Foreign Soil, Foreign Heart

Mathilde, a spirited Alsatian woman, follows her Moroccan husband, Amine, to his inherited farm near Meknes after World War II. The land is stony, the house unwelcoming, and the isolation suffocating. Mathilde's first impressions are colored by discomfort, cultural dissonance, and the realization that she is now a foreigner, subject to rules and customs she cannot control. Amine, focused on the land and his father's legacy, is blind to her anxieties. The landscape, both beautiful and harsh, mirrors Mathilde's internal struggle as she tries to reconcile her dreams of adventure with the reality of her new life.

Marriage of Strangers

Mathilde and Amine's marriage, born of wartime passion, is quickly tested by the realities of postwar Morocco. Mathilde is thrust into Amine's family home, where she is an outsider among his mother, siblings, and the rhythms of Moroccan domestic life. The couple's intimacy is strained by cultural misunderstandings, gender roles, and the unspoken resentments that fester in their cramped quarters. Mathilde's longing for autonomy clashes with Amine's sense of duty and tradition, setting the stage for years of tension and mutual incomprehension.

The Farm's Harsh Promise

Amine's ambition to transform his father's barren land into a model farm is met with relentless obstacles: poor soil, locusts, drought, and the indifference of laborers. Mathilde, isolated and overworked, finds little solace in the daily grind. Their marriage is further strained by poverty and the unending demands of the land. Amine's pride and Mathilde's yearning for recognition and beauty are both battered by the farm's indifference to their hopes, and the couple's resilience is tested as they struggle to survive and find meaning in their toil.

Letters and Lies

Mathilde writes home to her sister Irène, embellishing her letters with tales of exotic adventure and domestic triumph. In reality, she is lonely, exhausted, and often humiliated by her outsider status. The letters become a battleground for sibling rivalry and a shield against the truth of her isolation. Mathilde's need to be seen and envied by her family in France underscores her sense of invisibility and the emotional cost of her chosen exile.

Learning to Belong

Mathilde gradually learns Arabic in the kitchen, participates in Ramadan, and adapts to the rituals of Moroccan life. Her efforts to belong are met with both admiration and suspicion. She is both teacher and student, advocating for Selma's education while struggling to assert her own values. The kitchen becomes a site of cultural exchange and subtle resistance, as Mathilde negotiates her place in a world that is not her own.

The Weight of Difference

Mathilde and Amine's mixed marriage is a source of gossip, prejudice, and internalized shame. Mathilde faces open hostility from French colonists and subtle exclusion from Moroccans. Their daughter, Aïcha, inherits this burden, feeling the sting of difference at school and in her own family. The couple's love is tested by the contempt of others and their own moments of alienation from each other, as the realities of race and colonial hierarchy intrude on their private lives.

Children of Two Worlds

Aïcha, the couple's daughter, is caught between cultures, languages, and expectations. Her first day at a French Catholic school is traumatic, marking her as an outsider among both Europeans and Moroccans. She is shamed for her appearance, her clothes, and her family's poverty. Yet she excels academically, finding solace in books and the rare moments of connection with her teachers. Her childhood is marked by fear, longing, and the search for belonging in a world that offers her no clear place.

The Price of Ambition

Amine's obsession with modernizing the farm leads to risky investments, failed partnerships, and mounting debts. His pride and sense of responsibility isolate him from his family, and his relationship with Mathilde grows increasingly distant. The farm's modest successes are hard-won and often overshadowed by setbacks. Amine's identity as a Moroccan landowner is fraught with tension, as he navigates the expectations of both colonists and nationalists in a country on the brink of upheaval.

Rising Tensions, Shifting Loyalties

As Moroccan nationalism surges, the Belhaj family is caught between worlds. Amine's brother Omar becomes involved in the resistance, while neighbors and laborers choose sides. The farm is both a refuge and a potential target. Mathilde's clinic, initially a source of pride and connection, becomes a site of suspicion and accusation. The family's safety and future are increasingly uncertain as violence and mistrust spread through the countryside.

The Clinic and the Community

Mathilde's role as a healer brings her into intimate contact with the local community, but also exposes her to criticism and danger. Her efforts to improve hygiene and offer medical care are met with gratitude, skepticism, and sometimes hostility. The clinic becomes a microcosm of the larger tensions between tradition and modernity, charity and suspicion, as Mathilde navigates the complex dynamics of power, gender, and cultural difference.

Selma's Rebellion

Selma, Amine's younger sister, comes of age in a world of strict gender roles and family control. Her beauty and spirit make her both a source of pride and anxiety for her family. Selma's secret romance with a French pilot and her subsequent pregnancy ignite a crisis that exposes the limits of Mathilde's influence and the enduring power of patriarchal authority. Selma's forced marriage to Mourad, Amine's loyal but troubled foreman, is a bitter compromise that leaves scars on everyone involved.

The Fracture of Family

The discovery of Selma's affair and the ensuing scandal push the family to the brink. Amine's rage erupts in violence against Mathilde and Selma, culminating in a terrifying confrontation with a gun. The family's fragile unity is shattered, and the women are left to pick up the pieces. Mathilde's sense of agency and self-worth are deeply wounded, and the children are marked by the trauma of witnessing their parents' conflict.

Violence at the Doorstep

As Morocco hurtles toward independence, violence engulfs the countryside. Farms are burned, neighbors turn on each other, and the Belhaj family prepares for the worst. Amine and Mathilde teach their children how to hide and defend themselves. The boundaries between friend and enemy blur, and survival becomes the primary concern. The family's isolation, once a source of pain, now offers a precarious refuge from the chaos outside.

The Limits of Forgiveness

In the wake of violence and betrayal, the family struggles to find a way forward. Mathilde and Amine's relationship is marked by silence, guilt, and a strange intimacy born of shared suffering. Selma, trapped in a loveless marriage, withdraws into herself. The children, especially Aïcha, carry the weight of their parents' choices and the scars of a world in transition. The possibility of forgiveness is shadowed by the knowledge that some wounds may never fully heal.

The Fire and the Future

The burning of the colonists' farms signals the end of an era. The Belhaj family, battered but intact, looks toward an uncertain future in a newly independent Morocco. The land, once a source of hope and hardship, remains indifferent to their struggles. The family's story is one of endurance, adaptation, and the painful forging of new identities in the crucible of history. The final image is one of ambiguous hope: a family changed by love, loss, and the relentless demands of the country of others.

Characters

Mathilde

Mathilde is a Frenchwoman whose marriage to Amine is both an escape from her past and a leap into the unknown. She is intelligent, passionate, and stubborn, but her idealism is battered by the realities of rural Morocco and the constraints of gender and culture. Mathilde's psychological journey is one of gradual disillusionment, as she confronts her own powerlessness and the limits of love to bridge difference. Her attempts to assert agency—through language, healing, and advocacy—are met with resistance, and her sense of self is continually challenged by isolation, shame, and the need for recognition. Her relationship with Amine is marked by both deep connection and profound misunderstanding, and her role as mother, wife, and foreigner is a source of both pride and pain.

Amine

Amine is a Moroccan veteran of the French army, determined to honor his father's legacy by transforming the family farm. He is driven, proud, and often emotionally distant, shaped by the traumas of war and the pressures of postcolonial identity. Amine's relationship with Mathilde is passionate but fraught, as he struggles to reconcile his love for her with his loyalty to tradition and his own insecurities. He is both a modernizer and a traditionalist, admired and resented by those around him. Amine's psychological complexity is revealed in his moments of tenderness, rage, and self-doubt, and his journey is one of adaptation, compromise, and the painful recognition of his own limitations.

Aïcha

Aïcha, the daughter of Mathilde and Amine, embodies the tensions of mixed heritage and cultural hybridity. Sensitive, intelligent, and observant, she is marked by her difference at school and at home. Aïcha's psychological development is shaped by experiences of exclusion, shame, and longing for acceptance. Her relationship with her parents is both loving and fraught, as she navigates the expectations of both French and Moroccan worlds. Aïcha's story is one of resilience, as she seeks to define herself amid the fractures of family and society.

Selma

Selma, Amine's younger sister, is beautiful, headstrong, and yearning for freedom. Her adolescence is marked by defiance of family and social norms, culminating in a forbidden romance and pregnancy. Selma's fate—forced into marriage with Mourad—exposes the enduring power of patriarchal control and the limits of female agency. Her psychological journey is one of hope, betrayal, and withdrawal, as she struggles to reconcile her desires with the realities imposed upon her.

Omar

Omar, Amine's brother, is consumed by resentment toward colonial rule and family expectations. His involvement in nationalist resistance is both a quest for meaning and an expression of deep-seated rage. Omar's psychological profile is marked by alienation, violence, and a longing for recognition. His disappearance and eventual return as a wounded revolutionary highlight the costs of political commitment and the fractures within the family.

Mourad

Mourad, Amine's former army comrade and later Selma's husband, is a figure of loyalty, discipline, and hidden longing. Scarred by his experiences in war and colonial service, Mourad is both a stabilizing force on the farm and a source of tension. His unspoken love for Amine and his awkward marriage to Selma reveal the complexities of masculinity, sexuality, and the search for belonging in a world that offers little space for vulnerability.

Mouilala

Amine's mother, Mouilala, is a figure of endurance, silence, and ritual. She embodies the values of the old Morocco, marked by loss, resilience, and a deep attachment to family and faith. Her gradual decline into illness and confusion mirrors the passing of an era, and her relationship with Mathilde and her grandchildren is both nurturing and constrained by custom.

Dragan Palosi

Dragan, a Hungarian Jewish gynecologist, is both an outsider and a connector in the community. His friendship with Mathilde and Amine, and his role as a healer, position him as a figure of empathy and cosmopolitanism. Dragan's own history of displacement and loss informs his understanding of the Belhaj family's struggles, and his presence offers a glimpse of solidarity across boundaries.

Corinne Palosi

Corinne, Dragan's French wife, is marked by her beauty, sensuality, and unfulfilled desire for motherhood. Her friendship with Mathilde is a source of comfort and envy, as both women navigate the challenges of expatriate life and the limits of their agency. Corinne's story highlights the complexities of female identity, sexuality, and the search for meaning in a world of shifting allegiances.

Tamo

Tamo, the Berber maid, is both a helper and a victim in the Belhaj household. Her youth, strength, and vulnerability reflect the intersecting oppressions of class, ethnicity, and gender. Tamo's relationship with Mathilde is marked by both affection and resentment, and her fate is a reminder of the many invisible lives that sustain and are shaped by the dramas of others.

Plot Devices

Dual Perspective and Shifting Narration

The novel employs a close third-person narration that shifts focus among Mathilde, Amine, Aïcha, and other key characters. This structure allows readers to inhabit the inner worlds of individuals separated by language, culture, and experience. The shifting perspectives highlight the misunderstandings, unspoken resentments, and moments of connection that define the family's life. The narrative's refusal to privilege a single viewpoint underscores the theme of irreducible difference and the impossibility of total belonging.

Letters and Storytelling

Mathilde's letters to her sister, and the stories she tells herself and others, function as both a means of self-assertion and a shield against reality. The act of storytelling—whether in letters, family myths, or the lies told to children—reveals the power and limits of narrative to shape identity and mediate pain. The gap between what is written and what is lived is a recurring motif, exposing the disjunction between appearance and reality.

Symbolic Geography

The Belhaj farm, perched between the European and indigenous towns, is both a literal and symbolic borderland. Its stony soil, contested ownership, and isolation mirror the larger tensions of colonial and postcolonial Morocco. The land's resistance to cultivation becomes a metaphor for the difficulties of integration, belonging, and transformation. The farm's fate is inextricably linked to the family's fortunes and the country's political upheavals.

Foreshadowing and Historical Backdrop

The novel's events are continually foreshadowed by references to historical change: the rise of nationalism, the exile of the sultan, the violence of decolonization. The family's private crises are mirrored and magnified by the public turmoil, and the narrative's attention to historical detail grounds the characters' struggles in the broader sweep of Moroccan history. The use of foreshadowing—through rumors, dreams, and the slow encroachment of violence—builds a sense of inevitability and tragedy.

Objects and Rituals

The novel invests ordinary objects—letters, clothes, food, photographs, weapons—with symbolic weight. Rituals of cooking, cleaning, prayer, and celebration become sites of negotiation and resistance, as characters seek to assert control or find solace in the face of uncertainty. The recurring motif of the "lemange" tree, a hybrid grafted by Amine and named by Aïcha, encapsulates the novel's meditation on mixed identity, adaptation, and the bittersweet fruits of cultural encounter.

Analysis

Leïla Slimani's In the Country of Others is a profound meditation on the complexities of identity, belonging, and power in the crucible of postwar, decolonizing Morocco. Through the intimate lens of one family's struggles, the novel explores the psychological costs of exile, the violence of cultural and gendered difference, and the ambiguous legacies of love and ambition. Slimani's narrative refuses easy resolutions: her characters are neither heroes nor villains, but flawed, yearning, and often powerless before the forces of history and the limits of their own understanding. The novel's modern resonance lies in its portrayal of hybridity—not as a harmonious blending, but as a site of tension, pain, and possibility. The lessons are both personal and political: the search for home is fraught, the past is inescapable, and the future is always shaped by the country of others. In a world still marked by migration, displacement, and the struggle for recognition, Slimani's story is a powerful reminder of the costs and the necessity of forging new ways to live together.

Last updated: May 11, 2025