In this essay
commissioned by Tel Quel, a Moroccan political
magazine, Abdellah Taia considers what it means to use the
first person in an Arabic culture. "How to be naked and
dignified, how to live our 'I' and be free?" asks Taia, Morocco's
first openly gay autobiographical writer. Salvation Army, Taia's
account of his youthful enchantment with the mystique of French
culture, will be published in the spring by Semiotext(e)
and marks his
debut in English.
Does a Moroccan “I” even exist? Has it ever existed? And what about me, where is mine now? What has happened to it? Ever since I started writing, started transforming parts of my life and segments of my reality into works of literature, these questions have bothered me. I never planned it this way, but all the things I write, all things I invent actually revolve around or are, in fact, based on this “I” that stands for me. It’s an “I” I’ve come to know, really grown quite familiar with. Nevertheless, it’s an “I” that never stops trying to hide from me, never stops playing games, never stops disappearing. It never stops reinventing itself.
After writing five novels, you’d think by now that I’d have learned how to control this “I”, control it completely, perfectly. It’s not like that at all. Whenever I write, I’m always the first to be surprised by what comes out of me, by what this “I” demands of me. I’ve finally come to understand and admit to myself at last, that I am ruled by an “I” that is, in reality, a dictator. Some kind of megalomaniac. A dreamer of sorts. But I regularly rise up in revolution against him.
How’s that, you ask? Well, I crush him. Pulverize him. I stop loving him and, worse yet, I invent a double for him, several doubles. Other “me’s.” Myself just called by different names, “heteronyms,” as used by the great and melancholy Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. I stop living as the same old me. I pull back from the world. I start to see things differently. I can fly, fly off into the distance. I become a different person. And this causes my original self the greatest unhappiness and gives me the greatest joy. I become black. Black as the Tuaregs who live in Rabat. Black, black, really dark. Black as Merzougue, that friend of my father’s who was the inspiration for my second novel The Red on the Tarboosh.
THE RULE OF “I”
“We” as opposed to “I.” As most other Moroccans, I lived, for a very long time, as part of the “we” of society, the “we of the group: the family was a single unit, the neighborhood was a single unit, the street was a single unit, school was a single unit, the nation was a single unit, Islam was a single unit. My own “I” didn’t exist, didn’t have a chance to exist. A chance to just be. For the “I” is Satan himself. We’ve all heard that saying before. What it means is, you’re either part of the group or you’re falling from the sky, just like Satan, that former angel who turned against God. The “I” is diabolic, infernal. The “I” rebels against God. The “I” is anti-Islamic. The “I” has no say in things, determines nothing. The “I” has no destiny. So God and the group step in, take right over for it. The “I” is operated by remote control. The “I” becomes a robot. A scale model. The “I” is of no importance. Absolutely none. Its existence is theoretical. Something based on fiction.
That’s what was drummed into my head, expected of me. The righteous path is the path of service to others. Being there to help someone else. Always someone else. Especially someone important. Especially the high and mighty. And that’s where the paradox lies. In our part of the world, in Morocco and countries like Morocco, there has existed, since time immemorial, the cult of power, the cult of the man in charge, the person with some authority who gets to boss others around because he has some authority, the cult of the powerful man who always gets to have the first and last word. Call him “zaïm” (“leader”), “caïd” (“director”), “cheikh” (“chieftain”), “amir” (“prince”), “rajoul” (“important man”), “sayyéd” (“master”), “abe” (“father”)…
The words in Arabic used to describe the man in charge are numerous, far too numerous. Because, if you really think about it, the boss himself is an “I”. An “I” who has some power. A god in his own eyes. Of course he is someone who speaks up in the name of unity, speaks up to preserve the particulars of our world, but he is, first and foremost, someone who speaks up to maintain his own authority, to keep himself in power. And, therefore, maintain our dependence on him. He is the only one allowed to say “I”, in fact, he’s even encouraged to do so, commanded to use that word.
So, in this context, you can see how dangerous it is for some ordinary citizen to say “I”, to attempt to express himself. How dangerous it is for him to give free range to his own uniqueness. And when I say “I”, I am in direct competition with the man in charge. I am ill-mannered. This rebel. This devil. This sinner. Someone who has lost his way, someone worthy of damnation. Worthy of isolation, total isolation. I am totally miserable, consumed with suffering.
But this revolution, this struggle that distances me from my original group, from the place where I entered the world, is the very experience that enables me to see them better, to slowly and carefully observe them from another vantage point. And this revolution, so unacceptable and so full of risks, is the very experience that gives life, gives my life, such a powerful taste, that seasons my days and my hours with an exotic dash of excitement. I live life to the fullest. I am not like other people. I am my own boss.
And along came Mohamed Choukri…
I was born in 1973, in Rabat. I was poor. Sexually different. Fearful. My generation had turned apolitical. Morocco is my country, but intellectuals there never gave me the impression that they spoke for me. Were saying something to me. They never helped me discover my secret “I”, the weak and shameful one. Those intellectuals talked and those intellectuals philosophized, but it was mostly to one another. It was as if being smart meant you had to remove yourself from everyday life, separate yourself from the rest of us. Culture was not to be found in the world around you. Culture could not influence that world, could not change it. Couldn’t change our lives.
I know I’m not the only Moroccan who had this impression, the only Moroccan subjected to their exclusion. I wasn’t the only Moroccan who struggled, especially in the beginning, especially in my teen-age years when it was so important to find another person like myself, no, I wasn’t the only Moroccan who fought to discover his true “I”, then battled to find it some way to exist. Like so many other people in this country, I lived here, but lived cut off from everything. Forgotten. Born in this country, but a man without a country. It felt like I couldn’t be part of Morocco too. And it still feels that way.
My generation grew up with this impossible sense of loss for Mehdi Ben Barka. Here was a magnificent, lost, Moroccan “I”. A luminary. We never knew him. No one told us about his life, his revolution, but, nevertheless, he became part of our thinking, this spirit, this intellect, this guide, a master, a teacher, this secret name, someone we admired, exactly the kind of man we hoped would come along. Someone who was very much alive. Someone beyond death.
Then Mohamed Choukri came along. And all of us hungered. For Bread Alone, broke off a hunk of his banned, hot from the oven book and consumed it in crunchy, gut-filling Arabic. Here was a multi-grain loaf worked by hand from real life. Kneaded with grains of Moroccan neo-realism. Enriched by his vagrancy. Guaranteed to rise with his sexuality. Make our mouths water with his marginality, the taste of his revolution, the seeds of his language itself.
I write “I” because I feel this need inside me.
I want to bring about change. I want a revolution.
Even if some Moroccans today deny Choukri the status of a writer, even if they say: “He’s no writer. All he did was turn his own life into a book”, Choukri remains the writer for my generation, because he was the one who opened a lot of doors for us, the one who taught us how to be naked and dignified, how to live our “I” and be free. We are all his offspring. All of us.
Abdelfattah Kilito, a writer involved with two languages, Arabic and French, was my professor of French literature in the mid-90's. I love this man. Really admire him. In this country, there are many of us who were lucky enough to have been his students, who, thanks to him, discovered the pleasure of literature, learned how to navigate between Arabic literature and French literature, to ride the troughs and swells that energize this water salted from two sources. We learned to be engagé. He showed me how to access the most essential, fundamental thing of all: my body! And by that I mean my physical “I”, the “I” that is my body. Thanks to this one intellectual, the “I” and the body finally found one another, linked up inside me. And the two of them started this dialog. Argued about things. Wrote about things. Started to write to each other.
Other people haven’t had the good fortune to discover, through writing, this place where they can explore all the contradictions of their “I”. Let their “I” become this symbol. This “hero”. Transform their “I” while at the same time proclaiming their own truth.
How the “I” is able to speak for others.
The ability to speak for others, that’s the special talent that I, Abdellah Taïa, have been blessed with. I am able to write books, books that start out with my own “I”, that come from the first place I ever knew, Hay Salam. Books I need to write for myself. Books I need to write for others. My voice found an echo in Morocco. And through that response, I quickly came to understand a sentence that Jean-Luc Godard used: “An artist has no rights, an artist has only obligations.”
I write “I” because I feel this need inside me. I want to bring about change. I want a revolution. And the closer I get to myself, the more authentically I am able to speak for others. I am me, but I am others as well. In the world. Joined to others. Part of Morocco. Other places too. Ordinary. A student. Thin. A homosexual. Apolitical. Political. Truthful. Contradictory. Scandalous. Scandalized. Open. Crazy. Engagé. Autobiographical. Fictional. Witty. A pirate. This man who explores the imaginative self. This man who no one owns but me. I state my truth, my own truth. I declare my own “I”. Remain genuine. I let the world know how I respond. I change the world. Books are life, are part of life and not some thing removed from life. Books are in constant dialog with life itself.
These truths may seem self-evident, even naive to some. However, they must always be spoken, brought up again so that new generations are reminded of them. So the new rules about “I” are explained and taught to them. Everyone has the right to “I”. To assess “I”. And then to act. Act male, Act female. Act Moroccan. Act Arab. Act Berber. Act Muslim. Act non-Muslim. Act sexual. Act rebellious.
Morocco could gain a lot from that. For a long time. We’ve got to keep putting the word out.
Thank you.
Translated from the French by Frank Stock.
Image by Brunodbo, used under Creative Commons license.
