Before one scoffs at national pride and the fatherland, at wealth and good manners, love of one's country, family, and traditions, one must have arri… - Albert Memmi

Then the long walk in the sun brought us back to the coffeehouse where we always found the same crowd of Sabbath friends, cheerful and loud, smelling of eau de Cologne and of snuff. How blessed was the Sabbath coffeehouse where we remained pure because there was no cigarette smoke and where our conversation remained courteous because we were forbidden to play cards! In addition, I enjoyed a child’s privileges: everyone had a smile for me and welcomed me, making room for me. Seeing myself treated in this manner by grown men, I felt that I assumed a man’s dignity.

Oh yes, poverty is something to be ashamed of, and this was clear to me from the mutterings of my own parents, from their remarks about the Oukala of the Birds and their pity for the Choulam family. As for me, I despised the poor. Fraji had to pay with shame the price of his poverty and I too, if we were poor, would have to pay with my own shame. In the disorder of my awareness, I made that day a great and unhappy step forward. I noted that I too wore new clothes only rarely and was forced to receive, like Fraji, bundles that stank of mildew and dirty linen and from which all the expensive buttons had been removed. I now understood his suffering fully, the shame that I had poured forth upon him in the presence of Chouchane and the other kids. His suffering and shame were my own too; on my own shoulders I now felt the burden of the same contempt, as if I had his hair, all clammy with filth, and his eyes like the headlights of a car. I felt that I had become Fraji.

The suicide bomber denies the rules so painfully acquired by human societies, the outline of a moralization of war. It is a reversal of the gradual humanization of human societies. They cut the throats of journalists, who are only doing their job, abduct or machine-gun tourists, who have arrived from another part of the world and had the misfortune to want to amuse themselves. A tract that appeared in Casablanca before a horrendous attack, one that was distributed only in the mosques, exhorted its readers to make no exceptions for women or children—all of them were considered guilty and deserved to die. The same justification has been advanced by Palestinian leaders: all Israelis without exception must be attacked. Islamic terrorism appears to have declared war on the entire world, including the Arab countries that fail to align themselves with its objectives. Tunisia, Morocco, even Saudi Arabia, the leading sanctuary of the Arab-Muslim world, have been struck. Until recently, Palestinian bombers concentrated on Israeli or Jewish targets; now the battle has extended to the world at large.