Monia Mazigh's ​Farida

Reviewed by Maria Meindl

(Mawenzi House, 2024)

Farida is an unwilling matriarch. “Motherly love is the most oppressive force I have ever known,” she reflects, close to the end of her life. But the titular character of Monia Mazigh’s new novel nurtures the people around her in essential ways, holding them together without holding them back.

Tunis: 1941. Farida is led to her marriage bed by two aunts who release her from her heavy wedding garments, help her change into a nightgown decorated with lace handmade for this occasion, and leave her waiting for her husband to arrive. Her father has matched her with her cousin, Kamel, in the hopes of protecting the family’s land. This marriage, as far as Farida’s relatives are concerned, is her destiny. She does not want to be there. Even on her wedding night she thinks only of reading, which she describes as her “oxygen,” her “reason for living.” Her aunts tell her she belongs to Kamel. “I didn’t belong to anyone. I belonged to life. I belonged to death. I belonged to words and books. But it was too late.”
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Her forced marriage as a teenager and subsequent pregnancy crush Farida’s dreams. The rest of the book recounts a fifty-five-year struggle to bring more choices into its female characters’ lives. The story is told in multiple voices: not just Farida’s, but also those of her brother, her father and her husband. Mostly, though, it focuses on the women in her life: her friend, Fatma, her daughter-in-law, Jouda, and finally, her granddaughter, Leila, who has access to a wider world than her mother and grandmother could ever have imagined. The narrative moves deftly between these points of view, ultimately focusing on Leila’s. We now see the middle-aged Farida from the point of view of a child:

​My grandmother was never a real housewife, though she stayed in the house her entire life. Her life was elsewhere. Her life was in books and stories, literature and words. … if I interrupted her to say I was hungry while she was reading to me, her eyes, calm and gentle until then would suddenly become angry. “Can’t you tell your stomach to wait a bit until I finish the story…?”

This shift in perspective is an electric moment. In the segments told in Farida’s own voice, we see the ever-present trauma of her wedding night when: “I suddenly felt like fleeing that bedroom where my fate would be sealed.” The middle-aged Farida keeps that young girl alive within herself. From the outside, we see Farida through the eyes of someone who doesn’t fully understand the origins of her eccentric behaviour.
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Farida eventually obtains a divorce, yet can never further her education and become a scholar and poet like her brother Habib. She loves the son born of her unwelcome marriage, and throws herself into caring for him and his family. But she never stops thinking about what might have been. Dwelling on the loss of her freedom is not just a long-term response to trauma; it’s an act of resistance. Farida could deny or bury her pain, excuse or even defend the customs that hurt her so much, but instead she maintains her conviction of the injustice of her situation, and nourishes the hopes and dreams—if not the stomachs—of the women in her circle. 
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​In a beautiful translation by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott, the book’s tone is understated, but its economical prose reveals inner lives roiling with self-doubt, regret and longing. It is precisely this inner life Farida is struggling to maintain: the right to read, to delay a meal until a story is finished, or just stare into space, lost in her thoughts. 

​Taking place between 1941 and 1996, the story unfolds in a turbulent time. History is often brought in through the point of view of the men, who must try to make a life for themselves and their families in a serially colonized land. Farida’s brother, Habib, loves learning, yet the architecture of his school, Collège Sadiki, reflects the uneasy situation of the whole country:

​In the distance, I could see the twin domes of the college, like two breasts pointing to the sky, and the minaret, standing tall like a jealous guardian of Islamic traditions. The college represented a kind of uncertain compromise between East and West, between French and Arabic, a union of two worlds that had been watching each other for centuries.

​At the book’s outset the country is dragging itself along under French rule, while the threat of German invasion looms. The culture of Tunis is diverse; the characters have close business and personal relationships with the Italian and Jewish communities who share the city, but the world encroaches. The Germans are poised to invade. Will this bring salvation or disaster? When it comes to the country’s Jews, the latter proves true. For years they have lived harmoniously with their Muslim neighbours. Now, they are placed under restrictions and required to do compulsory labour. The Jewish schoolteacher, Thérèse, a revered figure in Farida’s life, comes to her door in a state of terror. Farida remarks: “Could it be that our books and our reading served no useful purpose for us women and it was men’s boots and guns that always had the last word?” She goes on:

​The Germans or the French, which of the two were ‘best’ for us? Those who had come to protect us against ourselves, bringing the civilization of the Enlightenment while killing our men and stealing our land? Or those who had driven out our enemies while humiliating, killing, and imprisoning some of us in labour camps? And who was to say that after the Jews it wouldn’t be our turn, the Arabs’ turn?

​The eventual defeat of the Axis does not improve matters. The mood is one of euphoria when the Allies enter Tunis. Europeans and Jewish residents celebrate but, Habib remarks: “The Arabs, afraid, hid away in their houses. They knew that the revenge of the French would soon some crashing down on them. When you’re small, you always ended up on the wrong side.” When the nationalist leader returns from exile, Farida remains aloof, perhaps out of her conviction that this is men’s business. Her son Tawfik observes: 

​When Zaïm Bourguiba returned to Tunis a hero, everyone wanted to go out and see him. Everyone but my mother. She stayed in our courtyard sitting on a wooden stool, a big laundry basin between her knees, washing our clothes. She had started smoking. I didn’t know how, and there was a cigarette between her lips. She had a big cake of green soap in one hand and an item of clothing in the other. 

Farida seems to be constantly preoccupied, yet she snaps to attention when one of the women in her life needs help or expresses a longing to escape the domestic sphere.

As a woman and a mother, Farida is prevented from living the life of the mind, as Habib is permitted to do. Even though he marries and becomes a father, despite pressure to become involved in politics, he is able to devote himself almost monastically to a French translation of the Quran. His relative freedom exists within an oppressive system. Though it eventually gains independence from France, Tunis, “infantilized under years of occupation,” must turn to its oppressors for help in shaping a new society. A disempowered feeling hovers over the inhabitants of this country, where, as Habib puts it, “All these forces want a piece of our flesh.”

“Getting out” is a cherished dream in this book—and not just for Farida. A friend tells Habib: “Make sure you don’t let yourself get caught up in the family’s scheming and endless quarrels. You will lose your soul. Go to college and become a teacher, earn your living and get away from those monsters.” Education is the ticket out for many characters, though Farida has her own methods of escape: books, newspapers and—at least for a while—cigarettes. The characters strive to get out of marriages, unwelcome societal roles, limitations of class, or even the country: “this hole” as Farida comes to describe it.

Though it shines a stark light on Tunisia’s recent past, another strength of this book is that it doesn’t condemn the country, its culture, or indeed its men. Some of the men throw their weight around, but do they really gain anything for all their power-plays and strategizing? Spoiler alert: Kamel doesn’t end up protecting the family’s fortunes. Farida’s father struggles to maintain his social and financial position. They are all up against something much bigger, and their dreams are thwarted, too.

Though their choices are limited, the women in this story have ways of looking after each other: prizing each other’s skills and talents, taking delight in each other’s company, confiding in each other and coming to the rescue in moments of distress. Female solidarity goes beyond the family circle. One character is helped out of a life-threatening situation by a clairvoyant and healer. Living in poverty and referred to as a dégasa, the woman proves to be wise and compassionate, the product of a culture able to face its own challenges if only it could disentangle itself from colonial rule. Farida’s marriage is miserable, but arranged marriages per se are not portrayed as a problem; the book’s only happy and fulfilling union is an arranged one.
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Women become a lifeline for an ageing Farida, who grows to be the opposite of a sweet old lady. Cross, haughty and distractible, she’s rejuvenated by the deep connection with the women in her life. Her son, Tawfik, notices that, when writing letters to her granddaughter, “Her back would straighten, her fingers would move with their former vigour, and her eyes would fill with a tenderness I had thought gone years ago.” In her final days, her beloved friend Fatma is the only one who can provide comfort. Fatma, she remarks, “will always be my mirror, the person on whose face I can read my own life.”

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​Maria Meindl is the author of a memoir, Outside the Box, a novel, The Work, as well as many short fiction and non-fiction pieces. In 2005, she founded the Draft Reading Series, which is still going strong after 20 years! She teaches movement in Toronto and runs a lecture/discussion series called The Work: straight talk on craft and method, about the history of wellness, fitness and performer-training methods.