![]() Amrani sets Youssef up in a luxurious apartment, where he enjoys the Mercedes-and-Marlboro lifestyle. Youssef confronts Amrani, who is thrilled to learn he has a son. Also featured in the magazine is a tycoon named Nabil Amrani, who resembles Youssef, right down to the piercing blue eyes. Hatim, the Party’s chairman, shows Youssef a magazine demonstrating the degenerate journalism (a piece on Morrocan vintners) of a reporter named Benaboud. His only friends are Amin, a law student, and Maati, who works for an Islamic extremist group, the Party, which operates a cafe to attract local youth. ![]() At university, Youssef envies the conspicuous consumption of “Mercedes-and-Marlboro” students. Under questioning by Youssef, she admits that his father was Nabil Amrani, scion of a wealthy family, who died in a car crash shortly before their planned marriage and Youssef’s birth. His father, Rachida claims, died in Youssef’s infancy. Her teen protagonist, Youssef, has begun university studies on scholarship, fulfilling the dreams of his mother, Rachida, a nurse, who raised him single-handedly in a one-room shanty. In her debut novel, Lalami, author of the short-story collection Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, 2005), explores the religious and political underpinnings of social inequity in globalized Morocco. A slum-dweller in Casablanca is briefly elevated into the upper class, then recruited by Islamic terrorists. ![]()
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