As in his previous books, we are first struck by the language. Short sentences, sometimes choppy temporality, jumps in the story. A style close to poetry, to incantation, and at the same time very precise, even raw, full of breath. “I have always had a conflicted relationship with the French language, he explained to us. In my youth, it was the language of rich Moroccans, that of the elite. There is always something that bothers me in this language which was that of insults. But I like this relationship, made of unease and discomfort. I like to live on the margins, as I do being homosexual.”
In The Bastion of Tearswe find themes dear to Abdellah Taïa: the lively criticism of Morocco in the 80s, the evocation of homosexuality, exile, the question of Islam, the city of Salé where the writer was born in a modest background.
Meeting with Abdellah Taïa in 2012
The massacre of 1260
Salé, the ancient capital of Morocco located opposite Rabat, haunts this novel. The city is the setting for the painful experiences that the author had to live there, like his hero.
gullWe begin our planned destruction very early.
The Bastion of Tears (Borj Adoumoue in Arabic) is a place facing the sea which commemorates a terrible moment in the city’s history. In 1260, Spanish warriors landed from 37 ships and attacked the people of Salé, caught off guard while they were busy celebrating the Eid festival. The attackers entered through the current location of the Borj. There they committed a terrible massacre during which a large number of Slaouis (inhabitants of Salé) perished. Women, children, and old men were surrounded at the Great Mosque and 3,000 of them were captured and taken as slaves to Seville.
“The Slaouis go every day, every late morning, writes Abdellah Taïa, at the edge of the ocean, in front of its furious waves. They listen to the sea, the wind, the waves. They are looking for these missing loved ones in the water. In the air, in the clouds. They await their impossible return.”
The novel recounts the return to Salé of Youssef, a Moroccan professor exiled in France for 25 years (like the author). He returns after the death of his mother and at the request of his six sisters to liquidate the inheritance. On this occasion, his whole past, his painful childhood, comes back to him. And firstly the inner voice of his friend and lover from his youth, Najib, who had chosen to follow his lover, Colonel Toufik, also a drug trafficker.
The very rich Moroccan literature in the spotlight
In Youssef’s dreams, Najib tells him about his childhood, the humiliations he suffered, the hypocrisy that then reigned in Morocco, the rapes in public baths, of young boys who were too effeminate, by old gentlemen. Najib had chosen revenge so as not to die of this shame like his friend Kaddour did. He took revenge by becoming a rich drug trafficker, a homosexual who became untouchable by spraying everyone around him in the Hay Salam district.
This return to Youssef’s past is not without tenderness when the writer nicely evokes his hero’s mother and six sisters (he himself dedicates his book to his eight sisters!). They are the heroines of his childhood, even if they did nothing in the past to protect him.
Should Youssef “to forgive or not to forgive”writes Abdellah Taïa at the end of his novel. Youssef asks himself the question, returning to Bastion of Tears, as “a little child sitting on the ground who has just stopped crying.”
⇒ The Bastion of Tears | Novel | Abdellah Taïa | Julliard, 213 pp. €21, digital €14
EXTRACT :
“Who are you to judge a soul that has barely left its body? Who are you to impose your vision of things and of Islam? You do nothing with your life, apart from going five times a day at the mosque, praying again and again. Do you think this is what makes you a good Muslim, a righteous man, a pure heart? You are not God to judge Najib?
