Tahar Ben Jelloun

La mémoire défaillante de ma mère l'a replongée,
pendant les derniers mois de sa vie, dans son enfance.
Redevenue soudain une petite fille, puis une très jeune
fille tôt mariée, elle s'est mise à me parler, à se confier,
convoquant les morts et les vivants.
L'amour filial, fort et passionnel, est souvent enrobé
de pudeur et de non-dits. En racontant son passé, ma
mère s'est libérée d'une vie où elle fut rarement heureuse. Pendant des journées entières, je l'ai écoutée,
j'ai show more suivi ses incohérences, j'ai souffert et en même
temps je l'ai découverte.
" Sur ma mère " a été écrit à partir des fragments
de souvenirs qu'elle m'a livrés. Ils m'ont permis de
reconstituer sa vie dans la vieille médina de Fès des
années trente et quarante, d'imaginer ses moments
de joie, de deviner ses frustrations. Chaque fois, j'ai
inventé ses émotions et j'ai dû lire ou plutôt traduire
ses silences.
" Sur ma mère " est un vrai roman car il est le récit
d'une vie dont je ne connaissais rien, ou presque. show less

The narrator, who has been brought up as a boy to secure an inheritance, as described in the earlier book L’enfant de sable, is released when her dying father makes a full confession to her during the 27th night of Ramadan (the Night of Power, Laylat al-Qadr). She cuts off all ties with her family and sets off to create a new life as a woman. Ben Jelloun makes a lot of play with religious and Arabian Nights imagery, as well as the symbolism of blindness and captivity.

This turns the book show more into a kind of Arab Orlando, with (sometimes brutally) realistic episodes intermingled with dreams and fables. There are scenes of rape and FGM, and although the author’s intention is clearly to make us look critically at relations between men and women in Moroccan society, by the standards of forty years later we would probably find that there is rather too much “male gaze” going on in the many sex scenes. Interesting, certainly for the time when it was written, but it perhaps hasn’t aged as well as it might have. show less

Can anything so horrific, so dark, so degrading, yet actually be a joy to read? This Moroccan writer supplies the reader with gorgeous prose, imagery and mirrors the deepest parts of a human soul with this wonderful book.

Jelloun supplies the reader with a testament to human strength and survival with this fictionalized version of a true event – a man’s tormented 18 years in a black hole, in a prison in Morocco called Tazmamart (1973-1991).

The prison cell is without light, 10x5 feet, show more with a ventilation hole and a small hole for his excrement. Full of scorpions, cockroaches and subject to the heat and cold of the seasons, the occupant survives at the edge of death, half starved, without exercise and without light. When he finally emerges, he is a broken man, a foot shorter and riddled with medical problems. Most of the men did not survive.

For such an absolutely terrifying topic, the prose is crisp and forgiving and non-judgmental. Jelloun has a true gift for probing the depths of human character. He does not lecture, throw political arrows or in any way proselytize – he manages to convey the hopelessness, torment and human degradation in a way that is so much more effective than angry rhetoric can ever convey. Ultimately, the Islamic religion suffuses his life as his body begins to decay and wither away.

Highly recommended. show less

Chilling tale of one of the few survivors of the secret prison in Tazmamart, Morocco. The book is called a novel, but is based on the true story of a group of young officers who took part in a failed coup in 1971 in Rabat. They were imprisoned, but after a year or so transferred to a secret prison in Tazmamart, a place in the desert. They were kept in tiny cells, that looked more like big graves than rooms (there was no light for example), and given no more than the very bare minimum to show more survive. Over the years most of them died of horrible diseases or simply of despair and loss of hope. The main character of this book describes how he survived 18 years of this hell because of his mental strength and his faith in Allah.
It is difficult to even try to imagine what it must have been like to have to survive these chilling circumstances. However, Tahar Ben Jelloun has found a way to at least let you get very close to this cruel reality. The prose is very bare and simple yet effective.
I love to read to imagine other realities. This is one of the most gruesome realities I have ever encountered, even more so because this is based on a true story. show less