Welcome to Paradise by Mahi Binebine, translated by Lulu Norman

Between the Rock and a harsh place

It is very doubtful if this novel by a Moroccan author will be read by those who need to read it. That is, those who regard "asylum-seekers" as alien creatures chosen to receive massive benefits from the state and then to beg in our streets, to seduce our women and to have a whale of a time. A shame; Welcome to Paradise might allow some light to penetrate their minds.

On the Moroccan side of the Straits of Gibraltar, a group of North Africans wait to cross illegally into Spain. Aziz, the narrator, is accompanied by Reda, his terrified cousin. The others include Nuara and her baby, Kaeem Judi who has escaped from terror in Algeria, Pafadnam, a huge, handsome Malian, and Yaree the masseur, who has grown sick of kneading rich white men "who smelled like corpses".

The group is hiding in the rocks. They think they can see lights on the other side. An overturned boat waits to take them out at a signal from a Spanish trawler. Beside the boat stands the motionless, threatening figure of the trafficker.

While they wait, they tell stories of their pasts and their dreams for the future. Momo, go-between to the trafficker, entertains them in the café with tales of his splendid life in Paris, his imprisonment and his three deportations. His customers' tales are more or less tragic – what else drives people from their homes? For Yussef, it is his family, dead through eating poisoned grain. Nurua is trying to join her beloved husband in France, tortured by thoughts that he might have taken to drink, or another woman. Reda simply wants an end to "punishments that end in gangrene, slaps from bosses in short-lived jobs... beatings from policemen... the fear that had pursued him all his life".

Their dreams are not grandiose. They don't add up to much more than a decent, or semi-decent, place to live, and a lowly job. They cannot understand the Western hippies, lounging around in the sun, with the ultimate safety net of a passport in their pockets. Their own fate, Aziz knows, is likely to be very different as illegal immigrants: "to learn how to become invisible... close our hearts to humiliation and insults... keep in the background... a stray dog... or even a cockroach."

But if their dreams are pathetic and their past lives tragic, there is no hint of self-pity in the way they are told. An air of goodness and happiness – rare commodities in any fiction – pervades Aziz's memories of his schooldays, and his teachers Sister Benedicte, Father Ali and Mr Romanchef. A shocking revelation about Aziz and Mr Romanchef is made towards the end of the book.

The signal from the trawler is finally seen, the trafficker takes their papers and their few belongings, because they must arrive "naked" on the other side, and the boat is launched. What happens I am not going to reveal – but there is survival and hope for some. From often bleak material, Mahi Binebine has written a moving novel that is full of life and light, aided by a fine translation from the French by Lulu Norman.