The city is black and hostile. Amine lui en expliqua la topography qui répondait aux principes émis par le maréchal Lyautey au début du protectorat. There is a strict separation between the Medina, the ancestral mœurs don't have the same preservative, and the European city, the streets portaient des noms de villes françaises et qui se voulait un laboratoire de la modernité.
Leïla Slimani, La guerre, la guerre, la guerre 1
Leïla Slimani, the Moroccan-born winner of the 2016 Goncourt Prize, will present her work in 2022 with Regardez-nous danser She presented the second volume of her trilogy "Le pays des autres," which, upon completion, will cover Morocco's history from 1945 to 2015. The first volume La guerre, la guerre, la guerre (2020, German title: "The Land of Others") focused on Morocco's path after the Second World War until its independence from France in 1956.
Slimani will be in Nouvel Observateur Interviewed alongside the most recent Goncourt Prize winner, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, as a representative of a new Francophone literature, she emphasizes the mutual attempts to instrumentalize history: “I began my trilogy ‘The Land of Others’ because, unfortunately, I wasn’t taught much about my family’s history, which is of mixed blood, with both a French and a Moroccan side. In my generation in Africa, we know little about what independence in the 1960s meant for our parents. One shouldn’t think that the instrumentalization of history or taboos only lie on the side of those who colonized. In Morocco, people don’t want to talk about colonization. Because it’s a humiliation, a disgrace. There’s silence on both sides of the Mediterranean. I wanted to combat these two silences, and I didn’t want to spare anyone.” 2
The first volume, published in 2020, told the story of how Mathilde, an Alsatian, and Amine, a Moroccan, met in 1944; the story was inspired by Slimani's own grandparents. The second volume of her trilogy now examines the late 60s to the mid-70s, a period marked by the tension between colonial legacy and an authoritarian monarchy. In her review, Alexandra Schwartzbrod emphasizes the atomization and instability of this era: "A vast political and human epic that reveals much about the anguish of these former French colonies, suddenly almost entirely on their own, where everyone tries to find their place in a society teetering between disintegration and renewal." 3 As if commenting on her second volume, Slimani sees her committed writing as aimed at confronting stereotypes and abstractions with real people and telling a different story of modernity, no less globalized and complex than the European one. Thus, the trilogy is a deliberate attempt to write against exoticism: “It’s like an attack to hear people talking about Muslims and North Africans all day long. I don’t know what that is, Maghrebi. Writing this trilogy also means giving people back their individuality, a history embodied in places. We are not just Muslim beings who have always been excluded from history and modernity. May 1968 had an impact on us too; there were hippies, people who dreamed of freedom, dreams that were betrayed. We have been raised too much with the idea that an American or European novel is universal, while a Moroccan novel would be exotic or documentary.” 4
Since 2018, Slimani has been appointed by President Macron to the Organisation of the Francophonie; in France, the media call her "Madame Francophonie," and Les Echos described her biography – as the daughter of a high-ranking official and as a graduate of Sciences Po in Paris – as an example of the prevailing elitism in this field. 5 When Slimani asserts that French could overtake Spanish and Arabic and move from fourth to second place behind English, she argues: "For many people, French is seen as a language of the boudoir, of scholars, but not as a pragmatic language used to find a job." 6 In conversation with Eric Fotorino, which is titled Comment j'écris Published in 2017, Slimani explained her choice of French instead of Arabic for her books by referring to her parents' story:
Mon père était donc très francophile, aimait beaucoup la littérature française, ma mère aussi. This son of people who have ensuite their responsibilities in so many years, who have a Maroc modern, a Maroc ouvert, a Maroc féminin, où il y avait en tout cas l'égalité des sexes, a Maroc beaucoup plus laïc que ce qu'il est aujourd'hui – à l'époque, on ne prononçait pas le mot "laïc", mais c'était un Maroc où la religion était moins importante. My parents are also attached to European, Western culture. […] You coup, mon père et ma mère ont un peu oublié de nous transmettre une chose pourtant fondamentale, qui est notre langue, la langue arabe. My parents are now speaking in French. Nous parlons bien sûr la Darija, the Arab dialectal parlé tous les jours dans la rue, mais ils ne nous ont jamais transmis l'arabe classique qu'on lit dans les journaux, qu'on entend aux informations. It's a great regret, and it's souvent reproché this lacune à mes parents à l'époque des grandes crises d'adolescence.
Leïla Slimani, Comment j'écris
My father was very Francophile; he loved French literature, as did my mother. These were people who then held positions of responsibility in the 1970s, who wanted a modern Morocco, an open Morocco, a feminine Morocco where gender equality definitely existed, a Morocco that was much more secular than it is today—back then, the word "secular" wasn't used, but it was a Morocco where religion was less important. My parents were also very interested in European, Western culture. […] As a result, my father and mother somewhat neglected to teach us something fundamental: our language, Arabic. My parents always spoke French with us. We naturally speak Darija, the Arabic dialect spoken every day on the street, but they never taught us classical Arabic, the kind you read in the newspapers and hear on the news. I deeply regret this, and I often reproached my parents for this oversight during the major crises of puberty.
Slimani introduces a pillar saint of modern literary studies in an anecdotal and highly symbolic manner:
The other side of a man is at the entrance, a European élégant aux cheveux blancs dont leave the visage a little sad me disait quelque chose. It accompagné d'une femme âgée, minuscule, sans doute sa mère. Le lendemain, j'ai croisé la vieille dame dans l'escalier de mon immeuble. J'ai compris qu'elle habitait un étage au-dessus. I can verify the box from the letters in the entrance hall, and I can see the name of the location: “Roland Barthes”. Do te rends compte? All the world is part of the world. À la faculté, les professors sont fiers qu'une telle célébrité vienne donner des cours à Rabat. Les étudiants de leur côté s'en fichent, ils ne pensent à rien d'autre qu'aux grèves et aux aux assemblées générales. What I'm looking for is ridicule, mais j'ai repris tous mes articles, je les ai relus et corrigés avec grand soin, et je les ai déposés dans sa boîte aux lettres. When you hear it, it can be trained on me! Désormais mon existence se résume à attendre.
Leïla Slimani, Regardez-nous danser
The other evening, a man came in, an elegant European with white hair, whose somewhat sad face seemed familiar. He was accompanied by an elderly, tiny woman, probably his mother. The next day, I encountered the old woman in the stairwell of my apartment building. I knew she lived one floor above. I checked the mailbox in the entrance hall and saw the tenant's name: "Roland Barthes." Can you imagine? Everyone here is talking about him. At the faculty, the professors are proud that such a celebrity is coming to Rabat to lecture. The students, on the other hand, couldn't care less; they think of nothing but strikes and general assemblies. You'll think I'm ridiculous, but I took all my articles, carefully reread and corrected them, and dropped them in his mailbox. Now, as I write to you, he might be reading me! From now on, my existence consists only of waiting.
Between 1969 and 1970, Roland Barthes taught in Rabat for a year; an entire conference volume examined this period. 7And in Tangier, Rabat, and Marrakesh, the gay literary theorist enjoyed not only cultural and friendly pleasures, but also sexual ones, comparable to other travelers to Morocco such as Montherlant, Gide, Genet, or Bowles. Barthes was admired in Morocco, and the Maghreb and the Arab world left their mark on his work, even though he was involved in a discussion in Regardez-nous danser It stands as a representative of French high culture, which was further promoted in Morocco.
After a lengthy period of historical research (as evidenced by the acknowledgments at the end), Slimani ultimately wrote her book entirely freely, and an index of characters, modeled after Elena Ferrante's, is intended to help readers connect to the first volume. The couple Mathilde and Amine have aged and achieved modest prosperity; Amine is an innovative farmer, while Mathilde runs her own small clinic. While Amine's brother Omar has joined the secret service and silences the opposition, the couple has become somewhat too bourgeois, somewhat too complacent, yet remains connected to a bygone era.
Amine se with à hair la ville. These yellow lights, these sidewalks sales, these boutiques in the odeur de Renfermé and these grand boulevards on lesquels les garçons marchaient sans but, les mains dans les poches pour masquer une érection. The city and the bouche de ses cafés that manage the vertu of the young girls and the force of work of the men. La ville où l'on perdait ses nuits à danser. Are you ready for men who are interested in dancing? Est-ce que ce n'était pas stupide, est-ce que ce n'était pas ridicule, pensait Amine, ce goût de la fête qui s'était emparé de tous ? En vérité, Amine ne savait rien des grandes villes et la dernière fois qu'il était allé à Casablanca, les Français dirigeaient encore le pays. Il ne comprenait pas non plus grand-chose à la politique et ne perdait pas son temps à lire les journaux.
Leïla Slimani, Regardez-nous danser
Amine began to hate the city. Its yellow lights, its dirty sidewalks, its musty-smelling shops, and its wide boulevards where boys wandered aimlessly, their hands in their pockets to hide erections. The city and the mouths of its cafés, which devoured the virtue of young girls and the labor of men. The city where nights were wasted dancing. Since when had men had this need to dance? Wasn't it stupid, wasn't it ridiculous, Amine thought, this lust for revelry that had taken hold of everyone? In truth, Amine knew nothing about big cities, and the last time he had been to Casablanca, the French had still ruled the country. He didn't understand much about politics either, and he didn't waste his time reading newspapers.
Amine, whom we heard in the first volume describe as wanting to make his estate a "model of modernity," is now one of the old guard. The dancing, which Slimani uses metonymically in the title to represent the transformation of individuals and the historicity of their bodies, signifies for the generation of the first book an incomprehensibly hedonistic new postcolonial era of Westernization: the young people go to clubs that previously displayed signs prohibiting Moroccans. Modern Morocco was initially a colonial project of the French military governor, before it now seeks its own path to modernity.
Là, sur les quatre-vingts kilometers de côtes qui separate Casablanca de Rabat, the maréchal Lyautey avait nourri le rêve de bâtir une French Californie. The pensait que c'était l'océan qui thunderait à ce pays sa force, sa fortune, et il s'étonnait que ses habitants aient si longtemps vécu en lui tournant le dos. The Rabat il fit sa capitale, renvoyant the prestigieuse cité de Fes au passé. Et à la place de la petite ville portuaire qu'était Casablanca, il ambitionna de construct la vitrine du Maroc moderne. A Maroc où les habitants s'occuperaient à gagner de l'argent et à jouir des pleasures de la vie. A Maroc bien loin de celui des cités imperiales, des médinas étouffantes, des riads aux murs sans fenêtres derrière lesquels des families entières live confites in les traditions. Non, ici, au bord de l'Ocean, the érigerait une ville pour les conquérants, les pionniers, les hommes d'affaires, les femmes en goguette and les tourists en mal d'exotisme. A ville d'ouvriers and billionaires with grand avenues of planted palm trees, restaurants and cinemas, Art Deco immeubles with a blancheur immaculée. Ici, the best architects of the metropolis feraient sortir de terre des buildings en concrete with ascenseur, chauffage central and parking basement. A city with a décor de cinéma, baignée de lumière jaune, où les passants joueraient the scénario qu'on aurait écrit pour eux. Fini les pachas pansus, les sultans paresseux, les femmes en haïk cloîtrées dans des palais humides. Fini les wars tribales, les famines paysannes, toute this pudeur et this arriération qui avaient prosperé à l'abri des montagnes. The "côtière" lies in the new frontier and all the ambitions of the people of the West.
Leïla Slimani, Regardez-nous danser
Here, on the eighty-kilometer stretch of coastline between Casablanca and Rabat, Marshal Lyautey dreamed of creating a French California. He believed the ocean would give this land its strength and wealth, and he wondered why its inhabitants had turned their backs on it for so long. He made Rabat his capital, relegating the prestigious city of Fez to the past. And on the site of the small port city of Casablanca, he wanted to build the showcase of modern Morocco. A Morocco where people were busy making money and enjoying life's pleasures. A Morocco far removed from the imperial cities, the oppressive medinas, and the riads with windowless walls, behind which entire families lived according to their traditions. No, here on the ocean, he would build a city for conquerors, pioneers, businessmen, women, and tourists yearning for the exotic. A city for workers and billionaires, with wide, palm-lined avenues, restaurants and cinemas, and pristine white Art Deco buildings. Here, the metropolis's best architects would erect concrete skyscrapers with elevators, central heating, and underground parking. A city like a film set, bathed in yellow light, where passersby would act out the script written for them. No more pompous pashas, no more lazy sultans, no more women in haiks locked in damp palaces. No more tribal wars, no more peasant famines, no more modesty and backwardness that had flourished in the shelter of the mountains. The "coastline" would serve as the new border, and all ambitious people would dream of conquering the West.
The focus of the generational saga shifts to the children Selim and Aïcha, who becomes a gynecologist and falls in love with Mehdi. Mehdi wants to be a writer and, according to Slimanie, is inspired by her own father. He, too, is precisely situated within the transformation of Moroccan society through his dance; the mediatization of his dreams turns Mehdi into a hybrid, semi-Westernized star, thus giving rise to a new, complex form of masculinity.
Pour comprendre Mehdi, the fallait le voir danser. It is available in two gestures, in two movements, in a mix of maîtrise and désinvolture. The paraissait s'abandonner au rythme de la musique, se laisser envahir et guider par elle telle une marionnette prenant vie sous les mains de son maître. The fermait les yeux, ramenait les bras contre son torse, les poings fermés, et le monde entier lui était indifférent. The rouvrait ensuite les yeux et jetait sur les other dancers un regard de défi. « Admirez ce que je sais faire », semblait-il dire. The lever has the same power and is met with a twister. The story is also in a night box on the coast of the sea and in one of the musical comedies that the children are looking for, with the children in the bathroom. It was written for Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire and asked Cyd Charisse to leave the foul and the main woman. Aïcha l'observa, fascinée. Le juke-box passa « The Great Pretender » and Mehdi dansa seul, claquant des doigts en rythme, les yeux baissés sur la pointe de ses chaussures en cuir. Il était mince et gracieux. It is also worth remembering that the lunettes can be changed and a model in mode can be chosen, with a large mount in the eye.
Leïla Slimani, Regardez-nous danser
To understand Mehdi, you had to see him dance. There was a strange mixture of control and spontaneity in his gestures and movements. He seemed to surrender to the rhythm of the music, to be overwhelmed and led by it, like a marionette brought to life under its master's hands. He would close his eyes, draw his arms to his chest, clench his fists, and the whole world would be of no concern to him. Then he would open his eyes again and cast a challenging glance at the other dancers. "Admire my skill," he seemed to say. He would lift his right leg and begin to twist. At that moment, he was no longer in a coastal nightclub, but in one of the musicals he had watched as a child through the hole in the bathroom window. He imagined himself as Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire and dreamed of Cyd Charisse walking through the crowd and reaching out to him. Aïcha watched him, fascinated. The jukebox played "The Great Pretender," and Mehdi danced alone, snapping his fingers rhythmically and looking down at the tips of his leather shoes. He was slim and graceful. Aïcha noticed that he had changed his glasses, choosing a fashionable pair with large tortoiseshell frames.
The extent to which Marxist and anti-colonialist disputes over the French cultural canon and Moroccan identity dominated the debate towards the end of the 60s, while people nevertheless went dancing together in discotheques, is shown by a scene that almost prophetically anticipates a later conservative revolution and re-Islamization:
— Le pays est au bord de la révolution, le people vit dans la misère et M. Roland Barthes va nous faire l'honneur de nous enseigner Proust et Racine! Mais qu'est-ce les Marocains en ont à faire de Proust à la fin ? On the porte of your clothes, on the look of your music, on the look of your films. In the cafés of Casablanca, the young people read Le Monde and jouent au tiercé sur des chevaux qui courent à Paris. When you think about it, what about Devon's development of notre propre personnalité, connaître notre propre culture, reprendre notre destin en main?
— Tu preferes quoi? retorqua Ahmed. I don't know what I'm talking about in the Istiqlal region, which demands the Coranical School, the Arabization total and the return to the traditions that are the same as the folklore for tourists?
— Ne me fais pas dire ce que je n'ai pas dit. The vérité c'est que le pouvoir ne voit also intérêt à éduquer les masses. Tant les coopérants français seront chargés d'enseigner dans nos facultés, les étudiants recevront un savoir colonial et bourgeois qui les amènera à défendre des intérêts de classe. Je ne dis pas ça pour toi, Henri. Well, it's different. Mais reconnais que tes collègues coopérants viennent ici attirés par la gamelle à dirhams marocains.
— If you find something wrong, you'll have something hot again. Nous sommes ici pour mettre nos connaissances à la disposition du Maroc et l'aider à former sa future élite, qui prendra les commandes du pays.
— L'élite, quelle blague! Ce pays fabrique chaque année des millions d'analphabètes pour laborer les champs, nettoyer les sidewalks, tenir un fusil. L'élite, comme tu dis, a une responsabilité. Nous devons partir à l'assaut des usines, organizer des cours du soir, œuvrer à la conscientisation des masses ! »
Ronit se with debout sur le comptoir. « Do you want to celebrate the party with great discussions? Are you still in the box? J'ai envie de danser! »
Leïla Slimani, Regardez-nous danser
The country is on the verge of revolution, the people live in poverty, and Mr. Roland Barthes will do us the honor of teaching us Proust and Racine! But what do Moroccans ultimately care about Proust? We wear their clothes, listen to their music, and watch their films. In the cafés of Casablanca, the young people read Le Monde and bet on horse racing in Paris. When will we realize that we need to develop our own personalities, learn about our own culture, and take our destiny back into our own hands?
“Which do you prefer?” Ahmed replied. “Don’t tell me you’re like the people from Istiqlal, who demand Koranic schools, total Arabization, and a return to traditions that are nothing more than folklore for tourists?”
Don't put words in my mouth. The truth is, those in power have no interest in educating the masses. As long as French aid workers are teaching at our universities, students will be taught colonial and bourgeois knowledge that will lead them to defend class interests. I'm not saying this for you, Henri. It's different for you. But you have to admit that your fellow aid workers come here because they're drawn to the Moroccan dirham trough.
“I think you’re being a bit unfair,” replied their host. “We’re here to provide Morocco with our knowledge and help them train their future elite, who will then take over the leadership of the country.”
"Elite, what a joke! This country produces millions of illiterate people every year who have to plow fields, clean sidewalks, and hold a gun. The elite, as you call them, have a responsibility. We must storm the factories, organize evening classes, and work to raise awareness among the masses!"
Ronit stood on the bar. "Don't you realize you're ruining the party with your big speeches? Shall we go to a club? I feel like dancing!"
And so, in the midst of this revolution, swinging young men with pomade in their hair and girls in bikinis participating in beauty pageants form the decor; musical groups are inspired by the stars of American music; you hear Elvis Presley, the Platters, or Gilbert Bécaud.
Selim, the son of Mathilde and Amine, whom his father considers too soft, joins the European hippies in Morocco. Here, even for the locals, the logic of colonialism begins to unravel, as the dancing European dropouts reject, in a perplexing way, the very privileges they longed for from their former colonial rulers. That this escape leads them to the former colony itself may represent a complex new form of exoticism, one that Leïla Slimani seeks to avoid with her trilogy.
Oui, les habitants les voyaient comme d'étranges misérables, des pauvres Venus d'ailleurs, des Européens qui ne possédaient rien. Les hippies étaient toujours de bonne humeur. Ils aims to dance and chant. Ils prenaient soin des bêtes et des enfants, à qui ils manifestaient une tendresse que les habitants de Diabet jugeaient à la fois touchante et naïve. « Ce sont eux-mêmes des enfants », se confiaient-ils quand ils étaient entre eux. Les plus vieux villageois se montraient parfois méfiants. Ils n'y comprenaient rien. Autrefois, les Blancs étaient Venus. It is available to all the promiscuous trains, routes and schools. Ils leur avaient dit que bientôt eux auraient l'électricité et des avions et des hôpitaux tout neufs et immaculés, où on les soignerait pour rien. There is no route, no school, no train. Et voilà que les Blancs revenaient. Ils revenaient pour partager une vie de peu, une vie rude. Comme c'était étrange. Les children of diabetes go to the village. It's all located in Marrakech or just like me, in Agadir or in Casablanca. Et les children des other venaient ici et prétendaient qu'il n'y avait rien de plus beau, rien de plus vrai que cette vie sans rien, parmi les chèvres et les cafards.
Leïla Slimani, Regardez-nous danser
Yes, the locals saw them as strange wretches, as poor people from elsewhere, as Europeans who owned nothing. The hippies were always cheerful. They loved to dance and sing. They cared for the animals and the children, showing them a tenderness that the residents of Diabet found both touching and naive: "They are children themselves," they confided when they were among themselves. The older villagers were sometimes suspicious. They didn't understand any of it. Before, the white people had come. They had promised them trains, roads, and schools. They had told them that they, too, would soon have electricity and airplanes and new, pristine hospitals where they would be treated for little money. But there were no roads, no schools, and no trains. And now the white people were coming back. They were coming back to share a life with few people, a hard life. How strange that was. The children of Diabet fled the village. They moved to Marrakesh or even further away, to Agadir or Casablanca. And the children of the others came here and claimed there was nothing more beautiful, nothing more authentic than this life without anything, among goats and cockroaches.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- "The city seemed cold and hostile to her. Amine explained its topography to Mathilde, which corresponded to the principles established by Marshal Lyautey at the beginning of the Protectorate: a strict separation between the Medina, whose traditional customs and practices were to be preserved, and the European city, whose streets bore the names of French cities and which saw itself as a laboratory of modernity.">>>
- « It commencé ma trilogie du « Pays des other » parce qu'on ne m'a malheureusement pas transmis tant de choses sur l'histoire de ma famille, qui est une famille de sang mêlé, avec un côté français et un côté marocain. Dans ma generation en Afrique, nous savons peu de choses sur ce qu'ont été les Indépendances, dans les années 1960, pour nos parents. Il ne faut pas croire que l'instrumentalisation de l'Histoire ou les tabous ne sont que du côté de ceux qui ont colonisé. Au Maroc, les gens n'ont pas envie de parler de la colonization. Because it is a humiliation, a good thing. Il ya du silence des deux côtés de la Méditerranée. Je voulais combattre ces deux silences et, my aussi, n'épargner personne. » “Leïla Slimani and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr: la littérature française, c'est eux!”, Nouvel Observateur, 2. February 2022.>>>
- “A formidable épopée, politique autant qu'humaine, qui en dit long sur les affres de ces ex-colonies françaises soudain livrées à elles-mêmes ou presque, chacun tentant de trouver sa place dans une société oscillant entre décomposition et recomposition.” Alexandra Schwartzbrod, “Leïla Slimani, a family member,” Libération, 5. February 2022.>>>
- "C'est une aggression d'entendre toute la journée parler des musulmans, des Maghrébins. Moi, les Maghrébins, je ne sais pas ce que c'est. Ecrire this trilogie, c'est also rendre aux gens une individualité, une histoire incarnée dans des lieux. Nous ne sommes pas que des êtres musulmans depuis à l'écart de l'Histoire et de la modernité. Chez nous aussi, Mai-68 a eu de l'influence, il ya eu des hippies, des gens qui ont rêvé de liberté, des rêves trahis qu'un roman américain ou Europe is a universal universe, even though it is a Moroccan Roman, exotique, or documentary.” “Leïla Slimani and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr: la littérature française, c'est eux!”, Nouvel Observateur, 2. February 2022.>>>
- “Illustration de l'élitisme ambiant”, Gilles Djeyaramane, “Francophonie: Leïla Slimani, a representative personnelle très attendue”, Les EchosNovember 22, 2017.>>>
- “Pour beaucoup de gens, la langue française est considérée comme une langue de boudoir, de lettrés mais pas comme une langue pragmatique, qui sert à trouver du travail.” AFP, “Leïla Slimani, “Mme Francophonie” de Macron, veut “déringardiser” le français,” January 14, 2018.>>>
- Roland Barthes in Morocco, ed. by Ridha Boulaâbi, Claude Coste and Mohamed Lehdahda, Meknes: Publications de l'Université Moulay Ismaïl, 2013.>>>
