“I started in life as a child found by accident. Stolen with a car as it happens. An Ami 6 of Citroën heritage. So they called me Ami 6 so as not to forget. Well these are my origins so to speak. As time went on they shortened it to Aziz.”***
After my mother in law died, I picked up a few of her books, this one ‘One Way’, priced at 89,00F from 1994, it’s going back a bit but I think I may have bought if for her. Incidentally it won the Prix Goncourt that year.
Aziz Kemal (see the opening quote), brought up in Marseilles by gypsies that found him in a car they’d stolen, had no identity papers, nothing new there, where he was brought up nobody did, but nobody got caught, except this time Aziz did, and at his own wedding.
Aziz is then expelled to Morocco, back then they imagined he would be accompanied by a cultural attaché to help him reintegrate Morocco. (Bless them, no flights to Rwanda for processing back then!) Except of course neither he nor the attaché had ever been to Morocco.
When pushed by Jean-Pierre Schneider, the young attaché about where he comes from, he makes up a story about a village in a secret valley, Irghiz and so begins their journey.
Must say I enjoyed this book, are they both looking for something, besides this non existant village? Well of course they are.
First Published in french as “Un aller Simple” in 1984, by Albin Michel
Translated into English by Mark Polizzotti and published in 2003 by Other Press
***My translation
The quotes as read in French before translation
J’ai commencé dans la vie comme enfant trouvé par erreur. Volé avec la voiture, en fait. Une Ami 6 de race Citroën. Alors on m’a appelé Ami 6 en souvenir. Ce sont mes origines, quoi. Avec le temps, pour aller plus vite, c’est devenu Aziz.
South of Paris books 