My life as a Moroccan prostitute

Jmiaa is a thirty-four-year old Casablanca prostitute. She lives in one room with her daughter Samia who is young enough that, when Jmiaa brings a john back to the room, Samia accepts the story that they are repairmen. "It's very rare that she's there when I bring men home—" Says Jmiaa who hires an old lady to take care of the girl. "—but when she is, I tell her that they're repairmen . . . I don't know what she thinks, but what's certain is that she's growing up and if this continues, it might start to cause some problems." What's certain is that Jmiaa, divorced, uneducated, alcohol dependent if not an alcoholic has very few options.

So in the first third or so of Meryem Alaoui's debut novel, Straight from the Horse's Mouth (translated from French by Emma Ramadan), Jmiaa tells an identified listener about her life as a whore; the challenge of tolerating the men she services; the circle of girls and regulars in which she travels; her marriage, separation, and divorce (she should have listened to her mother). She has a filthy mouth and her room and neighborhood sound squalid and dangerous. It's not a picture of city that the Moroccan National Tourist Board wants publicized.

Jmiaa's aimless life changes when she is connected with a Moroccan filmmaker, "a skinny stick with long disheveled hair at the end. Hamid told me she was the neighbor's niece but I hadn't imagined she would be so young. She's standing in front of the door, and she's looking at us and smiling. Toothy grin. Horse's mouth!" And from then on Jmiaa refers to her as Horse's Mouth.

Horse's Mouth is writing a screenplay about a prostitute who robs a jewelry store in Casablanca. She wants local color, local mores to improve her script. Jmiaa fills her in. The writer writes her script and raises enough money to produce it, but cannot cast a leading lady. Desperate, she auditions Jmiaa who is a natural.

Jmiaa's life changes dramatically. The movie company puts her up in a luxury hotel in which the bed alone is as big as her former room. A car picks her up in the morning and brings her back to the hotel at night. Not only does the role fit Jmiaa as a comfortably as a djellaba*, the film is an international hit. By the novel's end, Jmiaa has a sustaining role in a Mexican TV series.

The book's jacket says that Alaoui "creates a vibrant picture of the day-to-day challenges faced by working people in Morocco, which they meet head-on with resourcefulness and resilience." Because I know nothing about working-class life in Morocco nor do I know what it would be like to be a prostitute in such an environment, I accepted and was entertained by Jmiaa's story.

On the other hand, I think the translator made a mistake by noting foreign terms with an asterisk and sending the reader to a glossary in the back. For example, " . . . he adds as if he were Imad Ntifi*." The glossary says Imad Ntifi is (was?): "Famous presenter of musical and other entertainment shows." Why not make it, " . . . he adds as if he were the famous presenter of musical shows, Imad Ntifi"? Why make the reader work?

Another example: "The bnader* started up." Bnader we learn is the plural of "bendir: a drum traditionally fashioned from goatskin." Surely there's a way to avoid the asterisk. Maybe, "The goatskin drums started up"?

And at the other extreme, there are glosses we don't need. Jmiaa says about her ex-husband in Spain, "The only effort he makes is walking the two hundred yards between him and the grocery store* where I send the money." Does the reader need the following: "Berber grocery stores are often used as informal networks for transferring funds across the Mediterranean. The sender gives dirhams to a grocer in Morocco, and the recipient gets the equivalent in euros (minus a commission) at the cousin's grocery store in Europe—and vice versa." I figured out from the text that there was an informal transfer system; I didn't need the details of who does what minus a commission.

I suspect the translator (and her editor) wanted to give native English speakers a sense of Moroccan life and culture by retaining these linguistic markers, words like caid, chaabi, Cheikb Yassine, chemkara, chikbate, choumicba, Cimi . . . But rather than enhance the book's pleasure, they are constant interruptions. I could have done without.

*By the way, "djellaba" is not defined. Wikipedia tells me it's a long, loose-fitting unisex outer robe with full sleeves.