“Scentless” Tunisian Novels! An Article Written by Abdeddayem Sallami and Translated by Ali Znaidi.

[Habib Selmi’s The Scents of Marie-Claire] Among the woks that put an end to the generalisation stating the inexistence of a Tunisian novel. Photo borrowed off http://www.alarab.co.uk

“Scentless” Tunisian Novels!                                                           

By Abdeddayem Sallami

Translated by Ali Znaidi 

In 1966 Sonallah Ibrahim published his little novel The Smell of it and said about it “it is a novel that is on the edge of the autobiography” because although it tells the experience of a Leftist intellectual, we can find in it an identification with his experience as he left the prison after five years and he was thrown into the street without a shelter or a wage.

In the street he observes the conflict of three philosophies triggering the novel’s events: The philosophy of the Nasserite state which raises slogans against imperialism and makes the citizens hope for gaining wars and overcoming hunger, the philosophy of street which tends to individualism, showing off, and transgression against the system of social values, particularly the value of altruism, and the intellectual’s utopian philosophy which is based upon the dreams of Socialism, and the realisation of social justice for everyone.

***

We now remember the novel of The Smell of it which was not predestined to circulate among readers the way his The Star of August did because we found in the scent of its events and its modern artistic styles a persistence in keeping to linger in the mind after the passing of more than fifteen years after the date of its reading.

Perhaps among the causes of subdividing this rememberance is the inexistence of “scent” in most of the Tunisian novels which we examined with all our senses and reading alertness. Despite the variety of novel titles during the last two decades and the novelists’ diversification of the advertising styles to the point the advertising act became more pleasing than their novels, most of those novelistic publications remained lacking the minimum of life’s signs. They even were almost completely to be linguistic corpses waiting for festering in a bookshelf or in a pavement despite the beautiful dedications in them.

Although we find some exaggeration and generalisations in one of Dr Mohamed El Bardi’s university lessons stating that there is no Tunisian novel, and even we find a geographical concept that narrows down the meaning of literature, the status quo of the Tunisian narration permits us to say that there is a novel in it, yet it does not go beyond the personal endeavours.

They are endeavours which are not governed by the rule of “who worked hard and succeeded” because they are pertaining to the field of creation and creation does not accept relativisation or negligence because all through a century the corpus of the novel in Tunisia did not exceed 400 publications, and even the publications of the same novelist remained scarce and quality relied on the principle of “the cock’s egg” [something that happens once in a lifetime] which made most of the readers know only one novel of those novelists.

Perhaps we ascribe this to the fact that we find “extremism” in some of the new Tunisian novelists in their riding of the wave of narrative experimentation and their endeavour to go beyond its rules which were set by the theories of Western critics. This made their novels full of voidness, the chaos of meanings, and the gratuitousness of events to the point they became devoid of a narrative flesh or a semantic scent and intending to virtually say everything, but in fact they say nothing.

***

To put an end to the generalisation that states the inexistence of a Tunisian novel, it is sufficient to remember novels that achieved the essence of narration and formed, though scarce, a narrative accomplishment that gave its owners the right of the outstanding presence in the Arab novelistic scene, for instance, Slaheddine Boujah’s The Slave Trader (Al-Nakhkhas), Ibrahim Dargouthi’s The Dervishes Return to Exile (Addarawish Yaoudouna ila al Manfa), Mohamed El Bardi’s Henna, Habib Selmi’s Bayya’s Lovers (Ushaq Bayya) and The Scents of Marie-Claire (Rawaih Marie-Claire), Abou Bakr Ayadi’s The Last of the Subjects (Akhir Arraiyya) and The Time of the Dinar ( Zamanou Addanous), and Mohamed Ali Yousfi’s Sun Tiles (Shams Alqaramid). These are novels that relied upon a great awareness of the value of the storytelling act, committed themselves to most of its artistic rules, paid attention to the people’s status quo, and revealed what was unspoken about in the daily life with all its colours.

Originally appeared in Alarabonline 23/08/2012 by Abdeddayem Sallami.

You can read the original text in Arabic here.

Translated from Arabic by Ali Znaidi.

Tunisian Hedi Thabet and Science Fiction Writing: An Article Written by Kamel Riahi and Translated by Ali Znaidi.

Tunisian Hedi Thabet and Science Fiction Writing

Hedi Thabet Leafing through His New Novel Tanit’s Temple (Aljazeera)

Kamel Riahi-Tunisia (Translated from Arabic by Ali Znaidi)

Hedi Thabet is considered among the contemporary Tunisian novelists who gave a major addition to the Tunisian narration, despite his late plunge into novel writing, gaining a virgin road and opening a new door in the realm of narration, that is, of science fiction literaure.

Thabet surprised the Tunisian cultural scene in 1999 with his novel (Ghar Eljinn) The Cave of the Jinns, and then followed it by the novel of (Jabel Elliyine) Elliyine Mountain. Both novels were characterised by an unfamiliar genre feature, that is, of ‘the science fiction novel’ to begin a new novelistic project which is formed on the margin of the classical realistic, social, and political novel.

But afterwards Hedi Thabet published his novel (Al Qoronfoul La Yanboutou fi Assahraa) The Carnations Don’t Live in the Desert, winning the Tunisian prestigious Golden Comar. This novel was about to abort the experience of science fiction writing for him. But his persistence in his project and his fondness for science fiction literature made him return to the scene with his novel (Law Aada Hannibal) If Hannibal Returned. His political novel The Rape did not also prevent him from his project. Thus he returned to his beloved field with his novel Tanit’s Temple.

New Choices:

Through his works Thabet broke all expectations. A professor of French literature who hold degrees from French universities and a man belonging to the Sixties and Seventies Generation with all his francophone weight chooses Arabic as a medium for his novels. He could have easily written in French but he chose the hardest way, especially if we remembered the reception crisis of the literary genre he chose, that is, of science fiction, in Tunisia.

Contemplating the life of Hedi Thabet who one day extricated himself from the political activity in which he was involved for years preferring the cultural choice, one cannot find strange this adventure in which he believed, despite the decrease of possibilities for him as a former politician and a new novelist to publish. Although he was not able to publish his novel The Rape, which he wrote in the beginning of the eighties, only in the late nineties, he kept resisting the ogre of books censorship and dissented from it through science fiction literature breaking the horizon of its waiting for a new culture that apparently seems an intellectual luxury, but in its deepest nature, gives a flagrant criticism of the Tunisian and Arab society, and divulges the working mechanisms of the disease of benightedness, reactionism, and illiteracy that are decaying its body.

Today Hedi Thabet was preoccupied in his project with writing the Carthagian history of Tunisia. After the Second Gulf War, he reverted to the character of Hannibal in his novel If Hannibal Returned resurrecting the great leader to write the history of Carthage on the one hand and write the reality of the Arab nation on the other hand. So he approached the Arab status quo and deconstructed the Western thought and the movement of international imperialism through the operation of cloning and resurrecting the Carthagian leader.

Thabet considered that he wanted to try to touch upon two things in this novel: First is comparing two imperial regimes; Carthage and Rome with the first building its hegemony through commerce without the need for military hegemony, and the second using the military power to impose its hegemony on the other, and unfortunately the second toppled the first and the civilisation of war and hegemony pervaded humanity. Second is warning about the return of American imperialism today to impose on the world an order that is akin to what Rome did before more than two thousand years. That’s why we must be like Hannibal to stop this imperial hegemony in order for the hands of the clock not to return two thousand years behind.

Political Fiction:

Returning to the literatures of science fiction we made sure the existence of this type of literature that is called ‘political fiction literature,’ a literature that originated from science fiction then it stood on its own right. Writer Mahmoud Kassem devoted for it a whole chapter in his book Science Fiction: The Literature of the Twentieth Century. Among the predictions of this literature were ‘the dominance of political violence,’ ‘the demise of the modern civilisaton of the West,’ and the ‘demise of communism.’

Kassem said,

There are other themes that are familiar to political fiction literature like the dominance of a certain ideology or the dominance of political violence over the form of social relations or religious extremism or the dominance of the era of dictatorship or the dominance of another human race that is similar to the human kind in evolution like monkeys or the woodman.

Except the last theme, all other predictions are realistic and can happen as we are living today in the era of new dictatorships and the dominance of ideologies.

Here we can mention George Orwell’s novel 1984 in which he predicted the dominance of big powers in which the human being lives a situation of alienation and is just a number that is subject to an endless surveillance in the authoritarian state of the “Big Brother.” In his novel Orwell described the world that became a nightmare in which spying pervaded all the places.

And in this category we can put a part of the novelistic realm of Hedi Thabet who plunges into science fiction to say the political reality. His writings attempt to criticise reality, deconstruct its problems, and reveal the depth of ugliness of the unspoken about in it. The writer speaks about the fact that his literary project is stirred by a societal project saying,

I started writing science fiction bearing in my mind a future societal project in which the human being becomes liberated from his/her humanity limitations: violence of all its forms, worshipping the self with all its defects, hegemony of all its aspects, and fear of all its dimensions.

This presentation is shown in both of his novels The Cave of the Jinns and Elliyine Mountain where the events take place between the Earth and Qanmad. The general form of scientific fantasy appears through space creatures, planets, mysteries, and wonders. However the ideas are societal, human, and earthly dealing with the diseases of violence, war, poverty, and racial discrimination.

This article appeared in aljazeera.net 07/09/2012 by Kamel Riahi.

You can read the original text in Arabic here.

Translated from Arabic by Ali Znaidi.

“The Boxing Ring” or the New Initiative of “Nas Decameron”: A Report Written by Alia Ben Nhila and Translated by Ali Znaidi.

“The Boxing Ring” or the New Initiative of “Nas Decameron”: A Report Written by Alia Ben Nhila and Translated by Ali Znaidi.

In the New Season’s Program of “Nas Decameron”:

A “Combat” in a “Boxing Ring” where “al-Qawwaloun”(The Tellers) Fight.

Hemingway, Alexis Philonenko, and the Senegalese Aminata Sow Fall.

The working program of “Nas Decameron” salon for October, November, and December, 2012 was agreed upon in the evening of Tuesday, August 28^th, 2012. It includes “The Boxing Ring” manifestation which aims at, according to what novelist Kamel Riahi declared to Assabah, “regaining the art of oral storytelling in our Arab-Islamic heritage through sessions animated by ‘The Tellers’ in an innovative modern way in an attempt to regain the Decameron episodes of Boccaccio in a new way.

This manifestation also aims at inventing a new type and pattern to introduce narrative literature in Tunisia, creating a space for a marathon of tales and stories to highlight and enhance Tunisian narration, especially emerging writers, making literature accessible for the common people through a simple, modern, and new discourse that walks away from the pulpit discourse, materialising the statement ‘the sound mind in the sound body’ into reality,  and showing the close connectedness between sport and writing.”

According to Kamel Riahi, this manifestation that will be launched by the free storytelling salon in “Nas Decameron” club was inspired by the realms of boxing or “the noble art,” and it will abide by its rules. The décor will be in the form of a boxing ring. Sound effects and scenography will be identical to the contests of this game.

Combating will be in the form of rounds including two writers who will read texts à l’italienne. The participant is allowed to use accessories, sound effects, theatrical expressions when reading his/her prose text. Texts will not be limited to Arabic, but also the use of French will be allowed. The winner will be awarded a shield akin to the one used in boxing.

On the margin of “The Boxing Ring” manifestation a seminar about writing and boxing will be held through presenting experiences of international writers who practiced boxing like Ernest Hemingway, an American novelist and short story writer who was born in 1899 and won The Literature Nobel Prize in 1945 for his novel The Old Man and the Sea, Mohamed Mrabet, a Moroccan artist and novelist who was born in 1936, and Rachid  Djaïdani, a French writer, screenwriter, actor, and director of an Algerian father who has many literary works,  among them, Viscera (2007), and many films.

Besides, History of Boxing by the historian of modern philosophy at the French universities Alexis Philonenko will be introduced.

A Combat Controlled by a Chronometer:

“The Boxing Ring” manifestation that will take center stage in The Culture House Ibn Khaldoun all day long on September 28, 2012 has rules, among them, we can cite:

*The narrative combat must not exceed 10 minutes and it will be controlled by a chronometer and a brassy bell, and after time ends reading will not be permitted.

*Contributions are accepted a week before the manifestation as a maximum limit.

*Reading must be inside the ring.

*The participant must not utter any word that is not related to the text, either before reading the text or after reading it.

*The participant must attend to hear the other participants whose combats will undergo a draw to decide on the combat contestants. The one who will violate this procedure will be sanctioned through deleting his/her name from the contest. It should be noted that reading will not follow the alphabetical order of the contestants’ names.

“Nas Decameron” is a salon founded by novelist Kamel Riahi and a number of writers and poets in May 2011 to introduce and discuss some of the international experiences in the fields of narration, short story, novel, cinematic and literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, and fine arts.

Introducing and Discussing International Novels:

The rest of the program of “Nas Decameron” for the 2011/2012 season will be as follows:

*05/10/2012: Discussing Aminata Sow Fall’s novel La Grève des bàttu ou les déchets humains (The Beggars’ Stike) which was translated into Arabic by Jamel Jlassi

*12/10/2012:  Adnen Jdey and Aymen Debussy discussing “Writing and Evil.”

*19/10/2012: Slah Ben Ayed and Kamel Riahi discussing “The Novel and the Sea.”

*26/10/2012: Kamel Riahi and Adnen Jdey discussing Frida Kahlo.

*02/11/2012: Aymen Debussy and Slah Ben Ayed discussing the novel and the film L’étrange histoire de Benjamen Button (The Curious Case of Benjamen Button)

*09/11/2012: Kamel Riahi and Chaouki Barnoussi discussing “Writings in the Prison Cell.”

*16/11/2012: Adnen Jdey and Slah Ben Ayed discussing “Literature and Philosophy.”

*23/11/2012: Aymen Debussy and Chaouki Barnoussi discussing “The Novel and Jazz.”

*30/11/2012: Chaouki Barnoussi and Kamel Riahi discussing Haruki Murakami.

*07/12/2012: Adnen Jdey and Aymen Debussy discussing “Writing and Photography.”

*14/12/2012: Adnen Jdey discussing Emile Cioran.

*21/12/2012: Kamel Riahi and Aymen Debussy discussing Mohamed Aribi (a Tunisian writer).

Originally appeared in the Tunisian daily Assabah 30/08/2012 by Alia Ben Nhila.

You can read the original text in Arabic here.

Translated from Arabic, with some rectifications, by Ali Znaidi.

“Nas Decameron” Members Preparing for Upcoming Activities. Photo borrowed off http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151207055139874&set=a.10151207055014874.505097.560539873&type=3

 

Three Tunsian Poets Feautred in an Anthology

The Parley Tree. Photo borrowed off http://www.arcpublications.co.uk/book.php?description_id=432

 

Tahar Bekri, Shams Nadir, and Amina Saïd were featured in a bilingual anthology titled The Parley Tree: Poets from French-speaking Africa & The Arab World. This anthology is translated by Patrick Williamson with Yann Lovelock, edited and introduced by Patrick Williamson with a Preface by Tahar Bekri, and published by Arc Publications, 2012. This work seeks to provide the English-speaking audience with the most quality and vividest examples of poetry written by French-speaking distinguished poets of the region.

Here is a slice from this pie; a poem by Taher Bekri:

Afghanistan
By Tahar Bekri 
 
 
If music were to die
If love is the work of Satan
If your body is your prison
If the whip is what you know how to wield
If your heart is your beard
If your truth is a veil
If your refrain is a bullet
If your song is a funeral prayer
If your falcon is a crow
If your look is brother to dust

How can you love the sun in your lair?

If your sky detests kites
If your soil is a minefield
If your wind is thickened by powder
And not fecund pollen
If your mulberry tree is a gallows
If your door is a barrage
If your bed is a trench
If your house is a coffin
If your river flows with blood
If your snow is a cemetery

How can you love the water in the river?

If your mountains submit
Humiliated and humbled
Their backs unjust citadels
Their guts disembowelled to harden stone
If your valley is not to fuel your dream
Like a rose in the zephyr
If your clay is kneaded by grief
Not to raise a school
Like an apricot tree in flower
If your reed is not a qalam

How can you live in the light?

If your labour is seed for scarecrows
Craven cache for poppies
If your horse is enslaved by its blinkers
Scorns the flight of flutes in the air
If your valley vomits its sapphires
To the warlords
If the braids of women are ropes
If your stadium is a slaughterhouse
If your path is invisible
If your night is a tomb for the stars

How can you promise the moon?

If Gengis Khan is your master
If your child is the offspring of Timur
If your face is faceless
If your sabre is your executioner
If your epic is ruins and vultures
If all the rain cannot wash your forefinger
If your desire is dead wood
If your fire is ash
If your flame is smoke
If your passion is grenades and cannon

How can you seduce the dove at the window?

If your village is a casern
Not a nest for swallows
If your house is a cave
If your source is a mirage
If your dress is your shroud
If death is your mausoleum
If your Koran is a turban
If your prayer is war
If your paradise is hell
If your soul is your sombre gaoler

How can you love the spring?
 
 
 
 
from The Parley Tree (Arc Publications, 2012).

Ali Znaidi Featured in an Online Anthology

Poets Against War. Photo borrowed off http://www.poetsagainstwar.ca

Ali Znaidi’s poem “Can I Dream?” was featured in August, 2012 in an ongoing online anthology that includes poems against war in every part of this planet. You can read the poem here.

Two Tunisian Novels Are Nominated for ‘the Arabic Booker.’

Two Tunisian Novels Are Nominated for ‘the Arabic Booker.’

Moncef Louhaibi: “Whoever will win it, what matters is that the judges would be transparent.”

Dar El Janoub Editions (Sud Éditions, Tunis) has nominated the novels Achiket Adam (Adam’s Mistress) by Tunisian poet and novelist Moncef Louhaibi and Saadatouhou Essaid Elwazir (His Excellency Mr. the Minister) by Houcine El Wad (or Houcine El Oued) for The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) known as the Arabic Booker which is among the important Arabic prizes. It aims at rewarding contemporary high quality Arabic literature and increasing the level of its international readership through translating the winning novels into other languages and publishing them. The Arabic Booker is run by an Arabic committee with the support of the Booker Prize Foundation, and the Weidenfeld Institute for Strategic Dialogue and is funded by the Emirates Foundation in Abu Dhabi. It was launched in 2007. It was awarded for the first time for Egyptian novelist Bahaa Taher for his novel Sunset Oasis in 2008. Lebanese novelist Rabee Jaber won the 2012 Prize for his novel Druze of Belgrade. A panel of judges is selected each year. Tunisian Raja Ben Slama was chosen as a judge in one of the Prizes’ edition. The prize is devoted to literary fiction. Submitting to the Prize has certain rules, for instance, the novel must be submitted by a recognized publisher, in consultation with the writer, that is to say, a self-published writer cannot submit his/her novel. Besides, only novels originally written in Arabic are eligible, that is to say Arabic translations of a book originally written in any other language are not eligible. Moreover novels written by deceased writers and manuscripts are not eligible. Only one novel is accepted per author, and the novel must respect publishing rights and copyrights of the Arab country where it has been published. Every publisher can submit more than one novel. Every publisher was allowed to submit up to three novels, but now publishers become allowed to submit up to four novels. So Dar El Janoub Editions submitted Moncef Louhaibi’s novel Adam’s Mistress and Houcine El Wad’s Novel His Excellency Mr. the Minister which were published between 2011 and 2012.

Dar El Janoub Editions said to Assabah that it chose these two titles because they were its latest publications that were issued under the series “Ouyoun El Mouassira” as usual, and after the agreement with Houcine El Wad and Moncef Louhaibi because there is a form which   is required by the committee of the Prize to be sent with the novel in which it includes a biography of the writer, a synopsis of the book, and other pieces of information.

It is noted that Moncef Louhaibi’s Adam’s Mistress was awarded the Golden Comar, whereas His Excellency Mr. the Minister was not nominated for the Comar because Houcine El Wad was awarded a Golden Comar for his novel The City’s Scents.

Writer and critic Mohamed Ben Rejeb thinks that Dar El Janoub Editions did well in choosing to submit both novels because, according to him, they deserve to be nominated. He sees that the novel of Adam’s Mistress is a wonderful novel because its style is new, highlighting the total inventiveness of this style because Moncef Louhaibi wrote down his conversations with a hidden lady on the social site of Facebook, worked on them, and published them in the form of a novel. Ben Rejeb said, “Perhaps inventiveness itself is a guarantee for its nomination, but I have no idea concerning rules of this Prize because Adam’s Mistress was awarded a Golden Comar in its previous edition, however Houcine El Wad’s His Excellency Mr. the Minister is beautiful but it is classical and its strength lies in its language.”

Our interlocutor said, “I have read three Arabic novels since the beginning of Ramadan; two from Egypt and one from Syria, and it became obvious to me that although it is always unique as it gradually moves towards beauty which attracts and convinces everyone, the Tunisian novel is still stagnant in its place and does not leave it to break through into the unknown realms and walk away from old styles. Of course, I admit the existence of exceptions like poet Moncef Louhaibi’s novel of Adam’s Mistress.”

Thanks to his well-versedness in the novel in Tunisia as he has been among the patrons of the Tunisian Golden Comar for years which made him know its features and the points of its strength and weakness, Mohamed Ben Rejeb said, “It is true that the Tunisian novel invents original themes which are exemplified in the experiences of Mohamed Jaballi, Ibrahim Dargouthi, Amel Mokhtar, and Youssef Abdelati,  but the audacity of the connection between the invented theme and the invented style slightly succeeds.” He explained that we did not see, in the required strength, the audacity of Alaa Al-Aswani, for example, in breaking the Egyptian novelistic dimension in the creative Tunisian novelists. He said, “Thus the problem of the Tunisian novel lies in the invention of another way of writing exactly like what Moncef Louhaibi did. It is true that Moncef chose the style offered to him by Facebook which is the distinctive moment that happens to the creators. The new style sometimes happens suddenly like Einstein’s apple.”

As for him, Moncef Louhaibi expressed his happiness to Assabah for nominating his novel Adam’s Mistress and said, “I don’t know anything about the judges, but whoever will win it, what matters is that they would be transparent.”

This article appeared in the Tunisian daily Assabah 07/08/2012 by Alia Ben Nhila.

You can read the original text in Arabic here.

Translated from Arabic by Ali Znaidi.

Hassouna Mosbahi Guested at Goethe-Institut Los Angeles: A Report Translated by Ali Znaidi

 

Tunisian Writer Hassouna Mosbahi

Hassouna Mosbahi: Let Us Safely Pluck the Fruits of the Revolution!

Los Angeles-A meeting with Tunisian writer Hassouna Mosbahi took center stage in Goethe-Institut Los Angeles in the evening of Thursday, July 19, 2012 at 7:00 pm. where an American actor read passages of his novel A Tunisian Tale published in the beginning of this year by the American University in Cairo and translated into English by Arabist Max Weiss, Assistant Professor at Princeton University.

Hassouna Mosbahi who is currently residing through a German grant in the Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades, near Los Angeles spoke about the situations in his country after the collapse of Ben Ali’s regime. He also spoke about the writers who influenced him in the beginning of his literary life like Albert Camus, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and others.

The Tunisian writer said that the status quo in his country is habitually stronger than what even Kafka’s imagination could imagine and that’s why he usually seeks to start from realistic events to observe them in a literary way with the help of new technologies drawn from cinema and the world of image in general. Professor David Hirsch who is versed in Arab culture translated Hassouna Mosbahi’s interventions for the audience. In the beginning of this meeting Hassouna Mosbahi gave the following speech:

Dear audience, good evening!

In the beginning of this little speech I would like to thank

and be grateful for the honourable Fareed Majari who gave

me the opportunity to meet and talk to you. I would also

like to thank Mrs. Margit Kleinman, the director of the Villa

Aurora where I currently reside and her assistants who provide

me with all what I need financially and literally to finish

my new work.

I come from Tunisia, the country where the spark of

what will be labeled the Arab Spring started and toppled

authoritarian and corrupted regimes. But what happened

during the aftermath of these revolutions and what is currently

happening is dangerous and frightening.

The revolution that broke out in my country for the sake of

freedom, dignity, and bread is witnessing successive relapses

that might make it derail its path and confiscate the aspirations

of those who sparked it, particularly the newer generations;

males and females, who can no longer endure injustice, and the

political, social, and cultural coercion.

Those who draw benefits from these derailments are the

benighted obscurant powers that refuse the civilisation of

nowadays, and the values of freedom and democracy and

that disguise themselves in religion or what they call

“the sanctities” to return Tunisian society which has achieved

an important progress in many fields related to the woman’s

freedom, the dissemination of education, and the enlightening

of brains back to the darkness of the Middle Ages.

As an intellectual and writer who spent a great portion of my life

in exiles to preserve my freedom in life and writing I raise my

voice here in front of you to strongly express utter disapproval

of the attacks that target my colleagues, the writers, artists, poets,

and academics and behind which stood traders in religion who instigate

violence and agitation and work in public and in private on

establishing new inquisition tribunals that permit to judge all those

who oppose their ideas and opinions and all those who try to face

and prevent them from destroying the revolution of freedom, dignity,

and bread as unbelievers and declare the killing of them. So it

is no way to go backward.

Those who are seduced by a black past in which all manifestations of

oppression and injustice appear have no right to confiscate the aspirations

of the newer generations that want to enjoy the fruits of the era of

democracy, progress, and social justice.

My thanks and respect for all of you!

Originally appeared in alarab.co.uk 22/07/2012.

You can read the original text in Arabic here.

Translated from Arabic by Ali Znaidi.

Interview with Tunisian Writer Houyem Ferchichi

Houyem Ferchichi

 

Interview with Tunisian Short Story Writer Houyem Ferchichi 05/06/2012 (10:42)

Interview with Tunisian writer Houyem Ferchichi conducted by Majid Elia-Editor in chief

(Translated from Arabic by Ali Znaidi)

Houyem Ferchichi is a Tunisian author and short story writer who has collaborated with literary journalism since 2003. She published her short stories in Arab and Tunisian literary magazines. Her short story collection The Scene and the Shadow was awarded the Tunisian CREDIF Prize. She was also awarded Almothaqaf Shield for Culture, Literature, and Arts. Houyem Ferchichi writes in different fields like literary criticism and conducts journalistic interviews. She has a particular fondness for short story writing, despite her working on novel. She is enriching her writings with different artistic mediums like poetry, drawing, and cinema. This is what made her creative texts a gauge of several critical readings which were published in Tunisia and in the Arab World. Despite the variety of the fields of her writings, Houyem does not stagnate herself in a definite writing milieu. She sees that the dynamism of writing lies in asking questions and showing serious critical attitudes, and that the tributaries of creation are not disconnected from its manifestations through the cultural scene in and with which she lives. That is what made most of the characters of her stories drawn from the Tunisian cultural reality, for instance, we find the artist, the thinker, the journalist, and the novelist.

Ishtar Journal: How was your beginning with the pen’s career?

Houyem Ferchichi: My beginning with the pen’s career was connected to my first childish revelations. It oscillated between writing poetic accidental thoughts and writing contemplative ones. But it was not long until I turned to prose. I gave my fictional characters my confusion, my existential questions, and my relation with the designs of places and the traces they had left in my memory. I was like someone who started writing to search for characters that belong to the environment which I had discovered and had made me live bewilderment after bewilderment. I used to probe the world of the character even though I used to give it some of my childish bewilderment. I often used the third singular pronoun (she/he) to write neutrally, but without the lack of subjectivity in my texts

Ishtar Journal: We have known that your short story collection The Scene and the Shadow was awarded the CREDIF Prize in Tunisia immediately after the revolution. Could you tell us about this collection?

Houyem Ferchichi: This collection includes stories which I published in different Tunisian and Arab magazines between 2003 and 2009. Through them I tried to reflect the Tunisian status quo in the last decade that preceded the revolution through aesthetic visions and different technical preoccupations. Through these stories the reader might discover a narrator who is not preoccupied with the classical women’s issues as much as she is preoccupied with finding that gate to reshape her stories after understanding that she will not tell and create to resist death but to discover herself and to be aware of it in society and the world. These stories were characterised by pungent criticism of the Tunisian status quo at all levels. “The Scene and the Shadow,” the title of the collection reflected the scene as it is and the threads that move it in the shadow. This was particularly revealed in the story “The Scene and the Shadow” in which I depicted the environment of a mountainous village that is characterised by the use of the simple people and the faking of truths. The village was affected by a fire that was about to devastate it. The female journalist was assigned to do an investigative report about this incident. The editor assigned her to conduct an interview with Sami Arrachid who will donate money for these aggrieved persons. When she moved there and wanted to hear the testimonies of the aggrieved persons, she was surprised that the testimonies had been ready. When she refused to take part in this connivance, she was surprised that the report had been published. This story shows corruption in journalism, corruption of institutions, and the situation of those who live like shadows in shadow zones that no one can see their sufferings inside the scene.

Ishtar Journal: How is the image of man in your stories?

Houyem Ferchichi: It is an image of a troubled man in a troubled status quo. It is a man who lives civilisational fragmentation and dissociation in his relation to the authority. For instance, in the story “Leaving the Circle” Ahd searched for beauty in the mountainous farm where she was surprised by the philosophy teacher killing birds and drawing woman in a wretched situation on his knapsack. So she decides to escape. As a writer, I depicted the character of the philosophy teacher who was living an intellectual crisis that led him to a state of absurdity and made him wander the mountainous bends in summer to catch birds and crows and throw them in dunghills. For instance, these are the questions that are tempting me: Why did I observe in mountainous villages a pretty good category of people and particularly educated ones who adopt materialistic philosophy, although the space, according to me, is a generator of beauty and certitude? What were the things to which I had not paid attention in my occasional visits? Were they the crows that attack the fledglings and remind them of absurd death? Was it the natural environment with curved protrusions? Why do some feel strange in the city, although it is an environment that opens onto spiritualities, art, and culture? What are the ugly scenes in the city which did not represent for me any psychological or spiritual estrangement? The man in my stories stands for fragmented masculinity.

Ishtar Journal: Do you think that the reader must deeply study your writings to grasp what is hidden between lines and the meanings of the subject-matter?

Houyem Ferchichi: As a writer I have my personal experience with natural and cultural beauty in all the environments in which I moved around, and about which I wrote through a string of thoughts that is interested in beauty and self. I reflected through my stories an existential confusion which I dip in the meanings of existence and discovery to give it a special taste that my fictional characters do not know. Thus, coming back to the stories of The Scene and the Shadow, showing the scenes of absurdity, and analysing the characters’ psychological complexes, I search for a closed psychological world in the seclusion of the place in the absence of meaning and the essence of things surrounding them as it was supposed that they interested themselves with the abstract mental images. The reader has his/her intellectual horizon and his/her taste faculties that make him/her read my texts in whatever way he/she finds suitable.

Ishtar Journal: Where is your pen in the midst of the revolutions in the Middle East in general?

Houyem Ferchichi: Arab revolutions have causes and consequences. Right now, we cannot write about the causes of the revolution because we wrote about it before its breakout. The mere writing about the revolution right now is riding it and drawing benefits from it. The current government is interested that creators write about the eras of Bourguiba’s regime and Ben Ali’s regime. It seems there are financial seductions, in this respect, to draw benefit from it, serve its political agenda, and gain financially from the accomplishments of the revolution. Writing about the revolution should take into account the current phase and the hard problems it is witnessing.

Ishtar Journal: Do you have writings about the Tunisian Revolution?

Houyem Ferchichi: My pen is currently busy with the current cultural and social issues in a country that is bleeding, and which is being scraped by the nails of terrorist Salafism. I am trying to warn about the dangers of the politicisaion of literature and art and the clear Qatari intervention through its support to documentary films that distort our political and cultural history again and through spreading prison literature by Aljazeera Documentary in order for those who call themselves militants to draw financial benefits through claiming financial compensation for years of militancy in a country witnessing a bleeding economic crisis. This is what is preoccupying me right now.

Ishtar Journal: Today after the change, what does green Tunisia mean for you?

Houyem Ferchichi: If you meant by ‘change’ the Tunisian Revolution, that is an important political and social transformation. But if you were speaking about the current situation it is a change to the worse, looseness, and a trundle backwards. Green Tunisia is my country that has known artistic, intellectual, and civilisational accretion. Tunisia is an open country which believes in civilisational dialogue and rejects fanaticism. We have the right to combat the illnesses that are attacking the body of the beautiful country. It is a body that is able to fight, to recover and to realize the goals of its revolution.

Isthtar Journal: What poets’ and writers’ pens did you emulate most?

Houyem Ferchichi: Despite my various readings, I used to have a fondness for reading the novels of Naguib Mahfouz and Colin Wilson and the poetry books of Mahmoud Darwish. But I was not influenced by any author because I have my own fictional worlds, my artistic preoccupations, my memory that is rich in images and details, and my own vision of depicting reality. In my strory “A Journey of Quest of the Identity” I transmitted the space through my personal feeling of disgust whenever I passed by the Butchers’ Souk which I transmitted to the female protagonist of the story: she/the pregnant. I spoke about my memory when she moved to Bab Souika and I presented the images of the place and my personal memories with it. Thus, I spoke about the change that occurred in the place and its obliteration of the identity. The pregnant married/virgin woman was wondering about the just born baby after a state of dizziness and falling, “Will he/she be born distorted like the dream?” because the changes that occurred in the place obliterated its historical and civilisational identity, and even the Square of Bab Souika was distorted. Perhaps, in the innermost of each fictional character hidden thoughts wake up and some images that were stored in the memory appear. The story wove them together again in a new plot trying to analyse and deconstruct some images of society and to create the worlds of the self through creation and expressing the emotion that refuses a status quo loathed by the self. I am present in all my stories and others’ words go away when I am taken by the moment of writing. This reminds me of Flaubert speaking about the writer who must be “present in every place, but not seen in any place.”

Ishtar Journal: Are you content today with what you and your pen have given to culture?

Houyem Ferchichi: I am totally content with my pen’s performance. But I am not content with the Tunisian cultural status quo and the Tunisian cultural media since the free pen does not find the venue usually open to introduce its writings, and it is even often faced by pressure from influential sides whose interest does not coincide with accepting criticism especially in governmental newspapers that are still under the control of the successive governments that direct them as they want. Besides, the Ministry of Culture still suffers from the lack of neutral committees and still treats creators according to allegiances and planned programmes.

Ishtar Journal: Which friends of yours either writers or poets do you cherish and consider them really faithful friends?

Houyem Ferchichi: Every writer has friends who respect his/her creation and his critical visions and support him/her in media. And every writer has enemies who are mercenaries hired by persons or cultural gangs who draw financial benefits from the money allotted to culture and serve the ready-made political agendas. Anyway I have a large number of friends in Tunisia and I have an apprehension towards the mercenaries of culture. And what makes me feel good is that the list of my friends gets larger day after day.

Ishtar Journal: What is news with Houyem Ferchichi?

Houyem Ferchichi: Currently I have a short story collection – that extends beyond The Scene and the Shadow – through which the narrator/Ego is the locus of storytelling. Some examples are the story “The City’s Thresholds” which was published in the Tunisian magazine Al Hayat Aththaqafia (The Cultural Life), and the story “Returning Passageways” which was published in the Tunisian magazine Al Massar (The Path). This upcoming collection will express me, my memory, and the meaning of discovery that was pervading me to solve all ambiguities and will connect me to places I know well in Tunisia and abroad and to the city of Tunis which I lived its atmospheres and reacted with them and in which I have my grandfather’s house with its Ottomani style which bears a memory for knowledge and art. I have more than an image with every corner in the city. The city is the space in which I moved and which I discovered, lived with it, and loved it as well as the village with its outlets, thresholds, fields, water canals, and characters. Kind characters travel in these events and I open the doors of old houses leaving for the memory to invent characters made by my childish imagination that become a part of the village, searching for an old nostalgia or new dreams that might lead me to a new path. I was taken by a desire to write some passages which are related to the images of the memory which faded away. Thus maybe I could reflect the sensuous coexistence of the characters with habits decayed and hidden by time but they reflect what remained in my consciousness of these images of weddings in the village where I used to attend its celebrations and funeral ceremonies when I was a child.

Ishtar Journal: How do you see the situation of poetry in the Middle East today?

Houyem Ferchichi: Certainly there are new poetry experiences, a high ability of experimentation, and a variety of names from both genders. But in front of the creative thrust and the thrust of names it is impossible to determine which names are most able to establish themselves as distinctive marks in the sky of Arab poetry in general. The situation of poetry in the Middle East is not different from that of the Arab Maghreb. What we currently need is serious studies to read the modern poetic status quo and the most important active names in it. It should be known that Arab poetry meetings do not reflect the names that deserve to attend.

Ishtar Journal: Frankly, and please without compliment, how did you see the website of Ishtar Journal?

Houyem Ferchichi: If Ishtar stood for the Goddess of Love and Beauty, Ishtar Journal reflects through its pages true beauty through the published creative texts and through the intellectual issues that raises, which interest the Arab intellectual elites in general.

Ishtar Journal: On the occasion of this meeting what words will you offer to the readers of Ishtar?

Houyem Ferchichi: Thank you for Ishtar Journal. I was pleased with this invitation. I hope this interview will be a window for the readers of Ishtar to know some illuminations about Houyem Ferchichi, the Tunisian writer and the human being.

http://www.ishtarjournal.com/

Originally appeared in ankawa.com 05/06/2012 by Majid Elia.

You can read the original text in Arabic here.

Translated from Arabic by Ali Znaidi.

 

 

 

 

Mahmoud Messadi: The Icon of Tunisian Narration: An Article Written by Kamel Riahi and Translated by Ali Znaidi.

Mahmoud Messadi: The Icon of Tunisian Narration

Kamel Riahi-Tunisia (Translated from Arabic by Ali Znaidi)

It is impossible to speak about the achievement of Tunisian literature without the name of Mahmoud Messadi grabbing an outstanding position in it. Tunisia has not known a famous author like him except Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi, writer of “Life’s Will.” Thus Messadi ascends the throne of narration, whereas al-Shabbi is the prince of poetry. The celebration of the centenary of Messadi’s birth is going on in Tunisia through different cultural events.

Just like al-Shabbi’s, the fame of the deceased Mahmoud Messadi and the success of his works seemed one of the psychological obstacles for Tunisian writers. So, a large number of them fell into a superficial imitation of his style, while some fanatics declared themselves his enemies. They considered that the Messadi myth is fake and was produced by the official institution to destroy literature and authors when creating a matchless idol.

Bi-cultural Education:

A native of the village of Tazerka in the coastal governorate of Nabeul, he produced unique works, Haddathâ Abou Houraïrata qâl (Thus Spoke Abou Hourairata),  Essoud (The Dam),  Mawlidou’ Nissiâne (The Genesis of Forgetfulness),  Min Ayâmi Imrâne (Days in the Life of Imrane, and Other Meditations ), Tâssilân likiâne  (Rooting  of a Being), and al-Iqaa’ fi al-Saj al-Arabi (Rhythm in Arabic Rhymed Prose) chief among them. All of them are narrative works save the two latter ones. These works were translated into many languages, Dutch, French, and German among them.

Messadi’s works were characterised by a big strength which was affirmed by distinguished Arab writers, chief among them Taha Houssein who used to have a friendship relation with him which yielded a body of correspondences, and discussion about the assessment of one of Messadi’s works afterwards.

That strong throbbing language is related to Messadi’s education and his training which began with memorising the Quran in kouttabs( traditional Quranic schools) before joining school in the city of Korba, then joining the outstanding Sadiki College in the capital which opened for him the road to join the Sorbonne University in Paris where he graduated in 1936. Then he started preparing two PhD theses: One about Abou Nawas and another about rhythm in Arabic poetry. He finished the first one but he did not defend it due to the Second World War.

This Arab-Islamic formation on one side and the French Western formation on the other side provided Messadi with a particularity which appeared in his prose works that oscillate between authenticity and modernisation. Messadi was not a writer who devoted himself to literature, but an intellectual who was entangled in politics. He was one of the men of the post-independence era. He took charge of the Ministries of Education and Culture. During that period he founded two famous magazines:  Al Hayat Aththaqafia (The Cultural Life) which is still issued by the Ministry of Culture and Al Mabâhith (Studies) which stopped publication.

Perhaps the most important thing that shaped Messadi’s genius –as most critics see–is that he stopped writing around his forties and until his death in 2004 he did not lose his pioneering position in the Tunisian literary scene. Besides, Arab and foreign writers and translators are still fascinated by his texts whenever they fell within their reach.

Messadi in the Memory:

Honouring the distinguished writer of Tunisia, the Ministry of Culture republished his complete works this year in a revised and added edition by Dr. Mahmoud Tarchouna who said to Aljazeera.net that this edition was restricted to updating the bibliography like referring to all the studies, books, translations, and dissertations that touched upon the literature of Mahmoud Messadi.

Among the additions in this second edition was the publication of an important text titled “A Lesson from History” that Messadi published in Lissan Echaab (The People’s Tongue) newspaper on February 12, 1930 at an age under 20. It is considered the first theoretical text that he published.  It was about the indispensability to use the literary legacy in creative writing.  It is considered as a literary pact which he adopted during his cultural life.

Besides, another text was also published which is a tribute to the soul of his wife on the fortieth day after her death in 1990 which might be useful to researchers who are interested in his relation with women in general, and particularly with his wife. A 53-minute documentary film titled “Messadi , Magician of the Existence,”  which examines Messadi’s life from birth to departure, was also made about the owner of The Dam by Tunisian filmmaker Mokhtar  Laajimi with the help of testimonies about  his political, literary , and life experience given by a large number of Arab politicians and intellectuals.

Although the honouring and eulogistic side of the literary, cultural, and human life of Messadi pervailed, this did not prevent the presence of another opinion which accuses Messadi of stopping the Zaytounian education, and charges him with that, considering it a crime against Tunisian education when saying, “I will not forgive Messadi because he obeyed Bourguiba’s orders and ended the Zaytounian education.” Thus the owner of this opinion adds him to the seculars. This is what the film attempts, in a way, to refute it and presents him clinging to his Arab-Islamic identity.

Seminars that were organised did not also come up with new things. So Messadi remains a text that is secluded in itself waiting for other mad readings that its madness reaches even the opening of the file of the mediocre in Messadi’s writings or the discovery of other backgrounds which are not the usually regurgitated ones in studies that normally proliferate from the students of the mentors: Readings that put, even for one time, that famous statement “Existentialism embraced Islam at Messadi’s hands” into oblivion.

This article appeared in aljazeera.net 15/07/2012 by Kamel Riahi.

You can read the original text in Arabic here.

Translated from Arabic by Ali Znaidi.

Eleuch.. From the Football Field to the World of Novel: An Article Written by Kamel Riahi and Translated by Ali Znaidi.

A Tunisian Novelist Started his Life as a Football Player before Excelling as a Novelist.

Eleuch.. From the Football Field to the World of Novel.

Kamel Riahi-Tunisia (Translated from Arabic by Ali Znaidi)

Abdeljabbar Eleuch approached the situation of Tunisian society in a mysterious vision through Chronicles of the Strange City (Aljazeera)

In the football stadiums of the Tunisian city of Sfax a fortysomething man inspects the safety of the goal nets everyday and like a dabke dancer he powerfully probes the ground of the field, all ready to throw himself on a sudden ball. He jogs a bit toward the six-meter zone and the penalty kick zone. He perfectly ties his gloves to his wrists. He bends his back a bit while he is opening his hands in front of the probable throw. Abdeljabbar Eleuch was as such before taking the road of literature and novel.

Tunisian novelist Abdeljabbar Eleuch grew in the grass of football fields and the fury of its spaces to provide Tunisian narration with “strong throws” that discomposed the achievement of the “scions” of the great Tunisian novelist Mahmoud Messadi and his seekers.

Eleuch’s texts make their reader gasp, running after the fleeting tales in a nimble way that is similar to the nimbleness of “Attouga” , the most famous goalkeeper ever of the Tunisian team, reminding that writing could grow in the racetrack as is the case with Haruki Murakami or in the goal nets as is the case with Albert Camus or in baseball fields as is the case with  Paul Auster, Kerouac, and Mark Harris or could be explosive like a forgotten landmine in a wild forest or as is the case with Ernest Hemingway who came from hunters and fishermen or as is the case with Samuel Beckett who trundled from the chessboard toppling the king and the horse.

Murakami says, “Writing novels, to me, is basically a kind of manual labor. Writing itself is mental labor, but finishing an entire book is closer to manual labor. It doesn’t involve heavy lifting, running fast, or leaping high.” Writing, according to him, is “a tough game.”  This is clearly shown in his memoir What I talk About When I Talk About Running. Nietzsche also used to believe in this when he says, “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.”

Similar to these tense literary “sinews,” sinews of a Tunisian writer by the name of Abdeljabbar Eleuch grow. He plunged into creative writing with a poetry collection titled Gollanar (Blossom of Pomegranate) and a CD in his voice. Those works received a remarkable success before he surprised the Tunisian creative scene in 2001 with a dangerous novelistic text titled Chronicles of the Strange City with which, at that time, he backed the judges of the Comar Prize into a corner when his novel was awarded the Golden Comar Prize. So detectives and cultural political police became furious in their attempt to take back the prize for the reason that the novel had not a legal deposit and it did not pass through the Tunisian censorship of books.

At that time he was supported by some honest writers and journalists, so the prize remained his own. He followed this novel with two novels titled respectively Afrikistan and A Trial of a Dog. Thus, he proved that he is one of the new novelistic names that are able to change the Tunisian novelistic scene which has remained for years suffering from draught, calcification, and regurgitation of classical novelistic patterns.

Chronicles of the Strange City: Abdeljabbar Eleuch’s Debut Novel (Aljazeera)

The Writer of the Mysterious:          

Since his first novel, Abdeljabbar Eleuch has made us enter the world of the unreasonable to approach in a novelistic way the reality of Tunisian society through a strange event that found expression in the inability of one of the clients of the city café to lift his body from the chair then the contagion spread to the rest of the city inhabitants as is the case in José Saramago’s Blindness. The country falls into a total paralysis. Besides, a state of meaninglessness pervades, which its signs are disgust everywhere, fear about the intimate in our lives, and doubt of everything. It is an artistic approach to the Tunisian people who were unable to change their lame political status quo in the late eighties and the beginning of the nineties.

If Eleuch contextualised his first novel in the Tunisian space through breaking into the backstreets of Tunisia and revealing the true face that is concealed by the news, the tourist brochures and postcards that the authority spreads, he moves with the words of the mysterious into the heart of Africa in his novel Afrikistan to approach its most complicated social and political issues which are dictatorship and food security. He infiltrated the most secret places he observed through a foreign journalist that fate wanted him to enjoy an extraordinary power that lets him see what is not seen.

He arrives at the bedchamber of the Big Man and reveals the causes of the misery of Africa and what makes its people stand waiting in a long queue for an escape to Europe. Eleuch makes this mysterious queue a space for his novel in which its visionary characters are searching for a new utopia and a virgin land that has room for their little dreams of life and peace.

In his third novel A Trial of a Dog Eleuch turns to his autobiography to break into what Serge Doubrovsky called “autofiction” revealing as the first Arab writer, to my knowledge, after the Moroccan Mohamed Choukri, the secrets of his childhood, the dangers to which he was subject, and his story as a late discovery adoptee. All that flows in a mysterious style that reminds us of the nightmarishness of Colin Wilson and Franz Kafka making his protagonist oscillate between humanity and animality; a rabietic being who is tried because of many accusations such as reasons of his existence in this world with a sum total of marginalised people who form a forgotten world in the Tunisian land outside the context of what the center gives as an identity to this people who is put on the periphery with their dreams and pains.

Front Cover of Tunisian Abdeljabbar Eleuch’s Novel of Afrikistan (Aljazeera)

An Experimental Writer:

Writing, for Abdeljabbar Eleuch, takes the path of experimentation and cuts with traditional writing and the linear narration of events so that arts and absent texts either old or modern correlate in his novels to form a modern text that introduces its peculiarity as a learned and investigatory writing.

But the peculiarity of Eleuch’s writing and his experimentation do not make the text fall into ambiguity, and those knowledges do not represent a dilemma when it comes to the operation of reception because he was able to melt all those historical, literary, artistic, and political knowledges into fiction. Thus, the textual texture proceeds drawing a coherent plot, preserving suspense as a strategy and a rigid contract between the writer and the reader, and being faithful to its bet on depicting the reality of the wounded man at the individual, national, regional, and international levels.

Eleuch’s novels are receiving mass success in Tunisia and they are trying their hardest to travel to the other side of the Mediterranean Sea through being translated into the language of Moliére. Translator and researcher Hédi Khelil took the initiative in translating his novel A Trial of a Dog into French and it was published by The National Translation Center. His life and literary experience still tempts stage directors and filmmakers. For instance, Italy-based Tunisian filmmaker Adel Bakri approached it through a documentary that is inspired from his poetry collection Gollanar.

Similar to these new realms into which the Tunisian novel has broken since the beginning of the third millennium, writings of Kamel Zoghbani, author of the novel Waiting for Life, and other new voices herald a different Tunisian novelistic horizon that resolved the difficult equation between mass success and artistic quality. Thus, these voices gained the respect of cultural scenes either inside or abroad.

This article appeared in aljazeera.net 06/07/2012 by Kamel Riahi.

You can read the original text in Arabic here.

Translated from Arabic by Ali Znaidi.