Bilal has moved into my parents' home (readers will note that I live in my own flat a short distance from the Vieux Port). The reason for this is to adapt him to French culture a little bit more, as I have no willingness to live in La Savine, even if a top-floor flat would offer fantastic views of Marseille and the Mediterranean Sea. Such a rough gangsta area is not appealing to a sophisticated haute couture Frenchwoman such as myself. I would get tired of people greeting me by saying "Wesh-wesh toubab?" ("Wagwan honky?") For some reason, Bilal never looks entirely at ease when in some more typically French areas in a way that he did in Mali (I cannot vouch for what he is like in La Savine, having never been there) and often appears homesick.
In the longer term, we are wondering about what sort of arrangements will be most agreeable to us. One option we are considering is purchasing a livestock farm that would enable Bilal to feel at home. Although the Common Agricultural Policy allows French farmers to get away with many backward and inefficient agricultural practices (hey, I suppose some compromises are necessary to produce the pure and natural products that a Frenchwoman desires), they are still a world apart from Touareg practices. Another possibility is for us to construct a mountain home in the mountains to the north and east of Marseille to allow him to life a hill farmer lifestyle when he is not at work. If anyone has any suggestions, please e-mail me at mariannegaboriault@gmail.com : - we are looking for countryside that is as rugged as Bilal is, MDR!
Even if we struggle to find somewhere that causes Bilal to feel completely at home, Bilal has told me he is willing to endure feelings of homesickness for the rest of his life in order to be with me, adding that I am "une femeu bien faite" (French for "a well fit bird") even by French standards: - obviously, when he is living with my parents, they will attempt to smooth some of his rough edges. Bilal was never a macho man, but he has spent so much time around people who speak in this manner that he uses such words as if they were normal words. He managed to restrain himself for job and university interviews, but found it too tiring to keep up a pretence beyond that. This is partly why he tends to gravitate towards tasks that involve doing things in the background at work: - he can prove himself by the quality of his outputs and is unlikely to be obstructed by his hip-hop use of language. At university, he would just turn up for lectures, practical assessments etc and just go home again afterwards to do his study: - he did very well academically and he was very diligent with his studies, but he never had any interest in being involved in the extracurricular life of his university, as he never really felt at home with the white middle-class liberal atheistic students the way he does in da 'hood or at church. He feels at home at church because he knows that in this world, we are to regard ourselves as merely sojourners and if a church is a sound church, it is the closest experience a believer will have to the world to come. Obviously, the wedding will take place in our own church (not the one shown below).
I think Bilal will look absolutely gorgeous in a morning suit, but he doesn't like suits and as far as I'm aware, the only time he has ever worn one in his life was for his job interview with the "Trom de Marseille" (as he and his homies call it in Verlan, MDR). He is very fond of his Touareg attire and some of this looks gorgeous upon him though, especially the bright indigo garments. Because he is such a handsome man, being around him requires a greater amount of self-restraint and I am pleased that with our engagement, the amount of time I will have tocontinue to exercise this self-restraint is getting shorter.
