Theodore Dalrymple

Second opinion | 12 March 2005

I see the lower depths wherever I go

issue 12 March 2005

Having spent so long, if not in the lower depths exactly, at least among their inhabitants, it is not surprising, perhaps, that I see the lower depths wherever I go. My experience haunts me, and I am on the lookout for them. For example, not long ago I was in a bookshop in a chic part of Paris when I picked up a book by a young woman who called herself simply Leila. The title of the book was Mariée de force (Forced Marriage), and the cover showed the eyes of a young woman peering out of a slit in a black veil.

The book recounts the life of a young woman, born in France of Moroccan parents. And everything she recounted reminded me of my young female patients of Pakistani origin: everything, in fact, was exactly the same.

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