on Posted Wed, Aug. 16, 2006 email this print this
Book Review | A teen tells her story of life in a Muslim Paris suburb
Kiffe Kiffe TomorrowBy Faza Gune Translated by Sarah Adams Harcourt. 179 pp. $13 Reviewed by John Freeman Fifteen is a tough age to begin with, but especially so for Doria, the sassymouthed heroine of Faza Gune's debut novel, Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, published in the author's native Paris in 2004 and now brought out in a crisp new English translation. As the book opens, Doria's father has scuttled off to Morocco in search of a second wife and - he hopes - a male heir. Meanwhile, Doria and her mother are left behind in a tower block apartment called Paradise in the suburbs of Paris. It may sound nice to Francophiles in America, "but our building, and the projects in general" Doria explains, "they don't get so much tourist interest. There aren't any Japanese hordes with their cameras standing at the bottom of the towers in the neighborhood. The only ones interested in us are the parasite journalists with their nasty reports on violence in the suburbs." These are the mostly Arab, largely Muslim outer suburbs of Paris, the neighborhoods you saw burning during the recent student worker riots. Doria's local heartthrob is a young man named Hamoudi, a hashish dealer who stands around quoting Rimbaud poems all day. Her mother struggles to make ends meet by working in a nearby motel with "made-in-Chernobyl cleaning products," getting the rooms nice and tidy. Hope is a knife's edge in this environment, something suggested by the book's title - a hybridization of the Arabic phrase kif-kif (same old, same old) and the French verb kiffer (to really like something). For the most part, the Arabic part of this definition wins out in Doria's worldview. But don't think Doria wants your sympathy. Gune grew up in the housing projects the of Paris suburb of Pantin, and now studies sociology at the
University of Paris. She gives Doria a voice that feels slightly more knowing than is believable, but mesmerizing nonetheless. Doria can be nasty but soft, foul-mouthed but sharply attuned to the subtleties of class humiliating her mother. And she ladles out her sourest sarcasm upon those who flaunt their "spesh" face at her, like the social worker who "makes out like she gives a damn about our lives," or women from the neighborhood who ridicule her mother for using their welfare stamps to buy clothes at the local charity shop. "It's like a film script and we're the actors," Doria complains about this life. "Trouble is our scriptwriter's got no talent. And he's never heard of happily ever after." The only things that pierce Doria's gloom are the movie-made images reminding her that life is better elsewhere. Naturally, she gravitates to heroes who refuse to accept their victimhood, like Al Pacino in Scarface. "I'll bet you nobody could take his snacks," she says. "Straight up, he'd take ou...