purity

Can anything in this world be pure?  In The Last Friend, Tahar Ben Jelloun suggests that if anything can be, it would be friendship.  His short novel tells of the friendship between Ali and Mahmoud, two Moroccan boys, from their school days until the end.  Even until the end, each of them believes their friendship to have been the most important, most defining, and most pure thing in their lives.

Ben Jelloun, though, refuses to clearly answer any such question.  Instead, his story offers a polyphony of voices, that of both Ali and Mahmoud as well as their mutual friend who serves as an intermediary when their relationship sours.  For you see, their relationship goes through a number of difficult periods, when petty jealousies and misunderstandings and spousal pique prevents the men from sharing their lives in any but the most superficial of ways.  And yet they find their friendship to still be pure in shape and character.

They believe in this relationship until the end, even after it has fallen away, because it has fallen away in order to maintain its purity.  As I read this story last week, I wondered how these men could hold on so long to their friendship, to their relationship.  If anything can remain pure, it is friendship.

But my own life seems to be characterized by impurity, an ever-widening sphere of compromise, disappointment, and betrayal.  My life began in betrayal and, I fear, will end in it, betrayal of loved ones, of oneself, of one’s values and principles.  How do we live, survive, in a compromised world?

Ben Jelloun, though, offers solace, for his characters are just as imperfect, just as compromised and impure as we.  They continue, nevertheless, to believe not in the possibility of purity in their lives, in themselves, in their relationships, but in the reality of good enough, perfectly good enough.  The friendship between Ali and Mahmoud, despite all its tribulations remains not simply good, in their eyes, but exactly enough for each of them, serving them to the unavoidable, inevitable end.