# Quote — Albert Memmi, The Pillar of Salt

> Oh yes, poverty is something to be ashamed of, and this was clear to me from the mutterings of my own parents, from their remarks about the Oukala of the Birds and their pity for the Choulam family. As for me, I despised the poor. Fraji had to pay with shame the price of his poverty and I too, if we were poor, would have to pay with my own shame. In the disorder of my awareness, I made that day a great and unhappy step forward. I noted that I too wore new clothes only rarely and was forced to receive, like Fraji, bundles that stank of mildew and dirty linen and from which all the expensive buttons had been removed. I now understood his suffering fully, the shame that I had poured forth upon him in the presence of Chouchane and the other kids. His suffering and shame were my own too; on my own shoulders I now felt the burden of the same contempt, as if I had his hair, all clammy with filth, and his eyes like the headlights of a car. I felt that I had become Fraji.

- Author: [Albert Memmi](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-memmi.md)
- Book: [The Pillar of Salt](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-memmi/the-pillar-of-salt.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Memmi#The_Pillar_of_Salt_(1953)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-memmi/the-pillar-of-salt/oh-yes-poverty

## More from this book

> If my nose had been too long that might have been fixed in a couple of weeks in a clinic, or a gangrenous arm could be amputated, but I had a heart that was defective. My misfortunes were never chance encounters, and I could not easily avoid them. The more I get to know myself, the more aware I become of this. To put an end to this state of affairs would mean putting an end to myself, to die or to go mad. My principal's temporary appointment would end one day, but I would never find the solution to my problem because I am that problem.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-memmi/the-pillar-of-salt/if-my-nose.md)

> My mother tongue is the Tunisian dialect, which I speak with the proper accent of the young Moslem kids of our part of town and of the drivers of horse-trucks who were customers of our shop. The Jews of Tunis are to the Moslems what the Viennese are to other Germans: they drag out their syllables in a singsong voice and soften and make insipid the guttural speech of their Mohammedan fellow-citizens. The relatively correct intonations of my speech earned me the mockery of all: the Jews disliked my strange speech and suspected me of affectation, while the Moslems thought that I was mimicking them.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-memmi/the-pillar-of-salt/my-mother-tongue.md)

> I was cornered, without any escape, and began to think of death for the first time in my life. Without being at all strange or foreign, this idea of suicide was born within me quite spontaneously and gently, like the world coming to life at dawn. At once, suicide seemed familiar to me, like a release, and I was surprised how convenient and tempting so serious an action could seem. The ultimate solution to my problems was within my own power.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-memmi/the-pillar-of-salt/i-was-cornered.md)