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Secret Son
The opening to Lalami’s debut novel paints Youssef El-Mekki’s life in contemporary Morocco as difficult but with a halo of idyll hanging about it. The 19-year-old lives with his mother in a one-room house that couldn’t be described as romantic: There are no windows, rust slowly consumes the front door, and rocks hold the roof to the walls. But there’s no sense of gloom about the place. As Lalami writes, in trademark straightforward prose, “The week before, [his mother] had turned thirty-nine, and though her hair was streaked with gray and her forehead lined with wrinkles, her green eyes and high cheekbones gave her a distinguished, almost aristocratic look.”
It’s this richness that makes Youssef’s departure from home all the more powerful. When his father dies, his mother confesses that he wasn’t Youssef’s biological dad, who turns out to be a wealthy businessman, Nabil. Youssef tracks him down and the two receive each other warmly, father offering son an apartment away from the shanty. But his mother warns him off. His father didn’t want him when he was born, why change now? How would the rest of the family react to a son suddenly appearing, with a proper claim to the inheritance? But the allure proves too great for Youssef, who moves into the apartment, though not for long.
Though smartly rendered, the characters occasionally devolve into stock figures for Lalami’s actions. And while her prose digs deep into the psyche of Youssef, it often comes off clunky when put to the task of describing action. Still, Lalami has crafted a contemporary novel focused through a clear-eyed vision of all of the pressures acting on Youssef: economic hardship, familial hang-ups and the complicated stew of Middle Eastern politics. Neither the liberals nor the fascists come across particularly well. Maybe the sturdiest branch to reach across political and religious divides is corruption.
