Of all the men I saw, I only liked Noureddine Khayachi. He was the only man I ever loved. We lived happily together. We understood each other perfectly. He never spoke to me disrespectfully and I always paid him the greatest respect. That is what true conjugal harmony means. A lot of people think that artists must be difficult to live with because they are a bit odd, but having spent most of my life with Khayachi, I can tell you that this is not true. Artists don’t have something ‘missing’ but do have something that other people don’t – they are more attentive to the truth about people and the value of things. It is true that my husband never taught me to paint but he did teach me to see. He has all my love and all my affection. He always believed in mens sana in corpore sano and took care to look after his image and the way he talked and behaved, to care for both his body and his soul. He left nothing to chance. In everything he sought perfection – his person, his family, his life, his work and, of course, his art.
He was a workaholic, hating to be inactive. When he worked for the Ministry of Defence, he paid attention to everything from official decorations to how the El Jeich cigarettes were packaged.He painted for pleasure. He did not like to part with his work: when he sold a canvas, he would come home sad, as if he had lost someone dear to him.He wanted to perfect his training and get an official diploma, so he went off to Italy to study for four years. We all suffered from the family being torn apart, although he frequently came back from Europe on visits with little gifts and presents. He was completely unselfish, always thinking of us. He was not a saint, of course, but he was like a saint, he had a saint’s attributes – he was lovely, good and virtuous. He was physically and morally beautiful. All the children in the family adored him. He loved other people, and hated talking about himself. He was modest, and listened to others while keeping in the background. So as not to hurt people’s feelings, he would never show that he disliked something.
Also, he was a very good teacher and made a good impression everywhere he worked, especially at the Alaoui secondary school.He always painted at home. He never painted at night, preferring to work by daylight. He did a lot of work for the state, for example, a series of paintings of sovereigns of Tunis. In this way he completed what his father had started before him. Actually, he was only happy at his easel. The day he retired was very difficult for him because he had to tear himself away from his pupils, but we thought it was a day to celebrate because he would henceforth devote himself entirely to his family and his art. He liked to have me with him when he painted, but he liked to work in peace and not be bothered. When he took up his brushes it was as though he was living another life, but in fact he was in his true element.

He did not want to eat or drink or talk or see people or be disturbed in any way…Sometimes I had the impression that he was absorbed in his picture and I would go off to eat alone, and then come back to him silently, taking care to make no noise and not to come between him and his painting…

I would spend hours watching him paint. These moments of harmony explain why we were so happy together. He was clean, very organised. I never found even the tiniest spot of paint on the floor, or his clothes, or the furniture, or the carpet. It was as if he were not painting at all. The studio was spotless.

He didn’t really give me a chance to be jealous of his art, because he was always ready to listen to me and to do what I wanted. He often asked for my opinion. When he was satisfied with what I’d said he would laugh and say, ‘Well, you’ve learned to look!’ And when he’d finished a picture he liked to do something physical – sport, walking, visiting our family or our friends at the La Marsa club.

I was able to offer him a balance between his family life and his professional life. I provided him with the atmosphere necessary for his art. He wasn’t pretentious but he never doubted his art. He knew he was a great artist. He also loved reading and music, including Malouf music. He watched television very little. Sometimes we played together, he on the violin and me on the lute. The singers he loved were Saliha, Ali Riahi, Om Kalthoum and Abdelwaheb.

We did not live for ourselves but for each other. Married life means nothing unless the two people respect each other and live in harmony. He was a perfect husband and a model father.And I raised the children to admire and respect him.
He let me exercise a good deal of authority and I think I merited the confidence he had in me. We all suffered from those long years when he was in Italy. To make the children work well at school, I used to say, ‘If you do badly at school, your father will ask me for a divorce.’ The trick worked; our children had extremely good results.

My husband would paint three or four pictures at the same time, not for speed but to take the time to experience each painting and give the painting the time to live in him. He could wake up at night to go and spend hours studying the pictures, giving each one his full attention.

He would work on a picture, let it rest a bit, take up another, and so forth. He never thought a painting was finished. He would spend months and months on one picture. Sometimes, when I didn’t see a particular painting on his easel, I would say, ‘You’ve finished, then?’, and he would answer me, ‘No, not at all. I’m having a little rest from it and it’s having a rest from me! I’ll go on with it later…’. He really was not the kind of artist who paints a picture or two a day. That didn’t suit his nature, or his art.