Franco-Moroccan poet, Rim Battal publishes “I will look into my eyes”, a powerful first novel of autobiographical inspiration, in which a cigarette smoked by a teenager at her bedroom window will cause a real family explosion.
Smoking a cigarette at the window. The act may seem trivial, but in the narrator’s Moroccan family, it will trigger a real earthquake. Beaten and insulted by her mother, the 17-year-old young woman leaves Marrakech to take refuge with her aunt in Casablanca. Finding no support, she is quickly faced with a terrible ultimatum: produce a certificate of virginity, the only admissible proof of her respectability, or be definitively disowned by her family.
A literary performance
Just like his narrator, Rim Battal also had to obtain a certificate of virginity in his youth. It is moreover this intimate episode which allowed him to go further, by showing the political dimension hidden behind this act. Especially since the Franco-Moroccan poet is not the only one to have undergone this injunction to purity. In France, the Castex law which prohibits health professionals from issuing virginity certificates has only applied since 2021.
“From this event, I constructed a literary object, I hope in any case that my readership will see it, I tried to do it with a style, a particular aesthetic and a way of telling the story,” explains Rim Battal in the Vertigo show on January 13.
In “I will look into my eyes”, Rim Battal uses prose and poetry. And to counter the rather difficult scenes of violence, the poet also chose to infuse it with a good dose of humor. The goal being, she confides, “to write in the language and passion of a young 17-year-old girl”.
>> Discover the portrait of the poet Rim Battal in Oh! Microphone:
Avoid essentialism
A true initiatory novel, “I will look into my eyes” addresses the themes of sexuality, feminism and patriarchy in a universal way, well beyond the clichés of Moroccan culture. Moreover, Rim Battal invites his readers not to fall into clichés: “It is not a question of territory, but of patriarchy”.
-“This story of purity, of virginity that I address in the book, I think that we can also transpose it to France or the West, where the pressure is also very strong on young girls with fear and weight of ‘slut shaming (editor’s note: sexual stigmatization of women)’”, continues the writer.
Fortunately, in Rim Battal’s novel, the narrator does not only suffer humiliations. She also awakens to sensuality, discovers the importance of music and love. She will become an artist and will be the equal of the man she marries. Something to look into each other’s eyes with joy and pride.
Comments collected by Anne Laure Gannac.
Web adaptation: Sarah Clément
Rim Battal, “I will look myself in the eyes”, Bayard, January 2025.
