Sisters of Exile. L'undesirable is a double portrait composed in mirror and reflecting the journey of two Iraqi women born in Baghdad who meet in Paris. When Taj and Widiane meet for the first time at the entrance to the Arab World Institute, they recognize their common accent and, like “a woman overboard clutching her lifeline”Widiane grabbed Taj's wrist. “Their friendship walks the line between affinity and hostility. Like two wives of the same ghost. »
Taj Al-Moulouk is a 90-year-old woman who seems to have lived multiple lives. A political and literary journalist and then spy, she has taken on many names and known great people of her time. “Everywhere, she is given the status of a foreigner. » Intrepid and curious, she became free and independent. Her panache led her to the upper echelons of Iraqi society and the Arab world, and to romantic relationships that were also multiple and intense. Initially close to power, she quickly joined the crowd of demonstrators and fell in love with a Palestinian. And will espouse the cause of his country.
Widiane is younger, by at least a generation. She did not experience the same Iraq, nor the same destiny. Shy and reserved, a prodigy violinist, she was tortured by those in power, her eardrum pierced by a deafening sound, which deprived her of her most precious sense: hearing. She had already lost her fingerprints by putting her hands on hotplates. She was going to marry the only man she knew but who never made her happy. By talking, the two women revive their memories and allow each other to return to their lands of origin. “Two poles. The negative and the positive. We live here, but our thoughts don't care and force us back there. I quote this local proverb to him: “Even when he’s dying, the rooster keeps an eye on his pile of manure.” »
Journalist and writer Inaam Kachachi unfolds a fascinating plot which traces the history of the Arab world over the last eighty years, from the 1940s to today, including the Treaty of Portsmouth (1948). By interweaving the stories of political events and the reminiscences of intimate episodes, it embraces the questions of exile, war, power, dominations but also love, friendship and resistance. The author thus unfolds the layers of her polyphonic story in a beautiful mise en abyme completed in excipit. The unwantedit is also, implicitly, a history of feminism and the struggles undertaken by women to move towards independence and freedom. But these have a price and many women still leave behind, not only their feathers, but their bodies and their lives.
Inaam Kachachi
The unwanted
Gallimard
Translated from Arabic (Iraq) by Marianne Babut
Edition: 5,000 copies.
Price: €25; 368 pp.
ISBN: 9782072990755
