The Last One Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  THE LAST ONE

  “The musical quality of the novel is key—the story races along with the pace of a song or a poem…Daas’s depiction of Paris has been hailed by critics…Her beautifully drawn descriptions of endless hours on public transport were Daas’s way of exploring a commute she once considered ‘normal,’ then grew to see as an ‘injustice.’ Daas’s overriding message is that you don’t have to give up any part of yourself: you can inhabit a host of seemingly clashing identities at once.”

  —The Guardian

  “Fatima Daas’s monologue is constructed by fragments, as though she were updating Barthes and Mauriac for Clichy-sous-Bois. She carves out a portrait, like a patient, attentive sculptor…or like a mine searcher, aware that each word could make everything explode, and you have to choose them with infinite care.”

  —Virginie Despentes, author of King Kong Theory

  “The Last One is a thoughtful examination of a character who deeply wants to be known despite lacking the tools to do any of that self-excavation. The work is tender and sweet, lyrically built, and reprises itself in fascinating ways. Who are we apart from our family? Can we face ourselves? Can we love? Fatima Daas asks these questions the way many of us do: plaintively, longingly, and with a tremendous amount of heart.”

  —Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth

  “In The Last One, Fatima Daas uses words like bold and vivid brush strokes, exploring identity through lyricism. I tore through this incredible work of art in one sitting, but I often took a moment to catch my breath and admire the defiant beauty at the heart of this book.”

  —Abdi Nazemian, author of Stonewall Honor Book Like a Love Story

  “Fatima Daas’ debut novel signals the presence of an exciting voice that commands attention and insists on complexity. Whether she is unpacking family ties or tracing the ways queerness dovetails with other identities, Daas stops you in your tracks with what seems like a quiet symphony until you realize it is in fact a crescendo of what it means to be human.”

  —Mona Eltahawy, author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

  “Whether dealing with chronic illness, sexuality, therapy, education, faith, friendship, family, romance, or riding the bus, Fatima Daas’ The Last One takes on the world with honesty, humor, and lyricism. The specificity of life in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois underscores universal themes and utterly recognizable emotions. Daas bares her narrator’s soul, and we can’t look away.”

  —Eman Quotah, author of Bride of the Sea

  “Daas explores multifaceted identity through achronological slices of life, arrayed like glittering shards of a fractured mirror. An extraordinary debut novel you’ll never forget.”

  —Forsyth Harmon, author of Justine

  “The Last One is a bombshell that examines the question of identity with subtlety and passion.”

  —Elle (France)

  “A rhythm that pulses, sentences that crack, chapters like a chant…The furiously contemporary voice that we were hoping for.”

  —Les Inrockuptibles

  “A first novel of striking lyricism, with a narrator on the ridge between the ‘forbidden’ and her desire.”

  —Livres Hebdo

  Originally published in French as La petite dernière in 2020

  by Les éditions Noir sur Blanc, Paris and Lausanne

  Copyright © Les éditions Noir sur Blanc, 2020

  Translation copyright © Lara Vergnaud, 2021

  Production editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas

  Text designer: Jennifer Daddio / Bookmark Design & Media Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  For information write to Other Press LLC,

  267 Fifth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016.

  Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Names: Daas, Fatima, 1995- author. | Vergnaud, Lara, translator.

  Title: The last one / Fatima Daas; translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud.

  Other titles: Petite dernière. English

  Description: New York : Other Press, [2021] | Originally published in French as La petite dernière in 2020 by Les éditions Noir sur Blanc, Paris and Lausanne.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021020210 (print) | LCCN 2021020211 (ebook) |

  ISBN 9781635421842 (paperback; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781635421859 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCGFT: Novels in verse.

  Classification: LCC PQ2704.A22 P4813 2021 (print) | LCC PQ2704.A22 (ebook) | DDC 843/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020210

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020211

  Ebook ISBN 9781635421859

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  a_prh_5.8.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

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sp; Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Credits

  About the Author

  My name is Fatima.

  The name of a symbolic figure in Islam.

  A name that must be honored.

  A name that mustn’t be “soiled,” as we say in my house.

  In my house, to soil means to dishonor. Wassekh, in Algerian Arabic.

  Or darja, darija, our word for dialect.

  Wassekh: soil, stir shit up, blacken.

  It has multiple meanings, like “close.”

  My mother would use the same word to tell me I had gotten my clothes dirty, the same word when she came home and found her Kingdom in bad shape.

  Her Kingdom: the kitchen.

  Where we had best stay out of her way.

  My mother hated when things weren’t put back in their place.

  There were rules in the kitchen, like everywhere else. We were expected to know and respect them.

  If we couldn’t, we had to stay out of the Kingdom.

  Among the phrases my mother said all the time, there was this one: Makènch li ghawèn, fi hadi dar, izzèdolèk.

  It sounded like a punch line to me.

  “Not a soul to help you in this house, yet it keeps piling on.”

  Curling my toes in my knee-high socks, I usually retorted the same way:

  “You need to tell me if you need help. I’m not psychic. I can’t just guess.”

  To which my mother would snap back that she didn’t need “our” help. She deliberately used the collective pronoun in her reproach, so I wouldn’t take it personally, so I wouldn’t feel attacked.

  My mother started cooking at fourteen.

  First, the things she called sahline: easy.

  Couscous, tchouktchouka, djouwèz, lamb tagine with prunes, chicken tagine with olives.

  At fourteen, I didn’t know how to make my bed.

  At twenty, I didn’t know how to iron a shirt.

  At twenty-eight, I didn’t know how to prepare plain spaghetti.

  I didn’t like hanging out in the kitchen, unless it was to eat.

  I liked to eat, but not just anything.

  My mother cooked for the whole family.

  She designed the menu based on our whims.

  I refused meat; I got fish. My father couldn’t go without it; there’d be plenty on his plate.

  If Dounia, my older sister, wanted fries rather than a traditional meal, that’s what she would get.

  For as far back as I can remember, I see my mother in the kitchen, hands chapped by the cold, cheeks hollow, drawing a ketchup stick figure over my pasta, decorating the dessert, preparing the tea, storing the pans in the oven.

  I only have a single image left: our feet under the table, heads bent over our food.

  My mother at the stove, the last to sit down.

  Kamar Daas had a Kingdom, but I didn’t belong in it.

  My name is Fatima Daas.

  The name of a girl from Clichy who crosses the tracks to get to school.

  I buy a copy of the Direct Matin at the Raincy-Villemomble station before I catch the 8:33 a.m. train.

  I lick my finger to efficiently turn the pages. The headline on this page: How to Relax.

  I find my horoscope beneath the weather forecast.

  On the platform, I read my daily horoscope and then the one for the week.

  If you want to be able to endure life, prepare for death. —Sigmund Freud

  Your astral landscape: Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t help everyone who asks. Focus on yourself! Think before jumping into major projects. Don’t confuse your optimism for Herculean abilities.

  WORK: It’s time to make some robust decisions. Your realistic approach will be your best asset today by far.

  LOVE: If you’re in a relationship, be careful not to push away your partner with excessive demands. If you’re single, dream about Prince Charming all you want, but don’t expect to bump into him on the street corner.

  Then I skim through the tragedies of the world as I try to ignore the urge to stare at people on the train.

  Every single day there are commuters who refuse to move down the aisles. In the morning, I repeat the same not-magic words: “Would you mind moving forward, please? Other people need to get to work too.”

  At the end of the day, my tone changes.

  I deliberately strip away the politeness.

  The commuters who don’t move down the aisles are always the ones preparing to get off at the next two stations: Bondy and Noisy-le-Sec.

  Their trick is to park themselves next to the doors so they don’t miss their stop.

  In the bus, I watch to make sure the woman with a child, the pregnant woman, the elderly woman has a place to sit.

  I focus my attention exclusively on the women.

  I feel like I have to play the vigilante, to defend others, to speak on their behalf, to make them heard, to reassure them, to save them.

  I didn’t save anyone. Not Nina, not my mother.

  Not even myself.

  Nina was right.

  It’s not healthy to want to save the world.

  My name is Fatima Daas, but I was born in France, in the department of Yvelines, aka “the 78,” in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

  I came into the world by cesarean at the Clinique Saint-Germain on Rue de la Baronne-Gérard.

  Cesarean, from the Latin caedere: “hew”; “cut.”

  Incision in the uterus.

  After my birth, my mother has a heart attack, at thirty.

  I blame myself for being born.

  They take me out of her belly at dawn.

  I’m not born asthmatic. I become it.

  I officially enter the category of allergic asthmatics at age two.

  In adolescence, I hear the word “severe” used to describe my condition for the first time.

  At seventeen, I understand that I have an invisible disease.

  My longest hospital stay lasts six weeks.

  My sister Dounia says that I’m a sponge, except the air’s not getting out.

  It took me a while to realize that my asthmatic episodes can be triggered by emotions.

  I have to follow a course of medical treatment, consistently, for life.

  Seretide: twice a day, one puff in the morning, one puff at night.

  Inorial: one pill in the morning.

  Singulair: one pill at night.

  Ventoline: in case of respiratory distress.

  My name is Fatima.

  Fatima is the youngest daughter of the last prophet Mohammed—Salla Allah alayhi wa salam, peace and salvation be upon him—and his first wife, Khadidja.

  My name is Fatima.

  God alone knows if I carry it well.

  Whether I’ve soiled it.

  Fatima means “little weaned she-camel.”

  To wean, in Arabic: fatm.

  Stop the nursing of a child or a young animal to transition it to a new mode of feeding; feel frustration; separate someone from something or something from someone or someone from someone.

  Like Fatima, I should have had three sisters.

  One of mine passed away a few hours after her birth.

  Her name was Soumya.

  Fatima’s father deems her the noblest woman in heaven.

  The prophet Mohammed—may God’s peace and blessings be upon him—said one day: “Fatima is a part of me. Any who harm her harm me.”

  My father would never say such a thing.

  My father doesn’t say much to me anymore.

  My name is Fati
ma.

  I’m a little weaned she-camel.

  I’m the mazoziya, the youngest daughter.

  The last one.

  Before me, there were three girls.

  My father had hoped I would be a boy.

  During my childhood, he calls me wlidi, my little son.

  Though he should call me benti, my daughter.

  He often says: “You’re not my daughter.”

  I reassure myself by understanding that I’m his son.

  My mother dresses me until I’m twelve years old.

  She puts me in flower dresses, skater skirts, ballet flats. I have headbands in different colors, shaped like crowns.

  Not every little girl wants to be a princess, Mama.

  I hate everything that has to do with the female universe as my mother presents it to me, but I haven’t realized it yet.

  Sometimes, my father takes me to school.

  He doesn’t check my homework.

  He doesn’t ask me what I learned.

  He counts on my mother to do that.

  My mother often says: “I did my wajeb.”

  Wajeb: role.

  Her role as a mother.

  A role: a function served by someone; an attribution assigned to an institution; a collection of norms and expectations that govern the behavior of an individual as a result of their social status or function within a group.