The controversy is growing around the book Houris, by Camel DaoudGoncourt Prize 2024. Maître Fatma-Zohra Benbraham, the lawyer of Saada Arbane, the woman who accuses the Franco-Algerian writer of having told the story of her client without the latter’s consent, held a conference of press this Thursday, November 21 in Algiers.
Me Benbraham made serious accusations against Kamel Daoud, against whom two complaints were filed in Oran.
These are two separate cases, explained the lawyer. The first is the case of Ms. Saada who claims to be the main character, Aube, in the roman Houris“. It “concerns the physical person who has been obscured throughout Daoud’s book,” she said.
The second case is initiated by the victims of terrorism via their association chaired by Ms. Flici.
Saada Arbane is a survivor of the decade of terrorism in Algeria in the 1990s. During a terrorist attack against her village in the Tiaret region, in the west of the country, she escaped an attempted slitting of her throat by a terrorist group. She still has serious physical and psychological after-effects.
In a program broadcast on November 15 by the One TV channel, the lady affirmed that the story told in Houris is in fact hers. It was Ms. Daoud, the psychiatrist who followed her, who became aware of it and shared it with her husband, according to her. Despite the couple’s insistence, the woman assured that she had always refused to allow the drama she experienced to be turned into a novel.
“Ethics dictate that one cannot build one’s glory on the misfortune of the weak. Kamel Daoud built his glory on the misfortune of Saada. He strangled the voice in my client’s throat a second time,” accuses lawyer Benbraham, adding that “this book is a hoax” which “deceived Algeria, the French and the publishing house.”
The publisher Gallimard, who published Houris, is not spared by Saada Arbane’s lawyer. “He considers that she (the heroine of the novel) does not exist, and that is very serious. Today you saw her in the flesh,” she said.
“And Houris is inspired by tragic events that occurred in Algeria during the civil war of the 1990s, its plot, its characters and its heroine are purely fictional“, defended Antoine Gallimard in a press release released last Monday.
For the lawyer, the publisher did this because it was “banned in Algeria”. According to her, her ban at the Algiers Book Fair (Sila) caused her “very, very big losses” and it is therefore “a purely financial and material problem”.
Then, she adds, it was he who presented this book and “he did it under pressure from the most important person” in France. “We have proof of what we say,” she still assures.
Benbrahem: Kamel Daoud “did not deserve” the Goncourt prize
For Me Benbraham, Daoud’s book did not deserve to be distinguished from Goncourt. She explains. “He says it’s a spooky story, from his mind.
This is the sine qua non condition of the Goncourt Prize. Stories should not be real and should not touch the honor and dignity of people, whether living or dead. As soon as it affects a person who can be identified, as is the case with my client, it is not eligible,” she explains.
She expects that, in the days to come, “things will change” and “this book is likely to have very important repercussions in the future”, revealing that French lawyers have expressed their willingness to help him.
The second case against Kamel Daoud and his book “concerns all the victims of terrorism and all the families of the disappeared” who file a complaint for “clear violation” and “erroneous reading” of article 46 of the Charter for Peace and Reconciliation national law promulgated in 2005.
The lawyer accused the Franco-Algerian writer of misleading public opinion by maintaining that it is prohibited, on the basis of this article, to write about the black decade. “Which is not true, there have been many books, films and the Algerian state has said absolutely nothing,” she recalls.
“For 10 euros”, the value of the Goncourt prize, Kamel Daoud sold “his homeland and his conscience” and “stole people’s lives”, accuses Fatma-Zohra Benbrahem, adding that he went to “destroy all values nobles of our people.”
She even suspects him of having political designs and of wanting to “make us forget the 132-year colonial war and leave us confined in a dark decade of 10 years”. “This case is not trivial,” she assures.
Throughout her conference, Saada Arbane’s lawyer did not refrain from launching ad hominem attacks against the writer. According to her, Kamel Daoud was convicted by the Algerian courts for having attacked his wife “with a knife”.
“He’s a boy who knows how to surf on all platforms” and he didn’t get his French nationality, it was “granted” to him by President Emmanuel Macron. Finally, she wondered what the writer wanted to hide when he dedicated his novel to his mother and “obscured his father”.
