A literary meeting with Moroccan-Belgian writers Rachida Lamrabet, Taha Adnan, Aya Sabi and Ish Ait Hamou was organized on Saturday evening in the Riad Sultan cultural and artistic space in Tangier.
This meeting is part of the activities of Moussem Belgica, an event organized by “Moussem, the Nomadic Arts Center” based in Brussels, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the signing of the bilateral convention between Belgium and Morocco for labor recruitment.
This meeting was an opportunity to return to the work “Tell it to someone” by Rachida Lamrabet, a novel which tells the story of the young “Amazigh”, sent to the French front at the outbreak of the First World War. He recorded in a diary his experiences of “the horror of war and the racism of the officers”, which earned him a trial for high treason.
The meeting also made it possible to present the work “Dounia” by Taha Adnan, which tells the story of a woman who suffered greatly in her childhood from the lack of affection and dialogue within her Moroccan family living in Brussels. , and who agrees to marry a man who is radicalized in prison and leaves for a fight about which she knows little.
Furthermore, the work “The theory of 1 of 2” by Ish Ait Hamou, where the author seeks to dissect the patterns that underlie oppression and envy, the echoes of the past and the closed doors of the present , among the Moroccan community in Belgium, was presented during this event.
The public was also able to discover “Une demi-vie” by Aya Sabi, a family chronicle bringing together three generations of women: Fatna, who worked as a cook in Morocco in the 1955s, her daughter Hamouda, who at the end from the 70s and early 80s writes letters to her lover in Morocco, and her granddaughter Shams, who studies history at a Dutch university.
Speaking on this occasion, Ms. Lamrabet indicated that writing her novel on the considerable role of soldiers from the colonies in the First World War is “work against forgetting”, the contribution of non-Western people during this war being often “neglected”.
She also explained that she chose to write her novel without naming its main character, to play on the stigmatization suffered by the “Arab Man”, often deprived of any own identity or individual character, a European vision which makes Arab character someone anonymous.
The authors return in these works, through varied artistic expressions, to the notions of identity and belonging, as well as to experiences common to Moroccans around the world, at different levels and in different eras.
In a statement to MAP, Zoubeir Ben Bouchta, director of the Riad Sultan theater, explained that this meeting, which is part of Moussem Belgica, is an opportunity to present to the public Moroccan authors who write in other languages and known in their respective host countries.
He also noted that the Moussem Belgica event, which is held from October 4 to 25 in Tangier, includes a diverse program, including an artistic exhibition, an “Artist Talk” and the screening of several films.
Organized with the support of the Flemish Government and the Flemish Community Commission (VGC), the Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad (CCME), the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs , African cooperation and Moroccans living abroad, as well as the Circle of Belgian Laureates in Morocco, the Moussem Belgica continues in Tangier until October 25, before stopping in Oujda.
