Departing from Traditional Routes: Interracial to Interfaith
Also, Ricky’s romantic relationship with Fatima is intercultural and interreligious and is established in the Eighteenth. This relationship is similar to those in other expatriate fiction in that she represents the woman he would not have access to romantically in the US. She attends one of the most prestigious schools in Paris, Sciences Po, and she wants to live in the US—“the land of opportunity” (140). She is the type of woman Ricky imagines would have rejected him at home. Fatima says Ricky “is too lazy for America. You are like a Frenchman. Or an African. You live for pleasure. Americans live for work” (8). This passage provides insight into Fatima’s adoption of the narrative of American success and ambition. In spite of this, in Paris, Fatima is not out of Ricky’s league; with regards to his income, Ricky is a man among men.
Also, though Fatima and Ricky are both of African descent (she is Cameroonian and Moroccan), they do not have the same religion. Fatima is Muslim, and Ricky is not religious, and this challenges the progress of their relationship. Ricky frames Fatima’s convictions about marrying within her religion as similar to people who would only marry within their race. The narrator states: “Fatima Boukhari had sworn she would only, ever, marry a fellow Muslim. Fatima’s inflexibility on the issue surprised Ricky” (15). It is important to note here that I am not conflating (in the case of Fatima) her ethnic, cultural, and religious identifications with Islam. Though Fatima is an untraditional Muslim, like her father, who is Muslim and born in Morocco (151), she identifies as a good Muslim religiously. When Ricky asks her, "Do you wrestle with the secular and the spiritual?," she responds:
Of course, I love my religion. I believe in Allah and the teachings of Mohammed. But it is hard to be pure, you know. One seeks a balance. I am a modern woman. I want to succeed in the secular world. I have opportunities before me that my parents never had. I do not wear a veil but I still consider myself a good Muslim.
In spite of wrestling with her own religious purity, Fatima desires a Muslim husband. Ricky, as a non-Muslim, is treated like Fatima’s previous non-Muslim lovers with whom she had sex without a commitment. Ricky’s religion—regardless of his income—excludes him from being her husband. As a man among men in Paris, Ricky has access to the woman he desires, but his interfaith relationship has some parallels to the early taboo of an interracial relationship. In Rendezvous Eighteenth, North Paris is a space where the interracial romance represents inclusivity. It is also the space where being the same “race” is not as important as being the same faith. These relationships broaden the portrayal of Paris from the mid-twentieth-century two-sided Paris. In fact, the narrator of Rendezvous Eighteenth asks us to push beyond all of these boundaries: "There had to be a way, didn't there? A way to transcend religion, country, all these ideas we use to define ourselves" (311).