed to what I am. They impose whatever they wish upon me. Allow me to ignore the times.

  Boris Pasternak

  Mathilde stood at the window, looking out at the garden. Her opulent, chaotic, almost vulgar garden. Her vengeance against the austerity that her husband imposed upon her in every aspect of life. It was very early in the morning and the sun peeped shyly through the leafy treetops. A jacaranda, its mauve flowers not yet open. The sole weeping willow and the two avocado trees sagging under the weight of fruit that no one ate and that fell to the ground to rot. The garden was never as beautiful as at this time of year. It was early April 1968, and Mathilde thought it was not by chance that Amine had chosen this moment. The roses, which she had brought in from Marrakech, had bloomed a few days earlier, and their sweet, fresh scent pervaded the garden. Beneath the trees lay agap
anthus, dahlias, lavender, and rosemary bushes. Anything could grow here, Mathilde always said. For flowers, this soil was blessed.

  Already she could hear the songs of starlings and she spotted two blackbirds hopping in the grass, their orange beaks pecking at the earth. One of them had white feathers on its head and Mathilde wondered if the other blackbirds made fun of it or if, on the contrary, its uniqueness made it stand out, earned it the respect of its peers. Who knows how blackbirds live, she thought wistfully.

  She heard men’s voices, the roar of an engine. A huge yellow monster appeared suddenly on the path that led to the garden. First she saw its metal arms and then, at the end of those arms, the enormous shovel. The mechanical digger was so wide that it could hardly pass between the rows of olive trees and the men yelled instructions at the driver as branches were ripped from the trees. At last the machine came to a halt and peace returned.

  This garden had been her lair, her refuge, her pride. She had played here with her children. They had napped beneath the weeping willow and picnicked in the shade of the Brazilian rubber tree. She had taught them to flush out the animals that hid in the trees and bushes. The owl and the bats, the chameleons that they kept in cardboard boxes and sometimes left to die under their beds. And when her children had grown up, when they had tired of her games and her tenderness, she had come here to forget her loneliness. She had planted, pruned, sown, replanted. She had learned to recognize the different bird songs audible at every hour of the day. How could she dream now of chaos and devastation? How could she wish for the destruction of what she had loved?

  The workmen entered the garden and hammered stakes into the ground to form a rectangle sixty-five feet long and fifteen feet wide. They were careful as they moved around not to crush the flowers with their rubber boots, and Mathilde was touched by this pointless consideration. They gestured to the driver of the tractor, who tossed his cigarette out the window and started the engine. Startled, Mathilde closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the gigantic metal claw was sinking into the ground. A giant’s hand penetrated the black earth, releasing a smell of moss and humus. It tore up everything in its path and, as the hours passed, built a hill where shrubs and decapitated flowers lay lifeless amid the soil and rocks.

  That iron hand was Amine’s. Or so Mathilde thought that morning as she stood statuesque behind the living room window. She was surprised that her husband hadn’t wanted to watch it happening, to see her plants and trees torn out one after another. He had told her the hole had to be there. That they had to dig it next to the house, in the sunniest part of their land. Yes, in the place where the lilacs grew. Where the “lemange” tree had once stood.

  He had said no at first. No, because they couldn’t afford it. Because water was a rare and precious commodity that could not be used for mere leisure. He had yelled no, no, no, because he hated the idea of displaying such indecency before the eyes of the poor farmworkers. What would they think of the way he was educating his son, of his attitude toward his wife, when they saw her, half naked, in a swimming pool? He would be no better, then, than the old colonists or those decadent bourgeois families that proliferated all over the country, shamelessly showing off their glittering success.

  But Mathilde did not give up. She swept aside his protests. Year after year she tried again. Every summer when the chergui howled and the sweltering heat frayed their nerves, she brought up the idea of the swimming pool that so repulsed her husband. He could not understand, she thought, this man who did not know how to swim, who was afraid of water. She spoke to him softly, sweetly, imploringly. There was no shame in displaying their success. They weren’t hurting anyone. They had the right to enjoy life, didn’t they, after dedicating their best years to the war and then to this farm? She wanted that swimming pool; she wanted it as a reward for her sacrifices, her loneliness, her lost youth. They were over forty now and had nothing to prove to anyone. All the farmers in the area, at least those with modern lifestyles, had swimming pools. Would he prefer it if she flaunted herself at the municipal pool?

  She flattered him. She praised the success he had enjoyed experimenting with olive tree varieties and exporting citrus fruit. She thought she could persuade him by standing there in front of him, her cheeks pink and hot, hair glued to her temples with sweat, varicose veins bulging from her calves. She reminded him that everything they owned was down to their hard work and tenacity. “I’m the one who did all the work,” he corrected her. “I’m the one who decides what to do with the money.”

  Mathilde did not cry or get angry when he said that. She smiled inwardly, thinking of all that she did for him, for the farm, for the workers and their families. She thought about all the time she’d spent raising their children, taking them to dance and music classes, helping them with their homework. And for the past few years Amine had entrusted the farm’s bookkeeping to her. She wrote invoices, paid wages and bills. And sometimes—yes, sometimes—she would falsify the accounts. She would alter an amount, invent an extra farmhand or an order that had never been made. And, in a drawer for which she possessed the only key, she kept rolls of banknotes held together with beige rubber bands. She had been doing this for so many years that she no longer felt any shame or even any fear at the idea of it being discovered. The nest egg kept growing and she believed she had earned it; it was a tax for all the humiliations she had suffered. It was her revenge.

  Mathilde had aged. It was true that she looked older than her years, and that was almost certainly his fault. The skin of her face, constantly exposed to the sun and the wind, was coarser. Her forehead and the corners of her mouth were wrinkled. Even her green eyes had lost their sparkle, like a dress worn too many times. She had put on weight. One day in the middle of a heat wave, to provoke her husband, she had grabbed hold of the garden hosepipe and, watched by the maid and some of the farmworkers, sprayed water all over herself. Her clothes stuck to her body, revealing her erect nipples and her pubic hair. That day the workers prayed to the Lord, rubbing their tongues between their blackened teeth, not to let Amine go insane. Why would a grown woman do such a thing? People might spray water at their children sometimes, it was true, when the sun blazed down so hard that they were on the verge of fainting. But they always told them to hold their noses and shut their mouths because the water from the well could make you sick or even kill you. Mathilde was like a child herself. And, like a child, she never grew tired of begging. She’d talked about the happiness of days gone by, the vacations they’d spent by the sea in Mehdia, at Dragan’s beach hut. Speaking of Dragan, hadn’t he had a swimming pool built at their townhouse? “Why should Corinne have something that I can’t have?” she’d asked.

  She was sure it was this argument that had finally made Amine surrender. She had delivered that line with the cruel confidence of a blackmailer. Her husband, she thought, had had an affair with Corinne the previous year, an affair that had lasted several months. She was convinced of this despite never having found any clues other than a hint of perfume on his shirts, a trace of lipstick—those mundane, disgusting clues that are a housewife’s bane. No, she had no proof and he had never admitted it, but it had been so obvious, like a fire burning between their two bodies, a fire that did not last but had to be endured. Mathilde had tried once, clumsily, to talk to Dragan about it. But the doctor, who had grown even more debonair and philosophical with age, had pretended not to understand what she meant. He had refused to take her side, to lower himself to such pettiness, to join the impassioned Mathilde in fighting what he considered to be a futile war. Mathilde never knew how much time Amine had spent in that woman’s arms. She didn’t know if it was love, if they had spoken words of tenderness to each other or if—and this would perhaps be worse—their passion had been silent, purely physical.

  Amine’s handsomeness had only intensified over the years. The hair at his temples had turned white and he had grown a thin salt-and-pepper mustache that made him look like Omar Sharif. Like a film star, he wore sunglasses even indoors. But it wasn’t only his bronzed face, his square jaw, the white teeth that he flashed on the rare occasions when he smiled . . . It wasn’t only this that made him handsome. His manliness had matured like a fine wine. His movements were smoother now, his voice deeper. His emotional stiffness had come to seem like self-control, and his humorless face made him look like some wild beast, slumped in the sand, apparently listless, but that can, with a single bound, descend upon its prey. He was not entirely aware of his seductive powers; he discovered them little by little as they took effect on woman after woman, as if they did not really belong to him. And this sense of being almost surprised by himself probably explained much of his success with women.