This Strange Eventful History

François is now in college. He longed to come to the US, especially during the grim, postwar days in Paris, but now that he’s in school in Massachusetts, he feels out of place, even among other French students. Unlike them, he’s also African, though colonial (white) African rather than Arab or Black. When he tells them about his family and his childhood abroad, they’re interested, but he can feel the divide between them. He’s among the first class of foreign students admitted to his university, and the other members of his fraternity confess that they were a little worried about him when they heard that he was French. They assure him, however, that after meeting him they thought he was “all right.” Nonetheless, he had to room with the only Jewish student, the other “foreigner.”

François misses his family desperately but wishes he didn’t. He has an American girlfriend and American friends, but now that he’s living in the US, it no longer feels like a land of possibility. Life isn’t all bad, however. His grades so far are only middling, but he enjoys his classes. His two French friends, Broussard and Mouret, are amiable despite not entirely understanding what it means for him to be both French and Algerian.