Face-books: Publishing via Social Media in Morocco

Here is an article from Qantara which was originally written in Arabic on the use of social media platforms by Moroccans to self-publish novels and to share information about reading.

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Published by Facebook

Social media has democratised literary publishing, paving the way for young Moroccan writers to publish works which previously would not have enjoyed publication through traditional outlets.

By Ismail Azzam
(translated by Chris Somes-Charlton)

As the trend in social media took off, there was a fear that it would drive young Moroccans further away from writing, against a background of dismal statistics showing that most people in North Africa and the Middle East read only a few pages a year. This fear found its echo in the invasion of smartphones into everyday life, in such a manner that left books as no more than decoration in the front rooms of many households.

Despite this gloomy outlook, many Moroccans actually use social media to find out about books. Visit social media sites and you will see Facebook groups such as "Publications Iʹve read", "Ktoubna" and "Book share". These groups attract tens of thousands of eager readers. Moreover, Moroccan readers get involved in the group discussions on individual books via the Goodreads platform to review the writings.

This interest does not stop at reading books; it extends to writing them as well. These days it is apparent that many young Moroccan writers set out to write novels early in their lives, even though some of them are only known for their literary aptitude through Facebook.

Amongst those writers with whom Moroccan readers have become acquainted via social media is Abdul Aziz al-ʹAbdi who recently published "The book of faces" (a literal translation of Facebook). There is also Abdul-Samiʹ Bensaber, who recently published the novel "A Serpentʹs tail", as well as Mohammed Benmiloud who wrote "The Dangerous Neighbourhood", as well as many others who have either just begun or recently circulated their literary works on social media.

In this article, we will look at some of these writers, although the choice of the names below is not a reflection of their literary merit or lack of it. Rather, they are examples which shed light on the phenomenon of writing amongst young Moroccans.


FULL ARTICLE

Ketabook: Selling You on Books Published in Morocco

Here is an article from al-Fanar Media on Ketabook, an online Maghreb-centered bookstore, a real treasure.
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credit:https://essaouira.madeinmedina.com/en/bookstores.html

Moroccan Academic Plays Matchmaker Between Books and Readers

 

Ursula Lindsey / 19 Apr 2017 

Mohamed El Mansour has retired from teaching history at Mohamed V University in Rabat, but he keeps himself busy. He writes books and articles on historical subjects, and he runs a unique online business, Ketabook, which assists foreign libraries and scholars in finding books from the Maghreb.

The first challenge is simply to be aware of what is being published in Morocco and neighboring countries—no simple task. 
The Maghreb book market remains very unstructured and informal, El Mansour told me when we met for a coffee in Rabat, and distribution is weak. Because of this, he and his team “work on a small scale, on the basis of personal relations. You have to go knock at the [bookstores’] door.”

 FULL ARTICLE

The Continuing Influence of the 1960s and 70s Moroccan Cultural and Literary Magazine Souffles

Here is an article from al-Fanar on the cultural magazine Souffles and its continuing influence in artistic and academic circles. As the article states, " issues of the iconic magazine in French and in Arabic are available online through the web site of Morocco’s national library."  Stanford University Press published an English-language anthology of the magazine, Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics that can be found here.
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A Long-Shuttered Moroccan Magazine Still Wields Powerful Influence

Ursula Lindsey / 19 Apr 2016

Scholars from around the world gathered at Morocco’s national library in Rabat earlier this month to discuss the impact of a historic cultural magazine. Considered so subversive in its time that its founders were imprisoned for conspiring to overthrow the state, the iconic magazine Souffles (”Breathes”) continues to fascinate Moroccan intellectuals and artists and is increasingly the focus of international research.

The avant-garde magazine, published in French and Arabic, was founded by a group of young friends who were also some of the country’s most talented poets, writers and visual artists. They included the poets Abdellatif Laabi and Moustapha Nissabouri, the writers Driss Chraibi and Taher Ben Jalloun, the painters Mohamed Melehi and Farid Belkahia, and many more. The magazine also developed contacts and contributors elsewhere in the region, such as the Syrian poet Adonis.

The magazine was published from 1966 to 1971, a very turbulent time in Morocco’s
modern history, when King Hassan II faced public protests, leftist opposition and coup attempts, and reacted by unleashing a fierce repression—including arrests, assassinations and torture—that came to be known as “the years of lead.”

FULL ARTICLE

The Happy Marriage - a novel by Tahar Ben Jelloun

Here is a piece from the Independent on a new novel by  Tahar Ben Jelloun that has been translated into English. Its about a not so happy marriage between a Fessi man
and an Amazigh (Berber) woman from Southern Morocco.  His novels always seem to catch your attention, but we sometimes wonder who is Ben Jelloun's intended audience.

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The Happy Marriage by Tahar ben Jelloun, trans. André Naffis-Sahely, book review: 'Living hell' for husband and wife

Tahar ben Jelloun's thumpingly ironic title fronts the tale of a long, fractious and toxic partnership

by Boyd Tonkin
Thursday 21 January 2016


Tolstoy begins Anna Karenina with the questionable claim: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

If what applies to families also goes for the marriages that make or break them, readers of fiction may beg to differ. At least since the age of Tolstoy, Flaubert and Henry James, suffering couples in the novel tend to run to type.

Tahar ben Jelloun, the powerful and prolific Moroccan-born novelist who migrated to France in 1971, knows all the pitfalls of his chosen genre. His thumpingly ironic title fronts the tale of a long, fractious and toxic partnership, a "living hell" for both husband and wife. The latter acknowledges: "We were not made to be together". So how does Ben Jelloun, always a resourceful and versatile storyteller, renovate this shop-worn material? Be patient, wait and see.

In 2000, a distinguished Moroccan painter has a serious stroke in Casablanca. Stricken by the immobility that diminishes him from a "brilliant, elegant and celebrated" artist to a helpless invalid who sees "a Francis Bacon painting" in the mirror, he has all the time in the world to reflect on his creative and emotional life.

His recovery inches forward at a glacial pace. Enlisting a friend as his amanuensis, he uses this enforced hiatus to compose a memoir. It swiftly descends into an embittered indictment of his wife, their relationship, marriage itself.

FULL ARTICLE

Wonderful Moroccan Literature

We didn't notice this piece when it first appeared a few months ago in the Independent. But its not too late to appreciate now.
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The wonders

of Moroccan literature

Boyd Tonkin
Thursday 02 October 2014

Most visitors to Marrakesh know the name of the lovely 12th-century mosque whose minaret towers over the old city: Koutoubia.

Those with a smattering of Arabic, or the curiosity to ask, will be aware that – in honour of the dozens of stalls that once crowded around it – this is the Mosque of the Booksellers. And this most literary of minarets looks out over the glorious gardens of La Mamounia – the hotel where Winston Churchill, a regular guest, found his own kind of paradise.

In addition to its fame as a celebrity retreat, La Mamounia now sponsors a literary prize: not a ceremonial bauble, but a scrupulously judged award for Moroccan fiction in the French language that gives almost £15,000 to the winner. This year’s jury, headed by the Casablanca-born writer Christine Orban, included both the bestselling American in Paris (and Independent contributor) Douglas Kennedy, and that genial dynamo of the francophone literary scene in Africa: Alain Mabanckou, the French Congolese novelist whose Broken Glass was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

I thought of Mabanckou’s tragi-comic heroes – aspiring, educated Africans who still find doors slammed in their faces both at home and abroad – when I read the winner of the fifth La Mamounia prize. To readers who imagine that contemporary fiction from the Arab world must always dwell on the region’s intersecting crises of war, power and faith, Le Job by Réda Dalil might come as a jolt. Thrown out of work by the sub-prime meltdown of 2008, 30-year-old financial whizz-kid Ghali finds himself on the slide and on the skids in Casablanca – the sprawling metropolis whose stories fuel so much Moroccan fiction. In this teeming city of both “filth” and “brilliance”, Ghali the ejected ex-yuppie plunges fast into the abyss. Pretty soon he finds that “500 dirhams [£36] separated me from social euthanasia”.

We’re close here to the hectic mood, and style, of a Jay McInerney or a Bret Easton Ellis. British readers might catch a whiff of younger Martin Amis. In a series of comic but mortifying misadventures, downwardly-mobile Ghali faces “the extinction of dignity”. Meanwhile, the escape sought by best friend Ali – also out of work, but with a wife and daughter – highlights another aspect of the choices that ambitious but precarious young people face across the Arab lands. Despite his lack of any conspicuous piety, he opts to travel to Saudi Arabia to train as an imam: generous stipend guaranteed.
FULL ARTICLE 

The Moor's Account - a new book about a Moroccan explorer of the Americas

Lala Laila Lalami has penned a new piece of historical fiction. Her new book is entitled The Moor's Account and deals with the story of the life of a Moroccan Berber who visited America in the 1500s  (We've mentioned him earlier on this blog - see the tag "Esteban of Azemmour.")
Here is a link to her discussing the book on NPR.  And here is a New York Times article about the book.

Happy Reading!
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His Manifest Destiny
‘The Moor’s Account,’ by Laila Lalami

By JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN SEPT. 5, 2014

credit: cmems.stanford.edu

In 1527, the Castilian conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez and a crew of 600 men sailed from Spain to the Gulf Coast of the United States to claim “La Florida” for the Spanish crown. Laila Lalami recounts the voyage — and its brutal aftermath — in her new novel, “The Moor’s Account,” from the perspective of Estebanico, a ­Moroccan slave of one of the explorers. It’s a fictional memoir, told in a controlled voice that feels at once historical and contemporary, that seeks to offer a truer account of the expedition than the official (and hopelessly biased) version of events provided by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, one of the other three survivors.

It quickly becomes apparent that a strong moralistic impulse drives the story. Crossing “the Ocean of Fog and Darkness” and arriving in America, the conquistadors suffer biblical afflictions in the form of unbearable heat and hordes of mosquitoes. Disease does away with a good number of them, as do the Indians, who take the remaining men captive.

But Lalami is far more interested in what happens to the men after they escape and make their way from Florida to Mexico, bearing witness to wondrous terrain and tribal people. Here we see the previously untold history of the black man as explorer, and an explorer cut from a different cloth.

FULL ARTICLE 

A Rare Blue Bird that Flies with Me, an Award nominated novel by Moroccan writer Youssef Fadel

Here is an article from al-Sharq al-Awsat on the novel  A Rare Blue Bird tht Flies with Me by  Youssef Fadel that was nominated for the 2014 Internationl Prize for Arabic Fiction . It is an interview with the author.
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North African author exposes a dark spot in Morocco’s history

by al-Mustafa Najjar

London, Asharq Al-Awsat—In his latest book, A Rare Blue Bird that Flies with Me, Moroccan writer Youssef Fadel takes the reader on a vividly imaginative odyssey through a dreary period of Morocco’s history. Fadel’s ninth novel is a fictional testament to the Years of Lead in the 1970s and 1980s, which saw unprecedented levels of government violence against the opposition in Morocco.

Fadel’s handling of this period, on which much ink has already been spilled, is novel in the sense that he employs elements of fantasy and the supernatural. While it is true that it sheds light on government violations in Morocco’s secret prisons, A Rare Blue Bird is awash with what Fadel calls “patriarchal violence”: the “ordinary injustice” practiced outside prison, on the streets, at schools and in families. For Fadel, systematic violence in prison is nothing but an “echo” of that which is perpetrated outside.

Considered by critics as a sequel to A Beautiful White Cat that Walks with Me—a claim Fadel disputes in this interview—Fadel’s most recent novel traces a complex narrative network consisting of six voices. Each of which recounts a different side of the story of Aziz, a pilot whose passion for the open, blue sky lands him in an abysmal jail. Ignorant of Aziz’s whereabouts, his wife, Zina, embarks on an 18-year quest to find the husband she was separated from on her wedding day.

Asharq Al-Awsat: A Rare Blue Bird that Flies with Me is a delicate title whose poetic aestheticism stands in stark contrast with the cruelty and brutality we see in the novel. What is the relationship between the title and the content of the novel?

Youssef Fadel: The relationship between the title and the novel is similar to that between the protagonist, his past and his future: the pilot, the plane and the bird. [The protagonist] plunges to the bottom, to the nadir of the inferno—the bottom that opens into space. One has no choice but to spread your their and fly; whether in reality or fiction, it makes no difference.

Q: You had a personal experience in prison. Could you tell us about this experience and how it impacted your work as a novelist?

Imprisonment is always a tough experience, particularly at the beginning. Torture and interrogation could take place at any time, day or night. While your body refuses food, your inmate, who happens to come before you, devours your meal ravenously. You do not know where you are or how long you are going to stay, until one day you do not remember when you entered prison. You share with your jailor a mouthful of bread and some passing jokes.

Later, within the extreme confines of the most barbaric manifestations of this human experience, you find out that you can get used to it, and this is the most terrible aspect of the experience. Later on, following your release—having passed all this time—the experience would undoubtedly have an impact somehow. I have never wondered—nor do I find it necessary to—about the way in which my experience in prison has infiltrated my literary career.

FULL ARTICLE

Three Moroccan Writers Nominated for the Arab Booker Prize

Here is an article from  Sharq Al-Awsat on the nominees for the Arab  Booker Prize , an international prize for Arbic fiction. Three of the 16 authors are from Morocco and they are: Youssef Fadel, Ismail Ghazali, and Abdelrahim Lahbibi .
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International Prize for Arabic Fiction longlist announced

Sixteen writers from 10 countries included on this year's longlist for the prestigious prize


Among the well-known names are the Syrian novelist Khaled Khalifa for his No Knives in this City’s Kitchen, which was awarded the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in December 2013. Also on the list are the Egyptian Ibrahim Abdelmeguid for hisClouds Over Alexandria, and twice-longlisted Waciny Laredj for hisAshes of the East: The Wolf Who Grew up in the Wilderness.London, Asharq Al-Awsat—The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), also known as the Arabic Booker Prize, announced its longlist of 16 writers on Tuesday, featuring works from 10 different Arab countries.

Four of those selected this year have made it onto the shortlist in the past. These include the Sudanese writer Amir Tag Elsir, Iraqi Inaam Kachachi, Palestinian–Jordanian Ibrahim Nasrallah and Khaled Khalifa.

In a remarkable shift from previous years, the 2014 longlist features two crime novels, Ahmed Mourad’s whodunit bestsellerThe Blue Elephant, as well as Frankenstein in Baghdad by the Iraqi novelist Ahmed Saadawi.

Morocco, Iraq and Egypt took the lion’s share of this year’s longlist, with three nominations each. For the second year in a row, Kuwaiti authors have made it onto the longlist, following the well-received success of Saud Alsanousi in winning last year’s IPAF prize with The Bamboo Stalk, a work that deals with the question of identity and the controversial phenomenon of foreign workers in Kuwait.

FULL ARTICLE

Moroccan Poet Abdellatif Laâbi Reading in London

The following comes to us via the poetrytranslation.org site. If you're in London, perhaps you can check it out:

Abdellatif Laâbi at The Mosaic Rooms
The Mosaic Rooms, London
Wednesday 20th February 2013 19:00

Prize-winning Moroccan poet, Abdellatif Laâbi will be joined by his translator, André Naffis-Sahely, to read from his newly published chapbook of poems and to launch his memoir, The Bottom of the Jar.

The Bottom of the Jar (published by Archipelago Books) is an exploration of Laâbi’s childhood city of Fez, Morocco, through Namoussa, his semi-fictional kindred spirit. The memoir is not only a personal account of Laâbi’s early years, but a work of great social and political import, one that reflects on and evokes the charged atmosphere during the final days of French colonial occupation of Morocco and its painful road to independence.


The Mosaic Rooms
Tower House
226 Cromwell Road
London, SW5 0SW
www.mosaicrooms.org/

020 7370 9990

Cost: Free

The Cultural and Literary Scene in Morocco

Here is an article from Qantara.de.  about the culture of reading,publishing, and the current literary scene  in Morocco. It came out at the end of last year but still seems timely and relevant.  It is  also available in Arabic.
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The Cultural and Literary Scene in Morocco: From the Caravan of Books to the Literary Café

Morocco has not bothered to wait for the Arab Spring to revolutionise its cultural scene. It took off in the 1990s and is showing no sign of stopping – Moroccan artists exhibit in beauty salons, tennis clubs become impromptu literary cafés and a hotel sponsors the country's most prestigious literature prize. 

By Regina Keil-Sagawe

It was a glamourous event, and a touch surreal, when Mahi Binebine was awarded the newly established literary prize in the legendary and luxurious "La Mamounia" hotel in Marrakech for his novel "Les étoiles de Sidi Moumen", set in the slums of Casablanca and dealing with the suicide bomb attacks carried out in the city on May 16th in 2003. Rather a bizarre contrast, but not unnusual for Morocco, it has to be said.

Not that anyone begrudges the likeable allrounder Binebine, whose paintings have long been a feature of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, success in his native country. It is rather surprising, however, that practically all of the authors on the "Mamounia" shortlist are published by French publishing houses. And one wonders how the "Mamounia" intends to encourage Moroccan literature if it does not include any Moroccan publishing houses on its list.

A book market without readers?

Moroccan literature from Europe: Most writers awarded in Morocco, as for instance Mahi Binebine, are published by publishers in France On the other hand, why should the luxury hotel succeed with its prestigious coup where the Moroccan ministry of culture and the French embassy have been failing for years? Although the literary prize of both institutions – the Prix du Maroc du Livre and the French Grand Atlas – traditionally go to authors with Moroccan publishers, it has not been enough to bolster the Moroccan book market with its two thousand or so new publications a year and with diminishing print runs that rarely top a thousand.

Although Tangiers and Casablanca have hosted international book fairs for years, the country's top publishers, Abdelkader Retnani (La Croisée des Chemins), Rachid Chraïbi (Editions Marsam) und Layla Chaouni (Le Fennec), complain of the government's lethargy. There are too few subsidies, too many bookshops closing and no transparent figures available on the book market; all this despite the fact that current Minister of Culture, Bensalem Himmich, is himself a writer.

And then there is the inadequate infrastructure. Instead of the planned four thousand, there are a mere five hundred public libraries. Even in the major cities there are likely to be no more than ten, maybe twelve, bookshops, their owners' usually not even trained booksellers. Until recently, professionally run book shops, such as the Kalima wa Dimna in Rabat or the Carrefour des Livres in Casablanca, seemed heavenly literary oases in a desert of illiteracy.

Back in 2002, the writer Ahmed Bouzfour took Morocco's powerful rulers to task, bemoaning the sense of shame he felt at their incompetent governance and their cultural, social and economic decadance. He then also refused to accept the Prix du Maroc du Livre with its accompanying 7000 dollars prize money. Why bother to award a literary prize for books that do not sell because one in two Moroccans cannot read, in the rural areas the figure rises to nine out of ten.

Campaign for culture
Tremendous efforts have been made since that time to reduce illiteracy. Morocco's media used the occasion of World Literacy Day on September 9 to take stock of the situation. Since 2003 five of the thirty-two million Moroccans have achieved literacy outside the school system, 84% of 15 to 24-year-olds are now able to read and write, and even among the older age groups there is now 68% literacy. It is an achievement that state institutions alone could never have managed and required the efforts of numerous participants from civil society.

 One of those pioneers is Julia Hassoune from Marrakech, who, along with Fatima Mernissi, launched the "Caravane Civique" (citizens' caravan) in 1999, and the "Caravane du Livre" (caravan of books) in 2006. Hassoune undertakes expeditions into remote mountain villages or distant oases in the company of artists, writers and educationists to deliver drama, writing, painting or storytelling workshops.

At the same time as these developments, and practically overnight, a plethora of new literary awards were springing up. Prizes, which are directed primarily at young writers, with TV stations, publishers, cultural institutions, magazines, foundations and banks as sponsors. In 2002, the "House of Poetry" sponsored a newcomer's prize for Arab poetry, in 2005 the magazine "Tel Quel" initiated a short story prize, and in 2006 the 2M TV station came up with its prize for the best new Arab, Francophone and Amazigh literature.

Marsam publishing has already published the fourth volume "Côté Maroc: Nouvelle Noire", the result of a crime writers competition run by the Institut Français in Marrakech since 2007. In 2010 the "Magazine littéraire du Maroc": created two new prizes: a francophone short story prize and a major prize for literature in the French, Arabic and Berber languages, which is due to be presented by Tahar Ben Jelloun in the elegant new national library in Rabat on 14 October.
The Moroccans already have a name for this dynamic cultural energy that has long been part of the country's young art scene – "movida" or "moufida", also known as "nayda" (from the standard Arabic "nahda" – renaissance) and is now sweeping into the literary world also.

Literature festivals and literary salons are everywhere, and the latest manifestation is the literary café. Literature programmes in the media may be in short supply, but there are plenty of opportunities for 'live' encounters with books and authors – and the latest innovation, the new "Magazine littéraire du Maroc" founded by historian Abdesselam Cheddadi in 2009, and initially published only in French, is now about to add an Arabic edition, with a Berber edition in the Amazigh language also planned.
Back in the 1990s, when support for the Berber language meant facing a possible prison sentence, the idea that Amazigh might one day be accepted as one of the official national languages seemed impossible. But on October 17 2001, the Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) was set up, and in 2005 it announced its first prize for Amazigh literature. Now it is cool to be Berber, and since the referendum of July 1, 2011, the language that is the mother tongue of around half the people of Morocco has been constitutionally recognised as an official language. It now enjoys the same status as standard Arabic.

A hot potato
This is not to say that the other half of the population speaks standard Arabic. Most speak a Moroccan Arabic dialect known as "Darija", a mix of Arab and Berber with traces of French and Spanish, which horrifies the purists, but is so much a part of the soul of the people and everywhere in the media – internet forums, rap music, and advertising slogans.
In 2006, the American Elena Prentice, publisher of the free weekly "Khbar Bladna" (the latest news from our country) in Tangiers, a very popular paper that tries to close the gap between the educated and the semi-literate, was the first and only (so far) to offer a prize for Darija literature. It was the adventurous General Secretary of the Moroccan PEN, Youssef Amine Elalamy, who published the first literary text in Darija with Elena Prentice in 2006 – "Tqarqib Ennab" (gossip), a collection of portraits.

On 2 October, the second "Mamounia" literature prize was awarded. And, once again, the authors are almost exclusively with French publishers, including Fouad Laroui, whose essay "Le drame linguistique marocain" is a plea for more recognition for Darija. It will be interesting to see whether in the exclusive setting of the "Mamounia" the jury, with its diverse representatives of the French-speaking world from Senegal and Morocca to Quebec, will dare to pick up this hottest of Arab hot potatoes.

Regina Keil-Sagawe
© Qantara.de 2011

The Last Storytellers: An Anthology of Moroccan Stories

Here is an book review from the National on The Last Storytellers: An Anthology of Moroccan Stories. This book hopes to capture Moroccan oral folktales before they are forgotten.
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The Last Storytellers: An anthology of Moroccan stories

Noori Passela
Sep 23, 2011

As with some other literary traditions, the decline of oral storytelling can be traced to the rise of social media.

While the BBC correspondent Richard Hamilton laments this trend in his introduction to this compilation of Moroccan tales, his woe is thankfully temporary. Instead, The Last Storytellers is a celebration of literature, an anthology of 36 stories rescued from the dwindling numbers of Morocco's hlaykia or paid storytellers.

Considering that many readers are only likely to be acquainted with One Thousand and One Nights, these lesser-known stories offer a new, refreshing insight into the Oriental literary tradition.

They range from expeditions featuring a bold hero and an elusive princess to be won over (The Gazelle with the Golden Horns) to the more symbolic and moral (The Birth of the Sahara). Interestingly, there are also many that border on scandal, using a repertoire of love, lust and betrayal to shock (The Eyes of Ben'Adi). Dramatic fare all around, but with entertainment being the sole purpose, this is hardly a let-down. Instead, this is addictive material.

The Clash of Images [of Morocco] by AbdelFattah Kilito

Here is an interesting review and discussion from a popular book lover's website on a recently published translation of Si AbdelFattah Kilito's The Clash of Images. The reviewer writes that The Clash of Images will force American readers to question their understanding of the images that pervade our society and the power they exercise in our lives.
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The Clash of Images by Abdelfattah Kilito, translated by Robyn Creswell
By Natalie Storey

Abdelfattah Kilito sets his short stories in places rich with stunning imagery, such as in the shadows of a cinema, where an Arab boy watches cowboy movies, “anxious and trembling with desire.” The movie’s images -- the duel, the mount-up, the Indian attack, the fight in the saloon, the kiss -- help push the boy into adulthood and leave him troubled by their power to entrance. “In the cave whose lights had just come on they were freed of their chains, yet they wanted nothing more than to put the chains back on, to dive back into the darkness, lose consciousness of themselves and let their gazes glide over those fleeting, illusory, and deceitful images,” Kilito writes in his collection of stories, The Clash of Images, recently translated into English by Robyn Creswell.

Such scenes and the reflection that follows them provide a fascinating analysis of images in post-modern society, by an author who proves he is not desensitized to them. The collection contains 13 loosely linked stories, told mostly from the perspective of young North African men and boys. Kilito, a professor at the Mohammed V University in Morocco, primarily writes criticism of Arab literature, but makes a deft turn to a blend of fiction and memoir in The Clash of Images. The stories verge on family and cultural history, blurring the line between fiction, fantasy and reality in an attempt to cope with the meeting of Islam and the West’s various forms of image making -- the photograph, the comic book, the film and even literature like Don Quixote. Kilito attempts to map the transition of a culture from oral and text based modes of representation into today’s world, where the image rules. The stories accomplish deep reflection about the role of the image and its manipulation of identity in post-modern society with winsome storytelling and delightful characters.

The Clash of Images will force American readers to question their understanding of the images that pervade our society and the power they exercise in our lives. In the author’s note, Kilito wonders whether the image ushered Arabs into the modern world, pointing out that everyone must have a “double” today, at least in the form of government identification. This rests uneasily in societies that forbid making physical representations of God’s creation. Kilito’s Arab ancestors were faceless, lacking ids and photographs, he writes. Yet, “My idea is not at all to pity them,” Kilito writes. “What I’d like to know… is what profit they made by giving up figural representation.” The question to American readers of themselves becomes: What profit do we make by living in a society obsessed with images?

When I lived in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan from 2008 to 2011, I experienced the clash between the Muslim villager’s idea and my American idea of images. The refusal of my Arabic teacher’s eldest daughter to be photographed frustrated me. I couldn’t understand how else to remember her face, if I did not possess an image of her. While studying the stories of Islam, I found it difficult to visualize the Prophet Mohammed, of whom no authentic images exist. I asked my tutor over and over again, “But what did he look like?” I thought it would be easier to understand the stories they told me if I could imagine the main character in detail. Finally, my teacher acquiesced, providing a brief description from a hadith: He was handsome, with long eye lashes, and he wore a beard that often carried the red hue of henna. I quickly realized my error. The physical description of The Prophet allowed me to imagine a caricature, a stereotypical Muslim, like one from a cartoon strip in an American newspaper, an inaccurate representation. Yet, I still regret the lack of photographs of the women I cared about in Jordan. The contours of their faces have faded, a fact I cannot interpret any other way than a loss, one that an image might have remedied, at least partially. It seemed then like a contradiction for which there was no solution and Kilito, while skillfully sketching the lines of the conflict, doesn’t provide one either. Images both trouble and awe the characters of his stories.

The narrator of the story, “The Image of the Prophet,” takes up a similar issue, that of representing the Prophet Mohammed to facilitate understanding. A young Muslim boy in a French school, the narrator is confronted by an image of the Prophet in a French text book in a picture depicting the Hegira, the Muslims’ forced migration from Mecca to Medina. In the picture the Prophet, “wore a turban, a checkered jalabiya, and a flat leather sack strung across his chest. A short, trim beard covered his jaw.” Upon seeing the image, the narrator reflects:

This was, on the part of the illustrator, a risky undertaking, and one whose full consequences he didn’t seem to have considered -- unless, knowing the students who made up his audience were rather provincial, he was simply defying a prohibition he felt to be unjustified.

Although the image disturbs the narrator, his instructor never mentions it. The narrator’s pondering leads him to this conclusion: “The image is a site where eyes flee from each other, where glances never meet, where there is no face-to-face or actual encounter.” Here, Kilito’s narrator emphasizes the inherent superficiality of representation. While the image is beautiful, and while it conveys information, it also manipulates. In this way the story reaches its crescendo -- lacking dramatic action, the narrator instead offers a meditation on a small, but revealing instance of cultural collision.

The power of images has occupied Kilito’s work before, surfacing in his book of literary scholarship, Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language, translated into English by Wail Hassan. Kilito describes the shock and confusion of the Moroccan scholar as-Saffar, who first saw a crucifix in France in 1845. (Aside from the figure appearing real, as-Saffar was shocked because Jesus Christ, a prophet in Islam, is not believed to be the son of God, nor is he believed to have died on the cross.) As-Saffar notes the “strong passion for mirrors” of the French and a set of a play in the theater that, although drawn on paper, looks real. As-Saffar, according to Kilito, described the French as “masters of deceptive appearances.” The statement reads nearly like a prophecy, a foreshadowing of the airbrushing of models in magazines, video games with hyper real graphics and other types of image manipulation, which saturate Western society today.


Although the stories lack what Western readers would think of as narrative arc -- their conclusions come instead as brief epiphanies of thought -- they gain charm and believability from their young narrator or, in the case of third person narration, the young main character, and his earnest attempt to reconcile the two worlds he grows up in. The narrator proves obsessed with comics, books and films. In “Pleiades” Abdullah follows a girl named Pleiades (Thurayya in Arabic) through the streets, hoping they will accidentally meet. Pleiades earned her reputation by removing a photo of a boy from her bra and eating it to demonstrate her passion. When Pleiades has a change of heart and finally kisses Abdullah, he thinks of literature. “The verse of Mallarme, 'It was the blessed day of your first kiss,' sprung inevitably to his lips, along with the bittersweet aftertaste of an old photograph.” Kilito’s boy characters will grab the attention of readers with their humor and capacity for introspection. While the stories offer myriad insights into the world of young Moroccan boys, they also provide a site of reflection, points of reference to begin questioning our own cultural values, our own ideas of image and identity. The translation of this book into English is truly a gift to American readers.

The Clash of Images by Abdelfattah Kilito, translated by Robyn Creswell
New Directions
ISBN: 978-0811218863
128 Pages

Two Moroccan Authors Short-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction

Two Moroccan authors have been short-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. We find out in March insha'Allah if either BenSalem Himmich or Mohammed Achaari take home the prize. Here is an article from Reuters on the authors shortlisted for the prize.
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Torture and tragedy top Arabic Fiction Award list

LONDON | Thu Dec 9, 2010 3:21pm GMT

LONDON (Reuters) - Six authors nominated for the 2011 International Prize for Arabic Fiction on Thursday tackle issues ranging from corruption to immigration and religious extremism in a politically charged shortlist.

Moroccan poet Mohammed Achaari is nominated for "The Arch and the Butterfly," in which a father receives a letter from al Qaeda informing him that his son, who he believed was studying in Paris, had died fighting Western forces in Afghanistan.

Saudi novelist Raja Alem, shortlisted for "The Dove's Necklace," explores the "sordid underbelly" of life in the holy city of Mecca, said the organisers of the annual award, funded by the Emirates Foundation for Philanthropy.

It is also supported by the Booker Prize Foundation, the charity behind the Man Booker Prize for English language fiction, and by the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.

Two Egyptian authors write about Arabs who go to live abroad -- Khalid al-Bari's "An Oriental Dance" follows a young Egyptian man who marries an older British woman and moves with her to England, while U.S.-based Miral al-Tahawy's "Brooklyn Heights" describes the experiences of Arab immigrants in New York.

Morocco's Bensalem Himmich imagines an innocent man's experience of extraordinary rendition in "My Tormentor," and Sudan's Amir Taj al-Sir's "The Hunter of the Chrysalises" tells of a former intelligence agent who comes under police scrutiny.

The shortlisted writers each receive $10,000 (6,300 pounds) and the winner, announced in Abu Dhabi on March 14, 2011, wins another $50,000 and a likely boost in sales in Arab countries and internationally.

The winning book is also translated into English.

The previous three winners of the award are "Sunset Oasis" by Bahaa Taher (Egypt), "Azazel" by Youssef Ziedan (Egypt) and "Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles" by Abdo Khal (Saudi Arabia).

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Moroccan poet, Mohammed Bennis, wins Maghreb Culture Prize

Here is an article from the Moroccan National News Service on an award given to the Moroccan poet Mohammed Bennis. Beneath that is a poem of his that posted on Poetry International Web. You can read the original Arabic poem at this link to the PIW site.
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Moroccan poet wins Maghreb Culture Prize

Kairouan - Moroccan poet Mohammed Bennis was awarded, on Thursday in Tunisia, the Maghreb Culture Prize in recognition of his outstanding literary achievements and poetry works.

The award was handed over to the Moroccan poet by Tunisia's President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali during the closing ceremony of Kairouan Festival in presence of several Arab and Islamic personalities.

Born in 1948 in Fez, Mohammed Bennis is a founding member of the House of poetry in Morocco, which he chaired from 1996 to 2003.

He authored over twenty books of poetry, prose, essays and translations. He was awarded in 1993 Morocco's book prize, and received the Italian Prize of Calopezzati of Mediterranean Literature in 2006, in addition to the Atlas translation Prize in 2000.

Last modification 02/25/2010 07:54 PM.
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from Hieroglyphs

by Mohammed Bennis


1

A ghost
You attend to the ruby time
No east will rise in you or west
A niche
Drowned in blue rustle shrouded by the Kingdom
A clay horizon
Eternity
Dangling like a bunch of grapes
For a hand that drifts away
And dies

A stone
Forgets its master
Was he
Here
Or was he there
A stone above a stone
Rises to watch you
The comer
No one
Is still awake but you

A silence attends to me
And for you my guest
There will be a night of papyri
And a night of
Ageless
Distances
Arriving in hissing scents
The night’s end
And beginning
Are identical
Friezes are becoming one
Under the feet of the river’s dusk
Intoxication echoes resonate inside me
And fade away



© Translation:James Kirkup
From: Almakane alwathani

Reading Crisis Alarms Moroccan Writers

It seems that there is crisis of book reading in al-Maghreb. Maybe turning off some of the televisions might help. Just a suggestion. Oh yes, and I would really disagree with the statement that most of the books in Morocco with the best info and analysis are in English or French. But I guess it depends on what kind of information one values. Here is the article from Magharebia.com

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'Reading crisis' alarms Moroccan writers

2010-01-28

Ministry of Culture data show that Moroccans read only 2.5 books per year, while 1 in 10 don't read books at all.

By Naoufel Cherkaoui for Magharebia in Raba — 28/01/10


Worried by what they characterise as a national "reading crisis", Moroccan writers recently gathered to discuss restoring readers' love of books.

Cultivating a love of books begins in school, agreed the authors who took part in the January 22nd event in Rabat.

"We believe in the fundamental role that books play in the field of education," said conference organiser Mohamed Madkouri, who also chairs a pro-education group called the Popular Childhood Movement.

"We're implementing an annual programme for reading because our focus is on the problem of children and young people's aversion to reading," he added.

Writer Mohamed Behjaji suggested that a joint effort by the ministries of Culture and Education to encourage reading in schools may help Morocco overcome the reading crisis.

"There should be an international book day in which exhibitions are organised to remind people of reading," he told Magharebia on Friday in Rabat. "Moreover, there should be a partnership between the Ministry of Culture and the Interior Ministry for helping local councils acquire books. It's also a duty to start a real dialogue on the issue of book distribution."

Behjaji said the internet had dramatically changed reading habits.

The internet is a "dilemma" in that it offers opportunities to interact with the world, but it also has "two dangers", writer Mohamed Moujahid told Magharebia.

"The first is that knowledge comes to us through [the internet] in pieces, while book-based knowledge comes within the framework of a certain context," he said. "The second danger is laziness, because we've become addicted to copying and pasting."

A survey undertaken by author Hassan Ouezzani paints a bleak picture of the state of reading in the country. Citing research conducted by the Ministry of Culture in 2001, he said that Moroccans read only 2.5 books per year, while 1 in 10 do not read books at all.

In his work "The Book Sector in Morocco: Reality and Horizon," Ouezzani researched the types of books available to Moroccans. He found that more than 27% of the total number of publications was in the literature and criticism field, while legal sciences accounted for 18.11%. French-to-Arabic translations were far and away the most numerous, which he said might point to a shortage of books originally published in Arabic.


Khaldoun Mesnaoui, who heads the New Horizon Movement to promote cultural instruction and awareness, said more Arabic-language publications need to be created.

"There is also a problem at the level of quality," he told Magharebia. "Most of the books that are rich in valuable information and in-depth analysis are published in English and French."

Mesnaoui said the family and schools played key roles in encouraging students to read.

"I think that in order to get out of the crisis that reading is now undergoing, we need to have education for citizens that makes them understand that reading is a part of their daily routines," he added.

Five Moroccan Writers/Poets make the Beirut 39

Let us ignore the nonsense of the Tunisian elections and look instead of at the winners of Beirut39. Its a project to find the 39 best Arab writers and poets under the age of 39. This year five Moroccans have been chosen amongst the group. Below is a portion of the press release explaining Beirut39 and then below that is a short story written by one of the chosen Moroccan writers whose name is Abdelkader Benali.
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PRESS RELEASE: As part of Beirut 'World Capital of the Book' festivities, Hay Festival announces the complete list of the 'Beirut39' Project at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair. 'Beirut39' will celebrate the best 39 Arab writers under 40 in Beirut in a festival on 15-18 April 2010. An anthology featuring the authors will be published simultaneously in English and Arabic by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc and Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing.


The 39 writers that have been selected to be part of the Beirut39 project are:

Abdullah Thabit (Saudi Arabia, 1973), Abdelaziz Errachidi (Morocco, 1978), Abdelkader Benali (Morocco/The Netherlands, 1975), Abderrahim Elkhassar (Morocco, 1975), Abderrazak Boukebba (Algeria, 1977), Abdellah Taia (Morocco, 1973), Adania Shibli (Palestine, 1974), Ahmad Saadawi (Iraq, 1973), Ahmad Yamani (Egypt, 1970), Ala Hlehel (Palestine, 1974), Yahya Amqassim (Saudi Arabia, 1971), Bassim al Ansar (Iraq, 1970), Dima Wannous (Syria, 1982), Faiza Guene (Algeria/France, 1985), Hala Kawtharani (Lebanon, 1977), Hamdy el Gazzar (Egypt, 1970), Hussein al Abri (Oman, 1972), Hussein Jelaad (Jordan, 1970), Hyam Yared (Lebanon, 1975), Islam Samhan (Jordan, 1982), Joumana Haddad (Lebanon, 1970), Kamel Riahi (Tunisia, 1974), Mansour El Souwaim (Sudan, 1970), Mansoura Ez Eldin (Egypt, 1976), Mohammad Hassan Alwan (Saudi Arabia, 1979), Mohammad Salah Al Azab (Egypt, 1981), Nagat Ali (Egypt, 1975), Najwa Binshatwan (Lybia, 1970), Najwan Darwish (Palestine, 1978), Nazem El Sayed (Lebanon, 1975), Rabee Jaber (Lebanon, 1972), Randa Jarrar (Palestine/Egypt/USA, 1978), Rosa Yassin Hassan (Syria, 1974), Samar Yezbek (Syria, 1970), Samer Abou Hawwash (Palestine, 1972), Wajdi al Ahdal (Yemen, 1973), Yassin Adnan (Morocco, 1970), Youssef Rakha (Egypt, 1976) and Zaki Baydoun (Lebanon, 1981).

Beirut39 is a Hay Festival project which aims to select and celebrate 39 of the most interesting Arab writers under the age of 40 as a part of the Beirut World Capital festivities 2009/10.

______________________________________________

*

From May the Sun Shine Tomorrowby AbdelKader Benali

Translated from the Dutch by Susan Massotty

1

Malik Ben weighed 300 pounds on the day he decided to have his name removed from the Yellow Pages. Lugging all that weight around day after day had gotten to be a chore, which is what prompted his second resolution: to go on a diet.

Malik had dark features. Black hair, which took on a reddish sheen-a kind of auburn he rather liked-whenever he spent too much time in the sun. Brown eyes, the same shade of brown as in the paintings of the old Dutch masters. Pupils that sometimes glowed with visionary intensity. Tawny, leathery skin, tough as birch bark, which served as a visual reminder of his parents-children of high deserts and mountains, where rattlesnakes slithered across the sun-baked soil and goats leapt from ledge to ledge. It was the kind of skin that would still be firm in old age. Malik used his hands a lot when he talked. He was delighted when his hands assumed the leading role halfway through a conversation and did the talking for him. They'd been made for the job. Hadn't the Spanish Lady told him so?

Malik Ben was a healer. He healed people who were no longer in touch with their true, authentic selves. He referred to himself as an "authenticity healer." His job was to help people recover their lost souls. It was a task he had taken upon himself. In the past, poets had been entrusted with the soul's welfare. But since no one believed in poets anymore, Malik had felt compelled to assume this responsibility.

Thanks to his verbal skills, Malik made contact with others quickly and easily. But he was also a good listener-a quality his clients valued even more. It was his listening skills that paid the bills.

Malik's office was in the heart of Amsterdam, in the basement of a nineteenth-century town house a stone's throw away from Leidseplein. Callers were obliged to ring a bell that jangled loudly. Even before they stepped inside, Malik could tell what was on their minds by the expression on their faces.

Land was expensive in Amsterdam, so every inch of space was put to optimal use. Malik's cubbyhole couldn't have measured more than 80 or 90 square feet, but it served his needs: his occupation didn't require a whole lot of space. The elm trees lining the street added an air of majesty, though the roots had gradually pushed up through the paving and cracked the sidewalk in several places. Drivers and pedestrians had never been heard to complain. The gnarled roots had a certain charm. People were used to them. Every once in a while somebody tripped over one, but it was usually a tourist, who scrambled to his feet and went on his way without noticing the beauty of the street.

Malik, down in his basement, stared all day long at shoes-sneakers, boots, pumps and high heels-as they strolled, stumbled and scurried past. He never tired of the scene. Sometimes the shoe-wearers came inside and were given a face and a name. They shook Malik's hand, sat down and told their stories.

*

Malik Ben's services were listed in the Yellow Pages under "Entertainment," though it was hardly an apt description of his work. They'd stuck him in that category because they hadn't been able to come up with a better alternative. The deed had been done before Malik had realized what had happened. "It's like putting a hobble on the wrong leg of a donkey," his father would no doubt have said. Malik didn't worry about it, since most of his clients found their way to his office through word of mouth anyway. Being listed in the Yellow Pages showed that he took himself seriously, and that's all that mattered.

He'd wanted to be listed under "Alternative Medicine," but the Yellow Pages people had flatly refused. His other suggestions, such as "Alternative Therapy," "Psychological Counselling," "Spiritual Guidance" and "Career Consultancy," had likewise been vetoed. The Yellow Pages had a monopoly on headings. If you didn't fit under one of their headings, you didn't exist.

Practitioners of alternative medicine were required to hand over proof, such as a diploma, a certificate or an official letter stating that they belonged to a professional organization or association. But Malik couldn't produce a certificate and wasn't a member of anything, which is why he found himself listed in the Yellow Pages among the clowns, the contortionists and the male strippers, who entertained their female audiences with enviable cocksureness. In sheer desperation, the Yellow Pages people had placed Malik in a handy catchall. He hadn't even bothered to argue, but had simply gone forth to do good.

He was frequently asked at parties to explain his chosen line of work. "What do you actually heal?" It was then that he discovered that people had been given tongues to make life difficult. Your body might be in perfect shape and your cheeks cleanly shaved, but your tongue got so twisted up that nothing came out right. His few well-meaning stabs invariably trailed off into incoherent babble. His usual eloquence let him down just when he needed it the most. What he wanted to say, with studied casualness, was, "I try to restore the self-confidence of successful people who have lost their nerve." But it never came out casually. His tongue refused to cooperate. Instead, he usually said something like, "What's wrong with wanting to give people back their self-confidence?" It sounded defensive. It sounded like a counter-attack. And that had nothing to do with entertainment, much less clowns.

Faced with such a cryptic explanation, people usually looked at Malik as if he were the one who needed help. At that point, he would resort to an even simpler explanation. "I'm a kind of mental coach. I give my clients a psychological boost." That's how low he'd stoop in an effort to appear open and intelligible.

It takes a lot of energy to make yourself completely understood at parties. When Malik could bear the puzzled looks no longer, he'd make use of his last option: he'd slip quietly away. On the way home he'd feel empty and misunderstood, but the feeling never lasted long. Walking past his office was all it took to restore him to his usual good spirits.

Malik never felt sorry for himself. After all, he'd launched his career at the right time. With the grace of a skater, he danced across the slippery ice of an economic upturn. In the two hundred years since the Industrial Revolution and Hegel, there had never been a period in which human authenticity had been so sorely tried. The rat race and rampant consumerism had taken their toll. The winds of spirituality had swept in, cold and implacable, yet at the same time powerful, mysterious and irresistible. Malik knew that there was nothing new under the sun, but others marvelled at the New Age. He realized then that the writing was on the wall. It was a sign that people no longer knew what they were doing. And so he felt entitled to speak up.

Statisticians worked night and day like busy bees, gathering statistics to prove that humanity was in dire straits. Malik loved statistics. He rocked himself to sleep with statistics: his grade-point averages in school, his monthly profits, the average tax burden in the countries of the European Union, the rate of absenteeism among office workers in metropolitan areas.

Even without the help of statisticians, Malik would have noticed that a fundamental change had occurred. More and more people seemed to wonder who they were and to fall apart under pressure. As a result they lost touch with their inner selves. Or so the theory went. To make matters worse, some of them never managed to reconnect. They remained lost souls, forever in search of their identity. In Malik's opinion the human soul had more to do with personality than with religion. He didn't want his clients to misunderstand him on this point.

If anyone doubted his diagnoses-and therefore the need for his services-he pointed to the news reports in the media. One glance at the front page of the daily papers was enough to convince anyone of the seriousness of the situation. Presidents were losing control of the images they created of themselves. Not because the oil fields were drying up, but because they themselves were. Malik always smiled fiendishly as he perused the headlines. The more sensational the news, the better-his livelihood depended on it.

Malik knew why he had been able to adapt so quickly to the spirit of the times. He was the kind of person who learned from experience. And experience had taught him that it was better to blend in than to stick out. Nonconformity was charming in small doses, but too much was fatal. People who flaunted their differences were shunned; people who adapted were subtly rewarded. Malik didn't know all the ins and outs of this subliminal game, but he enjoyed playing it. Natural forces seemed to be at work, and Malik was instinctively drawn to natural things.

If he hadn't identified so strongly with the age in which he lived, Malik wouldn't have been able to rake in quite as much money. He imitated everyone he came into contact with, including absolute idiots. He unconsciously adjusted the tone and pitch of his voice to match that of the person he was talking to, even if it was someone he barely knew or didn't even like. It wasn't that he didn't respect other people. His profession, after all, required total commitment. Irony was taboo. The sharpest criticism could be communicated silently.

His desk was neat and tidy. It was cleaned twice a week by a small, smiling Colombian named Chiquita. That's what she called herself at any rate, though he had no idea if it was her real name. He loved his desk. He cherished its smooth surface, its elegant size and shape. One day he asked Chiquita if she knew Juan. It was a stupid question, since it assumed that everyone in the world knew everyone else. She laughed, because Malik was always bombarding her with questions she couldn't answer. He knew his desk would never be cleaned if Chiquita weren't around to do it.

In fact, she meant more to him than he did to her. When he no longer needed her services, she'd quickly find herself a new employer. He, however, would soon be working in a pigsty. Besides, Chiquita was one of the few persons he talked to outside of his work.

A picture of the Vatican adorned his desk. He kept it as a reminder of a weekend he once spent in Rome. Chiquita was a devout Catholic, so she always dusted the picture and polished the frame until it gleamed. She'd never been to Rome and didn't have the faintest idea of what went on in the Vatican, but the Pope's residence clearly had a special place in her heart.

The picture represented something else altogether to Malik. He thought of it as the perfect symbol of how slowly things change: an event that seems like a major upheaval today is actually just a blip on the human landscape. The picture comforted him and gave him the courage to go on with his work, which obliged him to get up early in the morning and to exercise an infinite amount of patience.

...

15

Like Malik's parents, the Spanish Lady and her husband had been refugees. Refugees with a small "r," an "r" that tried to make itself as small and inconspicuous as possible. Their story wasn't exactly grand either, and when urged to tell it, they looked positively embarrassed. They began to stutter so much that nobody ever made them finish the story. Beneath it lay a deep dark secret they didn't want anyone to know. He remembered the words of the Spanish Lady: "We were all orphaned by the Civil War. We all had to fend for ourselves. There was no need to shout it from the rooftops."

This more or less fit in with what Malik's parents had always told him: "People everywhere are sometimes forced to flee for their lives. We weren't the only ones." Years ago, long before the refugee question had become a burning issue with an even greater news value than floods and famines, Malik's father had seen a group of refugees on the eight o'clock news and had pointed out, with brutal honesty, which ones he thought were going to make it. Apparently he had an eye for that kind of thing.

The Spanish Lady had amassed a fortune in her host country, just as Malik's parents had. They'd made the most of their opportunities and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. No one had ever thought that Malik's father would one day be so rich that he'd never again have to worry about money. This was the same man who'd been welcomed to Holland by a clergyman who'd thrust a pair of underpants into his hands and then assigned him to a hastily built barracks. "You've got to strike while the iron's hot," his father always said, "and not get discouraged when times are tough. Remember, you can always get a bowl of soup from the Salvation Army." It was his father's mantra, and it sounded good, the way he said it. His father had saved the underpants. "They're a sacred relic," he said. "One whiff of those underpants and I'm reminded of my first few weeks in this country. The same feeling of despair comes over me. And that's good, because it gives me energy."

Malik's parents had arrived here with only two plastic bags, which contained their entire belongings. Holland had thrown open its borders to people whose voices had been silenced in other parts of the world, to people who longed for freedom and came to this country or to similarly welcoming countries to lick their wounds. They wanted to live their lives in peaceful surroundings, in places such as Ommoord, Poggibonsi, Sint-Niklaas or Aarhus. Holland was the oasis Malik's parents had been longing for.

"We made the right choice," his father concluded soon after his arrival. "We'll get along fine in this country."

"The toilets are dirty," his mother said.

"Dirty toilets, clean kitchens-isn't that how the saying goes?"

"I don't know and I don't care."

His father had felt at home right from the start. Before long his parents moved into a rented apartment in a working-class neighborhood. His father had promptly paid a visit to City Hall, the Chamber of Commerce and the Red Cross: to City Hall to register as a new resident, to the Chamber of Commerce to request a registration number for his future business and to the Red Cross to get a list of the most frequently occurring accidents and viruses in the Netherlands. He came home and told his wife that she should never stand on a ladder, since ladder-related incidents accounted for 80% of all home accidents. He visited the local churches, tasted the soup at the Salvation Army ("because you never know when you might need it") and took his wife in to taste it too ("this has got to be rock bottom").

Melissa Ben had wanted to go to Switzerland because it had mountains, chocolate and neutrality. Switzerland was a country that didn't belong to anything, much as she and her husband no longer belonged anywhere either. That was how she looked at things. She had a strictly dualistic view of the world. People were either rooted or uprooted, secure or adrift, starry-eyed or down-to-earth. To Melissa, there was nothing in between.

In the eyes of Roxander Ben, however, his adopted country could do no wrong. While Holland was admittedly infected with the revolutionary spirit of the times, it never seemed to progress beyond the flower-power stage. Soon after his arrival, the whole country suddenly seemed to go searching for its identity, only to find a ready set of hippie credos, hippie gurus and hippie manifestos. Not even this could shake his father's faith. Holland in the 1970s was a land of peace and harmony, where opportunity knocked on every door and the soup was rich and creamy.

The difference between Malik's mother and father was never more apparent than in the way they dealt with strangers. One evening his father came home with a woman he'd bumped into on the sidewalk. They'd struck up a conversation, and he'd decided to introduce her to his wife. The moment Melissa Ben caught sight of her husband, fumbling with his keys outside the door, she hid behind the drapes, terrified of the unexpected stranger who was about to enter her private domain: an apartment without decent drapes, without books, without memories, without anything you could point to and say, "Look, that's ours. That's who we are." A home, in fact, without the slightest bit of hominess.

The last thing she wanted was to be confronted with the hussy in tight jeans who was standing on her threshold. A woman who was bound to think she was ridiculous in her strange caftan. A woman who would look down on her and start flirting openly with her husband because she knew she could get away with it. Besides, the apartment still reeked of the spicy dish she'd prepared for her husband's supper. Melissa Ben hated to cook.

Roxander stepped inside and called her name, but she didn't answer.

"My wife is shy," he announced to the sophisticated creature at his side. It was a blatant lie, but lying was second nature to him. He promised over and over again to tell the truth, yet when push came to shove, he always lied. He liked to joke about it: "Truth brings the world closer to you. Lying brings you closer to the world."

Don't make things worse than they already are, she thought. Don't drag my name through the mud in front of strangers! But he did make things worse. He loved making things worse. He invited the Dutch woman to sit down and told her that his wife would be back soon, without saying where she'd gone, but implying that she'd just slipped out for a moment.

"Unfortunately, all I can offer you to drink is tea," he said.

"I'd love some tea!" the woman cooed.

Melissa-still behind the drapes-balled her fists. What a suck-up, she thought.

*

Roxander offered the woman some of Melissa's homemade cookies. His guest seemed to feel completely at ease. She had a soft, inquisitive voice. She thought the tea was delicious, the cookies even more so.

"If that woman had been the least bit sensitive," Melissa said to Malik years later, "she never would have sat down." As it was, his mother had been made to feel ridiculous.

"There's something I'd like to show you," Malik's father said to his guest. He trotted off and came back with a roll of toilet paper. "In my country," he said, "we don't have toilet paper. It's such a wonderful invention, and yet it's so wasteful! Incredible, isn't it? Imagine inventing a fantastic product like this that costs next to nothing to produce, yet commands a price that verges on the hysterical. Just think of all the trees!"

The woman laughed. "So what did you wipe your heinie with?"

"Your 'heinie'? What's that?"

"Your rear end."

He laughed. "With a sharp pebble or a sheet of newspaper. Preferably yesterday's paper, but it depended on the news. A good-sized pebble is the best. A little poking and prodding never hurt anyone. " The two of them laughed.

He's definitely making things worse, Melissa thought. It's getting worse by the minute. Now he's dragged my country's reputation through the mud, and all to please a woman.

The visitor told Roxander that she was impressed by the Regime of No Color-the regime that ruled the country from which he and Melissa had fled.

"There isn't an ounce of truth in what you've been told," Roxander said. "The Regime of No Color has destroyed my country. Look at me. What's a strong, healthy man like me doing here? I didn't leave my country because I hated it."

"Maybe you left because you wanted to tell the story of your country."

"Boy, have you got your head in the clouds! My country doesn't have a story to tell. All it has is poverty and despair. Our TV broadcasts the same crap day after day."

"You must be exaggerating."

"Me, exaggerate? Who's the one who's exaggerating-the person who calls a spade a spade or the person who admires the emperor's new clothes?"

"You've picked up our language pretty fast."

Malik's father realized that talking to this woman had been a mistake. "An animal doesn't abandon its territory without reason. The territory itself must have changed in some way, wouldn't you agree? For example, the animal no longer feels safe, or isn't able to find enough to eat. Anyway, I can tell you why this animal," he said, pointing to himself, "left its territory. I was chased out of it, because I was a spy who refused to give his prized possession to the wolves."

16

"So this is where you've been."

Those were the first words Roxander Ben uttered to his wife when he found her behind the drapes. Two hazel eyes, anxious but hostile, stared back at him. "I see you've been playing hide-and-seek," he said. "We waited for you all evening."

She looked at him. "You don't have a clue, do you?" she said. She strode over to the table, snatched up the roll of toilet paper and waved it angrily in his face.

"You can put that back in the cupboard," he said. "Show-and-tell is over. You missed all the fun. She was impressed, she had a good laugh, and she was confused. Just like I wanted her to be."

"I didn't miss a single word. You came waltzing in here with a strange woman. You made our country seem ridiculous by claiming we didn't have toilet paper, and you made it sound as if we escaped from hell. What on earth will she think of us?"

"I've got a plan. But in order for us to carry it out, you'll have to put on those high heels I bought you last week."

"The red ones? What for?"

"We're going to make a baby. Who else can we tell the story of our lives to except our own child?"

"You want us to do it now . . . this instant?"

"No, when the clock strikes hickory, dickory, dock. I'm going to take a shower, and after I've dried myself off, we can get started. It'll be this century's greatest project. It'll be the best baby ever. We'll show the regime that we haven't been beat!"

If Roxander Ben hadn't added that last sentence, in which he turned the birth of their child into an act of resistance against the regime, Melissa Ben would no doubt have slapped him or cursed him or even bitten off his ear. But she was prepared to do anything to defy the regime. So she put on her red high heels.

Melissa missed her homeland too much to settle easily into a new country. She had specialized in the geology and morphology of mountains. Her country was located in the middle of a high mountain range, and she'd written her master's thesis on the transitional zone between mid-sized and high mountains. Holland didn't have a single mountain, but that didn't stop her from thinking up research projects that she'd give her eyeteeth to implement. Dutch geologists invariably ended up working for the oil industry, and one of the oil companies did in fact have an opening for a geologist. They were anxious to hire her, because they were looking for someone to do field work in the country ruled by the Regime of No Color. They promised to give her a Dutch passport so she could go in and out of the country without getting into trouble with the authorities. The oil companies worked hand in glove with the regime. Melissa rejected the offer. The very thought of it made her blood boil.

Roxander begged her to reconsider. "Once the oil starts to flow, we'll be swimming in the stuff. In money, I mean."

"I don't want to be swimming in money, not at my country's expense."

*

"Oil is oil," he said. "Nobody asks where the gasoline comes from when they fill their tank. We can use that money to send our child to a good school, to put decent clothes on its back. Can't you set aside your principles for once? We're poor. We can't afford to have principles."

"You're such a bastard," she said. "You're asking me to sacrifice everything I ever stood for."

"I may be a bastard, but at least I'm an honest one," he said. "I'm not going to sugar-coat this for you. The next few years are going to be tough. If you don't take that job, someone else will. I don't intend to be made a laughingstock forever. The only thing you need to sacrifice is your inability to face reality."

"You smooth-talking bastard! There's nothing left of the ideals you used to spout so often. Peace. Truth. Justice. They don't mean a thing to you anymore."

Roxander grabbed his wife by the throat. "I don't ever want to hear those words again," he said. "I've had it up to here with words like that. Those words have been our downfall. Words are indestructible. They never change. People do. Our entire country went chasing after a few simple words, and look what it got us: corruption, manipulation, mutual distrust and a pack of lies."

For weeks Melissa was besieged with phone calls from the oil company. "The answer is no," she said. And again: "The answer is no!" They raised the salary. "The answer is no." They threw in bonuses, added more vacation days, upped her chances of promotion. "The answer is no." Roxander could have strangled her. Instead he watched as Melissa destroyed their one chance to live a life of relative ease.

"The answer is no!"

The Polymath By Moroccan Author Bensalem Himmich

I just finished reading the book, The Polymath, and I can honestly say that it is one of the best books I have ever read. Kudos to the translator, Roger Allen.

Bensalem Himmich, the author, won several awards for it, but a book of this quality should be more popular. Here is an article from al-Ahram weekly that ran just after Himmich won the Naguib Mahfouz prize in 2002. And then there is this short review that appeared in Newsweek.
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Ibn Khaldun Resurrected

by Amina Elbendary

As Cairo celebrated the centenary of the Egyptian Museum last Wednesday, another celebration took place also on Tahrir Square; AUC celebrated Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz's birthday (11 December) by announcing the winner of the seventh Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.

Never far from controversy, the prize this year went to Moroccan novelist Bensalem Himmich for his novel Al-Allama (The Polymath), originally published in Beirut in 1997 and in Rabat in 2001. An Egyptian edition is due shortly from Afaq Al-Kitaba series.

A historical novel, Al-Allama is a fictional biography of famous 14th century scholar Ibn Khaldun that reconstructs his personal and intellectual universe focusing on the years he spent in Egypt and Syria. Himmich has been a scholar of Ibn Khaldun for many years, having relied on his Tarikh (History) and Muqaddima (Prolegomena) while writing a dissertation on the late mediaeval period in the Maghrib which earned him a doctoral degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne in 1986. He has also published a study on Ibn Khaldun. For this novel, Al- Allama, he relied on Ibn Khaldun's own Al-Ta'rif bi Ibn Khaldun wa Rihlatihi Sharqan wa Gharban (Presenting Ibn Khaldun and his Voyage in the East and the West) -- a semi-autobiographical work. Himmich is the author of seven other novels including Majnun Al-Hukm (Power Crazy) which won him the Naqid Award and which AUC Press will shortly publish in English. Himmich is currently professor of philosophy at Mohamed V University in Rabat, a consultant to the Moroccan Academy and vice-president of the Writers' Union.

Established in 1996, the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature also includes the translation of the award-winning novel into English by the AUC Press. The award committee is made up of Ferial Ghazoul, professor of English and Comparative Literature at AUC, Ragaa El- Naqqash, writer and literary critic, Abdel-Moneim Tallima, professor of Arabic language and literature at Cairo University, Hoda Wasfi, professor of French literature at Ain Shams University and Mark Linz, director of the AUC Press. El-Naqqash described Al-Allama as "a novel that deals with the problematic relationship between the intellectual and authorities. Bensalem Himmich has produced a musically structured work made up of two melodic phrases: one historical and the other contemporary. Thus the novel addresses our times through the transparent veil of history."

Reading the judges' citation Ghazoul remarked that "Al-Allama is a historical novel and yet imagination plays an important role in personalising the biographical sketch we have of Ibn Khaldun. The orientation of Bensalem Himmich in this novel in particular, and in his fictional corpus in general, converges with that of the master, Naguib Mahfouz, in its quest for presenting the actual and the real in the garb of the fictional and the imaginative, in the mobilisation of historical events as material for storytelling."

In his acceptance speech Himmich outlined the dual poles that govern his approach to fiction; the philosophical and the historical. Explaining the former he said: "My devotion and attachment to the individual -- but not to individualism -- is what spurred me on the level of writing to understand the expressive possibilities of the novel and its communicative usefulness. Fiction allows the creation of the characters and the narrative unfolding of their life trajectories through the fabric of relations and intrigues in which they are embedded... I find in the novel strong semantic ties with informal philosophy revolving around existence and being; it possesses the most fertile grounds for reflection on human issues. In its liminal manifestations, the novel relates fundamentally to modes of meaning (or their absence) in the dialectic of life and death." As for the historical pole: "I see everything as heritage, that is, as history; for even what we produce today will one day be transformed into heritage."

Himmich also explained his indebtedness to Mahfouz: "What I have learned from the work of great masters of Mahfouz's stature is that language is the living treasury of the novelist. Language is the hallmark of the novelist... The genuine literary labour is to develop the language and to innovate it in a modernising way. This means the attainment of verbal and semantic freedom at once in a tightly dialectical mode as we witness in the past in the works of [Abu Hayyan] Al-Tawhidi and in the present in the works of Mahfouz. Influenced by these two figures, I find myself inclined toward the poetics of exposition rather than the poetics of grandiloquence, attracted to a transparency and simplicity that is hard to attain rather than to decorative and unfamiliar flourishes."

And finally, "What I continue to learn and derive from such writers is this lesson: the novel is as much the cultivation of knowledge as it is the application of creativity."

The AUC Mahfouz Medal for Literature is more often than not greeted with controversy within Egyptian intellectual circles. This year, though, reactions have been subdued: perhaps the award has taken observers by surprise as many in Cairo are not quite up to date with Maghribi literature. But the annoying question will undoubtedly be asked this year too: Why Himmich? Why not so-and-so? Indeed, why any author?

Anyway, this year's award ceremony had the new touch of readings from Naguib Mahfouz. Actress Raghda and actor Hesham Selim each read selections from Mahfouz's oeuvre, Raghda in Arabic, followed by Selim in English. They read the story "Half a Day" from his collection The Time and the Place as well as selections from Echoes of an Autobiography. One might confess, however, that Raghda's rendition was infinitely more appealing, animated and enjoyable, especially as she managed through her voice alone to inspire the audiences with the nuances of the text and the different characters and levels of consciousness in the story. Perhaps in the future this tradition could be extended to include readings from the winning work which -- in AUC Mahfouz Award tradition -- is often unfamiliar to the crowd.

At the ceremony, the AUC Press also announced the publication of translations of recent Mahfouz award winners, Edwar El-Kharrat's Rama and the Dragon and Somaya Ramadan's Leaves of Narcissus.

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The Polymath By Bensalem Himmich

In this historical novel, we meet perhaps the most famous of all Arab intellectuals, the 14th-century historian and judge Ibn Khaldun. It is near the end of his life, and Khaldun has settled in Cairo after decades of advising North African and Spanish Muslim rulers. Amid rumors and rebellions in among the Mamluk rulers of Egypt, Ibn Khaldun is hired, fired, imprisoned and dispatched to negotiate with the Mamluk's saber-rattling adversary, the Mongol conqueror Tamerlane. Readers have to plow through a long introduction to Ibn Khaldun's ideas before reaching the best part of this work, translated from Arabic: the personal history of a still-influential polymath.

--Liat Radcliffe