A Distant Episode

Content Warning: The story and this guide discuss extreme violence, captivity, and enslavement. The guide also references imperialism.

“The chauffeur was scornful. ‘Keep on going south,’ he said. ‘You’ll find some languages you never heard of before.’”

The bus driver’s words become ominous foreshadowing in light of later events. The professor travels further south against his will, and he does find a language he has never heard before: the Reguibat’s, whose “guttural voices” he cannot understand. The bus driver’s “scorn” for the professor’s interest in local languages hints at the theme of Orientalism and Western Naivete in the Face of Colonialism.

“‘Does this café still belong to Hassan Ramani?’ he asked him in the Maghrebi he had taken four years to learn.

The man replied in bad French: ‘He is deceased.’

‘Deceased?’ repeated the Professor, without noticing the absurdity of the word. ‘Really? When?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the qaouaji. ‘One tea?’”

In this exchange, the professor’s dream of meeting his old friend is immediately destroyed. However, the qaouaji is completely indifferent to the professor’s distress. The exchange helps to establish the professor’s role as an apparent victim of fate. At the same time, the linguistic dynamics of the exchange hint at the professor’s culpability in what follows. The professor speaks in the language of the place he is visiting—a gesture that could be seen as respectful but also as presumptuous. The qaouaji takes it as the latter; by responding in French, he denies the professor’s implied claim to knowledge of the region and its people and reminds him of his status not only as an outsider but also as a colonizer.