Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices Against Violence 7209174927, 2013026997, 9780415730440, 9781315849836

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Dissident Writings of Arab Women

Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices Against Violence analyzes the links between creative dissidence and inscriptions of violence in the writings of a selected group of postcolonial Arab women. The female authors destabilize essentialist framings of Arab identity through a series of reflective interrogations and “contesting” literary genres that include novels, short stories, poems, docudramas, interviews and testimonials. Rejecting a purist “literature for literature’s sake” ethic, they embrace a dissident poetics of feminist critique and creative resistance as they engage in multiple and intergenerational border crossings in terms of geography, subject matter, language and transnationality. This book thus examines the ways in which the women’s writings provide the blueprint for social justice by “voicing” protest and stimulating critical thought, particularly in instances of social oppression, structural violence and political transition. Providing an interdisciplinary approach which goes beyond narrow definitions of literature as aesthetic praxis to include literature’s added value as a social, historical, political and cultural palimpsest, this book will be a useful resource for students and scholars of North African Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Francophone Studies and Feminist Studies. Brinda J. Mehta is the Germaine Thompson Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Mills College in Oakland, California, where she teaches postcolonial African and Caribbean literatures, contemporary French literature and transnational feminist theory. She is the author of Notions of Identity, Diaspora and Gender in Caribbean Women’s Writing (2009); Rituals of Memory in Contemporary Arab Women’s Writing (2007); and Diasporic (Dis)locations: Indo-Caribbean Women Writers Negotiate the Kala Pani (Winner of the Frantz Fanon Award, 2007).

“A unique perspective on women’s postcolonial literary agency in North Africa. With impressive dexterity and intellectual depth, Brinda Mehta digs out and weaves the subtle but real links between creativity, dissent, and violence in today’s North African women’s writings, spanning the personal, the cultural, the social, the economic, the political, the intellectual, and the transnational. By highlighting the discursive aspect of power, the book underscores with authority the centrality of an ‘engaged’ literature based on civic engagement and social responsibility in an overall context that both informs and claims it.” Fatima Sadiqi, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fez, Morocco “Brinda Mehta’s Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices against Violence is a timely engagement with an understudied topic. Focusing in particular on the diaspora and sites of displacement, she brings into the discussion of feminist dissent a powerful insight that is substantiated throughout with blueprint material and documentation. Going beyond the condescending manner that blighted a portion of the feminist critique, she delves into writings and documents that present Arab women’s struggle through art, literature, and other public sphere activity to interrogate forms and types of violence that have targeted women populations. But rather than devising ethnic and genderic divides, the effort in this book is focused on manifestations of violence as strategies and methods that cannot be seen outside the colonial and imperial onslaught. The postcolonial scriptoria is expanded and enriched beyond the colonial encounter. Building up its strong argument across languages and borders, this book is a serious and well-documented contribution to the study of feminist dissent.” Muhsin al-Musawi, Professor of Arabic Literature, Columbia University

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22 Music, Culture and Identity in the Muslim World Performance, Politics and Piety Edited by Kamal Salhi 23 Dissident Writings of Arab Women Voices Against Violence Brinda J. Mehta

Dissident Writings of Arab Women Voices Against Violence

Brinda J. Mehta

First published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Brinda J. Mehta The right of Brinda J. Mehta to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Dissident writings of Arab women : voices against violence / [edited by] Brinda J. Mehta. pages cm.——(Routledge advances in Middle East and Islamic studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Women, Arab. 2. Dissenters——Arab countries. 3. Muslim women authors——Arab countries. 4. Social justice. I. Mehta, Brinda J. II. Stansfield, Gareth R. V. Iraqi Kurdistan. HQ1729.5.D57 2014 303.3’7209174927——dc23 2013026997 ISBN: 978-0-415-73044-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-84983-6 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor and Francis Books

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction: inscribing violence: dissident contexts in Arab women’s writings from North Africa and the diaspora

ix

1

PART I

Violence and war: the Algerian war story 1

Contesting violence and imposed silence: the creative dissidence of contemporary Francophone Algerian women writers

25

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PART II

Violence and social/sexual oppression 2

3

4

Sexual violence and testimony: the language of pain in Aïcha Ech-Channa’s Miseria: témoignages

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89

Gendering the Straits: border violence in Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Lamiae El Amrani’s Tormenta de especias (A Torrent of Spices)

108

Writing from the banlieue: identity, contested citizenship and gender ideologies in Faïza Guène’s Kiffe-kiffe demain

151

PART III

Staging violence in North African women’s theatre: Jalila Baccar (Tunisia) and Laila Soliman (Egypt) 5

Madness as political dissent in Jalila Baccar’s Junun: scene one – Tunis

191

193

viii 6

Contents The darker side of Tahrir in Laila Soliman’s No Time for Art and Blue Bra Day: scene two – Tahrir Square, Cairo

Conclusion: dissident reflections: an anti-conclusion Bibliography Index

218 253 258 277

Acknowledgements

This book is the result of a collective effort. I am very grateful to Joe Whiting for his enthusiastic acceptance of my project. My sincere thanks go out to the Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies team. Kathryn Rylance is a superb editorial assistant. Michael Helfield’s copyediting skills have brought elegance and fluidity to the manuscript. I am indebted to miriam cooke, Evelyne Accad, Maria Lugones, Sonia Dayan Herzbrun, Tareq Ismael, Fatima Sadiqi, Nawal El Saadawi and Muhsin Al-Musawi for their support of my work. I am grateful to the external reviewers for their thoughtful and insightful reading of the manuscript. I thank my friends Renée Larrier, H. Adlai Murdoch, Simone James Alexander, Medha Karmarkar, Grant Farred, Paget Henry, Myriam Chancy, Christian Marouby, Rafika Zahrouni, Hakim Abderrezak, Jacquelyn Cooper and Laura Chakravorty Box for their faith in me. My heartfelt thanks go to Laila Soliman for sharing her unpublished plays. Spark Carranza has provided invaluable technical support once again. I thank her for her patience and good humor. I am grateful to Mills College for supporting my research in France and North Africa through Faculty Development grants and Meg Quigley summer grants offered by the Department of Wome n’s Gender and Sexuality Studies. This book would not have been possible without the excellent interlibrary services provided by Moya Stone and Michael Beller. My husband, Arturo Dávila Sánchez, is my partenaire de vie and best friend. I am grateful for his love, wisdom and gentle heart. I dedicate this book to the memory of my beloved parents, Jagadish and Kunda Mehta, and my uncle, Admiral Oscar Stanley Dawson. Their peaceful spirits grace the pages of this book.

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Introduction Inscribing violence: dissident contexts in Arab women’s writing from North Africa and the diaspora

In a seminal essay on dissidence and creativity (1995), Egyptian feminist and author Dr. Nawal El Saadawi highlights the intimate synergies between creative thought and dissident action. She describes creativity as a dangerous activity capable of destabilizing the status quo through the search for alternative epistemologies. I argue that dissident creativity represents an act of rebellion against inscriptions of violence in North Africa and the diaspora by manifesting in “revolutionary” forms of action and knowledge production. This anomie is represented by state violence, the violence of coloniality, gender-based violence and social violence against the dispossessed. At the same time, dissident creativity also stimulates important reflections on the role and responsibility of the writer who must give voice to what Assia Djebar calls the “guttural, feral, unsubmissive” (1999, 29) narratives that seek expression in discursive form.1 El Saadawi states: “I believe there is no dissidence without struggle. We cannot understand dissidence except in a situation of struggle and in its location in place and time. Without this, dissidence becomes a word devoid of responsibility, devoid of meaning” (1995, 2). Creativity is the quest for meaningful change in a disordered world and it is the logical consequence of political and social consciousness. Believing in the intrinsic dissidence of the creative word, El Saadawi equates writing with the act of fighting for social justice in order to “have the passion and knowledge required to change the powerful oppressive system of family and government.” She asks: “Can we be creative if we submit to the rules forced upon us under different names: father, god, husband, family, nation, security, stability, protection, peace, democracy, family planning, development, human rights, modernism or postmodernism?” (2). Engendering the creative re-hauling of an unbalanced world system, the poetics of dissident creativity provides a necessary tool to fracture “the established philosophical canon … [that] began with the patriarchal slave or class system and is still prevalent today” (9). In a similar vein, Franco-Algerian author Albert Camus makes a case for dissident creativity when he stated the following in a lecture given at the University of Uppsala in Sweden: “To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing” (1957). Creativity is thereby a risky act of public

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Introduction

disclosure that, in turn, risks condemnation or censorship by “the established philosophical canon” denounced by El Saadawi. Both writers highlight the urgency of inscribing creativity within a certain timeliness and social relevance to debunk the inappropriateness of the bourgeois “art for art’s sake” aesthetic. This modality loses it pertinence in a deeply fractured postcolonial world that nevertheless carries the violent marks of coloniality and its strategically entrenched power structures: “The theory of art for art’s sake … [is] … a voicing of irresponsibility,” states Camus (1957). Creative writers engage in dissidence through their discursive ruptures in text by looking for more responsible forms of literariness to “revolt against everything fleeting and unfinished in the world. The time of irresponsible artists is over,” emphasizes Camus. Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices against Violence takes a “responsible” stance by analyzing the links between creative dissidence and inscriptions of violence in the writings of a selected group of postcolonial Arab women. These writers include Assia Djebar, Leila Sebbar and Maïssa Bey (USA/Algeria/France); Aïcha Ech-Channa (Morocco); Laila Lalami (USA/Morocco); Faïza Guène (France); Jalila Baccar (Tunisia); and Laila Soliman (Egypt). My book examines the ways in which these women’s writings provide the blueprint for social justice by “voicing” protest and stimulating critical thought, particularly in instances of social oppression, structural violence and political transition. Its interdisciplinary approach goes beyond narrow definitions of literature as aesthetic praxis to include literature’s added value as a social, historical, political and cultural palimpsest. The writers in this book destabilize essentialist framings of Arab identity through a series of reflective interrogations and “contesting” literary genres that include novels, short stories, poems, docudramas, interviews and testimonials. Rejecting a purist “literature for literature’s sake” ethic, these women embrace a dissident poetics of feminist critique and creative resistance, as they engage in multiple and intergenerational border crossings in terms of geography, subject matter, language and transnationality. Their writings demonstrate their timeliness in circumstances of war, the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the Algerian War of Independence in 2012 and the ongoing trajectories of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. I argue that Arab women writers already announced the Arab Spring revolutions in their work by revealing the inherent tensions afflicting their respective societies in the pre-and post-independence years. Their writings in this study span a fifty-year timeline beginning with the Algerian “war story” of the 1950s and ending with the early phases of the uprisings of 2012. As mentioned earlier, dissident creativity is intimately linked to a common preoccupation with violence and social injustice in all these women’s writings. In fact, the multiple configurations of violence in its most abject forms structure all the chapters of this book. The writers search for strategies to “dismember” the language of violence in their texts while making a commitment to socially informed models of creative activism found in the acts of writing

Introduction

3

and contesting. Literature provides them with the necessary instrument to express dissent by positing writing as an act of rebellion against the dangers of violence that circumscribe the lives of men, women and children. These woman-centered narratives favor the cause of the socially abject, the economically wretched, the politically dispossessed and the intellectually marginalized while “singing” revolutionary songs of hope. As stated by Chantal Kalisa: “For women writers, literature offers a privileged medium through which they attempt to resolve the tension between historical or state forms of violence associated with colonialism and postcolonial conditions and internal forms of violence that result from unfair cultural, social, and political rules based on gender” (2009, 3). By giving violence “center-stage” positionality in their works, these writers dislodge violence from the invisible realm of private space and bring it into the main forum of visibility and public critique, particularly with reference to the physical, emotional and social violence against women. Why is violence an overarching trope in Arab women’s writing and why do the women seek to engender violence in text? Moha Ennaji and Fatima Sadiqi offer a possible explanation in the introduction to their co-edited volume, Gender and Violence in the Middle East. They argue: While gender-based violence is a universal phenomenon, it takes interesting nuances and wears multiple faces in the region where tradition, social norm, religion, war, and politics intermingle in a powerful and tantalizing space-based patriarchy. The theme of “gender and violence” is relatively new in the field of research; hence, scholarly literature … is both scarce and dispersed. (2011, 1) Ennaji and Sadiqi reference the many social and cultural taboos that inhibit the public disclosure of visible and invisible forms of violence. The exposure of national and domestic violence is impeded by the multiple layers of conservatism, censorship, state intimidation, gender normativity and morality codes that shroud the home and nation in an attempt to guard the sacrosanct nature of these inviolable acts. Inscribed within dysfunctional power systems of regulation, control and law enforcement, violence represents the language of patriarchal authority, an exceptional form of “biopower” (Mbembe 2003, 16) destined to confiscate individual rights and subjectivity. As a “pattern for social structuring in the nation state” (Ennaji and Sadiqi 2011, i), violence is a disabling praxis of subjugation, conformity and submission. I associate violence with the physical and symbolic act of dismemberment. The term has a special resonance in this book, as it refers to a dual process of de-territorialization and de-corporealization. The women reveal how violence is configured physically and figuratively in its relation to the body, the female body in particular, through images of mutilated war-torn bodies, invisible bodies, ruptured hymens, bruised limbs, torture, and the ultimate annihilation of the body in “madness.” At the same time,

4

Introduction

dismemberment also has a symbolic value when clandestine migrants are wrenched from their home countries by economic dispossession, only to be objectified on European shores through border violence and sexual enslavement. In these circumstances, dissident creativity is a means to re-member the abject body while denouncing the agents of violence in acts of scripting violence, witnessing, testifying and denouncing. For this reason, Arab women’s writings occupy an interstitial space between dismemberment and embodiment to demonstrate how the act of writing against violence revives the historical and social traumas of marginality and invisibility in an inescapable landscape of pain. These “wounded” narratives are inscribed in socially vibrant texts that reveal the intersectional positioning of violence in prismatic contexts of war, sexual subalternity, clandestine migration, social exclusion (in France) and state dystopia. The following questions structure the “organization” of violence in the following chapters to offer a more comprehensive reading of the different forms of local and national violence that structure and deconstruct lives. How do “trans-locational” Arab women write “against violence”? Why is the dismemberment of violence a major feminist concern for all of them? How is the body dismembered by violence? What are the different narrative modes the women choose to expose and contest the suppressed “truths” about violence? What are the multiple ways in which each writer imagines her own “revolutionary” landscapes and framings of social justice from a gendered perspective? How do they express the inexpressible in the face of social taboos, censorship, exile, war, trauma and minority representation? What is the relationship between dissidence, creativity and human integrity in an increasingly volatile world? It must be mentioned that dissident creativity in these writings is not a reactive or reactionary praxis of negation and denial. On the contrary, it embraces a more proactive stance in its dual positioning as “ … not only a struggle against but also a struggle for … a future where resistance and struggle might give way to peaceful, productive and equal coexistence,” as stated by Jennifer Browdy de Hérnandez, Pauline Dongala, Omotayo Jolaosho and Anne Sérafin, editors of African Women Writing Resistance: Contemporary Voices (2010, 7). In addition, the women do not seek to “uncover” violence for its sensational value or for marketing purposes. To this end, they do not privilege one particular form of dissident expression or one specific narrative form over another. The women’s use of textual hybridity, as a medium to express their complex postcolonial subjectivities and transnational sensibilities, ruptures the conventional boundaries of literary genre by opening other discursive spaces, such as testimonials and docudramas. This plurality highlights the complex “in-between-ness” of their writings that decodes the violent wounds of coloniality that compromise survival and engender resistance in troubling times today. As argued by miriam cooke in Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official, “dissidence is not agenda driven but improvisational. It confronts and engages with dominant discourses. Always

Introduction

5

new and arresting, to survive, dissidence must deflect official attempts to repress it, reduce it to empty rhetoric, or co-opt it” (2007, 85). Dissidence stages discursive “arrests” through its unpredictability, spontaneity and refusal to be usurped by the state as a mouthpiece for partisan ideology. For this reason, it channels wide and varied means of expression that resist homogeneity and literalness. Dissident creativity is more than an invitation to transform reality through the power of discursivity. I argue that it is an act of civic engagement and social responsibility that engages the writer-artist in “unruly critique” (Chakravorty 2010, 116) and in meaningful “disobedience to a directive” (Danticat 2010, 11). Creative disobedience in literature is thereby a call to produce socially committed texts by combining literary activism with ethical consciousness, a creative praxis that nevertheless has its roots in context and social relevance. These creatively committed texts express their “modernity” by contesting the privilege of an ivory tower isolationism that de-links literature from its ethical responsibilities. As stated by Salman Rushdie: “Works of art, even works of entertainment, do not come into being in a social and political vacuum; … the way they operate in a society cannot be separated from politics, from history. For every text, a context” (1984, 2). In other words, a postcolonial text must reveal its contemporary instance by negotiating the tensions between aesthetics and context in an active decolonizing of literature from colonial, neo-colonial and patriarchal paradigms. “The writer need not always be the servant of some beetle-browed ideology. He can also be its critic, its antagonist, its scourge … writers have discharged this role with honor” (1984, 4), asserts Rushdie. Dissident Writings of Arab Women makes a case for the creative dissidence of contemporary Arab women writers by demonstrating how the women further problematize this trope through their particular gender preoccupations. These concerns demand feminist re-negotiations of questions related to identity, citizenship and personal liberties according to more inclusionary paradigms. The women nevertheless inherit a long tradition of social consciousness, wherein “gender consciousness is hardly new to Middle Eastern society.” According to Fedwa Malti-Douglas (1995, 16), “social, cultural, historical and legal questions relating to male-female roles, equality of women, and so forth, have been part and parcel of Arabo-Islamic discourse for centuries.” However, these twenty-first-century writers reveal the contemporary relevance of their struggles by demonstrating how dissidence against injustice is still a work-in-progress due to the ongoing violence of history, coloniality, refracted gender ideologies, and politics. At the same time, these writers further strengthen Arabic literature’s critical and creative engagements with “the word” by using creativity to reflect on a particular society’s cultural and collective ethos: “Literature is the archive of a culture,” states feminist Toril Moi, who makes a case for literature’s importance as a narrative of shared vision, hope, generosity and human understanding. She adds:

6

Introduction A novel or a poem or a play, or a theoretical essay for that matter, is an attempt to make others see something that really matters to the writer … In this gesture, there is hope – not certainty – that perhaps others may come to share her vision, if only for a moment. This hope makes a writer vulnerable. She has to be willing to say what she sees, to stake everything on her vision, without any guarantee that she will be understood. To write is to risk rejection and misunderstanding. To create a work of art, Sartre writes, is to give the world a gift nobody has asked for. But if we don’t dare to share with others what we see, the world will be poorer for it. (2008, 268)

Moi does not advocate literary authoritarianism, wherein literature morphs into an ideological and homogenous point of view dominated by the writer’s uni-centered vision, a dangerous positionality that has been manipulated and exploited by writers and critics worldwide. Instead, this “literature of conscience” encourages its readers to see the world differently through the lens of what Tariq Sabry calls “an ethics of otherness” described as “an ethics of radical exteriority … otherness-as-care, an otherness ‘for-the-other,’ and a way of being ‘otherwise’” (2012, 17). This revised ontology represents the very crux of creative possibility for Sabry, who focuses on “otherness as a heuristic and necessary ethical modality, a kind of precursor to a more universally inclusive and non-immanent way of thinking the other” (16). Sabry advocates a transformative consciousness that goes beyond the limited and opposing binaries of alterity that remain immobilized in a “self-versus-Other” dialectic. Instead, he proposes more synchronic engagements with otherness through an affirming ethics of accountability that is of particular relevance to the woman writer who has been systematically and dually displaced by the constructed marginality of her gendered Arabness in colonial and neocolonial discourses. As miriam cooke confirms in Women Claim Islam, Arab women … have been left out of history, out of the War Story, out of narratives of emigration and exile, out of the psychical and hermeneutical spaces of religion … Only by concentrating on their collective cultural production can we see that Arab women intellectuals are everywhere challenging meta-narratives that write them out of active political presence. (2001, viii, xxv) By reclaiming literary spaces on which to inscribe their engagement with an “otherness-as-care” ethic (Sabry 2012, 17), the women’s writing “seek justice wherever it can find it” (cooke 2001, x). On the one hand, their search exposes the historical and cultural violations that have marginalized their creative output. On the other hand, according to Anne Donadey (2001, xx), this quest creates sites of intellectual recovery “in which they reconstruct their history through the blanks of the other’s discourse (be it the colonizer’s or

Introduction

7

that of the patriarchal tradition).” This social justice perspective both “humanizes” literature and expressively articulates dissent in deeply embodied form, a discursive strategy that, according to Abdulhadi, Alsultany, and Naber: belongs to the tradition of Arab and Arab American knowledge production and further engages in a “theory in the flesh” or knowledge derived from narrating lived experiences and producing critical lenses through which we see and analyze the social and political world. (2011, xxx) Embracing the personal and the human within a politicized economy of awareness, Arab women thereby articulate what Lebanese author Evelyn Accad calls their “femi-humanism” (Zahnd 2010, 7). This “humanistic ethos of being” situates gender at the intersection of human concerns with oppression, exploitation, survival and historical violence framed within local, national, personal and transnational geo-positionings of self and culture. In so doing, these writers become informed advocates for social change through their revolutionary voices that complicate and nuance the intentionality and scope of dissident literature from the region: “I write against my hand,” emphasizes Lebanese author Hoda Barakat in her autobiographical essay from Fadia Faqir’s edited volume, In The House of Silence: Autobiographical Essays by Arab Women Writers (1998). Barakat’s statement reveals how writing is not only an act of coming-to-consciousness, but also a strategy of “bringing-to-consciousness” all that remains repressed, disavowed and concealed from public disclosure. Dissident creativity expresses the inexplicable non-dit (“the unsaid”) through narrative rupture, silence, memory, trauma, pain and the “resistant” subjectivities of the women themselves. These women refuse to accept the unacceptable dictates of intellectual chauvinism and social submission by engendering discursive fitna (“chaos”) in text. As stated by El Saadawi: Creativity channeled in such a way paves the way for change, demolishes outmoded, reactionary antidemocratic structures, and strengthens political and social movements grounded in the struggle for peace, democracy, justice and gender equality … Creative women know how to live with chaos because they understand that every creation is an inspiration that surges up out of chaos. (2010, 73) The act of creating chaos in text is a public intervention that brings the private art of writing to the open forum of readership and analysis. In so doing, the writer has the potential to “influence public life and public debate” (Bamyeh 2011, 1) through the social relevance of his/her work that refuses indifference, disengagement, jingoism and isolation when confronted with

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Introduction

situations of urgency. As confirmed by dramatist Mamduh ‘Adwan in a conversation with miriam cooke: No poem, no piece of music can overthrow a dictator. But, it can resist the normalization of oppression. It can focus on human beings and their deep humanity, reminding them constantly that they are human. Artists must create works that will help others to understand what is going on and why and what is the possible outcome. (2007, 91) These oppressions that necessitate a non-conforming response include war, imprisonment, socio-economic crisis, gender anomie, sexual oppression, political repression, among other violations. For example, El Saadawi expresses the urgency to write as a form of denunciation of Anwar Sadat’s authoritarian state in Memoirs from the Women’s Prison. In this text, writing is a lifesustaining force used to combat the mental and physical desolation of prison on the one hand, and a medium of reckoning on the other: “Nothing matters, except the birth of words on paper, the dawn’s birth, the gloom dissolving … ” (1986, 83), claims the dissident. The urgency to write and indict complements the will to survive the prison experience through the physical dimensions of creativity. The Egyptian dissident was arrested and incarcerated by President Anwar Sadat in 1981 for her campaign against intellectual censorship and the Camp David agreement between Egypt, Israel and the United States. She wrote Memoirs from the Women’s Prison during her nine-month imprisonment at Qanatir Women’s Prison using pieces of toilet paper and an eyebrow pencil borrowed from one of the female inmates. Like the physicality of the prison experience, writing also assumes a physical function like breathing or sleeping. Its deprivation is tantamount to a death sentence in the absence of revolutionary thought and creative action. El Saadawi states: “I think as I wish and I write – with my fingers, on the ground – what I wish to write” (46). Creativity thereby bears witness to a personal ordeal in testimonial form. It is a call for revolutionary action through the liberating power of the intellect that creatively writes itself out of imprisonment and thereby eludes victimization: “I cannot pull my body out between the steel bars … but I can extract my mind,” declares El Saadawi (135). This does not mean that Arab women’s literature from the region should only be a political response to crisis. To make this claim would be tantamount to depriving Arabic literature of its depth, passion, complexity, intensity and breadth. Instead, dissident creativity is a reflection on “the intellectual’s selfunderstanding of his responsibility to a given community” (Bamyeh 2011, 11), a consciousness needed to establish the writer’s own sense of integrity given the power of the written word to either effect change or surrender to co-optation. This is in keeping with Christopher Miller’s view that “the whole notion of what is ‘political’ has changed in the postcolonial era:

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political vision and symbolic representation are no longer held to be mutually exclusive” (1990, 124). The synergies between the political and the symbolic condition the writer’s “visionary” point of view as he/she negotiates the charge and “burden of commitment” (Cazenave and Célérier 2011). In this equation, the personal is the political, just as the political becomes part of the collective ethos. This vision is nevertheless mediated by the writer’s personal choice of opposition or surrender – the decision to be a part of the state machinery or oppose its oppressive dysfunctionality. As stated by ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif: The intellectual can not be impartial … but must be completely engaged in the present epoch, using culture to influence the times … There must be coordination and equivalence between words and their meanings. If not, these words will turn into curses and the one who is best versed in this craft will be the most dangerous … This is what has made many instrumentalize their knowledge and skills on behalf of the state. This is what has made them wealthy whatever their motives. (1996, 118 and 131) A dissident cannot be a self-serving cultural mercenary. On the contrary, dissidence should be a selfless act of good faith. It is particularly vital at a time when Western interests and ambivalent local leadership in North Africa and the diaspora make socially committed literature or littérature d’engagement politically expedient and inevitable in an effort to document this “chaos” in text. In her prison narrative, El Saadawi underscores the “chaotic” power of words in a conversation with the prison warden. When the author initially asks for writing material, she receives the following answer from a shocked warden: “This is utterly forbidden. Anything but pen and paper. Easier to give you a pistol than pen and paper” (1986, 49). This exchange reveals the incendiary scope of the written word in the hands of the dissident writer; words have a more explosive impact than an armed insurrection. The chaos engendered by these discursive insurrections leads El Saadawi to state: “I had not imagined that pen and paper could be more dangerous than pistols in the world of reality and fact” (4). The creation of literary chaos has special resonance for the woman writer who must unpeel the many layers of alienation that obscure her subjectivity through intellectual chauvinism, outmoded traditions, oppressive state legislation and irrelevant gender prescriptions that are not in consonance with the revolutionary demands for change taking place in North Africa and the Middle East. El Saadawi provides the necessary framework to inscribe these ongoing waves of protest when she proclaims: “Revolution is a natural result of creative action, and freedom is the daughter of the revolution. Revolution and freedom together constitute the form and content of any creative action” (165).

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Writing dissidence Dissident postcolonial Arabic literature enjoys a celebrated historicity in North Africa and the Middle East. As asserted by Barbara Harlow in her work on resistance literature, literature is the medium of “writing human rights and righting political wrongs” (1992, 256). Writers as diverse and distinguished as Mahmoud Darwish, Naguib Mahfouz, Adonis, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Assia Djebar, Nawal El Saadawi, Ahdaf Soueif, Laila Soliman, Leïla Sebbar, Jalila Baccar, and a plethora of others, are noted for their creative stance as writer-activists. These authors use literature as a medium of contestation, resistance and denunciation to expose and condemn human rights violations in the region through the beauty and power of the written word. As affirmed by Muhsin Jassim Al-Musawi in his seminal text The Postcolonial Arabic Novel: Debating Ambivalence, these “narratives assume multiplicity and polyphony through a number of strategies that are central to the decolonizing and decentering endeavor that makes up the postcolonial Arabic novel … “ (2003, 13). These writings “assume their postcoloniality not only as partial representations of change and reflections of awareness … but more significantly as dynamic cultural proponents of socio-political consciousness, especially in its local manifestations” (16). The decentering of coloniality together with the decolonization of gender represents the added preoccupation of the woman writer who must reclaim and re-center her femi-humanist preoccupations through “alternative socialities and oppositional responses” (Lugones 2010, 748) to standardized hetero-patriarchal discourses on identity and subjectivity. In an influential publication titled Intersections: Gender, Nation and Community in Arab Women’s Novels, editors Lisa Suhair Majaj, Therese Saliba and Paula W. Sunderman provide an important framework for “locating” the socio-historical context of contemporary Arab women’s literature: The novelists … write within the turbulent postcolonial context of the post-1960s, a period marked in the Arab world by the rise of national liberation movements, the defeat of Arab nationalism, the fragmentation of Arab identity, and the increasing militarism of the Israeli state. They contend with the intersecting hierarchies of gender, religion, class and ethnicity within their societies, as well as with the patriarchal, colonialist, Zionist, and militarized violence linked to these hierarchies. Situating gender issues within these historical moments of flux and change, these authors seek to recast national narratives and to redefine boundaries of identity and community. (2002, xix) Dissident Writings of Arab Women further expands and updates this framing in two areas – firstly, a narrative diversity that does not focus exclusively on novels and secondly, historical timelines related to the Arab Spring uprisings

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(2011). These historical events have both enhanced and complicated literature’s timeliness and appropriateness in periods of political crisis and tragedy. Arab women writers thereby stress the urgency of “righting” these violations through public condemnation in texts that foreground the desire to salvage human dignity from the throes of loss, capitalist warmongering, repression and racialized and sexualized violence. Their writings represent a counter war cry, “a ululation for survival,” according to Sarah Husain (2006, 12) that joins forces with Assia Djebar’s revolutionary “wild collective voice” (1993, xxii). This collective “scream” is inscribed in a landscape of loss as it looks for a sense of wholeness beyond the fractures of coloniality. As stated by Fathi Triki: “Postcolonial Arabs … must learn how to situate themselves in this ‘new geo-political landscape’ of a world that remains divided, contested and conflicted” (1998, 14). Personal and/or political traumas characterize the writings of all the women in this book, who make explicit connections between violence, pain and trauma in their work. They have either been victims of traumatic experience themselves, like Maïssa Bey, who witnessed the execution of her father by government forces, or have been first-hand witnesses to trauma in their societies, like Aïcha Ech-Channa, whose social activism exposed her to the violent underbelly of Moroccan society. Literature in its most expansive forms has provided them with an avenue to reclaim the humanity of all those who have been traumatized by the violence of coloniality represented by war, poverty, minority citizenship, detention and imposed codes of illegality. These “bruised” (Soueif 2004, 234) narratives reflect the primal wounds of coloniality, wounds that are in need of healing by the restorative power of creativity and its discursive engagement with broader social preoccupations. As Iraqi art activist Dena Al-Adeeb explains in an interview with Nadine Naber, creative expression: builds social movement by documenting and creating an interpretation of historical moments and memory. It is an important branch of political movement work that aims to educate and to invigorate and inspire critical thought … It can potentially serve to heal the wounds of injustice by accessing an emotional and psychological realm that can also channel people’s creative energies toward envisioning and manifesting a political vision. (Abdulhadi, Alsultany and Naber 2011, 223) In the women’s writings, creativity, social consciousness and political movement are an active and thoughtful form of non-violent resistance, a mosaic-like piecing together of fragmented postcolonial subjectivities that are further ruptured by coloniality’s dissonance. This does not mean that the writers assume or should assume a position of self-aggrandizement as victimized purveyors of transcendent truths accessible only to the initiated. On the

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contrary, the act of reclaiming is a precarious negotiation of humility, defensiveness and vulnerability to public exposure when faced with the burden of “living in truth” (Havel 1987, 104), which is to say, the charge of “paying attention to the power discourse and rejecting its falsifications,” according to cooke (2007, 24). Literature in all its forms cannot lay claim to being a narrative of pure truth. Yet, it can problematize the writer’s mediation of social engagement in text by blurring the boundaries between writing and activism. Egyptian author Ahdaf Soueif best describes this positionality by asking an important question: Is a novelist a literary activist? An activist is impelled by a cause and adopts it. Most people are content to live their lives within prescribed and personal boundaries. But one of the points of artists surely is that they live outside their skin, that they’re connected, that they hurt with the hurt of their fellow humans. How, then, can they disengage? How can you – if our task, if your gift, is narrative – absent yourself from the great narrative of the world? Our duty is to tell the story that comes to us in the most effective way possible. But we don’t choose the story. We’re drawn in where the feeling is deepest. A work of fiction lives by empathy – the extending of my self into another’s, the willingness to imagine myself in someone else’s shoes. This itself is a political act; empathy is at the heart of much revolutionary action. (2012a) Empathy is a human act of reconnaissance, a willingness to transcend the self-serving limits of the ego toward a more expansive consciousness in the name of world citizenship and creative responsibility. The act of “living outside the skin” (Soueif) parallels the strategy of “theorizing in the flesh” (Abdulhadi, Alsultany and Naber), wherein the skin, as a binding agent, reveals the intimacy between self and “another” (Soueif) in visceral bonds of reciprocity. These bonds acquire a special resonance when bodily aggressions, through war, trauma and abuse, create corporeal dissonances in the form of rape, mourning and mutilation. These violations strip the aggressed body of its autonomy; at the same time, however, they script a creative “bodypolitic” – a concept articulated by Evelyn Accad when she discussed her ordeal with breast cancer in an interview with Elizabeth Zahnd. Accad reaffirmed the body’s value “as a living scroll,” (2010, 11) wherein it transcends its objectification as a diseased entity by becoming a repository of knowledge. In other words, the women make a case for une littérature autre, another kind of literature in which embodiment provides the focal point of narration and creativity. The body engenders its own language in “unscripted” form when violence alters its defensive mechanisms and sensory affects through alienation, pain and horror. The uncharted landscapes of pain, for example,

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necessitate other forms of literariness to give these inexpressible emotions and experiences form and meaning in text. The relatively unstructured parameters of testimonial narratives provide victims and survivors with an expressive space to voice their abjection as they seek to document their ordeals in textual permanence. The text-as-body and body-as-text paradigm straddles the in-betweenness of literary “fictionality” (Derrida 1992, 49) and testimonial “veracity” in an indeterminate off-centered spatiality that nevertheless re-centers the body as witness. The body is a symbolic mediator between the writer and testifier when it engenders its own discourse in the form of what Abdelkébir Khatibi (2008, 28) calls a “syntax of gestures, which to a greater or lesser extent grant access to writing.” Khatibi’s gesture as expressive “handicraft” can be associated with Hélène Cixous’s pre-symbolic interventions of body language referred to as the following: the signs of the body: not those of the unconscious, which is already speaking – the unconscious is a language – but the body signs that are of the same order as those of the unconscious, though before language … beneath thought, form or codes. (1993, 136) The as-yet-to-be coded language of corporeality maintains its free expression by subverting the law of the letter in de-structured free-form narrative best expressed in Jalila Baccar’s play Junun (Chapter 5) and Ech-Channa’s compiled testimonies (Chapter 2). At the same time, can creativity and dissidence meet on common ground without compromising each other’s scope and intent? What are the risks of tipping the balance in favor of one or the other? At what point does art degenerate into propaganda and state ideology without the necessary creative integrity and expressive freedom? When does dissidence become a meaningless act in the absence of creative potential? Is it possible to create in times of socio-political dis-ease and still maintain the writer-activist equivalence? As Soueif comments: … the novelist, like the activist, is also a citizen of the world and bears the responsibility of this citizenship. The question is, then, can you honor your responsibility as a citizen of the world and fulfill your responsibility to your art? The question becomes critical in times of crisis. (2012a) In other words, how does creativity remain “honest” in a difficult predicament? As Edward Saïd suggests, the author’s “honesty” depends upon the ability to creatively frame the right questions in his/her dual role as a relentless “disturber of the status quo” (1996, x) and as a “spirit in opposition, rather than in accommodation” (xvii). This oppositional positionality conditions the artistic imaginary, according to Saïd, wherein the writer “must

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develop a resistant intellectual consciousness before he can become an artist” (16). El Saadawi echoes Saïd’s sentiments when she states: “Creativity flourishes when the mind and the imagination are freed from the chains of taboos and traditions, from the false consciousness and knowledge generated by the media and educational systems, and from the commercialization of values and morals” (2010, 67-68). However, the woman writer must go further in her interrogations by first posing and then reiterating the disturbing questions that are either unacknowledged in master narratives or that remain unarticulated by the “false consciousness” of the women themselves (69). The women must therefore “bend the question” creatively to include their disavowed gender concerns that call for “alternative courses of action” (Saïd 1996, 22) and alternative framings. Dissident Writings of Arab Women raises these disturbing questions through the voices of the women. Their faith in the written word as a locus of “alter-narration” is both an act of creative consciousness and political dissidence within a more balanced decolonizing ethic.

De-orientalizing “the” Arab woman As several Arab women scholars, writers and activists have asserted, Arab women bear the burden of representation in Orientalist and colonial feminist discourses that have fabricated a Euro-centered “idea” of essentialized Arab womanhood deprived of subjective particularity. This practiced myopia is a racist and violent disengagement with “difference” by corroborating with “the persistent Orientalist fascination with Arab women that reduces their lives to gender and sexual oppression under the purportedly unchanging, backward traditions of Arab-Islamic society,” as stated by Majaj, Sunderman and Saliba (2002, xix). In these colonialist mappings, “the” Arab woman is always already oppressed by the timelessness of recalcitrant traditions that are in desperate need of “modern” Western interventions in the form of war, occupation and corporatized media onslaughts. The mediated violence against Arab women repeats, in the words of Donadey, “the violent history of conquest and colonization” (2001, xx). Within these parameters, how do Arab women writers extricate their subjectivity from the weight of colonial rhetoric and the violence of mediated representation without compromising their selfhood or their craft? How do they “save their skin” from contamination by oil and “the women’s rights civilizing mission stance” (Jarmakani 2011, 228)? How have these confining paradigms compromised the full scope of the women’s potential on account of what I call the “media militarism” of those who refuse to see otherwise? By enforcing the invisibility of Arab women and by undermining their creative productivity as writers and thinkers, these levelling discourses complement the “scorch and burn” strategies of the colluding “military-imperialist and feminist-imperialist stances to reify stereotypical notions of Arab and Muslim womanhood” (228) through overdetermined and oversimplified signifiers, such as Western obsessions with veiling and unveiling, for example. As stated by Amira Jarmakani:

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Invisibility here is meant to signify both the ways that Arab and Muslim women are silenced and the ways they are made hyper-visible paradoxically, as markers of invisibility, exoticism, or oppression. The continuous need to identify and deconstruct stereotypical images of Arab womanhood functions as a double silencing of Arab [American] feminists whose energy could be better spent theorizing new spaces of possibility for Arab [American] women rather than respond to the misinformation promulgated by the dominant discourse. To the extent that Arab and Arab American women and particularly Arab and Arab American feminists have been able to carve a space in which to give voice to their own issues and concerns, they have found much of that space reluctantly, yet inevitably, filled with corrective responses to mainstream misunderstandings. (2011, 236) In addition, Arab women have also been further marginalized in and by the resistant patriarchal underpinnings of nationalist ideologies uncovered during Algeria’s transition to independence. Patriarchal symbols of the modest, selfdeprecating “mother of the nation” have fit in well with political and religious credos that have depended on women’s essentialized spirit of immolation in the struggle for national liberation. As stated by Marnia Lazreg (1994, 145) with reference to the nationalist disavowals of Algerian female revolutionaries in the post-independence area: “Sacrifice, not duty complemented by right, was the cornerstone of the new state’s view of women … Sacrifice does not always beget recognition.” Lazreg’s comments reveal how the women revolutionaries, despite their active service in the war of liberation against the French (1954-1962), were expected to conform to a certain ideal of postindependence womanhood that was almost as limiting in its conception as the Orientalist stereotypes. At the same time, women have also been “punished” for their going out in public during the popular resistance movements of the Arab Spring. The violence against women by the police and military represents an inglorious chapter in the history of the uprisings. Women demonstrators were regularly molested, verbally attacked, beaten, detained and subjected to intrusive “virginity” tests to “monitor their ethics of morality” in shared public spaces with men during the Egyptian revolution. The use of brute force against female protestors is best concretized in images of the aggressed “woman in the blue bra” from Cairo’s Tahrir Square. This image shows an unidentified young woman being dragged by military personnel through Cairo’s Tahrir Square; her abaya, or body veil, has been “manhandled” to expose her bare midriff and a vibrantly colored blue bra.2 The woman’s forced public unveiling is tantamount to an act of rape. Instead, she is perversely brutalized for “indecent exposure” by a militarized patriarchal dictate of morality that evicts her from public space. She is aggressed for two supposed violations – her nonconforming feminine presence in public space and her explicitly “immoral”

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demeanor represented by the exposed bra. Images of this violence went viral when the incident was captured on smart phones, cameras, videos and television. The YouTube clip3 shows a soldier covering the woman after she has been seriously beaten. This gesture could be interpreted in two ways – an act of kindness or a hasty cover-up to expunge any accountability for the crime. To date, none of the perpetrators of this crime have been brought to justice, even though the woman’s ordeal sparked open demonstrations against the military by 3,000 women who chanted: “Our revolution, the military stole it, the women of Egypt will restore it” (Soueif 2012b). The “blue bra” incident has nevertheless been documented in Laila Soliman’s short play “Blue Bra Day,” to be analyzed in Chapter 6. In addition, manufactured representations of “the Muslim woman” suffer a third level of obscuring in power-inflected Arabocentric discourses aimed at immobilizing women within patriarchal discourses. As argued by Lamia Ben Youssef Zayzafoon: In contrast with the western narrative of the victimized “Muslim woman,” and in opposition to the Arabocentric narrative in which “the Muslim woman” has no claims because Islam elevated her position fifteen hundred year ago … as a single “category,” the “Muslim woman” is an “invention,” whether in the western discourses of Orientalism and western psychoanalytic feminism or in the discourses of Arab nationalism and Islamic feminism in colonial and postcolonial North Africa. The “Muslim woman” is a semiotic subject who is produced according to the law of supply and demand to serve various political and ideological ends. (2005, 1–2) In other words, the branding of “the Muslim woman” is a political ploy to justify Western invasions, as well as a cultural ruse to deny the women their equal rights in the name of politicized and masculinist interpretations of religion. This distortion is exposed by social activists like the Moroccan femihumanist Aïcha Ech-Channa, who uses the strength of faith-based activism to highlight the social justice aspects of Islam, its emphasis on social welfare for the dispossessed and the spaces it creates for female leadership. These attributes are revealed in Miseria: témoignages (1996), Ech-Channa’s testimonial narrative that gives visibility to abused street children and exploited underage domestic maids in postcolonial Morocco, where a privileged elite supports a system of human slavery (which will be discussed in Chapter 2). At the same time, I argue that the women’s corrective narratives outlined by Jarmakani (2011) are a strategy of “unlearning,” de-centering and re-evaluating the mediated discourses on “the Arab/Muslim woman” by dispelling falsehoods and prejudice through revision, information and “a shifting tactical and strategic subjectivity” (Sandoval 1990, 66). This radicalized positionality partakes in the dissident act of both de-Orientalizing and de-nationalizing stereotypes

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by giving the women a chance to express themselves. The women create ruptured texts to highlight the many fault lines in their lives using literature as a medium of interstitiality and border crossing that affirms and complicates their multiple postcolonial selves. Language plays an important part in these re-positionings of self, identity and culture. These writers write between and beyond many world sites in Europe, Africa and the United States. Refusing to be limited by identity politics in terms of language choice, they embrace a translingual ambidexterity in writing with the hope of creating transnational communities of understanding between and among women and men. This book includes the voices of women who write in English, French, Spanish and French verlan, or street back slang, with the exception of Egyptian dramatist Laila Soliman, whose plays are performed in colloquial Egyptian Arabic. However, Soliman uses the “international” language of technology and social media in each performance to lend an air of worldliness to her plays. Performances outside Egypt are translated simultaneously or subtitled in different languages to create an implicit bilingualism in text. Dissident Writings of Arab Women thereby broadens the scope of the linguistic plurality of contemporary Arabic literature instead of focusing exclusively on monolingual writings in Arabic, French, English or Spanish. Writer Zina Alani Mougharbel raises an important question in terms of the transnational aesthetics of writing. She asks: What is more frightening for a writer than a blank page? Better yet, what is more frightening for a female Arab writer than a blank page: an audience indifferent to the content of that page, once it’s been filled … or one intently waiting to read what the author has to say? … What if the audience is ten-fold larger, multicultural and from various parts of the world instead of being confined to the geography of the Arab world? In a world plagued with controversy – smaller than ever, more complex than ever, where every speech about change and democratization brings up the issue of women, their rights and conditions – can the voice of Arab women writers, endowed with the tools necessary to reach Englishspeaking audiences, be a key element in creating dialogue, or at least providing a more credible “other” point of view? (2009, 20) Mougharbel makes a plea for the creation of transnational “reading” communities as a stepping-stone to cultural understanding and dialogue without the intervention of parochialism and cultural chauvinism. Literature represents a medium to unlearn stereotypes about Arab women through an “insider” perspective, even though some transnational writers have also been accused of colluding with dominant stereotypes in an effort to get published in the West. In turn, the award-winning poet Abdellatif Laâbi captures the spirit of what I call a “discursive dual handedness” that remains integral to the writing

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process in a poem titled “Une seule main ne suffit pas pour écrire” (“Writing Requires More Than One Hand”): “Une seule main ne suffit pas pour écrire/ Par les temps qui courent/il en faudrait deux/Et que la deuxième apprenne vite/les métiers de l’indicible” (1993, 47) (“Writing requires more than one hand/These days/it takes two/And the second needs to quickly grasp/the craft of the unspeakable”) (George 2003, 91). A solitary hand can only reflect a monolingual reality devoid of nuance and complexity as opposed to the interstitiality of multilingualism. As argued by Waïl Hassan: A major language in the hands of a minority writer is defamiliarized through its infusion with words, expressions, rhetorical figures, speech patterns, ideological intentions, and the worldview of the author’s minority group, which differentiates the writer’s language from that of the mainstream culture, producing all sorts of estranging effects. (2011, 4–5) These estranging effects revolutionize language through a dynamic “creolizing” effect that reflects the complex realities that the author wants to portray in her writings in the first place. Moreover, language choice is an explicitly political act of disavowing the prescribed linguistic norm of the non-dit (the “unsaid”) by embracing a poetics of the tout dit (“everything said”) instead. This choice is reflected in the decision of francophone Algerian women writers to write in French, the simultaneously estranging and intimate “langue marâtre” (“stepmother tongue”) (Djebar 1995, 239-240). Without having to choose between Arabic or French, or between Arabic and English to claim their “Arab authenticity” for example, these writers can engage in the revolutionary poetics of literary worldliness as “Arab Mezzaterrans” (Soueif 2004, 7) meeting on “common ground with avenues into the rich hinterlands of many traditions” (6). This meeting point is not a site of utopia or naïve idealism. Instead, the search for common ground highlights the struggle to carve safe spaces of mutual understanding, compassion, justice and tolerance when engaging in the boldly expressive ethos of creative dissidence – a much-needed initiative in a world where Mezzaterra is under siege. The general framing of dissident creativity provides the context for a more detailed analysis of the ways in which Arab women writers engage with the multiple aspects of dissidence-in-writing against violence in individual chapters. This book comprises six chapters divided into three independent sections structured around the theme of violence.

PART I: Violence and war. This section comprises one chapter divided into four sections. The violence of war represents a common theme in Algerian women’s writings; these writings focus on the physical, social and economic aspects of war.

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The women redefine the scope and intentionality of war by exposing its “physicality” and its violent psychological and emotional consequences. CHAPTER 1: Contesting violence and imposed silence: the creative dissidence of contemporary Algerian women writers Maïssa Bey, Assia Djebar and Leïla Sebbar. Arab women’s writings against war are inscribed in a historical continuum. This literature finds its roots in what I call the “Algerian war story” for francophone Algerian women. These authors chronicle the multiple wars faced by Algeria beginning with the 1830 war of French conquest, moving through the war of decolonization (1954-1962) and culminating in the bloody decade of civil war in the 1990s. Using a woman-centered perspective to expose both the violence of coloniality and its gendered ravages on the bodies of women, I examine how these writers evoke and condemn the horrors of war; patriarchal credos of targeted violence against civilians; the un-making of Algerian identity; the gendered intentionality of war and militarization; and the gaping omissions in Algerian history with reference to the active contributions of female revolutionaries and their participation in the nationalist struggle against the French. Primary sources include Maïssa Bey’s novel Pierre papier cendre et sang (Stone Paper Ashes and Blood) and short story Nouvelles d’Algérie (Algerian News), Leïla Sebbar’s novel La Seine était rouge (The Seine was Red), and Assia Djebar’s lesser known war play Rouge l’aube (The Red Dawn). ***

PART II: Violence and social/sexual oppression. This section comprises three chapters While the authors in this book have the freedom to migrate back and forth in their writings and across geographical spaces, they are, at the same time, acutely aware that this privilege eludes the poor and the working class. The mobility afforded by transnational travel for the privileged morphs into an act of illegality for all those who are immobilized by the borders of race, class, gender, disavowed citizenship and religion, as exemplified by the three texts chosen for this section. Delimiting distinctions between “grievable” and “ungrievable” lives (Butler 2010, xix) create life and death situations for the socially dispossessed. These populations are subjected to the coloniality of maps, disfavored economic realities and politically devised territorialities exposed by authors Aïcha Ech-Channa, Faïza Guène and Laila Lalami in a testimonial narrative, novel and novella, respectively. CHAPTER 2: Sexual violence and testimony: Aïcha Ech-Channa’s Miseria: témoignages. In this chapter, I examine the social violence that targets the Moroccan poor, especially women and children, who are dispossessed by an elitist economy of hypocritical morality codes and sexual slavery. EchChanna’s testimonial narrative focuses on the rape and physical abuse of society’s most vulnerable members represented by underage domestic maids

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(les petites bonnes) and street children. Constructed as a polyphonic text, the different narratives expose the scarred face of a society that disengages with social justice for the underprivileged in its transition from a heavy-handed monarchy to “democracy” and social progress. By giving voice to the voiceless, this text, I argue, participates in a process of decolonial thought uncovering the patriarchal and economic roots of violence. CHAPTER 3: Gendering the Straits: border violence in Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Lamiae El Amrani’s Tormenta de Especias (Torrent of Spices). This chapter analyzes the transnational face of violence when dispossessed Moroccans are forced to leave home in pursuit of a better life in Europe. Two Moroccan writers focus on another aspect of social and sexual violence when they describe the clandestine migrations of “the wretched of the earth” from Tangiers, Morocco to Tarifa, Spain. I examine these unauthorized border journeys through the lens of gender, imposed illegality, economic penury and border violence against women in Lalami’s novella and El Amrani’s poetry. More importantly, these texts offer a gendered view on immigration by including the negated perspectives and experiences of women – the women who migrate, as well as those who are left behind when the men migrate alone. I analyze the gendered faces of “undocumented” migration through the struggles of male and female characters who have “nothing to lose but their lives” in the dangerous pursuit of hope. I examine how migrating identities are constructed and delimited by immovable borders, interstitiality and nationalist rhetoric in an economy of violence and survival negotiated by working-class Moroccans. The insertion of gender concerns adds further nuance to the corpus of literature on border crossings to show how these transnational migrations impact men and women through the intersecting, yet gender-specific, impact of militarization and border fortifications imposed on the lives of the dispossessed. The two authors insert their feminized perspectives in an otherwise male-centered corpus of writing that, for the most part, details the masculine aspects of “clandestine” North African immigration. CHAPTER 4: Writing from the banlieue: identity, contested citizenship and gender ideologies in Faïza Guène’s Kiffe-kiffe demain. This chapter focuses on the internal and external borders of the Parisian outer cities that circumscribe the lives of French “others” who are caught between the borders of France and North Africa. These immigrant and working-class populations of color are subjected to a more dissimulated form of violence found in exclusion and negated citizenship. I demonstrate how Arab writers from the disfavored Parisian banlieues use literature as a means to protest the violence of exclusion practiced by the French state in its attempt to maintain a socially outmoded model of “pure blooded” citizenship. Questions of identity and belonging represent the democratic ideals of French youth of color like Faïza Guène who use literature and popular culture as a medium to inscribe their Frenchness in a tenuous postcolonial situation. Guène’s novel offers an intimate perspective into a world that is both negated and misunderstood by the

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mainstream. The author humanizes the marginalized banlieue, or outer city, through a process of narrative decriminalizing that restores the humanity of its residents. In so doing, she subverts hegemonic representations of the banlieues as essentialized sites of deviance by re-presenting them according to more human paradigms. I argue that Guène participates in an indigenizing project as she de-centers and subverts the coloniality of French universalism demonstrated by inflexible codes of assimilation and models of selective citizenship. Critical of the dual patriarchies represented by the state and the Maghrebi, or North African, family, Guène creates a socially conscious ethos in which subalterns reclaim their disavowed lives by establishing their own “genealogies of being” in an active act of decolonization. As an example of decolonial thought, Kiffe-kiffe demain demonstrates the power of the “youth voice” and its critical role in an alternative form of community-building based on the decolonization of dominant tropes of Frenchness and the “unlearning” of patriarchal North Africanness. ***

PART III: Staging violence in North African women’s theatre: Jalila Baccar (Tunisia) and Laila Soliman (Egypt). This part comprises two chapters This final section demonstrates how social unrest, violence and public protest are given an open forum of dissent in the revolutionary potential of theatre. The analysis focuses on two dramatic moments in recent North African history – the “dawn” of the 2011 Tunisian revolution and the early stages of Egypt’s Arab Spring uprisings. Theatre is thereby an integral component of dissident creativity in its capacity to expose a society’s historical and political anomie and create the necessary spaces for resistance strategies in public space. CHAPTER 5: Madness as political dissent in Jalila Baccar’s Junun. In this chapter, Tunisian playwright Jalila Baccar draws attention to the neglected dimensions of so-called “mental illness.” The author uses the trope of mental disorder to critique the violence underlying Tunisia’s postcolonial dystopia reflected in the inhumanity of its psychiatric system and its dysfunctional social systems. The play also examines the idea of maternal protest in the form of a female psychiatrist’s contestations of inviolable patriarchal institutions like the asylum, hospital, army and the hetero-normative family. I position this play as a cautionary text that announces the imminent Tunisian revolution through its powerful dramatization of the “Name of the Father.” The symbolic representation of the Father “stages” patriarchal authority in its most abject and institutionalized forms. The failure to submit to the patriarchal dictates of an obsolete and obdurate leadership condemns non-conforming citizens to a form of resistance that I call a “conditioned madness.” I argue that madness is not necessarily a symptom of clinical pathology or social deviance in its most literal form; instead, madness

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represents a search for exemplarity, self-expression and self-definition within society’s “carceral networks” of confinement, oppression and regulation. CHAPTER 6: The darker side of Tahrir in Laila Soliman’s No Time for Art and Blue Bra Day. Laila Soliman’s plays stage the darker side of the Egyptian revolution by documenting the torture of creative dissidents and the sexual violence against female protestors in Tahrir Square. She uses the form of testimonial theatre to chronicle the abuses suffered by male and female revolutionaries in their dramatic confrontation with the militarized state of former President Hosni Mubarak. I demonstrate how Soliman creates tenuous synergies between creative dissidence, sexual violence and cultural production through the medium of the Tahrir Square revolts. The two plays are presented as work-in-progress projects subjected to multiple revisions, re-enactments, changing decor, shifting roles, audience involvement and unexpected surprises at each performance. The “unfinished” nature of the plays inhibits any definitive version of the uprisings through their shifting de-centered perspectives, multi-locations and the ongoing documentation of events through subaltern articulations. These perspectives are found in testimonies; personal notes taken at Tahrir Square as a form of eyewitness account; technology and social networking correspondence; and staged state television broadcasts. *** Dissident creativity follows multiple trajectories in this study by providing its authors with multiple routes to map resistance in postcolonial Arab women’s texts. As an invitation to explore the unseen and the unsaid, this trope reveals its discursive power to engender alternative textualities through the creative un-censoring of the mind and body. By writing against their hands in their ambidextrous scripts, Arab women writers open doors to new framings of self, culture and history by going beyond the limitations of imposed silence, ignorance, negation and patriarchal violence. The following chapters take the readers through landscapes of pain, bleeding wounds, resilience, despair and revolution to “imagine” the lives of others in bonds of solidarity and empathy. As El Saadawi concludes: A better world is not possible, without freeing the minds and bodies of women … There will be no better world without organizing women everywhere, there will be no peace, no justice, no real democracy. But it is only women, women themselves, who can free themselves from all forms of gender oppression and violence and so become a vital dynamic force capable of creating another world. (2007a) The women’s struggle “against violence” is also the fight against victimhood and marginality in an attempt to create a more affirming world system for men, women and children alike.

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Notes 1 Refer to Alison Rice’s book, Polygraphies: Francophone Women Writing Algeria, for a thoughtful analysis of francophone Algerian women’s “autobiographical” writings. 2 See Ahdaf Soueif ’s article, “Image of Unknown Woman Beaten by Egypt’s Military Echoes Around the World.” 3 The “blue bra” violation can be seen in the following YouTube clip: www.youtube. com/watch?v=6Zbrf53hADQ.

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Part I

Violence and war The Algerian war story

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1

Contesting violence and imposed silence The creative dissidence of contemporary Francophone Algerian women writers

The creative voices of Francophone Algerian women writers have made their literary mark on the national, international and diasporic scene through a wide array of genres, including novels, poems, plays, short stories, autobiographies, chronicles, historical documents and testimonies. Inscribed within a socio-political context, this work spans the timelines of colonial and postcolonial Algerian history from the French conquest of Algeria in 1830 to the War of Independence (1954-1962) and the “black decade” of the bloody civil war of the 1990s. While exposing and denouncing the violent historical traumas that have ravaged the country, these writers have also commemorated the courage and resilience of the Algerian people in their impassioned narratives composed of “torch-words” (Djebar 1993, 142); the fiery resonance of these “torch words” illuminates the impermeable traces of resistance and oppression found in Algerian history. At the same time, these women use literature as a medium to creatively stage their own gendered insurrections against the patriarchal roots of war and violence through their “warrior voices” (Assima 1995, 138) that call for a re-reading of Algerian historicity from a gendered perspective. Through their writings, Algerian authors aim to “shatter the patriarchal spine of Algeria” (Farès 1974, 75) by proposing more reflective and expedient gender and politically nuanced modalities. In this chapter, I explore the ways in which three prominent Algerian women writers chronicle the painful trajectory and implicit silences of Algerian history as they offer their gendered perspectives that feminize and complicate Algerian historicity and postcolonial subjectivity. Algerian authors dispel monolithic representations of women as passive victims of colonial history or nationalist and religious ideology, even as they demonstrate how the masculinist ethics of war have ravaged the female body and women’s history through violence, silencing and exclusion. The subtle interplay between fiction and testimony highlights their nuanced attempts to fictionalize reality through a brutal but necessary realism that interrogates the very “idea” of the historical process. At the same time, these writings expose the violence of the past and mediate the horror (and successes) of the postcolonial present (Chaulet-Achour 2005, 195); they also expose the women’s postcolonial rage. In so doing, these women reveal their literary commitment to postmodern

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preoccupations with identity, exile, historical omissions, gender affirmations, decolonial thought and female authorship, as they evoke the wounds and unresolved traumas that inhibit successful decolonization. As stated by Ranjana Khanna in Algeria Cuts, “the figure of woman cuts into the masculinist frame of the Franco-Algerian relationship” (2008, xv) to both “elude and confound the dominant structures of colonial and postcolonial representation” (5). While Algerian and Franco-Algerian women writers as diverse as Assia Djebar, Maïssa Bey, Hafsa Zinaï-Koudil, Malika Mokkedem, Naïla Imaken, Nina Bouraoui, Fatima Gallaire- Bourega and Leïla Sebbar underscore the traumas suffered by the nation as a whole, they are, at the same time, particularly sensitive to the aggressions experienced by women and children. These dually subjugated constituencies representing the “colonized of the colonized” (Salhi 2008, 83) have been excised from colonial and nationalist discourses with the help of “the vivisector’s scalpel” (Djebar 1993, 156) to preserve the sanctity of patriarchal myths related to power, honor and glory in the colonial and national archives. These women’s creative dissidence exemplifies their efforts to transcribe the spectral echoes of these gendered silences onto the written page in an attempt to reveal history’s transgendered scope. At the same time, these women decry the historical, national and religious mutilations that have scarred Algeria’s landscape. They frame their work within a postcolonial feminist model that exposes the patriarchal intentionality of colonial, neo-colonial and religious exceptions. The postcolonial feminist framework demonstrates how historical distortions and gendered seclusions have created ontological impasses in women’s lives on the one hand, and provided the necessary impetus to confront interdictions and social taboos on the other. This discursive strategy disrupts patriarchal narrative dominance in Algeria and France by filling in the blank spaces – the fissures, erasures and omissions that have obscured Algeria’s feminine face through the violence of exclusion and patriarchal collusions. The literary valiance of these “Scheherazades in the age of ink” (Djebar 2006, 210) thereby expresses itself in the creative resistance occasioned by their discursive transgressions. These narrative acts preserve history’s maternal timelines through the life-sustaining nourishment provided by a primordial source, namely, “the tongue’s blood that nevertheless refuses to run dry.”1 In other words, writing provides the medium to lift the many veils of silence and violence that have shrouded the lives of women in particular through their discursive “sang-voix” (“bloodied/bloody voices”) decrying injustice, inhumanity and a triple colonialist, nationalist and religious culpability. These denunciations establish cartographies of gender relations that reveal the complexity of women’s lives in Algerian history. Assia Djebar compares the act of recovering and re-membering Algeria’s silenced female historicity to “a very special kind of spelaeology” (1993, 77), in which writing is both a funerary act of exhuming absence and a decolonial palimpsest “on which I now inscribe the charred passion of my ancestors”

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(79). The task of creating life-presence from death, forgetfulness and erasure involves a special way of seeing, feeling, knowing and experiencing the universe, an ultra-sensitive consciousness that Chicana activist Gloria Anzaldúa characterizes as la facultad. She states: It is an acute awareness mediated by the part of the psyche that does not speak, that communicates in images and symbols which are the faces of feelings, that is, behind which feelings reside/hide. The one possessing this sensitivity is excruciatingly alive to the world … Those who are pushed out of the tribe for being different are likely to become more sensitized. (1987, 60) This form of inner knowledge is similar to the Sufi concept of al basira, a deeply perceptive inner vision or insight that goes beyond the limits of physical or surface vision (Craun 2012, 2). I argue that the woman writer’s privileged access to la facultad, as a strategy to recuperate the obscured feminine words/worlds, is particularly vital when expressing the multiple lacks that punctuate the lives of women caught between the competing patriarchal configurations of colonial might, nationalist right and religious morality in Algeria. These texts are written to “assuage a lack” (Djebar 2006, 215); they resonate with the tensions between coloniality and the articulation of gender, “nationalism and feminism … decolonization and women’s emancipation” (Kalisa 2009, 12). These tensions highlight the particular wounds inscribed on women’s bodies as a result of historical fractures, traumatic memory and patriarchal ideology to demonstrate how it is impossible to disassociate gender from questions related to conquest and colonization, cultural and religious identity, “modernity” and historical violence. While scars are borne by men, women and children in shared histories of violence, the women’s texts demonstrate how patriarchal objectifications of women and children in master discourses have made them vulnerable to a gender-ascribed antagonism found in mediated Orientalist representations, symbolic aggression and the physicality of palpable violence at the state and family levels. These corporeal wounds reflect broader historical wounds to show how the silenced physical and social mutilation of Algerian women and children has contributed to the overall maiming of Algeria in colluding acts of infanticide and femicide. In so doing, these women have exposed the many ravaged faces of Algeria to thereby subvert masculinist claims to successful colonization, accomplished decolonization and religious subjugation. These writers can also be credited with the capacity to convert Algeria’s multiple tragedies into a powerful repository of shared memories, survival and resistance stories, social documentaries and testimonials of denunciation, as they negotiate the ambiguity of using the colonizer’s language to contest the power-inflected political, social and religious excesses that compromise

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Algeria’s integrity. Benjamin Stora highlights some of the major preoccupations that characterize these writings. He affirms: Their representations have created ways to access this country’s complex identity: how to preserve the private, family space against the encroachments of the State and the religious; how, at the same time, to do away with woman’s condition as recluse by entering into the public space; how to bring support to a masculine identity that has been disturbed by the dispossessions of history … ; how to overcome, again and again, the traumatisms linked to all forms of violence – colonial and postcolonial; how to affirm her condition as woman in societies that teeter, through wars, towards other national definitions. (1999, 91) In other words, Stora emphasizes the women’s explicit postcolonial dissidence as they interrogate the tenuous borders between colonialism and postcolonialism, plurality and homogeneity, private and public space, trauma and memory, and other binaries that both inhibit and propel Algeria’s struggle to move beyond coloniality. These women, and Francophone Algerian writers in general, defend their decision to write in French as an explicitly feminist and political act to resist the totalizing impact of Arabization promulgated by the post-independence Algerian state ruled by the National Liberation Front (FLN) as well as the different factions of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). They contest the state’s conforming “union of singularities” (Kristeva 1991, 132) based on the violent suppression of difference through their multilingual textual pluralities. They use literature to both contest and expose the singular vision of a state that refuses to acknowledge the following governing fact as explained by Réda Bensmaïa: A nation cannot be reduced to a mass of persons under the administrative iron rule of a state that has blurred not only every distinction between powers, but also every “difference” between ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and religious groups. Everything is happening as if, in Algeria, someone wanted to construct a system without incompatibilities, without contradictions, without contraries. (1997, 91) In opposition to a counter “civilizing mission” proposed by the Algerian state, Francophone writers insist that the use of French is in keeping with their ideal of supporting a plural Algeria; these women further indigenize French for their decolonial woman-centered agendas. The conscious decision to write in French is also an act of open defiance against the indiscriminate assassination of Francophone Algerian intellectuals during the black decade of “intellectual cleansing” (Bensmaïa 1997, 86). This list included Tahar

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Djaout, Youcef Sebti, Abdelkader Alloula, Lounès Matoub and a host of other creative dissidents considered to be an infidel group of secularized elites by religious traditionalists.2 In their commitment to French, Algerian authors engage with Abdelkébir Khatibi’s notion of a pluralist Maghreb, a Maghreb Pluriel (1983), which favors critical negotiations of cross-cultural hybridity and multilingual exchanges within and across the geographical expanses of North Africa and the Mediterranean region. Khatibi’s theory delegitimizes purist returns to authentic pre-colonial origins espoused by both nationalists and Islamists, and the over-determined presence of orientalizing tropes in Maghrebi and colonial writing by calling for a double critique of both Western and indigenous paradigms related to language and identity. He states: “The Occident is part of me, a part that I can only deny insofar as I resist all the occidents and all the orients that oppress and disillusion me” (1983, 106).3 This positionality is a form of critical decolonial thought, une pensée autre, wherein Khatibi “proposes that instead of trying to erase one element of the current ethno-cultural landscape, Maghreb intellectuals should evaluate that very landscape according to what he calls a double critique” (Amine and Carlson 2012, 239). Accordingly, French occupies a conflicted interstitial space in Assia Djebar’s writing, existing as a source of creative freedom and existential alienation at the same time. She states: “So it was for me with the French language. Ever since I was a child the foreign language was a casement opening on the spectacle of the world and all its riches. In certain circumstances it became a dagger threatening me” (1993, 126). Representing access to a new, albeit dangerous world, the colonial tongue reveals, what I term, its paradoxical “intimate alterity” as the symptom of a tenuous postcolonial condition. On the other hand, Maïssa Bey stresses the inevitability of writing in French as the result of a French education that makes her “une enfant colonisée” [“a colonized child”]. Refusing to apologize for her linguistic choice, Bey affirms: “Il est bien plus réaliste de [la] considérer comme un acquis, un bien précieux, et peut-être même un ‘butin de guerre’ ainsi que la définissait Kateb Yacine” [“It is more realistic to consider (French) as an acquisition, a precious commodity and even perhaps the spoils of war as defined by Kateb Yacine”], (Bouredji 2008, 2). For Franco-Algerian author Leïla Sebbar, French constitutes a naturalized mother tongue that nevertheless occasions the silencing of her father’s Arabic: “I write on silence, a blank memory, a history in fragments,” she confesses, thereby revealing the partiality of Frenchness and her own conflicted identity (1986, 160). In their personal negotiations of French, these writers reveal the duality of writing in the mother tongue that must be “conquered” and “subverted,” and which yet could “also be seen as the language of transgression, of flight and refuge” (Stora 1999, 80). ***

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Assia Djebar4 is undoubtedly the most internationally renowned Algerian woman author of the twenty-first century. Elected to the prestigious Académie Française on June 15, 2006, Djebar remains the only Arab-Berber woman recognized by this institution for her literary distinction. The winner of numerous international awards and other forms of recognition, Djebar’s work encompasses the entire expanse of colonial and postcolonial Algerian history. Born in Cherchell, Algeria in 1936, Fatima-Zohra Imalayen adopted the nom de plume Assia Djebar, whose signification includes healing and consoling (Kelly 2005, 253). As a creative healer, Djebar uses the power of words to mend the bleeding wounds of Algeria in beautiful poetic narratives that focus most specifically on the unresolved traumas of women and their ambiguous status in history. The pseudonym enables Djebar to give public voice to women’s private reflections and experiences, including her own, without violating cultural codes inhibiting female self-revelation. The veiled/ unveiled “I” problematizes the complicated trajectory of Algerian history in which identity is irrevocably linked to the broader scope of nationhood, cultural memory, multilingualism, fractured spatial geographies in relation to France, gender and coloniality. At the same time, these narratives are richly layered with the sensorial textures of memory. These memory-enriched narratives are endowed with a certain corporeality to position the female body as the dual site of oppression and contestation. While earlier novels such as La soif (1957), Les impatients (1958), Les enfants du nouveau monde (1962) and Les Alouettes naïves (1967) engage in incisive critiques of patriarchy through a burgeoning feminist consciousness, later works such as Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (1980), L’amour, la fantasia (1985) and La femme sans sepulture (2002) focus more precisely on the erasure of women in national and colonial narratives that remain male-centered, ethnocentric, Western-determined and written in scope. The daughter of an Algerian resistor and school teacher who was brutally tortured and executed by the French in February 1957 during the War of Independence, Maïssa Bey has used literature as a means of coming to terms with her father’s death while expressing her own sense of unresolved trauma and loss as a result of this violent experience. As O. Hind claims, “Maïssa Bey est une femme blessée dans sa chair … Elle est née avec cette plaie, jamais cicatrisée” [“Maïssa Bey is a woman wounded in the flesh … She was born with this wound that has never scarred”] (2008). This painful trajectory is explored in fictionalized form in her novels, Entendez-vous dans les montagnes (2002) being a prime example. Using a pseudonym instead of her birth name Samia Benameur, Bey adopts an insider-outsider position in her work to demonstrate how the brutality of colonial rule, religious dogma and patriarchy lead to the corresponding brutalization of the lives of women and children in particular when they are denied speech, ignored, violated and relegated to the margins of society. In texts such as Nouvelles d’Algérie (1998), Puisque mon coeur est mort (2010) and Cette fille-là (2001), Bey explores the realm of the unspoken, or the non-dit, to uncover the hidden realities of

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women and children and their daily struggles against hopelessness and despair in a male-centered society. Her literary aspirations correspond to a more intimate politicized aspiration for a better future for Algeria through a creative reconstruction of the nation. One of her major objectives has been to secure the inclusion of women’s intellectual contributions in the nation’s history through the development of women’s associations such as Paroles et Ecriture, a feminist workshop devoted to literary proficiency and creative writing. For Bey, writing represents an epitaph against amnesia, silencing, violence and despair. These elements are further explored in a recent memoir, L’une et l’autre (2009) in which she examines the multiple facets of her identity as a Francophone Algerian Arab Muslim woman writer who ironically uses the colonial language to sketch a self-portrait. Through writing and activism, Bey attempts to chronicle the making and un-making of Algerian history as the first step toward healing and reconciliation. Leïla Sebbar’s writings highlight the ambivalence of linguistic, cultural and historical hybridities, wherein the female body becomes the site of these conflicting affiliations and disaffiliations. Her work explores the linguistic exile that results from an over-identification with French, together with the familial alienations that are a part of the unequal cross-cultural exchanges between French and Arabic under colonial rule. In her novels, Sebbar explores the trajectories of the embattled female self that absorbs the trauma of an imposed French historicity while maintaining a sense of nostalgia for the silenced Arab-Algerian heritage through memory and the search for female Arab ancestors in writing. The themes of exile, displacement, fractured identity, gender, historical silences, immigration and the precariousness of North African or Maghrebi Arabness in France represent dominant tropes in all her novels, the Scherazade Trilogy (1991, 1985, 1982) and La Seine était rouge (1999) being prime examples. The cross-cultural textuality of Sebbar’s work enables her to traverse the multiple spaces of identity and life experience by eradicating internal and external borders that threaten to limit self-expression. She states: In my work, in everything I write – I can’t stop myself … I’m always in this back-and-forth. I think this back-and-forth, this movement, is conditioned in space and in time by my own birth. I’m in this dual back-andforth between two continents, two cultural, historical and religious spaces – antagonistic and amorous, conflicting and amicable – I realize it’s a definition I can’t escape. I’m very much in this movement – if it’s not there I’m not interested, I can’t write. And the back-and-forth is also the inside-out. (Redfield 2008, 51) For Sebbar, this migratory textuality produces complex (post)colonial identities situated between, within and beyond France and North Africa to delegitimize the nationalist, religious and cultural absolutes that marginalize all

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those who inhabit in-between spaces. In so doing, she calls for creative redefinitions of identity through discursive repossessions of Frenchness and Arabness found in transnationality. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section focuses on the psychological machinations behind the 1830 conquest of Algeria as represented in Maïssa Bey’s novel Pierre sang papier ou cendre. The analysis demonstrates how the French conquest of Algeria is intimately connected to colonial fantasies based on patriarchal racism and a Eurocentric claim to exceptionalism. The second and third sections explore the silences in French and Algerian history that have impacted the articulation of gender during the War of Independence as highlighted in Leïla Sebbar’s novel La Seine était rouge and Assia Djebar’s co-authored war play Rouge l’aube. In Rouge L’aube, Assia Djebar exposes the historical and national silences that have obscured the faces and voices of women who fought in the War of Independence alongside the men. The play focuses on the historical traumas of women that result from erasure, the wounding of the national imaginary through colonization, and the uncertain future faced by women after independence has been won. The play is a future indictment of the postcolonial regime’s inability to adopt a gender-inclusive agenda in its post-independence ethos, a concern that is also explored in Sebbar’s novel. The fourth and final section examines the link between violence, state oppression, human rights violations, national censorship and gender during the Algerian civil or “dirty” war of the 1990s as examined in Maïssa Bey’s collection of short stories, Nouvelles d’Algérie. These four sections offer a panoramic perspective on the negotiations of gender, resistance and subjectivity in Algerian women’s writing during key moments in Algeria’s colonial and postcolonial history. My analysis will gravitate around the following questions: What are the patriarchal ideologies that have scarred the face of gender in Algeria?; How have women and children in particular paid the price for coloniality and an ambivalent postcolonial anxiety?; How have mediated representations of women found in Orientalism, nationalism and religious traditionalism created impasses in women’s lives?; How have women either negotiated or submitted to these aggressions by writing, fighting or acquiescing?; How does writing, as a different kind of weapon, symbolize a non-violent form of feminist postcolonial dissidence?; Can this political and creative stance provide the necessary direction to transition from the trauma of amnesia and violence to the cathartic effects of anamnesis?; and Have women themselves colluded in this conspiracy of silence that has had a lasting impact on the next generation of children? In other words, can Algeria move beyond traumatic affect to a more fruitful politics of reconciliation? The women do not propose any ideological conclusions that could possibly mirror the dogma of colonial and nationalist ideologies. However, they affirm their right to unravel the silences that have hidden Algeria’s feminine historicity as they expose and contest all forms of exceptionalism and exclusion. The trope of violence and its pertinence to

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gender forms the leitmotiv of the different sections of this analysis. I examine the material, psychological, symbolic and religious modalities of violence that are inscribed on the subaltern bodies of women, men and young people during the various phases of Algeria’s history to demonstrate how decolonization still remains a “work-in-progress” with its fractures and inhibitions.

Section 1: Contesting the coloniality of power in Maïssa Bey’s Pierre sang papier ou cendre Decolonizing “freedom” Maïssa Bey borrows the title of her novel from a poem titled “Freedom” written by French surrealist Paul Éluard during the Nazi occupation of France. In this poem, a French schoolboy dreams of freedom from tyranny and evokes the devastation wreaked by the enemy on French soil: “Stone blood paper or ashes/I write your name.”5 In a tongue-in-cheek postcolonial repartee, Bey appropriates the title and sentiment of the poem to paint a vivid and disturbing fresco à la Guernica of the brutality of 132 years of French colonization. Through scenes of bloody warfare, rape, torture, civilian violations and land annexations, Bey denounces the “fact” of colonization and the hypocritical justifications of the French civilizing mission in Algeria. She shows how the French ideal of civilization is, in fact, a code word for savagery, racism, injustice and colonial brutality against non-European Others. As a novel of denunciation and a call for French accountability in Algeria, this work was primarily motivated by two egregious events that demanded a postcolonial feminist response – namely, the passing of the Law of 23 February 2005 that extolled the virtues of a “positive” colonization according to Article 4, and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s address to Africa’s leading intellectuals, politicians, government officials and youth organizations at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Senegal on July 26, 2007. Benjamin Stora indicates that the Law of 23 February was passed by the French National Assembly comprised mainly of white men; there were very few women, no minority groups, groups of color, young people or other voices of dissent that could have contested the racist implications of this law (2007, 20). The law received an early validation in a commemoration speech made by former president Jacques Chirac on November 11, 1996 to honor the French military and civilian casualties of the different wars in North Africa. Chirac emphasized “the importance and richness of the epic work France accomplished out there and of which it is proud” (Blanchard, Bancel and Lemaire 2005, 18). Nevertheless, the law was violently denounced “out there” in Algeria on June 7, 2005 in a text written by the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) party accusing the French of “glorifying the colonial act” (Stora 2007, 18). Prior to these two highly contentious moments, the earlier Law of 1982 promulgated by François Mitterand granted a general amnesty to the perpetrators of colonial war crimes in Algeria before and after

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independence in 1962, thereby obliterating any accountability for murder and other excesses committed by French army officials (Stora 2007, 18). French war crimes and France’s dark history in Algeria were officially glossed over in a spectacular state-officiated cover-up reconfigured as colonial nostalgia (20), the very source of France’s colonial fractures and difficult passage to (post) coloniality (Blanchard, Bancel and Lemaire 2005, 13). In addition, Sarkozy’s presidential address in Senegal was a further demonstration of France’s “colonial indigestion” and denial of the nefarious legacy of colonialism. His speech exemplified the machinations of what Anibal Quijano (2000, 533) calls the “coloniality of power,” a highly racialized, power-inflected Eurocentric discourse of Otherness destined to create distinctions between European modernity and Sarkozy’s evocation of “the first mystery of Africa.”6 Absolving colonialism of its disastrous and long-lasting impact on the future of African self-determination and sustainability, Sarkozy resorted to another ruse of self-justification when he stated the following: Colonization is not responsible for all the current difficulties of Africa. It is not responsible for the bloody wars between Africans, for the genocides … The colonizer took, but I want to say with respect, that he also gave … Not all the colonialists were thieves or exploiters. Ironically, Sarkozy’s rationalization exposed the hidden intentionality of colonization as an unpardonable act of thievery, murder and exploitation worthy of criminal exposure in a novel such as Pierre sang papier ou cendre. For Bey, the act of writing back is an urgent one for several reasons – to provide a sense of closure to distressed Algerians caught in a state of postcolonial limbo; to lodge a postcolonial protest against the masculinist exactions of Empire; and to contest the legislative biases of the French state. As Bey states in her interview with O. Hind: J’ai pensé qu’il fallait quand même, nous, Algériens réagir à elle (la loi) … Je me suis demandé comment, moi, romancière, je pourrais écrire quelque chose sur le sujet. Une lettre ouverte n’aurait pas suffi et n’aurait pas eu l’impact escompte … Je voulais revenir sur la réalité, sur le fait colonial lui-même. [I thought it was nevertheless necessary for us Algerians to react to the Law … I asked myself how, as a novelist, I could write something on the subject. An open letter would not have been enough and would not have had the desired effect … I wanted to come back to the reality, to the fact of colonization itself]. (Hind 2008) The idea of “coming back to the reality” prompts Bey to unearth history, to create a story in reverse, “une histoire à rebours” (Hind 2008) that defies colonial timelines and archival accounts in an active reclaiming of memory

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from an insider perspective. Bey suggests that history must be read upside down to regain its lost balance in terms of marginalized perspectives. Like Éluard’s schoolboy who documents his opposition to the Nazis in poetic verse, Bey also chooses a child protagonist to witness the entire spectrum of colonization from 1830-1962 in his role as a worthy “sentinelle de la mémoire” [“a guardian of memory”] (Bey 2008, 39). Written in the form of twenty-three narrative tableaux, the novel presents two opposing allegorical figures – the child as the voice of Algerian memory and the demon-like creature, Madame Lafrance, that epitomizes the horrors of colonialism. The novel is presented as a prose epic (Bouredji 2008) in the theatrical style of a Greek tragedy recounting the large-scale death and destruction wreaked by the colonizer in the name of civilization. The choice of a child chronicler is a deliberate one. Bey subverts the dominance of adult male colonial chroniclers and historians who often present history from a phallocentric, onedimensional, elitist and written perspective that excludes other voices, especially the voices of the aggressed. By choosing women and children as witnesses, women writers like Bey, Djebar and Sebbar favor the more inclusive and polyphonic positioning of history and testimony to counter partiality and distortions. These multiple voices establish the plural historicities of Algeria through polyvalent re-framings. Consequently, the positioning of a child witness represents an act of historical subversion/inversion that is in keeping with the ethos of “une histoire à rebours;” in this case, the adult male privilege to record and document events is reversed in favor of the most vulnerable member of society, as indicated in the novel: “Mais surtout, qui aurait pu accorder foi aux paroles d’un enfant?” [“But, above all, who would have given credence to the words of a child?”] (Bey 2008, 12). The child’s question nevertheless sheds light on a broader polemic: can a violated country ever regain its innocence through structural inversions of power, historicity and narrativity? The testimonials of the dispossessed expose the buried truths that compromise the sanctity of the civilizing mission through acts of uncivilized barbarity and colonial ignominy. As Bey states: Le regard d’un enfant est important et intéressant. D’abord parce qu’il est porteur d’innocence. Parce qu’un enfant se pose des questions que des adultes ne se posent plus ou ne savent plus se poser. J’ai essayé, à travers ce regard d’enfant, de voir d’abord quel était l’effet de la colonisation sur le people algérien, l’individu et non pas la masse comme on le considère de manière générale historiquement. [A child’s gaze is important and interesting. First of all, because it is the bearer of innocence. Because a child asks itself questions that adults no longer ask themselves or no longer know how to ask themselves. I tried, through the child’s gaze, to above all determine the impact of colonization on the Algerian people, on the individual and not on the masses as it is generally considered historically]. (Hind 2008)

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The primacy of the child’s gaze is therefore meant to both personalize and humanize history from a subaltern point of view in an attempt to interrogate the very nature and outcome of coloniality in Algeria. The child’s gaze penetrates the unseen and the unsaid, and thereby establishes its omnipresence in text through the vantage point of the witness: “Et c’est de là que l’enfant a pu tout voir, tout entendre” [“And it is from there that the child was able to see everything, hear everything”] (Bey 2008, 39). The photographic images provided by the child’s gaze permanently immobilize the actions of the French in richly textured friezes composed of the blood, cries, anguish, hurt, lamentations and outrage of the Algerian people when confronted by the voracious beast of colonization. The chronicling of violence by a child narrator furthers the poignancy of the text by focusing on the traumas suffered by children, the most vulnerable casualties of war. The child witnesses the extermination of an entire tribe through the infamous military strategy of enfumades. This tactic, also described in Djebar’s Fantasia, refers to the burning alive of unprotected civilians who sought shelter against the French in caves; they were literally burned out and suffered an agonizing death through asphyxiation and charred flesh. The narrator describes the scene: Il doit, il doit invoquer un à un les suppliciés. Et en les nommant, les force à exister encore un peu, car bientôt ils seront oubliés par l’histoire. Mais en cet instant, leurs cendres sont encore chaudes. Encore frémissantes. Les hommes d’abord … Tous, oui, tous. Et puis les femmes. Toutes les femmes de la tribu. [He must, he must invoke the tortured one by one. And by naming them, force them to exist a little longer, because they will soon be forgotten by history. But, at this moment, their ashes are still warm. Still quivering. The men first … All of them, yes, all of them. And then, the women. All the women of the tribe]. (1993, 37) The witnessing of such spectacular human devastation does irreparable psychological and emotional damage to a child through a primeval wounding. Denied the presence of a loving family and nurturing community the child becomes an unprotected war casualty. He bears the scars of the living in solitude due to the absence of a support system. The novel exposes the war crimes committed by the French who adhere to dishonorable war codes; the mission civilisatrice ironically gives them impunity in the face of an unknown “barbaric” enemy. As Jennifer Sessions states: The question of colonial violence likewise provoked little serious reflection among French military men who, like subsequent historians, focused on strategic and tactical matters, rather than on moral ones … The Algerians’ supposedly “savage” and “barbaric” nature exempted them from restrictions governing warfare between “civilized” nations. (2009, 29–30)

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In addition, French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville referred to crimes against civilians as “unfortunate necessities which cannot be escaped by any people at war with Arabs” in his “Essay on Algeria” written in 1841 (Pitts 2001, 70). The “unfortunate necessity” of murder, pillage and the devastation of children “des pleurs d’enfant” [“children’s cries”] (Bey 2008, 42) provides a smokescreen for ethnic cleansing disguised as a measure of self-defense. The colonial hatred of difference does not even spare children. The fact that no disciplinary action was taken against perpetrators of war crimes against civilians by the French military further testifies to the dehumanization of Algerians in French war manuals, an inconvenience or an impediment to be eliminated in the most brutal way. Moreover, the reduction of an entire community to a pile of smoldering ashes is indicative of the anonymity accorded to victims, who are either effaced from war chronicles as a cover-up for a heinous crime or reduced to impersonalized statistics in victory narratives. For the child, each grain of ash represents the body of a loved one to be protected against the ravages of time. Joanna Santa Barbara describes the ways in which war impacts the life trajectory of children. She states: Children are exposed to situations of terror and horror during war – experiences that may leave enduring impacts in posttraumatic stress disorder … The experience of indifference from the surrounding world, or worse still, malevolence may cause children to suffer loss of meaning in their construction of themselves in their world. (2006, 892) Algerian children are considered to be expendable victims in the colonial culture of war. Their unresolved traumas nevertheless mirror the historical violations borne by the colonized nation; these traumas will assume a grotesque articulation during the future progression of Algerian history in terms of identity politics and gender. For this reason, the novel establishes a parallel between the aggression of women and children by positioning the two groups as scapegoats in distorted militaristic approaches to conflict “resolution.” At the same time, the reduction of all Arabs and Muslims to children in Orientalist discourses reveals a double problematic: the infantilizing of these populations by racist condescension on the one hand, and the repressed insecurities of the colonials for whom even “children” pose a dangerous threat. The violent politics of Madame Lafrance The personification of Madame Lafrance as a female character exposes the first colonial historical distortion – the camouflaging of an overtly patriarchal nineteenth-century enterprise in feminine terms associating “national honor with military glory,” according to Jennifer Sessions (2009, 30). The novel describes Lafrance’s feminized characterization: “Elle avance, impérieuse et

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impériale. Laissant derrière elle des nuages de cendre et de poussière, des odeurs de poudre et de fumée. Elle est la liberté guidant le people” [“She advances, imperious and imperial. Leaving behind her clouds of ashes and dust, smells of gunpowder and smoke. She is liberty guiding the people”] (25). Bey highlights the fact that virtuous French ideals and their iconographic representations have always been feminine in orientation: “C’est une allégorie que je n’ai pas inventé et que j’ai repris, bien sûr, avec cette dose d’ironie qui est nécessaire, pour faire passer le propos” [“This is an allegory I did not invent and that I reused, of course, with this dose of irony needed to get the point across”] (Hind 2008). The feminized allegorization of ideals such as liberty, justice and truth by the French ascribes a conceptual value to the feminine within the colonial imaginary (and the postcolonial state, as will be discussed in Section 2). These re-presentations constitute an act of symbolic violence against women through colonial mediations found in Orientalist imagery and the very real violence of war, wherein “women have experienced this male violence through wars conducted by men” (Stora 1999, 78). While the novel exposes a vast panorama of violence inflicted upon Algerian civilians as a whole, I will focus on the representational violence levelled against women to show how the distorting colonial lens or the “scopic desire” (Alloula 1986, 7) of the conqueror conflates the territorial appropriations of land with the corporeal violations of Algerian women in a dynamic of silencing and voyeurism. The silencing of the feminine voice, as reflected in the novel, can be traced to the violent power of coloniality and its ability to both manufacture and annihilate difference in a well-calibrated equation of rationality, universality and French superiority. As Stam and Shohat affirm: The particularity of the French pretension to universality … is that it is both cultural and political; to be French is to feel oneself to have a right to “universalize” one’s particular interest, this national interest that has at its particularity the trait of being universal. (2007, 42) Reduced to a mere murmur when confronted with the resounding clamor of French universalizing pretentions, “la voix n’est qu’un murmure” [“the voice is only a murmur”] (Djebar 1992, 195) – the silenced voice symbolizes the ways in which Algerian women have been strangled by colonial ideology through “severed sounds” (133) and open wounds. These wounds prefigure the metonymic conflation of land and female body within a colonial economy of desire, control and possession to highlight Winifred Woodhull’s claim in Transfigurations of the Maghreb: Feminism, Decolonization, and Literatures: “The cultural record makes clear that women embody Algeria not only for Algerians in the days since independence, but also for the French colonizers … In the colonialist fantasy, to possess Algeria’s women is to possess Algeria” (1993, 16). This fantasy of possession is nevertheless inscribed

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within a racially based rhetoric of difference impacting both men and women as a justification for war. The desired “Oriental,” i.e. non-European, woman provides the colonial voyeur with the necessary libidinal justification to invade, torture and kill in a twisted protection/violating syllogism destined to save the veiled and socially oppressed Algerian woman from barbarian Algerian men. In other words, the “idea” of Algeria and Algerians has already fertilized the colonial psyche in a preconceived civilizing rescue mission “before even landing on its shores” (Lazreg 1994, 36) through the creation of orientalized Algerian fictions in France. As stated by Edward Saïd: “The Orient was Orientalized not only because it was discovered to be ‘Oriental’ in all those ways considered commonplace by an average nineteenth-century European, but also because it could be … made Oriental” (1978, 5–6). The novel provides several examples of these prefabricated orientalized stereotypes against which France launches a media war as a prelude to conquest. The sailors aboard the newly arrived French flotilla contemplate the shores of this unknown land: “C’est donc cela l’Afrique? C’est cela leur nouvelle Amérique? Une terre dont ils ne savent rien. Une terre profonde. Mystérieuse. Inexplorée … Une terre désolée, selon ces mêmes conquérants, de hordes barbares à demi nues” [“So this was Africa? This was their new America? A land of which they know nothing. An impenetrable land. Mysterious. Unexplored … A desolate land, according to these same conquerors, traversed by hordes of semi-naked barbarians”] (Bey 2008, 18). Feminized markers to characterize the newly discovered virgin land parallel European descriptions of elusive, mysterious and inaccessible “Oriental” women in highly sexualized tropes of war and sex that exhibit “sa singularité si exotique” [“its highly exotic singularity”] (48). The conflation of the exotic/ erotic and land/woman binaries, as Bey suggests, provides the very impetus for Algeria’s colonization, a militaristic agenda that nevertheless remains veiled under the civilizing paradigm. As the novel indicates: “Tous ont en mémoire les paroles prononcées juste avant leur départ par le commandant en chef de l’expédition, le comte de Bourmont: ‘Les nations civilisées des deux mondes ont les yeux fixés sur vous! La cause de la France est celle de l’humanité!’” [“Everyone remembers the words pronounced by Count Bourmont, the commander-in-chief of the expedition, just before their departure: ‘The civilized nations of the two worlds have their eyes fixed on you! Humanity is France’s cause’”] (20). If the first “two worlds” symbolize humanity and civilization, the “third world” inevitably represents the indigestible uncivilized component to be neutralized by “integration, war and assimilation.” The self-mandated authority to fabricate and recreate “third worldly” Otherness on a European scale is a basic ordinance of the coloniality of power to justify its civilizing mission against “irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, ‘different’” Orientals in order to distinguish them from “rational, virtuous, mature, ‘normal’” Europeans (Saïd 1996, 40). The maps of coloniality reveal an undifferentiated geography of conquest linking Africa to the

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Americas in parallel yet indistinguishable cartographies of desolation and semi-naked primitivism. The deviant/normal binary mediated by “race and racial identity” (Quijano 2000, 534) … “involved a process of historical re-identification: from Europe such regions and populations were attributed new geo-cultural identities” (540). In other words, the capacity to unmake and then remake identity, together with indigenous territorial framings, became a colonial prerogative through the appropriating nature of the colonial gaze. This position is symbolized by the use of the possessive pronoun “their” (Bey 2008, 18), a marker of appropriation that grafts the reconstituted Algerian territory onto a pre-existing French scale. The coloniality of power is thereby a hegemonic system of domination and coercion that manufactures and criminalizes difference along the lines of gender, race, sexuality, religion and political affiliations. The visibility and materiality of difference underscores the violence of representation constructed within sexist, racist, phallically nationalistic, queerphobic and Islamophobic paradigms. Based on a patriarchal system of binary oppositional thinking, the coloniality of power follows the rule of the exception, as the characterizing feature of difference, by creating arbitrary and politically mandated distinctions between the normative and the different; the civilized clothed Frenchman and the half-naked Algerian barbarian; the self-righteous colonizer and the right-less colonized; the colonial settlers and the unsettled indigenous populations; violent Algerian men and oppressed Algerian women; and Christianity and Islam, among other dualisms. Inscribed within a culture of war as stated earlier, the exceptional “nature” of coloniality favors a violent engagement with a-historic notions of alterity by creating situations of permanent racial, cultural and religious siege for colonially defined Others. As Sherene Razack argues: “Although race thinking varies, for Muslims and Arabs it is underpinned by the idea that modern enlightened, secular peoples must protect themselves from pre-modern religious people whose loyalty to tribe and community reigns over their commitment to the rule of law” (2008, 9–10). According to this form of race thinking, Algerians are placed outside the protection of the law through colonial evictions of land and body linking gender, Orientalism and militarization in a violent colonizer-colonized dialectic termed “the arrangement of the colonial world” by Frantz Fanon (1991, 40). In other words, the criminalizing of Arab-Muslim difference contrasted with France’s universal “emancipatory mission” (Stam and Shohat 2007, 40) provides the battleground and necessary justification for the most severe colonial atrocities committed in the name of national self-interest. As Sessions argues: “In Algeria, representations of Arabs as nomadic, devious, bellicose, and fanatical helped to justify French atrocities … Dehumanizing racial stereotypes authorized forms of violence, including torture, summary execution, collective punishment, and mass killing, considered unacceptable in ‘normal’ conflicts” (2009, 30). For the French, an “abnormal” situation in Algeria warranted anomalous levels of violence to discipline and control an

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equally “deviant” population. The a priori construction of the colonial subject in terms of racial and sexual deviance authenticates the use of force to eradicate all traces of alterity that would compromise the absolute Frenchness of the colonial state. However, as portrayed in the novel, women have suffered more significantly through sexualized forms of violence. Rape, torture and other war crimes become a militarized strategy to both violate the women and undermine the authority of the men in a twisted male honor/female dishonor binary, exposing the deeply entrenched gender stereotypes that underline militarism. The novel highlights the stereotypical representation of Arab women; their seductive and mysterious lure seems to provide the delusional colonialist with an explicit invitation to rape and penetrate through the destructive underpinnings of the Orientalist fantasy: “Comment pénétrer L’Orient autrement qu’en dévoilant le mystère, en dévoilant ses femmes, surnommées les interdites parce que jalousement gardées, soustraites à tout regard étranger?” [“How does one penetrate the Orient other than by unveiling the mystery, unveiling its women, nicknamed the forbidden ones because they are jealously guarded, protected from every foreign gaze?”] (Bey 2008, 97). Obsessions with the veiled/unveiled female body personify the ultimate colonial fetish concretized in an attraction/repulsion binary of “lust and thrust” in an attempt to violate the sanctity of the land and body. As Woodhull argues: “Whether the imagined contact between races or peoples involves a perilous siege or easy pleasure, a key point of contact, where Algeria is concerned, is the veiled or secluded woman” (1993, 20). Like the imposing citadel, the veil offers a similar protective defense against external invasion in colonial and national discourses. This material provides an obstructing barrier to “une terre de volupté” [“a land of voluptuousness”] (Bey 2008, 96), a paradise of unlimited sexual and economic delights to be conquered for capitalist and lascivious gains. The fantasy of uncovering the protected woman in a forbidden sexual act represents the very credo of colonization; sexual intercourse provides access to the female body’s most intimate parts as a precursor to the next stage of military penetration. As Fanon indicates in A Dying Colonialism: Whenever, in dreams having an erotic content, a European meets an Algerian woman, the specific features of his relations with the colonized society manifest themselves … With an Algerian woman, there is no progressive conquest, no mutual revelation. Straight off, with the maximum of violence, there is possession, rape, near-murder. The act assumes a para-neurotic brutality and sadism, even in a normal European. (1967, 45–46) The successful fruition of this act resides in the body’s total exposure to the colonial gaze, as it creates a fully visible wound unencumbered by the

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gauzy layers of protecting tissue, a wound that also exposes the vulnerable Algerian heartland, according to nationalists. Alloula explains: The Orient is no longer the dreamland. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, it has inched closer. Colonialism makes a grab for it, appropriates it by dint of war, binds it hand and foot with myriad bonds of exploitation and hands it over to the devouring appetite of the great mother countries, ever hungry for raw materials. (1986, 3) The colonial hunger for land and the female body is framed within a sexualized sadomasochistic relation, wherein the appetite for raw materials feeds the impulsion for raw sex with a veiled “virgin” in a new paradigm of militarized sex. The sexual desecration of a virgin/inaccessible woman represents the ultimate act of unveiling Algeria, especially when patriarchal morality codes locate the dictum of honor and tradition on a woman’s body. The establishment of the female body as a sexual protectorate under French rule results in the corresponding undoing of Algerian men. As Fanon states in A Dying Colonialism: “In the colonialist program, it was the woman who was given the historic mission of shaking up the man” (1967, 39). The material emasculation of Algerian men that results from their inability to safeguard the women represents an assault on notions of identity, cultural integrity and patriarchal sovereignty. At the same time, the land-woman equation subjects women to a dual patriarchal colonization, both local and colonial, in an uncompromising tug-of-war struggle for gender and territorial control. The militarized nature of sexual violence against women has taken many forms in Algeria. As Lazreg states: Native women suffered from military action as much as men did, but with a difference. As women they were subjected to more indignities than men. They were raped, forcibly held by military officers to satisfy their sexual desire, and often assaulted for the gold jewelry they wore. Such assaults took place on live as well as dead women’s bodies. (1994, 42) Empire’s propensity for necrophilia and other forms of sexual violence belies any claims to cultural proprietary or civilized behavior, thereby compromising the foundational intent of the civilizing mission in Algeria. As Irene Khan states: Women and girls are not just killed, they are raped, sexually attacked, mutilated and humiliated. Custom, culture and religion have built an image of women as bearing the “honour” of their communities. Disparaging a woman’s sexuality and destroying her physical integrity have

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become a means by which to terrorize, demean and “defeat” entire communities, as well as to punish, intimidate and humiliate women. (Marshall 2004) It could be stated that the female body provides corporeal documentation of its multiple violations through these visible markings of violence. The body offers its testimony through the medium of corporeal graphics exposing lacerations, penetration, mutilation and other violations in deeply embedded/ embodied form. In other words, gender dynamics further complicate the war maps of coloniality by highlighting the gender-inflected forms of violence that regulate, alter and repackage gender difference. Because men and women experience violence and war differently, it is important to highlight the ways in which gender ideologies transform women’s bodies into “the reproductive machinery of the enemy” (Long 2004) to be further colonized through patriarchal inscriptions of blood, semen and colonial maps in complementing strategies of conquest, sexual exploitation and death. The novel describes the abjection of the female body within the colonial sexual economy: “Madame Lafrance détourne à peine le regard. Dans les chambres closes, les moukères attendent, le corps rompu, la bouche lasse et le regard éteint” [“Madame Lafrance hardly looks away. In the closed bedrooms, the women7 wait, broken bodies, tired mouths and extinguished looks”] (Bey 2008, 99-100). The reference to Arab women as moukère and fatma by the French was another attempt to dehumanize and insult them through racial epithets anchored once again in Orientalist ideology; these terms denoted a lack of individuality, morality and religiosity. The enclosed space of the colonial bedroom resembles the private recesses of the prison chamber, in which all private aggressions remain invisible and therefore undocumented. The novel reveals the hypocrisy underlying the colonial mission that purports to rescue beleaguered Algerian women – a humanitarian cause celebrated within the public space of politics. At the same time, these lofty ideals are transformed into perverted sexual license with poverty-stricken, working-class women trapped within the intimacy of the colonial quarters: “Rue des Consuls, rue du Regard, rue de Chartres, Rue Lallahoum; côtoyant les maisons ‘honnêtes’” [“Street of the Consuls, Street of the Gaze, Charter Street, Lallahoum Street; skirting the ‘honorable’ homes”] (99). The diplomatic venerability of the colonials within these closed quarters gives them the privilege to prey on the sexual vulnerability of Algerian women through their sexualized commodification; the women are made to circulate within a fixed circuit of colonial desire. Like the colonial postcards of Algerian women depicted in Malek Alloula’s The Colonial Harem, these women ambulate within a restricted spatiality of sexual promiscuity in which their unveiled bodies are ironically hidden from public scrutiny through the covertness of militarized prostitution. Colonial double standards regarding sexualized gender relations reveal the corresponding (and implicit) exceptionalism of the civilizing mission, as suggested earlier.

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At the same time, the novel demonstrates how the unacknowledged feminization of poverty under colonialism, “leurs semblables en misère” [“their peers in misery”] (99) is further obscured by the proverbial cliché of the “Oriental” woman’s moral and sexual decadence that is nevertheless institutionalized in the form of prostitution. Sex with the exposed body of the prostitute, “des femmes offertes, mystérieuses et lascives bien entendu” [“offered women, undoubtedly mysterious and lascivious”] (96) provides the colonialist with a violent release from his frustrated attempts to penetrate the much desired, albeit forbidden, veiled body: “les moukères sont … étroitement surveillées. Cloîtrées dans des lieux impénétrables” [“The women are … closely surveyed. Cloistered in impenetrable places”] (98). The veiled/unveiled paradigm supports an entire system of colonial desire through a consummated/ unconsummated binary that also reflects the colonial trajectories in Algeria. In other words, the colonial manipulation of the sex trade goes hand-in-hand with broader social and political “para-neurotic” (Fanon 1967, 46) controls as a defensive strategy of surveillance and administration to further consolidate the enduring links between sex, gender and conquest. Colonialism, in fact, led to “the dramatic deterioration of the condition of women both in the rural and urban centers … The colonial presence of the French increased veiling, seclusion and unequal treatment of women often as a reaction against colonial rule and Western ways,” according to Zahia Salhi (2010, 114). The patriarchal struggle to control and define the female body within a competing agenda of veiling and unveiling has constituted one of the most violent and unacknowledged chapters of conquest, an agenda that has oppressed women on the one hand, and spurred them to revolt against this confiscation of their rights and humanity on the other. Both nationalists and colonialists have grafted the history of conquest onto the female body through physical and psychological violence, ambivalent gender relations, sexual oppression and silence. Bey’s novel demonstrates how gender relations mirror the history of conquest in parallel narratives of political appropriation, sexual violence and cultural defilement. At the same time, she also exposes the dangers and limitations of patriarchal and Orientalist readings of the female body, likening these romanticized positionings of colonial appropriation and nationalist protectionism to a form of structural violence against women.

Section 2: Feminizing the nationalist struggle in Assia Djebar’s Rouge l’aube. The Algerian War of Independence provides the historical background for Rouge l’aube. The historical context of the play is vital to the understanding of its dramatic implications in terms of Algerian nationalism and the unigendered direction of the new nation in-formation. This war has been hailed by scholars as one of the bloodiest struggles of decolonization in the twentieth century. Lasting for a period of eight intense years (1954-1962), this war marked Algeria’s fledgling passage to postcoloniality after a brutal colonial

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rule of one-hundred-and-thirty-two years. The French debacle in Algeria has been a major source of trauma for the French as evinced by the silences associated with this defeat in colonial history. Disguised under a series of euphemistic cover-ups referring to the war as “les événements d’Algérie” (“Algerian events”), “opérations de police” (“police operations”), “actions de maintien de l’ordre” (“actions to maintain order”) (Stora 1999, 13), this loss has not been thoroughly digested by France even today, thereby constituting one of the many amnesic gaps or, as Stora claims, “gangrenous” (13) omissions in France’s colonial and national history. This obfuscation of the truth is a calculated strategy “to avoid referring to it as a war, with all the implications of casualty, sacrifice and wounding that this would carry,” according to Michael Humphrey (2002, 194). France was able to disavow one of its major colonial fractures until June 10, 1991, thirty-seven years after the “Algerian drama,” (Stora 1991, 13) when the French National Assembly was finally forced to admit that its pacification efforts in Algeria were indeed a full-scale war. The “war without a name” had to finally show its face in French history, according to Raphaëlle Bacqué (1999, 40). However, there were purposeful omissions on the Algerian side too, according to Stora: “L’histoire officielle a … fabriqué de l’oubli” [“official history fabricated forgetting”] (1991, 304). In national versions of the war, the National Liberation Front (FLN) was set up “as the only nationalist force, thus erasing the existence of other, older parties that were in favor of independence and obscuring the violent purges and political murders between the different groups during the war” (Donadey 2001, 4-5). These partial and manipulated narratives positioned the FLN as the sole victor in the fight for independence operating under the banner of a united Algerian front; these discourses made no mention of the internal violence that was engaging Algeria in another hidden war, “une double guerre civile, à la fois algéroalgérienne, et franco-française” [“a dual civil war, simultaneously AlgerianAlgerian and Franco-French”], according to Stora (1991, 187). The repressive tactics used by the FLN to quell dissent ironically mirrored the machinations of the colonial politic. They made the same homogenizing claims to universalism as the colonials in terms of language, culture, political affiliations, gender and identity, as shown in La Seine était rouge. The suppression of difference mandated by a normative agenda of Arabization mimicked parallel claims to francité or Frenchification in the dysfunctional bonds of a “northsouth” neocolonial fraternity. In addition, the neocolonial structures maintained by the new government re-presented nationalism as a specular or inverted image of colonialism by compromising the successful transition to decolonization through rampant corruption, power abuse, heavy-handed censorship, gender marginality, economic stagnation and political archaisms. The implicit patriarchies of colonialism and nationalism merge in their common fixation on the female body as the repository of traditional values and cultural authenticity, especially during the insecure times of historical transition. Women are paradoxically denied subjectivity and equal citizenship

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within the supposedly liberating ideals of colonial benevolence and national emancipation; both ideals focus on a similar land-female body equation reducing women to abstract symbols of the nation without citizenship rights. As Donadey argues: “When woman stands in for nation, it becomes difficult to present the women of the nation as agents in that nation’s constitution because their body image is being activated as the object for which to fight” (2001, xxx). The woman-as-nation cliché creates a nation without active female citizens; the women are immobilized as inert icons, reduced to a symbolic value as the passive mothers of the nation or marginalized altogether in the drafting of the new constitution. The new legislation does not seem to support a gender-friendly agenda despite its declaration in favor of equal rights for men and women. This discrepancy is most evident in the disavowed citizenship of the female resistors, active combatants and caregivers who collaborated “equally” in the fight for independence. Djebar describes the ambiguous status of women within nationalism: “Before the war of liberation, the search for a national identity, if it did include a feminine participation, delighted in erasing the body and illuminating these women as ‘mothers,’ even for those exceptional figures who were recognized as women warriors” (1992, 144). The problematic positioning of gender within the revolution highlights another gangrenous silence in Algeria’s history by revealing nationalism’s undemocratic intent in terms of gender and minority representation. As Partha Chatterjee claims: The story of nationalism is necessarily a story of betrayal … nationalism confers freedom only by imposing new controls, defines a cultural identity only by excluding many from its fold, and grants the dignity of citizenship to some because others could not be allowed to speak for themselves. (1993, 54) The muting of the female revolutionary voices represents one of the most significant blind spots in Algerian historicity. The traditional silencing of women in successive master discourses constitutes a primordial postcolonial fracture; this fissure exposes another gaping lesion within the already numerous wounds of Algeria. As Djebar poignantly remarks in Women of Algiers: For a few decades – as each nationalism triumphs here and there – we have been able to realize that within this Orient that has been delivered unto itself, the image of woman is still perceived no differently, be it by the father, by the husband, and, more troublesome still, by the brother and the son. (1992, 138) It has been the task of Algerian feminists and creative writers to expose the “white phantom” (Djebar 1992, 138) representing the revolutionary silences

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in Algeria’s female historicity by giving voice to the forgotten moujahidat (female combatants), urban guerrilla fighters, marquisades (female members of the resistance) and ordinary citizens. For these women and young girls, active participation in the war was not only a patriotic duty, but, more importantly, a dynamic affirmation of their presence in the public arena of male politics. If, as Danièle Amrane-Minne claims, women were totally absent from public space prior to 1954, their subsequent incursions into the realm of the visible, I argue, was an act of conscientious dissidence: Algerian women who joined the struggle consisted, not merely of sympathizers or militants on a short-term basis, but proper fighters who joined the National Liberation Army or the Civil Organization of the National Liberation Front … The women participated directly in armed combat, and above all took an active part directing urban guerrilla warfare. (Amrane-Minne 1999, 62–63, 66) The suppression of gendered perspectives accentuates the violence associated with the fabrication of patriarchal myths destined to position resistance and liberation as exclusively masculine acts. Within this context, Rouge l’aube and La Seine était rouge expose and fill in the missing pages of the revolutionary struggles of women. These texts highlight the silences and historical veils that have obscured the female faces of the war story. They also reveal the hypocritical patriarchal structuring of liberation movements based on the traditional normativity of gender roles. Both narratives underscore the relevance of the feminized sang-voix (both titles contain the word rouge [red]) in examining this vital component of Algerian history. A red dawn for women? Rouge l’aube (Red Dawn) was co-written by Assia Djebar and Walid Carn in the style of “le théâtre document” [“documentary theatre”] (Cheniki 2010). Performed first in Arabic, it was subsequently published in French in 1969, seven years after independence. However, the play was actually written in Rabat, Morocco, where Djebar accepted a university position until the end of the war in 1962. As stated by Laura Box, Djebar and Carn were still influenced by the FLN when they co-wrote the play: The socialist wing of the FLN refused to accept the notion that art could be apolitical; performances had to be adequately executed, but imposing standards to do with aesthetics was considered a luxury. After the war two types of Algerian theatre were juxtaposed in tension with each other. (2005, 5–6) In other words, theatre blended the more traditional forms of hakawati or the storytelling tradition of narration and performance with socialist realism

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techniques enforced by the FLN in the form of documentary theatre and its explicit socio-political dimension, as argued by Kamal Salhi (1998, 70–71). The play was chosen to represent Algeria in the drama category at the First Pan-African Cultural Festival in 1969. It consequently “staged” women’s active participation in the revolution for the very first time, even though Djebar wasn’t pleased with the Arabic adaptation of the play by Mustapha Kateb (Box 2005, 6). Box suggests a possible explanation in her text: Perhaps the subsequent production of the piece on Algerian radio in 1970 gives a clue, since it cut all references to women’s participation in the liberation struggle. If the radio and Cultural Festival used the same text, Djebar was no doubt disappointed and angry. (6) The play highlights the collective fight for freedom against the violence of French rule to show how history determines the fate of a country and its people. The title reflects the dual symbolism of imminent revolution and sacrifice highlighting the parallel forces of heroism and martyrdom. The play focuses on the extent to which male and female revolutionaries and ordinary citizens are willing to put the ideals of freedom before self-interest; this trajectory is evident in the roles played by the three main characters – the blind poet, the young revolutionary (the guide) and his younger sister (the young girl). At the same time, it could be stated that the playwrights present a fourth personage in the form of the war of liberation itself. The war provides the backdrop and motivator of action in this historical play, wherein liberation is achieved at a serious price that compromises life, family, idealism and innocence. The play inscribes the heroic within the somber dimensions of the tragic to underscore the annihilating aspects of war. There are two interconnected wars in this text: the brutal colonial war that scars the Algerian landscape through a levelling politics of torture and the feminine war against patriarchal models of nationalism that discriminate against women within the politics of the freedom struggle. The characters represent the archetypal ideals of ancestral wisdom and creativity (the poet), revolutionary action (the guide) and feminist consciousness (the young girl), three interplaying principles needed to birth the new nation. According to Djebar, “the theatre becomes action with a magnified echo” (2010), an echo that carries the sounds of war as it magnifies the urgency of political, social and ideological change through a transformative ethic. Tragedy provides the conduit to “stimulate the life of a people” (2010) through self-reflective interrogations of death, duty, creative inspiration in times of war, and the act of living itself. The play reveals the tragedy of killing the creative soul of the nation by positioning the incompatible existence of war and creativity as reflected in the words of a soldier: “! … Aujourd’hui … Dans ce pays! En pleine guerre! … Il ne manquait plus que cela!” [“! … Today … In this

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country! … During a full-scale war! … That’s all we need”] (Djebar and Carn 1969, 17).8 The symbolic death of poetry takes physical form in the actual death of the blind poet who refuses to be silenced, even when he is captured and tortured by the French for aiding a young revolutionary. The poetic voice articulates the language of the mother tongue, the feminized instance of memory termed “the fourth language” (1993,180) by Djebar herself. The poet’s blindness gives him access to this supra-conscious space in which he does not “see” difference. The holistic power of poetry goes beyond the limitations of patriarchal language. This force embraces an entire range of pre-discursive sensorial expressions found in the oral dimensions of classical Arabic poetry, a non-institutionalized speech act that remains inaccessible to political ideologues and their limited vocabulary. For this reason, the poet remains sensitive to the situation of women whose oppression he “feels” and articulates in verse. He refers to the young girl character in his recitation: “Elle est la boisson fraîche qui étanche la soif au soir d’une journée de jeûne” [“She is the fresh drink that quenches thirst on the evening of a day of fasting”] (24). This verse highlights the very essence of the gender problematic in the play. The young girl is an indispensable vivifying force during a time of extreme privation; at the same time, her value is limited to a commodity that nevertheless regulates the balance between life and death through parching or satiety. The poet’s murder by the French soldiers constitutes the vicious slicing of the mother tongue, a painful act of violence comparable to the excision of women’s voices from the national consciousness. Djebar describes this tragedy in Women of Algiers: Thus, this world of women, when it no longer hums with the whisperings of an ancillary tenderness, of lost ballads – in short, with a romanticism of vanished enchantments – that world suddenly, barrenly, becomes the world of autism. And just as suddenly, the reality of the present shows itself without camouflage, without any addiction to the past: sound has truly been severed. (1992, 148) If the world of poetry is closely associated with the feminine world through its “ancillary tenderness” and “lost ballads,” the decimation of this world provokes the trauma of autism as a foundational imbalance in society. This rupture impedes the nation from creatively re-imagining itself due to the “vanished enchantments;” it is thereby condemned to replicate, mimic and reproduce the vices of French coloniality in a cycle of traumatic regularity due to the absence of postcolonial alternatives. As a creative intellectual herself, Djebar links artistic and political dissidence; the literary impulse is an integral component of the socio-political impulse that inspires creativity. As stated by Jane Hiddleston:

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Contesting violence and imposed silence Assia Djebar wrote four novels during the first phase of her career between 1957 and 1967. After leaving the École Normale Supérieure at Sèvres during the war of independence, she worked for the national newspaper El moudjahid conducting interviews with Algerian refugees in Tunis and Morocco, before going on to teach history in Rabat and later in Algiers. (2006, 21)

The combination of literary writing and politicized writing in the nationalist struggle exposes writing’s revolutionary potential as an incendiary discursive weapon in the war against colonization. Moreover, the play foreshadows the future brutalization of Algeria’s intelligentsia only three decades later, as demonstrated by the assassination of poet Tahar Djaout and other leading intellectuals by members of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) during the decade of terror in the 1990s. On the other end of the spectrum, the loss of youth through premature death, incarceration and execution by the French reflects the compromising of the nation’s creative future. The play raises two important questions: Can an emerging nation survive without its creative energy in the face of colonial atrocities and anticipated postcolonial anxieties? In addition, can it move forward successfully by neglecting its female constituencies? These open-ended preoccupations are reflected in the reddish hues of the approaching dawn; this liminal moment symbolizes the ambiguous tension between the impending (post)colonial reckoning and the fear-inspiring present of colonial exactions. The spatial dimensions of theatre publicize personal tragedies by framing them within a communal context to eliminate the divisive dichotomies of the private (domestic) and the public (political), especially in terms of gender ideologies. Djebar’s preoccupation with a “theater of gender” highlights a broader political commitment, whereby this form of theater “should be the only one of true commitment to living culture in Islamic countries” (2010). By giving gender the center stage spotlight in this tragic drama of historical, social, familial and political disruption, Djebar affirms her belief that the new nation cannot create itself dramatically without the presence of its women. Theater provides the platform to “act out” gender relations in a public forum by bringing the silenced marginalization of women to the forefront of the liberation struggle. The play connects the emergence of national consciousness through armed action with an emerging feminist consciousness demonstrated by the female characters’ active resistance to domesticity and coloniality. That is why theatre: seems to be the only art form that – by its power of transformation, but also by its need for a “presence” in the strongest sense of the word – belongs to the two arenas examined here: the public as well as the private. The effect of “catharsis” (or purification), which is its responsibility,

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causes the emotional reception that is aroused to be both aesthetic and political. (Djebar 2010) In other words, the merging of the public and private on stage represents a transgressive act to spotlight the aesthetics of gender within a male-determined agenda. As suggested by Djebar, theater gives women the necessary interspatial mobility through the visible “outing” of their stage presence; this spatial affirmation is denied within the patriarchal configurations of the home and state prison, two private spaces that define and regulate the workings of gender. The play is divided into four acts and ten tableaux; its thematic structure announces future Djebarian themes and preoccupations focusing in particular on the problematic positioning of women. At the same time, the text raises important questions about misguided idealism and the despair provoked by the political impasses that destroy the dreams and aspirations of young people. In this sense, it offers a dual critique of militarism and patriarchy through the non-glorification of war and the presentation of obdurate male ideologies that remain resistant to change. The play reveals the crisis of gender in the form of the male nationalists’ uncreative perceptions of gender roles during and after the revolution. The men reveal their duplicitous agenda of liberating Algeria from colonial rule, while imprisoning women and girls within the antiquated structures of the past. The revolution is associated with the activity of the masculine exterior, while the feminine ideals of the masculine struggle remain confined to the protecting realm of the interior. Gender roles are thereby inscribed within these patriarchal mappings of space as reflected by the feelings of imprisonment experienced by the young girl within the intimacy of the home. She exclaims to her mother: “On ne cloître plus les femmes – disaient-elles – tu vis dans une prison!” [“Women are no longer cloistered – they said – you live in a prison”] (Djebar and Carn 1969, 22). Under the tutelage of an authoritarian father and a submissive mother, the girl rejects the inevitability of a cloistered existence determined by the rule of the father. As Zahia Salhi states: “Rejecting their restrictive roles as mothers, wives and daughters in the private sphere of the household, women took on active roles in a wider public sphere” (2010, 116). The mother exemplifies the nationalist ideal of the martyred woman who is ideally conditioned to serve the interests of the nation through the stereotypical roles of nurturing. The mother’s identity is located in her domesticity. Her prescribed role is to invisibly “feed” the nation by producing strong male resistors who, in turn, will be energized to defend home and nation after receiving the mother’s nourishment. The mother implores her son to eat when he pays a clandestine visit to the family: “Il est temps que tu manges, mon fils … et que tu te reposes” [“It is time you had something to eat, my son … and that you rested”] (29). The mother’s care-giving role is permanently embedded within the patriarchal expectations of “sideline” female service. The father and

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son must be waited on unconditionally by the wife/mother due to the men’s active roles as income earners and freedom fighters located within a protectorprotected dynamic. Stora describes this passivity: Off to the sidelines of the battlefields, women were condemned to be nothing more than widows mourning a brother or a dead husband for the rest of their lives – repressing self-expression, taking refuge in invisibility, timelessness, the immobility of community and family ties. (1999, 80) The denial of self-expression, invisible domestic labor and demonstrated selflessness characterize the maternal condition in the absence of schooling and income-generating potential;9 the mother is forced to repress her innermost feelings, “la réserve de la mère” [“the mother’s reserve”] (Djebar and Carn 1969, 26) for fear of breaking a type-casted mold. In other words, the mother’s domestic servitude ensures the safekeeping of nationalist ideals within the protected haven of home space. The domesticated body of the mother remains inscrutable to external eyes; her invisibility provides the best defense against the intruding colonialists, while her silence guarantees non-opposition to questionable nationalist policies. Refusing to identify with this long-standing tradition of maternal abjection as the ideal paradigm of femininity, the girl feels stifled by the silencing and acquiescence that characterize the condition of women belonging to her mother’s generation. “D’ici mère, j’entends les cris de la passion, de la colère, du triomphe nu dans la mort … Je les entends dans ce silence. Et ce silence m’assassine” [“From here mother, I hear the cries of passion, anger, naked triumph in death … I hear them in this silence. And this silence kills me”] (23). The private-public space dichotomy is inscribed within a life-death paradigm; the strangling silence of the domestic milieu contrasts with the emotion-inspiring revolution that is taking place outside. The girl yearns for trans-spatial access; this mobility symbolizes a new model of femininity that, she believes, will be ushered in by the revolution: “Je vois des femmes. Les autres! Elles marchent sans voile. Elles me ressemblent” [“I see women. The others. They are walking without veils. They resemble me”] (23). For the girl, the new femininity uncovers the changing faces of Algerian women; the revolution inspires these women to refuse the physical and psychological veils imposed by society. The girl’s growing feminist consciousness coincides with her fervent national consciousness, wherein she believes that the political decolonization of Algeria will automatically favor the decolonization of gender through a feminized nationalism. Anxious to contribute actively to the radicalized struggles of Algeria instead of passively “receiving” freedom, she dreams of joining the resistance with her brother in an act of (self-)determination: “Je suis décidé … je veux partir … comme toi!” [“I have made up my mind … I want to leave … like you!”] (27). Ironically, the brother’s ideology of liberation does not include a gendered sensibility,

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thereby revealing the incompatibility between two levels of piety, both national and filial. As Lazreg states: “The FLN’s definition of women’s tasks in the war was based on a conventional understanding of the sexual division of labor” (1990, 767). The brother’s response to his sister betrays the embodied patriarchies within the nationalist movement when he expresses his strong disapproval: “Non, ta place est là, dans cette maison” [“No, your place is here, in this house”] (27). Based on a well-defined articulation of gender role division, the brother exposes the core ideology of both nationalists and colonialists in the following comments: “Chacun a son devoir dans ce combat: pour les uns, préparer l’avenir, pour les autres, garder ce qui paraît le plus pur du passé … Pour moi, tu es une des gardiennes de ce passé” [“Each one has his duty in this fight: for some it means preparing the future, for others, it means preserving the purity of the past … For me, you are one of these guardians of the past] (28). By relegating women to a mythical purist past, the brother denies them participatory agency in the postcolonial future; the patriarchal woman = tradition equation represents a form of cultural re-colonization. As Ketu Katrak argues: “Women were simply the ground on which debates about tradition were thrashed out; women themselves were not significant as human beings: tradition was” (1989, 168). The commoditization of women by the “guardian-of-tradition” trope is destined, once again, to immobilize them within the conceptual logic of the nationalist exception, a judgment that positions itself above and beyond the political and social interests of women. The brother finds his identity and calling in the resistance movement; he denies his sister the same privilege when he uses emotional blackmail to remind her of her primary duty: “N’oublie pas … nos parents! [“Don’t forget … our parents!”] (33), he states before leaving. In other words, the patriarchal configuration of the family provides the basic model for the national family; a disruption in familial roles threatens to destabilize national roles by compromising the order of the nation. He states: “J’ai peur de voir cette maison menacée” [“I am afraid of seeing this house threatened”] (29). The rules of the patriarchal home reflect the credo of the patriarchal nation in their common expectations for women, “la race des femmes humbles qui se baissent pour préparer la couche” [“the race of humble women who lower themselves to make beds”] (31). The sister opposes the traditional feminine characterizations of humility and domestic servility with an energized affirmation of women as resilient nomads of “la race des nomades” [“the race of nomads”] (31); their resistance in the desert is a timehonored convention of strength, free will, movement and independence. Ironically, the brother betrays his limited understanding of “other” womancentered traditions in Algeria; these very same “nomadic” customs inspire successive generations of Algerian women to fight the internal and external aggressor. In Act II, the reader learns that the girl has been with the resistance for one year. The play reveals the darker side of heroism by highlighting the consequences of the children’s activism on aging parents and the colonial

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brutality levelled against anyone suspected of underground activity. The father’s imprisonment by the French makes him a proxy prisoner for his son. The Algerian patriarch suffers the indignities of incarceration in a French prison, wherein he becomes a prisoner of space himself. The mother, on the other hand, is afforded a sense of mobility through her weekly visits to the prison: “Elle va chaque semaine à la prison … Père attend d’être jugé” [“She goes to the prison every week … Father awaits judgment”] (55). It is ironically the son who brings about the rupture in family ties when his outwardly projecting patriotism compromises his internal responsibilities toward his parents at home. Spatial disruptions within the family lead to gender role shuffling in times of war and the blurring of boundaries, as demonstrated by the example of the parents. The brother thinks of home: “Je dois être là-bas” [“I should be back there”] (55), while his sister expresses her joy for being away from home. She tells her brother: “Je voudrais que tu le saches: Je suis si heureuse!” [“I would like you to know: I am so happy!”] (55). At the same time, the second act also reveals that the girl is not an autonomous agent in the maquis. She is, in fact, engaged to the group commander who has just been fatally injured in an attack (56). Trading one patriarchal space for another, the girl exchanges masters at the same time; the commander replaces the father’s authority: “Depuis quand n’obéis-tu pas aux orders? Jusqu’à mon dernier souffle, c’est moi, ici, le responsible” [‘Since when do you disobey orders? Until my last breath, I am the one who is in charge here”] (60). This exchange reflects a broader network of patriarchal configurations within the resistance, “where men held positions of responsibility and command, and women executed orders,” according to Lazreg (1994, 124). The girl’s resolution to take charge of her own life by joining the maquis is altered by the dynamics of patriarchal love when she conflates love for the country (nationalistic love) with love for a man. The exigencies of patriarchal love are based on a command/obey binary to demonstrate how the social order of the resistance reflects well-defined gender hierarchies; young maquisades were at the very bottom of the organization on account of gender, age and inexperience. They were in an apprentice position vis-à-vis the more knowledgeable men despite their risk-taking and other valuable contributions. In fact, the identity of these girls depended on the master-student dialectic that gave their presence in the resistance a certain structure and coherence. To the dying commander’s comment, “je semblais te protéger” [“I seemed to protect you”] (64), the girl responds: “Je ne serais rien … sans toi … Rien!” [“I will be nothing … without you … Nothing!”] (64). In fact, she vanishes into total darkness at the end of the act (65): her disappearance coincides with the death of the commander. The final act opens with a scene from the prison, another patriarchal space representing colonial authority in its most primal state. One of the women prisoners compares the prison to a voracious monster reminiscent of Madame Lafrance in Bey’s novel, the very symbol of French coloniality in Algeria. She states: “Je la sens comme un être vivant. Une bête qui nous étouffe

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lentement … puis, de temps en temps, tout comme un fauve, elle a besoin de sang” [“I feel it as a living being. A beast that smothers us slowly … then, from time to time, as a savage beast, it needs blood”] (86). The prison provides a metaphor for the colonial savagery that progressively drained the blood of Algeria through torture, rape, economic exploitation and a general vampire-like relationship with the colonized. There are several examples of prisoner abuse and civilian brutality throughout the play, wherein torture and other war crimes provided France’s best chance to rehabilitate a dying empire. One of the prisoners remarks: “L’ennemi se voit perdre, il triche parce qu’il sent brusquement sa faiblesse … Mais maintenant, je sais: ils torturent parce qu’ils veulent nous humilier” [“The enemy sees himself in a losing position, he cheats because he suddenly sees his weakness … But now, I know: they torture because they want to humiliate us”] (93). Torture represents Empire’s defining imprint as well as its supreme power over supposedly defenseless victims. The prisoner’s body is forced to bear the physical and psychological marks of Empire through gendered models of enforcement; only death provides a perverse escape from this abjection. The “material queering” of male revolutionaries occurs when the “phantasmic Muslim-as-hypermasculine-hypersexual” stereotype shifts from “the metaphorical-discursive queering of Muslims to their material queering,” according to Paola Bacchetta (1999, 58). This reversal is realized within the highly sexualized dynamics of torture, as stated earlier. Emasculation equals sodomized rape through the normalization of these repressive and highly dehumanizing techniques influenced by Orientalist stereotypes of Arab/ Muslim men. As Lazreg argues: Systematic torture was not just an instance of violence committed by uncontrolled soldiers; it was part and parcel of an ideology of subjugation that went beyond Algeria’s borders … Torture was intimately linked to colonial history and to the nature of the colonial state. (2008, 3) The daily occurrence of torture was an acceptable part of the colonial regime through the violent silencing of these criminal acts against men, women and children. Unfortunately, torture’s permeability within coloniality also provided a transitional link to the next postcolonial phase, as highlighted by Lazreg: As with its colonial counterpart, the democratic state in crisis is especially attracted to torture because it is pure power, and affords absolute control. Engaging in torture for liberal democracies also provides an expedient and instantaneous response to a crisis defined as one of “security.” (2008, 7) The security crisis provoked by the body of the revolutionary under French rule is revived by the new nation as a means of suppressing dissension against

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its newly acquired power; this material absolutism reaches its most abject physical articulation against the gendered body during the 1990s. The play ends on a note of uncertainty, fear and disillusionment as the male prisoners await condemnation during the perilous hours of the “red dawn.” The women prisoners, on the other hand, ruminate about their future beyond the revolution. If the armed struggle provided the guerilla fighter Fatima with a temporary respite from domesticity, together with a new lease on life, the end of the revolution, she fears, will bring her back full circle to her original prison: “la maison, le ménage, les enfants qui crient” [“the house, housework and crying children”] (89). Fatima wonders about the insecure status of female freedom fighters in post-revolutionary Algeria, just as other women worry about possible repudiation by their husbands for having collaborated in a “male” operation. Did women bring honor or dishonor to the nation through their public service with men? How have patriarchal war myths criminalized women through negation, neglect and phallocentric selfaggrandizement? To quote Baya Hocine, a female revolutionary who was imprisoned and tortured by the French for her participation in the war: “En prison, on a tellement l’impression que lorsqu’on sortira, il y a aura les grands frères, on fera une Algérie socialiste … Et puis, on voit une Algérie qui se fait pratiquement sans nous … sans que personne ne pense à nous” [“In prison, we were so sure that once released, we would create a socialist Algeria together with the big brothers … And then, we see that Algeria is going ahead without us … no one is even thinking of us”] (Amrane-Minne 1994, 146). Will the scars and wounds borne by one generation be inflicted on the next as a symptom of trauma’s repeating violence? The play unsettles the reader/spectator with many answered questions that subvert the glorifying intent of colonial and nationalist victory narratives. Both Djebar and Carn seem to suggest that war is not a win-win situation for either aggressor or aggressed. As they demonstrate, the “success” of the revolution unveils the lost illusions, disappointments and hurt of men and women as the specter of future violence looms menacingly within the bloody hues of “freedom.” The profound pessimism reflected in the conclusion represents the oftenobscured underside of the War of Independence. It nevertheless nuances the people’s will to fight against colonial oppression, just as it highlights the women’s determination to fight for a better future by articulating silence. The revolution nevertheless offered women from the entire spectrum of Algerian society (urban/ rural, working class/bourgeois, schooled/unschooled) the opportunity to challenge patriarchy, revolutionize public space through their armed and civilian contributions, and expose the multifaceted condition féminine of Algerian women who could no longer be confined solely to victimhood and invisibility: “Women’s new status as warriors not only altered the patriarchal concept of the division of labour between the genders, but also challenged the wider power of patriarchy, threatening to erode its power and privileges,” claims Zahia Salhi (2010, 116). The new threat posed by women during and after the revolution could possibly explain the tenacious efforts

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made by the postcolonial regime to re-inscribe them within the invisibility of the private, as a way of upholding and defending the one-dimensional masculinity of Algeria.

Section 3: Historical trauma, gender and obscured silences in Leïla Sebbar’s La Seine était rouge Writing trauma, healing wounds Leïla Sebbar’s novel La Seine était rouge (The Seine was Red) offers another chapter on the feminine silences that punctuate colonial history. In this text, Sebbar presents one of the most censored events in Franco-Algerian history, an event that took place in the metropolitan capital, Paris, on October 17, 1961. Toward the end of the Algerian War of Independence, FLN forces in France organized a peaceful demonstration to protest stringent curfew laws impacting the free movement of Algerians in Paris. These restrictions were imposed by Maurice Papon; the infamous police prefect wanted to stifle any possible threat posed by alleged FLN supporters against French national security. Papon had previously collaborated with the Nazis under the Vichy regime to deport 1,500 Jews to concentration camps. Using similar techniques of repression, the commissioner ordered the violent quelling of the demonstration that included 30,000 Algerian civilians (men, women and children) through the heavy-handedness of the police. According to Michel Laronde, approximately 200-300 people were killed; 11,000 were arrested; some protestors were tortured and dumped into the Seine; and others disappeared when their bodies were concealed in wooded spaces around Paris (2007, 142). A certain number of survivors of the massacre were deported to their villages in Algeria or incarcerated without fair trial in prisoner camps until the end of the war. Papon received a general amnesty for his role in the October 17 massacre and was even given the Legion of Honor medal by Charles de Gaulle later that very same year. However, he was later condemned for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and sentenced to ten years in prison in 1999 when his complicity with the Vichy government was exposed (Donadey 2003, 194). The victimization of Algerian civilians was accompanied by an equally brutal censorship of the truth by French authorities. Laronde refers to this cover-up as “une histoire forclose,” a history foreclosed by official silencing (2007), while Anne Donadey characterizes it as the “Algeria syndrome,” (1996, 215) referring to France’s refusal to reconcile with its Algerian past. These silences exist even today after the fiftieth anniversary of Algerian independence. As quoted by the French weekly newspaper France-Soir on October 17, 2011: “Fifty years on and a wall of silence exists around these events. The Algerians of France would today like France to recognize its responsibility.”10 The incident nevertheless establishes the history of Algerian resistance on French soil, thereby uniting Algiers and Paris in a trans-spatial

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locus of decolonial resistance. This manifestation of Algerian dissidence in France also debunks stereotypes about the passivity and subservience of immigrants in the host country who are supposedly anxious to keep a low profile in the face of the law. By claiming their space through peaceful protest, the Algerian immigrants affirm their “right to enter history” (Laronde 2007, 147) through the visibility and articulation of presence in a reconfigured “metropolitan landscape” (Fulton 2007, 35). However, on a recent state visit to Algeria, on the fiftieth anniversary of Algerian independence in 2012, Sarkozy’s successor François Hollande broke the official French silence surrounding the tragedy by acknowledging it as a “bloody repression.” When he made the statement, “the Republic recognizes these acts with clarity,” Hollande finally admitted to France’s culpability in the massacre fifty-one years after the event, even though he did not apologize for France’s “colonial system” during his visit. Hollande’s quasi acknowledgement of an egregious act was an attempt to forge “a strategic partnership between France and Algeria, treating each other as equals … ” The French premier thereby expected the petroleum-rich former colony to credibly “buy” his clean slate proposal by which he hoped to replace France’s brutal colonial legacy with a new chapter in economic partnership. The lack of an outright apology for France’s colonial legacy together with the emphasis on renewed economic ties with Algeria insinuates the makings of an updated twenty-firstcentury colonial agenda. The creatively disguised colonial rhetoric is nevertheless made quite explicit by the president’s insistence that he “did not come here … to seek repentance or make excuses. I speak what is the truth, what is history … I’m not here to open the closets. I’m here so that we may build a new house together” (Ouali and Ganley 2012) – a new house built by Algerian labor of course, in this not-so-subtle imposition of a foreclosed historical “truth.” Sebbar sets her novel in 1996, thirty-five years after the tragedy, and frames it in terms of a ritualistic and discursive claiming of memory or anamnesis, as suggested by Donadey and other Francophone postcolonial scholars, such as Michel Laronde, Dawn Fulton and Mildred Mortimer. As Mortimer argues: “Given Leïla Sebbar’s unique perspective on France and Algeria, it is not surprising that she has been drawn to the process of recovering and reinterpreting colonial history … The state of amnesia surrounding the events of the Algerian has been harmful to both nations” (2010, 1247). Marking the fraught passage between “amnesia and anamnesis” (Donadey 1999, 111), La Seine is a novel that commemorates the victims and survivors of October 17, 1961, as it acknowledges the previous work of writers, publishers and filmmakers on the subject in the opening dedication. However, Sebbar “is the first to use the historical event as the entire subject of a novel,” according to Mortimer (2010, 1248). The novel is constructed in the form of a collective témoignage (testimony) featuring the voices of diverse witnesses who were connected to the tragedy in some way – policemen, demonstrators, Algerian harkis (collaborators),

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women resistors, French sympathizers of the Algerian cause and eyewitnesses, among others. Like Djebar, Sebbar insists on the polyphonic nature of historical recovery to avoid the partiality and pitfalls of propaganda, ideology and selective re-membering. She demonstrates how the road to anamnesis is a tenuous one due to the multiple layers of official silencing and auto-censure that characterize historical narration; in these accounts, historical silences intersect with intergenerational “family secrets” (Stora 2003, 24) to stifle communication and disable catharsis on the national and familial levels. The novel also underscores the danger of concealing family truths from the younger generations who are then forced to embark on their own quest for knowledge in the pursuit of identity and positionality in France.11 The novel focuses on three young people whose identities represent the different dimensions of French and Algerian history – beur, “French,” immigrant/exile. These characters are nevertheless connected through their mothers and a grandmother figure Lalla; the mothers Flor and Mina themselves are closely linked by their activism and solidarity during the liberation movement. Amel is the sixteen-year-old beurette daughter of Noria and is French of Algerian origin; the twenty-five-year-old Louis is the son of a “French-French” mother Flora who supported the War of Independence with her husband; Omer is a twentyseven-year-old journalist who fled to France from Algeria to escape the political and religious violence of the 1990s; his mother Mina also left Algeria to avoid persecution. Although the novel focuses primarily on the past, reminders of the current civil crisis in Algeria permeate the entire text to highlight the linked, albeit silent traumas of colonialism and decolonization: “Today others are carrying out assassinations,” laments Noria, “leaving cadavers to rot in public places, at the side of the road – the bodies of brothers, fathers, friends … enemies. A silence” (Sebbar 2008, 29). When the young protagonists ask their mothers and Lalla specific questions about October 17 and the war in general, they encounter stony silences and frustrating evasions. As Mortimer states: “Introducing two generations of protagonists, French and Algerians who experienced the Algerian war directly, and their children who, years later, seek to understand it, Sebbar evokes the tension between an older generation committed to silence, and a younger one in search of anamnesis” (2010, 1248). In fact, the novel begins with an act of stonewalling: “Her mother said nothing to her, nor did her mother’s mother” (2008, 1). The mother and grandmother conspire in French and Arabic to preserve a closed culture of silence as a way to shield the teenager from the painful reality of the war, a truth too harsh to both divulge and digest. The grandmother states: “Secrets, my girl, secrets that you shouldn’t know, that must be kept hidden. But you’ll learn them some day, when you need to. The day will come, don’t worry; it will come and it won’t be a happy one for you” (1). Implying that Amel is still too young to comprehend the gravity and the darkness of the past, the mother and grandmother believe that their silences shield Amel from the transmission of traumatic wounds. It is Noria who finally decides to talk in front of Louis’s

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camera using the camera lens as a self-reflecting mirror to speak aloud. Noria sees her own image projected onto the lens; she thereby feels comfortable to speak “to herself” through an impersonal third-party medium, even though she has difficulty remembering events that took place when she was only seven years old: “I don’t know,” she confesses (27). Nevertheless, her decision to narrate is an important one. First, she is able to highlight the many existing gaps and erasures in the history of female resistance during the war, and second, as a female narrator, she provides a womanly tribute to the heroism of French and Algerian women like her mother and Flora who collaborated against the French government. These women created their own subversive political and feminist coalitions within the warring spaces of Algeria and France; their underground activism adds another missing chapter to the war story. The novel highlights the psychological symptoms of adult and childhood trauma manifested through amnesia, deliberate forgetting and silence. Trauma’s discursive marks are to be found in ellipses, abruptly ended sentences, defensiveness and narrative ambiguity. The impossibility of discourse and the inability to translate thought into action become the root cause of traumatic memory, the very site of the body’s multiple defenses in a history of violence (Mehta 2007, 41). Linking trauma with the inassimilable in terms of the psychic wounding of the mind, Cathy Caruth offers the following definition: “Trauma … is always the story of a wound that cries out, that addresses us in the attempt to tell us of a reality or truth that is not otherwise available” (2006, 4). Caruth’s formulation lodges trauma in an in-between space of simultaneous alienation and recuperation, wherein the body generates its own impulsion to speak the unspeakable in an attempt to give public voice to a private story. The body represents the very locus of this “impossible” history, whereby, as Caruth states, “the traumatized … become themselves the symptom of a history that they cannot entirely possess” (2006, 5). Imbibing the wounds of history, the body symbolizes an impossible text when it preserves the trajectories of trauma within its memory. Lalla’s refusal to speak is a defensive action to impede the reliving of past pain in the present: “‘When the time is right,’ repeats Lalla. ‘She could die before that day comes’” (Sebbar 2008, 5). The foreclosed history that resists articulation indicates the ways in which survivors ingest the wounds of coloniality according to cultural and political conventions. The censoring and re-presentation of the war and October 17 through euphemistic labelling, political manipulations and disavowals on both sides of the Mediterranean provoke the internalization of these same historical coverups by the body through its own internal secrets. In other words, historical secrets mirror the private corporeal secrets that remain hidden from public disclosure within the nation and the family. For Mina, speaking represents a form of betrayal to the revolutionary cause because it means divulging information meant for private dissemination only. On the other hand, the act of speaking itself reopens fresh wounds through the pain of remembering and

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invoking: “I’ll stop talking, I don’t want to repeat it again and again. It’s like madness,” states Mina (8). For Mina, narration does not bring about catharsis through the proverbial talking cure. Instead, talking instigates the madness of remembering in a regressive cycle of suffering and haunting. As Michael Humphrey argues: Survivors are … haunted by the past with their private memory unable to be assimilated into public memory. Consequently, their experience cannot be commemorated, preventing them from reconstructing the self through narration. Instead, the mnemonic of violence leaves the mark of regression buried in the individual; through terror and trauma the victim is silenced. (2002, 94) In other words, if public memory bears the scars of silencing, private memory encounters the foundational impasses of non-resolution through the unsuccessful integration of the public and private. The private-public space dichotomy also reflects the broader gendered spatialities of visibility/invisibility in Algerian culture, whereby the women’s involvement remains confined to the realm of an introverted inner space. Consequently, there is no public forum or intellectual space to articulate these gendered experiences in the absence of formalized language and dialogue. The women remain outside the scope of representation through the polemics of institutionalized patriarchal language and its inability to translate a gendered experience, as stated earlier. These linguistic refractions collude with the nationalist refractions toward gender, whereby “following independence, the women who took part in the national struggle suddenly disappeared from public life. When all those who had fought in the war of independence were called upon to build the new state, women were badly represented” (AmraneMinne 1999, 68). As women were seen in an ancillary and supportive role, even in armed combat, they were obliged to return to the private sphere when their “public” service was not needed any longer. Several women themselves decided to retreat from public life “to return to normality and to everyday life” (Amrane-Minne 1999, 68) when they felt there was no further motivation to fight. However, several of them like Fatima Benosmane, one of the first women to respond to the nationalist call for action, later regretted her political inaction. As she states in one of Amrane-Minne’s books, Les femmes algériennes dans la guerre: In my view, we the militants made a mistake when we did not try to explain to young people what the war of liberation was about. It remains a big blank in their minds because we did not tell them about it to allow them to judge for themselves this period on its own merit. We gave them nothing to make them appreciate our achievements. (1991, 24)12

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At the same time, the women are able to speak to each other within this traumatic spatiality, as they share a common private language of pain and survival that remains foreign to the younger generation born after the war. They share their experiences of incarceration and resistance in Algeria and France, wherein they see themselves as survivors and not victims. The novel highlights the collaborative efforts of Algerian and French women who colluded in their common fight against colonial and nationalist patriarchs, thereby broadening the scope of feminist resistance in the Franco-Algerian war. The women’s resistance erased territorial boundaries between the two countries through transnational solidarities, just as the French erased boundaries during colonization “as, by 1848, Algeria had been incorporated into French territory and divided into three French departments” (Donadey 2003, 2). According to Donadey (3): “It is only since the 1962 Independence that we can speak of ‘Algerian’ versus ‘French’ peoples per se. Before and during decolonization, legally there were no ‘Algeria’ or ‘Algerians,’ only ‘French Algeria.’” For this reason, the novel provides an undifferentiated cartography of feminist struggle by blurring the liminal boundaries “in Algeria, in France” (Sebbar 2008, 8). As a French sympathizer for Algerian independence, Flora belonged to the group of “the suitcase couriers” (99) who were imprisoned by the French for alleged sedition against the colonial state. She meets members of the Algerian resistance in the prison cell and forms lasting relationships with them, as symbolized by the collective knitting of woolen scarves. Spindles, knitting needles, looms and other phallically constructed instruments needed to knit and spin are forbidden in the prison cell due to the “lethal” potential of these pointed objects. These tools can create a beautiful product on the one hand, and serve as a weapon for self-defense on the other. The female prisoners decide to knit scarves for practical and political purposes – to creatively weave a collective protest against their incarceration and protect themselves from the bitter cold of a French winter: When she was in prison, Flora listened to her cellmates and one of them always said: “If we had a loom, one like our mothers and grandmothers, we would have fun teaching you, Frenchwoman, how to weave, and we would be warm in winter here. Let’s draw up a petition for a loom and some wool. Why not? The supervisors will see us busy, doing something useful. Who will think we can plot, organize a hunger strike?” (8) In a cultural reversal, it is the Algerian women who teach the Frenchwoman Flora a useful skill as a means to partake in an ancient woman-centered tradition that can nevertheless be used for revolutionary purposes. The women use tradition as a “cover” to highlight their prison activism that includes plotting, petition drawing and organizing a hunger strike. As revealed in the novel: “They got salvaged wool and knitting needles to make scarves … Flora

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kept hers, green and red, knitted in moss stitch … She learned the letters of the Arabic alphabet and some Kabyle words” (8). The women weave the bright colors of the Algerian flag of independence on French soil. Their scarves reflect the multicolored plurality of Algeria and affirm the revolutionary presence of Algeria in France. At the same time, this creative skill underscores the intensive female labor that was responsible for both “producing” and ensuring the fruition of the revolution: “Wool is scarce; it’s too expensive; no one wants to pay them for their work, and what work,” (8) exclaims Mina. Mina’s comments reveal two important truisms, namely, the commoditization of women’s labor within the revolution in their role as “fire carriers” and “suitcase couriers,” and the exploitation of Algerian female labor within the capitalist French market. As Mina claims: “You know, Algeria is forgetting its people, and its women weavers … Soon they won’t know how to weave anymore. Some of the women are weaving for the Gobelins factory in Lodève” (8). Mina highlights the women’s skills as political and cultural guerrillas, and the inattention paid to them by the postcolonial regime in Algeria and within the diaspora. The fate of the women weavers reflects the colonial and postcolonial ambiguity of Algerian women before and after the revolution and the continued exploitation of working-class immigrants in France. Algeria has forgotten its diaspora in exile through political excisions between nationals and French immigrants, thereby disavowing an important component of its own history – the creation of diaspora as a particular postcolonial condition. In other words, women are exploited in Algeria for a postcolonial ideal, just as the exploitation of working-class female immigrants remains a reality in postcolonial France. Colonial ties of dependence and economic oppression are revived in the diaspora through the ideal of the colonial chic, namely, the production of exotic Algerian products for the Orientalist market that consumes these female bodies of labor. In either case, the women remain invisible behind ideals and factory walls as they continue to feed nation and diaspora through “traditional” women’s work. As Madelaine Hron states: “Immigrants are so often absent in social discourse, and excluded from civil, national, and labour rights, although they are manifestly present in the social order, as labouring bodies” (2009, 85). Solidarity networks At the same time, the novel problematizes the idea of female resistance through a transnational focus. Flora and Mina think of their days together, with Mina saying: You’re going to say I’m nostalgic for prison … for those days, those weeks we spent together in jail cells; yes I am. There was complicity, friendship, there were discoveries in spite of our disputes … Interrogations, threats … persecutions, humiliations. I haven’t forgotten them, but I never again found that profound, true, sincere solidarity. (12)

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Their solidarity networks create “imagined” coalitions among women united by a single cause despite the dangers of war. Both Algerian and French women unite in their common preoccupation about the postwar status of women after “liberation” has been won. The women integrate their gendered and political concerns into a “transversal organizing,” wherein, as Nira Yuval-Davis posits, “perceived unity and homogeneity are replaced by dialogues which give recognition to the specific positionings of those who participate in them as well as to the ‘unfinished knowledge’ that each such situated positioning can offer” (1997, 9). Yuval-Davis continues on to argue that “the boundaries of a transversal dialogue are determined by the message rather than the messenger” (9). These gender negotiations made possible by strategic activism take on a broader scope through the “unfinished knowledge” related to gender concerns. The novel highlights the women’s commitment to these lifetime solidarities occasioned by the near-death experiences of war. As a symbol of this transnational commitment, one of Flora’s Algerian cellmates sends her a woven rug: “Her cellmate from Aït-Hachem, after their prison days were over, had a rug woven for Flora” (Sebbar 2008, 8). The rug provides a permanent reminder of the homosocial prison solidarities in Algeria and France, and the weaving together of eternal bonds of friendship concretized in thought and creative action. In this way, the women imagine their own gender-friendly nation within and across geographical boundaries by subverting the patriarchal configurations of Empire and the nation-state; they create a political and social refuge for themselves within the liminal space of the prison. As Lazreg states: “Women forged bonds with one another that transcended the usual episodic solidarity that characterized their relations during peacetime. The experience of jail and torture was a significant component of this bonding, which cut across class, ethnicity, and geographical origin” (1994, 38). The idea of Franco-Algerian solidarity is of personal significance to Sebbar, whose very identity is located in war, violence and transnationality, as stated previously. Her identity simultaneously personifies and neutralizes the tensions inherent in a mixed-race encounter, wherein “her blood mixes both colonizer and colonized, perpetrator and victim,” according to Helen Vassallo (2008, 190). Sebbar’s call for transnationality is reflected in these synchronic gender alliances that are also a vital part of French history. Instead of making value judgments against “traitors and conspirators,” the novel focuses instead on the cause of human rights and social justice espoused by French intellectuals themselves, and concretized in the actions of “the suitcase couriers, including the women couriers” (Sebbar 2008, 11-12). The novel raises larger philosophical questions about who constitutes a traitor or a hero in instances of war, when an entire civilian population has been criminalized and oppressed by the violence of French colonization and the brutality of FLN repression (29). At the same time, Sebbar’s text also demonstrates how the democratic principles of the French state are compromised by its visible

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repression against its own dissenting citizens; they were tortured, imprisoned or executed for their conscientious objection to the war. In a conversation with her son, Flora reveals the presence of the women’s prisons in France: “His mother had told him about the women’s prisons in which she had been jailed during the Algerian war. The prisons were in the provinces, and in Paris” (11). Anxious to document this chapter in his mother’s life, Louis starts making a documentary on the war in his search for answers. His mother’s defensive response, “do you really need to make this film? It isn’t your story … ” (12), only strengthens his commitment to “make the best film about this chapter in history” (13). Flora’s silence masks the pain of the past – “how many of them wish to forget, and they do forget” (12) – and exposes the unanswered questions related to her own sense of loyalty to family and country. She states: “We were young, your father and I, we were students, we were idealists. I’m not sure we gave it much thought” (12–13). The burden of betrayal is a heavy cross to bear, implicating the parents in an ambiguous emotional battle of mixed heroism and condemnation. At the same time, Flora’s convictions energize her overt and continued activism revealed in her son’s comments: You made a commitment. It was dangerous. You risked death, getting caught up in the settling of old scores, an attack. You went to prison. Dad had to go into hiding, and afterwards you were at the Algerian protest march on October 17, 1961 … You can’t say you didn’t think about it. (13) The activism of the suitcase couriers nevertheless remains a shameful issue for the French state; like the war in general, this section must be eliminated from the national archives to destroy any traces of French dissidence. On the other hand, when Noria breaks the feminine silences of the past, she accomplishes two important actions. By speaking out about the past, she gives traumatic experience a definite structure in testimony by textualizing pain in narrative form: “ … she talks and talks and talks. She doesn’t stop” (17). The unleashing of trauma unfurls the violence of the past in uncontrollable speech acts as a medium to exorcise the painful past. In so doing, she establishes a maternal cartography of diaspora when she frames and claims her story: I was little, maybe seven years old. I remember that we lived at number 7. The number 7 was written on the wooden door in white paint. I don’t know how the mailman was able to deliver the mail. Streets without names, other streets with weird names, street signs that were often illegible … Those streets … if you could even call them streets. (19) The invisibility of the immigrant ghetto characterized by unnamed streets and an isolated location reveals the colonial efforts to further obscure Algeria

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in France and any relationship between the two countries. The politics of immigrant containment in distant suburbs, such as the La Folie shantytown near Nanterre, is a strategy to control and confine the movement of immigrants between the suburb and the city center. Moreover, the pejorative naming of the ghetto as La Folie (“madness”) associates immigrant space with deviance; its supposed “pathology” provides the colonial justification for its spatial alterity within the urban landscape. At the same time, when Noria describes the painted door number as a point of orientation for the mailman, she reverses the town’s peripheral non-location by mapping “these shunned existences onto the peri-urban landscape,” according to Fulton (2007, 33). She lays claim to her maternal locus of origin. These spatial relocations correspondingly re-center the immigrant voices from the margins to the center when Noria spotlights her mother’s otherwise unrecognized revolutionary leadership; the mother’s initiative mobilizes an entire community of women through the politicization of domestic action. Noria witnesses the women’s organizational skills and their intimate understanding of collective action. This networking is a part of her mother’s own historicity: My mother came to Nanterre. My father bought her a secondhand Singer sewing machine and she did dressmaking at home. Not only dressmaking. Working with women of the shantytown, she hid political tracts in fabric, in wedding dresses; the women distributed them. Women musicians would spread the news from wedding to wedding, from one celebration to another. I watched my mother and her friends prepare them; they said they were kitchen recipes and letters for the families back home … I later learned that the tracts were signed by the FLN. They were calling for the protest march on October 17, 1961. It was to be a peaceful march protesting the curfew imposed only on Algerians by the Paris prefect, Papon. (Sebbar 2008, 26) The women skillfully convert domesticity into political activity through their “discrete” feminism. Margot Badran argues that this covert activism rescues it “from being understood as an exclusively public and explicit phenomenon, and thus provides an analytical framework within which to locate and explain the more comprehensive feminist historical experience … ” and goes on to say that “an analysis of Arab women’s discourse allows us to see feminism where we had not previously thought to look” (Badran and Cooke 1990, xv, xxxiii). The claiming of experience through the “discrete” parameters of an interstitial feminist subjectivity enables the women to draw their own maps of resistance on non-patriarchal terms using kitchens as war rooms and dressmaking to disseminate vital information. The women create their own maquis in France to fight the enemy from within; at the same time, they complement the struggles of their sisters in Algeria through a borderless sorority. This sisterhood nevertheless remained severely threatening to

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nationalists and Islamists in the third phase of political violence that wrecked Algeria from 1992–1995.

Section 4: Denouncing the Algerian civil war in Maïssa Bey’s Nouvelles d’Algérie The Algerian civil war represents one of the most brutal periods in decolonial history. Over 200,000 people were summarily killed, while thousands of others were brutally wounded, displaced, abducted and sexually violated, according to the Amnesty International Report of 1996. This war was particularly violent toward civilians due to “une tuerie en traître” [“a treacherous form of killing”] (Assima 1995, 144) targeting women, children and the elderly in particular, as reflected in Assima’s novel. Thirty years of an ineffective and repressive one-party rule effectively stymied the country through rampant corruption, unemployment, the neglect of “minority” groups such as the Berbers, loss of morale despite the success of the revolution, continued gender marginality, a lack of social services, and state violence, among other failures. The inherent crisis in civil society created structural impasses in the lives of ordinary people due to mounting socio-economic pressures that culminated in the “bread riots,” an uprising against the government on October 5, 1988. The uprising initially took the form of peaceful demonstrations and general strikes. However, these protests quickly degenerated into large-scale riots and the destruction of public property by angry disenfranchised youth who had the most to lose in a tenuous economic and social situation. The opposition was brutally crushed by the military, as the official branch of the government’s armed forces. The repressive methods used by the army, including mass arrests, torture and death-inducing injuries inflicted on protestors, only fuelled the anger and frustration felt toward the government. As stated by Bensmaïa: For the first time since independence, the Army dared to shoot at people, at the people, in cold blood, with several hundred wounded or dead. Absolutely nothing could justify these deaths. The main consequence of these ignoble facts was that the Army, the sole guarantor of a certain national cohesion and especially of a certain public “order” (one dare not say, of a certain justice), would lose its legitimacy and its (exorbitant) power, its pseudoneutrality, and its status as an arbitrating power (among parties, regions, clans, and so on). (1997, 95) The Islamists were quick to capitalize on the festering tensions by brainwashing and recruiting many disenfranchised young people into their ranks (Salhi 2010a, 169). Jane Hiddleston explains the reasons behind the growing popularity of the radicalized Islamists:

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The possibility of change offered the illusion of salvation to the bruised egos of young men who were denied their masculinity in the new Algeria through economic and social dispossession. Prominent Algerian intellectuals also backed the uprising; they protested the government’s anti-freedom of expression decrees and its monolingual Arab “authenticity” credo as the defining elements of Algerian identity. More importantly, the populist movement was strongly supported by women’s organizations outraged by the passing of the retrograde 1984 Family Code that institutionalized their second-class status as “minors.”13 As Lazreg argues: The “discovery” of citizenship is a powerful tool of protest in the hands of political opposition groups and social groups such as women, traditionally excluded from the full enjoyment of their political rights. It opens up a new era of inquiry into the many dimensions of citizenship and their culturally specific expressions as well. (2000, 58) The revolution had nevertheless led to a radicalized prise de conscience among many women and feminist associations unwilling to regress in terms of gender ideologies dictated by the nationalists and the Islamists. As Salhi argues: The situation of women in this new political climate is indeed most intriguing, as while they remain minors under the dictates of the Family Code, which denies them their civil rights, they can now enjoy political citizenship and form their own associations through which they can make claims for equality before the law. (2010a, 170) The opposition to the Family Code saw the emergence of new coalitions between war veterans and a new generation of feminists who refused to abdicate their rights in postcolonial Algeria. The women considered the Family Code to be a violent assault on their integrity; they felt betrayed by a government that had used them for its revolutionary purposes with promises of post-revolutionary gender enhancement. Revolutionary activist Khalida

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Messaoudi expresses her outrage against the FLN government when she exclaims: “Le traître qui veut le Code, qui impose le Code c’est bien L’Etat” [“The traitor that wants the Code, that imposes the Code, is indeed the State”] (1995, 102). At the same time, the women were also deeply concerned by the government’s open concessions to religious and political conservatives who supported the full implementation of the Code and its biases. In an attempt to liberalize the country after the 1988 riots through a public showing of “democracy,” the government decided to hold parliamentary elections in 1991. The overwhelming success of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) led to a swift annulment of the election results and the subsequent banning of the FIS by the FLN. The government declared a state of emergency in February 1992 to control the volatile responses to the annulment, and, the very next month, two of the most important leaders of the FIS, Abassi Madani and Ali Benhadj, were arrested. These arrests inaugurated a reign of terror when the politicized FIS launched a counter-attack by splintering into several armed terrorist groups, the most violent being the GIA (Groupe Islamique Armé/Armed Islamic Group), the AIS (Armée Islamique du Salut/Islamic Salvation Army) and the MIA (Mouvement Islamique Armé/Armed Islamic Movement), according to Salhi (2010a, 173). As a consequence, the military became more militarized with its own radicalized security forces; competing patriarchies on both sides dragged the country into one of the most horrific moments of its history. Civilians paid the ultimate price with their blood, creativity, feminist aspirations and human rights sensibilities when confronted by the militias, wherein: The fear of civilians was intensified by the random killings of police, journalists, intellectuals, and women. The armed groups issued death threats against the intelligentsia, government security workers, and feminist activists. It became very obvious to all that the terrorists harboured a worrying misogyny. (Salhi 2010a, 174) At the same time, Franco-Algerian historian Luis Martinez, writing under a pseudonym to protect his identity, linked the violence to a capitalist machinery of economic profiteering and personal advancement. In his book, The Algerian Civil War: 1990–1998, Martinez accused the many selfproclaimed leaders of independent Algeria of highjacking the country through a “war-oriented imaginaire” in which violence becomes the most effective and immediate “method for accumulating wealth and prestige” (2000, 4–5). He denounced these “political bandits” (10) for compromising the ideals of the new nation through their self-serving agendas of personal aggrandizement, obsessive control and social dystopia, wherein these personalized power-engendering motivations are protected by well-maintained structures of violence used as “an economic and political resource” (4–5). The civil war was therefore a profitable economic enterprise for the power-hungry

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fraternity; it was not necessarily the lone result of a violent “breakdown of the political system” (4-5), as has been argued by other historians. Violence was also a means to ensure what I call the “confirmed masculinity” of these men in a colluding dialectic of elitist wealth and populist death. Women soon found themselves caught between two levels of totalitarian behavior – the institutionalized misogyny of the FLN and the reactive misogyny of the FIS: “d’un côté les fous en djellabas, de l’autre les voleurs au pouvoir” [“on one side, the madmen in djellabas and, on the other, the thieves in power”] (Assima 1995, 94). The call to veiling, traditionalism and the seclusion of women ironically echoed the anti-constitution legislation of the nationalist government in the form of the Family Code, thereby exposing two traitors to the women’s cause. As Salhi states: As early as the 1970s women became a clear target for the Islamic fundamentalists, whose aim was to bully them out of the public sphere through intense harassment, verbal abuse, and segregation in the work place. This quickly escalated into physical attacks in the street against women who were dressed “indecently,” throwing acid on their bodies and attacking them with knives. In the face of these brutal attacks, which often disfigured the victims, the government offered no rejoinder. It is often reported that when women complained to the police about their assailants, they were told that they had brought it upon themselves by their immoral conduct. It was in fact this silence and sometimes the complicity of the neo-conservative state that encouraged the fundamentalists’ attack on women. The way a given society chooses to control the violence inherent in it reflects the value it places on mutual respect and tolerance of difference, and on human rights, democracy, and good governance. (2010a, 167–168) The bad governance in relation to women’s issues only motivated the women to become more visible in public space through their anti-misogyny demonstrations and intergenerational coalitions protesting abuse, spatial violations, terrorism and the deprivation of civil liberties. Amrane-Minne states that it was the women’s initiative that mobilized the public protests against terrorism on May 22, 1994 (1994, 12). Calling for an end to the violence, the women were very vocal and noticeable in the various demonstrations for peace and civic justice. However, for the conservatives, women were becoming too visible in municipal space due to their professional employment, political participation and increasing access to the public sector. Consequently, they became the “natural” targets of the religious conservatives who wanted to bully them back into the invisibility of domesticity through intimidation and violence (12). Women writing war Women writers, for their part, have brought the struggle into an open forum through their discursive solidarities with their male counterparts; they have

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been at their creative best during this dark period of anomie that has pitted the lacerating sword against the unyielding pen: “ce combat dément du couteau contre la plume” [“this demented struggle of the knife against the pen”] (Zinaï-Koudil 1997, 64). The women have used writing as a means to sustain and celebrate life in the face of two forms of “fundamentalist” terror instigated by the military’s special forces and the armed Islamists (Mokeddem 1995, 98). The radicalized obsession with the female body has defined the basic credo of these groups in terms of purist notions of identity, religiosity, Westernization and a woman’s place in society; these misogynist readings of gender have resulted in some of the worst human rights violations, a violation decried by the writers in their creative work. In Nouvelles d’Algérie, Maïssa Bey reveals the multifaceted nature of gendered terrorism in this war without a face. She describes this amorphous war in a novella, Au commencement était la mer: “Cette guerre qui ne dit pas son nom … plus terrible encore que l’autre, la vraie, celle où l’ennemi se découvre, s’affronte à visage découvert” [“This nameless war … worse than the other one, the true one, in which the enemy shows his face, and fights openly”] (1996, 10). In her writings, Bey describes the faceless nature of terror in a culture of fear and suspicion to show how, for the misogynists, the spilling of blood, especially women’s blood, restores Algeria’s lost virginity through the reinstating of an “imagined” pre-colonial gender normativity. Questions of gender are thus the focal point in this crisis, wherein misogyny validates its cruel trajectory on and through the female body. The dismembered body reflects the postcolonial dismembering of the country, a primary aggression chronicled and contested in the women’s narratives. As Susan Ireland states: Taken together, the women’s testimonial narratives chronicle the rise of the FIS, the wave of violence that has swept across the country since 1992, and the relationship of the former to political, economic, and gender issues. At the same time, they document the effects of civil war on ordinary people’s lives – death threats, assassinations, torture, terrorism, curfews, “disappearances,” and constant fear. (2001, 179) The women document these effects through traumatic re-creations of the real. In fact, what we do see on both sides is a radicalized manifestation of “absolute” politics, since “the most cursory study of Islam’s early history will show that such traditions have, in fact, no relevance to authentic Islam or its spirit,” according to Salma Jayyusi (2009a, 13). Nouvelles d’Algérie frames a dual problematic in French. The word nouvelles refers to short stories as well as to the news; the title thereby reflects the inscription of reality in the fictional through tenuous negotiations between fiction and testimony. The text is divided into ten untitled chapters framing a collective experience; its very writing and publication represents an act of postcolonial dissidence and an attempt at objectivity. The chapters are titled

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at the very end in the table of contents section to avoid skewed readings or narrative manipulations often occasioned by descriptive titles. Bey critiques the long period of repressive censorship that has ironically characterized postrevolutionary Algeria by exposing the horror and terror of daily life in a country under siege. She exposes the duplicity and inequities of Algeria’s “national harmony law” and its decree on “national reconciliation,” wherein the government basically banned any attempts by the media, human rights groups or civilians to seek justice for the crimes committed during the civil war period. Equating reconciliation with non-accountability, the government’s treatment of dissent was characteristically brutal, ranging from threats, arrests, “mysterious” disappearances to death itself, as will be analyzed in Part III, which focuses on revolutionary theater. Bey states: For many of those who suffered it was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; others, however, were killed deliberately … But one thing applies to all of them. No one wants to talk about them, about the fact of this never-ending grief for people who, after all, were entirely innocent, because most of them had nothing to do with either side. (Sabra 2011) Determined to offer some closure to the never-ending grief of the people, Bey creates her own counter-narrative of reconciliation to expose and denounce the horror. This exposure represents a means to both come to terms with the violence and begin the process of personal and national mourning outlawed by governmental interdictions: “Without an honest reappraisal of the past there can be no democratizing process in society or in the political structures. We will never achieve anything in Algeria until we get the truth out into the open and begin acknowledging facts,” states Bey. “This is something that has to involve everyone: victims, perpetrators, those politically responsible for the violence and the authorities who have imposed a total blackout on the lives of hundreds and thousands of families” (Sabra 2011). Writing offers a healing medium in which to deal with the darkness of disallowed grief on the one hand, and in which to expose the governmental blacking out of a shameful experience on the other. The short story format does not privilege a unique experience or partisan ideology characteristic of mediated reporting or state-sponsored propaganda. As a representation of the alternative press, the stories provide the daily news by narrating the unedited trajectory of a fratricidal war that has held an entire civilian population hostage. By espousing the viewpoint of the aggressed, Bey states that she: wanted to liberate captive voices and inaudible screams – “miniscule lives” – to bring them into written history, because just as they are, they represent the underside of a society that claims, quite hypocritically, that it has freed itself from all forms of oppression. (Ruta 2006, 16)

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Through her writing, Bey exposes the murderous intentionality of the regime and the politicized face of religious radicalism. For her, these ideological stances are in complete opposition to the egalitarian, peaceful and humanitarian ethos of genuine Islamic faith. Award-winning Lebanese author Amin Maalouf describes the exceptional nature of this destructive identity politics as “des identités meurtrières” [“murderous identities”] (1998); these self-identifications are based on the violent suppression of difference. The government suppresses the dissenting voices that compromise its unilateral authority, while the religious conservatives terrorize women because they represent Westernized modernity. These identities immobilize the country through a structural paralysis that nevertheless makes its presence felt through the conforming politics of violence. The language of violence manifests the “role of the inhuman” (Ruta 2006, 17) in its most grotesque configurations. Bey’s stories raise several questions: Is it possible to narrate the inhuman through aesthetic mediation? Can language contextualize the “un-representable” in this continuum of violence spanning the past and the present, the private and the public (Kalisa 2009, 3)? As Bey herself asks: “Comment trouver les mots pour dire indicible?” [“How does one find words to express the inexpressible?”] (1998, 12). How does the body script violence in a pre-discursive language that eludes patriarchal signification? Can horror be actualized in text to exorcise pain and achieve anamnesis? How does a writer script a language of pain without objectifying the victims of this violence? Assia Djebar asks the all-important question in Le Blanc de l’Algérie: “mais dans quelle langue?” [“but in what language?”] (1995, 61) without necessarily offering a conclusive answer to this impossible inquiry. Chronicling the war in text Nouvelles relates everyday stories of human suffering and courage framed within larger theoretical questions linking violence, gender and the fate of Algeria’s youth. Bey highlights the urgency of writing against silencing and forgetting at the very beginning of the collection: “Textes écrits dans l’urgence de dire, la nécessité de donner la parole aux mots … le désir désespéré de croire que tout est encore compréhensible, sans avoir toutefois la prétension de croire que j’ai compris” [“Texts written in the urgency to verbalize, the necessity to let words speak … the desperate desire to believe that everything still makes sense, without, however, the pretention to believe I understood”] (1998, 11). The stories are inscribed in an atmosphere of death as a paradoxical means to make sense of life amid violence: “Voici des nouvelles d’Algérie. Nouvelles écrites en ce temps où le souffle de la mort taillade à vif la lumière de chaque matin” [“Here are the stories of Algeria/ Here is the news of Algeria. Stories/the news written at a time when the breath of death slashes alive the light of each morning”] (11). The writing of violence, like the editorship of the independent press, is a transgressive act by virtue of its

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accusatory intent. The writer risks his/her life for exposing the infamy of the current times; this uncovering is considered to be an unpatriotic and irreverent act meriting murder or censorship. At the same time, Bey reveals her moral and intellectual duty as a writer, mother and teacher to write without fear or compromise in the name of humanity: “I wouldn’t call it courage,” she says, “simply determination, the will to go on. When you have children and you’re a teacher – the two are akin – you have a responsibility to go to the limit, to survive and transmit something to others” (Ruta 2006, 17). In a bold tour de force, Bey inverts the traditional disclaimer about the purely fictional nature of her characterizations by highlighting their embodied presence in the real: “Je dois préciser que toute ressemblance avec des personages ayant existé ou existants n’est pas fortuite. Et mes personnages me semblent aujourd’hui plus familiers et plus proches, presque plus réels” [“I must specify that all resemblances to characters dead or alive are not fortuitous. My characters seem to be more familiar and intimate to me, almost more real today”] (1998, 12). Bey pays a collective homage to the unseen casualties of war by chronicling their private suffering. The acknowledged pain of bereaved families, distraught parents, dispossessed sons and violated daughters puts a human face to tragedy by highlighting this invisible and visible violence that shows no mercy toward its victims. As Bey states: “Je me suis attachée à présenter des hommes et des femmes, des femmes surtout, pris dans les rets d’une Histoire qui ne retiendra pas leurs noms” [“I made it a point to present men and women, women in particular, caught in the clutches of a History that will not retain their names”] (12). The articulation of pain in these stories documents an alternative war script focusing on its inglorious manifestations found in physical violence and psychological dystopia. The violence of the past achieves its fruition in another cycle of history through the symptomatic expression of these desecrated “bodies in pain” (Scarry 1985). As Ato Quayson argues: “The postcolony is a place of violence. This violence constituted by the wars and acts of expropriation that undergirded the colonial order becomes endemic in the postcolony and produces a series of persistently violent political and social disjunctures” (2001, 192). In other words, violence represents a Fanonian (post)colonial affect, an endemic structural defect that maims and warps the postcolonial imaginary beyond the historical limits of French coloniality. This war thereby etches a visible cartography of pain through broken bodies, bruised spirits and bloodied landscapes. The reconfigured geography frames a new postcolonial map of a fragmented Algeria, whose personalized historicity can only be recovered in fragments and stifled grief: Fragments de vie ciselés au burin de mes angoisses, éclats de voix au seuil de la folie, bouches fermées où tremble le cri ou le sanglot retenu au creux de ces pages, chaque instant de ces vies ne peut s’inscrire que comme une pulsation de la mémoire de tout un people que l’on voudrait réduire au silence. [Fragments of life sculpted with the chisel of my

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anguish, a bursting of voices on the threshold of madness, closed mouths that tremble with the cry or sob stifled on these hollow pages, each minute of these lives can only be inscribed as a pulsation of the memory of an entire people destined to be reduced to silence]. (1998, 12–13) The language of pain resists discursive expression because there are no conventional words to express the depth of this anguish. As Elaine Scarry explains: “Whatever pain achieves, it achieves in part through its unsharability, and it ensures this unsharability through its resistance to language” (1985, 4). The individualization of pain as a private experience impedes its formulation in formalized text; it can only be articulated in the non-discursive tongue of the pre-verbal, the primal and precarious non-dit (the inexpressible). This pre-symbolic inscription, referred to as “les mots labyrinths” [“labyrinthine words”] in Nouvelles (106) articulates the speech of the anguished body through piercing screams, convulsions, frenzied cries and other forms of expression beyond the law of the letter. As the return of the repressed in corporeal form, cries, screams and other types of wounding simultaneously locate and dislocate pain’s “unsharability” as an expressive outlet destined to prevent the stifling of self within institutionalized language. As Scarry states: “Pain makes overt precisely what is at stake in ‘inexpressibility’ and thus begins to expose by inversion the essential character of ‘expressibility’ whether verbal or material” (1985, 19). In the short story, “Le cri” [“The Cry”], a woman’s piercing cries articulate the pain of the female body; this symbol of abjection covers an entire range of semiotic expression ranging from despair, madness and fear to outrage. The story establishes the cry’s repertoire: “le cri un instant arrêté, reprend, se module en variation stridentes puis en sons articulés mais intelligibles” [“the momentarily suspended cry resumes, modulates itself in strident variations, then, in unintelligible but articulated sounds”] (Bey 1998, 17). The cry’s strident range of modulation covers the entire span of unarticulated female experiences; these include all the private violations against the female body that are nevertheless made public through the penetrating cry, “un long cri, sauvage, interminable” [“a long, savage and interminable cry”] (15). The savage cry reveals the male brutality of the “black decade,” a contemporary reign of terror concretized by its violence on the female body. In fact, the female body is ironically “exposed” as the scapegoat of the radicals, even though this group launches a frenzied campaign to veil the body through death, kidnapping, disappearances and other tactics. Women have become the primary targets of state terrorism, precisely because of the obsessive reappearance of the reductive tradition/modernity binary. This dichotomy has once again positioned women as both “alibis” and “hostages” of patriarchal agendas, according to Monique Gadant (1995, 230). The obsession with the female body has been pushed to the limits of blind hatred among the radicals; their unbridled pathology has transformed the

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body into a stomping ground of control and redefinition on the one hand, and a medium to enforce collective terror on the other. As novelist Aicha Lemsine comments: The treatment of women raises serious questions about the level of faith and Islamic behaviour on the part of the protagonists in the civil war in Algeria … As in Bosnia, Algerian women are the first victims of the civil war in their country. In the Balkans, rape and enforced pregnancy were tactics of “ethnic cleansing”: in Algeria, the persecution of women is a key element of “religious cleansing.” (1995, 21) The program of gender cleansing instated in Algeria compromises the blind faith of the conservatives who position the female body as its key enemy in the attempt to cleanse the country of its “impure,” foreign (Westernized) elements. The body’s purging within a religiously determined national purge restores the precolonial sanctity of Algeria, according to these men engaged in a revised postmodern enfumade; in this new version of extermination, decapitating swords and daggers replace asphyxiating fumes to decimate entire constituencies of women through bloody wounds. In the short story, sororal howls of pain resonate among generations of women to both reveal and lodge the anguish of maternal protest against this violence: “Et le cri ne s’arrête que pour mieux renaître. D’autres hurlements feront echo à celui de sa mère” [“And the cry only stops to be born again. Other howls will echo the mother’s howl”] (Bey 1998, 20). The cry symbolizes an unconventional mode of expression when women are denied speech through “severed sounds” (Djebar 1992, 148). This severing of voice assumes its most extreme form in the long spate of decapitations that have characterized the period of civil crisis. The choice of execution by decapitation is not a random one, as indicated by Patricia Geesey: It is a gesture that recalls God’s testing of Abraham’s faith and thus one of the most important elements of the Muslim religion. In Arab-Muslim cultural and religious practices, only animals who have had their throats slit are deemed “halal,” or fit for human consumption. Hence, murdering human beings in this fashion is seen as both an attempt to ritualize their slaughter and to annihilate the human dignity of the victims. (2000, 48) Death by decapitation is one of the most abject manifestations of corporeal objectification. At the same time, the decapitation of women reinforces the male credo of female “invisibility” in public space. The headless body preserves its anonymity on the one hand; at the same time, it bears the marks of palpable violence in a public display of patriarchal possession enforced by the armed militias. Algeria’s spiritual cleansing can only be accomplished by the

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political violence of femicide as another form of female martyrdom for the nation. As Khalida Messaoudi claims: At the heart of their way of life, their mindset, their imprecations, and their savagery, I perceived a constant obsession, of the kind that is symptomatic of madness; an obsession with women. The truth is; no other theme looms as large as this one does in the ideology of the FIS … According to the fundamentalists, women are the root of evil. (Messaoudi and Schemla 1998, 100) In other words, men become the guardians of female sexuality through their self-defined codes of morality aimed at dispossessing the female body of its identity and subjectivity. The misogynist idea of woman as evil, as the source of fitna (“disorder”) and chaos is explored in the story “Croire, obéir, combattre” (“Believe, Obey, Fight”) through the feminization and sexualization of terror. A young radical is about to behead a beautiful young woman who inspires conflicting emotions of lust and disgust through the sight of her unveiled face and flowing hair. Indoctrinated to equate exposed female beauty with the demonic, he seeks to eliminate the very source of his sexual anguish in the proverbial association of female sexuality with bestiality: “son odeur, odeur de femme, semblable à celle de … le mal, c’est d’elle que vient le mal … corps du démon, toutes, perverses et tentatrices” [“her smell … the smell of a woman, similar to … evil, she is the source of all evil … satanic body, all women, perverted and seductive”] (Bey 1998, 96). Overwhelmed by his sexual desire, the young man is unable to control his own fantasies of rape in a radicalized battle between religious faith and sexual gratification: “il serre encore plus fort les cheveux dénoués” [“he holds the flowing hair even tighter”] (96). His sexual frustration is sublimated through the dictates of his political crusade to eradicate “evil”; the poised blade of the phallic sword replaces his suspended penis in a rapedecapitate parallel, as the ultimate religious victory over a corrupted moral source. The “woman-as-enemy” trope provides him with a just cause for murder reconfigured as service to God, even though he initially hesitates to execute his duty in another battle between his prescribed mission and the desecration of beauty. His hesitation punctuates a brief moment of introspection, revealing the tension between political brainwashing and compromised principles in the Islamist campaign to control the hearts, bodies and minds of Algeria’s youth. However, the shining blade and the blinding rays of the sun convince the young man about the divinely ordained motivation behind his action. The murder will testify to his “blinded” faith that has nevertheless been manipulated by the corrupted ideals of self-appointed godheads: “Je suis un combattant de Dieu, nous allons détruire le mal, purifier le monde, vite” [“I am a warrior of God, we are going to destroy evil, purify the world, quickly”] (96). The young woman, on the other hand, refuses to play the role of a victim by passively submitting to the man’s violence. She looks him straight in the

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eye opposing his weapon with her own: “ce regard dressé comme une lame” [“this look raised like a sword”] (96). His blinded stare obscured by the gleaming sword is confronted by her blade-like stare that could, perhaps, have thwarted his mission in a competing battle of wills. The man needs the protection of a defending weapon to affirm his masculine control in a precarious situation. On the other hand, the non-submissive female body protected by its own internal weapons of flowing hair and unmasked bodily scent has the power to destabilize the man by breaking his sexual defenses; the men misrepresent the corporeal control displayed by the female body as evil, that is, something beyond their power. The woman’s refusal to publicly and privately capitulate through embodied resistance reveals the cowardly nature of the man’s actions; he needs the protection of a sword to save himself from an unarmed woman in a publicized “rescue the nation” mission: “si au moins elle criait, se débattait comme les autres” [“if only she cried or struggled like the others”] (96). Her refusal to physically engage with the man invalidates his justification for self-defense against an uncontrollable adversary. However, the woman lodges an unrestrained protest manifested by “la petite larme [qui] coule au long de sa joue” [“the tiny tear that flows along her cheek”] (96), a symbol of regret for the scarring of Algeria’s young men by a corrupt adult morality. Bey refuses to commodify suffering by portraying gory scenes of violence. She preserves the dignity of the dead through the stark symbolism of tears as a noble commemoration of life. In so doing, she avoids the danger of opportunism by going against the grain of sensationalism that has characterized some of the writings from this period. By focusing on the psychology of violence rather than on its purely physical manifestations, Bey succeeds in balancing “the need to bear witness to tragedy and the desire to protect the dignity of the victims of violence” (Geesey 2000, 50).14 Bey’s story “Un jour de juin” (“A Day in June”) reveals the trauma of young people when an entire generation experiences the abduction of life during its most formative years: “Tu rentres pour dormir, et même là, le silence … Mais ce n’est pas tout à fait du silence, c’est du néant, de l’absence” [“You go home to sleep, and even there, silence … But it isn’t exactly silence, it is nothingness, absence”] (1998, 56). How do young people confront the existential and material voids in their lives in the absence of support systems and direction? Does desperation provide the religious conservatives with fertile ground for their spiritual highjacking of disoriented youth? Does the violence purported by these groups provide the necessary medium of reorientation to reclaim a confiscated masculine identity? The story highlights the psychological and economic roots of terrorism by focusing on the desperate measures taken by disavowed male youth to affirm themselves in a hopeless situation of insecurity, dashed dreams, boredom, joblessness and compromised masculinity. Their dire situation of socio-economic limbo reveals some of the failures of decolonization and the negation of promises made by the new government. These youngsters face a futureless life in the absence of economic incentives and income-generating potential. Forced to loiter

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aimlessly within the big city, these youngsters have been called hittistes: those who lean against the city walls for lack of something to do (Gronhovd 2010, 1224). From the Arabic hit for wall, the metonym symbolizes the dead-end prospects of thousands of young people for whom the future does not provide any hope of economic and social self-determination despite the country’s recent political transition. Bey’s stories reveal the stranglehold of patriarchy within these times of anomie; alienated young men are vulnerable targets for an internal and external patriarchy through their symbolic emasculation engendered by the state, religious factions and the father of the household. “Sofiane” is one of the most poignant stories in the collection based on a true-life incident. Both Bey and the narrator reflect on the tragic trajectory of a mild-mannered twenty-year-old nephew who gets progressively radicalized through terrorist activity. Bey admits: My twenty-year-old nephew met his death at the end of such a path where he had no idea of the stakes involved – like many other young men who disappeared in similar circumstances. Men in our country have, or think they have, freedom of choice. But there are some choices that lead right to the preplanned destruction of any form of freedom. (Ruta 2006, 17) In the story, the narrator learns of her nephew’s death in an impersonal newspaper article: “Sofiane est mort. J’ai appris la nouvelle en lisant dans le journal l’article qui racontait sa dernière aventure … je ne sais pas, je ne sais rien de lui depuis longtemps, depuis que cette sale guerre a commencé” [“Sofiane is dead. I got the news by reading an article on his latest adventure in the newspaper … I don’t know, I don’t know anything about him for a long time, since this dirty war started”] (69). Sofiane’s disappearance from family life mirrors the invisibility he confronts within the home as a child where he is subjected to his father’s relentless bullying. His shyness and sweet nature are considered unbecoming of a manly demeanor; the father wants to bully him into masculinity, “jusqu’à ce que son père, découvrant sa présence pourtant bien peu bruyante, le renvoie d’une brutale injonction” [“until his father who discovers his silent presence, sends him away with a brutal injunction”] (70). The equation of brutality with masculinity feeds into a cultural and gendered stereotype based on the heavy-handedness of the father. As a violent authority figure within domestic space, the father subjects his son to the tyranny and trauma of an internal totalitarian rule with its enforcement of passive obedience: “il obéissait sans un mot” [“He obeyed without a word”] (70). The father’s domination within private space is replicated on the outside by the reigning political and religious forces of the FLN and FIS in a contentious struggle for control. Boys like Sofiane are sandwiched between the duelling forces of a multifaceted patriarchy, whose spatial jurisdiction complements its political and moral jurisdiction over identity. The story focuses

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on the ways in which war can lead to an altering of personality during insecure times (Bey 1998, 72–73). The narrative leads to a reflection on the very “construction” of the terrorist in socio-psychological terms rather than as a biological pathology. What are the underlying factors that would transform a sweet child into a cold-blooded murderer? Is the son’s terrorist activity the outcome of his father’s brutality, which is, in turn, responsible for the annihilation of the boy’s individuality? The stories demonstrate how social displacement and psychological alienation are key factors in “deviant” behavior when society is unable to accommodate the needs and aspirations of its younger generations: “car s’il avait réellement choisi cette voie, comme tant de jeunes dont on dit qu’ils ont été égarés et abusés … ” [“because if he had really chosen this path like so many young people who were said to be lost and abused … ”] (75). Sofiane’s first exposure to terrorism is linked to his father’s violence against him. The narrator comments: “Et puis, il y avait le père, mon frère, si sévère, si exigeant avec ses fils et plus particulièrement avec ce garçon trop sensible” [“And then there was the father, my brother, so severe, so exacting with his sons particularly with this hypersensitive boy”] (89). Like the tentative boundaries between love and hate, the story reflects similar inversions between docility and ferocity to highlight the fragile balance in human emotions, especially in circumstances of heavy duress. Sofiane runs away from home to escape the father’s daily regime of psychological torture and physical abuse: “un père que Sofiane avait fini par haïr” [“a father that Sofiane ended up by hating”] (89). His violated sense of self makes him the vulnerable target of another father figure who patiently waits in the shadows to snare the next unsuspecting victim. The adopted father skillfully replaces the biological father’s brute force with the seductive rhetoric of salvation as a key to transcendence: “Ce sont les autres, une entité mystérieuse et indéfinie, au pouvoir de suggestion et de séduction irrésistible” [“It is the others, a mysterious and undefined entity with the power of suggestion and irresistible seduction”] (79). The undefined psychological violence of the “mysterious others” remains intangible and provides a foil to the biological father’s visible violence measured by scars and inflicted wounds. Instead, Sofiane finds solace in the calculated sympathy of a new family, “ceux qui savaient l’écouter, qui savaient lui parler, et lui avaient donné l’illusion de le comprendre, pour mieux le prendre dans leurs filets” [“those who knew how to listen to him, who knew how to talk to him and who had given him the illusion of understanding him, to better catch him in their nets”] (89). Sofiane’s internalized docility since childhood transforms itself into the virility of terrorist activity, wherein violence gives his life new meaning. His early trauma belatedly expresses itself in his teenage years, when the seductive lure of power and force coincides with the emerging virility of manhood as the locus of a reclaimed identity. The terror of rejection experienced by a child reconfigures itself in later years into the terror of violence, wherein an inexpressible emotion of moral pain seeks articulation in the expressible

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language of power. Terrorism gives Sofiane’s life new meaning and structure as he struggles to gain control over his marginalized existence: “Ce que voulait Sofiane, c’était échapper à l’emprise de son père intransigeant, mais c’était aussi et surtout faire quelque chose de sa vie” [“What Sofiane wanted was to escape from the clutches of his unyielding father, but it was also, and above all, to make something of his life”] (91). Violence provides him with a sense of participatory ownership within the nation; like God, he controls the dynamics of life and death. Through murder, assassinations and other violations that label him a “dangerous terrorist” (70), Sofiane acquires a sense of power over himself and others by determining the fate of his victims. At the same time, the stories are also an indictment of the real terrorists in society, who hide behind the protection of patriarchal immunity to intimidate, corrupt and violate entire populations. By describing the horror of the black years, the collection of stories also exposes the hidden face of terror found in the colluding patriarchies of despotic fathers, ineffectual nationalists and terror-inspiring religious militias. Bey concludes: I hesitated for a very long time before writing. Unlike many authors in my country and elsewhere, I didn’t want to focus my efforts on lamentation nor on celebrations of the inevitably glorious past raised to the level of a guiding myth for future generations. And it took me all this time to summon the courage to tear loose from the “black room” certain painful images that obsess or assault one and leave one wondering about the role of the inhuman. (Ruta 2006, 17) The black room provides access to the concealed traumas that seek resolution in narrative. For Bey, writing provides the catalyst to rupture the repeated cycles of trauma that impede the realization of anamnesis. In conclusion, the dissident writings of Algerian women span the wide spectrum of Algerian history from the 1830 conquest to the civil war of the 1990s. These women have registered their postcolonial protest against the three intersecting faces of patriarchy that have compromised the integrity of the country through violence and political anomie. As their writings reveal, the “coloniality of power” represented by the French was later adopted as a model of control by both nationalists and fundamentalists in their campaigns to terrorize and disenfranchise civilian populations. Violations such as torture, prisoner abuse, rape, incarceration, decapitation and gender marginality have significantly targeted women in particular, as revealed in the analysis of all the texts. At the same time, the writers’ preoccupations have also included the distressed situation of men and children who, together with the women, have been denied subjectivity and social justice within an equally distressed postcoloniality. Using their “warrior words,” these women articulate their gender concerns in terms of female agency in national policy, the feminization of Algerian historicity and the possibility of healing from raw wounds that

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have scarred Algeria’s internal and external landscapes. At the same time, Maïssa Bey, Assia Djebar and Leïla Sebbar have highlighted the crucial role of female resistance in the War of Independence and the equally tenacious fight of women against the misogyny of the nationalists and Islamists. They stage their discursive insurrections against the violations of coloniality in their powerful narratives as they fight for the rights of Algeria’s men, women and children through public protest, accountability and the search for peace. Their work represents a form of testimonial writing that gives a visible face to the private suffering and heroism of anonymous victims, the silenced masses and forgotten war heroines. At the same time, these women affirm their belief in the power of dissident creativity to launch a new gender-affirming Algerian ethos based on a collective call to action. Zinaï-Koudil aptly sums up their aspirations: From Tihinan to la Kahina, both Berber queens, I interrogate the living and the dead. An empty book, an arid language, a murderous silence … But the call has gone out. Against amnesia. It rises from the entrails of the earth. The shy Dyhia and the rebellious Lalla Fadhma cry out together and awaken the elusive Nadjma and her daughter. Dozens of Djamilas pour out of the high mountains, the sand dunes and the cities, and behind them our grandmothers and our daughters raise their heads and repeat together, so that no one will forget: “We want to live. Proud and free. Answer our cries.” (1996, 25) By raising their powerful voices against violence and imposed silencing, Maïssa Bey, Assia Djebar and Leïla Sebbar suture the severed mother tongues of Algeria and reclaim a proud historicity in text.

Notes 1 Reference to the English translation of Assia Djebar’s Oran, langue morte by Tegan Raleigh, The Tongue’s Blood Does Not Run Dry. 2 See Assia Djebar’s tribute in Le blanc de l’Algérie. 3 Quoted in Khalid Amine and Marvin Carlson. 2012. The Theatres of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia: Performance Traditions of the Maghreb, 239. 4 For more biographical details pertaining to Assia Djebar, Maïssa Bey and Leïla Sebbar, consult Brinda Mehta. “Francophone Algerian Women’s Fictionalized Memoirs.” 5 Consult the following site for an English translation of Éluard’s poem: http:// anndandridgepublicrelations.ning.com/profiles/blogs/freedom-poesie-paul-eluard Accessed July 2, 2013. 6 “The Unofficial English Translation of Sarkozy’s Speech.” June 26, 2007. Available at http://www.africaresource.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article& id=437:the-unofficial-english-translation-of-sarkozys-speech&catid=36:essays-a-discussions&Itemid=346. Accessed April 14, 2010. 7 Moukère is a familiar term for “woman.” However, in French Algeria, terms such as moukère and fatma were used in a derogatory manner by the French to

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denigrate indigenous women who were all supposed to look alike without any distinguishing characteristics. All translations of Rouge l’aube into English are my own. In Des femmes dans la guerre d’Algérie, Danièle Djamila Amrane-Minne indicates (12) that when the War of Independence broke out in 1954, only 4.5% of Algerian women had reading and writing skills. Kim Willsher, “France Remembers Algerian Massacre 50 Years On.” The children’s search for history does not fall within the scope of this chapter. Consult the works of Anne Donadey (2003, 2001, 1999 and 1996), Mildred Mortimer (2010) and Dawn Fulton (2007) on the subject. This is a quote from Amrane-Minne’s article, “Women and Politics in Algeria from the War of Independence to Our Day.” The Algerian revolution did not lead to the decolonization of gender, unlike the Cuban revolution and the Zapatista revolution in Mexico that favored gender equality as an integral part of political subjectivity. See Rachid Mokhtari, La graphie de l’horreur: essai sur la literature algérienne, 1990–2000. Mokhtari accuses Algerian writers of capitalizing on the goriness of the war to write mediocre and sensationalized novels destined for a Western audience. He accuses these writers of being “vampire-writers[s]” (27-31) who commoditize the tragedies of Algeria for self-promotion in the West. As stated by Alexandra Gueydan-Turek, “this literature could be construed as preying on the grief of a society, transforming bloodshed into a pure literary commodity, or worse, a pseudo-ethnographical artifact, and placing the writer among the perpetrators rather than the victims it initially intended to represent” (2011, 86). At the same time, writers such as Assia Djebar, Leïla Sebbar and Maïssa Bey must be credited for their (self)-conscious attempts to write about the traumas of these wars as a means of dealing with pain on a collective and individual basis. Unresolved traumas and blocked psychological tensions impede healing and the creative deconstruction of pain through the active art of self-expression. These writers do not fall into the category of vampire-writers.

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Part II

Violence and social/sexual oppression

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2

Sexual violence and testimony The language of pain in Aïcha Ech-Channa’s Miseria: témoignages

Writing as catharsis The scripting of violence represents an important narrative strategy in the writings of several Arab women who use the trope of pain as a medium of political and social protest in circumstances of gender-based and other forms of systemic violence, such as social inequality. In their work, violence is both a physical and moral state conditioned by the inequities and inhumanity of the postmodern era, in which modernity has ironically led to human rights abuses and disproportionate class distinctions between the rich and poor. These inequities have created impermeable class-based social borders that have been further exacerbated by the rural-urban divide. In this chapter, I demonstrate how Moroccan activist Aïcha Ech-Channa makes important interventions in these framings of violence by exposing and condemning the brutalization of the economically and socially dispossessed who “speak their pain” in testimonial narratives. In so doing, she participates in a process of decolonial thought or “oppositional consciousness” (Sandoval 1991, 1), uncovering the patriarchal, colonial and economic roots of oppression. Personal testimonies collected in Ech-Channa’s text reveal the many abuses faced by the Moroccan underclass. This author favors the medium of the testimonio (“testimonial”) to script the language of violence and its resulting pain from a femi-humanist perspective. She documents the physical and social violations of the body through social and sexual dispossession when she uses the testimonial form as a human rights intervention. By focusing on the social and sexual violence imposed on women and the dispossessed, this chapter makes common cause with the women of Algeria in a collective denunciation of violence.

Testimonial writing and documenting In his influential essay, “The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio (Testimonial Narrative),” John Beverley provides the following definition of this genre: The word testimonio translates literally as testimony, as in the act of testifying or bearing witness in a legal and religious sense. That connotation

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Sexual violence and testimony is important because it distinguishes testimonio from simply recorded participant narratives, as in the case of “oral history” … The situation of narration in testimonio has to involve an urgency to communicate a problem of repression, poverty, subalternity, imprisonment, struggle for survival and so on, implicated in the act of narration itself. (1989, 14)

Beverley associates testimonio with the urgency of disclosing events, situations, experiences and facts omitted in master narratives; in so doing, discourses pertaining to the disenfranchised periphery are relocated to the center to create a necessary structural upheaval or readjustment in dominant narratives. By their very definition, testimonios are narratives of disruption calling for a realignment of the interstices as a way of excavating hidden socio-political, discursive and economic fault lines through the process of witnessing and exposing. As the expression of the non-dit (unsaid/unspoken), testimonio represents the narrative mode of the Other in terms of race, gender, class, political affiliation, sexuality, national belonging and other variables to constitute a viable form of subaltern speech conceptualized in communal terms. In other words, these subaltern narratives reveal a communal preoccupation by going beyond the limits of an individualized or isolated experience. The inscription of the personal within a broader politicized frame of reference uncovers the narrator’s own “intentionality” (Beverley 1989, 14) or commitment to social justice when expressing modernity’s inherent dissonance. The added perspective of gender reveals the maternal inscriptions in these narratives as a woman-determined form of social justice. According to this viewpoint, the unarticulated “voices of pain” are actualized in “corporeal narrativity” or through the language of the body. Aïcha Ech-Channa gives voice to the most disenfranchised segments of Moroccan society – defenseless street children, unwed mothers, petites bonnes (underage maids) and the rural poor. Her text exposes a more social form of maternal wounding, when society exploits and harms its most underprivileged and defenseless constituencies through class-induced cruelty, patriarchal codes of morality and differing standards of humanity. These discrepancies undermine the very foundation of civil society in post-independence Morocco as the country transitions from a heavy-handed monarchy to the democratic rule of a young successor. Miseria exposes society’s hidden underbelly through an ethically motivated activism based on the Islamic principles of social justice and equality. I argue that Ech-Channa’s narrative exemplifies the credo of creative dissidence; the very act of “writing pain” is a dissident act that both unveils and contests the “silent” or dissimulated crimes committed against women and children in particular, even though her text also includes the perspectives of economically disenfranchised rural men. I refer to these acts of witnessing as decolonial embodied testimonials; the female body becomes a palimpsest-like

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text documenting its simultaneous abjection and resistance within what I call a “politics of vulnerability” in its struggle for autonomy, self-definition, consciousness-raising and agency. Ech-Channa’s struggle for social justice is an explicitly political and praxical task. “It is to enact a critique of racialized, colonial, and capitalist heterosexualist gender oppression as a lived transformation of the social,” according to Maria Lugones (2010, 746).

Maternal activism and social critique Miseria lodges a powerful social critique against postcolonial Morocco’s disengagement from its poverty-stricken rural masses and the symptomatic violence against women and children that results from the criminalization and feminization of poverty. The social abjection of young women and girls is further linked to hypocritical codes of patriarchal sexuality and antiquated norms of what I call “permissible femininity” to inscribe the already disenfranchised within a culture of sexualized terror and economic subalternity. This injustice compromises the democratic ideals of the postcolonial state. Ech-Channa’s narrative exposes society’s invisible human rights infractions that remain concealed under the rhetoric of partisan politics and ambiguous legislation regarding the rights of women and children. These laws, such as the newly revised Family Code of 2004, to cite one example, sustain gender discrimination, while others favor class deprivation, rural underdevelopment, illiteracy and a credo of social and moral corruption despite their best intentions to adhere to democratic ideals. As Moha Ennaji states in his article, “Violence Against Women in Morocco: Advances, Contentions, and Strategies to Combat It”: Legal discrimination against women continues to persist in many provisions of the new Family Code, which deals with topics generally regarded as belonging to the private sphere such as marriage, divorce, alimony, child custody and inheritance. This legal discrimination acts as a powerful mechanism of control over women’s political, social, civic, and cultural activities. (2011, 203) Leading Moroccan feminists such as Fatima Mernissi, Ghita El Khayat and Fatima Sadiqi agree that the greatest stumbling block to the development of a healthy civil society lies in the state’s problematic engagement with gender issues and child welfare. Attributing this neglect to the traditional gender-based spatial dichotomies found in Arab-Muslim patriarchy, Ennaji and Sadiqi argue: “The private space is culturally associated with powerless people (women and children) and is subordinated to the public space, which is culturally associated with men who dictate the law, lead business, manage the state, and control the economy, both national and domestic” (2006, 89). Women’s legal disenfranchisement, together with their high illiteracy rates in

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the rural sectors,1 unemployment, poverty, bureaucratic corruption and the pernicious hold of the patriarchal traditions of local culture set up discriminatory ideals of gender acceptability, whose long-term consequences are borne by women and children in particular. As El Saadawi argues: The majority of the poor in the world are women, youth and children. Gender, or women’s oppression, is inseparable from class, race, and religious oppression. The patriarchal class system propagates the idea that the oppression of women and the poor is a divine law and is not man-made. (1997, 12) The adherence to a divinely inspired and patriarchal mandate creates a situation of permanent siege for women, children and the poor in a socially unjust system based on socio-economic divisions. In contemporary Morocco, this system leads to a painful process of social désenfantement (“de-childing”) (Orlando 2009, 101) that compromises the country’s future through the wounding of its most vulnerable populations. The term désenfantement is a neologism invented by Moroccan psychologist and writer Ghita El Khayat to describe the depths of her own sense of grief and suffering after losing her only daughter. She describes and analyzes the abject state of her mourning in a book bearing the same title. As Valérie Orlando explains: “Le Désenfantement,” a fabricated French noun, bears the meaning of loss and separation … El Khayat not only creates the meaning of a verb, “désenfanter,” to denote an action that is so horrible one has difficulty grasping the concept, she then makes the verb a noun, thus rooting the action as a thing – tangible, unflagging in its painful presence. (2009, 101) El Khayat associates this loss with the inconceivable pain of bereavement that leads to her corresponding loss of identity as a mother. As an inassimilable solitary experience, désenfantement represents a descent into the very abyss of perdition without any hope of recovering from this primal loss. I position this state of bereavement as a gaping social wound in Miseria, whereby society undoes itself through violence and criminal acts of injustice against defenseless victims of the system. These violations can only be exposed, contested and remedied through the social mothering of women like Ech-Channa, whose lifetime denunciations of child abuse, domestic violence, labor exploitation and sexual aggressions against women and children are acts of faith and resistance to oppression. In so doing, Miseria gives voice to the voiceless majority by documenting their personal stories of misery and resilience to provide yet another example of a survivor’s text. These narratives also demonstrate how the suspension of human rights undermines the overall

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productivity and health of a society stifled by its fraught engagements with social justice and gender equality. Aïcha Ech-Channa’s commitment to issues of social justice includes an illustrious five decades of activism. Beginning her career as a government social worker in the port city of Casablanca, Ech-Channa decided to start her own NGO, Association Solidarité Féminine, in 1985 to have greater autonomy in decision-making and in the choice of causes supported. She has worked tirelessly to champion the rights of young unwed mothers considered to be the worst pariahs of society on account of their “compromised” sexuality. As Katherine Marshall explains: “Even if their pregnancy resulted from rape, they are condemned as prostitutes and thrown out by their families, and their babies are stigmatized as bastards” (2009). The social stigma of whoredom and bastardization invalidates the identity and dignity of an entire population of aggressed women and children who are obliged to devise their own survival strategies to endure the pain of dispossession and rejection. Their support systems are few and tenuous, thereby highlighting the importance of woman-inspired social consciousness agendas of protection and rehabilitation. To serve the needs of the unprotected, Ech-Channa has set up daycare and treatment centers in Casablanca to service some of the basic needs of unwed mothers and their children. The women are given the fundamental skills of economic reliance, such as sewing, cooking and massage therapy to aid them in their struggle against poverty and gender discrimination as they fight to reclaim their lives. As Ennaji and Sadiqi state: Women’s associations have emerged to combat violence against women, gender-based legal and cultural discrimination, underrepresentation of women in government and the economic sector, and illiteracy. These associations have given Moroccan women the opportunity to become skilled in the public organization of their demands, the public articulation of their resources, as well as a good opportunity to gain credibility on the public scene. (2006, 102) Ech-Channa bases her communal care on the founding tenets of Islam and the religion’s values of compassion, mercy, justice, gender equality and human dignity to demonstrate how her work is clearly inscribed in her faith (Marshall 2009). A recipient of the prestigious Opus Award for faith-inspired activism in 2009, this activist has repeatedly shown her belief in the need to empower young unmarried women who are criminalized by sexual misery and abject poverty in a country where over 20% of the population lives below the poverty line. The dual burden of economic and sexual subalternity is felt heavily by these young women who face a double rejection by society and family in the form of shame, rejection, violence and abandonment. As Leela Jacinto affirms: “In Moroccan society, where a woman’s sexuality is essentially owned

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by her male family members, where her sexual ‘purity’ is the key to their social honor, … [an unwed mother] … is simply a disgrace” (2007). Ech-Channa questions the social face of shame by exposing the violent roots of patriarchal and class oppression suffered by young women and children. The very defense of the sexually unprotected becomes a subversive act when it clashes with the normative codes of sexuality established and controlled by conservative men, local culture and antiquated gender ideologies. The documentation of these violations is a further challenge to well-guarded social secrets by giving patriarchal disgrace a public face through testimonial exposure. The defining characteristics of testimonials are “a means of not only legally recording abuse, but also are a way to establish collective memory so that further infractions can be avoided,” according to Orlando (2009, 87). Consequently, these testimonial narratives demand collective and individual accountability for social, cultural, religious and sexual infractions committed against the marginal by men as well as by privileged women. In addition, Miseria represents a counter-hegemonic document that exposes the gaps and omissions in existing laws and long-held cultural traditions, such as the cult of virginity, in which the protection of young women and minors remains partial at best. As stated earlier, issues such as domestic violence, rape, incest and child abuse are still relegated to the realm of the private, thereby making these criminal acts an “invisible” affair. Miseria represents the attempt to create a public document archiving the abuse and intolerance shown toward the socially abject in an open forum. Ech-Channa breaks the silence surrounding patriarchal and social criminality through the recorded documentation of survivor stories; these narratives indict bourgeois norms of acceptable/unacceptable humanity constructed along the lines of sexuality, gender and class variables. Published for the first time in 1996 during a time of socio-political repression, the infamous Lead Years of the previous monarchy, Miseria has been republished three times since then (Orlando 2009, 96). These subsequent publications themselves testify to the ongoing urgency of recording and exposing abuse in a persistent manner, so that this injustice is both registered and inscribed in communal memory. At the same time, this testimonial also contests the state’s duplicitous engagement with the Islamic principle of social equality and the postcolonial tenets of “democratization.” Democratic ideals do not necessarily mirror democratic praxis in the socio-economic power struggle between the rich and poor, men and women, and the rural and urban domains, as reflected in this text.

Documenting lives in Miseria Constructed as a multilayered and polyphonous text, Miseria is the product of a collaborative effort between social activists, local and international NGOs such as Association Solidarité Féminine and Swiss-based Terre des Hommes, royal patronage under King Mohammed VI, together with the

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stories of the victims themselves. Divided into twenty-four individualized accounts, each bearing the name and the particular story of the victim, Miseria provides a mosaic of personalized experiences, activist strategies and survival techniques to highlight the interactive and polyphonic nature of all testimonials. In so doing, this text gives a face and identity to each victim who is no longer considered a dehumanized statistic in a sociological study on violence; Miseria favors a multimedia approach including oral narration, visual documentation and corporeal scriptings of pain on the abused body. In fact, the thematics of pain in Miseria provides the leitmotiv for all the recorded testimonials and serves as a common link between the different narratives. Moreover, the text establishes the spatial boundaries that control and define the lives of the children and young adults, whose most formative experiences are shaped in orphanages, hospitals, social centers and the open streets. Miseria raises the following questions through its testimonial-based contestations: Can the Moroccan state truly embrace the concept of the collective and the value of social welfare embedded within the principles of Islam when an overwhelming section of society is denied full citizenship?; Can a nation survive its transition to and through postcoloniality with its existing class and gender distinctions?; Does the exploitation of children compromise the country’s future through the violent trauma of displacement experienced by entire generations of young people?; Can the wounds of the abject be healed through the voicing-out of pain found in testimonials?; How does a country re-birth itself through the maternal activism of women such as Ech-Channa and others like her, whose work reflects and celebrates the generous, loving and selfless face of the “other” Morocco?; and What are the obstacles impeding the healing of the nation, and how are these deficiencies brought to public attention? As Orlando argues with reference to Ech-Channa: In both her writing and her activism, she emphasizes that while the monarchy has fostered significant movements in certain areas, particularly addressing deficiencies in the economy and Morocco’s infrastructures, the government still lacks resources and is slow to act when it comes to investment in changing the most dire issues plaguing society, namely homeless children and disadvantaged women who bear the brunt of poverty. (2009, 96) In other words, how does a society move forward by addressing its social and economic handicaps? In many ways, Ech-Channa searches for new and inclusive paradigms of social wholeness and belonging. The reading of pain in Miseria takes on a visual documentary-like quality in each story. A cinematic frieze frames each chapter in the form of a fivepart sequence: Première image (“first image”); Premières questions (“first questions”); Premières paroles (“first words”); Premières lueurs (“first

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glimmers”); and L’enquête (“investigation”). The text charts a map of inquiry in its problem-solving trajectory in the form of a systematized plan of action, whereby “she states the details of her subject’s reality and then proceeds to uncover his/her story with the goal of saving the woman, the child, or both from the ravages of depravity,” according to Orlando (2009, 97). Ech-Channa’s fact-finding and abuse-resolving mission is recorded in the neutral “voice” of the documentary; the narrator underscores the impartiality of her text in an impersonal, objective voice to demonstrate her impartiality in narrating misery sans partie prise. The mode of narration is secondary to the intentionality of the text, as stressed by John Beverley, whereby “testimonio promises by definition to be primarily concerned with sincerity rather than literariness” (1989, 14). This act of unveiling and unmasking without narrative subterfuge or embellished prose is a bold political act to give open exposure to society’s bleeding wounds in need of the thoughtful attention of the activist. In so doing, Miseria establishes the credibility of “minor” or marginal voices through a network of female and child testifiers. In telling their stories to the activist, these individuals bear witness to their own degradation in and by an elitist society as they collectively uncover and denounce their violations in text.2 As she listens to these voices of pain, Ech-Channa outlines her motivations and methodology at the very beginning of her text: “J’ai décidé d’entreprendre des recherches, de m’impliquer en tant que mère et en tant qu’être humain” [“I decided to undertake research and to involve myself as a mother and a human being”] (1997, 44). The interconnected responsibilities of mothering and feminist activism intersect with the causes of social justice and civic consciousness, thereby paving the way for a “new model of social transformation” (Busia and James 1993, 44). As a form of political work, social mothering transcends the limits of biological essentialisms and the trauma of an imposed or violated maternity by serving “as a catalyst in the development and implementation of strategies designed to remedy these harmful conditions” (45). In other words, social mothering is a form of visionary planning; it establishes a blueprint of action to decriminalize and humanize the subjectivity of the socio-economically condemned, while revealing injustice’s criminal face.

Bodies in pain Miseria documents the human cost of pain amid a catalogue of disheartening statistics. Moha Ennaji’s article “Violence against Women in Morocco” provides the necessary statistical figures for the inequities, exploitation and anomie prevalent in Moroccan society with reference to the abuse of minors working as domestic laborers. He states: According to the 2001 survey conducted by the Moroccan League for the Protection of Children and UNICEF, 45% of domestic workers under the

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age of 18 were between the ages of 10 and 12. 26% were under the age of 10 … Over 80% of the child maids are illiterate and over 75% are from rural areas. Underprivileged parents oblige their daughters to work as maids so that they can benefit from their earned wages. (2011, 210) This documentation frames child abuse within a five-dimensional prism of gender alterity, rural poverty, ignorance, capitalism and corporeal commodification in the form of the hard labor young girls are expected to perform as “petites bonnes” (underage maid servants). A not-so-discrete social and familial collusion to restrict and exploit the “docile” female body within the domestic spheres of home-space establishes and consolidates the parameters of patriarchal and economic control in an undifferentiated zone of pain. The impoverished parents’ economic servitude is both focused on and mediated through the travelling body of the young girl as she migrates between the rural and urban domains. In the urban city, the rural female body is further subjected to the class-determined tyranny of economic and sexual slavery. The travelling body is subsequently immobilized through its solitary confinement within the borders of economic serfdom as it negotiates the difficult passage from rural disempowerment to an urban hell. These economic and sexual migrations are charted in Miseria through the travelling narratives of its protagonists; the lens of each chapter focuses on individual stories before providing a more panoramic perspective on pain. My analysis focuses on three primary narratives that frame the visible and invisible cartographies of pain inscribed on the subaltern body. The stories of Ouarda, Mounia and Farida provide the basic structure of Miseria and reveal the complexity of all the testimonials at the same time. These narratives are a form of social indictment on the one hand, and they are a testament to the importance of coalition building and NGO activism in the creation of a more egalitarian society on the other.

Ouarda speaks The narrative lens frames the testimonials within the locale of a social center in Casablanca, the headquarters of Ech-Channa’s organization. The lens then moves from the centrality of place to the “individuality of face” in the case of Ouarda by focusing on “le visage d’une enfante, blonde, mais tellement maigre … Son âge? 15, 16 ans [“the face of a young, blond and extremely thin girl child … Her age? 15, 16 years”] (1997, 21). Ouarda’s story personifies the social and physical amputation suffered by disenfranchised Moroccan youth within a framework of violence and abuse. The victim of an amputated leg after surviving a suicide attempt, Ouarda loses her motivation for living in the absence of love, family and identity (22). The lack of identification papers renders her both invisible and illegitimate in a society where a piece of paper has more value than human life itself. The social worker stresses the urgency

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of establishing Ouarda’s civil status as an affirmation of her presence in order to begin the program of social services. She states: “Il faut tes papiers pour savoir qui tu es, d’où tu viens. Pour se sentir quelqu’un, une Marocaine à part entière, il faut des papiers” [“We need your papers to know who you are, where you come from. In order to feel like somebody, a fully-fledged Moroccan, you need papers”] (23). The papers are the only proof of Ouarda’s existence in an already circumscribed social situation. All the testimonials reveal the trauma of the undocumented, the disfavored sans papiers, whose socially and economically illegal status as poor children makes them expendable bodies for public use. Ironically, their very identity is inscribed within the parameters of mistreatment; an undocumented body cannot provide legal evidence of abuse in the absence of a civil status. Consequently, it becomes both an “object and target of power,” according to Foucault (1995, 136). This body’s subjectivity remains invisible within legal systems of arbitrary control to be exploited within the equally invisible, i.e. unaccountable, domestic economy of violence. The exploitation of disenfranchised minors is thereby an unseen and unrecognizable crime in the absence of a legal plaintiff. Moreover, the trauma of abuse stifles expression by impeding the voicing-out of pain as an “inarticulate” experience. Ouarda “ne parle pas, se laisse mourir” [Ouarda “does not talk, she languishes to death”] (22). Ouarda’s death would, in fact, permanently seal the chapter on child abuse in the “absence” of a testifying body. Within a patriarchal system of economic deprivation, girls are seen as commodities to be sold in exchange for money. Children provide an incomegeneration source for impoverished parents in the face of rural subalternity and growing unemployment. Girls represent the dual “attraction” of economic and sexual exploitation for prospective employers due to their undetermined social status in terms of gender and poverty. In fact, children are produced for their economic viability as an assurance for the parents’ financial security, as stated earlier. As the testimonial reveals: Au douar. Le père. Sa deuxième épouse. Le père a continué tranquillement à faire des enfants avec elle. Une soeur de Ouarda placée comme bonne à Safi … L’essentiel c’est qu’elle lui rapporte de l’argent. Le père: un blédard … faire travailler des enfants en échange d’argent” [In the village. The father. His second wife. The father calmly continues to produce children with her. One of Ouarda’s sisters is placed as a maid in Safi … The most important thing is that she brings him back money. The father: a country bumpkin … exploits the children in exchange for money]. (30–31) The wife and daughter are inscribed in a patriarchal service economy to reproduce bodies of work. A patriarchal contract between the poor father and the rich future employer sustains a system of bonded servitude in which the

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inseparable ties between unprotected childhood and repudiated womanhood create a constituency of social martyrs sacrificed for the needs of capitalist consumption, according to psychologist Ghita El Khayat (2003, 97). The specialized skills of the social activist are needed to restitute broken lives through crisis management strategies. Ech-Channa’s mothering techniques include the task of piecing together the fragmented lives of the marginalized, “reconstituer le puzzle” [“reconstituting the puzzle”] (24) by searching for lost relatives and dis-locating the epicenters of abuse. The activist engages in a fact-finding mission to locate Ouarda’s mother, who could help in the reconstruction of Ouarda’s life by providing the missing information needed for the civil status papers; this process nevertheless involves a communal effort to once again emphasize the “popular” nature of testimonials. The activist uses the power of storytelling to gather information in working-class areas by capturing the popular imagination through a more accessible and familiar oral medium of communication: “Il faut faire comme les conteurs de Jmaa El Fna. Les Marocains sont très curieux. Ils aiment beaucoup ce genre de conteurs publics” [“It is necessary to follow the method of the storytellers of Jmaa El Fna. Moroccans are very curious. They love this kind of public storytelling”] (26). If the culture of abuse maintains its secrecy through the inviolability of private space, the activist’s process of inquiry is a public act and a collaborative effort. This method of investigation involving human contact and a hands-on approach has a successful outcome when the local children are able to locate one of Ouarda’s relatives: “Les enfants s’envolent comme des oiseaux dans les ruelles et, peu après, une femme arrive. Une femme assez jeune, 35-40 ans à peu près” [“The children run away like birds in the backstreets and, shortly thereafter, a woman arrives. A woman who is quite young. Around 35-40 years”] (27). The children represent messengers of hope in this case by playing an active role in the salvation of another child; in so doing, they counterbalance one-sided representations of their victimhood by demonstrating their proactive qualities of generosity and selflessness, and their seminal importance to society. The activist’s role of surrogate parenting inspires Ouarda’s confidence through a socially devised ethic of caring. The young girl finally breaks her silence to tell her story, thereby establishing her subjective presence in text: “Ouarda parle” [“Ouarda speaks”] (28). Through the speaking voice, Ouarda assumes responsibility for her own story by displacing the locus of narration from the social worker to the testifier herself. This act of self-representation is an expression of Ouarda’s determination to effectuate the passage from victimhood to subjectivity. The naming of the self reverses its previously undocumented status, thereby giving the female “I” legitimacy and authority through a “self-centered” narrative. Through a social services network, Ouarda acquires a prosthetic for her amputated leg to begin her first steps toward recovery. Her rehabilitation nevertheless remains inscribed in the politics of pain as a frequent reminder of pain’s lasting legacy: “Ouarda continue à souffrir: son appareillage doit être constamment revise” [“Ouarda continues

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to suffer; her apparatus is in need of constant adjustment”] (33). This rite of passage nevertheless motivates Ouarda to eventually pardon her perpetrators through a magnanimous gesture by which she transforms the abjection of misery into the transcendence of forgiveness: “Le Marocain sait être miséricordieux” [“The Moroccan knows how to show clemency”] (33). She neutralizes a lifetime of pain with the spiritual catharsis of mercy as she rises to new heights of humanity. At the same time, Miseria is careful to highlight the economic roots of oppression to demonstrate how the commoditization of a daughter is also a sign of an economically disenfranchised father’s corresponding abjection. A father’s inability to provide for his family is projected onto the most vulnerable member of his family through a culture of ignorance and a cyclical rotation of repression. Miseria holds the Moroccan state responsible for failed literacy schemes in the rural sector, wherein rising illiteracy rates and economic anguish are provoking desperate means of survival. By showing how some fathers abuse their patriarchal privilege, the text also expresses the despair and inconsolable grief of other fathers who mourn the loss of their children to the ravages of poverty. Miseria avoids the stereotypical essentialisms of portraying all poor families as abusive by showing how the love for one’s children is a universal attribute and not only a bourgeois prerogative. The text reveals the feelings of joy experienced by a family when they are finally reunited with their missing child: “Pour nombre de parents, leurs enfants sont leur bien le plus précieux. Pour la famille de Mohamed, la richesse, c’était lui” [“For many parents, the children are their most precious possession. For Mohamed’s family, he was their wealth”] (51). In the case of Mohamed’s family, the lack of material wealth is compensated by the presence of a treasured child, whose intrinsic worth transcends a finite monetary value.

Mounia’s wounds If Ouarda achieves a level of acceptance in society (“elle a trouvé sa place dans la société”) [“she has found her place in society”] (33), Mounia suffers the wrath of subalternity as the daughter of an unwed mother. The young girl’s oversized clothing and haunted/hunted looks represent the burden of a stolen childhood, a weight that seems too heavy to bear: “Elle porte une robe beaucoup trop grande pour elle, qui flotte autour d’elle, des sandales trop grandes pour ses pieds. Elle court. Une toute petite fille d’environ six ou sept ans” [“She wears a dress that is too big for her, that floats around her, and sandals that are too big for her feet. She runs. A tiny six- or seven-year-old little girl”] (35). Mounia carries the load of her mother’s shame; the stamp of bastardization becomes the young girl’s pain later intensified by her own rape: “elle a été violée” [“she was raped”] (36). Mother and daughter carry the brutal imprint of patriarchy on their bodies in the form of their bruised, violated flesh. The raped body represents the abject body par excellence, as it submits to hypocritical codes of patriarchal morality equating a broken

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hymen with the moral defilement of the victim. As Ennaji argues in “Violence against Women in Morocco”: Virginity is highly valued by society, especially in rural areas and working class circles. A woman who has lost her virginity before marriage is considered to have brought shame to her family and may not be able to marry … The loss of virginity and/or pregnancy outside of marriage, combined with poverty and ignorance, push many young mothers to commit suicide, abandon their children, or end up in prostitution. Single mothers and their children are seldom accepted by the family and society. (2011, 208) Miseria confirms this obsession with virginity: “Au Maroc, on donne encore à l’heure actuelle beaucoup d’importance à la virginité. Même dans les actes de mariage, c’est écrit: ‘Je vous donne en mariage ma fille qui est encore vierge’” [“In Morocco, a lot of importance is given to virginity even today. It is even written in the marriage documents: ‘I give you my virgin daughter in marriage’”] (1997, 145). The virgin body is further sanctified in and by the “legal” bonds of marriage; patriarchal marital sex is the only permitted form of female sexuality destined to regulate female desire. The female body is thereby inscribed within a male determined, culturally authenticated virgin/ whore binary in which the unwed non-virgin is criminalized for her supposed “illegal” status when compared to the official status of the wedded body. The private violation of the “illegal” female body leaves the perpetrator free to commit future crimes in the absence of a legal network of support for the aggressed. Incest and rape remain well-guarded domestic secrets through an imposed dictum of silence levied by male and female family members alike. As the ultimate site of the non-dit, the inexpressible, incest and rape paradoxically displace the locus of blame from the violator to the victim through a patriarchal regime of suppression and control. This cover-up nevertheless reveals the glaring patriarchal imbalances of power within familial, social and judicial structures that sanction violence against the defenseless. In addition, the discrediting of women’s testimonies of protest confirms the primacy of the male logos in which a man’s word reigns supreme. Miseria reveals this discrepancy when Ech-Channa’s association is unable to provide twelve male witnesses in a particular case. Rejecting the testimony of twelve women from the NGO, the male judge states: “Douze témoins hommes ou rien” [“Twelve male witnesses or nothing”] (115). Condemned by a male kangaroo court for their lost virginity, the women receive a further sentencing when patriarchal and tribal codes of chastity, purity and family honor are disrupted through the visible evidence of an unwanted pregnancy. Forced to shoulder the blame for “openly” dishonoring the family, clan and community through “illicit” sex, even in cases when the women and girls have been raped by family members or male employers,

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these victims are publicly condemned for their non-allegiance to the cult of virginity, the ultimate patriarchal fetish destined to regulate female sexuality. The shameful body becomes an open receptacle for patriarchal markings of discontent in the form of bruised hands, overworked limbs and other signifiers of sexual and work-related abuse. In other words, the laboring body is an expendable body to be physically branded as a domestic possession whose marketable value has nevertheless been undermined by its non-virginal status. Beatings and other forms of violence represent permissible forms of disciplinary action within private space to create sexually conforming bodies through punishment. Miseria demonstrates how the “transgressive,” non-virginal body remains traumatized for life through its permanent scarification as an eternal reminder of pain (41). Mounia absorbs the pain of a primal maternal wounding symbolized by the legacy of female disinheritance shared by mother and daughter. She inherits the mother’s abjection when she becomes the hapless result of her unwed mother’s rape by a male employer. As the scapegoat of an unlawful relationship between a maid (the mother) and her boss, Mounia pays the price for these sexual and social infractions between the dominator and dominated through a domestic code of violence. When the mistress of the house fires her suspected rival for getting pregnant, the child Mounia is later returned to the same household to become an easily victimized substitute for the betrayed wife’s wrath and jealousy. Miseria establishes a class-based male and female economy of violence in which the violated mother’s imposed shame translates into the daughter’s pain for providing visible confirmation of the husband’s infidelities. Mounia’s illegitimacy as a bastard child and her disenfranchised social status as an underage servant girl make her the vulnerable target of a permitted female-to-female violence; the wife’s bourgeois standing provides the necessary supporting shield to hide her mistreatment of the girl. Doubly violated by patriarchal and bourgeois female graftings of pain on the subaltern body, Mounia testifies to the social accommodations of violence that transcend gender modalities. Violence against a minor represents a socially permissible act when the working body is denied its humanity according to bourgeois standards of propriety. In other words, the wife recovers her own dignity through undignified behavior against a non-equal; this behavior permits her to perversely reclaim her authority within the household by disfiguring a social “inferior.” The text describes Mounia’s bodily wounds: “Visage pas ordinaire: nez comme un nez de boxeur, écrasé. Son corps porte des traces de coups. Elle a de petites mains, mais ce ne sont plus des mains d’enfant: elles révèlent un travail très dur, travaux de ménage, lessive, etc.” [“An extraordinary face: a crushed nose like a boxer’s nose. Her body carries the traces of wounds. She has small hands, but they are no longer the hands of a child: they reveal very hard work, housework, laundry, etc.”] (35–36). Mounia’s loss of innocence symbolized by her adult-looking hands, unreasonable domestic labor, her broken nose and physical wounds displace her

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from the realm of childhood to the confines of a premature adulthood. Her precocious sexuality must therefore be tamed by a regime of hard blows and bloody wounds. In other words, the young girl’s physical disfiguring will become the wife’s ultimate protection against her husband’s future promiscuity with the already adult Mounia, a readily available surrogate for her absent mother. By focusing on the indelible traumas borne by the Moroccan state’s youngest members, Miseria raises important questions about the long-term consequences of such violations on the vulnerable. The growing emotional instability of an aggressed generation also compromises the country’s future through a steady rise in depression, suicide, child prostitution and juvenile delinquency. Society’s ambivalent responses to violence against children, women and young adults, together with bourgeois women’s complicity in this abuse, is reflected in extreme cases of manic depression exhibited by traumatized children. Mounia, for example, suffers from “violent” mood swings and irrational behavior: “Elle Passé de la crise de larmes la plus violente au rire le plus fou” [“She goes from violent crying fits to the most maniacal laughter”] (36). These physical and psychological imbalances instigated by society’s untreated violence create a tension-filled “nervous condition” among the socially dispossessed. These pressures provoke feelings of social hatred, rejection, poor self-image and other psychically damaging symptoms leading to a complementing societal and individual “arrested development.”

Farida the child-mother Miseria chronicles the pain and humiliation suffered by those who feel abandoned and criminalized by society. This ambivalence expresses itself through feelings of hatred for society, a general indifference toward life, reactive selfdestructive behavior and other defensive techniques to cope with the desperation of rejection (53). Farida, a young orphan and unwed single mother, experiences the dual abjection of orphanhood and single motherhood. Her story reveals the hypocrisy and callousness of a society that cannot provide for its single mothers despite its credo of compulsory motherhood as the ideal norm of femininity within the authorized confines of marriage. The testimonial also critiques bourgeois women whose codes of mothering do not include unprivileged minors. Instead, disenfranchised women and girls are subjected to a personalized form of justice executed by family members in the absence of external legal support. As Jacinto states: The Moroccan Family Code, which was amended in 2004 to widespread international acclaim for improving women’s legal rights, still explicitly criminalizes sex outside marriage for women. Under Article 490, a woman who has sex “outside the bonds of marriage” can get between one month to a year in jail. Activists such as Aïcha Ech-Channa, Morocco’s indefatigable champion of women’s sexual rights, says cases rarely end up

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Ech-Channa also acknowledges the lack of resources available to her own organization in the form of public funding and state sponsorship. She admits: “Que faire? De petites participations personnelles ne peuvent rien résoudre, mais que peut faire une assistante sociale devant cette détresse? Il y a malheureusement trop de cas sociaux pour lesquelles les associations n’ont pas de réponse” [“What to do? Small private donations cannot resolve anything, but what can a social services worker do when faced with this distress? Unfortunately there are too many social cases for which the associations do not have a response”] (55). This financial and social deprivation further compromises the fate of these girls who are unable to find a suitable outlet for their distress. Subjected to an arbitrary vigilante justice in the absence of legal and familial support, these young women are very often forced to fend for themselves through prostitution and exploitative domestic labor in order to survive with their children. Farida’s case highlights the urgency of social mothering networks that provide daycare facilities and infant support for young mothers in order to keep the latter off the streets. Farida explains her situation: “Avec le bébé, je ne peux pas travailler; j’ai besoin d’argent pour le lait et pour beaucoup d’autres choses” [“With the baby, I cannot work; I need money for milk and many other things”] (55). As a sixteen-year-old “child” herself, Farida experiences a double “un-childing” as an orphan and adolescent mother whose disrupted life symbolizes a primal tearing apart, déchirure (55). The physical sense of being torn apart by an imposed pregnancy and a difficult delivery also reflects a more existential social rupture or state of non-belonging in which the body is exiled both from its self and society through unhealed wounds. Miseria is a serious reflection on the burden of single mothering when it inscribes the biological within the domain of social justice and civil governance. Why are absent fathers allowed to abdicate all responsibility toward their children? Why is single mothering a class-controlled, gendered experience and not a social responsibility that respects the Islamic tenet of the ‘umma (“community”)? Why are single mothers confronted with the unfortunate choice of keeping or abandoning their children depending on personal circumstance? Is it not a crime to deprive a mother of her child and vice versa? Is motherhood a privilege, a choice or a birthright? Can a society participate in its re-birthing by removing motherhood from its patriarchal constraints? What is the responsibility of socially privileged mothers in the economy of national care? As Ech-Channa asks: “C’est cette question qu’il faut poser peut-être: comment aider ces mamans à garder leurs enfants? Comment les soutenir? Quel examen medical permettra de découvrir qui est le père? Ça, ce sont des questions!” [“We should perhaps ask this question:

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how can we help these mothers to keep their children? How can they be supported? What medical examination will uncover the paternity of the child? These are all the questions!”] (65). Miseria is a critique of absentee fatherhood and the patrilineal roots of identity. Ghita El Khayat indicates that Maghrebi society is essentially patriarchal in orientation and governed by notions of clan and tribe. All filial ties and kinship patterns are strictly patrilineal; a woman’s identity is designated solely by its relationship to a man (2003, 108-109). The absentee father delegitimizes the existence of both woman and child because the name of the mother does not have any social or legal validity. The problem of absentee fathers remains a serious social issue that has inspired the anger of several Moroccan feminists and social activists themselves. In her preface to Miseria, noted sociologist Fatima Mernissi highlights the ways in which this text plunges readers into the depths of unbearable yet unavoidable truths, namely the shamefaced reality of Moroccan children abandoned by unworthy fathers. She states: “Ils sont indignes parce qu’ils profitent des archaïsmes d’une loi qui les délestent de leurs responsabilités envers les femmes qu’ils engrossent” [“They are unworthy because they take advantage of the archaisms of a law that relieves them of their responsibilities toward the women they impregnate”] (1997, 14). Mernissi’s statement reveals the hypocritical criminalizing of victims when the very root of criminality either remains unacknowledged through silence or protected by the law. Why is a single mother labelled a prostitute, who can spend several months in jail, while there is no condemnation reserved for an irresponsible father? What is the connection between the problematics of “illegal” sex and gender? How can the law’s partiality embrace the essence of democratization in an unequal gender and class equation? How does Moroccan society reconcile the enlightened leadership of the new Father of the Nation with the unenlightened behavior of a segment of its male population? These questions reveal the open-ended structure of Miseria, wherein the different testimonials highlight the as-yet unresolved social problems compromising a smooth transition to the second decade of the twenty-first century. The concluding paragraph of the text is, in fact, the commencement of yet another chapter on misery and charity featuring yet another victim’s story narrated in cyclical regularity: “Telle est l’histoire de Najat, de Karima et de Zineb qui se prolonge jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Je crois qu’elle n’est pas finie, qu’elle continue … ” [“Such is the story of Najat, Karima and Zineb that continues even today. I think it is not over, that it continues … ] (203). The simultaneously hesitant and hopeful voice of the narrator leaves the reader in a state of suspension, as if the very lives of the dispossessed concretize themselves in a series of tentative questions left with or without the possibility of ultimate resolution. At the same time, Miseria is also a testament to the generosity and good will of ordinary citizens committed to the overall cause of social justice, economic rights, sexual decolonization and gender equality in a rapidly

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transforming society. The text demonstrates how social wretchedness inspires a culture of resistance to bring about effective change. The author appeals to the public’s humanity in this consciousness-raising text in which dissident action/narration leads to a three-part program of social decolonization. In the first step, the initial voicing-out of pain in the testimonials should provoke feelings of outrage and indignation on the part of informed readers. The second step transitions from gut reaction to physical action through the politicized act of paying a personal visit to these infamous institutions of pain; in so doing, the reader has first-hand exposure to the hidden culture of pain and can thereby document these abuses as a credible witness. In other words, the reader himself/herself becomes a witness to the women and children’s abjection in a participatory hands-on exchange. The articulation and dual witnessing of pain by reader and victim alike provides the basis for the next level of collaboration with the social activist, who then joins hands with a distressed constituency of aggressed women and children and an emotionally charged public as she motivates them to take collective action against the politics of pain. Referring to the abuses she herself has witnessed in an institution for abandoned children, Ech-Channa pleads for the formation of critical social and transnational coalitions across and beyond the limits of gender, class and nation: “Je voulais que le public sache ce qui se passait dans cette maison. Je voulais que des gens viennent voir, que des associations, des personnes de tous les niveux, de toutes classes sociales, m’aident à réaliser quelque chose. Seule, je ne pouvais rien” [“I wanted the public to know what was going on in this house. I wanted the people to come and see; I wanted the associations, people from all levels, from all social classes to come and help me to accomplish something. I was helpless alone”] (177). Recognizing the efficacy of collective action, Ech-Channa makes an urgent plea to energize civil society and sensitize Moroccans to the prevailing social and economic inequities that impede human development. In so doing, she calls on all Moroccans to humanize and help the disenfranchised by creatively “re-childing” or rebirthing society through compassion, generosity and universal citizenship. She echoes Mernissi’s entreaty to construct a luminous Morocco “où un Etat rénové coopérant étroitement avec une société civile énergisée, assureront la sécurité des enfants, quelle que soit leur classe sociale” [“where a revitalized state, working closely with an energized civil society, will ensure the security of children of all social classes] (16-17). Like Mernissi, Ech-Channa sincerely believes that a socially sensitive and culturally informed program of economic reform, family planning and rehabilitation that places the interests of the dispossessed at its core will lead Morocco to a more luminous future, a future in which women’s and children’s rights will be recognized as basic human rights without compromise or apology. This appeal to Moroccan solidarity will inevitably have a positive outcome: Ça m’a appris que les Marocains ont le sens de la solidarité. Il suffit de savoir faire appel à eux, de les chercher là où ils sont et de les laisser

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gérer, en leur faisant confiance. En effet, avec la création de cette association, les choses sont devenues supportables. [This taught me that Moroccans have a sense of solidarity. It is only a question of knowing how to appeal to them, to look for them where they are and to let them administer things, while having confidence in them. In fact, with the creation of this association, things became bearable]. (179) Collective might over partisan self-interest is the key to social progress, according to Ech-Channa, who has made the rights of the oppressed her life mission and religious calling. In conclusion, Aïcha Ech-Channa has written a memorable testimonial text expressing the subaltern perspectives of disenfranchised women and children. Ech-Channa produces a heart-wrenching narrative of the abjection and corresponding resistance to victimization demonstrated by Morocco’s single mothers, orphans and street children. Chronicling the violence meted out against the most vulnerable segments of society, Miseria: témoignages gives voice to the voiceless by chronicling their stories in a polyphonic narrative. These stories are an indictment of the social and domestic abuses that characterize a class-based patriarchal society that still feeds on antiquated gender and class ideologies in terms of working-class women, children and the rural poor. This testimonial is geared toward raising the consciousness of readers and authorities alike as its author struggles to affirm her ideals of social justice and human rights. The trope of pain provides her with the necessary framework to question the inhumanity of the postmodern age and celebrate the courage and tenacity of the victims and survivors of social violence.

Notes 1 According to Ennaji, only 36% of adult women are literate, as opposed to 62% of adult men. 2 Ghita El Khayat has done a study of the situation of Maghrebi maids in Paris, documenting the difficulties they face as migrants, as well as their hopes and efforts to overcome their marginal status. See Les bonnes de Paris: Essai sur l’émigration des femmes maghrébines. See also Houria Boussejra, Femmes inachevées: nouvelles.

3

Gendering the Straits Border violence in Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Lamiae El Amrani’s Tormenta de especias (A Torrent of Spices)

The question of clandestine migration and its consequences is a central concern for North African writers and filmmakers. A variety of North African writers pay literary tribute to the victims and survivors of the Straits in socially conscious texts written in French, English, Spanish and Italian such as Partir (Tahar Ben Jelloun, 2006); Les Harragas ou les barques de la mort (Mohamed Teriah, 2002), Cannibales (Mahi Binebine, 1999); Harraga (Boualem Sansal, 2005); Diario de un ilegal (Rachid Nini, 2002); Tormenta de especias (Lamiae El Amrani, 2010), Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (Laila Lalami, 2005) and Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio (Amara Lakhous, 2008), among others. These writings, which include novels, poems, film scripts and testimonials, are an indictment of the darker side of globalization responsible for primal fractures between the North and the global South in terms of social inequalities, the restriction of movement from the South, the militarization of borders between Europe and Africa, institutionalized racism, gender violence and economic disparities between separate yet intersecting world spheres. However, Lamiae El Amrani and Laila Lalami provide important woman-centered interventions in this predominantly masculinist discourse by including the voices of women who represent at least fifty percent of this “migrating” force. Their narratives complement the testimonies collected by Aïcha Ech-Channa. If Miseria’s survivors highlight their confinement within the impermeable borders of class and patriarchal sexual codes, El Amrani and Lalami focus on the marginalization of the socially dispossessed within the physical borders between North Africa and Europe. These boundaries represent the “violence of territoriality” for unwelcome “foreigners.” This chapter analyzes the transnational face of violence when dispossessed Moroccans are forced to leave home in pursuit of a better life in Europe. These migrants suffer the pain of separation and exile when they are violently wrenched from the homeland in their dangerous pursuit of hope in Spain. El Amrani and Lalami underscore another aspect of social and sexual violence when they describe these clandestine migrations from Tangiers, Morocco to Tarifa, Spain. More importantly, these texts offer a gendered view on

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immigration by including the negated perspectives and experiences of women – the women who migrate as well as those who are left behind when the men migrate alone. I demonstrate how migrating identities are constructed and delimited by immovable borders, interstitiality and nationalist rhetoric in an economy of violence and survival negotiated by working-class Moroccans. The insertion of gender concerns adds further nuance to the corpus of literature on border crossings to show how these transnational migrations impact men and women through the intersecting, yet genderspecific, impact of militarization and border fortifications imposed on the lives of the dispossessed. The two authors insert their feminized perspectives in an otherwise male-centered corpus of writing that, for the most part, details the masculine aspects of “clandestine” North African immigration.

The poetics of illiterature The urgent need to revise stereotypical representations of the “clandestine” migrants found in mainstream media reports, racist immigration legislation and elitist perceptions in Spain and Morocco has led to the development of a new vocabulary and new terminology within the existing discourses on illegality. Hakim Abderrezak frames this literature within the parameters of illittérature (illiterature), a neologism created to decriminalize a highly racialized and classist discourse by providing a more complex counter-narrative of reclaimed subjectivity. Abderrezak deliberately combines the terms “illegal” and “literature” to “re-appropriate illegality” (2009, 461). Illiterature legalizes the disfavored aspects of the process of migration and the individuality of the migrants themselves by crossing “the party line against depicting clandestine emigration from Morocco … Illiterature points to the empathetic nature of the sub-genre from a Maghreb shaped by the effects of globalization.” It thereby provides “an alternative to monolithic narratives in mass media and politics concerning clandestine migration” (462). Illiterature adds a cutting-edge dimension to the field of postcolonial literature emerging from the specific context of social and racial subalternity as a politically expedient narrative, “a key geopolitical phenomenon,” according to Abderezzak (463). Framed within the trajectories of social justice and human understanding, this “anti-literature” uncovers the true face of criminality found in economic exploitation, corruption, thwarted opportunities for the poor and working class, and sexual slavery. It features as its protagonists those who are anxious to “burn” their painful pasts through the “burning” desire to leave. Clandestine migration in the Maghreb has been termed ‘hrig, while the plural Harragas (Harrag in the singular form) is another neologism referring to the “burners” who cross the waters by literally burning any form of identification that would link them to the Maghreb. Abderrezak states that ‘hrig has a trilateral root in Maghrebi Arabic (ha-ra-qaf), referring to the actual act of burning (2009, 469). He explains:

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Gendering the Straits Moroccan Arabic ‘hrig translates into French as brûler to burn – the common practice of burning identification documents before undertaking the sea crossing in order to avoid repatriation, the figurative act of “burning the road” (in this case, the sea), and illegally “burning up” kilometers in one fell swoop … . (469)

The ‘hrig represents the intent to provide a clean slate of transparency by adopting a new identity located in a fluid trans-bordered spatiality. The process claims a revised transnational citizenship hitherto denied to “southern” citizens by reframing European cartographies of affiliation from a decolonial perspective. Like the fluid and rapidly moving waters evoked in El Amrani’s poems, the Moroccan migrants also look for more porous negotiations of identity and belonging in new patterns of disorientation beyond the confining Europe/Africa binary. As argued by Homi Bhaba: But in the fin-de-siècle we find ourselves in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion. For there is a sense of disorientation, a disturbance of direction, in the “beyond,” an exploratory, restless movement caught so well in the French rendition of the words au-delà, here and there, on all sides, fort/da and thither, back and forth. (1994, 1) The spatial reorientations of identity from a subaltern perspective dislodge its fixity in time, location and space through the migrating potential of a “rhizomatic imaginary,” as a more affirming decentering of identity for the dispossessed. Resisting fixed definitions and immobility within confined geographical spaces, the rhizome, as a movable center, regenerates through displacement, dislocation, instability and interruption. These are defining characteristics of the diasporic process, according to Caribbean scholars Édouard Glissant and Antonio Benítez-Rojo (Mehta 2009, 3). The rhizome as a multiplicity of concentric circles without a fixed center traces “ex-centric” (Abderrezak 2014) movements across and within geographical frontiers and nationally determined borders in an active decolonization of colonial maps, a strategy termed “illegal” by European nationalists, immigration officials and politicians who are anxious to maintain the Eurocentric fixity of colonial geography. Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits provides one example of this creative reconfiguring of colonial geography through the actions of a female harraga: “The Guinean woman throws a piece of paper overboard. Murad figures its her ID. She’ll probably pretend she’s from Sierra Leone so she can get political asylum” (2005, 9). Mainstream European discourses impose universal characterizations of illegality and deviance on southern migrants

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“revealing the blunt criminalization of the Southern Other in current debates on the question” (Abderrezak 2014). The Guinean woman uses the European logic of homogeneity to her advantage by blurring her “indistinguishable” Africanness for political purposes in an active re-vision of the master narratives on clandestine migration. In this case, her “clandestine” efforts creatively open the space for other self-affirming opportunities routinely denied to liminal identities. At the same time, neither Lalami nor El Amrani offer celebratory narratives divorced from the cruel reality of migration. In fact, they encourage the reader to view the process differently by humanizing the brave agents of this death-defying journey.

The violence of illegality As stated by Jonathan Smolin: “Considering the modern Arabic novel’s typical focus on literary commitment and engagement with pressing socioeconomic issues such as poverty, women’s rights, and social justice, it should come as no surprise that illegal immigration to Europe has served as a rich theme for Moroccan authors since the 1990s” (2011, 2). In his article, Smolin refers to the long period of intellectual repression initiated by King Hassan II’s “Lead Years” from independence in 1956 to the early 1990s, also referenced in Chapter 2 of this book (on Ech-Channa’s Miseria: témoignages). During these years, the brutal silencing of free speech through censorship, incarceration, exile and even death tempered critiques of the government, while the mass media was “encouraged” to express highly favorable and idealized views of the country. The end of this era marked the creative un-censoring of speech in the form of critical discourse, political commentary, socially engaged literature and other media that openly denounced the government’s failings and hypocrisy. The year 1991 coincided with the implementation of stringent immigration controls by Spain following its entry into the European Union in 1986. The imposition of visa requirements for all Moroccans was an attempt to curtail “third-world” population flows to Spain by means of a quota system and the strict surveillance and management of the “illegal.” The imposed restrictions had the opposite effect from discouraging unauthorized migration from Morocco despite vigilant border controls that were established when Spain joined the Schengen Agreement with twenty-five European countries in 1991. This accord abolished all internal borders between the member countries. Entry into one Schengen country guaranteed freedom of movement to other countries that were a part of the Agreement without the use of a passport.1 While the Agreement promoted lateral movement within Europe, it simultaneously led to a closing of borders outside the European Union, discouraging vertical movement across an institutionalized Spanish-Schengen-Moroccan border from the South. The development of a highly sophisticated surveillance system reminiscent of the Separation Wall in the Occupied Territories and the “Frontier Wall” (la frontera) between

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Mexico and the United States was aimed at sealing the coastal borders through the impermeable and forbidding SIVE (Integrated System of External Vigilance) and the authoritarian watchfulness of the Guardia Civil (Civil Guard). However, the controls only intensified the desire to defy this politically structured taboo by using any means possible to cross over – first, the ill constructed pateras (rafts) and later the inflatable Zodiacs capable of “flying” at high speeds and carrying an increased capacity of travellers: “It’s a border, it’s a closed border,” responds Moroccan photographer Yto Barrada when interviewed about her photo exhibit on the Straits titled Morocco Unbound (2006, 1). She continues: “The fact that the border is closed creates a situation of longing desire to cross, and the violence of that desire is that it’s confronted by a wall” (3) – the wall being the symbol of a violent impasse. This impasse is in violation of Article 13 of the 1945 Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man that states: “Toute personne a le droit de circuler et de choisir sa résidence à l’intérieur d’un Etat. Toute personne a le droit de quitter tout pays, y compris le sien, et d’y revenir” [“Every human being has the right to circulate and to choose his residence within a State. Every human being has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return there”] (Daoud 2004, 244). These universal rights of free passage are nevertheless compromised by anti-human rights legislation, such as the “Alien Law” or LOE 7/1985, which is “the single most important factor in drawing the political and legal boundary between Africans as foreigners and Andalusians as European citizens,” according to Liliana Suárez-Navaz (2004, 50). The institutionalized consolidation of borders violates the basic tenets of the Universal Declaration by imposing an “alien” legislation detrimental to the lives of humans who are nevertheless considered non-human by their “alien” designation. In other words, the highly policed border is a carceral space of detention and expulsion representing a fragile membrane that separates insider and outsider groups, life and death. It is also a highly contested site of virulent nationalist and gender ideologies nevertheless resisted by each successive wave of emigration. Spain begins to fortify itself against these unwelcome “invasions” conceptualized in purely militarized and colonial terms. The character Murad references the historical and mnemonic reclaiming of Spanish territoriality by the migrants as they embark on their postcolonial journeys twelve centuries later in Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits: Murad can make out the town where they’re headed, Tarifa. The mainland point of the Moorish invasion in 711. Murad used to regale tourists with anecdotes about how Tariq Ibn Ziyad had led a powerful Moor army across the Straits and, upon landing in Gibraltar, ordered all the boats burned. He’d told his soldiers that they could march forth and defeat the enemy or turn back and die a coward’s death. The men had followed their general, toppled the Visigoths, and established an empire that ruled over Spain for more than seven hundred years. Little did they

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know that we’d be back, Murad thinks. Only instead of a fleet, here we are in an inflatable boat – not just Moors, but a motley mix of people from the ex-colonies, without guns or armor, without a charismatic leader. It’s worth it, though, Murad tells himself. (2005, 2–3) The migrants pursue their illustrious ancestors through two journeys – the reconfigured enactment of the historical voyage of conquest and symbolic resurrections of the past through the trope of memory. Memory nevertheless concretizes its presence in an act of “natural” embodiment in Gibraltar, the small island named after the Moorish conqueror. Tariq Ibn Ziyad thereby inscribes his permanence on the imposing Rock of Gibraltar (the rock of Tariq) in a historical ritual of possession. He surveys the ancestral passage between Tangiers and Tarifa by illuminating the way between two interstitial “contact zones” (Pratt 1992, 7) in his Arabic symbolism as the “morning star.” Contact zones, according to Mary Louise Pratt, are politically constructed conflict zones inscribed and re-inscribed by the violence of history and the machinations of coloniality leading to “conditions of coercion, radical inequality and intractable conflict” (7). As politically demarcated border zones, these zones symbolically “re-enact” the unresolved tensions and anxieties of an interrelated Spanish-Moroccan historicity through the traumatic temporality found in the violence of contact.2 Murad wonders: “how fourteen kilometers could separate not just two countries but two universes” (Lalami 2005, 1) that share a conflicted, albeit umbilical, affiliation represented by the connecting passageway of the Straits. In this respect, the postcolonial trip centuries later mimics the primary crossing as a “shadow presence” which has lost its conquering grandeur due to shifting geopolitical power imbalances and Spain’s continuing colonial presence in parts of northern Morocco. In addition, the migrants suffer an internal colonization by the crushing force of social inequality. These inequities are symbolized by the replacement of the imposing Moorish armada by inflatable rubber dinghies and the substitution of a charismatic leader by a corrupt, self-serving boat captain. As stated by Ahmed Idrissi Alami: From this first opening, we see echoes of historical memory, of a triumphant earlier time that initiated seven centuries of dominance on the peninsula. But now, after numerous indignities and hardships in their own land, these emigrants will turn to Spanish jobs in agriculture, food service and some of them even prostitution, which have come to be preferable to the rejections they have experienced in their own society. (2012, 144) The traumatically dreaded “return of the Moor”3 has nevertheless scarred Spain’s national imaginary and has consequently defined its neurotic engagement with “the return of the repressed,” marking its traumatic disavowals of

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its own Arab-Berber-Islamic historicity through the racist conflation of Maurophobia and Islamophobia. Moreover, the shift in terminology from “clandestine” to “illegal” emigrants has imposed irreversible connotations of criminality and lawlessness on an already outlawed constituency. As stated by Daniela Flesler: The Morisco “problem” and its successive problematic “solutions” reveal Spain’s deep anxiety over the demarcation of national belonging. Today, the responses to Moroccan immigration are still determined by that anxiety. Unlike other Western European nations, Spain is not only experiencing the return of the colonized but also that of its medieval colonizers … If Spaniards have difficulty in welcoming Moroccan immigrants, it is because they perceive them not only as guests but also as hosts who have come to reclaim what was theirs. Perceived as “Moors,” Moroccan immigrants embody the non-European, African, and oriental aspects of Spanish national identity. (2008, 9) Traumatic historical recreations – ranging from the historic Moor who claimed the medieval Andalusian heartland to the sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury pirates who attacked the Spanish coast (Flesler 2008, 10) – are projected onto the postcolonial migrant in criminalizing and racialized discourses of “intimate” Othering. As argued by Flesler: The use of the rhetoric of invasion and specific reference to medieval or early modern Spain conjures up the stereotype of the violent, invading Moor and thus generates a reality that justifies the rejection of and the violence against Moroccan workers as a form of self-defense … in strategies of separation and differentiation. (10) The vicious attempt to externally expulse the Moroccan Other from Spanish shores also reflects the desire to purge the Spanish imaginary of its nonChristian, non-European, non-”secular,” non-white dimensions in a purist and delusional return to an “uncontaminated” national origin. As argued by Mark Meyerson: One of the paradoxes of Spanish history, it seems to me, is that the legal, literary, and polemical texts in which the “other” was constructed often were produced because the “other” had become too familiar and hence too dangerous, because the “other” was not “other” at all. (1999, xiii) The radicalized efforts to exterminate any form of Otherness from within the confines of nationally conceived notions of identity are concretized in punitive

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methods of expulsion, detention and sexual violence authenticated by criminalizing immigration codes of illegality and compromised national security.

Border crossings in text Moroccan poet Lamiae El Amrani and author Laila Lalami humanize the “clandestine” Moroccan migrants who cross the Straits of Gibraltar to Spain in search of better economic prospects in Europe. Their search involves a risky ten-mile crossing across the Straits in turbulent conditions exacerbated by the choppy waters and the fragile rafts (pateras) and Zodiac boats that are no match for the forces of nature (in most cases). The Straits provide the illusion of safe passage due to the short distance between Morocco and Europe, and the apparent feasibility of the trip. At the same time, these waters mask an inner violence punctuated by death, the shame of deportation, exile and thwarted possibilities. It is estimated that more than 30,000 Moroccans attempt the crossing each year – approximately 14,000 are arrested, more than 1,000 drown in failed attempts, while 15,000 on average are successful in their efforts (Daoud 2004, 233). The entire system is organized and managed by a corrupt network of passeurs (human smugglers) who are willing to capitalize on human misery and vulnerability to make an enormous profit for themselves. Very often, they are complicit with another organized mafia on the Spanish side represented by the very same Guardia Civil responsible for the security of the Spanish coastal borders. Clandestine migration is ironically framed within an “illegal” supporting network bordering on human slavery on both sides of the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, codes of illegality are only imposed on the migrating bodies of the dispossessed in the absence of material or legal support, even though each journey represents a legitimate human rights search for visibility and social mobility beyond the limits of class, race, gender and national affiliation imposed by home and foreign country. Lamiae El Amrani uses the ethereal beauty of verse to poeticize the lives of “las victimas de los suenos del estrecho” [“the victims of the dreams of the Straits”] (2010, 47) whose aspirations and desires are tossed about by the capricious waves of the Mediterranean. Together with Laila Lalami, she focuses on the social despair that drives the economically wretched to cross the perilous Straits of Gibraltar, this “Eldorado européen” [“European Eldorado”] (Rédouane 2008, 13) in search of a supposedly better life in Spain. These writers engender an epistemic shift in geographical location by displacing the center of migration from France to Spain in a subversive border shift termed “ex-centric – they are off-centered or ex-centered (to Spain and the Middle East), deviating from the historical norm for this region,” according to Hakim Abderrezak in Ex-centric Migrations: Europe and the Maghreb in Cinema, Literature and Music (2014). Lalami’s narrative establishes another “off-centering” by providing a woman-centered reading of the feminized faces of migration in North African

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literature through the vicissitudes of her female characters and their gendered negotiations of the Straits. Her short stories are, to date, the only narratives that focus more fully on the “women of the Straits” to show how the embedded tensions between women, migration, “illegality” and violence are inscribed in a complex network of gender relationships. These connections and disconnections impact the women who successfully or unsuccessfully brave the crossing, as well as those who support the male crossers financially and emotionally. In turn, El Amrani is the first Spanish-speaking Moroccan woman poet to dedicate her work to the memory of the victims of the Straits in Tormenta de especias. She memorializes the crossings in poetic form to create intimate synergies between poetry and the brutal hardship of postcolonial realities faced by the marginalized. The two authors insert their feminized perspectives in an otherwise male-centered corpus of writing that, for the most part, details the masculine aspects of emigration. Lalami was deeply moved when she read about the tragic drowning of fifteen Moroccan immigrants who were trying to cross the Straits of Gibraltar on a flimsy fishing boat. This news item was relegated to the bottom of the French newspaper Le Monde’s online page almost as an afterthought, thereby making it “unworthy” of a more visible front-page exposure. These migrants had left the port city Tangiers at night in an attempt to navigate the treacherous waters of the Straits with the hope of commencing a new life in Spain. They were separated from their dreams by a narrow ten-mile crossing dividing Africa from Europe. However, the boat was overcrowded, poorly constructed and incapable of dealing with the turbulent Mediterranean currents. It capsized a couple of miles away from the coast, leaving no survivors. Lalami was astonished by the cavalier way in which France’s leading newspaper chose to narrate the accident in a completely impersonal and matter-offact tone. She was equally astounded by the tragedy’s relegation to a footnote in a newspaper credited for its sensitive and comprehensive reporting of world events. It soon became clear to her that the lives of the fifteen Moroccans were indeed dispensable in a European milieu (both French and Spanish) marking the “ungrievable” (Butler 2010, xix) nature of these lives. When Lalami originally read the article from the comfort of her Los Angeles desk, she thought the accident was an isolated event, which could possibly explain the report’s marginal presence in the newspaper. However, she soon learned otherwise: I thought at first that the disaster was an isolated incident, a blip, a bizarre turn of events. Over time, however, the incidents seemed to multiply. Nearly every week in the summer of 2001 there was a report about arrests by the coast guards on either side of the Mediterranean. (2005a) Lalami realized the enormous scope and regularity of these trans-aquatic crossings that were inscribed in a life-and-death dynamic between hope and hopelessness. She adds:

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I wondered what could compel people to pay large sums of money to risk their lives for what would very likely be third-rate jobs. The articles never went beyond superficial details: this one had been unemployed for five years; that one had paid $4,000; this other one was on his third attempt. (2005a) Lalami notes how human lives are reduced to superficial trivia in corporate news accounts that only seem interested in the lives of the wealthy. In addition, the anonymity ascribed to the lives of the poor and the dispossessed is further compounded in these depersonalized narratives referring to “this one” or “that one” in the absence of subjective nomenclature. The desire to confer a level of humanity and worthiness on these faceless border crossers impels Lalami to reconstruct their lives in text through specific characterizations, narrative integrity and the discursive autonomy that would restore their lost individuality in media narratives. Lalami rewrites the Gibraltar crossing through the individual perspectives of her characters, whose experiences are highlighted in individual chapters. The structure of her book exemplifies the idea of genre crossing: serving as a collection of individual stories that, when read as a continuum, could also be considered a novella. She chooses this more intimate form of communication to establish a sense of familiarity with her literary creations: “Sometimes, I can still hear them whisper in my ear,” (2005a) she confesses. The author’s attempt to personalize her characters also reflects her desire to humanize the corpus of theoretical research on illegal immigration, a reminder that immigration is a human subject and not a compendium of statistics: As I started to research this subject, I learned about illegal immigration – what it represents, how it works, who benefits from it. The research, however, amounted to a lot of facts and figures; it didn’t tell me what I wanted to know. I had been writing fiction for many years, and I thought that the answers to my questions might lie in creating a story. (2005a) Lalami transforms the immobilized statistics into moving characters that highlight the complex trajectories of migration through their personalized narratives. She converts a news item into a humanized story inscribed in the realities of social inequality, racism, national rejection and the refusal to remain downtrodden. An intellectual and international border crosser herself, Lalami is a leading voice in Anglophone Arab-American writing. She negotiates multiple linguistic spaces in French, English and Arabic in her diverse roles as a recognized writer, journalist and essayist for several publications including The Nation, The Guardian and The New York Times. She is a popular blogger (Moorish Girl) who writes on a variety of subjects from literature to politics and a respected Associate Professor of Creative Writing

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at the University of California, Riverside. Born and raised in Morocco, Lalami completed her undergraduate education at l’Université Mohammed V in Rabat and at University College in London before receiving her PhD in Linguistics at the University of Southern California. Her collection of short stories, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was shortlisted for the Oregon Book Award, while her recent novel Secret Son was long-listed for the Orange Prize.4 She has been considered the most important Moroccan author writing in English by international critics, and her work has been translated into more than eleven languages. Lalami chooses a title that conveys the ambiguity of migration for the disenfranchised populations of Morocco – the poor, abused women, the religiously marginalized, the unemployed, those without elitist connections, and disempowered college graduates: Although they come from different cities in Morocco and although they are leaving the country for different reasons, my characters all share a deep hope of a better tomorrow. What intrigued me was the idea that they were risking their very lives for the sake of a better life. A very dangerous gamble. So I wanted a title that had both hope and danger in it, which is how it came about. (Lawless 2008, 2) She endows her characters with a definite complexity and sense of purpose that rescues them from sensationalized accounts of victimhood and the indifference of impersonalized reporting. El Amrani’s poetry and Lalami’s short stories are social justice narratives destined to give a voice and face to the dispossessed majority in Morocco. Born in Tétouan, Morocco, El Amrani has already made her mark as a leading female voice in Spanish-Moroccan poetry at a young age. She holds a diploma in Spanish language and literature from l’Université Abdelmalek Essaadi in Tétouan and is currently completing a doctorate on memory and Moroccan women’s writing in the Department of Journalism at the University of Seville. She is the author of several volumes of poetry and anthologies, including Verde mar sin alas (2007), Un suspiro inapreciable de una noche cualquiera (2007), La pasión intimista (2009), Tormenta de especias (2010), a bilingual collection in Spanish and Arabic, and Poesía femenina y sociedad: antología poética marroquí (2010), among others. She is also a translator and an essayist with publications in journals such as Barcola, Lunas de Papel and Antaria. Her poetry is known internationally through her active participation in poetry festivals, workshops and conferences in countries as diverse as Spain, Morocco, Mexico, Chile and Colombia.

Poeticizing the Straits: the torment of crossing In “The Water Well,” poet Lamiae El Amrani pays tribute to the human casualties of the Straits of Gibraltar who float like fresh seaweed before being

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submerged under the watery depths of the unknown. The poem describes their situation: “like fresh seaweed/exposed to the sun/I see you fading into oblivion/You are born on a shore/without a name/but with a number/that number keeps you company/in the depths without depth/on a voyage of no return” (2010, 49).5 These anonymous victims of the sea represent a diaspora of the “hopeful” who risk their lives by leaving nameless shores in search of a better life overseas. Anonymous in their homelands due to their subalternity, they suffer another level of erasure as the unknown casualties of an epic tragedy. The sea alters their destiny within the “depths without depth” by claiming the lives of these seekers of hope in this “voyage of no return.” The poet laments this tragic loss of life to the devouring waters of the Straits termed one of the most expansive cemeteries in the world. As a formidable opponent, the Straits represent a superhuman force capable of battling the vanquished in an ongoing game of “surrender.” El Amrani’s poem consequently serves as an epitaph for this aquatic grave; these deadly waters are nourished by a steady supply of fresh seaweed in the form of surrendering bodies incapable of braving powerful undercurrents and capricious waves. Anxious to memorialize these invisible lives, to rescue them from the depths of oblivion, the poet uses literature as a narrative of commemoration to restore their worthiness by inscribing them in poetic memory. The timelessness of poetry guarantees the permanence of these rituals of memory. These rituals are a fitting tribute destined to keep alive the courage and tenacious spirit of the “water crossers” who contest “la frontera detestada” (“Con Los Limites A Cuestas”) [“the detested border” (“With the Limits Behind Us”)] (69) in a forward-projecting journey. These individuals are re-membered through each poetic invocation against forgetfulness, guaranteeing the survival of memory’s spirit in a sub-marine landscape. The reference to the inhospitable beach as the detested border is an ironic reminder of how pristine tourist spots in sunny Spain remain out of bounds to the economically dispossessed of the global South. These beaches are part of an annihilating “deathscape” for those who dare to trespass on forbidden lands. At the same time, “for many migrants, to lie out on the open beach is bitterly an act that only occurs through death, and weekly reports of dead bodies washing up on the shores of the Strait represent only a fraction of the actual numbers of the dead,” according to Compan and Pieprzak (2007, 106). The tabooed prostration of the migrants on the beach is inscribed in a condemning paradigm of death as the ultimate form of “illegal” immigration control. At the same time, North African literature also condemns the failures of the postcolonial state and its inability to effectively deal with the growing socio-economic despair of its most disenfranchised populations, who seem to be either shortchanged or abandoned in policies of social reform. For example, in 2005, Moroccan King Hassan VI and his government formulated the National Initiative for Human Development (NIHD). This project was destined to vitalize and modernize the infrastructure of some of Morocco’s poorest urban and rural centers, since growing poverty and social impasses

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have been identified as key factors fuelling the rising tide of migration. As stated by Moha Ennaji and Fatima Sadiqi: Morocco, as an emerging country whose economy is based on agriculture, has known in the last few decades an increase in unemployment and poverty, which are caused by the economic crisis triggered by low economic growth, numerous droughts, high oil prices, overpopulation, more supply than demand for work and internal migration. The high unemployment rate is also caused by the government’s decrease in public administration jobs … and insufficient reforms and investments in the economic sector. (2008, 50) Despite the best intentions of the NIHD scheme, the project hasn’t been able to realize its full potential due to inefficiency, poor planning and insufficient resources, thereby leaving the promise of tackling the socio-economic crisis in a state of limbo reminiscent of the floating “pateras de carton/bailando con el viento” [“cardboard rafts/dancing in the wind”] (49) described in “The Water Well.” This state of social stagnation has ironically provided a solitary form of “mobility” for the economically disadvantaged, namely the seduction of the forbidding waters as the only possible contestation of their current immobility in Morocco. Vacillating between the certainty of social death in Morocco and the possibility of physical death by drowning, the precarious rafters choose in-betweenness by “inhabiting” the only home they will know during the tenmile crossing, this “una patria de cartón” [“a country of cardboard”] described in El Amrani’s “Con Los Limites A Cuestas” [“With the Limits Behind Us”] (2010, 69). Tahar Ben Jelloun’s novel Partir also highlights the dual problematic of rejecting the motherland and being rejected by it in turn through the act of crossing: “Quitter cette terre qui ne veut plus de ses enfants … partir pour sauver sa peau même en risquant de la perdre” [“To leave this land that turns its back on its children … to leave in order to save one’s skin even at the risk of losing it”] (2006, 23). Leaving becomes a conscious choice to control one’s future instead of facing the rejection and invalidation resulting in an existential and state-sanctioned condition of homelessness at “home.” The obsession to leave becomes a new and recurring geopolitical positioning for these immigrants, wherein home is located in a transiting positionality: “Tout le monde est en état de fuite” [“Everyone is in a state of flight”], states Zakya Daoud (2004, 215). This “syndrome du départ” [“this syndrome of departure”] described by Najib Rédouane (2008, 11) is linked to the trauma of displacement within the exilic space of un-homeliness, an excluding national space that does not recognize the economically and socially damned. The decision to leave consequently reflects the desire to claim “una dignidad ignorada” [“a disavowed dignity”] (El Amrani 2010, 69) within the

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borderless expanses of water, to “burn” one’s limitations symbolized by “nuestras lágrimas/y nuestros recuerdos pesados” [“our tears/and our burdensome memories”] amid “un desierto de agua” (“Retrato De Un Viaje”) [“a desert of water” (“Portrait of A Journey”)] (67). At the same time, the water’s movements are confined by two delimiting boundaries on either side that create a transnational “transit” zone between arrival and death as a defining rite of passage. In this sense, the Straits represent an infinite border “beyond a boundary,” an undifferentiated liminal space extending “hacia la sepultura” (“A Lo Lejos”) [“toward the grave” (“Far Away”)] (51). Within this indefinable limit, “En la superficie aparece una mancha/es un alma dormida, cansada” [“On the surface appears a blot/it is a weary sleeping soul”] (51). The poem blurs the distinction between death and sleep in a gesture of conferred immortality bestowed upon the “sleeping soul” by the mourning clouds: “las nubes están de luto” [“the clouds are in mourning”] (51). For El Amrani, the sea is a site of mourning and memory represented by “la sabana blanca” [“a white blanket”] (51), a memorializing lieu de mémoire as the repository of the migrant’s past and his/her interrupted present. As Pierre Nora affirms: “Memory is a perpetually actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present” (1989, 8). The sea is blanketed by a white shroud of grief as a shared memorial for lost lives. At the same time, each life is guaranteed permanency in the aquatic archive of memory by the eternal presence of the water and the repetitive motion of the cyclical waves that move to the thrashing rhythm of “un flamenco africano” [“an African flamenco”] (69), a constant reminder of the African presence in Spain – as suggested by Caribbean poet Derek Walcott, “the sea is history” (1986, 364). In his memorable poem, “The Sea is History,” Walcott makes reference to the erased histories of African slavery and the transatlantic crossings to the Caribbean that remain locked in the “gray vault” of memory. The task of re-membering and re-collecting these disavowed histories is entrusted to the mnemonic art of poetry that looks for “other” histories in fractures, in indeterminate autonomous places removed from the colonial and national archives. These counter-histories emerge from the palpable reality of altenative sources found in El Amrani’s “la sal marinera” (“Apariciones”) [“sea salt” (“Apparitions”)] (2010, 71). The sea salt represents an important medium of self-inscription for the “othered” Moroccans, since their “illegal” working-class historicity is negated on both sides of the Mediterranean. Instead of being condemned to historical rootlessness, as an irreversible exilic predicament, they seek a reclaimed historicity expressed by Lalami’s protagonist Murad when he states: “There was no use reading stories like this anymore; he needed to write his own … ; he was already lost in the story he would start writing tonight” (2005, 195). These alternative stories written from the subjective position of the migrants themselves do not have a rooted origin as a point of possible exclusion and partiality. Instead, they emerge from the depths of “el Oasis” [“the

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Oasis”] (El Amrani 2010, 67) peopled by a community of souls, these “almas justas” (“Como Colón En La Barca”) [“just souls” (“Like Columbus On The Boat”)] (63) who inhabit different social and geographical locations in Morocco. The Oasis is a final resting place in this “desierto de agua” [“desert of water”] (67), a point of inclusion embracing diversity, contrast and contradiction found in the confounding vastness of these “deserts of water.” These multifaceted narratives contest the uncomplicated one-sidedness demonstrated by the media narratives as well as the sense of placelessness imposed on migrants in the dominant “sociospatial and moral landscapes” (Suárez-Navaz 2004, 222) of the Mediterranean. At the same time, the Oasis is also a site of memory and the starting point of a new historicity claimed and written from the point of view of the subaltern. Each individual story represents a painful fragment that nevertheless joins in communion with a mosaic of similar shards reclaiming their “suenos posibles” [“possible dreams”] (El-Amrani 2010, 63) amid “una gloria delirada” [“the delirious glory”] (65) of the moving waves. El Amrani’s poetry transforms the migrants from their abjection as victims of the sea to their poetic transcendence as immortalized guardians of memory. Her poetry links the sea to a remembered life that has nevertheless endured a grueling rite of passage in order to enter “un nuevo mundo/donde brotan/ríos de esperanza” [“a new world/from where new rivers of hope flow”] (63). The reconfigured seascape is a site of agency that gives “voice to the dead, the voice that was refused to them while they were alive,” according to Youssouf Elalamy, who, in a fitting tribute to the sea, continues on to say the following: To finally bring out the voice from its clandestine state, to make it heard, vibrate and explode like a truth. Paradoxically, and thanks to this artifice, never have my characters been so alive. They are finally delivered from the silence imposed on them by religion, society, morality, and quite simply life. (Compan and Pieprzak 2007, 119)

Surviving the crossing If El Amrani’s poetry commemorates the lives of the dead, Lalami’s short stories pay tribute to the living in the voices of four survivors of the crossing. Despite the fact that they are strangers to each other with diverse stories emanating from different parts of the country, they are united by their common objective to leave the past behind as they face an uncertain future in an unknown land. The decision to leave is a damning one, as stated earlier, wherein the threat of possible death on the Straits is preferable to the regret of remaining behind in a no-win situation. Spain offers the seduction of the cherished Eldorado through a mediated imaginary of satellite images, twinkling lights on the Spanish shore and projected fantasies that temporarily obscure the grim reality of Spanish inhospitality. As related by Barrada:

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The coincidence is that when the border closed in 1991 the satellite dishes were all over the place with images from the West. Before we had only two channels, one channel in Morocco – in Morocco there’s only one channel, and you could sometimes see Gibraltar – and one channel in Spain. All of a sudden you had forty, fifty, a hundred and fifty channels from all around the world, and that’s when the border closed. (2006, 3) Barrada’s comments reveal how Spain’s “come-hither” seduction game is televised from all over the world, wherein tantalizing images are beamed into Morocco as an invitation to “explore.” The free-floating images are circulated within a capitalist economy of desire and repulsion to both feed and thwart Moroccan dreams in an active/passive media power play between the makers of corporatized images in the West and their bewitched “third-world” recipients. The Spanish border reveals its historical and geographical proximity through the entwined historicity of “greater Andalusia” linking Spain and Morocco in a Herculean enjambement (straddling): “Fourteen Kilometers. Murad has pondered that number hundreds of times in the last year, trying to decide whether the risk was worth it” (Lalami 2005, 1). Murad’s thoughts are perhaps influenced by a comment made by the late King Hassan II with reference to Morocco’s geopolitical location as a “nation of the middle road … [with] shores lapped by two oceans and forming a bridge between Europe, the Arab West, and Africa” (Nelson 1985, xxvi). The late King sees his country as a point of connection between Europe, the Arab hinterland and Africa through a series of intersecting routes bridging cultural and social differences. Like the ancient Silk Road, the “Middle Road” also offers a similar possibility of cultural exchange and understanding through the traversing and crisscrossing of multiple “roots,” creating a multicultural prism within the region. The King’s idyllic vision has nevertheless been refracted by the current political debates on immigration privileging a nationalism-inspired cultural hegemony over cultural plurality. If Europe considers the Mediterranean to be the Mother of all Seas, the border ideology that frames the current legislation makes the Straits of Gibraltar the Mother of all Borders in a conversely negating perspective. The idea of bridging is replaced by bordering in an uncompromising one-way passage that ironically undermines the scope of transnationality in a rapidly globalized world. As stated by Xavier Ferrer et al.: Often, visual representations of the Spanish-Moroccan border are condensed into the metaphorical image of the Pillars of Hercules on the two shores of the Strait of Gibraltar – Gibraltar on the one hand, and Ceuta’s Mote Hacho, on the other. Not without a reason, due to its symbolism the Mediterranean-divide dimension of the border is especially marked in the collective imaginary. However, the border between Spain and Morocco goes beyond the Herculean divide. It is configured by an extra set of

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Ferrer implies that the negation of the rhizomatic configuring of the Mediterranean sets up a series of fragmenting borders instead. These fractures divide Europe from its negated Others through repeatedly enforced and manufactured dislocations “to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them” (Anzaldúa 1987, 25). These spatial fragmentations are indicative of broader divisions between the legitimate and the illegitimate, the powerful and the powerless, in an irreconcilable border politic that harms the socially and economically vulnerable. Lalami provides organization to these migrating dislocations through the overlapping structure of the short stories, whose initial focal point is the Zodiac boat hired to transport the characters to Tarifa on the other side. The diverse occupants of the boat represent a community of the dispossessed, the obscured underside of Moroccan society that reveals the internal fractures of a compromised civil system. These “hidden” faces of Morocco do not feature on tourist brochures or glossy magazine covers. Lalami gives them visibility in her stories as a counter-propaganda narrative. As stated earlier, the boat represents a microcosm of Morocco’s “othered” citizens who lift the social and economic taboos that govern their lives in the act of crossing: “The six-meter Zodiac inflatable is meant to accommodate eight people. Thirty huddle in it now, men, women, and children, all with the anxious look of those whose destinies are in the hands of others – the captain, the coast guards, God” (2005, 2). The cramped boat reflects their stifled lives and the overcrowding pressures that inhibit their existence. At the same time, the Zodiac represents their destiny through its precarious balancing on the waters, where a ferocious wave can either propel the boat further or cause it to capsize to the depths, according to the capricious whims of god and nature. Within this “democratic” space, men, women, children, the middle-aged and the young, the single and the married, the veiled and the unveiled, North Africans and sub-Saharans, the educated and the uneducated huddle together in a blurring of spatially determined distinctions between public and private space, thereby revealing the transgendered and transgenerational scope of migration. Lalami brings depth and complexity to the process by focusing on the lives of dispossessed women and children in addition to the men to show how Morocco compromises its future vitality by “burning” its promises of creating an egalitarian civil society. Instead, the government indirectly sustains the networks of illegality that foster exploitation and human slavery by turning a blind eye to the desperation of the migrants who have forsaken home and nation by risking everything, including their life savings: “If the other passengers paid as much as Murad did, the take is almost 6000,000 dirhams, enough for an apartment or a small home in a Moroccan beach town like

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Asilah or Cabo Negro” (2). These links between social despair and capitalist exploitation disclose the ethos of the corruptible state that feeds on the dispensable status of its poor and wretched citizens in the name of economic profit. Lalami states: “Our leaders delivered us into a world of silence and fear and told us that we must watch what we say and watch what we do” (2011). The complicit state silences around “illegal” migration reveal the illegality of the state itself in its negation of its humanitarian obligations toward the people.

The women of the Straits Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is divided into three discontinuous parts beginning with an autonomous section titled “The Trip.” The first and second parts move back and forth between a “Before” and an “After,” each part containing four chapters for a total of eight chapters. The first four chapters describe the reasons and the events leading to “the trip,” while the remaining chapters in the second part focus on the aftermath of the successful/unsuccessful crossing and its impact on each character. The book’s chapter symmetry is upset by the “intervening” trip as a determining factor in the human scale of migration to avoid facile positionings of migration to Europe in uniquely positive experience. The organization of the stories mirrors the upheavals and movements that characterize the lives of the protagonists through “the before and after strategy” used by the author, who reveals her own tentativeness about the process. The stories focus on four central characters – Murad, a highly educated unemployed college graduate who is unable to make a living in Morocco despite his multitalented profile: “He has a degree in English and, in addition, he speaks Spanish fluently, unlike some of the harraga” (3). Another unemployed man Aziz is responsible for supporting his family and aging parents; he is attempting the crossing for the second time: “Across from Murad is Aziz. He’s tall and lanky and he sits hunched over to fit in the narrow space allotted to him. This is his second attempt at crossing the Strait of Gibraltar” (4). The third character Faten is a religiously devout veiled young woman from a poor background. She is unable to survive amid the moral and social corruption she encounters when confronted by the power of the Europeanized secular elite. The rich have the ability to control and manipulate the lives of the unprivileged through collusions between the social and political elite and the ever-growing gap of class disparities. From a broken home, the nineteenyear-old lives with her mother in the slums of Rabat: “I live with my mother,” Faten’s voice dropped an octave, “in Douar Lhajja” (46). Finally, Halima is an abused mother of three children, whose unemployed alcoholic husband subjects her to a daily regimen of domestic violence and absentee partnership: The day after Maati beat her with an extension cord, Halima Bouhamsa packed up some clothes and took the bus to her mother’s house in Sidi

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Halima makes the crossing with her children as a statement against the state’s indifference to the plight of battered women and their unprotected children, also discussed by Ech-Channa in Miseria. All the characters visibly “carry” their abjection in corporeal form through scars, wounds, and a stooping posture. Also visible are signs of premature aging, most notably in the children. Take, for instance, Halima’s daughter: “She seems to be about ten years old, but the expression on her face is that of an older child” (5). Each character hopes to “wash away” their desolation through the promise of a fresh start in Europe, even though this assurance could have a fateful outcome. The women on the boat travel alone without the “protection” of male partners or chaperones. They contest one of the most prevalent misconceptions in migration studies about the subordinate positioning of migrating women within wider family systems. These analyses overwhelmingly situate the women as migrating wives, mothers and daughters. They occupy a subordinate position in relation to the men who are presented as the primary agents of migration. The presumed marginality of the women has justified their invisibility in mainstream discourses. These theories have negated the gender-specific experiences of migrating women and the border violence they encounter on both sides of the Mediterranean. As stated by Moha Ennaji and Fatima Sadiqi: “The focus … has been on male migrants as individuals, without reference to women, who nowadays constitute about 50% of international migration … This has led to the neglect of women in migration theories” (2008, 8, 14). Lalami’s stories are a necessary corrective to this oversight through the personal narratives of Faten, Halima and the women who are left behind in this network of social destitution, national crisis, gender violence, the feminization of poverty and the orchestration of “organized transborder and international criminal networks” (2008, 55). The novel complicates the economic despair confronted by the young and middle-aged men by adding the gender disparities faced by women and young girls to reveal the feminized aspects of migration in which women suffer an added level of “illegality,” as stated earlier. The women are forced to confront the hypermasculinity of patriarchy’s internal borders represented by failing familial and social systems, as well as the hyper-militarized external borders of immigration within which they suffer a coded discrimination as gendered objects. As argued by Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Mohanty: “Militarized hypermasculinity plays a strategic role in the reproduction of (neo)colonialism and the (re)-organization of gendered hierarchies in the national state” (1997, xxv).

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Halima the brave The women’s stories provide another example of embodied testimonials in which their bodies “speak” through the patterns of abuse they encounter at home and abroad. Halima’s narrative gives public exposure to the hidden face of domestic abuse that remains confined to the realm of private space, as a personal family matter. Her choice to migrate instead of accepting the conferred patriarchal identity of a submissive wife brings public attention to her husband’s violence and the state’s complicity with an act of patriarchal criminality. She expresses her discontent through the “aura of quiet determination” (Lalami 2005, 6) that accompanies her decision to leave. As stated by Moha Ennaji: Violence against women is carried out in most cases by persons associated with the family, and it is present in all social groups. As long as the present system of domination remains, and legal and social inequality continues, both men and the State will feel legitimized to pursue violence against women. (2011, 200) Ennaji’s comments demonstrate how social inequities foster gender imbalances in a recurring cycle of violence and powerlessness determined by prevailing gender stereotypes of male virility and female passivity that are inscribed within traditional cultural codes. This gender-based typecasting is nevertheless reinforced by a culture of silencing surrounding questions of domestic and sexual violence, whereby these abuses, according to Ennaji, “continue to be considered a private matter” and “do not represent a human rights violation or a crime that needs serious investigation and analysis.” Ennaji continues: “Violence against women continues to be surrounded by silence. As a consequence, violence against women is underestimated” (2011, 209). In fact, the Advocates for Human Rights and Global Rights make the following comments about what they call the “on-going and chronic violence” against women in Morocco: While it is difficult to determine the exact prevalence of domestic violence throughout Morocco, statistics that are available demonstrate that domestic violence is a widespread problem. A national study on the prevalence of violence against women found that 62.8% of women in Morocco of ages 18–64 had been victims of some form of violence during the year preceding the study. The same study found that 55% of these acts of violence were committed by a victim’s husband, and the violence was reported by the wife in only 3% of such cases … There is an overall acceptance of domestic violence and a distrust of the justice system that makes it unlikely that a victim will report domestic violence. (2011)

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At the same time, there have been some steps taken by the government to address the problem. In addition, the tireless efforts of local woman-headed NGOs have made the issue a priority in their agendas for social justice, especially since the gender-friendly revisions made to the 2004 Family Code (Ennaji 2011, 209) have made provisions for gender equality. However, at the governmental level, the question of gender violence still remains a work-in-progress due to the absence of specific legislation, adequate protection for victims, a lack of due process against perpetrators and a basic lack of faith in the system on the part of the violated women. The character Halima expresses these doubts when she consults a judge to initiate divorce proceedings against her abusive husband. This judge has a known history of accepting bribes in a corrupt justice system. She initially attempts to bribe him to receive a ruling in her favor that would include full custody of the children: “This judge had been taking bribes for years; there was no reason to think he wouldn’t come through this time. But what if he didn’t? How could she trust him?” (Lalami 2005, 73). Instead of upholding the supposedly infallible integrity of the law, the judge shows how justice can be bought for a fair price based on the wagers of the highest bidder in a game of Russian roulette. If the judge risks his title by supporting injustice, Halima, on the other hand, opposes the system when she refuses to be an accomplice to his misdeeds the moment she hands over the bribe money. In a dramatic change of heart, she demands the return of the money and defends herself against the judge’s added sexual lasciviousness when he tries to rape her into submission: She couldn’t trust him … “Give me back my money,” she said, her voice trembling. The judge’s eyes opened wide and his lips parted in an expression that was half-way between anger and disgust. He slipped his hand in his pocket and threw the money at her. As the billfold fell to the ground, a few bank notes separated from the rest and floated down. Halima dropped to her knees and clutched them with both hands. The judge grabbed the back of her jellaba and pushed her. She drove her elbow into his gut with all the force she could gather. He bent over in pain, his arms folded over his stomach while Halima stepped outside, a fistful of bills in her hands. The gate slammed shut. (73) The social impasses created by inadequate reforms, ineffectual implementation, corruption, sexual violence and the growing economic crisis of poverty and unemployment construct the parameters for the enactment of gender abuse as an outlet for scapegoating and structural dissonance. Within these circumstances, it is important to deliberate on the limited choices available to subaltern women. Is migration the only option offered to poor uneducated women who are battered for their liminal status within an already battered social system? Does the act of exposing the inner workings of the

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“clandestine” crime of domestic and sexual abuse through the corporeal evidence of scars and the ultimate rejection of hypocritical social taboos exemplified by the act of leaving represent “criminal” acts for a woman without social status in postcolonial Morocco? What are the consequences of these actions? What opportunities await Halima if she manages to make a successful crossing? Will she encounter the same social impasses in Spain that she attempted to flee in the first place by “cleaning houses or working in the fields”? (7) Lalami’s story of Halima provides some clues that demystify the “idea” of crossing for the women. Halima leads a circumscribed life detailed by her spatial restrictions within the ghetto – “if only the family could get out of the shanty-town, with its dirty alleys where teenagers sniffed glue by day and roamed around in bands at night” (61) – and her subaltern position within a service economy of gender-specific jobs: “Halima had taken janitorial jobs two days a week and made extra money by selling embroidery to neighbors and friends” (57). Her social milieu reveals the genealogies of disinheritance that characterize life in the ghetto, where young people dream of escape by sniffing toxic glue or by attempting to claim a disavowed masculinity through the identity politics of gang affiliation. Their constructed and delusional attempts at subjectivity mirror the social obstacles that will impede their transition from the ghetto to the city center due to the lack of opportunity. This absence is also evident in the type of jobs available to Halima, whose limited skills in literacy impede social mobility: “So far, the only use she had gotten out of the classes was that she could now read the rolling credits at the end of the soap operas she watched every night” (74). The limits of her education can only take her to the illusory world of soap operas, a world that contrasts with her less-than-fanciful existence. Halima’s story highlights another social evil related to illiteracy and gender discrimination. The triple responsibilities of housework, mothering and domestic work in the form of her janitorial job and sewing provide limited opportunities for taking adult education classes in the absence of adequate time and the burden of physical fatigue. As stated by Ennaji: “Illiteracy is very high among women in Morocco despite government and civil society efforts to reduce it. Only 36% of adult women know how to read and write, against 62% for men” (2011, 204). Halima’s displacement in the social sector is compounded by her eviction from home space represented by the regular abuse she faces at the hands of a frustrated husband. If she is marked as a social subaltern in public space through the invisible feminine labor of cleaning and sewing, her manifest marginalization within the home is stamped once again by the uncompensated routine of domestic chores, “the monotony of couscous, bean soups, and fritters” (Lalami 2005, 64), and by the patriarchal imprint of physical violence as a sign of the husband’s possession rights: “She saw her face in the mirror. Maati’s hand hadn’t quite landed on her cheek, but there were clear imprints on the side of her neck and jaw” (67). When Halima looks at her bruised face in the mirror, she sees an alienated

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self, an unrecognizable stranger who has been molded and reshaped by bodily alterations caused by crushing blows and whipping lashes. The husband Maati’s aggression is conditioned by the social roots of his abjection and his emasculation in a society that provides limited opportunities for salaried work. Seeking an escape in alcoholism, Maati projects his hopelessness onto his wife’s body, wherein each bruise confirms his reclaimed masculinity amid social castration and joblessness. Moreover, his wife’s income-generating potential subverts the cultural stereotype of the male head of the household who can exercise unrestrained authority over his wife and children through their economic dependence on him. As stated by Fatima Sadiqi: The family in Morocco is in most cases agnatic and patriarchal. Moroccan family structure is generally headed by the father and the father’s male lineage and is legally founded on blood relations … The patriarchal system is built on the exclusion of women from spaces of public power and by the sanction of all forms of physical and moral violence against them in these spaces. Women’s freedom is seen as a challenge to the patriarchal social fabric and men’s status quo. It is in the family that women are initiated into their role of guardians of social organization. This initiation is channeled through a rigid system of kinship relations, a battery of traditions and rituals, and taboo. (2011, 225) Money, virility and social standing are a prerequisite to the “confirmed masculinity” of the husband. Any imbalance in the equation provides the grounds for a violent reaction in an attempt to stabilize a compromised patriarchal structure. In other words, Maati’s compromised masculinity in the novella reveals his powerlessness: Now that Maati had lost his job she knew he’d turn to her for beer money. She let her head drop onto her knees. How did it get to this? Where was the man she’d married? He had been full of promise and energy and ambition, but he was lazy and angry, ranting at the taxes that cut through his profits, at the customers who didn’t leave him tips, at the other drivers for not covering for him when he slipped out to drink. (Lalami 2005, 67) Maati’s loss of control is expressed in the language of violence as a new form of “subalternspeak” articulated from the margins of placelessness, role displacement and diminished control within the household. As argued by Ennaji: The violence directed at women linked to their womanhood is genderbased. It is a violence intended to establish or reinforce gender hierarchies

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and perpetuate inequalities. Violence against women seems to be a cause and a consequence of gender perception. Gender-based violence affects men’s and women’s perceptions of each other. (2011, 201) Maati expects his wife to remain silent and acquiescent when faced with what he thinks is his regime of power in the household, despite the lack of income. Instead, Halima sees his growing loss of power as a form of “feminization” in a gender role inversion that makes her the primary income earner. This role reversal provides the impetus for two important actions – her decision to divorce her husband and to start a new life in another country with her children: “She had to do something for her future – today” (Lalami 2005, 77). Her resolve involves two acts of “illegal” movement – the journey to the judge’s affluent neighborhood as a form of social transgression from the Casablanca ghetto to the bourgeois quarter: “Halima waited for the bus that would take her to the judge’s house in Anfa, a posh seaside neighborhood in Casablanca. Taking a new route made her anxious” (68). Her presence as an unwelcome stranger in public space nevertheless morphs into a subaltern claiming of “forbidden” space when she displaces the judge’s authority in his own home by weakening his “gut,” (73) the root cause of his social and sexual decadence. Distrusting the mechanisms of social justice in her own country, Halima seeks the justice of nature by braving the Straits with her children through the only route possible: “Halima knew what Hanan meant, knew that people like her, with no skills and three children didn’t get visas” (77). Her decision to leave with the children meets with the disapproval of Murad who shares the same space on the boat with her: “ … even though he thinks her irresponsible, or at the very least foolish, for risking her children’s lives on a trip like this” (6). This perception highlights the gender prejudices that obscure the motivations of migrating women in a discourse that focuses exclusively on the men. As a mother, Halima is aware of the dangers surrounding unprotected children who are handed over to the custody of an erring parent: “Maati would not keep his promise to their child” (65). She visualizes the social wretchedness that confronts her children in a foster home or orphanage within structures of absentee fatherhood (outlined in Ech-Channa’s Miseria). The risk of crossing with the children seems less daunting than the risk of losing her children to an unjust system that seems indifferent to social care for poor children despite the work of local human rights and feminist organizations. Moreover, she reconceives the notion of illegality by associating the separation of a mother from her children as the highest form of criminality: “She … wraps one arm around her daughter and the other around her two boys, seated to her right. Halima’s gaze is direct” (6). With a clear conscience, Halima is convinced about the righteousness of her decision through her unwavering gaze and her refusal to support the hypocrisy of outmoded social institutions, such as her patriarchal marriage that denies her basic rights as a wife and mother.

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Halima and her children are unsuccessful in their attempts to reach Spain. Yet, in an inexplicable tour de force, her son Farid rescues the entire family when the occupants of the boat are abandoned before they reach the Tarifa beach: The captain had forced them out of the boat before they could get ashore. The water was cold, the current was strong, Halima didn’t know how to swim. Yet Farid had pulled her to safety somehow. And even though the Spanish police were waiting for them right on the beach, at least they were alive. Besides, the boy had helped his sister, Mouna, and his younger brother, Amin, as well. They had all survived. Farid was a saint. (117–118) Farid’s miraculous rescue of the family represents a generational inversion in the male provider role. He replaces his father as the safekeeper of the mother and the younger children to demonstrate how migration not only displaces gender roles but also family duties, capabilities and expectations generationally. The most vulnerable family member becomes the most important through his superhuman rescue effort. At the same time, capture and deportation do not mark the end of a life for Halima. On the contrary, the very act of survival, as a new lease on life, is a consciousness-raising process for her. She acquires a new appreciation for Morocco through the new role she is determined to play in defiance of cultural mandates. With the help of cousins, she rents an autonomous space to avoid spatial negotiations with her husband and mother “and took a room with her three children in Sidi-Moumem, a slum outside the city” (119). Moreover, her divorce comes through – “she had her divorce” (121) – and she is now able to reconfigure the patriarchal foundation of the family through her single-mother status, a source of hardship and independence at the same time: Halima still had to make a living. Her mother had told her about a janitorial job twice a week at a lawyer’s office, but when she went to ask, she was told that the position had already been taken. So she started selling beghrir at the market. Every year, when people tasted the beghrir she made for Eid, they would compliment her on how fluffy they turned out … She enjoyed working for herself and was good at sales. Things were working out after all, she thought. (127) Despite the unsuccessful external crossing, Halima is nevertheless able to negotiate an internal migration between public and private space represented by the market. Halima’s previous janitorial jobs had confined her to the invisibility of private space within the inner walls of an office. She was thereby subjected to

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domestic and extra-domestic invisibility marked by the spatial demarcations of conforming gender roles. Her access to the market gives her access to the visibility of open space and the opportunity to work independently in an act of economic self-possession, a necessary prerequisite to the claiming of identity and subjectivity She develops newly found entrepreneurial skills in the selling of the popular beghrir, a sweet pancake-like product that gives her recognition and independent income. The unsuccessful crossing thereby has a life-impacting consequence for Halima. She claims the subjectivity of a survivor who is determined to repossess her “lost” country through hard work, self-reliance and a new appreciation for her “discovered” sense of self: “Don’t worry, I’ll pay,” said Halima. She reached and touched her mother’s arm as if to comfort her. Then she turned to watch the beghrir break into bubbles as it cooked. She did not notice the fading afternoon light that lengthened the shadows behind her, framing her body like the arches of a shrine. (131) Halima reaches a point of transcendence in her life by her refusal to be victimized by the past and by her faith in a more enshrined future. Her faith is a sign of hope amid adversity.

The women in-between Hope highlights the female networks that provide moral and financial support to the male crossers who expect to pay back their debt to the women in the form of family remittances from Spain. Murad pursues the dream of crossing despite a failed first attempt. His social emasculation in Morocco results from his joblessness and bleak prospects for the future. He is further denied subjectivity when he is obliged to live in an all-woman space with his widowed mother and his employed sister: “He will have to return to the same old apartment, to live off his mother and sister, without any prospects or opportunity” (17). The mother’s jewelry destined to guarantee her own security in widowhood and old age provides the financial backing for her son’s uncertain future within and beyond Morocco. She is expected to sacrifice her financial resources in the hope that her son’s successful second crossing will ensure her own financial ease through a steady cash flow from Europe in the future: “It will be hard to convince his mother, but in the end he knows he will prevail on her to sell her gold bracelets. If she sells all seven of them, it will pay for another trip. And next time, he’ll make it” (17). The son hopes his mother’s gold bracelets will offer the necessary passport to success in an all-or-nothing gamble – first, the exorbitant crossing fee needed to access the golden path of the Straits and second, the precarious crossing itself. The mother, in turn, is willing to support her son in an act of blind faith, her only “security” in

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troubled times: “‘You’ll have better luck tomorrow.’ She said this every day, Murad thought, but his luck didn’t seem to be getting better” (104). In other words, the mother’s faith “wills” a better future for her son so that he may claim his position as the natural head of the household, a position determined and defined by money in a male genealogy of inheritance, as stated earlier. Instead, Murad is reminded of his disinheritance in the following exchange with his mother when a suitor comes to ask for his sister’s hand in marriage: “Someone asked for your sister’s hand today.” “Who?” “A colleague of hers from work. He came to talk to your uncle and me.” “My uncle?” Murad felt his face flush with anger at the slight. … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …. “I should have been in the know,” he yelled. “Don’t raise your voice at me. Are you paying for the wedding?” “Just because I don’t have a job you think I’m invisible? I am her older brother. You should have come to me.” (106–107) Poverty and unemployment displace Murad’s “legal” status as older brother and eldest son, wherein he becomes an invisible harrag in his own family through a “burned” familial status. He is displaced from his position as the “man in this house” (106) when his uncle assumes the manly duties of providing for his niece. In fact, Murad is “supported” by his sister Lamya when she supplies the family income by working as “a receptionist for an import-export firm downtown. Bitterly, he recalled how he’d been turned down from a similar job because they wanted a woman” (105). Lamya can migrate toward social mobility through an import-export exchange. She is able to dislodge her brother’s position within the home and the public sector by accommodating her own future through paid work. As stated by Alami: Murad is rejected in his own land … Forced to return to his widowed mother empty-handed, he also finds himself further stripped of his masculine role. He cannot earn money while his sisters can, he cannot get a job using his education in English while his brothers obtain scholarships to medical school in Rabat, and he is then denied his role as “master” of the house following his father’s death. (146) On the other hand, his sister’s ability to find employment reveals the government’s efforts to feminize its workforce beyond the level of “service” employment for young educated women. Lamya can thereby migrate socially within Morocco; this movement enables her to choose a marriage partner on equal terms as a “colleague” (106) and not as a dependent partner. While Lamya’s future happiness in the marriage is not guaranteed, she is

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nevertheless able to negotiate traditional gender role impasses in terms of spatial mobility unlike her brother, who is, ironically, marginalized by entrenched socio-spatial dislocations for young men: “without a job his time wasn’t going to be anytime soon” (107). Lamya finds herself in an interstitial positionality between migrating gender roles in Morocco. Her brother, on the other hand, confronts the impasses that arise from a despairing “reverse” discrimination confronting educated young men. The women who are left behind when the men migrate alone confront the tensions of in-betweeness from a different perspective. When Aziz attempts the crossing for a second time, he produces an exilic situation for his wife at the same time. The vacuum created by his departure needs to be filled by his wife Zohra in her new role as the female head of a household that includes aging parents. While Halima welcomes this change in status, Zohra’s hardships and anxieties increase disproportionately with Aziz’s physical absence and the lack of adequate income to support an extended family. Like Murad, Aziz faces the daunting prospect of indefinite unemployment and subsequent poverty at home. Thwarted in his efforts to find work due to a series of natural and economic calamities, Aziz is compelled to look for financial stability elsewhere. The risky crossing is a far better alternative to the socio-economic stagnation experienced at home. The stories reveal how families are literally torn apart by migration and gender role dissolutions that destroy support systems and generational patterns of care. If the men experience the labored pain of exile in a foreign land – “what he remembered most about that first summer was the hunched figures of his fellow workers and the smell of muscle ointment inside the van that they took to work every morning” (154–155) – the women are burdened by an “economy of vulnerability” ascribed to woman-headed households. As argued by Ennaji and Sadiqi: “Female-headed households constitute a significant portion of the poor and have a weak financial base and less access to resources, income, labor, and education than male-headed households. The ‘feminization of poverty’ is mainly caused by the increasing ‘feminization of household hardship’” (2011, 32) and the onerous responsibility of multitasking without the help of a partner – housework, parental care, working outside the home to secure an income, and preserving familial ties within a disintegrating family. When Aziz returns to Morocco for a brief visit after an absence of several years, he notices the visible cost of his absence on his wife’s face: “Zohra looked thin and small, and she had defined lines on her forehead” (159). Her prominent worry lines produce the effect of premature aging on a young woman to highlight the physical and psychological impact of migration on the poor and working-class body. Zohra’s rough calloused hands are another sign of her rapidly transforming body: When she gave him his glass of hot tea, he noticed that her hands seemed to have aged a lot faster than the rest of her, the skin rough and dry. Her

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Zohra’s hardened hands bear testimony to her difficult life inscribed in and by a regimen of work that does not provide more affirming alternatives. Her body is stamped by its working-class status and the poor quality of her life, wherein long working hours are not compensated by a commensurate income. “Regardless of their size, women-headed households are likely to be poor because they depend on the small earnings of the female head and have fewer income earners,” state Ennaji and Sadiqi (2011, 32). Aziz’s migration provokes a corporeal imbalance within Zohra by precipitating her transition from youth to middle age, a process that does not follow the natural timeline of aging. The impact of Morocco’s economic crisis and its resultant consequences on shifting family dynamics are creating broken lines of communication within the family and across society through severed ties and disrupted genealogies. This traumatic loss is linked to the actual act of traversing the Straits when the landscapes of the past and ancestral connections are lost in transition. For the migrants, exile is a one-way passage, a point of no return symbolized by fractured associations, deportation or “a body bag on the ground” (Lalami 2005, 17). Unlike the transnational mobility afforded to uninhibited tourists who navigate their way between Europe and Africa in cyclical frequency, the harragas are denied the privilege of errancy and nomadic wandering by geographical, racial, gendered and social obstacles unfamiliar to the favored North. The physicality of exile complements a more invasive existential exile when Aziz and Zohra face each other as strangers who are unable to communicate in a common language due to the trauma of separation. Despite his marginal life in Spain, Aziz has already migrated beyond Morocco in his mind and body: “Did she have any idea what he’d gone through to make it in Spain? He couldn’t give it all up now. He had to go back” (174). He is unable to straddle a “there and now” consciousness since he has abdicated all rights to the past as a member of a “clandestine” service economy in Spain: “he was a bus boy” (156). His invisible status in Spain is compounded by a parallel “covering-up” strategy with his family when he is unable to reveal the true details of his life in the not-so-golden Eldorado: “He didn’t describe how, at the grocery store, cashiers greeted customers with hellos and thank yous, but their eyes always gazed past him as though he were invisible” (162). A circumspect stranger in Spain, Aziz’s strangeness multiplies when he returns to the immobilizing permanence of life “at home,” the primary reason for his decision to leave in the first place: “Aziz wondered why the place was so packed in the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday, but the serious expression on everyone’s face provided an answer to his question. They were unemployed” (173). The fear of returning to stagnation is worse than the

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dread of an unsettling life in Europe for Aziz. He makes his decision accordingly: “He closed his suitcase and lifted it off the bed. It felt lighter than when he had arrived” (175). Aziz’s lightness at the prospect of returning to Spain doesn’t reflect the heaviness that will befall Zohra’s existence once again. His newly acquired habits in Spain – “he, too, had his own habits now” (175) – contrast with the predictable routine that characterizes Zohra’s life in the absence of migrating possibilities: He couldn’t imagine her with him in Madrid. She was used to the neighbor’s kid pushing the door open and coming in. She was used to the outdoor market where she could haggle over everything. She was used to having her relatives drop in … . (175) Aziz hopes Zohra will get used to his absence through the familiar monotony of habit, wherein the routine of daily rituals will presumably offer the necessary comfort to confront a future without him. Ready to face the vagaries of his adopted life in Spain, Aziz nevertheless expects his wife to follow the predictable reliability of her role as a dutiful wife and daughter-in-law who must wait patiently for his possible return.

Desecrating the “Odalisque” The “traumatic” return of the Moor is inscribed in deeply entrenched gender ideologies differentiating the male migrants from the women. If the men are framed by discourses of criminality, aggression and delinquency, the women are further coded by highly sexualized xenophobic tropes found in Orientalism and capitalist inscriptions of local and global tourism in a dually conceived “oriental brandscape” (Mernissi 2010). Lalami’s novella describes the Moroccan tourist industry’s efforts to “manufacture” a cultural landscape that will simultaneously feed the Western appetite for exotica and service the sexualized Euro-American fantasies of “consuming” the oriental in a cannibalistic economy of self-gratification and sexual license. Morocco sells itself to the Western market that is shaped by the dictates of colonialist ideology. This mindset is camouflaged by seductive package deals offering a welcoming “come hither” itinerary. Morocco submits to the demands of a colonial tourist economy by complying with the stereotypes that “fit” a preconceived Western landscape. These stereotypes have their roots in racialized colonial imagery and the violence of colonization, as discussed in Maïssa Bey’s novel Pierre papier sang ou cendre. Accordingly, the colonized subject remains “fixed in zones of dependency and peripherality, stigmatized in the designation of underdeveloped, less-developed, developing states, ruled by a superior, developed, or metropolitan colonizer who was theoretically posited as a categorically antithetical overlord,” according to Edward Saïd (2000, 295).

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The manufacturing of touristy Morocco complements an agenda of cultural imperialism offering free and safe passage to “northern” tourists via the same routes denied the desperate harragas. Morocco opens itself in rites of hospitality to foreigners, while Moroccans themselves are denied the same privilege in their northbound journey by Europe’s exclusionary rights of (non-)access. The links between colonialism and tourism mirror the colonizercolonized dialectic in a reconfigured arrangement made palatable to the global tourist and the flagging Moroccan economy by mediated Western images and self-inscribed acts of compliance on the Moroccan side. These acts of collusion reveal the power imbalances instated by economic dependency, wherein Morocco is transformed into an attractive colonial artifact to be possessed and pursued at leisure. As stated by Hamid Mernissi: Mass tourist destinations have become more products than places. This is in my view the cancer that our tourism industry suffers from today, that the modern manifestations of Moroccan cultural heritage are not distinct from its colonial constructions. (2010) In other words, Morocco feeds the colonial imaginary by offering the lure of an ethereal timelessness, a freezing of colonial timelines blending the past and the present. Murad works as a self-appointed tourist guide hoping to use his knowledge as a college graduate to make a living. Donning a djellaba as a signifier of Moroccan authenticity, “he took off the jellaba he wore whenever he dealt with tourists. He was now in his old jeans and white T-shirt” (Lalami 2005, 104). Murad attempts to attract tourists by feeding their “idea” of Morocco gleaned from tourist brochures, colonial documents and American Beat poetry: This was his line: “Interested in Paul Bowles?” And it usually worked, especially with the hippy types. Even though the writer had died a few months ago, he could still take the tourists to the house where he had lived, the cafés he’d gone to, the places where he’d bought his kif. These days, though, the guides outnumbered the tourists and Murad found little work. (99) The hippy tourists claim familiarity with Morocco through their exposure to the work of Paul Bowles, an American expatriate author, ethnomusicologist and translator. His first novel, The Sheltering Sky (1949), was set in Morocco at a time when the country was still a French protectorate. Resplendent with colonial stereotypes and colonial landscapes, this novel was a major success in the West. In fact, it still remains a major reference and guidebook for Americans interested in “oriental” Morocco.6 The tourists are more interested in Bowles’s “image” of Morocco, even after his death, than they are in

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experiencing the country first-hand through a lived insider perspective. Mernissi makes the following observation with reference to French tourism in Morocco: The dominance of French Tour Companies is still obvious, exploiting it to the core. Hachette published its first Guide Bleu of Morocco in 1918 prefaced by General Lyautey. Today Hachette is still publishing this guide book but hardly changed in substance; its theme is always exotic North African Islamic civilization, primitive yet nonetheless captivating. (2010) These captivating narratives circulate widely in a transnational circuit of mediated representations and “othering” discourses that do not meet with censure or revision in a global capitalist consumer market. The tourists and tour companies thereby remain blind to the reality of Morocco and the desperation of its guides who are caught in a vicious cycle of economic dependence on these unchanging orientalized fictions to indicate how the West’s constructed ideal of Morocco is more appealing than the lived reality of Morocco itself. The picture perfect image of Morocco found on postcards, posters and travel channels finds economic purchase by its ability to circulate in a globalized economy of desire and possession, as an attempt to assimilate “difference” to a dominant standardized model. On the other hand, the Moroccan government promotes the “idea” of fantasy tourism, while turning a blind eye to the economic marginality of the industry’s service providers who do not lead a life of fantasy in Morocco. Their only fantasies are constructed by a “reverse” Orientalism projected by the carefree tourists who represent the perceived comforts and salvation of Europe and the West in general symbolized by “the ease with which she carried herself, the nonchalance in her demeanor, free from the burden of survival” (Lalami 2005, 114). In other words, the unburdened body of the Western tourist is free to lie exposed on Tangiers’s sunny beaches soaking up the warmth of the Mediterranean seascape. Inversely, the burdened bodies of the harragas tragically meet a different fate on the other side of the sea, where exposure signifies devastation in a frigid deathscape.

Circulating bodies The colluding ideologies of tourism and colonialism converge in violence on the circulating body of the female migrant represented by the character Faten. A social subaltern in Morocco, Faten experiences the brutality of the corrupted bourgeois elite when she befriends Noura, a fellow student at the University of Rabat. Noura is the daughter of Larbi Amrani, a powerful administrator in the Ministry of Education who ironically doesn’t support the system he represents when he decides to send his children to the U.S. for higher education. Despite the challenges of living “with her mother in the

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Douar Lhajja slum, the kind of place where couscous pots were used as satellite dishes,” she had managed “to graduate high school, go to college, find God, and join the Islamic Student Organization” (134). Faten’s religious faith, exemplified by the wearing of the hijab (Islamic headscarf), and her belief in the radicalized teachings of Sayyid Qutb provide structure and meaning to her young life when she is faced with the hypocrisy and discriminatory tactics of the elite. In fact, she represents a threat to the Europeanized elite by contesting their Westernized lifestyles through her appearance and convictions. Larbi overhears Faten’s words to his daughter: “The injustice we see here every day,” she said, “is proof enough of the corruption of King Hassan, the government, and the political parties. But if we had been better Muslims, perhaps these problems wouldn’t have been visited on our nation and on our brethren elsewhere” (28). Faten exposes and denounces the very root of Morocco’s social and religious crisis that results from acts of bad faith. Her searing social critique is a call for social justice for the oppressed who have been victimized by a damning politic practiced by the King and his political and religious sycophants. She commits an act of sacrilege by contesting Morocco’s “divine eminence” and the exploitative socio-economic and political structures that disable the country under a compromised leadership. Her faith in a new religiosity complements the revolutionary praxis to decolonize Morocco from the “evils” of globalization, class injustice and gender prejudice. Fearful of Faten’s reactionary influence on his daughter, Larbi uses his privilege to evict her from Morocco’s social spaces and the intimate space of his home when his daughter gets caught helping Faten on an exam. Noura is protected from punishment by her father’s impenetrable social privilege – “that was the thing with money. It gave you choices” (145) – while Faten pays the price for her religious and social dissidence when she is outlawed in and by her own country: She’d had the misfortune of making a derogatory comment about King Hassan within earshot of a snitch but had, rather miraculously, escaped arrest, thanks to a friendly tip. So when her imam suggested she leave the country, she had not argued with him. She had done as she was told. Except her imam wasn’t there when the Spanish coast guard caught her and the other illegal immigrants, nor was he around when she had to fend for herself in Spain. (134–135) Betrayed by the very same religious system that upholds a collective ethic reflected in the principle of the ‘Umma (community), Faten finds herself alone on the Zodiac where she meets Murad and the other characters. If Faten’s veil symbolizes the other face of Morocco criminalized by an elitist minority, “like half the city’s female population,” (36) her unveiling when she reaches the Spanish coast is accompanied by a brutal act of rape:

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She thought about her first john, her first week in Spain. The captain of the boat that had brought her here hadn’t bothered to land in Tarifa; he’d started turning back as soon as they were within swimming distance of the coast. She’d managed to get to the beach, where the Spanish Guardia Civil was waiting for them. Later, in the holding cell, she saw one of the guards staring at her. She didn’t need to speak Spanish to understand that he’d wanted to make her a deal … The guard had taken her to one of the private exam rooms, away from everyone else. He lifted her skirt and thrust into her with savage abandon. He was still wearing the surgical gloves he’d had on to examine the group of migrants who’d landed that day. And, all the while, he kept calling her Fatma. (147) As a harraga, Faten has to unveil her identity on Spanish shores: “It had been just as hard to get used to the heels as to the short skirts. Before this, back at home, it was always flats or sneakers, an ankle-length skirt, and a secondhand sweater” (135-136). This transition is not liberating, as it makes Faten vulnerable to the politics of “border sex” controlled by the Spanish guards. The lack of protective clothing makes her defenselessness even more visible, a weakness seized upon by the observant guard. His savage penetration of Faten is meant to represent a forged passport imprint. This stamp of approval for a satisfactory performance in a private border examination “legalizes” her presence in Spain through a violent corporeal colonization of her body as a reminder of her “place” in Spain. The incident with Faten exemplifies the institutionalization of border violence against women. As stated by Jane Freedman and Bahija Jamal: For migrant and refugee women who are victims of violence, insecurity may be reinforced by a lack of protection afforded by the relevant national authorities. This lack of protection may be aggravated by the woman’s legal status … and by the interaction of gendered and racial discrimination which mean that violence against them is not recognized or not taken seriously. (2008) The criminal acts of the guards are legitimized within the institutionalized spaces of detention centers and private exam rooms as a permitted form of law enforcement. The guard’s gloved hands remove any traces of culpability through the cover-up operations performed by those responsible for supposedly controlling illegality. Instead, disposal gloves obscure illicit acts aimed at humiliating and objectifying the women into submission. Physical impositions, intimidation, punishment and fear are part of the carceral structures of the border politic revealing the dispensability of the female harragas in their dehumanized civil status. The prohibited and the forbidden are the inhabitants of the borderland, states Anzaldúa, who adds: “In short, those who

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cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the ‘normal.’ Do not enter, trespassers will be raped, maimed, strangled, gassed, shot. The only ‘legitimate’ inhabitants are those in power” (1987, 25). The border politic is sustained by a power-inflected dynamic between the male guards and the female migrants; these relationships are inscribed in impermeable colonial bonds. The colonizer-colonized relationship is referenced when Faten is called Fatma. During the colonial period, Arab women were unilaterally referred to as Fatma, a racialized signifier of their indistinction, depersonalization and inhumanity. In this situation, Faten can be violated precisely because of her indistinct harraga status that dispossesses her of personal rights and a claim to legal action. She fuses with a multitude of criminalized Fatmas who have been similarly aggressed as part of a faceless and voiceless female “diaspora in-violation.” The novella describes this liminal state of being: “She got out of bed and went to the bathroom to get a Valium. The main thing to survive this life was to not think too much” (145). The conceptualized Fatma symbolically conjured up by the drowsiness of tranquilizers becomes the fantasized ideal in the colonial imaginary, a fetishist construct that can be manipulated and deformed at will by the colonialist. In other words, a woman’s illegal crossing of the Straits authorizes the permissible breaking of her hymen represented as an “internal strait” in parallel acts of physical “crossing.” The novella blurs the distinction between the legal and the criminal through the illegal acts of the guards and a discriminatory justice system that does not take legal action against the perpetrators. As stated by Freedman and Jamal: Institutional and structural racism may also prevent police and judicial authorities from recognizing or taking seriously forms of racist and sexist violence which occur against migrant and refugee women in their societies … Racism, xenophobia and gender-based violence occur within institutional settings. (2008) These “silenced” crimes nevertheless implicate the Guardia Civil in a broader network of criminal activity ranging from extortion to sexual license with “unauthorized” women. If the returning Moor haunts the Spanish coastline with his recurring voyages, the Moorish woman is further subjected to the dialectics of “haunting and craving” in the male colonial imaginary. As the “image of a memory” (Djebar 1992, 135), she is the ultimate spectral map on which Spain marks its territorial rights. As suggested by Somaya Sabry: “Because the ‘Oriental’ woman has always represented a particularly disputed space in representations of the ‘other,’ she unfortunately becomes the area upon which many presumptions about the ‘East’ are mapped out” (2011, xiv). In other words, the entire economy of colonial desire crafted by liminal representations of the “oriental other” is grafted onto the female body. This mapping is orchestrated

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by acts of violence destined to permanently memorialize the male history of conquest in semen, blood and sweat in corporeal form. The female body provides the canvas for the inscription of such violence through her objectification as a nineteenth-century orientalist painting à la Ingrès (French) or à la Fortuny Marsal (Spanish) that permanently freezes the dual functioning of desire and violence in vividly etched images of the Odalisque: “this new vision” of the Moorish woman “perceived as pure image … Penciled bodies coming out of the anonymity of exoticism” (Djebar 1992, 134–135). The captivating Odalisque “captured” in the paintings of European orientalists provides the quintessential image of the Moorish woman of the past and the Arab-Muslim woman of the postcolonial present. As argued by Mohja Kahf: Romanticism inaugurates a portrayal of the Muslim woman in which these new clusters of elements are key: irredeemable difference and exoticism; intense sexuality; excessive ornamentation and association with fetish objects; and finally, powerlessness in the form of imprisonment, enslavement, seclusion, silence, or invisibility. (1999, 8) Conflating imagery and ideologies of an essentialized Arab woman frozen in time and space (mis)inform Spanish readings of the feminized Arab Other who is pursued for her “oriental” beauty and criminalized for her excessive sexuality at the same time. Her confinement within the postcolonial strictures of what I call Europe’s “harem imaginary” leads to a facile transposition of the nineteenth-century harem mistress onto the postcolonial prostitute who remains imprisoned in the colonial “structure of the seraglio … [that] … attempts to impose its laws in the new wasteland: the law of invisibility, the law of silence” (Djebar 1992, 151). This “law of silence,” in other words, is the determining law of illegality. *** Faten’s violation by the border guard “introduces” her to the underground world of prostitution. Her sans-papier status can only give her access to a fringe world in which women are consumed for their foreignness, destitution and illusory ideals of entering a much touted Eldorado in which survival depends on competitive sex work: “The Spanish girls often fought with the Moroccans or Romanians or Ukrainians, but it was a useless battle. Every week there was a new immigrant girl on the block” (Lalami 2005, 134). Competing geographies of dispossession from the global South and the Eastern bloc vie for ascendancy in a globalized prostitution ring that provides invisible (working-class) service to the insatiable Spanish cravings for the exotic. The women remain hidden in darkened alleyways, veiled behind layers of makeup, obscured in forbidden bedrooms. Their only access to public

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space is in the form of streetwalking. As revealed in the novella: “She spent a lot of time on the street, yet she didn’t know Madrid well at all” (136). The absent-present silhouettes of the women titillate the imagination through the unbridled fantasy of an “accessible oriental harem at home.” This masturbatory jouissance (pleasure) must be continually replenished by successive waves of clandestine women. At the same time, the “forbidden” desires must remain private so that they do not conflict with the growing nationalist tide against “illegal” immigration. This attitude reflects the hypocritical and xenophobic Spanish mindset of consuming and purging difference in violent acts of colonial indigestion. Faten’s inscription in the sex trade reduces her identity to the anonymous Fatma of the colonial period, “just another Muslim woman to be taken and tossed onto the street,” according to Lalami (2005, 147). Her minimized role of sexual subalternity is reinforced each day through sex work, her only means of existence in a sex-crazed environment. Spain does not represent a cherished ideal, but a sexual cesspool instead. This ambiguity complicates the very notion of “a successful crossing” to Europe when Faten crosses from one sexual encounter to another as the only permissible form of mobility. Sandwiched between patriarchal impasses, her journey past the Rock of Gibraltar chains her to the phallic rocks of sexual desire. Eroticized by the colonial “taste” for the exotic, Faten encounters the pillars of coloniality in her relationship with a young Spanish customer named Martín. She mistakenly thinks that their common experiences in failed higher education will provide equality in the relationship. She is quickly disabused – “may be Martín was no different after all (140) – when she realizes the active-passive power dynamic at work in their relationship controlled by sex and money: He circled the knob of her knee with his thumb … “I like the smell of your skin – salty like black olives.” He coiled a strand of her hair around his finger, let it spring out, ran his finger along her cheekbones, cupped her right breast. “And your breasts – ripe like mangoes.” “You’re making me sound like a dish,” she said. “I guess you could say I’m a connoisseur.” (136–137) Like a still life painting, Faten morphs into delectable black olives and ripe mangoes in Martín’s “knowing” mindscape through his self-assumed role as a connoisseur of “all things Arab:” Faten watches Martín’s “clear open face become excited as he told her that he knew things about her and her people” (149). The difference between the authoritarian stance of “knowing” and the open-minded desire of understanding establishes a power differential in which Faten becomes a blank page on which Martín gives himself the authority to rewrite her personal script: “So, where are you from?” he asked. “Rabat.” “I thought you were from Casablanca.” “I can be from Casablanca if you want” (136).

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Martín has already constructed his own narrative of Faten by establishing rights of authorship over her. Faten’s individuality is subsumed by Martín’s supposed knowledge of her as a personalized construction. He creates a selfcentered “origin” story by positioning himself as the narrator and protagonist of Faten’s narrative in which she is obliged to corroborate with his “odalisque dreams” (148) in an act of self-exotification. Martín’s “idea” of the Arab woman is composed by an assortment of objects ranging from condoms to the Quran that he keeps in the glove compartment of his car: “She burrowed through her purse, looking for condoms, and discovered she was out. When she told him this, he said he had extras in the glove box. She opened it and, there, between CDs, maps, and gas-station receipts was a copy of the Qur’an” (139). The choice of objects locates Arab women within two binary extremes – religious fanatic or lascivious odalisque – dangerous and seductive symbols of religious and moral “deviance” to be “naturalized” by assimilation and sex in a colonial rescue narrative. In other words, Islam in Spain can be minimized in its influence by controlling the women through the multinational industry of condoms as an effective population check. As indicated by Kahf: “The recurrent drama of incipient colonization, that of a heroic male conquest of a feminized Oriental land is played out in literature upon the inert body of the Muslim woman” (1999, 8). Accordingly, Faten’s life is rewritten in the form of Martín’s definitive textbook on the Orient: “‘Are you doing a term paper about me?’ she joked” (139). He demystifies and denies her subjectivity in his text. Moreover, he assumes the white man’s responsibility of safeguarding these crafted re-presentations in order to ensure the permanence of the gender-based biases underlying orientalist ideology: “‘Women in this country,’” he said, shaking his head. “‘They don’t know how to treat a man. Not the way you Arab girls do’” (148). On the one hand, Martín exposes his emasculation by Spanish women. At the same time, he reveals how his bruised ego is salved by the attentive care of the acquiescent Arab woman who is still “waiting” to be “emancipated” by Western feminism: “Muslim women in particular are seen in simplistic and limiting ways as part of the undifferentiated group, Muslim woman. They can only be members of religious communities and not thoughtful independent individuals; and certainly not progressive or feminist,” writes Shahnaz Khan (2000, xii). However, the relationship does not focus solely on a conceptualized and sexualized Orientalism having its roots and legitimacy in colonization. In the course of their conversations, Faten realizes that she and Martín are “intimately” linked by the violence of colonial history on another level. This awareness leads her to break off the relationship with the returning colonizer and rupture his orientalist script by a hasty departure. As stated by Alami: There seems to be a moment during which Faten is able to anchor her sense of identity within a reconstruction of historical narrative that makes Martín stand for the return of the repressed “Spanish colonizer” in their

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In other words, Faten’s passage to self-awareness is jogged by the traumatic passage of memory that has its roots in a violent history. After their final sexual encounter, Faten asks Martín about his father suspecting that the latter may be a law enforcement officer who uses his son as a decoy to capture the “hated immigrants” (138). Martín responds by calling his xenophobic father a “fascist.” In fact, Martín’s family history is inscribed in a nefarious nationalist history of anti-Arab fascism linking Islamophobia and xenophobia: “He leaned against the headrest as he spoke, telling her about his father, a retired army lieutenant who had served under Franco as a young man. It was a bit of a tradition in the family, Martín’s grandfather having served under Franco as well. Hearing the Generalissimo’s name stirred in Faten memories about her maternal grandfather, a proud Rifi who’d lost his eyesight during the rebellion in the north. It was mustard gas, he’d told his children, and he’d spent the rest of his life begging for a gun to put an end to it all. It was cancer that took him away, though two years before Faten was born” (137–138). The intimate connection between violence and trauma converge on Faten’s body in the form of a prenatal memory of loss and resistance. The novella refers to the triumph of the Rif resistance, under the heroic leadership of Ibn Abdelkarim al-Khattabi, over the conquering Spanish and later French invaders in a spectacular repulsion of the colonial army. However, the Spaniards used blinding mustard gas to scar their victors for life through chemical warfare as a constant reminder of the painful cost of “crossing” enemy lines. The grandfather’s anguish concretizes in the fatal symptoms of cancer that claim his life two years before Faten’s birth, even though he has experienced an emotional death since the Rif War (1919–1926). The trauma of history has a personal significance for both Faten and Martín, who are positioned on two opposing sides of the colonizer-colonized spectrum – the violation of Faten’s family by criminal acts of militarism performed by Martín’s family. These dissonant histories are located in the recent past; they are nevertheless obscured in Spanish war manuals and documents as a form of historical blinding resulting from the crushing Spanish defeat. In a similar fashion, Martín attempts to obscure Faten’s subjectivity through the blinding power of Orientalism and its “fetishist compulsion” (Djebar 1992, 135). Faten’s decision to leave Martín is an attempt to shed light on the inglorious legacies of colonization by rupturing the past through illuminated acts of selfconsciousness in the postcolonial present: “‘I think you should find yourself someone else next time,’ she said. She opened the car door and got out”

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(Lalami 2005, 150). The slammed door marks the suspension of Martín’s unfinished chapter on Faten, wherein she terminates his falsified narrative based on ignorance and arrogance: “For all his study, all his declarations of understanding, he was no different than his father. He didn’t know anything” (149). Her final act of resistance is an attempt to defy the dictates of a colonially-inscribed Orientalism by reclaiming her suppressed individualism in the land of the colonizer.

The memory of home Faten’s first step toward self-awareness is demonstrated by her refusal to work on the religious holiday Eid. She hopes to reclaim the sanctity of the religious feast by refusing to compromise her body on the holy day. In so doing, she takes control of her circumstances by destabilizing the circuit of sexual desire for one day through her non-participation. She also reclaims her Muslim identity when she celebrates the Eid dinner with her roommate Betoul. Faten’s consciousness is sparked by an act of memory that enables her to insert the sanctity of Islam in a predominantly Catholic country with a history of religious repression: “Still, she had a certain fondness for those special times because at least her mother didn’t work on Eid and they could spend the day together” (146). Her actions motivate another conscious return of the repressed on Spanish soil. The decision to cook a traditional meal is a way of celebrating the sensory rituals of memory in a politicized act of selfdefinition. Guided by the memory of the modest meals she shared with her mother in Morocco, Faten is nevertheless able to modify ingredients and substitute food items as evidence of her new identity and circumstances in Spain: By the weekend, Faten decided to do something. She was going to cook a meal for Eid and so, rather than sleep, she spent the better part of her day at work in the kitchen. At home with her mother, meals had been simple – fava beans and olive oil, rghaif and tea, bread and olives, couscous on Fridays, whatever her mother could afford to buy. Now that Faten could buy anything she wanted, she didn’t know how to make the dishes she’d craved as a teenager. The lamb came out too salty and the vegetables a little burned, but she hoped that Betoul wouldn’t mind. She rounded off the meal with pastilla from the Moroccan bakery at the corner, set the table, and waited. (150) Faten uses cooking as a mnemonic act to connect with her past that was “burned” during the crossing. The saltiness of the meat and the burned flavor of the vegetables are reminders of this loss and the painful rites of passage she is forced to undergo within and beyond the narrow ten-mile separation from home – veiled to unveiled, revolutionary student to sex worker, Moroccan

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identity to harraga, virgin to sexually violated, poor to economically independent. Her life journey takes her through a series of social, sexual and geographical border crossings that reflect the uncertainty of the first crossing. She receives a new understanding of the connections between social injustice and class-determined liminalities, whether at home or in the diaspora. This knowledge is conceived within a revised framework of diasporic consciousness. Her efforts to negotiate the boundaries of race, class, nation, culture and gender framed within nationalist codes of criminality and illegality motivate her to develop a new paradigm of citizenship in which even the “illegal” have the legal right to a better existence: “‘Well, you should rest now, I made dinner,’ she says to her exhausted roommate in renewed bonds of solidarity” (151). Despite their initial antipathy toward each other due to Faten’s line of work – “in Morocco Betoul would never have lived with Faten” (142) – the two women bond over the Eid meal as a shared reminder of home. As an “immigrant with the installment plan – she sent regular checks in the mail to help her brothers and sisters” (142) – Betoul can only find a job in an invisible underpaying service economy by working as a maid for an affluent Spanish family. Denied the privilege of a home and family in Spain, Betoul is nevertheless obliged to service a stranger’s home and create a secure sense of homeliness for the children despite her own financial insecurities as a single woman. In fact, she is expected to maintain three homes simultaneously through hard labor and only one source of income – the apartment she shares with Faten, the family home in Morocco and the employer’s home. She manages the three spaces through self-deprivation, exhausting work hours and a demanding schedule that warrants several domestic crossings between her apartment and the employer’s home, as well as the yearly crossing to and from Morocco: She lived like a pauper for eleven months of the year, and then, in August, she flew home and spent whatever was left in her bank account. Of course, her yearly trips only made people back home think that she made a lot of money, and so she always came back with long lists of requests in her hand and new worry lines etched on her forehead. (142) The new worry lines mark Betoul’s increased responsibilities misperceived as financial security by her family. Betoul’s value at home is based on the gifts she can bring, while her worth in Spain depends on her skills as a “surrogate” mother to three children and a neurotic employer: But her mother spent all day in bed, crying. She didn’t go to work. She said she’s too fat and her husband doesn’t want her anymore. So after I took the children to school and put Ana down for her nap, I made her lunch and then let out the waist on a couple of her pants, so they’d fit better. (151)

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The absence of a legal work contract makes Betoul susceptible to exploitation through a blurring of duties. Originally hired to take care of the children, Betoul soon finds herself in the position of “mothering” the employer who has the economic freedom to decide whether she wants to work or take the day off, to act as a mother to her children or not. Betoul’s silent but dependable presence provides the employer with the necessary assurance of keeping the latter’s options open. Betoul’s lack of choice, on the other hand, based on her working-class alien status, provides another model of the colonizer-colonized relationship. She becomes yet another anonymous Fatma in an underground economy that maintains the invisibility of domestic workers. Betoul must prioritize the needs of others over herself in the absence of subjectivity and social status. In other words, she must “feed” Spain’s affluence through a regimented routine of social mothering that is enforced at the expense of her own emotional and social starvation. Her story highlights the structures of coloniality that link migration, gender and a working-class positionality. At the same time, the sharing of the Eid meal is an important act of diasporic affinity as Faten and Betoul reflect on the bitter truth of migration represented by the salty meat: “Faten served her a generous portion of the lamb. Betoul had a taste. ‘A bit salty, dear,’ she said. Faten smiled, feeling grateful for the truth” (151). Faten and Betoul are determined to create their own historicity in Spain as they search for new paradigms of belonging in the transnational spaces of the diaspora. To conclude, Lamiae El Amrani and Laila Lalami chart the variegated landscapes of clandestine migration through the medium of poetry and the novella/short story to highlight the human cost of globalization, corruption, state inefficacy, economic marginality and discrimination on the lives of subalterns from the global South. El Amrani’s poetry uncovers the painful horror associated with the crossing of the Straits, while Lalami’s narrative shows how individual characters negotiate internal and external border crossings in their struggle for a better existence. While El Amrani focuses on the poetics of the crossing, Lalami inscribes her characters in the structures of coloniality to highlight the impact of gender on the process of migration. Moreover, Lalami’s characters demonstrate how their most successful migrations are represented by a certain “coming to consciousness” amid unstable circumstances, an awareness that permits them to reclaim and rewrite their own subjective textualities: “he was already lost in the story he would start writing tonight” (Lalami 2005, 195). Both authors provide a feminized reading of clandestine migration and thereby lend their unique perspectives to a corpus of male-centered texts that obscure the feminine faces of the ‘hrig. At the same time, the women join their male peers in the literary efforts to decriminalize and humanize the intrepid harragas as they search for a borderless world “en un beso con agua/en un suspiro sin agua” (“Me Pregunto Si Tienes Un Amor”) [“in a watery kiss/in a waterless sigh” (“I Ask Myself If Someone Is Loving You”)] (El Amrani 2010, 93).

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Notes 1 Consult the following website for more details on the Schengen Agreement: http:// travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_4361.html. Accessed June 8, 2012. 2 In his insightful analysis of Lalami’s novel, Ahmed Idrissi Alami refers to the historical violence that “contacts” Morocco and Spain. He states: “The geographical location, specifically Tangier and the North of Africa, has witnessed numerous acts of violence and waves of emigrants coming away from Spain, too; after the fall of Granada in 1492 and the ultimate expulsion of even converted ‘Moriscos’ from Spain in 1609, many of those expelled from Spain settled along the northern coast. Some groups moved further south into the region of Fès and along the Atlantic to the port city of Salé, where they formed distinct communities. It is this northern region, known later as the Spanish zone, which becomes conquered territory of the Spanish through the Treaty of Fès in 1912. Since then, despite the recognition of Morocco’s self-determination in 1956, Spain still maintains several enclaves on the coast at Ceuta and Melilla, and continues to dispute the sovereignty of the tiny island of Perejil/Leila off the northern coast, as happened in September 2002. These events highlight the ebb and flow of people and the changing balance of power between these two nations. In the present, it is this legacy that particularly informs relations between the two nations and among the characters of Lalami’s novel” (2012, 144–145). 3 Moors refer to the Arab and Berber Muslims from North Africa responsible for the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 711. They established the great civilization of Andalusia that lasted until the fifteenth century. 4 See Lalami’s personal website for more details on the author: http://lailalalami.com. 5 English translations of El Amrani’s poetry have been provided by Arturo G. Dávila Sánchez in consultation with the poet. 6 Bowles moved to Tangier with his wife Jane in 1947–1948 and spent the remainder of his life in the city. He died in 1999 at the age of 88.

4

Writing from the banlieue Identity, contested citizenship and gender ideologies in Faïza Guène’s Kiffe-kiffe demain

Faïza Guène’s bestselling novel Kiffe-kiffe demain has brought international attention to the marginalized situation of France’s ethnic, religious and social minorities who remained confined to a situation of economic subalternity and social displacement in disfavored urban spaces. Guène describes the daily existence of a young beur (Franco-Moroccan) teenager who negotiates the hardships of suburban living with her immigrant mother without subscribing to victimization, sensationalism or exoticism. Instead, she writes what I term a “social documentary novel” that reveals the inherent fissures in a failing social system, the duress of being a single parent immigrant woman, and all the impasses that confront France’s “othered” citizens in their quest for identity and subjectivity in a conformist social structure. The novel focuses most specifically on second- and third-generation French citizens of Maghrebi (North African) descent whose disavowed presence testifies to the permanent wounds of coloniality in France. These populations are subjected to the social violence created by the symbolic and physical borders between France and North Africa in terms of identity, social location and citizenship when they remain confined to the ghettos of the outer city euphemistically named Paradise Estate in Guène’s text. At the same time, the narrator also questions the intractability of certain cultural, religious and gendered ideologies within the immigrant spaces of the Maghrebi community of the housing projects. She looks for alternatives within these dystopic spaces as she questions the integrity of a society that maintains its condescension and hostility toward immigrants, the socially disempowered and communities of color. In so doing, Guène highlights France’s ongoing agenda of exclusion targeting its Arab-Muslim and other racialized citizens. I demonstrate how postcolonial Arab writers from the disfavored Parisian outer cities use literature as a means to protest the social violence of exclusion practiced by the French state in its attempt to maintain an outmoded model of “pure-blooded” citizenship. This literature highlights the compelling contributions of immigrant and French writers of color. These writers problematize French engagements with issues of minority citizenship, immigrant rights, cultural assimilation and social displacement, among other issues. In

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the last two decades, the politicized literature of second-generation beur writers,1 such as Mehdi Charef, Azouz Begag, Ahmed Zitouni, Farida Belghoul, Soraya Nini and a younger generation of post-beur authors represented by Faïza Guène and Houda Rouane2 has captivated France’s literary and cultural attention. As beur literature engages with the sociological and political reality of Arabs (both immigrant and French) in France, it is impossible to separate literature from the social text. Literature and political engagement intersect in these works to provide a complex and creative sociopolitical document of lived experience in the marginalized outer cities, banlieues. In other words, this literature does not emerge from an aesthetic vacuum. It favors the cause of social justice when it contests France’s claims to decoloniality by highlighting the ongoing racism and social disenfranchisement of French youth, immigrants and communities of color, as stated earlier.

Social texts and context I position Kiffe-kiffe demain as a decolonial text that makes an important intervention in discourses on subaltern subjectivity, vernacularity, gender ideologies and social displacement in France. This novel favors a decolonized epistemology. It is narrated by a social subaltern who espouses an antihegemonic perspective in her critique of French models of integration and immigrant accommodations. At the same time, the novel also pays tribute to the mothers of Maghrebi immigration, who remain the most invisible faces of the immigration process. Franco-Algerian filmmaker Yamina Benguigui refers to these mothers as “the pioneers of immigration” and the “French Republic’s forgotten ones” in her interview with Claire Hache (2012). In fact, Benguigui has presented a petition to President François Hollande asking him for a public acknowledgement of these valiant witnesses to France’s social anomie in the disfavored outer cities. The petition is an attempt to “rehabilitate the mothers within our Republic” and recognize their valuable role as “the invisible and silent guarantors of republican equilibrium” in the urban ghettos (2012). Kiffe-kiffe affirms the subjectivity of these women through their importance in the novel, judging by the prominent role played by the narrator’s mother in her transition from invisibility to a visible presence-in-text. In many respects, this literature echoes the politicized agenda of important anti-racist, anti-imperialist postcolonial movements in France, such as the Mouvement des Indigènes de la République (Movement of the Indigenous of the Republic) (MIR), an “indigenous” coalition started in January 2005 by the French-born children of Arab, African and Asian immigrants. While the term “indigène” was derogatorily used by the French to designate “native” colonized populations, its intentional re-appropriation as an explicit decolonial act by the MIR is explained by the movement’s spokesperson Houria Bouteldja. In a conversation with Saïd Mekki, Bouteldja explains why the MIR’s members identify as indigenous:

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Well, because we are living a neo-colonial reality. We are the children of an illusion that consisted in believing that the independences of our countries signified the end of colonization … decolonization has yet to be accomplished. Its ideological and cultural bases still exist. We thus continue to live in a different colonial phase. We, who experience diverse regimes and systems of oppression, recognize ourselves in this name because it demonstrates to all the oppressors, precisely and in a crude way, the reality of the state in which they want to confine us. (2009, 1) Bouteldja establishes an historical continuum or a timeline of marginalization between the immigrant parents and their postcolonial children by stating that decolonization is still a tentative work-in-progress in France. Identifying the French state as neocolonial, she emphasizes the ongoing struggle for political subjectivity experienced by French citizens of color – beur, Asian, and Black, in particular. Similar preoccupations with identity and location are also expressed in literature.

Beur positionality in France Beur literature thereby poses important questions about the multiethnic identity of France, the positionality of Arab-Muslims3 and the French Republic’s tenuous negotiations of cultural plurality amid this diversity, while affirming the place of beur literature in the canon of contemporary French writing. As Carrie Tarr asserts: “Beurs have been the most visible, the most stigmatized and the most dynamic ethnic minority in postcolonial France” (2005, 3). In his essay, “New Writing for New Times: Faïza Guène, banlieue writing, and the post-Beur generation” (2008), Dominic Thomas distinguishes between the beur and post-beur generation in terms of identity politics and literary preoccupations. He states that the writings of the older beur generation focus on the anxieties of assimilation and exile together with the conflicting tensions of negotiating ancestral North African and mainstream French cultural, social, linguistic and religious spaces. This negotiation is an attempt to establish a sense of belonging in France. On the other hand, the struggles of the post-beur or third-generation are rooted exclusively in France, the only home space they know as disadvantaged French youth from the banlieues, that is, the projects. Referred to by different labels “ranging from the ‘banlieue’ or ‘post-Beur’ generation (Silverstein; Thomas) to ‘Génération Scarface’ (Blumenfeld) and ‘young ethnics’ (Begag) … the transition to a third generation of Algerians is part of a wider realignment of social structures and identities in which national markers are of declining significance,” according to Hargreaves (2010, 1290). Establishing transnational bonds of solidarity with other disenfranchised French youth of Black African, Caribbean and Asian origin, this generation affirms a deracialized, denationalized French plurality to contest

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and subvert the “ethnicization and urban marginalization of the beur community” (Echchaibi 2007, 302). The transition from beur to banlieue literature is an act of political commitment to include all socio-economically disenfranchised groups united by their subaltern status in France; negotiations of Arab ethnicity are one part of the entire social spectrum and not an exclusive feature in this revised nomenclature. At the same time, Guène’s novel also reveals the importance of the voices of French youth in their demands for a more racially tolerant and socially inclusive France. Beur and post-beur literary and cultural productions offer “a touchstone for measuring the extent to which universalist Republican assumptions about Frenchness can be challenged and particular forms of multiculturalism envisaged and valued” (Tarr 2005, 3). Similarly, Nora Barsali highlights the continued stigmatizing of this community as “des Français pas comme les autres” [“French with a difference”] (Barsali, Freland and Vincent 2003, 5) or “des enfants issus de l’immigration” [“children born of immigration”] (6), wherein the reference to immigrant origins suggests a permanent state of Otherness and foreignness. As Barsali affirms: “Les Beurs souffrent d’une diabolisation qui au mieux leur interdit de jouir pleinement de leur citoyenneté, au pire les retranche dans une crise identititaire ‘schizophrénique’ dont la revendication à une appartenance ne s’opère que par désespoir” [“Beurs suffer from a demonizing that, at best, prohibits them from fully enjoying their citizenship and, at worst, entrenches them in a schizophrenic identity crisis whose politics of claiming operates through despair only”] (5). Caught between mediating tropes of marginal representation and partial identifications, the problematics of beur identity evoke a serious identity crisis. This crisis results from what I call a “citoyenneté non partagée” [“a citizenship of disaffiliation”] on the one hand, and the questioning of normative standards of French identity on the other. As Le Monde journalist Musthapha Kessous affirms: “On dit de moi que je suis d’origine étrangère, un beur, une racaille, un islamiste, un délinquant, un sauvageon, un ‘beurgeois,’ un enfant issue de l’immigration … Mais jamais un Français, Français tout court” [“They say I am of foreign origins, a beur, scum, an Islamist, a delinquent, an unruly person, a Beurgeois, a child born of immigration … But never French, simply French”] (2009). Kessous bemoans the persistent disavowal of his Frenchness through disabling markers of ethnic, racial and social Otherness. At the same time, the politics of nomenclature “also speaks to, and thus perpetuates, the republican dream of a national society in which ethnic differences are considered to be irrelevant to interactions in the public sphere” (Durmelat and Swamy 2011, 13-14). Caught in the ambiguity of displacement, Kessous’s predicament highlights the misplaced positionality of the “othered” French within Republican dictates of conforming citizenship. The protagonist’s negotiation of her bicultural identity exposes the hypocrisy of the French secularizing mission of an a priori universality in which all markers of difference, especially in terms of race, social status, gender, religion

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and ethnicity are suspect until they are assimilated into a homogenous national ideal of sameness. Accordingly, the politicized rhetoric of safeguarding national unity very often becomes a code word for exclusion and discrimination based on race, social standing and religion, which confirms Barsali’s claim: “Il serait vain d’aspirer à une cohésion nationale tant que certaines catégories, en l’occurrence les Beurs, ces enfants d’immigrés, se sentent discriminés, non représentés, indésirables” [“It would be pointless to aspire to national unity as long as certain categories, Beurs in particular, these children of immigrants, feel discriminated against, underrepresented, undesirable”] (Barsali, Freland and Vincent 2003, 5). Accordingly, this chapter also examines the ways in which immigrant Maghrebi mothers and their beur daughters question French universalism and the assimilating codes of “integration” through the following questions: What are the normative standards of French nationality and citizenship, and how are these discriminatory ideals negotiated by Franco-Arab Muslims, especially within socially circumscribed spaces like the housing projects? How are these markers of difference inscribed on the female body through the mother’s labor exploitation in the service industry and the daughter’s marginalization in school? How do the female characters negotiate these tensions as they seek a resolution of their conflicted status in France through cultural reclaiming, spatial transgressions and gender affirmations? At the same time, the novel also reveals the “colonial fractures” that locate Arab-Muslims as permanent outsiders; they remain extraneous to French society as an attempt by France to disengage with its violent colonial past.4 As Christian Delorme suggests: “La société française dans son ensemble montre des sentiments mitigés à l’égard de cette installation de la ‘maghrébité’ dans la ‘francité’, c’est-à-dire dans l’être collectif français” [“French society as a whole demonstrates mixed feelings with regard to the setting up of North Africanness within Frenchness, that is to say, in the collective French imaginary”] (2003, 134). Accordingly, how are beurs, as ambiguous representatives of French (post)colonialism, commodified within the strictures of coloniality to exemplify partial affiliations with French postcolonial subjectivity within which colonial paradigms mediate and define their identity? What are the strategies used by beur writers to decolonize their identity through the intersecting categories of race, class, gender, culture and nationality? The novel thus raises broader philosophical questions about the precariousness of Arab-Muslim identity in France, while providing a young Franco-Algerian author’s perspective on day-to-day life in the “other” France.5 Guène thereby offers an intimate perspective into a world that is both negated and misunderstood by the mainstream. The author humanizes the marginalized banlieue (outer city) through a process of narrative decriminalizing that restores the humanity of its residents. In so doing, she subverts hegemonic representations of the banlieues as essentialized sites of deviance by re-presenting them according to more humanistic paradigms. I argue that

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Guène participates in an indigenizing project as she seeks to de-center and subvert the coloniality of French universalism demonstrated by inflexible codes of assimilation to a dominant norm and models of selective citizenship. Critical of the dual patriarchies represented by the state and the Maghrebi family, Guène creates a socially conscious ethos in which subalterns reclaim their circumscribed lives by establishing their own genealogies of being in an active act of decolonization. Walter Mignolo describes this process as “decolonial thinking.” He asserts: “Decolonization of knowledge and of being requires one to engage in rebuilding what was destroyed and to build what doesn’t yet exist” (2011, 108–109). As an example of decolonial thought, Kiffe-kiffe demain demonstrates the power of the “youth voice” and its critical role in an alternative form of community-building based on the decolonization of dominant Frenchness and the unlearning of patriarchal North Africanness. The novel exposes the two mutually exclusive realities of France, in which Arabs and Muslims are objects of racial profiling by the French state represented by a racist social services network and educational system. In these fractured spaces, beur children must negotiate their biculturality as FrancoMaghrebi citizens amid racism, social marginality and antiquated French and Maghrebi patriarchal ideologies. At the same time, the novel also “humanizes” stereotypical representations of the housing projects as sites of deviance and violence through a tender mother-daughter relationship and communal affiliations found in female solidarity bonds, popular music and the sharing of food. The novel reveals the determination of mother and daughter to transcend the status quo reflected in the Arabic word kif-kif, meaning “same old-same old,” by combining the term with the French verb kiffer (“to like”) to create a more affirming reality for themselves: Kiffe-Kiffe Tomorrow. A very early draft of Kiffe-kiffe demain caught the attention of one of Guène’s film studies teachers, who immediately showed the preliminary outline of the manuscript to his influential sister, an editor at Hachette Littératures, one of France’s leading publishing houses. While one wonders how much (or if) the Hachette editor mediated Guène’s narrative for marketing purposes, the novel’s importance cannot be denied because of the larger social issues it addresses from a subaltern viewpoint.6 Interestingly, many book reviews have used Guène’s young adult perspective as an excuse to gloss over the more politicized nature of the novel and its vindication of minority rights by focusing instead on its lighthearted and easily digestible aspects: “A confection that is tender, funny, and even wise,” states the New York Times’s glib publicity blurb on the English translation’s back cover. However, the novel’s interest lies in its power of suggestion, hinting at what needs to be said within the interstices through social critique, cultural re-evaluations, the linguistic inversions of double entendre and the creative modalities of verlan (backslang street language). This postcolonial vernacular signifies the dual axes of marginalization and resistance to be discussed later.

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A voice from the margins A resident of the Parisian public housing projects in Les Courtillières, Faïza Guène is the daughter of Algerian parents from Oran. Born in Bobigny in 1985, the author’s meteoric rise to fame (before age twenty) with the publication of her first novel Kiffe-kiffe demain followed shortly by Du rêve pour les oufs and Les gens du Balto can be explained by the social and political relevance of her work. Using the intimate style of a personal journal, Guène offers a young insider’s perspective into the daily struggles of the Maghrebi working class as it negotiates gender, racial and social marginality within confining urban spaces and under debilitating economic conditions. The author combines black humor, wit, sarcasm, irony, ethnographic observation and youthful optimism to paint a poignant landscape of the dreams, aspirations, frustrations and humiliations of the dispossessed immigrant parents and their disenfranchised French-born and raised beur children; their daily battle for social acceptability and cultural legitimacy in an unwelcoming milieu creates a situation of permanent siege within hegemonic structures of French authority. Determined to counter dominant stereotypes and cultural misrepresentations of the “wretched of the earth,” Guène uses fiction as a powerful tool of self-claiming to give voice to the underrepresented working-class Arab-Muslim minorities of France. These minorities are caught between the mediated extremes of French policies of integration and questionable citizenship on the one hand, and immigrant dystopia on the other, as stated earlier. Literature thereby provides an important counter discourse or “une autre vision de ceux qui dans leur vie quotidienne vivent le stigmate social d’être ‘origine étrangère’” [“another vision of those, who in their everyday lives, experience the social stigma of being of ‘foreign origin’”], according to Stéphane Beaud (Amrani and Beaud 2005, 231). As the visible Others of French universalism, the intergenerational community of elders, children and young adults depicted in Guène’s novels both contests and highlights the inherent racism of such normative ideals while exposing the partial claims to citizenship afforded to France’s native-born Arab-Muslim constituencies. Guène herself describes the predicament of this in-between generation of beurs in an interview with Jason Burke, in which she refuses to succumb to the dictates of a contested identity: People say that people like me should be more integrated … But what does that mean? I was born in France, I went to a French school, I speak French, I live in France. It is difficult to do the things that are apparently needed to be accepted if that means denying things that are a part of my culture. It is as if – and this is a bit brutal but is true – we (children of immigrants) are told: “You are children of the republic, but you are bastard children.” (2006, 4–5) Guène’s statements reveal the deep fractures and social divisions in mainstream French society. These ruptures are based on antagonistic binaries

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between French cultural authenticity represented by “the great symbols of France” (wine, cheese, gourmet dining, museums and cultural centers of international repute) and Arab marginality symbolized by this population’s inability to have access to these “universal” cultural signifiers of sophistication and distinction in the impoverished urban ghettos. At the same time, beur writers also resist, according to Alec Hargreaves, “monocultural concepts of national identity”: Averse to national boundaries while inevitably residing within them, they cultivate supra- and sub-national identities; diasporic and global on the one hand, local on the other … While their cultural hybridity cannot be reduced to any simplistic notion of national identity, there is nevertheless a clear realization among most of these writers that they have to work within, rather than outside, the complex dynamics that are reshaping the cultural contours of France. (Hargreaves and McKinney 1997, 230, 234) Consequently, beur contestations of national absolutes reveal the two realities of France created by the racial and social impasses of accessibility/nonaccessibility and affiliation/ bastardization. These binaries favor unequal claims to political agency in the form of the contested nationality of Frenchborn Maghrebis for whom the mother country remains an elusive ideal. This continual tug-of-war between two separate but unequal historicities (Arab and French) becomes the very source of unparalleled anguish, alienation and desperation among the urban youth in particular, as revealed in other beur novels, especially Mehdi Charef ’s Le thé au harem d’Archi Ahmed. At the same time, France’s colonial ties with North Africa, especially its 132-yearlong colonization of Algeria,7 has also occasioned inverted symbiotic ties between these geographical spaces. The visibility of Arab difference in France nevertheless remains an inassimilable tract in its refusal to conform to an integrated cultural norm; at the same time, this “resistant visibility” found in cultural signifiers such as food, language and music, as well as physical appearance also risks criminalization in the form of racial profiling and harassment. Guène admits that even though cultural rituals provide the security of belonging and resistance to assimilation within the safe space of home, her incursions into public space are a frequent reminder of non-belonging in France through racism and cruel intent. As she admits to Elaine Sciolino: We speak Arabic and watch Algerian satellite and listen to Algerian music at home … Even what I have on my plate is Algerian. You can’t easily just tell yourself one day you’re French. Your’re betrayed by your face, your hair. It takes time … [I have been called] “dirty Arab” on the streets of Paris and told to “go home.” (2004)

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The physical visibility of Arab-French difference represented by beurs undermines the mythical legality of dominant French claims to purified national roots and cultural homogeneity, a falsified illusion to first fabricate and then reject Otherness. At the same time, Guène redirects social negativity into creative possibility when she converts this socio-psychic struggle into a humanistic representation of the will to survive amid adversity. In so doing, she transforms abject spaces such as the housing projects into vibrant centers of cultural and social subjectivity. As stated by Beaud: A la vision stéréotypée des banlieues … les jeunes des cités “pris en otage” par les médias proposent une “contre-image” qui corresponde mieux à la réalité et qui donne surtout à penser un tant soit peu la complexité de ce monde social des cités [In opposition to the stereotypical vision of the suburbs … the young people of the projects “held hostage” by the media propose a “counter image” that corresponds more appropriately with reality and makes one think at least about the complexity of the social world of the projects]. (2004, 230) In her novel, Guène gives prominence to the lives of the socially and racially inadmissible, especially the women of the housing projects: “It would be better if people interested themselves in what happens in the banlieues8 for reasons other than our social conditions. There is a richness and a creativity there as well as an enormous need to express oneself,” concludes this young social critic and cultural optimist (Burke 2006, 5).

The Parisian housing projects Situated on the Parisian periphery in a disadvantaged no man’s land separating the tourist capital of light from its suburban dystopia, the housing projects are both a reminder of France’s colonial past and its neocolonial engagement with the residents of its former colonies and their families.9 These imposing multilevel constructions called “grands ensembles” (“tower blocks”) were designed in the 1960s to accommodate a new style of modernist architecture destined for immigrants and the urban proletariat, the backbone of France’s labor force. As Sylvie Durmelat indicates: These newly built housing projects were intended to provide the working masses and migrant populations with the benefits and comforts of modern life (such as running water and electricity) … The utopian ideal underlying this massive construction effort assumed that a new society and a new way of life would emerge from this new functional architecture. (2001, 117)

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This system of low-income housing called the Habitations à loyer modéré (HLM) had the functional purpose of containing France’s postwar foreign labor force imported most specifically from North Africa, Algeria in particular,10 within the limits of the suburban or outer-city ghetto – “both to meet the pressing demand for lodging left unresolved after World War Two and to eradicate shantytowns,” according to Durmelat (117). France’s postcolonial architecture was nevertheless based on colonial design in terms of the HLM’s dislocation from metropolitan centers; the use of substandard building material such as asbestos; inhospitable living conditions such as overcrowding, inadequate plumbing and poor electrical facilities; flimsy construction; light deprivation; and an absence of green spaces. Resembling the industrial prison complex, these suburban concrete jungles were also a testament to the darker side of modernity in the form of a dissimulated social and environmental racism targeting France’s disfavored Others. Referring to the projects as “dark ghettos,” Kenneth Clark affirms that the “dark ghettos are social, political, educational and – above all – economic colonies. Their inhabitants are subject people, victims of greed, cruelty, insensitivity, guilt and fear” (1965, 11). In other words, the housing projects in France replicate the distant colony to expose a local colonial polity at home, that is, a home whose racism targets French Muslims: “ces Français en mal de représentativité et de compréhension de la part de leur société d’accueil” [“these French who remain underrepresented and misunderstood by the host country”] (Barsali Freland and Vincent 2003, 7). The projects also highlight France’s rejection of the economically disadvantaged. As Echchaibi affirms: Today the banlieue has become, through its sinister image of chaos and poverty, the contemporary colony in which France asserts its identity and reaffirms its difference. Beyond its appeal, all the social and cultural ills have been dumped on this urban abyss as the source of the cultural malaise France is experiencing. (2007, 309) In the novel, this aggression assumes a structural form in the projects when dividing walls and barbed wire create conditions of spatial apartheid for the economically and racially besieged. As the narrator admits: There’s still such a well-drawn line between the Paradise Estate where I live and the Rousseau housing development. Massive wire fencing that stinks of rust it’s so old and a stone wall that runs the whole length of the divide. Worse than the Maginot Line or the Berlin Wall. (2006, 81–82) The connections between France’s wartime fortifications along the Maginot Line, the Berlin Wall, and the concrete enclosures surrounding the projects create sharp spatial divisions between insider/outsider groups by demarcating

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those who fall within “enemy” lines as a threat to national security. These internal border zones are a way of restraining and confining “suspect” populations through police surveillance and checkpoint controls in metro stations, cafés, schools, shopping centers, streets and other public spaces whenever there is a perceived fear of transgression or trespassing by these groups. In addition, the perverse naming of the projects as Paradise Estate creates an ironic reversal of intent. The residents of the HLM are subjected to a state of living hell for the “privilege” of living in a colonially designed paradise for the unwelcome located in the marginalized banlieues. Paradise, for subalterns in France, represents a liminal state of abjection. This “paradise lost” or embattled war zone inhibits social transcendence and economic elevation for the urban poor and favors their moral dejection at the same time. As Mireille Rosello states: French banlieues have become a cultural cliché, a metaphor, a shortcut for a vaguely formulated yet deeply seated malaise. Today, “banlieues” is often used in the plural, as if all banlieues were the same, and the word had lost most of its semantic territory … “Banlieues” now evokes one single type of urban landscape: dilapidated areas of social housing populated by a fantasized majority of “foreigners” and especially of “Arabes.” Those demonized sites are the symbolic crossroads where anti-Arab feelings crystallize around issues of housing. (1997, 240) Kiffe-kiffe demain establishes the parallel between structural and environmental degradation on the one hand, and the social deprivation experienced by the inhabitants of the HLM on the other: You could say the super of our development doesn’t give a shit about our towers. Luckily Carla, the Portuguese cleaning lady, gives them a quick once-over from time to time. But when she doesn’t come, they stay disgusting for weeks on end, and that’s how they’ve been lately. There’s been piss and globs of spit in the elevator. It stank, but we were all just happy it was working. It’s lucky we know which buttons are for which floors, because the display panel’s all scratched and melted. (2006, 29–30)11 The abject conditions of the projects expose a system of French structural dissonance punctuated by sentiments of disregard, hatred, suspicion and the negation of the residents who remain subsumed under globs of spit and piss. As Durmelat affirms: “Indeed, the now dominant stereotype of the banlieueturned-ghetto seems to be another way of erasing the immigrant presence and experience from French urban spaces” (2001, 118). These sites of exclusion and seclusion remain hidden from tourist eyes through spatial demarcations maintained by inferior/superior, rich/poor, civilized/barbarian colonial

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binaries of imposed deviance, in which French civilization upholds its selfpurported distinction through the criminalization of its Others. The novel highlights these discrepancies fuelled by biased media coverage: But our building, and the projects in general, they don’t get so much tourist interest. There aren’t any Japanese hordes with their cameras standing at the bottom of the towers in the neighborhood. The only ones interested in us are the parasite journalists and their nasty reports on violence in the suburbs. (2006, 116–117) The novel demonstrates how the timeless wonder of the touristic Eiffel Tower is deemed worthy of commemoration in postcard immortality; in contrast, the block towers of the projects loom menacingly over a threatening/ threatened landscape of socio-economic decay. The Eiffel Tower is celebrated for its unique style and cultural purchase; however, the criminality of difference represented by the forbidding block towers in the suburbs menaces the singularity of the coveted Parisian cultural chic in a non-calibrated differential between urban/suburban, bourgeois/proletarian and national/immigrant spatial liminalities. These binaries provide a mirror image of the colonizer/ colonized dialectic enforced and sustained during France’s colonial history. The presence of France’s Arab-Muslim proletarian subjects “tarnishes” an otherwise whitewashed colonial scheme. This agenda either erases France’s Arabness through discriminating laws of integration and a denial of the colonial past, or confronts ethnic difference through the heavy-handedness of the law, police brutality, media bias and the colonial belief in the inherent moral regression of Arabs. Their very presence poses a “fundamental” threat to the democratizing aspects of French secularism and the revolutionary ideals of the nation. In reality, the development of violence among the disenfranchised youth in the borderline spaces of the projects can be seen as a reaction to continued marginalization, social neglect, economic stagnation, alienation, boredom, academic failure and a sense of hopelessness about the future: “We worry about the future but there’s no point. For all we know we might not even have one,” states the protagonist of the novel (2006, 13). Violence speaks the language of despair among the suburban youth condemned to a future without social mobility rather than symbolizing the inherent delinquency of ArabMuslims as represented by the media. As Christian Delorme states: “C’est le chômage, le fait d’être ‘inutile’ socialement, et, économiquement, qui tue l’intégration” [“It is unemployment, the fact of being socially and economically useless that kills integration”] (Barsali, Freland and Vincent 2003, 134). Confining architectural designs to control movement within and beyond its borders reflects the social impasses that confront this community of disenfranchised and unemployed youth.

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Kiffe-kiffe demain consequently assumes a personal resonance for Faïza Guène to both decriminalize the projects and highlight the complexity of its Arab and other inhabitants: Kiffe-kiffe demain is a necessary corrective … I was sick and tired of hearing only black stories about the suburbs, so I wrote about the trivial, daily things that happen here … It’s important to show that the suburbs are not only about cars that are set on fire or girls who get gang-raped in basements. (Sciolino 2004) Faïza Guène transforms an ordinary story into a noteworthy demonstration of the human search for exemplarity within disempowering circumstances. In the novel, the women and girls take the lead in redefining and reclaiming their lives as a reaction to their circumscribed social existence in the projects in particular and France in general.

Arab-Muslim difference in France Muslims are the largest ethnic minority in Europe, where Islam has steadily become the second most influential religion after Christianity. In France itself, Muslims constitute over 12% of the population (Bernard 2004, 18). Their growing presence has led to insecurities over issues of national belonging and secular identity that reveal “fundamental contradictions between a highly abstracted notion of universalism and the lived reality of ethnic distinction and racialized discrimination against people of non-European origins and of color,” according to Trica Danielle Keaton (2006, x–xi). These self-selecting universalisms of cultural normativity reveal their discriminatory intent in terms of the social, economic, religious and political marginalization of France’s Arab-Muslim constituencies whose claims to francité (Frenchness) are ironically measured solely in terms of cultural assimilation, economic deprivation and social isolation. As a code word for the suppression of difference in the form of a “racist humanism” (Sartre 1961, 56), French universalism, or the desire for sameness, implies conformity to a nationally fabricated criterion of affiliation that remains non-Muslim and non-Maghrebi in scope. Maxim Silverman attributes this obsession for an undifferentiated cultural authenticity to “a crisis in the structures of the nation-state” (1992, 33) as France suffers the angst of being absorbed into a wider European community; the very idea of the European Union delegitimizes unitary claims to national sovereignty. Within these restrictive standards of acceptable national identity, French Muslims are subjected to the politics of disaffiliation in the home country, where they continue to be perceived as outsiders and a potential threat to national security interests through their imposed foreigner status. As Etienne Balibar argues, French national identity is inextricably linked to the history of French colonialism, wherein all the inassimilable cultural

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differences of formerly colonized groups feed a new form of xenophobia termed “a racism without races” (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991, 32–33). Positioning racism as another marker of French universalism, Balibar suggests that France’s ambivalence toward its non-European Others becomes a direct offshoot of colonialism creating preferential categories of favored/ disfavored integration into postcolonial French society. Balibar states: “The European immigrants of the prewar period and of today are said to be ‘close’ because they came or come from ‘equal’ countries that have never been colonized by France, unlike Maghrebians, Blacks, and Asians” (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991, 58).12 In other words, colonialism and its resulting reactive (and exclusionary) nationalist identifications have created fractured political spaces giving Maghrebi Muslims the option of either being crushed under the weight of these colonial fractures or accommodating interstitiality by redefining the very notion of Frenchness. This “racialization of national identity” (Keaton 2006, 7) based on an inverted insider/outsider polemic subjects French Muslims to specular distortions of a non-prescriptive Frenchness. These manufactured identities are part of a national marketing scheme to create racialized distinctions between good Frenchmen and their less than desirable Others; these manufactured identities sustain a universally ratified construction of an equally “imagined” French identity that subverts transnationality in a reductive and racist French/nonFrench equation. Universality, as the not-so-disguised search for preserving cultural and religious homogeneity, has led to institutionalized discrimination against Muslims by negating their access to social and economic mobility. At the same time, they are subjected to a certain violence of representation through cultural stereotyping and religious profiling. This structural violence has targeted the banlieues in particular, as highlighted in Guène’s novel. In these liminal spaces, the Franco-Maghrebi transnationality of beur youth is both demonstrated by their cultural migrations between the imposed secularism of France and the Muslim values of their immigrant parents on the one hand, and negated by criminalizing tropes of non-French social deviance on the other. As Keaton argues: “While they are made to be seen by the public as living manifestations of every social ill, what they are not perceived as is French” (23). Within this ambivalence, beur children must first negotiate a dual migration predicated by the alienating consequences of their parents’ immigration from the Maghreb and their own internal migrations between mutually exclusive French and Maghrebi value systems. They must later come to terms with their postcolonial identity as transcultural Franco-ArabMuslims.13 These individuals are nevertheless denied their postmodern national wholeness within a racialized framework of inclusion/exclusion through the code word “integration,” even though they speak French and demonstrate a stronger identification with French youth culture than the ancestral heritage of their parents or grandparents. Within these interstitial spaces of indeterminate identity and social exclusion, gender roles are further complicated by a dual national and indigenous

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patriarchy. Regressive patriarchal politics of control and manipulation are played out on the female body through restrictive cultural dictates, national exclusions and the immobilizing social constraints of a failing welfare system. The novel explores the interstitial spaces between absolute confinement within these structures and resistance to marginality through the bicultural displacement of the protagonist and her immigrant mother’s quest for roots in France. The placelessness experienced by mother and daughter provides a common site of struggle for economic and social independence from the colonial mindset of the welfare system and the disengaging policies of a racist school system. In other words, the two women politicize their outsider status by creating their own paradigms of belonging in an effort to establish a sense of home in an alienating environment. At the same time, this effort reveals the underlying tensions involved in the process of self-definition when the colluding determinants of race, class, gender and national disaffiliation resist Arab subjectivity, economic empowerment and gender agency.

The irony of nomenclature The novel highlights the ways in which Maghrebi immigrant mothers and their French daughters have to negotiate their multiple alienations in terms of environment, work, social integration, education and political rights. The father’s departure for Morocco creates a certain liberating space for both women in terms of spatial mobility between the public and private spheres and the possibilities for economic independence through the mother’s employment. This movement between the inside and the outside subverts the father’s stereotypical belief that women and girls should be confined to domestic space because of their inherent biological weakness and economic dependency on men. He affirms: “He thought girls were weak, that they were made for crying and doing the dishes” (130). At the same time, the novel also exposes the resisting structures that engage women in a tug-of-war struggle for social transcendence within a postcolonial patriarchal hegemony in France and restricting socio-cultural spaces in the projects. The father’s absence is nevertheless predicated on a particular “patriarchal permissibility” to abandon wife and family in the search for a male heir. This search is inscribed within culturally determined gender expectations and goals. Within these cultural limits, the birth of a daughter directly contests the viability of the patriarch by instating a mother-daughter lineage in the absence of a son. The protagonist sarcastically comments on this feminine assault on the father’s sense of manhood and cultural identity: Dad, he wanted a son. For his pride, his reputation, the family honor, and I’m sure lots of other stupid reasons. But he only got one kid and it was a girl. Me. You could say I didn’t exactly meet customer specifications. Trouble is, it’s not like at the supermarket. There’s no customersatisfaction guarantee. So one day the Beard must have realized there was

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The patriarchal production of female identity within male-centered paradigms of uniformity exemplified by gender role typecasting mirrors the universal French model of racial standardization in self-replicating patterns of normative hypermasculinity represented by the state and family. As Jane Freedman and Carrie Tarr argue: And whilst the French Republican model of citizenship has been criticized for the manner in which gender has been used as a category of exclusion, there has been little discussion of the ways in which the interactions of the categories of gender and “race” produce multiple exclusions … and have created situations of double oppressions and double dependency on men. (2000, 3) Forced to confront these competing racial, cultural and national exclusions, the novel indicates how immigrant women and their daughters are caught in the double bind of colluding national and local patriarchies whose legislating codes define and delimit gender roles. If the women’s successful integration into the Maghrebi household can be measured in terms of their conformity to the prescribed roles of mother (of male sons), wife and dutiful daughter, their fortuitous integration into French metropolitan culture lies in complete assimilation and subservience to the national father as an ironic “liberation” from an oppressive regime at home. Faced with these mediated options of “freedom” proposed by home and state, the women must nevertheless arbitrate their own access to subjectivity. In the novel, the father’s abandonment destabilizes the patriarchal stronghold within the narrator’s family by providing the mother with access to public space and income-generating potential. As the novel indicates: “When Dad lived with us, there was no question about her working even though we were seriously broke. Because for Dad women weren’t made for working in the outside world” (2006, 107). The quotation demonstrates how spatially determined gender modalities sustain a public/private space dialectic controlled by the Law of the Father. Instead, a loving mother-daughter relationship of mutual care and support in the text redefines the very concept of the Maghrebi family in France even though the protagonist misses her father (3) and the mother remains traumatized by the suddenness of his departure. The mother experiences a dual sense of exile; first, as a disavowed ArabMuslim woman immigrant in France who has been separated from her homeland involuntarily and second, by a brutal separation from the husband who leaves his wife for another woman. The double loss complicates the mother’s sense of physical and psychological estrangement, demonstrated by

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her existential disengagement from life. As the narrator explains: “ … my mom’s here. Well, she’s here physically. Because in her head, she’s somewhere else. Somewhere even farther away than my father” (3). Ironically, the absence of the father as the main economic provider places mother and daughter under another form of tutelage – a paternalistic social services system. As a substitute for the lost father, the system takes charge of the daily life of the family in an attempt to establish the parameters of state control within the privacy of home space. The family’s life is regulated by the frequent visits of social workers; these individuals adopt an attitude of colonial benevolence in relation to the socially and economically colonized subjects of the projects. The protagonist admits: “Since the old man split we’ve had a whole parade of social workers coming to the apartment … Even when it’s clearly not the right time” (7). The social system’s power to regulate family welfare bases itself on the mandate to socialize France’s Others according to the “civilizing” norms of French respectability and acceptability. These norms find their social purchase in cultural stereotyping and colonial definitions of Arab alterity. The novel raises the following issues: How do Arab Muslims and women in particular become marketable objects of hegemonic representations in which Arabness is reduced to an identifiable commodity of “imagined” difference? How is Arabness created in the French imaginary to support an exclusionary national ideal and repressive immigration policies in an attempt to both manage and define Arab-Muslim identity? How and why is Islam packaged for media consumption, especially in terms of gender? As Freedman and Tarr affirm: These stereotyped representations, which portray women of immigrant origin as wives, mothers or daughters, supports for the process of “integration” of immigrant communities into France, or “victims” of patriarchal Muslim cultures, are clearly obstacles to the full understanding of the heterogeneity of identities and representations and the multiple dimensions of problems and difficulties that touch these women’s lives. (2–3) The integration/victimization binary undermines the complexity of Arab women’s lives by reducing the women to readily identifiable signifiers of uncomplicated Arabness. This blanket characterization of cultural and gendered homogeneity is further subjected to nationally ratified perceptions of threatening Islamic Otherness or submissive Arab female backwardness – two colonially motivated viewpoints that apparently seem to justify the French political need for assimilation.

The Other’s Other Positioned as the “Other’s Other,” Maghrebi women in France are immobilized within the representational closure of the colonial gaze that subjugates

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them to three levels of alterity as North African/Arab-Muslim/women. This subaltern positionality is further complicated by the women’s civil status as immigrants or non-normative French citizens. In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon refers to this form of objectification as a “crushing objecthood” in which the marginalized Other will “experience his being through others” (1967a, 109). The colonial right to (mis)represent through mediated perceptions and self-serving fabrications finds its legitimacy both in the history of colonization and the stigmatized visibility of difference in postcolonial France; Maghrebi immigrant women and their French daughters remain sandwiched between two contradictory and antagonistic state-sanctioned binaries – cultural guardian on the one hand, and medium of assimilation on the other. Obliged to play a balancing act between these ambivalent strategies of identity politics, Muslim women are nevertheless manipulated by the cultural politics of representation through sensationalism, controversy, media control and the packaging of fear against Islam, as revealed in the novel. Caitlin Killian argues: North-African and sub-Saharan immigrant women and their daughters are generating attention in France, but almost always around controversial and stereotypical issues that are sensationalized such as clitoral excision, polygamy, and veiling, issues that serve to further exoticize them. Rarely are the more mundane and constant issues they face, such as discrimination at work or which language to speak to their children, studied. The recent interest by government officials and the French public in the integration of the second generation has led to a surge in recent studies looking at girls born in France, but the first generation remains seriously neglected. (2006, 10–11) If the immigrant mothers are silenced by neglect, the daughters remain equally silenced through assimilation into mainstream culture. This integration takes the form of the rejection of traditional Maghrebi cultural beliefs by the children as a way of undermining Islam and demonstrating their allegiance/submission to the secular values of the French nation. Mothers and daughters experience the burden of representation through the “debilitating impact of dominant Western representations of the Muslim woman” (Kahf 1999, 9) that remain fixed, patriarchal in motivation, essentialist and intransigent to change. These one-sided perceptions resist the complicated realities of Muslim women in France as a way of controlling and defining their access to an accommodated Frenchness. At the same time, these stereotypes interrogate their Muslimness through the constructed devaluing of an equally monolithic positioning of Islam. The cultural packaging of Islam through stereotypes, fear and frozen colonial imagery gains purchase over the subjectivity of ordinary Muslims and a “lived” sense of Islam (Geisser 2003, 115). As Laila Lalami states:

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Millions of French citizens with ancestral roots in North Africa are being told … in order to be French, they must “integrate” by giving up that which makes them different – Islam. The religion, however, is not regarded as a set of beliefs that adherents can adjust to suit the demands of their everyday lives, but rather as an innate and unbridgeable attribute. It is easy to see how racism can take hold in such a context. (2007) The perceived intractability of Islam further contributes to a virulent antiMuslim racism whose anxiety-generating tensions are played out on the female body. Guène’s novel contests these stereotypes, revealing the psychology of oppression experienced by immigrant mothers in a racist and capitalist social structure; the mothers occupy a marginal status in terms of their class, religion and ethnicity. The text nevertheless shatters the first stereotype about Arab women’s reproductive proclivity in the comments of a surprised social worker who expects to meet a large family when he enters the protagonist’s home. As the narrator states: Once, he told my mom that in ten years on this job, this was the first time he’d seen “people like you with only one child.” He was thinking “Arabs,” but he didn’t say so. Coming to our place was like an exotic experience for him. (2006, 8) The social worker’s comments betray their tentativeness when he is caught off guard in an unexpected circumstance negating his previously held assumptions about disruptive Maghrebi family patterns within a nuclear family system in France. While the female body’s capacity to (re)produce an Islamic nation in France through consecutive pregnancies symbolizes the ultimate threat to the social and political order, the one-daughter/absentee-father family model described in the novel also negates essentialized constructions of the patriarchal family in national and cultural discourses. The social worker is unable to typecast the family within a prescribed framework of “predictable” Arab social behavior, thereby revealing gaps and contradictions in fixed sociological theories of immigrant social adaptability and family groupings. At the same time, the valorization of female reproductive labor and the expectation to produce multiple male heirs, a potent signifier of the disallowed Maghrebi patriarchal imprint in France, also gets reversed by the family’s non-patriarchal woman-centered configuration, in which the daughter can say: “I like the times when Mom and me get a chance to have deep and interesting discussions” (73). If the mother escapes the regime of patriarchal expectations within the home through the father’s departure, her working-class status inscribes her within a more repressive social system of proletarian labor in a secondary

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market structure of exploitation and discrimination. The mother’s employment as a cleaning woman in an outer city motel exposes an underground system of indentured servitude within a capitalist economy. The novel reveals the mother’s abjection through commodified labor: “Not very long ago Mom started working. She cleans rooms at the Formula 1 Motel in Bagnolet while she’s waiting to find something else, soon I hope. Sometimes, when she gets home late at night, she cries. She says it’s from feeling so tired” (5). Low pay, unreasonable working hours, a difficult commute and physical exhaustion do not constitute a source of liberation for the mother; instead, she remains crushed by an oppressive socio-economic structure that continually reminds her of her undetermined positionality in France. She remains an unschooled female immigrant whose life has been reduced to “a kind of squiggly line. She’s not used to holding a pen” (5). Increasing unemployment rates in Maghrebi communities together with minimal opportunities for social mobility seriously restrict the overall opportunities for work, wherein women are further limited by gender discrimination. Their only options remain confined to an invisible service industry of domestic labor found in cleaning and caregiving (Killian 2006, 61). The workplace projects the limitations of home space (within the confines of the housing projects) through the machinations of extra-domestic labor. This work nevertheless remains unrecognized despite its importance to the economy. In other words, the women are constrained by three intersecting axes of marginality represented by a cultural patriarchy within the home, a colonial patriarchy of socio-economic disenfranchisement within the projects and a capitalist patriarchy at work. In addition, the invisibility of women’s work leads to a corresponding devaluing of their identity in the form of “ambivalent nomenclature” represented by the mother’s imposed work name, Fatma. The colonial regime in North Africa designated all Arab women as Fatma, reducing them to a non-differentiated group; their universal Otherness was to be redefined in explicitly colonial terms irrespective of their subjective particularities. In the novel, the transformation of the mother’s proper name “Yasmina” (“fragrant flower”) into a utilitarian function, “Fatma,” re-establishes the power dynamic of the colonial paradigm to irreverently rename the gendered Other through the bonds of commercialization; the mother becomes an object of colonial patriarchal control. The novel highlights her dual marginalization within these structures: “Everyone calls her ‘Fatma’ at the Formula 1. They shout at her all the time, and they keep a close watch on her to make sure she doesn’t steal anything from the rooms. Of course, Mom’s name isn’t Fatma, it’s Yasmina” (Guène 2006, 5). The criminality of difference in this case leads to the mother’s dehumanization and surveillance for expected/suspected delinquency. The colonization of her body through hard work and the repressive colonial gaze is also a way to regulate her Muslim difference through the deliberate defaming of a sacred name, Fatima being the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed. Consequently, the mother’s social anonymity and religious defiling within the service industry

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further reflects the disavowed presence of the Maghrebi immigrant mothers in France. The women remain hidden behind the more visible, yet not necessarily affirming exposure given to the men and children. The mother’s marginalization is further compounded by her limited knowledge of French, leading to linguistic displacement as well. The French model of universalism imposes standardized and normative proficiency in French as another basis of inclusion/exclusion based on accent, fluency and linguistic purity. Linguistic vulnerability provides another source of exploitation when the women are unable to interpret the language of social discrimination in a foreign tongue. At the same time, the novel also demonstrates how the mother’s limited French creates an amusing and ironic reversal when she mispronounces her boss’s name. As the narrator explains: “Mr. Winner is Mom’s supervisor. He’s from Alsace … One day he insulted her and when she got home she cried like crazy … That bastard Winner thought Mom was disrespecting him because, with her accent, she pronounced his name ‘Weener’” (6). Through her linguistic subversions, the mother creatively transforms her boss from a lofty position of omnipotence as a “winner” to a diminutive sausage or “weener” (wiener). She unwittingly subjects the supervisor to the same derision and objectification experienced by his workers by reducing him to an easily digestible item of consumption. For a brief moment, employer and employee are placed on an equal footing through “immigrant accommodations” of the French language. In this way, the mother resists conformity to the colonial Fatma stereotype by unwittingly affirming her subjective insurrections against representational essentialism. On the contrary, she exposes the manipulated imagery of a “dear old la belle France” (9) frozen in the timeless ideal of “black-and-white films from the sixties. The ones where the handsome actor’s always telling his woman so many pretty lies, a cigarette dangling from his lips” (11). The very process of immigration reveals the inherent duplicity of this mediated reality when the protagonist’s parents actually arrive in France: Back in Morocco, my mom and her cousin Bouchra found a way to pick up French channels with this antenna they rigged up from a stainless-steel couscous maker. So when she and my dad arrived in Livry-Gargan, just north of Paris, in February 1984, she thought they must have taken the wrong boat and ended up in the wrong country. She told me that when she walked into this tiny two-room apartment the first thing she did was throw up. I’m not sure if it was seasickness or a sixth sense warning her about her future in this bled. (11–12) The parents’ first impressions of France do not conform to the expansiveness of the movie images in which the male actor seduces his bewitched woman with lies. As a mirror image of the deceitful male character in the film, the colonial father also delivers a prescribed script of false hopes and promises to

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the immigrants in search of socio-economic deliverance in France. The beguiled immigrants are then confined to the same spatial closure represented by the immobile movie screen, where images are contained and projected within a confined space, and roles are closely determined by a powerful “directing” authority. Several years later, the daughter herself gets trapped in a similar network of deception when she becomes addicted to American TV shows such as soap operas like The Young and the Restless and idyllic family romances like Little House on the Prairie. These programs represent the White American dream of wholesome living. Mediated images of an enchanting albeit inaccessible “elsewhere” imitate the same mechanisms of seduction as the French programs that lured the parents to France in the first place. While these highly stylized images of a perfect life filled with “perfect” Hollywood-style love and family structures remain out of the reach of the suburban working class and immigrants, they nevertheless create misleading and unrealistic points of identification for subaltern groups through the manipulating illusions of television. On the one hand, these fabricated “realities” are destined to provide a quick-fix escape: “If they cut off our TV like they did with the phone, it will be too much. It’s all I have,” admits the protagonist (14). At the same time, these images create psychological dependence through a “virtual consumerism,” ensuring that subalterns will always be reminded of “their place” in society through the overpowering and controlling potential of TV propaganda. These delimiting borderline spaces define the parameters of social and physical mobility between the two opposing façades of France, wherein imposed spatial controls for Maghrebis and immigrants of color imply a sense of homelessness for the dispossessed: “ever since the first day they made the mistake of setting foot in this crappy country they thought would become theirs” (98). If the idea of France as an alluring “Eldorado” provides a motivating factor for immigration, this mythical notion continues to play itself out after emigration to France as a doubly elusive ideal both in the country of origin and host country. The novel highlights this inaccessibility when the narrator takes her mother to Paris for the first time: Since Mom’s still on vacation until next week, we decided to hang around Paris together. It was actually the first time she’d seen the Eiffel Tower even though she’s been living half an hour from it for almost twenty years. Before now, she only saw it on TV, on the one o’clock news on New Year’s Day, when it’s all lit up from top to bottom and people are partying, dancing, kissing, and getting wasted. Anyway, she was seriously impressed. “It must be two or three times our building, yeah?” (116) In other words, the limitations of the ancestral bled (“village”) inspire the trip to France. However, in France itself these limitations are reactivated within

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the confining projects as postmodern bleds, ensuring that immigrants and their children will never lay claim to the idyllic France reserved for the favored few in power. The thirty-minute gap dividing the glorious metropolitan city and disadvantaged outer city creates an internal border crossing for mother and daughter demarcating insider/outsider groups and legal/illegal movement between the métropole and its deflected postmodern colony.

The colonial fracture The presence of a “third-world” settlement in the Parisian suburb remains a part of the colonial residue, a gaping wound that “grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it haemorrhages again” (Anzaldúa 1987, 25). These lesions reflect a permanent state of crisis experienced by the residents of the projects, whose very survival in such debilitating circumstances represents an act of resistance. The reference to the wound highlights both the wounding of the colonial imaginary represented by the crushing French defeat in Algeria as well as the wounds of neocoloniality borne by diasporic and French Arabs in the projects.14 The spatial segregations between city and internal colony are reminiscent of colonial spatial segregations between the French Ville Nouvelle (colonial city) and the medina (Arab quarters) in the former French colonies. In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon associates these divisions with a form of spatial apartheid when he affirms: The zone where the natives live is not complementary to the zone inhabited by the settlers. The two zones are opposed, but not in the service of a higher unity. Obedient to the rule of Aristotelian logic, they both follow the principle of reciprocal exclusivity. No conciliation is possible. (Fanon 1991, 39) These fault lines are in turn sustained by glaring economic disparities in a twisted syllogism of wealth and Whiteness. As Fanon argues: This world divided into compartments, this world cut in two is inhabited by two different species. The originality of the colonial context is that economic reality, inequality, and the immense difference of ways of life never come to mask the human realities … In the colonies the economic sub-structure is also a super-structure. The cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich. (Fanon 1991, 40) In other words, the economization or the price of colonial Whiteness becomes the credo for racism and labor exploitation justified by the transcendental value of Whiteness as evidence of “belonging to a given race” (Guène 2006, 40). These racialized truisms are further inscribed within a historical context of physical conquest and domination embedded within the ruptures of French

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colonial history in the Maghreb in general and Algeria in particular. As Alec Hargreaves and Mike McKinney assert: Algerians, the largest minority ethnic group in France, are also the most distrusted and disliked by the majority population. This is in no small measure due to the images of racial inferiority and enmity inherited from over a century of colonization and almost eight years of guerilla warfare that brought France itself to the brink of civil war. (1997, 18) This imposing defeat by an African nation preceded by the earlier French debacle in Indochina at the hands of another non-European region undermines France’s implicit claims to White supremacy in the ego-bruising eventuality of colonial history’s deep-seated fractures. The editors of the volume La fracture coloniale associate the colonial fracture with the inherent tensions and symptoms of postcoloniality emerging from France’s persistent negation of its violent colonial past and successive failures in the “third world.” The violence and traumas of history have nevertheless been sublimated by the colonial nostalgia for a forgotten era of imperialist glory (Blanchard, Bancel and Lemaire 2005, 14) termed “nostalgéria” by Benjamin Stora (2005, 62). France was unable to deal with the shock of decolonization, especially in terms of Algerian independence, and this denial has led to a serious identity crisis provoked by the amnesic disassociation of the history of colonization from French national history. This schism has been projected onto Algerians and Arab-Muslims in general through the perceived incompatibility between “authentic” Frenchness and North Africanness together with the difficulties involved in claiming both identities as a form of French transculturality. Disjunctions between maghrébité and francité undermine the construction of complex postcolonial identities through a negating either/or binary expressed ironically in the very title of Mourad Ghazli’s memoir, Ne leur dites pas que je suis Français ils me croient Arabe [Do not tell them I am French, they think I am Arab] (2006). In this work, the author demonstrates how he is unable to claim his Frenchness and Arab identity simultaneously when he is forced to choose between competing ethnicities: “je perdais ma qualité de Français, je devenais un Arabe” [“I was losing my Frenchness, I was becoming an Arab”] (34), he remarks. Ghazli’s identity remains fractured by a power-inflected binary that denies ontological wholeness. Instead, the tenacious (and simultaneous) adherence to the oblivion-inducing machinations of colonial nostalgia and the latent fear of confronting the “truth” of postcoloniality have fuelled the fires of racism against Arabs in the form of a certain negation of being also highlighted in Guène’s work. Commenting on the precarious positioning of Arab identity, Didier Lapeyronnie states: “Son identité est construite contre lui par la société à laquelle il appartient, elle lui est à la fois, imposée et interdite. Se revendiquer

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‘arabo-musulman’ est en quelque sorte revendiquer sa propre condamnation, sa propre humiliation” [“His identity is constructed against him by the society to which he belongs, it is at once imposed and forbidden. Claiming one’s Arab-Muslim identity is, to some extent, claiming one’s own condemnation”] (2005, 213). This dialectic of avowal/disavowal mirrors France’s tenuous negotiation of its own historicity, wherein the claiming of Frenchness is predicated on a subsequent erasure of difference. This erasure represents a defensive strategy on the one hand, and a coping mechanism to deal with the “return of the repressed” symbolized by France’s growing Arab populations on the other. Comparable to a gangrenous wound that oozes its toxicity, this past consequently concretizes itself in the present through historical segregations between colonial and contemporary French history, the virulent racism and growing popularity of the father-daughter National Front Party team (Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen) and its anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim politics, the mediated representations of the banlieues, (Stora 2005, 61-62) and the disengagement with subaltern rights through the growing impasses in the lives of French Arabs. As a result, “ces citoyens partagaient une ‘blessure,’ un ressentiment collectif vis-à-vis de la mère patrie prise en flagrant délit de contradictions, oscillant du paternalism colonialiste à la stigmatisation” [“these citizens shared a ‘wound,’ a collective resentment against the mother country caught in the flagrant offence of contradictions, vacillating between colonial paternalism to stigmatization”], according to Barsali (Barsali, Freland and Vincent 2003, 7). The novel seems to indicate that Arabs in France are being forced to pay the price for Algeria’s independence as a form of psychological reparation even today, thereby absolving the need for French guilt or accountability for its ravaging colonial regimes in North Africa. As Anne Donadey states: “Any analysis of anti-Arab racism and the ‘immigrant question’ in France must take into account the historical and psychological scars the Algerian war has left on the French collective unconscious. Unfortunately, the war is rarely factored into studies of immigration” (1996, 221). Donadey attributes the current anti-Arab racism or “arabicide” in France to “an aftermath of memory,” “a replay of the rift” created by the War of Independence (223).

Diasporic solidarity Afflicted by the wounds of coloniality, the scars borne by French Arabs are temporarily healed by the strong sorority bonds between the novel’s women of the projects – the mother, daughter, Aunt Zohra and the new friends the mother acquires when she leaves her job to go to school at the insistence of her daughter. These women create an extended family in France: Mom’s started her new training. She likes it a lot, from what she tells me. She even made friends with two other women: a Moroccan from Tangier

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The new program to acquire literacy skills enhances the mother’s self-esteem by “educating” her about her ontological value as opposed to the dehumanization she suffers in the previous job, where she was obliged to get up “at five o’clock in the morning to work in some cheapskate motel and wreck her health” (72). The mother acquires the necessary self-confidence to become more outgoing; she overcomes the anguish of being an easily replaceable commodity in a proletarian economy to finally see herself as a valuable individual. In addition, the solidarity bonds with other women provide an occasion to create new kinship ties in France in the form of an extended diasporic family. The new family provides a coping strategy to deal with the trauma of separation from the homeland and adapt to an alienating individualistic lifestyle in France. The narrator marvels at the change in her mother: “The way Mom’s changed in a year. Seeing her getting better every day, fighting for both of us to live, has started me thinking it’ll all work out and maybe I’ll be lucky and be like her” (166). The mother’s sense of mobility between French and Arabic becomes a tool to mediate her own biculturality as an immigrant in France. It also provides her with the necessary knowledge needed to survive in a confounding foreign environment. Through this newly found sense of autonomy, the mother discards the statistical anonymity of her Fatma status to assume her individuality as the blossoming Yasmina. Yasmina’s cultural migrations between French and Arabic reflect a new imagining of Frenchness that goes beyond reductive exceptionalisms, wherein the consciousness of self parallels the politicization of one’s identity. The mother consequently defies the political ploy of maintaining immigrants in a requited cycle of social subjection; very often, immigrants are forced to internalize oppression through self-negation and cultural isolation as an impediment to their social advancement. At the same time, the novel also disrupts totallizing perspectives on French oppression by partially crediting the mother’s transformation to the sensitivity, professional skills and friendship of the Norman schoolteacher; this character’s ethics of care and female nurturing humanize the otherwise impersonal social services system. The mother’s subjectivity is further strengthened by the link between identity and community. Yasmina insists on taking her daughter to an annual street fair organized in the Livry-Gargan project as a sign of communal and diasporic affiliation with Maghrebis in France. This “imagined” family provides strength in numbers and compensates the disruption of family life within her own home as a result of the husband’s absence. Moreover, the novel subverts the one-dimensional representations of the projects as sites of terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism and social regression by focusing on the ordinariness of the residents and their joyful celebration of family events:

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Every year people start preparing way in advance for the Livry-Gargan summer fair. Parents, kids, and especially the neighborhood gossips. This year there were plenty of games for the kids, food stands with mint tea and sweet Middle Eastern pastries, Elie’s barbecued merguez sausages and fries (Elie’s like our neighborhood social planner), plus a stage with bands playing one right after the other. … Afterward, Mom and me headed over to see Cheb Momo. He’s been singing at the Livry-Gargan summer fair every year since 1987, with the same musician, same synthesizer, and, of course, same songs. It’s not too bad because everybody ends up knowing all the words by heart, even the people who don’t speak a word of Arabic. (43–44) The permanence of an annual ritual is a sign of hope for the community that seeks comfort in the familiarity of food and music. The security of communal rituals tempers the isolation of contemporary French living by providing cathartic tastes and sounds as enduring lifelines between home and diaspora. Within the safe space of the street fair, Maghrebis transcend the stigma of minority status by establishing their own cultural parameters through a participatory ethic found in Cheb Momo’s sing-along melodies. Meanwhile, Elie’s social planning for the event reconstitutes a microcosmic Maghreb in France, enabling parents and children to socialize freely across the Maghreb’s different geographical spatialities and within the multiethnic spaces of the French project. Arabs can congregate openly and sing loudly in Arabic without fear of police interference for alleged “suspicious” activity, thereby experiencing momentary relief from the tensions of everyday living in France. The overt demonstration of Arabness in a public space represents a crucial political intervention in matters of cultural identity; France’s working-class Arabs can negate dominant stereotypes by participating in peaceful cultural demonstrations against marginality through the regularity of ritual.

Beurettes in France The sense of Maghrebi community has particular bearing on gender ideologies and their regulation by cultural norms, identity and social adaptability. The continued marginalization of Maghrebi men in the public sphere through racism, discrimination, unemployment and poverty creates a Fanonian “nervous condition” acted out on the female body. Daily aggressions against Arab-Muslim men find their source in criminalized representations of them as terrorists, fundamentalists and militants. These mediated images have been fashioned by the colonial imaginary as a result of the successful guerilla tactics used during the Algerian War of Independence (1958-1962); the steady rise of Islam in Europe; the postmodern media vilification of Arabs after 9/11; a male inspired culture of fear unleashed by religious revivalists and the

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military during the Algerian civil wars of the 1990s; and “terror-inspiring” notions of Palestinian suicide bombers and Iraqi insurgents. In addition, the sense of hopelessness experienced by young Arab men in the projects and their “defiant delinquency” as a response to social marginality and continued police harassment have given rise to a corresponding policing of gender; this is an attempt by the men to reclaim their threatened masculinity in France. A father-son complicity to reinstate authority within the home in the face of an increasing loss of control on the outside manifests itself in punitive domination over daughters “who continually walk a swaying tightrope in being the transcultural teenagers that their social locations have fashioned,” according to Trica Keaton (2006, 6). The transculturality of the daughters ironically poses an immediate threat to the cultural and religious integrity of the disfavored immigrant family by providing the scope for assimilation into a nonMuslim, non-Arab social reality in France through schooling, friendships and interactions with children of other ethnicities, and interfaith activities. These extra-familial activities are deemed suspect, as they undermine family honor through a violation of cultural codes of respectability and gender-imposed norms of propriety. If mothers are deprived of spatial mobility through their confinement to domesticity, the French daughters pose the ultimate threat to Maghrebi patriarchy by their transcultural spatiality beyond the limits of home space. In other words, the social confines of the housing projects delimit gender roles in a social exclusion/gender seclusion parallel. As Keaton explains: Certain Muslim girls must navigate an additional layer of gender constraints attached to competing home, neighborhood, and school expectations. They must also develop strategies to cope and exist within those often incompatible arenas, sometimes to their own peril. These circumstances make the politics of their existence highly complex and in some ways unique. Their assertions of being French, at some level in these identity politics, foreground rights that they have yet to actualize fully as French citizens, or even, at times, to comprehend. (194) In the novel, the narrator offers a critique of these complicated gender conventions impacted by immigration, the loss of parental control over French children, the continued negation of Islam and patriarchal inscriptions of a culturally sanctified domestic power. The novel demonstrates how the structured violence against the disfavored Muslim men of the projects actualizes itself against Muslim girls in particular through the example of Samra, who remains victimized by a dual father/brother oppression: In my building, there’s a girl being held prisoner on the tenth floor. Her name is Samra and she’s nineteen. Her brother follows her everywhere. He stops her from going out and when she gets back from school a bit

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later than normal, he grabs her by the hair, then the dad finishes the job … In their family, the men are kings. They do serious close surveillance on Samra, and her mom can’t say anything, can’t do anything. So it’s truly bad luck to be a girl. (Guène 2006, 83) The men establish their authority as kings within the privacy of domestic space; they impose their own sense of victimization in public space on vulnerable mothers and daughters through a cyclical pattern of violence as a form of symptomatic aggression. It is misleading to associate this violence with an Islamic cultural mandate exclusively instead of examining the underlying causes of violence created by dysfunctional social systems undermining the holistic integrity of disfavored populations.15 At the same time, the narrator also reveals the attitudinal violence of the community in the form of its tacit complicity in and indifference to these injustices against women, thereby demonstrating the compatibility between colluding standards of familial and communal honor: When Samra was locked up at home in her concrete cage, nobody talked about it, like they found it completely normal. And now that she’s managed to free herself from that dictator of a brother and torturer of a father, people are condemning her. I don’t get it. (85) Within complicit family and group expectations, women bear the sole responsibility of acting as the purveyors of culture; the non-transgressive compliant female body becomes the yardstick for measuring the family/ community’s overall viability in terms of its diasporic minority status in France. In such instances of socio-cultural and political ambivalence, a “threatened” community will close ranks internally by imposing regulatory controls on the movement of the women within and beyond its circumscribed spaces in the projects. As Guène states in her interview with Jim Wolfreys in the Socialist Review: The main problem these men have more so than the women, is that outside the areas where they live they are devalued. That’s why inside they try to exert their authority over women. Because outside they’re devalued all the time in school, at work, even when they go out in the evening. All that plays a role, and that shouldn’t be forgotten or camouflaged … the mistakes of the past are making themselves felt today. (2006, 5) These cultural restrictions find their legitimization in strict male-centered interpretations of religious and cultural codes à la lettre in terms of dress, behavior, socialization and spatial movement leading to a corresponding sense

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of female disinheritance. As the protagonist admits to herself: “But if I was a boy, maybe it would be different … It would definitely be different” (Guène 2006, 161). However, the narrator also complicates the representation of the young men of the projects by highlighting their complexity. For example, her dopesmoking friend Hamoudi introduces her to the beauty of Rimbaud’s poetry, and a classmate Nabil offers to help with math tutoring. In fact, Nabil inspires the narrator in her quest for an empowering future: “I have to spend less time with Nabil,” she concludes. “It’s giving me serious democratic fever” (179). Both men ultimately become the narrator’s most trustworthy and supportive friends; in fact, Hamoudi acts as a caring father figure who demonstrates so much tenderness and genuine concern for the narrator’s well-being that she admits: “If Hamoudi was a little older, I’d have liked him for my dad” (20). By resisting the stereotype of Arab-Muslim men as the universal oppressors of women, the novel focuses on the social conditions that motivate human behavior rather than subscribing to prefabricated misrepresentations of Arab men based on hegemonic bias and media intentionality. As Stéphane Beaud asserts: Il s’agit bien … de lutter contre l’image des “jeunes immigrés” … qui s’est imposée aujourd’hui dans les médias où ces derniers incarnent, pour le dire vite, la “figure du mal”: d’origine arabe et de condition socialement défavorisée, ils sont le plus souvent montrés ou décrits comme “machos,” provocateurs, agressifs, voire violents, potentiellement susceptibles de basculer du côté de l’islam radical et du terrorisme [It is a question … of fighting against the image of young immigrant men … that has been imposed today by the media, where the latter incarnate, in a nutshell, the “symbol of evil”: of Arab origin and socially disfavored, they are most frequently represented or described as “macho,” agitators, aggressive, even violent, potentially capable of swinging over to a radicalized Islam and terrorism]. (Younes and Beaud 2005, 208) In other words, the men are subjected to the violence of mediated representation. They are immobilized within racist categories of social deviance, non-respectability and macho behavior: characteristics that delimit their overall access to self-representation.

Social abjection and revolution The structural inequities of the projects are replicated in the school system, a further reminder of the disfavored status of France’s “other” children. Located in the most disadvantaged areas of working-class neighborhoods, these schools follow a colonial model of educational disengagement to alienate and isolate the children of the projects through a curriculum of enforced

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non-belonging.16 The narrator admits: “Whatever, I want to drop out. I’ve had enough of school. It gets on my nerves and I don’t talk to anybody” (Guène 2006, 18). The school ensures a high dropout rate by providing a socially and culturally irrelevant education managed by disinterested teachers who “don’t give a shit about our homework. I’m sure they don’t even read any of it. They just stick on a random grade, rearrange the papers, and go back to sitting on their leather couches between their two kids” (18). Supported by class and racial hierarchies, these schools for the défavorisés (“dispossessed”) do not favor universal ideals of enfranchisement for all French citizens. Instead, as Keaton claims: “It becomes, therefore, not only interesting but critical to connect identity politics with social institutions in order to demonstrate more broadly how those very politics – structured by those institutions – contribute to maintaining a status quo, despite resistance to it” (2006, 13). These schools reinforce the disenchantment of the youth by further highlighting the impasses in their lives through low expectations, disciplinary control and a syllabus of compliance. Like the welfare system and the proletarian labor market, schools enforce a level of psychological dependency/ despondency by guaranteeing the imminent failure of students. Homi Bhabha equates the school’s power to disenfranchise and demoralize with its “governmentability” (1994, 70) and ability to create an educational protectorate for the socio-economically colonized. These curricular and administrative restrictions reveal the imperialistic tendencies of these colonial schools that impose alien systems of learning on those who have the least to benefit from such a unilateral enforcement of authority. Failure in school and a series of low-paying, temporary and dead-end jobs leave the protagonist in a state of heightened anxiety and insecurity about the future to the point where she says: “sometimes I think about death. I even dream about it. One night I was at my own funeral” (Guène 2006, 13). This sense of desperation highlights a broader polemic within contemporary French society focusing on the place and postcolonial identity of both beurs and successive third- and fourth-generation youth. Alec Hargreaves reveals the vexed postcolonial predicament of beurs when he states: “The cohabitation within the beurs of conflicting aspirations derived from their bi-cultural conditions makes the construction of a coherent sense of personal identity a highly problematic process” (1991, 21). Inner conflicts and unresolved tensions characterize the daily lives of beurs and France’s “others,” who are constantly reminded of their outsider status, while the young women are further alienated by conflicting gender prescriptions, as stated earlier. Excised from the national imaginary, beurs, and now their children, are being forced to choose between competing French and Arab allegiances to establish a sense of home in France, the only home they know as French citizens. However, claims to the national home do not represent universal rights of ownership ironically. As Keaton points out: “And while such young people are taught that France is their country, indeed their homeland, this idea becomes a metaphor for hypocrisy when home is an immense, multistory

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housing project” (2006, 59). In fact, the decaying school system and the dilapidated housing projects represent living vestiges of the colonial residue that question France’s continued engagement with coloniality and its hypocritical claims to democratic citizenship.

Vernacularity and subaltern rights At the same time, the projects invite an important discussion on vernacularity and subaltern subjectivity through the mode of resistance, political enfranchisement through voting and the possibility for an “intelligent revolution” (Guène 2006, 179) led by the narrator. Grant Farred offers the following definition of vernacularity: “Vernacularity is the language of the Other that, while conscious of its difference and Otherness, stands as a form of singular intervention” (2003, 15). The vernacular, as an effective “subalternspeak,” represents the political interventions of the popular in matters of social justice and cultural legitimacy through a radicalized positionality. As a response to and contestation of marginality, vernacularity articulates the language of social protest in popular parlance, a street tongue that undermines the bourgeois standardization of French through linguistic “corruptions” capable of “sullying our beautiful language” (Guène 2006, 142). According to the narrator’s teacher Madame Jacques: “It’s the faaaaulttt of people like yooouu that our Frrrench herrritttage is in a coma!” (143). In this case, the vernacular facilitates linguistic subversions of French, the very core of purist notions of French identity and nationality. At the same time, it highlights the ossification of French culture in outdated ideals of authenticity that do not reflect the changing social and linguistic realities of France. Anthony Lodge argues the following in French: From Dialect to Standard: “For many French people their language has come to stand for French national identity, French culture, and France’s position in the world” (1993, 6). Lodge’s formulation of “an ideology of the standard” remains particularly relevant in France. This ideology is based on normative binaries affirming the superiority of the written over the spoken, of uniformity over variation, and standardization over non-standardization (15).17 The vernacular consequently represents an interruption in these resistant cultural paradigms by voicing the popular in the language of “political oppositionality” (Farred 2003, 7). This articulation creates new spaces for ideological revolutions that undermine the status quo through an oppression/resistance dialogic. The invention of a new language by the socially dominated is a way to de-center the exclusionary paradigms of bourgeois French represented by the teacher’s ability to trill the French “r” to a point of perfection as another way of discriminating against “non-proficient” French-speaking ethnic minorities. Interestingly, verlan as a vernacular tongue is an ingenious way of reversing these normative absolutes of identity and linguistic propriety through “irreverent” implosions within the French language as acts of redefinition and

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reaffirmation. If standardized French sustains itself through hierarchical oppositions framed within a good French/bad French dialectic, then verlan resists this duality by figuring a third space of resolution. The street slang mode of verlan or langue verte consists of inverting or reversing terms to create new systems of signification that mirror the continually renewed and shifting paradigms of identity. Resisting stasis in confining paradigms of identity, verlan is an attempt to go beyond the literalness of meaning by creative neologisms that expand and extend the limits of academic French and limited paradigms of Frenchness. If the word “Arab” signifies cultural marginality and represents a justification for Islamophobia, the reversal of the term into beur is an attempt to go beyond colonially determined categorizations by claiming transnationality. If, in turn, the nomenclature beur is being appropriated by neo-liberal multicultural discourses, then a further inversion of the term into rebeu reflects a heightened desire to reject conformity to a stereotype. Verlan is consequently a marker of place and identity for disenfranchised youth by enabling them to claim a sense of belonging found in a disruptive language that reflects the unpredictable disruptions and fluxes in their own lives. As an embodied tongue, “it’s the best way of getting her to understand how I’m feeling,” states the narrator (Guène 2006, 168). This vernacular language fills the void of homelessness experienced in France by reversing a disempowering circumstance into a creatively affirming locus of being. With a particular vernacular, each individual constructs their own personal narrative to make sense of the world around them, while establishing the legitimacy of their identity. In other words, verlan represents a particular border language that actively hybridizes French through indeterminate vocabularies, syntactical disorder and a nomadic referentiality traversing France and the Maghreb. This strategy of reclaiming is further underscored by the insertion of Arabic words into French to create a more familiar/familial relationship with French on the one hand, while linguistically decolonizing the oppressor’s tongue on the other. This language fills the void of homelessness by creating the necessary discursive space within which feelings of alienation and loss are decentered by a self-generated linguistic rapprochement between and among the dispossessed. In this way, vernacularity marks the progression from despondency to hope for the narrator, as it cultivates her growing political consciousness simultaneously. She states: I’m still missing lots of stuff. And lots of things need changing around here … Hey, that gives me an idea. Why don’t I go into politics? “From highlights to high offices: It’s only one step … ” That’s the kind of slogan that sticks. I’ll have to think up some more along those lines, like those quotes you read in history books in third grade, like that joker Napoleon who said: “All conquered people need a revolution.” (179)

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Developing a certain vernacular consciousness regarding subaltern rights through the reclaiming of language, the narrator turns French history on its head, a strategy successfully used by Maïssa Bey in her novels. She demystifies the loftiness of elitist historical narratives based on acts of colonial infamy committed in the name of civilization and progress by calling for a rewriting of history from a vernacular perspective, wherein “like Rimbaud said, we will carry in us ‘the sobs of the Infamous … the clamor of the Damned’” (179). The ideological shift from the violent Napoleon to the nineteenth-century poet Rimbaud, who revolutionized archaic poetic forms through creativity signals a new form of dissidence as a way of imagining a more peaceful and socially relevant France: “It will be an intelligent revolution, with no violence, where every person stands up to be heard. It’s not just rap and soccer in life” (179). The narrator’s idealistic stance for change calls for the transformation of an entire mindset through creative action, whereby the “damned” will rise up against their imposed oppression through a more artistic form of dissidence found in historical revisions, cultural affirmations and engaged literature. This creative call to arms provides the ultimate catharsis for the subaltern’s claims to humanity as a politicized consciousness-raising strategy and a social call to non-violent resistance. Identifying the projects as the locus of creative energy and political expediency, the new revolution moves beyond violence “by its ability to speak popular resistance and popular culture to power” (Farred 2003, 12) through a transformative unlearning of coloniality. The act of dissident creativity is a movement toward transcendence for the disenfranchised through innovative resistance found in vernacular writing and other forms of subaltern expression. This creativity finds its most successful outlet in the cultural mixity that emerges from the projects that nevertheless continue to be characterized by the mainstream media as “quartiers difficiles” (“difficult neighborhoods”). This “creativity in-difference” aligns the banlieue with: the American urban ghettos from which surge rap artists, sports heroes and an underground culture of popular street fashions, jargons, literature, and political attitudes. This new appealing dimension of an underground French culture, which, according to its critics, mixes purity with esoteric cultural forms like borrowing words from foreign languages, submitting the French language to creole rap lyrics and adopting new foods and fashion styles from foreign cultures is increasingly … a threat to the integrity of France and its political and philosophical projection of the nation. (Echchaibi 2007, 308–309) The “threat” of a more pertinent and transnationally articulated Frenchness articulated by the margins through popular modes of cultural production is inscribed within the tenets of “dissident citizenship,” defined by Holloway Sparks as “the practices of marginalized citizens who publicly contest

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prevailing arrangements of power by means of … creative oppositional practices.” (1997, 75). Dissident citizenship is a form of creative democratic praxis to fight exclusion, invisibility and negativity within the dominant polity through a participatory cultural, social and political ownership of French society. This sense of ownership can no longer be confined to an elusive and ironically reversed minority of elitist “Français de souche” (“pureblooded French”). Dissident citizenship is thereby a manifestation of “decolonial thinking” (Mignolo 2011, 108), as it offers other ontological modalities that transcend “the coloniality of being” (109) reflected in disavowed rights of citizenship. At the same time, Guène does not condemn the violence that represents the subaltern’s cry against continued marginality: I don’t want to set myself up in opposition to those who are burning things. I don’t condemn them at all. I support them. I’m lucky to have this means, this tool, to express myself, this facility with words that they don’t necessarily have, so they express themselves in other ways. (Wolfreys 2006, 2) Echchaibi describes the motivation behind the 2005 riots that rocked France. These popular uprisings have been couched in exclusively religious and racial terms in the rhetoric of neoconservative intellectuals. Echchaibi states: The 2005 suburban riots in Paris have exposed the languid narrative of the universalist republican model and weakened the heretofore widely celebrated French ethos that ethnic and religious differences simply evaporate in public life. While the riots were neither racially nor religiously motivated, despite numerous interpretations to the contrary, they were primarily orchestrated by minorities of North and West African descent, mostly in their teens. Most of the rioters … claimed they did so not because they have no desire to integrate, but mostly because their decrepit banlieues often remind them that the universalist ideals – liberté, egalité, fraternité – they have imbibed since their first schooling day do not apply to them. (2007, 301) Consequently, revolutionary synergies found in writing and fighting script the language of dispossession in which “at last we’re making ourselves heard” (Guène in Wolfreys 2006, 2). Words as action and actions as an expressive language highlight the complementary workings of vernacularity in its attempts to both expose the appropriating intent of the colonial tongue and claim a new “idea” of French citizenship articulated by the next generation. The novel nevertheless ends on

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a note of youthful resolution about the future, a possible sign of hope against the continued marginalization of the urban poor, including beurs and their immigrant parents in France today. Kiffe-kiffe demain takes the initiative to imagine other forms of revolution through the discursive power of literature and different forms of cultural resistance emerging from the projects. These discursive tropes incite their own symbolic insurrections against dominance from a gendered subaltern perspective: “even rap lyrics with a philosophical slant,” admits the narrator (Guène 2006, 82). At the same time, the novel reveals the importance of the perspectives of young people whose voices for change cannot be ignored – as demonstrated in the Arab Spring uprisings. Voices like those of Faïza Guène and other literary and cultural “guerrillas” of her generation underscore “the ways in which youth culture constitutes a new global phenomenon, capable of a critique of both capitalist globalization and the separatist forms of nationalism and cultural identity,” states Caroline Rooney in her conversations with Anastasia Valassopoulos (Valassopoulos 2012, 121). The destabilizing of coloniality can only take place by a non-elitist “underground” movement that reverses an unbalanced chain of command maintained by traditionalism and socially irrelevant power structures. Kiffe-kiffe provides the first blow to this hierarchy by calling for the valorization of France’s excluded citizens and residents. In conclusion, Faïza Guène’s novel provides a complex perspective on daily life in the Parisian housing projects, where Maghrebi residents and French citizens struggle to overcome the vicissitudes of their working-class existence within racist paradigms of French dominance. Her characters elude stereotypes by acting “unconventionally” to negate imposed representations and preconditioned cultural dispositions. Highlighting the overlapping oppressions that dominate these communities, the author is also careful to affirm the subjectivity of her protagonists to avoid facile characterizations of uncomplicated victimization. Written from an insider perspective, Kiffe-Kiffe celebrates the grit of an entire community as it accommodates and contests assimilation while searching for new models of French belonging. These residents of the “other France” nevertheless mark their presence on the French landscape through cultural tenacity, literary productivity and religious integrity to highlight the need for transforming the multiethnic spaces of France into a national safe space for immigrants, citizens and residents alike. The narrator imagines this new beginning as a politicized site of reclaiming in the concluding section of the novel: It’s what I used to say all the time when I was down, and Mom and me were suddenly all on our own: “kif-kif tomorrow,” same shit, different day. But now I’d write it differently. Spell it “kiffe-kiffe tomorrow,” borrow from that verb kiffer, for when you really like something or someone. Oh yeah. That one’s all mine. (Guène 2006, 178)

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Notes 1 According to Alec Hargreaves: “Beur is a name popularly applied to the sons and daughters of North African immigrants. The term was formed by inverting the syllables which make up the word ‘Arabe.’ A longer-established label is that of ‘second-generation immigrants,’ but as most of those concerned were born in France, this is something of a misnomer, for they have never migrated from one country to another. In their daily lives the Beurs have, however, been compelled to migrate constantly between the secular culture of France and the traditions carried with them by their Muslim parents from across the Mediterranean” (1991, 1). At the same time, many beurs have also rejected the term because of manipulated media associations of the word with violence and suburban decrepitude in the housing projects. See Sylvie Durmelat’s article, “Petite histoire du mot ‘beur.’” See also Michel Laronde’s Autour du roman beur. 2 Houda Rouane’s novel Pieds blancs is a tongue-in-cheek claiming of beur positionality in France. The term “pieds noirs” refers to French settlers born and raised in North Africa. In an ironic inversion, Pieds blancs establishes the political and social location of beurs as legitimate French-born citizens. 3 It must be pointed out that all North Africans are not Arab or even Muslim. These populations also include Berbers from Kabylia and the region of the Rif mountains, Christians and Sephardic Jews. As Alec Hargreaves and Mike McKinney argue: “These differences are completely effaced in everyday French usage of the word Arabe, which is applied indiscriminately to virtually anyone connected with the Maghreb other than the pieds-noirs … In a wider sense, Arabe is used more or less interchangeably with Musulman (Muslim) to cover people of Middle Eastern appearance (not all of whom are Arabs, or, for that matter, Muslims) along with Maghrebis” (1997, 19). 4 Berbers also face similar discrimination. However, Arab-Muslims continue to be viewed as the ultimate threat to French secularism due to the fears engendered by religious revivalism and the growing popularity of Islam in Europe in spite of its vilification in dominant discourses. 5 Beurs have been impacted by the Méhaignerie and Pasqua laws of 1993 together with the Debré law of 1997. According to this legislation, “the restriction of access to French nationality for the French-born children of foreign parents meant that young people of Maghrebi descent whose parents had not claimed French nationality themselves were obliged to apply for it once they reached the age of sixteen,” according to Tarr (2005, 7). These laws subsequently subjected the children to the insecurity of unbelonging in France; an application for citizenship did not automatically guarantee the right of citizenship for this French-born generation, further contributing to its ambivalence and resentment toward the French state. At the same time, France has also witnessed the emergence of a growing “beurgoisie” or beur middle class of professionals, politicians, artists and intellectuals who are making vital contributions to France’s cultural and social landscape. 6 It is completely erroneous to assume that a young adult perspective is necessarily mediated or in need of mediation by an authorizing figure such as the film professor and the Hachette editor. The viewpoints of suburban youth constitute a vital social text representing a minority voice that “speaks its condition” in the language of social protest. 7 See Benjamin Stora’s La gangrène et l’oubli. 8 Banlieues refers to the French suburbs. Since the 1980s, the term has been “widely used to denote disadvantaged urban areas with dense concentrations of minority ethnic inhabitants” (Hargreaves 2007a, 139). 9 All the residents of the projects are not exclusively Arab-Muslim. This population also includes sub-Saharan Africans, Caribbeans, working-class Whites and other

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ethnicities. However, this paper focuses on Arab-Muslims given the cultural context of the novel. The North African presence in France, the Algerian presence in particular, is the result of French colonization and subsequent decolonization, which brought waves of migrant labor through flexible immigration control laws. In need of a cheap workforce to revitalize its economy after the destructive economic impact of World War Two: “In 1947, France granted a new status to her largest North African colony, Algeria, which gave the Muslim majority of the population equal freedom of movement alongside the settler minority,” according to Hargreaves (1991, 9). An overwhelming number of Algerians took advantage of this “mobility” to go to France in search of work and soon began to outnumber the European migrants of Italian, Portuguese and other origin, a social phenomenon that was not welcomed by France. Algerian migration ironically increased after the country’s independence in 1962 to constitute a significant part of the proletarian labor force in France, a fact which holds true even today. At the same time, it is erroneous to believe that this migration was totally voluntary or even economically based, according to Durmelat and Swamy. They state: “During the colonial period, the systematic displacement and internment of the Algerian rural population in ‘camps de regroupement’ by the French army marked the beginning of a large-scale rural exodus that made Algerians available for migration. This military operation was designed to ‘protect’ the locals from the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale, the insurgent group that led Algeria to independence) and to cut the latter off from much-needed resources. However, it exacerbated what colonization started with the spoliation of Algerian lands for European settlers, making Algerians readily available as labor for the metropolitan market” (2011,6). The political motivations of Empire negate any claims by the French to be protecting the interests of Algerian workers against the reactionary forces of “insurgents” and rebels. Kiffe-Kiffe Tomorrow. 2006. Translated from the French by Sarah Adams. New York: Harcourt. All subsequent references will be made to this edition. Also consult Winifred Woodhull’s article, “Ethnicity on the French Frontier.” Hargreaves argues: “For many on the majority ethnic side the endlessly stated need for ‘integration’ has been a coded way of saying that people of minority ethnic origin must give up the cultural differences supposedly blocking their absorption into mainstream society. In reality minorities have been prevented from participating in French society not by their cultural differences but by prejudices and roadblocks placed in their way by members of the majority ethnic population” (2007a, xix). The Islamic designation of these populations serves as another obstacle to acceptance and social participation. The Algerian War of Independence (1958–1962) has been described by historians as one of the bloodiest wars of decolonization in French history. The traumatic impact of the war and its consequences are still impacting both France and Algeria in terms of immigration, minority rights in France and French negotiations of the colonial past. Morocco and Tunisia were French “protectorates.” Their transition to postcoloniality was not based on a violent war of independence. Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores nor Submissives) is a feminist collective started by anti-racist activist Fadela Amara in 2002 to expose the culture of male violence against young girls in the projects. This organization offers female victims of violence a healing space of hope, comfort and respect in the face of rape, domestic abuse, forced marriages and sexual harassment. The group has also investigated several cases of “honor” killings among immigrant families. The organization currently has over 6,000 members. See Ni putes, ni soumises, co-authored by Fadela Amara and Sylvia Zappi. At the same time, the organization has also been criticized by liberal intellectuals such as Étienne Balibar, Elsa

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Dorlin, and Houria Bouteldja, among others, for its conservative anti-Islamic stance with respect to women’s rights and its political affiliations with the French right. 16 The term “Zone d’éducation prioritaire” (ZEP) is used to designate disfavored working-class neighborhoods with “special” schools for remedial learning. 17 See also Martine Fernandes, Les écrivaines francophones en liberté: 36.

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Part III

Staging violence in North African women’s theatre Jalila Baccar (Tunisia) and Laila Soliman (Egypt)

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5

Madness as political dissent in Jalila Baccar’s Junun Scene one – Tunis

Arab writers and poets privilege the artistic spirit as the very foundation of humanity and subjectivity, preferring death against the loss of creative freedom. As stated by El Saadawi in the Nawal El Saadawi Reader: “Dissident people liberate themselves from fear and they pay a price for this process of liberation. The price may be high or low but there is always a price to be paid” (1997, 172). This price could include exile, incarceration, excommunication, death or alleged charges of madness. In this chapter, I demonstrate how Tunisian playwright Jalila Baccar adds her voice to this pantheon of dissident writers by using theatre as a medium to “stage” violence and fight for creative freedom. Dissident creativity espouses an ethical calling in this playwright’s work, as she uses popular theatre to reveal suppressed “truths” and violations on stage in the face of an impenetrable board of governmentappointed censors, such as the euphemistically named “Theatre Orientation Committee” established in 1966. Baccar’s dissident creativity is exemplified by its relentless struggle against the violence of state censorship. Originally charged with the task of promoting Arab culture and the use of Arabic in theatrical praxis, the Theatre Orientation Committee was soon to assume the charge of intellectual censorship in the production and representation of dramatic texts. As stated by Mohammed Al Madyouni: The theatre’s administration followed theatre events through the “Committee of Theatre Orientation,” whose first responsibility was to certify that dialogue in plays were to be written in standard Arabic. Gradually, however, this committee will become responsible for, and in control of, issuing the official endorsement of any text not only before it is completed but also before it can be presented later to the public. (2000, 119–120) These multiple levels of censorship were destined to create standardized public scripts in an official language devoid of nuance, free expression and creativity.

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A graduate in romance languages from the École Normale Supérieure de Tunis, Baccar has repeatedly demonstrated her versatility as a dramatist and an actress for the stage, cinema and television. She initially joined Le Théâtre du Sud at Gafsa in 1973 and later left the company to co-start the New Theatre with Fadhel Jaïbi in 1976. As Tunisia’s first private theatre company, the New Theatre was purely experimental in approach. It broke away from the more conventional historical theatre developed by ‘Ali Ben ‘Ayed between 1968-1971 and its mimetic engagements with Western drama (Zahrouni 2011). Other members of the New Theatre included Mohamed Driss, Fadhel Jaziri and Habib Masrouki. However, internal differences within the group led to a parting of ways when Baccar and Jaïbi founded their own troupe Familia in 1982. In keeping with the social justice ethos of the New Theatre, Baccar and Jaïbi were committed to represent “Tunisian daily life and to contest the Tunisian political structures by unveiling the official ideology” (Zahrouni 2011). In fact, Baccar’s eminence as an author of distinction can be seen in a recent invitation to become Tunisia’s new Minister of Culture after the October 2011 elections following the popular Tunisian Revolution. However, the dramatist turned down the invitation, stating that her primary place was in theatre and not politics because “le contre-pouvoir est plus important que le pouvoir” [“counter-power is more important than power”] (Hoyet 2011). However, she agreed to be part of a group that is revising and updating the terms and conditions of the current Tunisian constitution. A second round of elections will be held once the committee finishes the revisions. In 2012, Baccar received the distinguished Mahmoud Darwish Award for Freedom and Creativity, an award she ironically couldn’t receive in person, as she was barred from entering the Ramallah Cultural Palace in Palestine by the Israeli authorities. The jury was unanimous in awarding this prize for a lifetime commitment to creative dissidence and justice based on Baccar’s conviction that “theatre is an act of existence … an act of beauty and resistance” (Baltayeb 2012). Baccar’s dramatic repertoire has been subjected to the tradition of state opposition to creative dissidence from its very inception, a legacy that has nevertheless provided the dramatist with the creative impetus and intellectual daring to represent the “inacceptable” on stage. For more than three decades, Baccar and her director-partner Fadhel Jaïbi have situated themselves at the forefront of a cultural revolution in Tunisia by creating a theatre of social consciousness. This form of experimental theatre represents an “alternative staging” of themes such as political and social dysfunctionality as seen in Junun (2004), religious extremism and terrorism in Khamsoun (2006) and Araberlin (2002), political decadence in Yahia Yaïch (2012), and stolen memory in A la recherche d’Aïda (1998), among other productions. The scope, intensity and socio-political relevance of the Baccar-Jaïbi productions have made their mark on the theatrical scene in Tunisia and in the Arab world, leading to the following pronouncement made by Khalid Amine and

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Marvin Carlson: “Today, Tunisian theatre is widely regarded as the most advanced and experimental in all the Arab world” (2012, 216). Baccar’s belief in the redemptive power of theatre is concretized in one of her most powerful plays Junun (Dementia), a script that focuses on the disastrous impact of patriarchal repression and political censorship on a failing social system. Within this fractured society, the brutal censoring of free thought and action is suppressed in favor of the unilateral dogma of the Name of the Father that represents patriarchal authority in its most abject and institutionalized form. The failure to kowtow to the patriarchal dictates of an obsolete and obdurate leadership condemns non-conforming citizens to what I call a conditioned “madness,” as a form of resistance. In this play, I argue that madness is not necessarily a symptom of clinical pathology or social deviance in its most literal form; instead, madness represents a search for exemplarity, self-expression and self-definition within society’s “carceral networks” of confinement, oppression and regulation (Foucault 1995, 302). Written in French, Junun was adapted for the stage by Jaïbi and performed in the Tunisian Arabic dialect at the Théâtre de la Ville de Tunis on February 2, 2001. The play also had international showings at the Avignon Festival in France and the Berlin Festspiele in 2002, together with a performance in Buenos Aires in 2003. Junun is a free adaptation and dramatization of the chronicle Chronique d’un discours schizophrène: récit d’une psychanalyse sans divan (Chronicle of a Schizophrenic Discourse: Narrative of a Psychoanalysis Without a Couch) written by psychotherapist Néjia Zemni (1999). Inspired by Zemni’s unique narration of an unconventional therapy to “cure” madness without the proverbial psychoanalytic couch, Baccar was determined to add a human touch to the psychoanalyst’s clinical detailing of an unusual doctorpatient relationship. Baccar chooses a passage from Zemni’s book as a fitting dedication/epigraph, revealing her own “coup de foudre théâtral” (“theatrical love at first sight”) for both the story and the patient’s revolt against the oppressive machinery of mental illness. She shares Zemni’s intuitive desire to follow the patient’s story of anger and rebellion against the injustices of “l’insupportable réalité asilaire … l’acceptable fatalité de la maladie et de l’enfermement” [“the unbearable reality of the asylum … the unacceptable fatality of illness and confinement”] (1999, 21). Baccar was driven by her sense of humanity to evoke the circumscribed existence of all those who are condemned to suffer the indignities of marginality in the form of madness – a world subjected to misunderstanding, negation and criminalization by society’s rules of the normative. She states: “Ce monde est devenu pour moi l’objet d’une ‘descente’ inévitable. Aller vers cet autre, cet autre inconnu, ce méconnu … est l’occasion d’aller regarder ailleurs, repérer les objets de la crainte, de la méfiance, et tenter de comprendre, sans réduire” [“This world became for me the object of an inevitable ‘descent.’ To go toward the other, this unknown other, this misunderstood other … is the occasion to look elsewhere, to spot objects of fear, of defiance, and attempt to understand without being reductive”] (2000). I affirm that

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Baccar’s desire to humanize the “undesirable/undesired” Other through a narrative of compassion and uncompromising strife leads her to re-present “madness” from the perspective of a literary artist for whom mental “illness” symbolizes the ultimate state of defiance against institutionalized “normality.” Intrigued by the unconventional methodology proposed by the title, “sans divan,” Baccar is also impelled to produce a script that goes against the grain of stereotypes and conventional understanding. She enters the world of the unknown through a highly coded language, an elusive “marginalspeak” that resists facile translation in the hegemonic discourse of patriarchy. This “parler subalterne” (“language of marginality”) reveals the dramatist’s own tentativeness when she and Jaïbi are obliged to translate the colonial tongue (written French), the original language of her play, into the oral dimensions of the local dialect to be articulated on stage. Junun consequently reveals a world of linguistic slippage, mistranslation and rupture as Baccar negotiates her own exilic state of being a minority woman author of conscience. The anxieties and projections that result from “ce sentiment d’être différent des autres” [“this feeling of being different from others”] (2000) find their artistic expression in the rebellious characters Nûn and Elle (the psychiatrist) as they search for new ways of existing beyond the confines of the institution. They refuse to be “ligotés par l’institution” [“chained by the institution”] (2004, 97).1 The local context of the play is established by the reference to the revolutionary poet M’naouar S’madah who was jailed, tortured and later institutionalized for his political beliefs and refusal to be silenced: “So speak, suffer, and die for the sake of words,” states the poet (38). Interestingly, S’madah wrote this poem in 1969 while he was interned at Ar-Razi Hospital, the same asylum referenced in the play. Although he was not incarcerated under Ben Ali himself (1987-2011), his real life example serves as a reminder of the brutal suppression of dissension under all dictatorships. The intellectual (S’madah) and his possible literary characterization (Nûn) share the same liminal space of abjection in both history and literature to expose a universal political predicament, the dictator’s fear of the dissident. As stated by Rafika Zahrouni: “By framing Junun in a socio-political context … the play sheds light on the fact that politically engaged narratives fill gaps that politics fail to reveal” (2011). In this chapter, I position Junun as a premonitory text that foreshadows the impending Tunisian Revolution of January 2011. I demonstrate how this “revolutionary” play reveals the problematic state of the nation under the repressive militarized government of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Although Baccar and Jaïbi do not make this claim themselves, an informed reader can see how the unfolding of history complements the narrative trajectories of the drama. This connection unravels the close synergies between literature, history and society, making Junun a political allegory of the fight between authoritarianism and freedom of expression. In addition, “the story of Nûn can be taken as a fable criticizing a corrupt system that alienated the poor

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and the uneducated, who are perceived as a threat to the social order” (Zahrouni 2011). Junun is thereby inscribed within an explicitly political context of “austerity” (Foucault 1995, 231) fathered by two patriarchs – the biological father and the symbolic Father of the Nation. By drawing attention to the neglected dimensions of so-called “mental illness,” the author uses the trope of mental disorder to critique the violence underlying Tunisia’s postcolonial dystopia reflected by the inhumanity of its psychiatric system and dysfunctional social systems. At the same time, the play also examines the idea of maternal protest in the form of a female psychiatrist’s contestations of inviolable patriarchal institutions like the asylum, hospital, army and family.

Contextualizing Junun Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun compares Ben Ali’s regime to “une occupation coloniale, c’est-à-dire illégitime et féroce” [“a colonial occupation, that is to say, illegitimate and ferocious”] (2011, 39). Associated with the illegal occupation and control of the nation and the usurpation of civil rights, “la loi Ben Ali-Trabelsi” [“the Ben Ali-Trabelsi law”] (49) transformed Tunisia into a police state despite the government’s posturing of “benevolence.” Ben Ali ruled Tunisia with an iron fist as though the country were “son affaire privée” [“his private business”] (45) for over three decades. Babak Dehghanpisheh argues that the rise and fall of Ben Ali exposed a major truism: It has exposed the corrupt common denominator of every regime in the Arab world. They are all, in effect, mafia states – entire nations run by families for their own benefit. Whether they call themselves republics or monarchies, whether they are allied to the United States or opposed to it … they are all family businesses. Whether they claim to be secular or follow Sharia or try to chart a course in between, their governance has less in common with the Magna Carta than it does with La Cosa Nostra. (2011,1) This La Cosa Nostra-style governance forms the basis of Junun’s plot structure. The play centers on the corrupt morality of the patriarchal family dominated by the absent/present voice of the deceased patriarch, gender abuse in the form of prostitution and domestic violence, economic marginality, intolerance for difference, social deviance and patriarchal tyranny – mimetic characterizations of the despotic regime to be discussed later. Moreover, the Tunisian leader curried favor with Western powers, notably France and the United States, by positioning himself as a bastion against the country’s radicalized Islamists. As a military man, Ben Ali was Tunisia’s chief intelligence officer in the 1980s. He maintained close connections with the CIA and other intelligence networks during his tenure. Dehghanpisheh writes:

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Madness as political dissent in Jalila Baccar’s Junun Ben Ali cast himself as a bulwark against militant Islam, and after 9/11 he became one of the Bush administration’s most reliable allies in the Global War on Terror … Diplomats in Tunis told Newsweek in 2003 that Tunisia was “a country that works,” a relatively benign regime where criticism of the leader might bring torture and jail but probably not death. It was a “soft dictatorship,” the diplomats said … All the while Ben Ali and his wife, with several members of her family, were living out the starring roles in a real-life gangster movie. (2011, 2)

Western indemnity for Ben Ali’s repeated human rights abuses against his own people enabled him to “mettre en place les réseaux et structures nécessaires pour que le pays soit à sa merci” [“to put in place the necessary networks and structures that would place the country at his mercy”] (Ben Jelloun 2011, 39) through his “reassuring secularism” against “Islamic terrorism.” Ben Ali’s dictatorial paternalism led to a complete breakdown in civil society in the form of rampant corruption; rising unemployment rates; social despair; emigration to Europe (both legal and clandestine); failure of the education system; economic abjection; poverty; state terrorism resulting in torture, incarceration and detention; censorship and a general social and political malaise. According to the Tunisian daily La Presse (February 7, 2011), the official figures highlighting the country’s rapid descent into a socioeconomic and political abyss were systematically hidden from the public to enable the president to maintain his inviolable patriarchal face. It would take a “spark” in the form of a poor fruit vendor’s self-immolation to mobilize one of the most remarkable popular revolutions in contemporary history. Mohammed Bouazizi’s public outcry against the oppression and humiliation of the dispossessed was the ultimate indictment “pour dire l’intolérable” [“to articulate the intolerable”] (Ben Jelloun 2011, 40), a rallying and visionary call that would mobilize a popular revolution leading to the eventual fall of the leader in a collaborative, non-violent offensive against patriarchy. I argue that Junun symbolizes this visionary “spark” of resistance against the Father’s illegitimate omnipotence within the home and the state. His spurious rule is represented in the play as “pourriture et violence” [“decay and violence”] (Baccar 2004, 89), a state of dis-ease that is nevertheless contested by a doctor-patient coalition. The play demonstrates how repressive political pathologies engender alienating social pathologies in the form of schizophrenia, internalized violence, madness and other expressions of discontent to expose the dialectical struggle for freedom within the vise-like grip of patriarchy. Accordingly, Marie-José Hoyet compares Junun to: le cri d’un pays qui ne demande qu’à vivre mais où l’enfer de la vie quotidienne mène un peuple à la folie, sensation renforcée par la froideur et le vide de l’hôpital-prison dans lequel les comédiens semblent se déplacer comme des automates dans un monde absurde [the cry of a

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country that only wants to live, but where the hell of daily life leads a people to madness, a sensation reinforced by the frigidity and emptiness of the hospital-prison in which the actors seem to move like robots in an absurd world]. (2011)

Staging the institution The Prologue opens in an atmosphere of oppressive heaviness, wherein the actors ambulate “lentement, pesamment” [“slowly, heavily”] (Baccar 2004, 11) as evidence of disarticulated movements. The main characters represented by Elle (She) and Nûn proceed center stage and take up their positions behind two microphones destined to amplify their voices in reverberating sound bytes: “Ils se dirigent chacun vers un micro” [“Each one moves toward a microphone”] (9). The microphone mediates the relationship between the two characters through a projected “third” presence, just as the red opening curtain blurs the tenuous boundaries between the real and the performed, the mind and the body, the real and the imagined, movement and immobility, perceived madness and imposed rationality, silence and speech, hell and paradise, triumph and failure, confinement and nature, poetry and political rhetoric, among other binaries. In fact, the play meanders within and between these binaries in an indeterminate no man’s land represented as a site of confinement on the one hand, and as a deterritorialized space of possibility on the other. Antonin Artaud associates this undifferentiated space with the: shadows where life has never ceased to grope its way … For the theatre … remains a question of naming and directing shadows: and the theater, not confined to a fixed language and form, not only destroys false shadows but prepares the way for a new generation of shadows, around which assembles the true spectacle of life. (1958, 12) Junun reveals its genius as a play of shadows obscuring and illuminating the search for transcendence within “des espaces insoupçonnés” [“unsuspecting spaces”] (Baccar 2004, 14) and the indefinable contours of madness as practiced non-conformity. This ambiguity is reflected in the name “Nûn” that represents one of the letters of the Arabic alphabet. However, Nûn has other connotations as well, including “the feminine;” “the symbol of light;” “the eternity hidden in humanity or the manifestation of the secret of eternity;” “the breaking down of the barriers between the spoken and the imaginary;” and “half of the Divine Order of Creation.”2 The name symbolizes the idea of wholeness. At the same time, it references the erasures, gaps and ruptures that compromise human existence, thereby advocating the use of other modes of perception, thought and action to address these negations.

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These alternative forms of being are put into action at the very beginning of the play through the primal gaze exchanged between Elle and Nûn at their very first meeting Le premier instant/A l’instar même où leurs regards se croisèrent/Un éclair aveuglant, fulgurant la transperça/La secoua au plus profond d’elle-même/A l’instant même où elle l’aperçut en mars 98/Dans la cours de l’hôpital/Adossé au mur, dos courbé/ mâchoires serrées, yeux en feu/ Elle reçut son regard de plein fouet/Et elle comprit sa différence … et son errance [The first moment/At the very moment their eyes met/A blinding and dazzling bolt of lightning pierced her/Shook her to the depths of her being/At the very moment she saw him in March 98/In the hospital courtyard/Leaning against a wall, with his back bent, jaws clenched, eyes alight/She received his hard-hitting look/And she understood his difference … and his errancy]. (Baccar 2004, 13) The intensity of the “ricochet” looks suggests an out-of-body experience beyond the limits of corporeality. The shared gaze is a sign of primal recognition between two individuals marked by their difference – Elle, as a marginalized professional woman in the highly patriarchal establishment of psychiatry, and Nûn as an errant soul diagnosed with schizophrenia. Their body language is inscribed in a densely coded semiotic system that remains beyond the scope of the medical institution’s prescriptions for predictable conforming behavior. In fact, their eyes reflect their shared Otherness through a boomerang effect, “comme un pacte de sang” [“like a pact of blood”] (31), linking their destinies irrevocably. This knowing look serves as a point of motivation for both Elle and Nûn to defy the institution in their individual ways. The doctor fights for medical reform within a dehumanizing system of power and patient control: “Mais elle était résolue à le sauver/ Le sortir de ‘cette inacceptable fatalité’ de la maladie et de l’enfermemement/Et casser cette logique implacable/du malade qui n’est qu’un cas sur lequel on débat/Et non un être humain avec qui on parle” [“She was determined to save him/To get him out of this ‘unacceptable fatality’ of sickness and confinement/And break this implacable logic/of the patient who is only a case to be debated/ And not a human being with whom one speaks”] (30). The doctor’s commitment to healing her patients rather than “curing” them by conventional methods mirrors the philosophy of doctor-activist Dr. Nawal El Saadawi, who states: “I am a medical doctor, a psychiatrist, but I hate writing prescriptions for people. I just help them to write their own, and to cure their problems (physical or mental) by their own willpower and new awareness” (Newson-Horst 2010, 3). Like El Saadawi, the character Elle believes in a more holistic and communicative approach to psychiatry. She seeks to restore the patient’s lost inner balance and broken spirit resulting from a barrage of medical experiments destined to lower self-esteem,

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self-confidence and personal agency. Through a self-prescriptive and personalized methodology, both doctors expose the illogic of the institution termed the “postmodern slave system” by El Saadawi (Newson-Horst 2010, 10). In turn, Elle exposes this perverted logic in the play: “Comment peut-on reconstituer une personnalité decomposée, éclatée/si on fait taire et muselle le malade” [“How can one reconstruct a broken and split personality/if one silences and muzzles the patient”] (Baccar 2004, 30). Elle suggests that effective healing depends on a communicative bond between doctor and patient, on fruitful dialogue and mutual collaboration between the two parties, in which the patient is an active agent in his/her own cure. This proactive stance contrasts with the passivity required by the institution’s rules of non-communication, authority and imposed regimens: “l’institution, avec ses règles et ses habitudes” [“the institution with its rules and habits”] (30). The broken lines of communication between the individual and the establishment indicate a larger social breakdown that is symptomatic of the nation’s dislocated state under authoritarianism. Broken societies are a result of obsolete social systems and uncreative modes of leadership that reveal their inherent pathologies and stagnation. This social dis-ease is manifested by “des maladies endémiques et épidémiques, de la misère économique, de la sous-nutrition, de l’abalphabétisme, c’est-à-dire toutes les conditions nécessaries pour l’éclosion ou la décompensation des états morbides physiques et psychiques” [“endemic and epidemic illnesses, economic misery, malnutrition, illiteracy, that is to say, all the necessary conditions for the birthing or the de-compensation of morbid physical and psychic states”], according to noted Moroccan psychiatrist and author Ghita El Khayat (1994, 83). In such a circumstance, asks El Khayat, “l’individu normal est-il celui qui s’y adapte ou celui qui est différent, aliéné, déviant ou marginal?” [“is the normal individual the one who adapts to the situation or the one who is different, alienated, deviant or marginal?”] (83). El Khayat’s question throws into disarray the entire system of classifications that produces binary rationalizations for pathology and normalcy by creating an interrogative third space; this grey area of ambiguity invalidates conventional definitions of the rational and the irrational that are sustained by oppositional power-based binaries. Is it rational to conform to the state’s pathology or is resistance to its decay the highest form of reason? Is “deviance” the ultimate unlearning of patriarchal reason by proposing other forms of intelligence found in “unreason,” for example? (Foucault 1973, 69). Nûn represents the ultimate expression of this “unreason” through his alternative reasoning based on the dissolution of reductive absolutes. He demonstrates his unwillingness to be an accomplice to the system when he attempts to take control of his diagnosis by refusing to act as a compliant patient: “Mon corps s’effiloche comme un nuage. Il faut que je fasse quelque chose pour arrêter cette souffrance” [“My body unravels like a cloud. I must do something to stop this suffering”] (Baccar 2004, 17). Elle and Nûn are moved to claim their subjectivity by resisting the patriarchal dictates of professional and psychological passivity – Elle is expected

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to behave like a subservient female colleague by her male co-workers: “la gueule du trio médical” [“the face of this medical trio”] (105), and Nûn has been diagnosed as a mentally ill patient who has supposedly lost control of his faculties. They occupy subaltern positions in terms of gender, social standing and class, thereby providing insights into how the populist majority confronts and negotiates marginalization and adversity. The proverbial glass ceiling thwarts the doctor’s possibilities for career enhancement: “vaine utopie … rêve bref qui n’a duré que deux ans” [“a fruitless utopia, a short-lived dream that only lasted two years”] (30), while Nûn’s chances of social advancement beyond poverty are compromised by his continuing unemployment and economic subalternity. The two characters encounter institutional impasses that impede mobility within the highly structured walls of the institution represented by “l’interdiction institutionnelle” [“institutional prohibition”] (114); at the same time, they are united by their collective search for alternatives. The first glance is therefore a defining moment, a hard-hitting instant of unconscious acknowledgement and action inscribed in a visceral body language of shudders, penetrating looks, silence and taut emotions: “Ce matin-là, se produisit à leur insu quelque chose comme une transmission de l’inconscient” [“That morning something like a transmission of the unconscious took place without their knowledge”] (31). An unconscious force beyond the institution, this “fil rouge tendu entre eux” [“this fraught red thread between them”] (13) prompts the doctor to ask for Nûn’s medical file, while Nûn is driven to seek a consultation with the doctor “quatre mois après leur premier regard,/Il poussa enfin la porte de son bureau … pour lui décrire sa souffrance” [“four months after their first glance,/He pushed open her office door at last … to describe his suffering to her”] (13-14). Both characters make conscious decisions to act when mektoub (“fate”) brings them together. The precarious red thread nevertheless maintains a fragile tension between them, vacillating between anxiety and promise – the hope of a possible victory over an unjust medical system or the fear of an irrevocable defeat against its impenetrability. However, the first glance initially tips the balance favorably because “without this silent observation of Nûn, his story may not have been woven in the same way; instead, he may have been taken for any other patient,” according to Zahrouni (2011). In turn, Nûn notices the non-judgmental nature of the doctor’s glance that reflects empathy and even intuitive maternal concern for a distressed young man. This glance is different from the “eye” of surveillance that follows Nûn throughout his series of internments within “les centres de redressement à quatorze ans./La prison à dix-sept, l’armée à dix-huit et l’asile à vingt-quatre ans” [“correctional facilities at 14 years/Prison at 17, the army at 18, and the asylum at 24 years”] (Baccar 2004, 14). The continual surveillance and policing by the disciplining eye of the panopticon creates an ambiance of criminality, wherein: everything was organized so that the madman would recognize himself in a world of judgment that enveloped him on all sides. He must know that

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he is watched, judged and condemned. From transgression to punishment, the connection must be evident, as a guilt recognized by all. (Foucault 1973, 267) Like the one-eyed Cyclops, the surveying eye/I conclusively establishes the defining parameters of Nûn’s life within multiple and recurring spaces of incarceration that delimit his movements and actions due to charges of deviance. Denied subjectivity, he is re-created by the distorting lens of the panopticon as a de-formation, judged a social and physical anomaly that must “disappear” behind the walls of the institution where he can be monitored and corrected. His disappearance restores the “normalcy” of society as well as the regularity of the institution that has successfully disciplined yet another victim. Baccar’s play adds an important dimension to the question of “disappearance,” wherein the physical concealment of the patient within the depths of the asylum mirrors his corporeal and mental dispossession as a disciplined subject.

Creative awareness as de-institutionalized activism The meeting with Elle nevertheless creates a temporary rupture in this predictable continuum of incarceration and surveillance. The doctor realizes that Nûn’s exceptional instance as a different kind of patient necessitates an alternative treatment, a non-institutionalized form of therapy in which he must be considered a human being and not a pathological case study for research purposes. The confirmed diagnosis of “chronicity” (14) had previously subjected Nûn to the institution’s methods of medical experimentation destined to create a subdued body and a colonized spirit through punitive and primitive “cures,” shock therapy, mind-altering drugs and their psychological disassociations, and programmed surveillance. These dislocations are intended to create an “institutional product” (Foucault 1995, 301) with the precise objective of justifying the existence and value of the institution in the first place. This dehumanized “product” is later processed by the institution’s coercive and disciplinary systems controlled by a team of doctors and clinicians. These individuals have the power to engineer the patient’s precise “docility” and subsequent return to a non-threatening submissive “normality” as the ultimate sign of a successful cure for madness and other forms of “deviance.” The physician’s power to “normalize” his patient through a carceral apparatus (Foucault 1995, 304) of shocks, restraints, lobotomies and tranquillizers highlights the success of the treatment once the patient is silenced and transformed into a “recognizable” and manageable object. These prison-like systems, according to Foucault, represent “a new technique of overlapping subjection and objectification”, which “brought with it new procedures of individualization” (1995, 305). These cures against nature are aimed at creating naturalized products inscribed within the omnipotent “mechanisms of

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discipline” (304). The institution’s clinical regime of uniformity and standardization represents the ultimate suppression of individuality, creativity and consciousness through a mechanized program of one-eyed homogeneity. At the same time, the play offers many examples of Nûn’s awareness when he refuses to follow the programmed schedule of treatment that includes the ingestion of powerful medication. He asserts: “Les médicaments n’ont aucun effet sur mon mal/Je dois les arrêter” [“The medicines have no effect on my suffering/I must stop them”] (Baccar 2004, 15). The prescribed mind/body split instigated by the noxious pills develops into double consciousness and cognizance instead. He has an introverted inner body experience wherein he realizes what is being done to him: “Quand je me perds, je m’évade dans mon corps” [“When I lose myself, I escape into my body”], he claims (15). Turning inwards, Nûn escapes the exteriority of social condemnation when he protects himself from outward exposure to the external world. This interiority is both the source of his solace and torment as he struggles to maintain wholeness within social systems created to split him apart, hence the repeated references to schizophrenia in the play: “Le médecin de garde qui l’avait admis en urgence nota sur son dossier: ‘Crise de dépersonnalisation inaugurant un début de dissociation schizophrénique’” [“The doctor on duty who had admitted him to the emergency room noted in his file: ‘A crisis of depersonalization leading to the beginning of schizophrenic disassociation’”] (13). Nûn’s primary dissociation begins with the medical system, a microcosmic representation of the nation in general: “Contre la patrie indifférente/La misère révoltante/L’ignorance accablante/La maladie paralysante” [“Against the indifferent nation/Revolting misery/Overwhelming ignorance/Paralyzing sickness”] (119). The state of a country’s medical institutions provides the yardstick to measure its mental and physical health. From the very inception of the play, the spectator is introduced to a decaying nation populated by abject bodies that have been “broken” by the system. This state of misery is reflected in Nûn’s supplication, “pourquoi ce corps qui me torture?” [“Why do I have this tortured body?”] (12). The reference to torture is both political and physical, referencing the repressiveness of the state machinery as well as the torturous state of individuals forced to confront this abusive condition of being. The state’s murderous impulses are concretized in Nûn’s pronouncement, “envie de tuer” [desire to kill] (12), thereby highlighting the disturbing usurping of the personal by the political. The penetration of state decay into the physical body is symbolized by Nûn’s contraction of syphilis: “Maladie grave et contagieuse qu’il fallait soigner très rapidement” [“a serious and contagious disease that was necessary to cure very quickly”] (19), as diagnosed by Elle. The doctor recommends an immediate and effective cure to prevent the spreading of the disease. Untreated syphilis can lead to severe neurological disorders, compromised reproductive systems or heart failure. She recognizes that Nûn’s affliction is more than just physical; it has its source in a broader problematic of decay corrupting home and nation through the social and

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political pathologies of patriarchy. For this reason, she advocates a home cure treatment in order to identify and treat the disease’s root instead of simply focusing on its external manifestation of sores and rashes: Chez lui, c’était plus sûr/Un infirmier lui rendrai viste pour les injections/ Et elle s’occuperait un peu de lui, loin de l’ambiance asilaire/ … Ce fût pour elle l’occasion inespérée de se rendre chez son patient/Et de faire connaissance avec la famille du ‘dement’ [At his home, there was a better guarantee/A male nurse would visit him for the injections/And she would take some care of him, far away from the environment of the asylum/ … This was her unhoped-for occasion to visit her patient’s house/And to meet the family of the “demented” one]. (19) The doctor understands the ineffectiveness of the establishment in terms of personalized care, so she hopes that treatment in a non-institutionalized space will afford her greater accessibility to her patient and the circumstances that define his illness. As indicated by Zahrouni: “By investigating Nûn’s family life, the doctor may be able to gain a better understanding of the reasons for his repression, schizophrenia and the disintegration of his personality. His social conditions are deemed instrumental for comprehending the violence smoldering within his psyche” (2011). Interestingly, she finds that his disintegrating personality projects the fragmented chaos of his family life, “l’hystérie collective de la famille” [“the collective hysteria of the family”] (40), manifested by “l’odeur de la maison” [“the odor of the house”] (21). Both the home and the institution are characterized by a particular odor of abjection, whose violent toxicity disorients the mind and poisons the body through decay, antiseptic fumes, drugs and bodily alterations. The two locations become mirroring spaces of dysfunctionality that reveal a reciprocal ethos of unconstructiveness; this negativity is nevertheless engineered by the state’s power to occupy and influence the dual spatialities of the interior and the exterior. As stated by Foucault: It is the economy of power that they exercise, and not that of their scruples or their humanism, that makes them pass “therapeutic” sentences and recommend “rehabilitating” periods of imprisonment … the judges of normality are present everywhere … it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behaviour, his aptitudes, his achievements. (1995, 304) Like the asylum-nation, the home represents a space of homelessness for Nûn – two exilic spaces that create a body-in-alienation of its own identity: “Je ne sais plus qui je suis” [“I no longer know who I am”], he laments (68).

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His existential discomfort at home is supposed to be therapeutically addressed in the asylum and normalized into “acceptable” behavior for citizenship. Instead, he is forced to abdicate his rights as a citizen within the institution in the same way that he abdicates his rights of belonging within the family: “Mon corps n’est plus mon corps/ … Il ne m’appartient plus” [“My body is no longer my body/ … It does not belong to me anymore”] (68). His privileges as an individual and as a son are stripped by a confiscating authority that establishes uncontestable categories of belonging and non-belonging: “Je ne me contrôle pas” [I am not in control of myself], admits Nûn (75). The doctor attempts to restore some of Nûn’s lost control through her holistic vision of treatment: “Elle avait rêvé d’un hôpital qui fût un refuge et non une prison” [“She had dreamed of a hospital that was a refuge and not a prison”] (30). This transgressive attempt to decolonize patriarchal spaces by proposing a more humane center for recuperation meets with institutional impasses represented by “silence, discipline and order” (31) as impenetrable obstacles. Stifled by the scope and gendered intentionality of the institution, she nevertheless embarks on a perilous journey with Nûn as his doctoractivist guided by “cette énergie intempestive” that “allait les guider à travers les espaces houleux de la folie” [“this inopportune energy” that “was going to guide them through the stormy spaces of madness”] (31). This storm leads them both through the uncharted territory of a common madness that defies the self-assumed rationality of the institution: “la mobilization brutale et massive d’une force de combat” [“the brutal and massive mobilization of a combative force”] (31). In fact, the doctor and Nûn declare war on the institution in the form of a revolutionary force by displacing the locus of power from the doctor to the patient within alternative anti-establishment spaces. Her mission is reminiscent of El Saadawi’s own politicized engagements with medicine as a feminist and a medical doctor: “I had made the link between curative and preventive medicine, then moved to make the link between preventive medicine and social conditions. I now started to make the link between the social, the economic, the political and the cultural in society,” states the doctor (1997, 56). By focusing on the preventive aspects of medicine, El Saadawi contests institutionalized medicine’s curative practices by showing how these cures sustain a capitalist industry of profit-making and its assembly line production of clinical goods. As a form of market economy, psychiatry and other forms of medicine provide a security guarantee for an industrialized complex of competing capitalist recoveries. Each “successful” cure within this highly guarded system of silencing and muzzling (Baccar 2004, 30) guarantees a large margin of economic profitability for doctors-turned-merchants. These practitioners are responsible for “manufacturing” the zombification of their patients. The patients, in turn, are reconfigured as silent accomplices of the system through their enforced acquiescence: “HALDOL/NOZININ/TRANXENE/Tout ce qui endort/Abat/Terrasse” [“HALDOL/NOZININ/TRANXENE/All that puts to sleep/Brings down/Crushes”] (113). The institution

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reveals its Empire-like power to tranquilize all forms of opposition through cartel-like management. The doctor doesn’t realize the power of her opponents when she embarks on her quest for social justice. Like Ech-Channa’s faith-based activism in Miseria, the doctor also has faith in her healing capacities. She proposes a socially conscious form of “medical mothering” in an attempt to heal the wounds of a distressed generation (represented by Nûn) that feels trapped in an unrelenting network of violence, social despair and economic hopelessness. The doctor’s attempt to “cure” the rotting innards of the institution with a prescription of love and attentive care is nevertheless misconstrued as sexual frustration and unrequited desire for the patient in highly misogynist constructions of gender role typecasting. As Anastasia Valassopoulos argues: A medical career does not guarantee a life free from preconceived notions of sexual and gender imbalance. It is possible to trace, through history, biography and fiction, that medical knowledge seeks to construct sexual difference as an inherent and biological fact while simultaneously seeking to heal the body. (2004, 89) The doctor’s constructed biological difference as a “woman” in a patriarchal corporation invalidates her feminist praxis in a gender-imbalanced society that negates a woman doctor’s contributions and expertise. On the contrary, she is disciplined for her insubordination to the medical fraternity on account of her “dérapages/Voire aux tentations de l’âge/Ce garcon est jeune et beau/Et toi, pas loin de la cinquantaine/Et divorcée” [“Slip-ups/ Perhaps even the temptations of age/This boy is young and handsome/ And you, not far from middle age/And divorced”] (Baccar 2004, 96). Her “unreasonable” call for social justice is normalized under the guise of sexual misconduct conceptualized in terms of ageism and sexual discrimination. The play highlights the disquieting gender ideologies promoted by the patriarchal nation, wherein women can either be martyred as mothers or sexualized as Others in a disempowering gender politic. The plot further demonstrates how the institution’s economy of surveillance and discipline does not only target its “disorderly” inmates. Its punitive mechanisms also invalidate the creative input of its female members, who are reduced to the same “minor” status as the mentally damned. The doctor’s ultimate resignation marks a step toward her own de-institutionalization and claiming of autonomy after “dix-huit années passées dans cet hôpital” [“eighteen years spent in this hospital”] (105). She nevertheless continues to treat Nûn outside the restraints of the establishment, demonstrating her commitment to “aller jusqu’au bout” [“to go to the end”] (97). Her obligation to help Nûn reflects her desire to safeguard the future health of the nation that depends on the vitality and promise of Tunisia’s youth together with the unlearning of patriarchy.

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Madness and patriarchal violence Nûn’s fragmentation has its roots in patriarchal violence. In fact, he is haunted by the demons of patriarchy represented by the Father’s disembodied voice that seeks total control of his mind and body in embedded form and the patriarchal spaces of home and nation responsible for this apparent schizophrenia: “La voix, la voix qui est là, dans mon crâne/C’est elle qui a tous les pouvoirs sur moi” [“The voice, that voice in my head/It controls me completely”], he cries (16). The controlling voice of the dead Father manifests its spectral presence in Nûn’s body as a colonizing affect. It situates itself within the configuration of a three-headed paternal instance – colonial, biological and national – as the absolute manifestation of patriarchy. The Father’s name is physically inscribed on the son’s body – “sa poitrine/Lacérée et cicatrisée” [“his lacerated and scarred chest”] (17) – while the boy’s mental torment is guaranteed by the impermeable voice. The all-consuming voice is based on an original violation, namely, the primary displacement of society’s maternal imaginary and its feminine sensibilities. This symbolic death is needed to establish the inviolability of the phallocentric nation and its masculinist ideology represented by Nûn’s internalized sexism and his dangerous pre-conditioned murderous impulses: “Envie de tuer … Envie d’attraper une femme,/Lui couper la tête, les bras, les jambes … /Et la brûler/ Cacher ses cendres sous les carreaux de la cuisine … et en finir” [“Desire to kill,/To catch a woman,/Cut off her head, arms and legs … /And burn her/ Hide her ashes under the kitchen tiles … and finish off with it”] (12). The above quote exposes how the Father establishes his omnipotent presence through a primordial crime – the destruction and annihilation of the feminine Other in a brutal act of rape, dismemberment and incineration. He must conceal these murderous actions with cold-blooded calculation, ensuring his uncontested ascendancy to the ancestral Origin. In this perverted creation game, the Father immaculately conceives the nation in his own image through stolen birthing rights and patriarchal inversions exposed by Cixous: “What is a father? ‘Fatherhood is a legal fiction,’ said Joyce. Paternity, which is a fiction, is fiction passing itself off as truth … Men’s cleverness was in passing themselves off as fathers and ‘repatriating’ women’s fruits as their own. A naming trick” (Cixous and Clément 1986, 101). The Father’s distorted sonority usurps the voice of the Mother as the original Ursprache (“ancestral tongue”) that is located in a “time before law, before the Symbolic took one’s breath away and reappropriated it into language under its authority of separation. The deepest, the oldest, the loveliest Visitation” (93). The theft of voice and language transforms the “loveliest Visitation” into a dastardly perdition responsible for institutional sexism, gender imbalances, repressive codes of masculinity and hypocritical standards of virility described as follows: “Mon père priait et se saoûlait/Eduquait et mentait/Moralisait et jurait/ Battait et pleurait/Sermonnait et pétait” [“My father prayed and got drunk/ Taught and lied/Moralized and cursed/Battered and cried/Sermonized and

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farted”] (Baccar 2004, 35). This ambiguity is the sign of a confused morality and questionable masculinity in the absence of the patriarch’s legitimacy, thereby necessitating the establishment of oppressive structures like patriarchal families, prisons, the military, asylums and detention centers to keep the truth concealed. It is interesting to note how the father conjures his recurring presence at crucial moments in the play. He is manifested whenever Nûn seems to resist this indoctrination by accessing his inner worlds of “la pensée errante” [“errant thinking”] (14). Nûn’s free-floating thoughts are nevertheless brought back into the uni-centered strictures of the logos through a painful tug-of-war struggle for control. This power play is represented by the two conflicting voices that inhabit Nûn when he witnesses the unravelling of his own mind as spectator and actor: “L’Autre qui est en moi!/Lui veut tuer et je le surveille” [“The Other that inhabits me/He wants to kill and I keep an eye on him”] (12). The dual problematic of controlling the Other and being controlled once again reflects an insider/outsider consciousness, a concomitant source of agency and psychic splitting occasioned by the presence of multiple “visions” and conflicting voices. Nûn’s struggle is to maintain this plurality in a synchronized equilibrium of “multiples” without having to submit to the patriarch’s one-dimensional authority. As stated by El Saadawi: “I am for multiples: poly gods, poly ideas, polytopia and not utopia” (Newson-Horst 2010, 3). The existence of multiples exposes and undermines the patriarch’s repressive utopia based on a one-man/one party singular rule that disfavors heterogeneity, multiplicity and Otherness: “J’ai essayé de l’éloigner de moi, de le repousser,” states Nûn, “il est plus fort que moi” [“I tried to keep him at bay, to push him aside, he is stronger than I am”] (Baccar 2004, 12). The one-sidedness of patriarchy is revealed at both the state and local levels through a reflecting collusion found in what Sandra Gilbert calls the “manylegged tarantula of patriarchal law” (1986, xii) and its deeply entrenched values of social repression, sexism and dystopic decadence. This state of anomie is reflected in the characterization of Nûn’s mother, the punishment meted out to Elle for daring to subvert the system, as well as Nûn’s own agony at having to live a compromised life. The mother Cha is the ultimate patriarchal construction of femininity in her role as the widowed mother of eleven children; she has been denied her eminence by a traumatic displacement reflected in her “regard vitreux et absent sur un horizon incertain … ” [“her vitreous and absent gaze over an uncertain horizon”] (20). Her distant look situates her outside the scope of representation in a masculinist economy dominated by the father’s rule. Conceptualized solely through the biological and social lens of reproduction and sexual slavery, the mother bears eleven children marked by the abusive insemination of the father. Nûn talks about his father’s violence: “Ce qu’elle a pu en baver la mère/Il se jetait sur elle, la tabassait sans raison/Ensuite il la traînait dans son lit” [“What the mother had to suffer/He threw himself on her, roughed her up without reason/Then he dragged her into his bed”] (34). Conceived through an act of violence, each

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child carries the patriarch’s imprint in the form of internalized aggressions, delinquency, social marginalization, sexual commodification in “bordel school” [“school of prostitution”] (19) and Nûn’s contraction of “la syphilis” [“syphilis”] (19). Objectified by her sexual violations, the mother bears the burden of patriarchy through each successive pregnancy that progressively undermines her selfhood: “Oeil sans vie/Bouche cousue/Voix étouffée, tue” [“Lifeless eye/Sewn mouth/Stifled voice, silenced”] (111). The mother’s silencing and displacement are an attempt to safeguard the patriarch’s violent secrets from public knowledge through the obscuring of the mother’s vision, this “blind repression” articulated by Foucault (1973, xii), and the suturing of the mother tongue. Like the political prisoner, the mother suffers a similar incarceration in a private familial hell that simultaneously reflects the national hell of state oppression. The elimination of the mother’s subjectivity within the patriarchal family guarantees the heterophallic normativity of all constructions of identity, language, culture and sexuality engineered by a like-minded authority of patriarchs. She is dually dispossessed by corporeal and spatial evictions that exile her in and from public and private space represented by the home, family and physical body. As stated by Cixous: Ultimately the world of “being” can function while precluding the mother. No need for a mother, as long as there is some motherliness: and it is the father, then, who acts the part … Either woman is passive or she does not exist. What is left of her is unthinkable, unthought. Which certainly means that she is not thought … that she does not make a couple with the father (who makes a couple with the son). (Cixous and Clément 1986, 64) Relegated to the unthinkable, the mother embodies the Cixoulian notion of “whiteness.” At the same time, she represents the repressed and the negated in a corrupted syllogism equating authority with patriarchal self-centeredness. The father’s overarching influence straddles the realms of life and death through his surviving spirit. Nûn exclaims: “Son corps s’est décomposé/Mais lui est toujours là/En moi/Vivant/Il vit en moi” [“His body has decomposed/ But he is still there/In me/Alive/He lives in me”] (Baccar 2004, 88). The father’s permanence endures through his “ghosting effects” (Carlson 2001, 111) that are reinforced each time he makes his presence felt in Nûn. These values are expressed in the purloining father tongue; this discourse pronounces its immortality in a recurring and obsessive insistence symbolized by the father’s occupation of Nûn’s spirit: “L’Autre qui est en moi/Qui m’ordonne ce que je dois ou ne dois pas dire et faire/C’est lui qui a dit/Crève et bon débarras” [“The Other that resides in me/That dictates what I must or must not say and do/He is the one who said/To hell with you and good riddance”] (75). The father’s punitive language associated with hell and damnation becomes the national credo associating phallocentrism with logocentrism

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in the patriarch’s self-selecting language of reason. The national language pronounces a life-sentencing on those who refuse to conform to its orderly discourse that “requires integration into the patriarchal cybernetic system called culture,” according to Allen Thiher (1999, 294). This rejection is reflected in Nûn’s “madness” and the mother’s silent abjection. Moreover, the death of Nûn’s father corresponds with the release from prison of the eldest son Kha, who becomes the father’s natural substitute when two tyrants change hands in “anal” rituals of transference. The younger sister Waw describes the brother accordingly: “Depuis la mort du tyrant/C’est lui le maître à la maison/Un vrai tyrant … /Alors il se venge comme il peut sur Nûn” [“Since the death of the tyrant/He is the master of the house/A real tyrant … /He avenges himself as much as he can on Nûn] (Baccar 2004, 49–50). The spectral tyrant embodied in Nûn and the younger mirror image represented by the son Kha consolidate the father’s power by brutalizing all forms of difference that do not project a self-reflecting image of “fathering” sameness. This image is bolstered by the mother’s undying love for Kha and her subsequent rejection of Nûn in a cyclical pattern of internalized violence: “Kha mon fils préféré/Digne enfant de sa mère adorée/Sensibilité/ Bonté/Générosité/Humanité/Seule une mère comme moi pouvait l’enfanter” [“Kha my favorite son/Worthy child of his adoring mother/Sensitivity/Goodness/Generosity/Humanity/Only a mother like me could have given birth to him”] (60). The mother’s negated sense of self is bolstered by an overt identification with her son in another inverted mirror image. She projects her own repressed inner reality of goodness and virtue on her renegade son as a sign of selfvalidation, her only means to avoid “disappearing” from “an order of signifiers identified with the father and the phallus” (Thiher 1999, 29). These dislocated and alienating images nevertheless reflect the fragmentation of home and nation by the “patriarchal shards” of (neo)colonization that compromise harmony, security and happiness, a reflection of Tunisia’s prerevolutionary social predicament. This crisis is dramatized in the play through the nightmares and scarred landscapes that traumatize Nûn: “Du sang, des torrents de sang/ … /Des montagnes de corps ensanglantés/Désarticulés, éventrés/Charognes décomposés, éclatées” [“Blood, torrents of blood/Mountains of bloody bodies/Ripped apart, disemboweled/Decomposed and split open carcasses”] (Baccar 2004, 16). The quote highlights two intersecting violations that disembowel the society’s core integrity through a bloody rupture – the raping of the country and the rape of the mothers through state and domestic violence. As stated by Zahrouni: “Junun is not only the account of a schizophrenic patient, but also a story about a society that may, allegorically, be described as such” (2011). Schizophrenia results from the internal decomposition of a bloodied society on the one hand, and at the same time, it could also be re-presented as the search for plurality exemplified by Elle’s search for other forms of mothering, also discussed with reference to Aïcha Ech-Channa’s Miseria. Within this

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context, it is important to demonstrate how the link between schizophrenia and the multiple gazes portrayed in this text propose other ways of seeing. Despite the mother’s marginality, her absent look described earlier in the analysis also infers a certain detachment from her immediate surroundings. She gazes forward toward a distant and uncertain horizon (Baccar 2004, 20) imagining a life beyond patriarchy through her “lifeless eye” (111). This forward-projecting vision that remains invisible to patriarchal eyes nevertheless veils an interiorized awareness of what it means to be a sexualized subaltern in a patriarchal society. The mother is obliged to wear a conforming mask to guard her interiority from physical colonization, unlike the sexual subjugation of her body. Her overt support of patriarchy in the form of her preference for Kha camouflages the depth of her feelings for Nûn, in whom she recognizes a marginalized equal: “Il ne sait pas se débrouiller tout seul” [“He can’t manage alone”], she cries (93). The mother’s gaze defines the boundaries of a social cartography of dispossession that includes the unprotected “wretched of the earth,” victims “governed by a punishing Tunisian political system,” according to Zahrouni (2011). The mother suppresses her love and concern for her vulnerable son under the guise of rejection as a form of protection for both of them. At the same time, she reveals the intensity of these repressed feelings in an outpouring of emotion that negates her outward social demeanor of passivity. Referring to Nûn, she states: “Je l’enfermerais dans une cage/ J’arracherais les arbres/Assécherais la mer/Et stopperais la pluie/Si je pouvais” [“I would lock him up in a cage/I would root out the trees/Dry up the sea/And stop the rain/ If I could”] (93). The mother expresses her desire to defend her son against a hostile environment by restoring the inverted cycles of nature to their pristine state. She refers to a time before the de-naturalized colonization of man and nature by patriarchal violations. Her inner strength symbolizes a life-affirming instinct of preservation that conflicts with the patriarch’s death-driven politic. The combination of her repressed interiority and practiced exteriority provides her with a more complex characterization to demonstrate how social roles are conditioned and fabricated by the “free exercise of sovereignty over and against nature” (Foucault 1973, 283). The state’s free play with human life engineers a politically motivated schizophrenia revealed by the “silent” rebellion of the mother in her dually constructed role as the mater dolorosa of the nation on the one hand, and at the same time, she also represents the nation’s resisting ideals emblazoned during the Revolution, on the other: “Notre mère à tous!/Mère tendresse/Mère faiblesse/Mère tigresse/La Mère/Conte inénarrable/Epopée ineffable/Rêve inoubliable” [“Mother of all/Mother tenderness/Mother weakness/Mother tigress/The Mother/Funny story/Indescribable epic/Unforgettable dream”] (Baccar 2004, 112). This anthem to the Mother is recited by female characters like Elle and the younger sister Waw, who articulate their dreams, fears, aspirations and strength as the country takes a new direction upon the fall of one godhead: “Mon père est mort, mort et enterré/Il ne me reviendra plus”

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[“My father is dead, dead and buried/He will never come back to me”], says Nûn (117). Nûn’s prophetic words announce the symbolic death of the Ben Ali regime less than a decade after the publication of the play. He anticipates his final release from the ghosts of patriarchy through this “deathly” liberation.

Alternative ways of being Junun problematizes the “crisis of creativity” that results from the stifling of free speech and the authoritarian imposition of the father tongue as the official and only language. As language represents one of the foundational markers of identity, the alien non-identifying tongue produces an internal conflict between the imposed patriarchal voice as an institutional discourse and the suppressed maternal Ursprache as the language of poetry, music and other forms of orality. Nûn’s madness is a creative impulse resulting from his refusal to submit to patriarchal language when he tries to undo the strictures of “reason” that institutionalized him in the first place. His search for a denied language is mirrored by his quest for the “lost” alphabet Nûn as an active re-membering of self. He seeks to decolonize his mind from the treacherous binaries that establish his “deviance” and depersonalization by claiming a free-flowing, decentered language found in the “unravelling” of the senses: “Les mots jaillissent de ma bouche comme une source/Des idées claires qui racontent ma détresse/La fin de mes rêves et ma tristesse” [“Words that spring from my mouth like a source/Clear ideas that narrate my distress/The end of my dreams and sadness”] (37). The Rimbaud-inspired treatise of dérèglement as a creative uncensoring of preconditioned thought and expression initiates this quest for a revolutionary poetics beyond the limitations of gender, race, politics and nation. Nûn’s search for the right word to articulate his complex being reveals the limitations of patriarchal language when it comes to negotiating nuance and ambiguity through its strict adherence to literalness and fixed meaning. Dispossessed in and by this linguistic fixity, Nûn’s linguistic deprivation represents a lack comparable to a state of aphasic orphaning. This condition is described by the doctor as the thirst for words, a primordial parching and temporary loss of the power of speech occasioned by the absence of a viable language to re-present selfhood: “Lèvres béantes, tu es, assoiffées, privées de MOTS/Appels inquiets, muets, tu es, orphelin de MOTS” [“Gaping lips, you are parched, deprived of WORDS/Anxious and silenced calls, you are orphaned by WORDS”] (38). Nûn responds: “Y a tellement de choses en moi que j’ai envie de dire, raconter/Je veux parler … ” [“There are so many hidden things I want to say, to narrate/I want to speak … ”] (33). Nûn’s gaping lips search for the “whiteness” of the wrenched mother tongue, “the first music of the voice of love” (Cixous and Clément 1986, 93) silenced by an institutional burial. Nûn searches for subjectivity through the self-determining “I” that seeks control in a confounding world determined to

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deny his humanity: “Mais veux pas rester ici/Veux pas devenir comme eux” [“Don’t want to stay here/Don’t want to become like them”] (Baccar 2004, 32). The absence of the speaking “I”, the subjective exposes a primary fragmentation of the self in a disjointed world, where the search for plénitude (“wholeness”) is considered a tragic flaw to be aborted in the most abrasive ways. The doctor exposes this original fracture occasioned by a “loss of heart”: “Car le coeur des vivants a souvent été un tombeau pour les mots” [“Because the heart of human beings has often been a tomb for words”] (121). The doctor identifies the heart as the source of thought and emotion, thereby displacing the centrality of the mind in the language of patriarchal reason. At the same time, she shows how the dramatic inversion of the head over the heart in Cartesian divisions between reason and emotion, the rational and the irrational, have conversely led to psychological imbalances initiated by the deadening of the senses instead. The institution rationally prescribes the moral and mental death of its patients through sensory deprivation, “absents zombies sans nom” [“absent zombies without a name”] (114), and a “return to reason” at all costs. This return has fathered a state of national zombification through the continued distress of the people. Nûn’s struggle against zombification reveals the predicament of the artistic soul caught between the opposing forces of creativity and authoritarianism. He symbolizes the precarious positionality of the creative dissident who imagines a different world through “Les yeux étincelants/Le regard brûlant” [“His gleaming eyes/His burning look”] (93). Comparable to a clairvoyant, Nûn’s eyes have the prophetic power to “see through” the foibles of patriarchy and question its underlying duplicity: “Le mot est plus fort que le bâton” [“the word is stronger than the stick”], claims Nûn (38). As stated by psychologist Mark Millard: “Creative people, like those with psychotic illnesses, tend to see the world differently to most. It’s like looking at a shattered mirror. They see the world in a fractured way” (quoted in Roberts 2010). However, I argue that this shattering also provides a more prismatic threedimensional vision, an ultra-vision associated with a highly developed consciousness found in poetry and spirituality. In fact, Nûn sees “too much” due to his inner vision. His madness represents this excessive vision beyond the superficial façade of reality. If rationality represents a broken language for the poet, the expansiveness of irrationality as a borderless mindspace becomes the poet’s preferred medium of expression: “Je suis très, très intelligent quand je veux” [“I am very, very intelligent when I want”], affirms Nûn (36). This self-possessed intelligence ushers in a “new world” (Hourani 1990, 396-397) birthed by a revolutionary language of social transformation and ultra-awareness. As argued by Bassam Frangieh: “Poets expressed the discontent of the Arabs with themselves and the world. They felt that poetry should play an active role in rebuilding and revitalizing Arab society and bring about revolutionary change” (2000, 224). Frangieh highlights the seminal role played by Arab

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poets in the intellectual, social, political and cultural spheres of their different societies. Their voices of distinction and their distinctive voices are associated with truth, “vision and prophecy, and for this they have been a source of fear for many Arab leaders” (223). Nûn senses the patriarch’s fear as the source of his misfortune when he asks: “Puisque j’étais plus fort que lui/Sinon pourquoi il m’aurait jeté en maison de redressement?” [“Because I was stronger than him/Otherwise, why would he have thrown me into a correctional facility?”] (Baccar 2004, 36). The father fears a rival in Nûn, who has the ability to unravel his language through “dyslexia” (12) as a form of linguistic altering. The restructuring of language through “backward inversions” resurrects and reinstates the repressed mother tongue: “Lettres éparpillées/Syllabes retrouvées/Phrases recomposés/Sens décrypté” [“Scattered words/Uncovered words/Recomposed words/ Decrypted meaning”] (119). This highly semiotic language encoded in a specialized system of ancient hieroglyphs represents the language of multiple rebirths and re-compositions, a Saadawian poly language, as the ultimate Multiple (Newson-Horst 2010, 3). The reincarnated tongue reveals its linguistic polyvalence through a torrent of words (Baccar 2004, 39), a wondrous symphony of natural sounds and images described by Nûn: “J’ai avalé les étoiles et leur lumière/La lune et ses mers” [“I swallowed the stars and their light/The moon and its oceans”] (45). This is the language of ‘fana (the ecstatic soul) as it merges with the infinite to create this exceptional “Être unique” [“unique Being”] (El Khayat 1994, 7). This “Être unique” is the madman reconfigured as Nûn in the play. The madman’s tongue is understood and decoded by the expert translator-doctor, who joins her patient in projecting a more affirming future beyond the projected “madness” of the institution. The excavation of the lost word/hieroglyph, the Nûn of the Arabic alphabet, marks a journey into the boundless realm of metaphysical perfection, a search for the boundless multi-gendered self conducted first of all by a reclaiming of the repressed feminine within: “Lorsque qu’on sait toute l’ambiguïté qu’entretient l’homme avec sa féminité/Dans notre culture arabomusulmane” [“When one knows the very ambiguity that man maintains in terms of his femininity/In our Arabo-Muslim culture”] (Baccar 2004, 71). Junun is a plea to go beyond institutionalized gender dualities inscribed within intransigent cultural dictates by embracing Cixous’s non-divisive “other bi-sexuality,” “the one with which every subject, who is not shut up inside the spurious Phallocentric Performing Theater, sets up his or her erotic universe … This bi-sexuality beside itself, which does not annihilate differences but cheers them on, pursues them, adds, more” (Cixous and Clément 1986, 84–85). The play denounces the limitations engendered by an uncreative phallocentric performativity by embracing a pluralistic life-ascribing cosmology: “Vivre et semer la vie” [“To live and sow life”], concludes Nûn (Baccar 2004, 123). By affirming life over death, Nûn comes to terms with his inner torment by exposing the true madness of a government that predicates its

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own death by negating its complementing femininity and thwarting its creative possibilities. Nûn ignites the first spark to illuminate a new direction, a path traced by the enlightened mystic-poet who reclaims his displaced position as seer in the new populist governance. Nûn advocates a new “leadership of the heart” that has its roots in Sufi thought. In this philosophy, the heart (qalb) is the symbol of inner knowledge, wisdom and insight, representing the divinity within, as stated by the great Sufi master Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi in his poem “The Heart”: “The heart is the substance and the world the accident” (Rumi n.d.). The only Truth resides within the inner depths of the heart and not in manmade texts and political fabricated treatises. Nûn seems to suggest that enlightened leadership does not come from an “untruthful” political godhead, but from a heartfelt humanitarian politics created by the artistic soul. He affirms: “Il n’y a qu’un pouvoir: celui de la Vérité/Pas celui du Mensonge/De l’Oppression/De la Force/ De la Violence/De la Dictature” [“There is only one power: that of Truth/Not the power of Lies/Oppression/Force/Violence/Dictatorship”] (Baccar 2004, 89). The heart as a universal life force sustains the power of Truth found in social justice, harmony, tolerance, inclusivity, the dissolution of absolutes and the valuing of creativity. In this search, the doctor encourages Nûn to “open his heart” as a reclaiming of self, to speak the unspeakable by releasing his suppressed inner consciousness and thereby to realize the wholeness he seeks. As stated by El Saadawi: “Creativity is the uniting of the unconscious and the conscious mind, what we might call the super-conscious, the knowledgeable whole self” (Newson-Horst 2010, xiv-xv). The new “politics of the multiple” is a step toward social transcendence in the “super-conscious” framing of the post-revolutionary “knowledgeable” self, as articulated in the words of Tunisian intellectual Nouri Gana: The real achievement of Tunisia is that it demonstrated that the hope for change is alive and well. The worst crime of dictatorships is the politics of fear they use to engineer the consent of their people – the slow and steady dispossession of all will to freedom and self-determination. When this fear insinuates itself into the mind, not only does all memory of freedom disappear, but so too does the willingness to pay the price for it. The crucial importance of what happened in Tunisia is that Arabs no longer recognize who they are without it. (2011) Junun is an ode to freedom, a hymn to the creative power of the dispossessed majority that has just deposed the maniacal despot through the “maddening” rhythms of the reclaimed Mother Voice/Self: “Tranchant/Ferme et résistant” [“Sharp/Firm and resisting”] (Baccar 2004, 123). Junun is thereby a powerfully conceived social text inscribed in the local and universal political context of state power, repression and the struggle for survival. Dispossessed characters seek control of their lives through their

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individualized forms of resistance aimed at claiming subjectivity and representation in the patriarchal nation. By staging the horrors of history and postcolonial anomie, the play exposes the darker side of the state that uses propaganda, punishment, incarceration, mind control and other oppressive techniques to maintain its uncontestable power within broken systems of governance. At the same time, Junun highlights the refusal to accept the dictates of submission, marginality, morality, censorship and “delinquency” imposed by the state in an attempt to discipline and “correct” its non-conforming citizens. The characters fight for their rights of citizenship by advocating social justice, medical reform and a more humanitarian model of leadership that will realize the nation’s full potential. The courage of the damned in Tunisia highlights the non-violent means of resisting the intransigent political elite in the name of human rights, justice and free expression. The play advocates the restoring of the nation’s compromised feminine and creative imaginary as the key to self-determination and future possibilities: “Creativity and dissidence will continue to be linked,” concludes El Saadawi, “as long as we live in a world built not on justice and real freedom but on force, false democracy, coercion, obedience and submission to the oppressor, false consciousness and fragmented knowledge … for the maintenance of the class patriarchal system” (2010, 67-68). Junun represents a literary attempt to imagine a world beyond this destructive economy by looking for the inner beauty of truth, wisdom and spiritual strength in the global movement to decolonize patriarchy from its “murderous” intent.

Notes 1 All translations of Junun into English are my own. 2 Please see the audio-visual presentation by artists Haythem Zakaria and Skander Besbes (2011) at http://vimeo.com/15335914, focusing on the meanings and significations of the word “Nûn.”

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The darker side of Tahrir in Laila Soliman’s No Time for Art and Blue Bra Day Scene two – Tahrir Square, Cairo

Laila Soliman is one of Egypt’s most outspoken and revolutionary dramatists. She is also a theatre coach and producer who uses the medium of experimental theatre to make important social justice interventions. Born in Cairo in 1981, Soliman has been deeply committed to a politically conscious, social justice-inspired form of independent fringe theatre since her most formative years in the Egyptian capital. As stated on her blog profile, she believes “in the role of dissident art as a tool of social and personal empowerment since it articulates modes of expression that are otherwise negated or stifled.”1 Soliman studied at the German School and the American University in Cairo and is currently completing her Master’s in Theatre at Dasarts in Amsterdam. The author of numerous plays, her work has been showcased in Egypt, Europe, Latin America and the United States. These productions include The Retreating World (2004), Ghorba: Images of Alienation (2006), At Your Service (2009), Lessons in Revolting (2011), Blue Bra Day (2011) and No Time for Art (2011)2. The last play is an ongoing five-part series of interactive and collaborative pieces (2011).3 The last three plays have been directly inspired by the 2011 uprisings. A winner of the Willy Brandt Special Award for Political Courage in October 2011, Soliman reaffirms her commitment to use theatre as a forum for social critique, political contestation and human rights issues: “I have put my doubts in the spotlight for reasons that have nothing to do with art,” she claims in her acceptance speech.4 At the same time, the dramatist places her human rights concerns at the service of art to stage and document the violations committed at Tahrir Square. In this chapter, I demonstrate how Soliman’s plays No Time for Art and Blue Bra Day stage the darker side of the Egyptian revolution. This “darkness” is demonstrated by the incarceration and torture of creative dissidents and the violence against female protestors in Tahrir Square at the hands of a powerful military junta. Soliman uses the form of testimonial theatre to chronicle and document the abuses suffered by male and female demonstrators in their dramatic confrontation with a militarized state that maintained the people in a vise-like grip during the thirty-year rule of former President Hosni Mubarak. The Egyptian revolution that began on January 25, 2011 was inspired by a series of interrelated events: the Tunisian revolution, a long

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history of organized political activism, the spectacular display of cyberactivism and the people’s rallying cry against a thirty-year-old dictatorship that had denied them basic civil rights under a regime of military authoritarianism. Like Tunisia, Egypt ignited its own spark against longstanding civilian violations that included police brutality, rampant corruption, censorship, state of emergency laws, denial of free and fair elections, high unemployment rates, food shortages, gender inequality, violence against women, poverty and rising inflation indices. These protests took several forms, including youth demonstrations, women’s marches, acts of civil disobedience and labor strikes (Leyne 2011). A coalition of workers, students, housewives, journalists, activists, artists, children and intellectuals synchronized the downfall of the powerful head of state in eighteen days.5 On February 11, the former (and late) Vice-President Omar Suleiman6 announced that Mubarak would be stepping down and handing over power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) under the leadership of Field Marshall Tantawi, the commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces and Chairman of SCAF. A violent military-led counterrevolution nevertheless violated the ideals of the revolution through the heavy-handedness of military might leaving Egyptians in a state of heightened anxiety and tension over the state of post-revolutionary Egypt. However, one of the most inspiring aspects of the revolution was the outpouring of creative expression that accompanied the uprising’s social and political movements in the form of protest songs, poetry, slogans, chants, graffiti and installation art, street theatre, and cartoons, among other forms of artistic inventiveness. Creative dissidence has always been an integral part of protest movements, as argued by Iraqi poet Sinan Antoon: Poetry, novels and popular culture have chronicled and encapsulated the struggle of peoples against colonial rule and later, against postcolonial monarchies and dictatorships, so the poems, vignettes, and quotes from novels were all there in the collective unconscious … The revolution introduced new songs, chants and tropes, but it refocused attention on an already existing, rich, and living archive … Contrary to all the brouhaha about Twitter and Facebook, what energized people in Tunisia and Egypt and elsewhere, aside from sociopolitical grievances and an accumulation of pain and anger, was a famous line of poetry by a Tunisian poet, al-Shabbi. (2011) Antoon evokes Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi’s revolutionary “The Will to Live,” a poem that symbolized the battle cry of Tunisians in the anti-colonial struggles of the early 1900s.7 Refrains from the poem echoed in both Tunisia and Egypt during the uprisings to show the literary imaginary finds its most significant articulation in revolutionary action and vice versa. The poem addresses the “imperious despot, violent in strife,” and cautions him:

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“Patience! Let not the Spring delude you now/A gale of flame shall suddenly consume/A bloody torrent sweeps you to your doom” (Colla 2011). However, Egypt’s revolutionary Spring was soon to morph into a tempestuous storm termed “la tempête arabe” (“the Arab storm”) by Evelyne Accad,8 unleashing a whirlwind of mixed emotions and state violence on the one hand, and revolutionary artistic expression on the other. Soliman was among the ten million Tahrir Square protestors. She witnessed the unfolding of the revolution and its aftermath first-hand and was therefore in a position to “stage” the different phases of the revolution and its consequences through the medium of experimental theatre. I demonstrate how Soliman uses theatre to indict the militarization of the Egyptian state and the predominance of the prison complex that creates a culture of fear, abuse and intimidation. At the same time, these violations are countered by the people’s spirit of resistance that takes several forms ranging from testimonial exposure to dissident art and public protest. The open-ended structure of experimental theatre gives Soliman the freedom to work with a variety of theatrical forms instead of limiting her to a singular genre of performance. Her theatre situates itself within the interstices, within these in-between spaces that “resist or reject definition” (Schechner 1998, 360). As a multimedia performance, Soliman’s theatre “cannot be mapped effectively because it transgresses boundaries, and therefore cannot be pinned down or located exactly” (360). In her productions, docudramas intersect with testimonial theatre; social media networks are integrated into narrative structures; smartphones and televisions counteract silences, pauses and the performance of oral history in a symbiotic fusion of postmodern technology and expressive dramaturgy. It is therefore difficult to analyze Soliman’s plays traditionally in terms of theme, characterization and plot structure. The stream-of-consciousness flow that underlines certain aspects of her work defies analysis and methodological probing. The absence of structure and the outpouring of words highlight a sense of urgency to “communicate a problem,” as John Beverley (1989, 14) reminds us in Chapter 2 on Aïcha Ech-Channa. The need to speak and denounce in freeform takes precedence over aesthetics to provide a “spoken word” narrative unmediated by the studied crafting of words and syntax. The cause of exposing human rights abuses is embraced by a diverse community of artists and activists who are celebrated and commemorated in a work such as No Time for Art. As the Cairo-based graffiti artist and designer Ganzeer remarks: Dirty politics and power struggles aside, there are innocent people who died over the course of Egypt’s current revolution. These people died because they could see something most of us could not see. They died because they could see Egypt soaring high in a place of dignity and respect. They could see Egypt become something none of us thought possible … True heroes, ready to fight a corrupt regime with all its

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soldiers, guns, and ammo with nothing more than their voices and will power. (Davis 2011) Performances like No Time for Art resurrect these silenced voices that refuse to be lost in vain. In addition, a play like Blue Bra Day documents the violence and abuse faced by female protestors at the hands of the military for having “dared” to demonstrate their dissidence by sharing public space with men. As part of a group of young avant-garde dramatists, Soliman offers raw, unornamented and bare-to-the-bones documentation of the heavy “price” of revolution represented by the arbitrary incarceration, punishment and torture of dissidents termed “thugs” by the government. Her plays lead us into the darkness of the government’s counter-revolutionary tactics aimed at stifling opposition and eliminating any form of “subversion” to army rule. Soliman’s perspective is crucial to our understanding of the uprising because it represents the point of view of a younger generation of Egyptians who feel that their futures are being compromised by a patriarchal tug-of-war between the army and religious factions. I argue that Soliman’s use of a multidimensional theatrical experience provides an alternative version of history through counternarrations, uncensored scripting found in blogging, texting and other forms of technology, audience participation, minimalism, and the personalized testimonials of living actor-activists who blur the boundaries between reality and acting in a théâtre-vérité performance. This theatre “of the human” is a way to commemorate both the victims and survivors of the uprisings and decriminalize their negative portrayals in governmental scripts that resort to a powerful “media play” of distortion, manipulation and invention. In an interview with Helen Stuhr-Rommerein (2011), Soliman states: In Egypt, I want to draw attention to situations people may not have been aware of, and I want to raise the issue of keeping the resistance going … The function outside of Egypt is to create an alternative narrative to the media in the way they have portrayed events in Egypt. Soliman creates tenuous synergies between creative dissidence, violence and cultural production through the medium of the Tahrir Square revolts. No Time for Art and Blue Bra Day reinforce the preoccupations of an older generation of North African female dramatists like Jalila Baccar by presenting a younger generation’s views on censorship and violence. No Time for Art is presented as a work-in-progress project that is subjected to multiple revisions, re-enactments, changing decor, shifting roles, audience involvement and unexpected surprises at each performance. The “unfinished” nature of the series inhibits any definitive version of the uprisings through its shifting decentered perspectives, multi-locations and the continuing documentation of events through subaltern articulations found in testimonies, personal notes

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taken at Tahrir Square as a form of eyewitness account, social networking correspondence and state television broadcasts. Blue Bra Day documents the egregious brutalization of an unidentified female protestor. It also makes a broader statement about sexual violence against women in Tahrir Square. This violence has been justified by hypocritical morality codes of shame and honor dictated by a militarized patriarchy. Soliman’s plays are located in an indeterminate “interspace” during and after the uprisings, a space that guards its autonomy without being inhibited by a limiting timeline. For this reason, her work straddles the liminal spaces between the universal and the particularized, the public and the private; these intersections enable Soliman to make effective social and political commentaries on the Egyptian uprisings in particular and revolution in general. Most of Soliman’s performances in Cairo take place in off-centered spaces such as university campuses and Rawabet Theatre in downtown Cairo. These stagings are meant to energize marginal spaces with the vitality of revolutionary art and offer alternative spaces for Cairo’s vibrant counter-culture spearheaded by a new generation of creative dissidents. Soliman politicizes the private space of fringe theatre on the one hand, and on the other, she “outs” the private into public space by the wide recognition she receives for her work in Egypt and abroad. As an independent artist, she is liberated from the limitations of corporate sponsorship rules in terms of subject matter, location and production, and can thereby explode myths, taboos and state secrets through the exposure of live performance. As stated by Soliman’s choreographer Karima Mansour with reference to experimental theatre: “This is not an explanation of what was but what it is now and what will be” (Sharma 2011). Soliman is less interested in the grand narratives associated with the revolution that seem to remain immobilized in their nationalist fervor. She is more interested in offering a personalized account of the human rights abuses committed by the military before and after Mubarak’s downfall in order to focus on the traumas and triumphs of the revolutionaries and the painful trajectory of the revolution itself. She focuses on the labor pangs of the revolutionary process through the indeterminate nature of these interactive performances that raise more questions about than they provide absolute answers to the burning question of regime change. There is nothing glorious about her performances. Instead, their introverted quality creates a reflective space of consciousness-raising in the form of “active resistance and a functional contribution to protest” (Soliman in Stuhr-Rommerein 2011). Soliman’s plays stage the dramatic confrontations between military men, dissenting women and creative dissidents in a dysfunctional power differential. This imbalance leaves no space for dialogue or artistic/creative negotiations, hence the title of the series, No Time for Art. As Soliman tells Hans-Christoph Zimmerman (2011) in an interview: Since Mubarak was overthrown on 11th February, nobody says anything about the army, and above all, about the Supreme Military Council. The

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military has its own censorship. And the journalists are very careful about what they write because they don’t want to lose their readers. One of the aims of my work is to create an alternative version of history with the means of theatre. Especially now, where one can already see how the official history is being written … The eighteen days of the revolution which led to the overthrow of Mubarak don’t interest me anymore … I didn’t at all want to react to the revolution in the way it’s been defined in the west. We decided to look for other ways of carrying the struggle forward … . (2011)

What is art? The ambiguity reflected in the title No Time for Art is symptomatic of the playwright’s own meditations on the function and place of art and artistic freedom in a militarized state of siege. At the same time, Soliman also interrogates the appropriateness of art in expressing the revolutionary state. The play raises the following questions: Can an artist subscribe to the privileged and self-centered preoccupation of creating art in a heightened state of national alert? If so, does this art have the capacity to reflect an “ethos of the collective”? Does a state of violent and brusque socio-political upheaval enhance or inhibit the creative spirit? Can art reflect this brusque and brutal unease without succumbing to artistic nihilism? What constitutes art in a state of emergency? Is a revolution-inspired art functional or aesthetic in its value? Does this art have to be recognizable in its expression as literature, theatre, poetry and painting, or does revolution call for alternatively disruptive art forms that mirror the country’s political and social ruptures? Can art “perform” reality? Can art express the inexpressible in creative form? Preliminary questions instigate even deeper reflections in each successive production of No Time for Art to keep the creative process vibrantly alive. These circular inquiries deploy a circuitous route to maintain the audience, actors, director and the playwright herself in a state of constant suspension. This strategy is an attempt to avoid intellectual complacency and artistic stagnation. No Time for Art is also a reflection on the state of Egyptian theatre itself, and it calls for a theatrical revolution from within. If the first days of the revolution represented a “revolution of the imagination” (Elseewi 2011) and “an artistic or literary gathering and a cultural forum,” according to novelist Ibrahim Abdel Meguid (quoted in Ibrahim 2011), then Egyptian theatre had to transform itself from being a censored mouth piece of the state into a medium of artistic activism in order to stage the revolution. Hanaa Abdel Fattah argues that mainstream Egyptian theatre was stymied by thirty years of dictatorship and it was therefore completely denuded of any social or political content. He asserts: “On the contrary, all social needs were silenced as a result of direct censorship placed on the theatre by the Ministry of Culture. Limitations and rigid censorship were among the many reasons that

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stopped the theatre from giving reign to free expression” (2010). In fact, Soliman herself talks about the way in which her work was censored during the Mubarak years, wherein her scripts were closely scrutinized for supposedly inflammatory material. At the same time, she indicates that the former regime’s rules were straightforward and apparently transparent. A play like No Time for Art would never have seen the light of day under Mubarak due to its direct political critique, according to the playwright. On the other hand, she asserts that the post-revolutionary censorship codes are more ambiguous, shady and, consequently, more dangerous: “It isn’t clear what gets one arrested or killed. We’re taking the risk. It’s a different game,” says Soliman in her interview with Betwa Sharma (2011). No Time for Art is both a political challenge to the militarized state and an attempt to revitalize Egyptian theatre from its imposed stagnation and sociopolitical disengagement. The revolution provided a younger generation of dramatists, such as Soliman, Dalia Basiouny (Tahrir Stories) and Hani Abdel Naser (By the Light of the Revolution Moon), among others to give new momentum to theatre by politicizing the margins. The “dramatization of the political” provided the necessary impetus for a new form of documentary theatre “that sought to salvage, document and store in the collective memory the stories of the people of Tahrir Square, both living and dead, through narration and first- or second-hand testimonies,” according to Nehad Selaiha (2011). As an archive of memory, the newly conceptualized intentionality of documentary theatre provided a rallying cry: to overthrow oppressive, authoritarian systems, but also, more significantly perhaps, a subtle, ironic comment on the political scene in Egypt and a sobering warning against the pitfalls that beset all revolutions – namely, violence, disorder, irrational fear, fanatical aggression and power struggles, not to mention breeding new dictators to replace the old ones. (Selaiha 2011) This theatre’s mission was to provide the counter-voice of the already violent counter-revolution that was rapidly transforming the people’s sense of accomplishment into a fearful despondency and pessimism. Documentary theatre was one way to keep hope alive through its “truth and reconciliation” credo of “outing” issues of social justice and political reform.

Testimony on stage No Time for Art9 is a five-part sequential denunciation of the violence engendered by the military against unprotected civilians who were perceived to be a threat to national security. Composed as a mosaic of different experiences situated in different locations, the multifaceted play has a constellationlike shifting structure to avoid the primacy of any one occurrence, individual or site. Favoring the articulation of multiple voices that narrate collective and

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individual stories, this piece’s very organization critiques the privileging of representative images or figures that appeared on Facebook and television as defining “faces” of the revolution. At the same time, each piece can be viewed individually to focus on specific individuals and issues that are incorporated into a broader and more inclusive framework. The intersections between the individual and the collective in the different segments are nevertheless linked and given form by a common preoccupation – the ongoing military violence that has wrecked Egypt before and after regime change. The different sections are an indictment of Egypt’s history of violence through individual narrations that deconstruct any misconceptions about a unified nation led by a benevolent “father of the nation” figure. However, the play also dramatizes a play on words wherein “it doesn’t pretend to be art, because these times don’t need art, or do they … ?”10 The tenuous question mark protects Soliman from critique that may result from her decentered fringe perspective on art. Can testimony be considered an aesthetic form? Do we need art in an emergency? Is the urgency to speak from the gut more important than the crafting of dramatic language? These interrogating tensions are maintained throughout the performances without a definitive partie prise taken by the author. This play situates the Tahrir Square uprisings as acts of collective will instead of promoting the dramatist’s self-selecting interests. It occupies an intermediary space between the call for human rights reparation and the affirmation of subjectivity by ordinary Egyptians who, for the first time in thirty years, were encouraged “to imagine themselves as subjects (and not, as the official narratives would have it, objects) of history” (Elseewi 2011, 1197). This claiming of historicity by the disempowered is an attempt to rewrite history from the margins by including what Wassyla Tamzali calls “les histories minuscules des révolutions arabes” [“the minuscule histories of the Arab revolutions”] in the title of her edited book (2012). She adds: “. les révolutions sont arrivées par la grâce de héros minuscules, et que si elles existent c’est par leur vertu de mettre enfin l’homme – la femme – au centre du devenir arabe, chassant Dieu et la Nation” [“the revolutions took place thanks to minuscule heroes, and if the revolutions continue, it is by their virtue of finally putting man – and woman – at the center of the Arab future, getting rid of God and Nation”] (2012, 10-11). The various sections of the play focus on a range of violations – prisoner abuse, the incarceration of children, the fragmentation of Egyptian society as a result of army rule and its consolidation of the prison complex, civilian trials before a military court, the lack of accountability for crimes by the police and army, and the criminalization of the public through false accusations and arbitrary justice. However, Soliman’s theatre is not limited solely to the staging of abuse. The stage, in fact, becomes a courtroom for the aggressed and offers a springboard for the next progression toward social justice activism. The passage from “performing rights” to “fighting” for rights is ensured by a coalition of artists and activists who are committed to the

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creation of a “reformed” Egypt as part of a revolutionary agenda. I will focus on the first “movement” titled No Time for Art 1. This segment offers the most convincing example of this revolutionary rite of passage through the combined synergies of acting, witnessing, testifying, denouncing and taking action. Segment 1 begins with an interactive prelude in which the participation of the audience provides the atmosphere and setting for the three forthcoming testimonials in the next scene. The main purpose of this segment is to pay tribute to the martyrs of the revolution by keeping their memory alive in public commemoration. It is estimated that over 924 known protestors were killed by military violence, while many more are still missing and unaccounted for.11 Soliman restores the humanity of the fallen and the living in a public ritual of healing and remembering. The theatre morphs into a space of understanding, empathy, shared emotion, solidarity and education as the members of the audience are obliged to forgo the comfort zone of passive spectatorship through active involvement in a human rights issue, namely, the indiscriminate arrest, torture and abuse of civilians in military detention centers and state prisons. As stated by the New Tactics in Human Rights Collective in their posting “Using Theatre for Human Rights Education and Action”: “Theatre is being used to promote, educate, motivate and move people to action regarding human rights, development and issues ‘screaming’ for change. Theatre is a powerful tool in human rights work” (2008). In No Time for Art 1, the movement for change through creative dissidence is conceptualized and conceived even before the audience enters the theatre. Instead of conventional tickets, spectators buy stickers of a revolutionary poster made by street artist Ganzeer, who was later arrested and detained for this “incendiary” work. The vibrantly colored yellow poster shows a blindfolded man wearing a mask. Above him reads the caption: “New on the market, the mask of freedom, from the Supreme Council of Armed Forces to our beloved people.” Ganzeer’s ironic poster offers a very visible protest against the suppression of free speech ordered by the Supreme Council to quell opposition to its longstanding dominance. Replacing the proverbial revolutionary clenched fist with a suffocating mask, Ganzeer’s artwork highlights the stifling of Egypt’s creative imaginary and a deadening of the people’s senses by obdurate military rule. Soliman collaborates with Ganzeer in a common cause while promoting his work through her own ticket sales in an act of solidarity. Before the performance, each member of the audience receives an envelope containing a piece of paper with the name of a martyr, his or her age, and the place and method of death. Each individual is then expected to read aloud the name of the martyr and demand justice for this unwarranted death through a fair trial in an international tribunal. The audience member imbibes the spirit of the martyr as he/she reads out the name and the following demand inscribed on the paper: “I demand a trial of those responsible for the killing of … ” The call for justice consequently transforms into a scream for justice from a personal place of outrage and horror.

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As the names are called out, two actors standing by a makeshift map of Egypt mark the location of each death on the map and then cross out the age of each victim on a chart that ultimately reveals a chilling statistic – most of those who were killed were between the ages of 16 and 39, the prime of Egypt’s youth (Taher 2011). This commemorative mapping is a way to immortalize Egypt’s fallen generations in a revised cartography while assuring them a place in collective memory through repeated performances and rehearsals. The experience jolts the spectator from his/her complacency as a passive receiver of news to an agitator who demands accountability for these abuses through the active stance of denunciation in a recreated courtroom. In this way, the theatre-as-courtroom provides a learning experience for the audience by serving as an educative consciousness-raising tool while demanding greater civilian involvement in the future of Egypt. The reconfigured theatrical courtroom gives validity and legitimacy to both performance and interaction in acts of documenting violence and memorializing the dead. The emotionally charged ambiance of the prelude shifts its locus to a bare stage with three upright wooden chairs occupied by three actors – two women and one man. A well-known actor, Aly Sobhy, occupies the first chair. Sobhy, who plays himself, was one of the first protestors to be arrested by the military on March 9, 2011. Next to him sits Shereen Hegazy, who narrates the account of an anonymous prisoner called Shady. This prisoner is, in fact, her own brother, who shares his experiences in prison with his sister through the medium of personal letters. An activist-friend of Sobhy’s named Zeinab occupies the third chair. The narration alternates between two experiences of incarceration, one in October 2007 and the other in March 2011, together with Zeinab’s eyewitness accounts: “We’d been talking about Egyptian prisons and what happens inside them,” states Zeinab (Soliman 2011, 1). The alternating accounts expose the long legacy of military and police violence in Egypt and provide the necessary context and justification for the people’s revolution against the oppression of militarism. In the background, a video clip of the March 9 detainees recorded from a program that had aired previously on state television plays uninterrupted. A reporter praises the military for having apprehended the alleged “thugs” responsible for spreading terror and chaos among the people. Sobhy sits on the stage during the screening impassively refuting the lies that are blatantly announced on-screen. His dishevelled and confused state on-screen contrasts with his clean-shaven and orderly presence on-stage to highlight two conflicting scenarios. A medley of tea bombs, knives and Molotov cocktails are placed in front of the detainees in the televised script as “evidence” of their criminality: “Where they were filmed, shackled and in front of them knives and cutlasses and Molotov cocktails and bombs made from tea,” (9) retorts Zeinab. Sobhy’s staged role is to provide counter-evidence of his innocence and raise concerns about the mediated nature of all representations, staged or screened, in the search for the “truth” behind the unlawful arrests and detentions. As argued by Martin: “Governments ‘spin’ the facts in order to

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tell stories. Theatre spins them right back in order to tell different stories” (2010, 23). Soliman’s emphasis on testimonial corresponds to her urgent need to tell stories that need to be told, as suggested by John Beverley (2004, 61). Beverley affirms: “Testimonio is a transitional cultural form appropriate to processes of rapid social and historical change, but also destined to give way to different forms of representation as these processes move forward … to other stages.” In other words, testimonial narratives respond to a particular moment in history when rapid transformations and the bewildering circumstances they produce necessitate new methods of documenting change. At the same time, this documentation is anchored in what I call a “transcription of pain” articulated by these agents of change who are nevertheless victimized by the change-resistant government. Testimonio is thereby an art form based on a particular mode of visceral narration as well as “a strategy of subaltern memory,” as stated by Beverley (73), to counter the suppression of alternative historiographies by the state. Testimonios provide an alternative to state testimonies mediated through propaganda, falsehoods and selective reporting, wherein “I discovered that what was written in the report was a totally different story from the actual events” (Soliman 2011, 12). In this instance, Aly’s role as actor, witness, documenter and victim is a form of embodied theatrical praxis (Martin 2010, 19), in which he occupies a dual positionality as the narrator and the narrated. His testimony adds veracity to the narration through a humanized firstperson perspective that rescues him from being an impersonalized casualty of the state. Aly thereby embodies the experience of abuse as well as the narration of its excesses as he performs the role of testifier and observer of events before an impassioned audience: “I am going to start from 5 in the afternoon of Wednesday 9 March 2011,” he states at the inception of the play (Soliman 2011, 1). Aly establishes the origin of his story through the precision of dates, time and location, and thereby claims subjectivity in text by documenting the revolution’s as-yet-to-be-written history. As a “popular” oral chronicler and survivor of events, he is positioned as an alternative voice to the duplicity of the state versions of the revolution: “The public prosecutor wrote what he wanted to write,” (9) states Shereen. In addition, Aly’s testimony demonstrates how the state creates its own performance by employing specific personnel whose duty lies in the fabrication of “official” stage settings: “An interior decoration officer was fixing up the set with two soldiers under him. A Director of Photography officer with three or four light crew guys and one cameraman,” (12) reveals Aly. The official titles and the specific duties to be performed convey an impression of authority as opposed to the more informal organization of Soliman’s fringe productions. Hence, the importance of dismantling these “fixed” scenes, in which “the Interior Decorator started adding his personal touches to the display” (12) with other more credible scenarios.

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Aly’s arrest and abuse do not seem to be random acts of violence. As an actor and a regular participant in street theatre, Aly has a recognizable face and a known history of dissidence: “And they were screwing me over because I’m an actor,” he admits (19). Moreover, as a member of Clowns Without Borders, his acts of civil protest disguised as clowning had already placed him in direct opposition to the authorities. His arrest betrays the latent defensiveness of the government – even one dissenting voice can threaten to destabilize its entrenched structures of power. Aly therefore becomes a public example of the brutal repercussions of dissidence. He is stripped of his identity as an actor and as an Egyptian through beatings, electrocution, sleep deprivation and hunger as military tactics of submission. He claims: “They sheared my hair off, like a sheep” (16). Aly’s dehumanization is an attempt made by the army to stifle his right to speech and abduct his rights to selfhood. He nevertheless chronicles the timelines of his arrest, his detention in a military prison in Hikestep and his final release through activist pressure from the outside in order to give his stolen life definite form and meaning in narrative. He posts an account of his ordeal on Facebook upon his release to give his story wider circulation beyond the limits of the stage. When Aly recounts his story on stage, his tone remains detached and impassive: “And here I am after all that saying everything without feeling emotionally affected” (20). Narration provides a cathartic release for the survivor who can unburden himself before a receptive audience. The stage provides a safe space through the mutual bonds of empathy between actor and audience, and the healing qualities of the proverbial “talking cure.” As mentioned earlier, Aly plays the role of a survivor in the play; he survives to tell his story. At the same time, he bridges the gap between acting and testifying through the subjectivity of survival. His duality as an actor-activist releases him from the burden of carrying a personal trauma in solitude through the participatory act of narration. At the same time, when his story enters the realm of public discourse, it becomes a collective narrative detached from a personalized perspective. His story is “owned” by all in rites of collective authorship. The space of detachment also reveals another polemic termed the “unexperienced experience” by Derrida (2000, 47). Because Aly lives to give his testimony, he becomes a proxy for the silenced, all those who have been tortured to death. In her work on Iraqi women and testimonial fiction, Ikram Masmoudi explains that they are: complete witnesses to the horror [who] are no longer alive to tell the story or have been so traumatized that they are unable to speak. The true witness is the absent one, the one who has “touched bottom” and who will never return to tell his story. Thus, at the root of testimony there is an “essential lacuna” – a structural gap – which can be seen as the absence of the “true witness” but also as the space between the language

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Quoting Giorgio Agamben,12 Masmoudi argues that the act of bearing witness is both an “unclaimed” experience, as suggested by trauma theorist Cathy Caruth, and the tentative passage from silence to articulated expression by the “voice” of a mediating agent. In other words, since Aly has not succumbed to the “total” experience of horror through death, he must fill the gap of this “unexperienced” or “unclaimed” experience with words. He must “claim” the voices of the dead in narration and give them ontological presence through the “ghosting effects” (Carlson 2001, 5) of performance. Aly’s detachment exemplifies this as-yet-to-be-experienced “total” moment. This apparent disengagement guards his narrative from ingenious claims to “absolute” witnessing and a total exposure to the “truth” of the witnessing act. At the same time, he commemorates the absent voices of the deceased by the deference found in silent detachment. However, I argue that Aly’s survival is in itself a “resistant claiming” of an inexpressible experience through an act of creativity found in dissident theatre. His assertion takes a performative form in the subjectivity of the surviving victim who contests his own victimhood by refusing total capitulation to an inhumane system: “I told him the whole truth, no more, no less,” (18) he asserts. The intermediary liminalities between the “no more … no less” space is the very site of this affirmation situated in the chiaroscuro of memory and in “resisting narrativity.” As he begins his story, Aly takes the spectator on a visual tour of Tahrir Square, providing a virtual geography of the area with filmic precision. He states: “Lobna and I started moving towards Dar Merit publishing house on Kasr el-Nil Street. But first we decided to take a look at Tahrir Square” (1). He inscribes his story in a definite locus of origin by defining the parameters of Tahrir Square, also known as Liberation Square, as the framework of his narrative. The play highlights the centrality of Tahrir Square as the locus of protest, violence and resistance to demonstrate how “public space remains the most important arena for dissent and social change,” according to Nezar AlSayyad (2011). Tahrir Square provides the necessary center space to map the trajectories of the revolution through familiar landmarks, street signs and intersections: “We walked along Tahrir Street until we got to the square,” (1) states Aly. Due to its central location in the heart of Cairo, Tahrir Square represents the pulse of the revolution in the capital, an indicator of the ebb and flow of a collective history created in public space. Serving as a point of connectivity through accessible public and private transportation routes, the square’s geometric “turnaround” (AlSayyad 2011) configuration can be likened to a canvas or a camera lens on which a national event receives international visibility. On the other hand, Tahrir Square is a stage itself that is propped for multiple performances, both laudatory and infamous. Aly’s profession as a

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street actor inscribes him in a tradition of “modern urban theatre of contention par excellence,” (Bayat 2012, 75) wherein the acting-out of street politics in an improvised open forum solicits a spontaneous and intuitive response from interested onlookers. Street theatre establishes a communal space of exchange and interactive communication through its often-used “call and response” mode, thereby creating a sense of participatory ownership of a public venue by private citizens. When protesting Egyptians lay claim to the square, they simultaneously lay claim to history through spatial negotiations, crowd configurations and “occupation” strategies. Participating in the elaboration of la comédie humaine with its social and human concerns, the protagonists of Tahrir Square appear, disappear and reappear in multiple locations as evidence of their shifting positionalities in the revolutionary cause. Aly states: “Cool, so we kept walking straight until we got to Kasr el-Nil, across from the Egyptian Museum” (Soliman 2011, 3). The square, as a point of access and mobility, is transformed into a dynamic people-centered “alter-nation,” a democratically configured collective space seeking to dismantle the oppressive patriarchy of the dictatorial regime. It is no coincidence that the Tahrir Square uprisings found common cause with the different “occupy” movements worldwide to protest militarism, neo-capitalism and economic sufferance, as well as political repression. Ahdaf Soueif explains this connection in a book review conversation with Julie Tomlin: The occupy movements address the deep injustices of society and the structural problems that have resulted from the economic policies of the last three decades. As such they address many of the deep issues that the revolutions in the Arab world also address. You can basically sum them up as young people don’t like the direction that the world is taking with rampant capitalism, inequality and injustice, ecological disaster – in other words, the world is being run in the interests of the few. (Tomlin 2012) The reclaiming of the “street” is a form of unified protest by the disenfranchised 99% to resist the structural “mis-adjustments” introduced and perpetuated by a transnational ruling elite in the Arab world, Europe, the United States and elsewhere. Asef Bayat describes the particular pertinence of popular politics on the Arab street: Streets as spaces of flow and movement are not only where people protest, but also where they extend their protest beyond their immediate circles to include also the unknown, the “strangers,” who might espouse similar grievances, real or imagined. That is why not only the de-institutionalized groups, such as the unemployed, but also actors with some institutional power, like workers or students, find the street to be a useful arena for the extension of collective sentiments. It is this pandemic potential that

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The democratization of space represents a glaring threat to the military whose very authority is based on spatial policing and regulatory controls aimed at dispersing crowd movement and spatial negotiability. In a counterdefensive, the army stages a counter-occupation maneuver by taking over one of Egypt’s most treasured institutions, its national museum. The museum as a site of civilization, high culture and venerated traditions is quickly transformed into a site of savagery instead, when the army’s brutality exposes its most abject traditions of brute law enforcement. The transformation of the museum annex into a makeshift torture and detention center highlights the desecration of a sanctified space for many Egyptians: “our Egyptian museum,” bemoans Zeinab (Soliman 2011, 3). Her lament is a foreshadowing of a violent turn of events – “she had a feeling that something really bad was about to happen” (3) – as exemplified by the army’s aggression against its own people: “the terrified look on people’s faces” (5). As Aly nears the Egyptian museum, “our Egyptian Museum that the army’s been occupying and using to torture Egyptians,” (3) remarks Zeinab, he witnesses the chaos that erupts when the square is attacked by armed Mubarak supporters and the army. He reports: “We looked back and saw the army and the people,” to which Zeinab adds: “ … who turned out to be the thugs among ‘the people’ … ” (3). The two testimonies by Aly and Zeinab attempt to make sense of a confusing situation, in which the army switches its former allegiance with the people – “and there’s chaos and people running and kids shouting ‘The People and the Army are One’” (3) – to become the enemy of the people overnight.13 Aly exposes this treachery in an eyewitness account: “I went back down to the square and when I got to the museum I saw, wonder of wonders, soldiers rounding up anyone taking photos” (4). Aly’s recording and documenting of events in memory becomes even more important when the army attempts to destroy any incriminating evidence of its misdemeanors. His photographic memory remains invisible to the army’s destructive eyes, thereby permitting him to create a personalized mnemonic archive of events. His direct conversational tone devoid of artifice is a way to document a “street event” as opposed to the “finishing touches of the Interior Director” (12) that polish an already doctored script. Aly’s advantageous position as a witness in the heart of the skirmishes gives him an insider view and perspective: “I went back to my spot and as I was going back I saw them arresting Ismail Gamal” (4). He tries to win the favor of the army by repeating their demoralizing slogans to entrench himself even deeper within army ranks: “I found myself spontaneously saying ‘Yes pick them up those dirty sons of bitches, we can’t go to work because of them!’” (4). His collaboration is a form of subterfuge to get a front-row position. He

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is nevertheless arrested outside the museum when he protests the arbitrary arrest of civilians, especially when he reacts to the arrest of a fellow artist – the musician Ramy Essam, whose protest music won the hearts of the people at Tahrir Square. Ramy’s famous song, “Leave,” directed against Mubarak, became an instant favorite among the protestors and received a record number of YouTube hits. However, Ramy’s fame did not go unnoticed by the authorities. He was arrested and dragged to the museum, where he was stripped, beaten and electrocuted to the point of physical debilitation. In the play, when Aly’s narration shifts to Ramy, it accomplishes an important objective. It deflects attention away from Aly to a comrade who finds himself in a similar situation of abuse. This shift provides the foundation for a communal “fraternity of the aggressed” to highlight the solidarity bonds that exist among Egyptian artists who are fighting for artistic freedom. The multi-focused perspective of Aly’s testimony includes other stories of violence and thereby avoids charges of self-centeredness through a more synchronic alliance with others. When Aly witnesses Ramy’s arrest, he reassures his friend: “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it” (4). His testimony straddles the personal and the collective when his individual story becomes part of a larger multilayered chronicling of violence with multiple actors, different time periods and diverse scenarios. Aly’s subsequent arrest at the army’s makeshift detention center and headquarters lodged in the Egyptian museum demarcates the sites of his ordeal and abjection. His detention together with the imprisoned Shady’s testimony highlight the major sources of dis-ease in contemporary Egypt – the army’s overarching stranglehold of power, the deprivation of prisoner rights, civilian trials in military courts, (“we’re being tried in the officer’s mess,” (19) states Aly, the incarceration of minors in flagrant violation of international law and the lack of a viable justice system whose basic structure depends on “acting, acting, and more acting,” according to Shady’s sister Shereen and the character Zeinab (19). Aly’s arrest serves as a point of entry for Shady’s story, as the two intersecting narratives establish a historical timeline of the army’s infamy from October 2007 to March 2011. Shady’s chronicle of incarceration narrated in the personalized form of letters to his sister provides a written account of violations that complement Aly’s oral testimony. Like Aly, Shady provides a written genealogy of his arrest, imprisonment and “liberation” that highlights the army’s intrusiveness into personal life and its self-given mandate to control life and movement: “we have the right to pick up any person from any place,” (13) states an officer. The letters, oral testimonies and Facebook postings represent archival documents created by the aggressed to record injustice and provide counter-documentation of the state’s version of events from a first-person perspective. As survivor narratives, they represent the important counter-histories that are of interest to Soliman in their capacity to decolonize and de-nationalize the historical process.

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Shady’s story Shady’s desire to remain anonymous reflects two possibilities – the need to protect his identity as a victim of the state – “my name is S.A. I was a student at Tiba Academy” (6) – and his intent to present his story as a collective account of what happens to students and intellectuals who question the militarized legitimacy of the state. Arrested for trumped up charges, Shady represents a threat to the military’s rules of conformity and single-mindedness through his critical skills that seek alternative forms of governance. Ironically, his forced “release” from the Wadi Natroun prison during “the events of the January 25th revolution, when they opened up the prisons and made us leave by force” (16) occurs a few weeks before Aly’s arrest to expose the hide-and-seek game played by the army on unsuspecting individuals. Shady’s testimony is narrated in a reverse chronology as a symbol of the disruptions in his life as well as the alternative chronologies proposed by testimonials that do not follow the linear progressions of history. As a way to debunk historical “progressions” with their fixed plot structure extending from the beginning to the end, the testimonial, on the other hand, charts alternative “regressions” to turn history on its head, as I have shown in Chapter 1 on Algerian women writers. The immediacy of the revolutionary present nevertheless finds its anchor in the shadow lines of the past to establish a continuum between past and present violations highlighted in the two distinct yet complementary testimonials. However, as opposed to Aly’s first-person recounting, Shady’s subjectivity is mediated through the voice of his sister, who reads the letters aloud. The two models of narration reflect different modes of claiming subjectivity, either through “direct” narration or by a proxy narration articulated by a female confidant. This “queering” of voice symbolizes the emasculation suffered by both men in the prison system through the physical and mental colonization of the mind and body in a “necropolitical” landscape. Shady’s physical abuse stems from periods of starvation, mind-play by the justice system, mental interrogations and a regime of beatings: “They left me for two days with no food, no water, no sleep, nothing” (7). Meanwhile, Aly is subjected to the ignominy of torture, “electric shocks … sticks … wooden staffs … electric cables … their army boots” (9). These governmental perversions within the prison complex nevertheless have their root in a systematic pogrom to eradicate all forms of intellectual difference exhibited most prominently by students, artists, writers and other dissidents. As El Saadawi writes about her own incarceration in Memoirs from the Women’s Prison: A writer cannot mount to the pinnacles of literature, and stay there, unless the authorities approve. Everything in our country is in the hands of the state and under its direct or indirect control, by laws known or concealed, by tradition or by a long-established, deeply-rooted fear of the ruling authority. (1986, 3)

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As shown in the Introduction, El Saadawi chronicles her imprisonment by late President Anwar Sadat in 1981 as retaliation for her campaign against intellectual censorship and her belief that “nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies” (quoted in Tomlin 2011). Sadat used the ironically named “precautionary detention order” as his defense against political and intellectual dissidents. Aly and Shady represent these “dissidents of truth” as students and artists responsible for the creative future of Egypt. Their detention and torture in the military prison is an attempt to quell “other voices” that speak other truths about life under a military dictatorship. Shady’s narration begins with a momentous event – the unexpected freeing of prisoners from “Wadi Natroun Prison Compound, Ward 6, 4 a.m.” on “Saturday 29 January 2011” (Soliman 2011, 1). Like Aly, Shady’s narrative establishes its historicity by the precision of dates and the time and hour of his release. The storming of the prison by a joint Hamas-Hezbollah coalition was aimed at releasing political prisoners who had been detained in this facility located to the north of Cairo. Taking advantage of the chaos engendered by the revolution and the concentration of military troops in Tahrir Square, the commandos engineered the escape of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, “militants” and the general antiMubarak prison population. They did not meet any serious resistance from army guards and other prison personnel, whose attention was focused elsewhere: “There wasn’t a single soldier or officer or even a prison guard” (2). The commandos used explosives and grenades to detonate the inner and outer gates of the prison, thereby clearing the passage to the prisoner cells. As indicated in the testimony: “We heard loud noises, really loud heavy machinery noises, like tractors … and then we heard the sounds of demolition and walls falling and people shouting and a huge din” (1). The raid was planned to increase the anti-Mubarak opposition by liberating the “terrorists,” including students like Shady, who were imprisoned for their subversive protest of the potentate’s rule under false charges. Shady documents the surreal nature of the escape: “After about an hour the ward door opened. We saw people with automatic weapons and machines guns. They said: ‘You, all of you … go on, get out … we don’t want anyone in this place’” (1). The commandos stage their own revolution against the regime through armed protest in a joined Egyptian, Palestinian and Lebanese coalition. The testimonial provides another example of teamwork by focusing on the solidarity that exists among the prisoners; these men ensure the evacuation of the entire ward before fleeing the premises in a collective demonstration of liberation: “We opened up the rest of the wards that hadn’t been opened” (2). The prison outbreak represents one of the most memorable events of the uprisings and highlights the different forms of revolution that were taking place within and outside Tahrir Square with the express purpose of uniting the opposition. At the same time, Shady also highlights the methodical nature of the prison escape, displaying the prisoners’ sense of organization and mission in times of chaos: “They started running out into the desert, left and

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right, east and west. More than 20,000 prisoners scattered in every direction. They divided themselves into groups” (2). This eyewitness account undercuts prevailing media reports of disorder and chaos perpetrated among and by the prisoners. At the same time, the prisoners expose themselves to the government’s counter-attack when they take to the open road: “It was about 6 a.m. and the desert was blue with prisoners” (2). The contrasting shades of blue against the desert’s bleak landscape make the prisoners visible targets of aerial attacks. At this point, Shereen’s own testimony takes over and covers the gaps left by her brother’s narrative during the counter-offensive: “The helicopters came out and started shooting at them … lots of people dying” (4). The collective multi-narrator dimension of the testimonial is revealed when the sister assumes and restores her brother’s subjectivity by filling the void created by his disappearance with the collaborating presence of her words. This fracture in the narrative becomes the pivoting point to spin the story back to its origin, namely, the initial cause for Shady’s arrest and his subsequent imprisonment in Wadi Natroun for three years: “And this is how it began” (6). His narrative demonstrates how the police, together with the military, as in the case of Aly, have the unilateral authority to enter, disrupt and violate private space through their coercive rights of possession: On 8 December 2007 we were studying and I went to bed and after about an hour a bunch of people came in to the room. It was obvious they were police, they had automatic weapons … They blindfolded me and put me in a pickup truck and handcuffed me inside. We were driving for about an hour and a half or two hours. They didn’t take off the blindfold until I was inside a room. From there I went into another room and they handcuffed me to the bed. (6–7) Both Shady’s and Aly’s testimonials begin with an act of violence – the aggression of the free citizen and the occupation of private space. El Saadawi references a similar violation in Memoirs from the Women’s Prison, an unannounced intrusion into the private sanctum of her home by the police with a warrant for her arrest and incarceration. She tells the officers: “You broke down the door. This is a crime” (7). The authorities’ jurisdiction over the private and the public creates a culture of unease or, as Diana Medlicott argues, “an ontological insecurity” … [that] … “comes about when individuals are forcibly prevented from exercising autonomy over their bodies, and excluded from predictable and safe routines and encounters. It is a state of unease where all confidence and trust in the surrounding environment disappears” (2003, 9). Shady experiences the full impact of this ontological unease in prison when trumped up charges for drug possession (Soliman 2011, 8), the pathological execution of prison law, and the corruption of the judicial system leave him in

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a state of suspension: “a few months later there was a hearing, then it was postponed” (11). Postponed hearings – “and my lawyer kept postponing, once, twice, three times … ” (12) –, inhuman treatment, kangaroo courts – “hahahaha nothing, you’ll appear before the court hahahahaha and you’re gonna get 5 to 7 years, hahahahahaha” (18) – and the cavalier attitude of judicial officers are evidence of what Medlicott calls a “heightened atmosphere of punitive loathing” (2003, 8) that creates an adversarial relation between the authorities and the detained. This connection mirrors the culture of hate espoused by the government toward its dissenting citizens, and it establishes close synergies between the workings of the dictatorial state and the machinery of abjection that binds the carceral system. A perverted fraternity of power-mad state officials, members of the judiciary, military men, secret service agents, policemen, religious traditionalists and prison officials dramatize the insidious workings of patriarchy and the hydraheaded patriarchal class system that remains responsible for anti-democratic legislation. This duplicity is most evident in the workings of the prison system revealed in Aly’s torture and abuse, as well as in Shady’s heightened insecurity at an uncertain fate in prison: “we were terrified of our unknown fate” (11). The torture and abuse of detainees represents one of the darkest chapters of the revolution and remains in flagrant violation of human rights and civilian protection codes. As stated by the May 19, 2011 Amnesty International Report: It is unclear under what legal framework, if any, the arrests and detentions of these individuals took place. Even basic safeguards provided for in Egyptian legislation, including emergency provisions, such as informing detainees of the reasons for their arrest, giving them access to a lawyer, and allowing them to contact someone of their choice, were not respected. In all cases documented by Amnesty International, such detainees were held incommunicado. (2011) No Time for Art exposes these “invisible” violations and condemns the close interchanges between the prison complex and the militarized state. These collaborations were responsible for endless acts of criminality. When Aly is transferred to the military prison, he sees a larger-than-life image of Mubarak dominating the prison complex. Mubarak establishes his dubious eminence in his dual position as head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces like a postmodern pharaoh: “We got to the Armed Forces’ Main Prison at Hikestep and the first thing we saw was a huuuuuuuuuuuge picture of their boss, Hosni Mubarak” (Soliman 2011, 15). The panoptic eye of the national leader projects its omnipresence through a commanding vantage point of surveillance and control, a symbol of the military’s “total system of power” (Medlicott 2003, 8) and overarching

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influence in Egypt even today. This consolidated power explains why the armed forces were able to terrorize and torture civilians with impunity during the Mubarak era and in the aftermath of the revolution without worrying about retribution or charges of accountability. As stated by Cynthia Schneider and Khaled Abol Naga: “By trapping civilian protesters inside the military system, the [former] ruling military council completes the cycle of intimidation against Egyptian citizens” (2012). Egyptians are held hostage by military power, wherein they ransom their lives within the prison complex in the absence of justice: “One does not feel very hopeful when one sees men in uniform,” admits Soliman in her interview with Sharma (2011). As highlighted in the play, the arrests and detentions are crafted within a specific discourse of hyper-nationalism and xenophobia targeting the protestors and activists as enemies of the state co-opted by foreign interests: “those dirty sons of bitches who ruined the country” (Soliman 2011, 4). The army and security forces use the guise of national protection to wound and kill in acts of patriotic duty deemed essential for the nation’s security. The detainees are stripped of citizenship like “piles of meat tossed on the ground” (9). They can be brutally manhandled, as they have lost their human status in their newly conferred identity as commodified “objects” of violence: “ … the soldiers of Egypt’s armed forces on top of them, raining down on them all kinds of beating and torture: electric shocks … sticks … wooden staffs … electric cables … their army boots” (9). Aly inscribes his own brutalization by torture within a larger documentation of torture to create a legal case against the government: The blow landed square in my chest, in exactly the spot where I had my lung surgery two years ago, which left scars, which I still suffer from. I fell on the ground, sure that I would never stand again. They dragged me by the hair. (8) At the same time, he also provides a documented case study of life under militarism as a just cause for the revolution. “I started to say my testament of faith” (8), he admits as he frames his manifesto for justice. His testimony also reveals how the government uses war-like tactics against its own people to create a situation of internal siege and domestic terror in a carefully guarded carceral network. As argued by Medlicott: In any given prison system, the systematized and state-sanctioned set of power relations, which is mediated and operated in distinctive ways in each society, is actually personalized. That is to say, it is put into practice: the technology of power attempts to dominate, control, subjugate and humiliate individual men, women and children. The tools of this power … in combination are totalitarian, extreme, and monolithic. (2003, 8)

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Torture, rape, and other forms of violence are militaristic strategies used in war to dehumanize, traumatize, dishonor and defeat entire groups of people. This violence effectuates long-term bodily and mental alterations through physical disability and psychological incapacity destined to create conforming bodies and dominated wills. The dissident’s “dangerous” opposition to this state of zombification makes him or her the ultimate opponent, a sentiment revealed by El Saadawi in her prison memoirs referred to in the Introduction: “I had not imagined that pen and paper could be more dangerous than pistols in the world of reality and fact” (1986, 49). The oppositional positioning of the gun and the pen or any other medium of art disrupts the stranglehold of the state through the fissures and fault lines crafted by dissident art: “They should be afraid of me because I am a threat,” says El Saadawi referring to the authorities (Tomlin 2011). The threatening power of art comes from its capacity to effect social change, to dream of a revolution that will create an “other” Egypt with demilitarized ideals. At the same time, the play is also a deep protest against the theft of innocence witnessed by the incarceration of “street” children and the corruption of vulnerable minds through youth conscription in the army. Making a statement about the criminalization of Egypt’s future generations, the play raises awareness about the detention and military trial of minors – “every group is ten kids, young as roses” (Soliman 2011, 17) – as it reveals how the army manipulates young people into joining a life of service through the perceived lure of armed power. Aly’s torture infantilizes his physical appearance in the absence of teeth and hair “because your front teeth are gone and your hair was a mess” (12), states Zeinab. His torture, wherein “he slammed me in the chest with his army boots … And this officer was jumping up and down on me and falling onto me and getting up and jumping up and down on every part of me” (8) is meant to reduce him to a fetal-like stage of submission when plummeting blows and their aftershock make him cower, fall to the ground and protect himself from further beating through bodily distortions: “and they kept hitting me in the knees and shins and I would fall towards the ground.” The perpetrators of this violence are: “the soldier kids were holding me by the arms and pushing me forward” (8). As accomplices in the machinery of torture, the kid soldiers are exposed to the seduction of power at a young age. Violence enables them to access their as-yet-to-be-attained virility prematurely in the absence of other venues of empowerment in an elitist patriarchal society. They remain manipulated intermediaries in a system governed by an elite core of officers, such as the Supreme Council. The play demonstrates how the kid soldiers are used as weapons of war against other beleaguered youth in a perverted power play controlled by seniors. These soldiers are the “perfect weapons” in an already militarized system because they are “easily manipulated, intensely loyal, fearless, and, most important, in endless supply,” according to Jeffrey Gettleman (2011). However, instead of stereotyping all the youth soldiers, Aly’s testimony also highlights acts of kindness performed

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by some of them who are still incapable of completely abdicating their “innocence.” Aly describes one soldier’s humanity: “A kind soldier came around giving us water and he seemed really moved by our appearance” (Soliman 2011, 10). The soldier probably realizes there is a delicate balance between himself and the detainees: any act of insubordination on his part will automatically place him on a “wanted” list. At the same time, he can also “imagine” the plight of the detainees since he himself has been subjected to the army’s brutal initiation rites during his training: “Soldiers said they’d gone 45 days without removing their boots, and that was the only problem that made them beat us … that they hadn’t taken off their army boots in 45 days” (16). The recruits undergo their own regimen of torture when swollen, smelly and infected feet create toxic imbalances capable of provoking noxious behavior. For the army, the performance of grown-up duties by a young recruit already makes him an adult before the law. It is therefore no surprise to see how child victims are also treated as adults in a military court in which a criminal system beats them into subservience or condemns them with a life sentence. Unable to stage their own defense, underprivileged children are easy targets in an uncompromising system that takes advantage of the most vulnerable members of society: “Let’s just hope he doesn’t get a death sentence,” worries Zeinab when Aly describes the ordeal of an unsuspecting child who has just been framed for an officer’s injury (13). Ironically, the military man gets a civilian trial, while civilians are court-martialled in an inverted justice system.

The resisting self Aly’s and Shady’s testimonies are personal manifestos representing “a public performance or announcement of an individual’s interpretation of experience on behalf of and as part of the larger group accessing and mapping borders of public-private and personal-political,” according to Daphne Grace (2007, 182). These stories are narratives of survival ensconced in the complex workings of trauma, memory, resistance and re-membering. They represent a means of coping with the horror of what victims have witnessed around them as well as their personal experiences. These interstitial narratives located in the indeterminate intersections of the public and private are not only meant to transmit the traumatic experiences of pain in confinement, they are also deeply reflective narratives that lead both men into an inward journey of introspection. For example, Aly’s near-death experiences spark an epiphany after a prolonged bout of beatings and electric shock treatments: “And only here did I begin to be sure of my strength, because I wasn’t dead yet” (Soliman 2011, 8). His inner strength gives him the will to survive and testify rather than become another victim of the state’s machinery. The liminal space between life and death is a point of re-creation for Aly, who summons a superhuman strength to brave his ordeal. Like a spiritual mantra– “and that’s

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all I kept repeating until I got into the car” (8) – Aly experiences what I call a “third eye vision,” when the brutalization of his physical body becomes a conduit to access a higher plane of spiritual consciousness in an out-of-body experience: “Here I decided to live and I started saying God save us from these infidels because I have to tell just this part of the story” (10). The abjection of prison leads to a metaphoric and actualized shedding of old skin through the creation of a “new” self that has been significantly “altered” by this experience. As stated by Medlicott: For some prisoners, they are nudged toward a kind of heightened awareness not just of their inner self, but of their place in the world. They reflect on life, on present experience, and on what is truly felt to be important. This heightened awareness comes to them in a place where anxiety is naturally generated, by the very nature of incarceration. (2003, 10) Barbara Harlow makes a similar argument in her work on detention and prison writing: Penal institutions, despite, if not, because of, their function as part of the state’s coercive apparatus of physical detentions and ideological containments, provide the critical space within which, indeed from out of which, alternative social and political practices of counter-hegemonic resistance movements are schooled. (1992, 10) The repressive and restrictive physicality of the prison provides the space for the counter-hegemonic defense of the detainee who refuses to let his physical limitations impede the scope for revolutionary critical thinking. Similarly, Aly sees himself with new eyes upon his release due to the egotranscending trajectories of prison. Shady makes a similar comment about his newly found knowledge of the self: “I’ve never been as strong as I am right now” (Soliman 2011, 21). The prison ordeal leads to a recovery of self despite the systematic efforts to depersonalize the detainees. This act of recovery is, in itself, an act of discovering the true self. As El Saadawi writes in prison: “In prison, a person’s essence comes to light. One stands naked before oneself, and before others. Masks drop and slogans fall. In prison, one’s true metal is revealed, particularly in times of crisis” (1986, 129). The harshness of torture, detention and incarceration provides Shady and Aly with the necessary tools to become committed activists devoted to a life-term calling to social justice: “And I know that I won’t be done until I die” (Soliman 2011, 21). His spiritual and socially conscious mission coincides with the people’s heightened fervor to restore Egypt’s integrity as a progressive nation through the fires of popular revolution: “And the only way to get rid of us is to finish off the people of Egypt,” proclaims Zeinab, to which another character, the blind

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musician Mustafa, shouts, “Long live the struggle of the Egyptian people” (21). All the characters understand that Egypt’s transition to a more favorable level of existence will involve prolonged commitment, resistance and sacrifice, a cause they are willing to fight for in the name of “national” rights. The public posting of Aly’s story on Facebook represents a visible protest calling for prison reform and the internal overhauling of corrupted and decaying socio-political structures favored by the military regime. His insistence on playing himself is an attempt to come to terms with his tribulations in a repeated acting-out of pain, as well as a desire to become a “voice of conscience” through the “open protest” medium of the stage. Representing a generation that has been revolutionized by the call for freedom, Aly and others join theatre activists like Soliman to imagine a better future. As mentioned earlier, Soliman’s commitment to revolutionary art does not stop at the stage. The official website of No Time for Art dedicates a section to a public appeal calling people to write and tweet their support to end the military trial of civilians using the hashtag #StopSCAF. The No Time for Art coalition also republishes testimonies that have been documented at El Nadeem Center of the torture experienced by thousands of detainees like Aly. Anxious to create a public document of survivor stories, these activists, writers and performers are determined to rewrite the history of the Tahrir Square revolution from the point of view of survivors and creative dissidents because, according to Zeinab, “they’re going to see these words sooner or later” (20). Each staging of No Time for Art in its multiple forms renews the commitment to liberate Egypt from the sullied fetters of the past in a creative and political reclaiming of a cherished homeland. The play makes a forceful statement against state violence, as it urges Egyptians to speak out against abuse and reclaim the human right to free expression. Aly’s testimony, together with the work of the El Nadeem Center, has encouraged other torture victims to come forth and tell their stories in acts of public disclosure. These stories provide the necessary chapters for the chronicling of the Tahrir Square testimonials. However, even though the play ends on a note of firm resolution, the characters are cognizant of the fact that the road to change is slow, painful and arduous. It is possible that they may not witness the organic social and political transformation of Egypt in their lifetimes. As Soliman admits: The priority is a just legal system. Everything depends on that: the constitution, the police and how people are treated. The police also has to be completely reformed. Social injustice is already great enough in a country with such a small middle class. But it is really not the way it should be, to have all these men in uniform. (Zimmerman 2011) The struggle continues with a new set of political players and the continued resilience of Egyptian men, women and children.

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Commemorating “Blue Bra Day” Soliman’s unpublished feminist play, Blue Bra Day, represents a powerful cry against the military’s cruelty against female protestors, who suffer the same abuse as political and intellectual dissenters. The army’s misogynist attitude is exemplified by its brutal treatment of an anonymous woman wearing a blue bra. The woman is pummelled with blows, beaten and stomped on with heavy military boots. As she is dragged through Tahrir Square, her clothes and body veil (abaya) are ripped apart, exposing a bare torso adorned by the vividly colored bra. This moment of infamy has been captured for posterity on video, camera, smartphones and TV as proof of a crime committed by a cohort of soldiers against a defenseless woman. In fact, the blue bra incident has come to represent one of the defining images of the Tahrir Square uprisings, eliciting outraged responses from audiences worldwide as well as from artists and intellectuals within Egypt. Soliman was one of the protestors who joined a large women’s march protesting the treatment of the blue bra woman and other violated women like her. The play is short and visceral in its expression. It condenses the intensity of the playwright’s emotions into a frenzied scream of anguish for the woman who suffers a public raping in front of the media and a transnational audience. The image of her aggression is frozen in time and space on the media screen through the clicking of the camera and the flicking on of the video switch. Its repeated viewing and screening multiplies the violation through projection and repetition, a symbol of the repeated traumas faced by the women of Tahrir Square. The play is commendable for the issues it raises as well as for its actual “narration to the moment” to demonstrate how Soliman is more interested in empathetic human responses to a violation rather than mediated reactions demonstrated by the Military Council’s calculated response to this incident. It is therefore instructive to provide the specific social and political context for Blue Bra Day for a better understanding of the play’s significance. The Tahrir Square demonstrations revealed the powerfully visible presence of women who chanted, shouted and sang for their personal liberties and the civil rights of all Egyptians. Their participation represented acts of solidarity with male protestors, planned protest against a dictatorial state and its violent henchman, and a general refusal to accept minority status within the patriarchal confines of the nation. The sheer volume of the female presence projected repeatedly on media screens stunned the Western world that was more accustomed to seeing orientalized images of “repressed” veiled women restricted to spatial shadows and confinement. Westerners were amazed to see veiled and unveiled, young and old, urban and rural women and girls occupy center stage in their bid to register their protests visibly and vocally, as if Arab women’s participation in revolutionary action were a new and unknown phenomenon. As stated by Juan Cole and Shahin Cole: The Arab Spring has proven an epochal period of activism and change for women, recalling the role of early feminists in the 1919 Egyptian

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The women of Tahrir Square demonstrated their ability to organize on the ground in multiple ways – street activism and community associations; reporting events; making posters and slogans; providing food and shelter to the protestors; participating in social networking systems, such as tweets and Facebook forums; mobilizing student and volunteer groups; and promoting the idea of a unified revolutionary Egypt through the gendered participation of men, women and children. In a statement issued by ten prominent feminist NGOs in Egypt on February 16, 2011, the women outlined their agendas clearly: As women, we have been active participants in the Egyptian popular revolution and will continue this role, insisting on the full participation of women in the political and decision-making processes in the coming period. We believe that the elimination of all forms of discrimination – not only those based on gender, but also on class, race, belief or ideological affiliation – is the way to achieve citizenship for all. (Soueif 2012b) The military, however, had other plans for its citizens, when it launched its own anti-woman campaign of sexualized terror a few days later on March 9 (Soueif 2012b). The military was more interested in humiliating, intimidating and physically violating the women with the ultimate goal of obliterating the feminine presence in Tahrir Square. As stated by Hamid Dabashi: “Women were not only at the forefront of the revolutionary uprisings. They were also its first and foremost victims – the first targets of the brutal repressions that those in power launched against the uprising” (2012, 186). The calculated violence against the Tahrir Square women by a combined military, police and presidential “special forces” fraternity is reminiscent of the violation of women during the Algerian civil war discussed in Chapter 2. Their brutal aggression in Tahrir Square represents one of the darkest chapters of the revolution, linking state violence to specific forms of gendered violence found in rape, groping, beatings, bullying, verbal harassment, incarceration, body probing and even death. Levels of violence against women have increased exponentially since the early days of the revolution with charges of mob violence financed by members of the former Muslim Brotherhood. Moreover, Egyptian women complain about their continued harassment in the post–Brotherhood era. Caught between the brutality of radicalized military and religious patriarchies, the women of Tahrir Square continue their protests undaunted. They are emboldened by the spirit of sisterhood shared with other demonstrators and the support systems organized for their safe passage as they chart

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their resistance to and from the public square. As stated by El Saadawi: “There is a counter-revolution that is trying to abort the revolution in Egypt” (Al Yafai 2012). The state coverage of sexual violence has vacillated between complete denial to the carefully crafted manipulation of events. Questions related to gendered violence against women have been couched in moralizing discourses on honor and shame according to a national dictate that locates a nation’s honor on the body of its women. The punishing of a woman’s “dishonorable” act of public “exposure” is apparently justified by the politically mandated credo of shaming her into conformity and submission. As stated by Yasmine Nagaty: In the aftermath of the January 25th revolution and the ongoing struggle for freedom in Egypt, the question of state-sponsored sexual violence and capitalization on the discourse of “shaming” has become a critically important topic of discussion. Although sexual violence predates the revolution, Egypt has been making headlines for the past two years for mob street harassment. As security in the country began to wane, such incidents have rocketed for many reasons. In part, this exists in order to deter Egyptian women from taking to the streets in protest. (2012) Sexual violence thereby represents a war tactic used by the counter-revolution to deny women their rightful access to public space by circumscribing their freedom of movement. At the same time, these gendered forms of violence target women’s access to free expression by inhibiting their participation in popular protest. The sexualized and criminalized reconfiguring of the “Arab street” (Bayat 2012) is as an overt form of street warfare against women. This violence is nevertheless couched in patriarchal morality codes destined to further target and restrict their agency. These morality codes associate a woman’s public presence with the sexual service connotations of prostitution and the so-called “free” access to publicly available women. The women are transformed into sexually commodified targets that circulate within a patriarchal cordon of desire and violence in gender-determined spatial confrontations between public and private space. These spatial limits are regulated by a coalition of soldiers, policemen and paid thugs who are determined to mark the uprisings with a masculine imprint. When a woman “reveals” herself in public, she automatically commits a shameful act that needs to be “corrected” by disciplinary action. As stated by activist and women’s rights researcher Nadya Khalife: “Images of soldiers and police stripping, groping and beating protesters have horrified the world and brought into sharp focus the sexual brutality Egyptian women face in public life” (El Wardani 2012). On the one hand, a woman’s crossing from private to public space represents spatial transgression. At the same time, she compromises her virginity

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by entering a male-defined arena in a supposedly sexualized act compromising the honor of her nation and family. She must therefore be “tested” by the morality police, who will determine her respectability according to its own apparatus of power. This power is reflected in the virginity tests conducted by the military to determine the chastity of female protestors who are thereby caught in a rigid purity/promiscuity binary. According to Nagaty: In a country where women’s “chastity” is held at high regard, such gross violations of a woman’s physical space have been successful in shaming Egyptian women – they have successfully struck a nerve … Again, this is not new, but has recently magnified in size and frequency. What has become glaringly “new” as far as shaming and sexual violence is concerned is the role of the state in capitalizing on such discourse. (2012) In other words, the state has authenticated the use of violence as a form of sexual and political oppression to denigrate the women and thereby confer/ confirm the virility of the men according “to the oppressive notion that shame can only be found on the body of woman as opposed to the conduct of man” (Nagaty 2012). The uprisings attempt to preserve their patriarchal thrust by evicting women from public space through intimidation and force in a powered directive to control and preserve the masculinity of open spaces like Tahrir Square. This strategy is reminiscent of the nationalist struggles that marginalized the presence and contributions of women in Egypt, Algeria and other locations. At the same time, gendered spatial markings receive another perverted twist when women protestors are not protected in private spaces either. Their violations continue within the “secret” spaces of detention centers, prisons and police headquarters. The women’s sexual subalternity is thereby institutionalized by patriarchal takeovers that dis-place the bodies of women in a masculinized politic of spatial and corporeal control. As stated by Magda Adli: Many female protesters are threatened with rape in detention and are often told that any woman who joins a protest is a prostitute. Many women told us that when officers beat them with electric sticks they focused on the sensitive and private parts of their bodies. (El-Wardani 2012) The sexualization of violence for “unwomanly” behavior embeds the state’s signature on a woman’s most intimate parts as a form of branding. This act is destined to dispossess women through the proprietary rights of the militarized state and its oppressive machinery that determines how and to what degree a woman can be “recast” to conform to normative morality dictates. As argued by activist Nevine Ebeid:

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The security forces send a clear message when using sexual violence against protesters. The message is beat the weak and you scare the strong. In a patriarchal society, if you beat women, you scare women and men … This is how oppressive regimes operate – exactly like Mubarak used to. They attack marginalized groups and the whole society is scared. (El-Wardani 2012) At the same time, open demonstrations of masculinity found in the unrestrained sexual violation of women nevertheless seek the privacy of nondisclosure to maintain the sanctity of the men’s conduct. As revealed by Magda Adli: “Members of Egypt’s ruling military council often get angry if anyone brings up these violations or objects to them. While many activist report abuses, few follow up on their respective cases to make sure offending officers are punished” (El-Wardani 2012). The male conspiracy of silence to conceal the state’s sexualized excesses is supported by a protective apparatus of whitewashing that includes censorship and mediated reporting. This strategy ironically preserves the honor of men who dishonor women. Hypocritically devised honor codes discriminate on the basis of gender, class and power, placing women at a manipulated disadvantage. However, women have refused to accept their violations in silence. They have fought back to reclaim their presence in public space by valiantly launching their own fight against shame in dissident acts of feminist strength: “The Egyptian Revolution has after all proven to be feminist,” states writer Zainab Magdy, “because it has been about injustice whatever form it takes” (2011). The fight against injustice provides the basic credo of Blue Bra Day. Using a minimalist decor with two actors, Laila and her housekeeper Karima, Soliman shows her solidarity with the blue bra woman by memorializing her story in scripted form. As argued by Magdy: “Writing has come to mean place and presence, and presence gives us power to force those who don’t acknowledge our existence to admit that they can hear the sound of our breath” (2011). The play gives form and presence to the woman’s story, ensuring that her ordeal will not be erased from the revolution’s memory. Her breath is revived in each utterance and every emotion displayed by the actors as she is dragged breathless through the streets of Cairo. The playwright documents her scenario by providing a specific date, time and place. She localizes the event by framing it within a specific temporality as a point of convergence and detailing: “Blue Bra Day. Downtown Cairo, 17.12.2011, 8 am” (Soliman 2011a). She thereby draws attention to what I call “eyewitness specificity” by superimposing a collectivity of gazes on a singular event. This ocular multiplicity includes the eyewitness viewing of a coalition of spectators, including the playwright and her cast, the audience, demonstrators at Tahrir Square, local and international viewers, and the perpetrators themselves. The play nevertheless represents the ultimate witness to this infamy by providing a scripted testimony: “Look how they are pulling the woman by the

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hair,” screams Laila. The imperative to “look” is directed at a wide audience of transfixed onlookers; their multiple gazes are intended to displace the penetrating fixity of the one-eyed panopticon representing the state’s unifocused vision and its concentrated power, as analyzed in Junun. This selfreflecting gaze symbolizes absolute authority manifested in the tunnel vision of the dictator and his alter ego, the military chief. According to Karima: “They want to show us they are still the masters and that we are still their slaves.” A public incident of violence reaches the inner recesses of Laila’s home through the medium of technology and thereby establishes its “intimacy” within the narrator’s home space. Laila watches the woman’s misfortune on her laptop screen, responding with passion and incredulity. In the background, a large screen projects the violence in larger-than-life form to the audience in a double take that is situated in micro and macro spaces – the privacy of the personal laptop and the general visibility of the wide screen. This spatial in-betweeness highlights the monumental nature of the aggression that cannot be ignored either on a personal or collective level. The incident takes on the symbolic value of an individual and communal nightmare that is projected onto the open screen of Tahrir Square. Laila shares the video with Karima who exclaims: “Look how the infidels pulled her veil away. What a nightmare! We are in a nightmare!” The reactions of the women are important for their woman-centered perspectives. They provide an insight into some of the ways in which women respond to the violation of other women: “God forbid. What milk did they drink,” screams Karima. Karima’s exclamation highlights an acquired cultural misogyny toward women that is nourished by tainted milk. Violence against women represents the rejection of the mother’s good milk in favor of inherited gender biases. The play shows how these imbalances are instated by the guardians and fathers of the nation who take perverse pride in committing immoral acts against honorable abaya-wearing women: “Are they from the Police or the Army,” asks Karima. “They are both the same,” replies Laila. “The same dogs,” states Karima. The displacement of the mother by a succession of ruthless fathers creates a culture of militarized violence in the absence of a loving ethic: “May God burn them in hell, and may Tantawi be the first amongst them, this, this dog of Mubarak,” cries Karima. Mubarak’s ouster perversely safeguards his authority and male lineage in the form of the military man Tantawi and later, the brotherhood man Morsi, who maintain the entrenched structures of patriarchy in thought and action. Patriarchal succession rights are inscribed in a duplicitous language of deceit and camouflage destined to control and manipulate the “recording” of events. The patriarch proclaims his innocence by sanitizing his narration of the incident and by monitoring any counter-narratives that will compromise his impervious account. He uses brute force as another form of patriarchal language to preserve the sanctity of this discourse. According to the state’s official reports, the woman in the blue bra is beaten because of her partial

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nakedness under the abaya. Her public nudity apparently justifies a public punishment to preserve the morality codes inscribed in stereotypical gender prescriptions. She becomes the scapegoat of an outmoded gender directive associating dissenting women with dishonor and shame. A superficial glance at the blue bra video shows a bra and a pair of jeans as the woman’s only clothing. Karima asks: “Oh my God, is she naked? Why?” To which she receives Laila’s response: “Yes. Pulling her, they undressed her.” On closer viewing, the woman’s tattered clothes appear hidden under the abaya as if the offending soldiers deliberately undressed her to justify their violence. They surround her carrying batons and sticks poised for action in a suggestive act of gang rape. The woman’s bare torso represents the infamous “invitation” to violate her. Her body provides a blank slate on which the state imposes its enforced grafting of power. These distorted hieroglyphics take shape in boot imprints, gashes, blows and kicks: “Oh my god,” cries Karima, “are they kicking her on her naked chest with their army boots!” As morality enforcers, the soldiers are state intermediaries entrusted with the task of “interpreting” its hypocritical dictum through the recognizable discourse of violence, a tactic also revealed in No Time for Art. When a soldier hastily covers the woman at the end of the act, he performs a quick cover-up to hide the woman’s wounds from public eyes. Her covered body conceals the soldiers’ crimes as the men make a quick getaway unscathed. The Military Council attempts to manipulate details of the event when it uses technology for dishonorable purposes by using photoshop techniques to alter and fake images. Laila retorts: “The military council does not even comprehend that you cannot photoshop video. Avatar makers couldn’t fake that video. How could anyone be so naïve? … No, of course she was wearing other things, not only a bra waiting to get undressed like a ‘bad’ woman.” The military’s technological ineptness mirrors its antiquated gender misogyny to reveal how gender “regression” cannot have a place in twentyfirst-century Egypt. The discord between militarism, women’s rights and democracy plagues the nation in which “we are undressed and killed on this road to democracy by the internationally respected transitional leaders, those military dogs,” screams Laila. The Egyptian military is the brutal force behind the counter-revolution bolstered by a transnational patriarchy with colluding power-driven capitalist interests, a dishonorable sign of its infidel status in an economically ravaged country. As stated by El Saadawi: “The counter-revolution is in two parts: the powers outside the country, the western powers that are benefitting from the oil of the Middle East. And the inside power that is the local government and the military” (Al Yafai 2012). El Saadawi also includes the ruling Muslim Brotherhood as part of this fraternity: because the Muslim Brotherhood are capitalists. The Brotherhood and the Salafi groups and the Christian groups, all religious groups, they don’t have an economic policy … They don’t care about poverty, because most

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Laila Soliman’s No Time for Art and Blue Bra Day of them are rich, they are the upper class or upper middle class, who benefit from capitalism. So they want to divert the revolution from its economic and social goals, to superficial things like … the beard, the moustache, the veil and all that nonsense. (Al Yafai 2012)

At the same time, the soldier’s action could also represent his remorse for violating an unprotected sister in a shameful act, thereby bringing dishonor to his own family. If patriarchal values establish men as the guardians of women, the soldier fails in this duty by refusing to defend the woman against his vengeful peers. The play makes a statement about the psychology of male violence against women and attempts to determine its underlying roots. It offers varying perspectives on violence through the different voices of its characters. These voices seek to determine whether violence is dictated by family, local culture, militarization, patriarchal oppression, social mores, or politicized forms of religion – or if it is a combination of all these factors. What is the connection between poverty and conformity? Are soldiers themselves pawns in a larger power play? As Karima asks: “Don’t they have mothers and wives? … No shame? … May they feel the pain our children felt in their bodies for eternity. Those who gave the orders and those who followed them for the few pennies they get.” Karima’s questions lead to further interrogations reminiscent of the questions raised by Soliman herself in No Time for Art and Maïssa Bey in her short stories Nouvelles d’Algérie. When do soldiers become mercenaries for a few pennies? Does violence emasculate them by stripping them of their humanity or is violence the only way to reclaim a compromised masculinity in the face of poverty and economic hardship? Who bears the responsibility for acts of infamy: those who give the orders or those who execute them blindly? Karima’s outburst places the blame squarely on the shoulders of those who give and receive orders in a patriarchal pact sealed by hypocritical “inhuman infidels” and their deadly governance of Egypt. The play ends on a tentative note, eluding any fixed resolution or conclusion. On the one hand, the playwright it heartened by the women’s heightened activism after this outrage: “It is cool to see the women’s marches the next day on the news, no?” Yet, she remarks with irony: Egypt is now so democratic and women march in thousands now, but why? Did you think about that? Why do you do the maximum? Why do they take the risks they take? Maybe because they, we are beyond afraid. Maybe when you feel the weakest then you find your strength. Laila the actor merges with Laila the activist in the “they = we” equation to show how Laila’s staged dissidence complements her dissident activism in everyday life. Like Laila the dramatist-activist, the women of Egypt continue to demonstrate their strength despite the setbacks they have faced in the

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post-Tahrir Square period. They realize they have everything to lose through disengagement, cynicism and pessimism. “This revolution is far from over,” states Soliman in another unpublished play, Lessons in Revolting. For the women of Tahrir Square also, their feminist struggles continue under a new government’s “fraternal” credo. Their aspirations are best outlined in the words of writer-activist Azza Kamel: Women are half of the society and it is time that we are treated with respect. This revolution was about getting back our dignity. It was about social justice and that is why change has to happen. It is all about changing cultural attitudes and social norms. This won’t happen overnight, but this is a time of new beginnings and it is our revolution too. (Amin 2012) Soliman’s plays and her creative activism dramatize the ideals of Egypt’s aggressed men, women and children who demonstrate daily in Tahrir Square with the hope of reclaiming their compromised nation. Indeed, the Egyptian revolution is far from over.

Notes 1 Autobiographical details can be found at: http://www.blogger.com/profile/ 03121952168388692897. Accessed July 1, 2011. 2 The former three plays (as yet unscripted) can be accessed at the following websites: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDrT_kU0H4g (The Retreaing World); www. youtube.com/watch?v=C6m17rD3AB8 (Ghorba: Images of Alienation); and www. youtube.com/watch?v=xDrT_kU0H4g (At Your Service). 3 For more information, see: http://www.kent.ac.uk/arts/news-items/creative_prac tices.html. Accessed July 1, 2012. 4 See Laila Soliman’s No Time for Art. 5 Egyptian novelist and cultural critic Ahdaf Soueif chronicles the first eighteen days of the revolution in her memoir, Cairo: My City, Our Revolution. Also consult reporter Ashraf Khalil’s book, Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation. 6 Omar Suleiman was the chief of Egypt’s intelligence services and a close confidant of Mubarak. He died in the US on July 19, 2012 at the age of 76. See: http://www. bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18899004. Accessed August 18, 2012. 7 Refer to http://aasilahmad.net/abu-al-qasim-al-shabi-the-poet-of-the-tunisia-andegyptian-revolution/ (Accessed August 18, 2012). Also consult Elliot Colla’s translation of the poem at the following site: http://arablit.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/ two-translations-of-abu-al-qasim-al-shabis-if-the-people-wanted-life-one-day/ (Accessed May 30, 2013). 8 “Voix de femmes, voix de luttes dans les printemps (tempêtes) arabes.” Unpublished paper. Summer 2012. 9 No Time for Art was written before Egypt’s first free presidential elections that brought Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt to power on June 17, 2012. Morsi was ousted by the Egyptian military on July 3, 2013 after only one year in power. Neither the play nor this analysis focuses on the post-election period. The play limits itself to events that occurred up until the early phases of 2011.

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10 This quote is taken from the No Time for Art website: http://notimeforart.com. (Accessed July 1, 2012). 11 Check the following website for more details on Ganzeer: http://www.artterritories. net/?page_id=2570 (Accessed July 1, 2012). 12 Masmoudi references the following quote from Agamben’s seminal work on testimony, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. Agamben states: “To speak, to bear witness is thus to enter into a vertiginous movement in which something sinks to the bottom, wholly desubjectified and silenced and something subjectified speaks without truly having anything to say of its own … ” (2002, 120). 13 Soliman describes the ambiguous role of the army during the revolution in her conversation with Zimmerman: “The army is still the hero of 1967 and 1973 (the wars against Israel) and the people still have great respect for them, as if they were angels from heaven. People saw how they defended us demonstrators, but also how they infiltrated Tahrir Square with paid roughnecks. Now we find ourselves beaten up increasingly frequently, and we’re no longer so sure whether we’re all on the same side … The army is trying to destroy the image of the demonstrators which the people hate, they try to break the resolve of the protestors and the people; they arrest people not just in demonstrations, but quite unexpectedly – in the subway, for instance” (2011).

Conclusion Dissident reflections: an anti-conclusion

Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices against Violence is a call for humanity in a highly volatile world marked by war, occupation, imperialism, unrelenting patriarchy, violence and socio-economic crisis. As they try to imagine a more just and egalitarian world, the authors in this book offer us what Ranjana Khanna calls “a gift of hope” (2008, 210) in their writings as they search for ways to contest and neutralize the stranglehold of coloniality on their societies. They interweave their gender concerns within dissonant geo-political structures enhanced by the nefarious machinations of state-dictated “biopower” (Mbembe 16, 2003), genocidal capitalism, class-based oppression, and gender refractions. At the same time, these writings are a testament to the human quest for dignity, survival, equality and empowerment in delimiting circumstances. Historical wounds find their literary expression in the writings of Francophone Algerian women who demonstrate their postcolonial dissidence against violence and erasure by refusing to remain silent in the face of colonial and neocolonial oppression. Maïssa Bey denounces the violence of coloniality ensconced in the repressive 132-year French colonization of Algeria as well as in coloniality’s post-independence affect revealed in the “black decade” of the 1990s civil war. Assia Djebar, on the other hand, bemoans the one-sided intentionality of official Algerian history that has skillfully excised the voices and vital contributions of Algerian women. In turn, Leïla Sebbar underscores the historical silences that punctuate Franco-Algerian history through colonial disavowals and postcolonial traumas. On the one hand, the three writers seek the healing of a repeatedly wounded nation using words as catharsis. Their writings, on the other hand, represent politically charged calls for “honest reappraisals of the past” (Bey quoted in Sabra 2011) without which there can be no democratizing process in society or politics. The physicality of pain receives a very concrete form in Aïcha EchChanna’s testimonial narrative that testifies to the moral and physical violence levelled against Morocco’s minors and women. This text shows how the wounding of the already dispossessed represented by underage domestic maids and street children constitutes one of the most egregious crimes of social and domestic violence. These infractions are inscribed in class-controlled

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norms of morality and sexuality that compromise the integrity of the postcolonial nation. Ech-Channa exposes hidden family secrets when the young victims of abuse speak about their rapes, molestation and physical disfiguring at the hands of bourgeois men and women. The Moroccan elite supports a closed system of sexual slavery within the privacy of their homes, assuming that their class privilege gives them unrestricted ownership of the disadvantaged “docile” body in man-made categorizations of inhumanity. Miseria is an important public disclosure of these crimes. It is an attempt to restore the confiscated subjectivity of the dispossessed through a first-person narrative in which the subaltern speaks and indicts her perpetrators by affirming her right to exist with dignity. The question of rights and belonging punctuate the writings of beur and post-beur authors and activists who refuse to accept their second-class citizenship in France created by universalizing norms of race, identity, religion and class. Faïza Guène uses literature to valorize and humanize France’s disfavored ethnic and social minorities by advocating the decolonization of French nationality. She offers more complicated readings of the disfavored banlieues populated by immigrants, communities of color and the working class by showing how these locations are also sites of vibrant cultural production, linguistic dexterity, subaltern knowledge and diasporic community. She fights for the removal of ideological and politicized borders within French society by using her writings for two major purposes – to dispel stereotypes and mediated representations of France’s “Others” and question the relevance of purist paradigms of nationalist belonging. She represents one of the many voices of French youth who are looking for a more inclusive and socially tolerant postcolonial France. Laila Lalami and Lamiae El Amrani highlight the disastrous impact of borders on the lives of the economically dispossessed in prose and poetry, respectively. Their writings show how violent border cartographies create deadly distinctions between “grievable” and “ungrievable” lives (Butler 2010, xix). These authors reveal the “border hysteria” (Gómez-Peña 2007) confronted by working-class Moroccans who are willing to cross the treacherous waters of the Straits of Gibraltar in search of a better existence in Spain. They focus on the gendered faces of so-called “clandestine” migration by including the stories of migrating women and the women who are left behind when the men migrate alone. At the same time, these narratives highlight the border violence faced by women and the migrating poor together with the limited potential for self-enhancement offered to the working class lured by the seductive appeal of a Spanish “Eldorado.” Instead, Spain offers these women and men limited possibilities in a service economy of domestic work, menial labor and prostitution, thereby dispelling any mythologized notions of promised lands and European transcendence. Both authors encourage us to become socially conscious readers and reject the politicization of borders in an affirmation of life: “To me immigration is not a legal issue but a humanitarian and humanistic one. No human being is ‘illegal,’ period. All human

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beings, with or without documents, belong to human kind, our kind. Their pain is ours, and so is their fate,” affirms Gómez-Peña (2007). The inhumanity of the state and its patriarchal institutions receives a public staging in the work of Jalila Baccar. The Tunisian dramatist uses the trope of madness to indict the postcolonial excesses of the state represented by the patriarchal family, the prison system and the asylum. Junun problematizes the liminal spaces between madness and reason through linguistic and creative reversals. The play demonstrates how the intellectual’s alternative forms of reasoning contest the dictatorial regime’s tunnel vision in an unconventional subversion of the Name of the Father. As a precautionary text, this play foreshadows the imminent Tunisian revolution and its overthrowing of a despotic leadership that thwarts a nation’s creative and intellectual imaginary through repression and conformity. The play provides the setting and props for the staging of the revolution as Tunisians look forward to a new era of “reasonable” beginnings. At the same time, the play does not idealize revolutionary beginnings and utopian dreams of immediate change. Laila Soliman’s theatrical productions focus on the revolutionary dystopias created by the counter-revolution in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. The region’s Arab Spring has morphed into what Accad calls “the Arab storms” (2012a), judging from the violent backlash of the military and security forces against demonstrators, dissident women, artists and other perceived Tahrir “agitators” assembled in the revolutionary square. Soliman provides raw theatrical footage of these events in a testimonial form of drama based on the first-hand detention and torture experiences of aggressed activists. Her plays raise important questions about the future of revolutionary action and its potential to create a democratic society, while remaining open ended about the fate of post-Arab Spring Egypt. Dissident creativity thereby eludes discursive closure. Inscribed within a continuum of action, this trope also points out to the unresolved questions that emerge from periods of change and transition, questions related to women, the poor, the working-class, sexual and religious minorities, democratic participation, freedom of expression, among other issues. As stated by Nawal El Saadawi in an interview with Azzurra Meringolo: I am really worried. The future is in our hands and we have to work hard. Nobody is going to liberate me except myself and nobody is going to liberate women except women. We have to unite. Unity is all our power … Because organization is power. We don’t have to fight against men. We have to fight against the patriarchal mentality that also many of the women have. We have to fight against these ideas, we cannot divide people looking at their gender. I look to people’s minds. Do you believe in justice, freedom, equality and real democracy or are you with capitalism, war and violence? It’s a matter of mentality. (2012)

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This example of “femi-humanism” nevertheless is also a cry for the equality of women in highly militarized and radicalized patriarchal states in which “you cannot have a revolution without women. You cannot have democracy without women … The slogan of the revolution was dignity, social justice and freedom. You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women,” according to the venerable Egyptian dissident in her conversations with Joseph Mayton (2012). Iranian Nobel Prize-winning lawyer and women’s rights activist Shirin Ebadi makes a similar cautionary claim: I think it is too early to talk of an Arab Spring, which should be used when democracy has been established and people can determine their own destiny and are equal and free. And we cannot forget half of society – the women. If women cannot gain equality and the right to set their own destiny, then that is not a real revolution and won’t lead to democracy. (2011) Accordingly, Ahdaf Soueif provides a glimpse into the leadership agenda outlined by the women of Tahrir Square on the eve of the 2012 International Women’s Day celebrations: As women, we have been active participants in the Egyptian popular revolution and will continue this role, insisting on the full participation of women in the political and decision-making processes in the coming period. We believe that the elimination of all forms of discrimination – not only those based on gender, but also on class, race, belief or ideological affiliation – is the way to achieve citizenship for all. (2012b) In Tunisia, the peaceful ouster of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali witnessed the implementation of a revolutionary gender-parity law that requires the equal participation of women in constituent assembly elections (Lynch 2012). At the same time, women are cautious of these newly acquired gains even though the leading Ennahda Party has promised to uphold women’s rights. As admitted by Houda Zaibi Belhassen, vice-president of the League of Tunisian Women Voters: “We have to be vigilant and be aware of the danger of a possible backlash” (Lynch 2012). This backlash already manifested its power in early June 2012 when a group of religious hardliners attacked artists who were displaying their work at the “Spring of Arts” exhibition at the Abdallah Palace in Tunis. The artists were accused by the extremists of exhibiting sacrilegious, defamatory art that compromised the Islamic ideals of the nation through vulgarity and indecent exposure. The government was slow to protect the artists in the wake of some of the worst rioting since the revolution. This unrest is nevertheless symptomatic of the regular harassment faced

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by artists, dramatists and intellectuals in post-revolution Tunisia, according to Sofia Bouderbala (2012). These aggressions also have the potential to compromise the constitutional gains “exhibited” by women, thereby feeding their insecurities about the present: “Forecasting the future for Tunisian women post-Jasmine Revolution remains a guessing game. There are too many unknowns,” state Jane Tchaïcha and Khedija Arfaoui (2012, 234). Creative dissidence reveals its urgency in these fractured moments of ambivalence leading artists like Baccar to ask the all-important questions related to post-revolution freedom: “Do we want a country without art, without artists? Who should decide which lines can be crossed in terms of what is sacred? Is it for judges, religious leaders, the constitution that is currently being drawn up?” (Bouderbala 2012). Will post-revolution governments issue “a no time for art” dictum to further stifle the creative élan of revolution? In the same way, can a society survive without its women’s creative and intellectual input? Creative rights are thereby human rights needed to restore a society’s lost balance. Soueif makes this claim forcefully when she calls for the reinstatement of the comprised Mezzaterra consciousness: There is another way and that is to inhabit and broaden the common ground. This is the ground where everybody is welcome, the ground we need to defend and to expand. It is to Mezzaterra that every responsible person on this planet now needs to migrate. And it is there that we need to make our stand. (2004, 23) Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices Against Violence plants its roots in the expansive world of Mezzaterra, inviting its readers to enter its “open and hospitable” (Soueif 2004, 8) spaces. At the same time, the book stimulates further reflections on peace and social justice with the hope of having raised the important questions that contest coloniality’s stranglehold of power and violence in the twenty-first century.

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Index

Abdel Fattah, H. 223 Abdel Naser, H. 224 Abderrezak, H. 109–11, 115 Abdulhadi, R. 7, 11, 12 Accad, E. 7, 12, 220, 255 Adli, M. 246, 247 Adonis 10, 214 ‘Adwan, M. 8 Agamben, G. 230 Al Madyouni, M. 193 Al-Adeeb, D. 11 Al-Musawi, M.J. 10 al-Qasim al-Shabi, A. 219–20 Alami, A.I. 113 Algeria: Algerian War of Independence 2, 27, 46; Arab Spring uprisings 2, 15–16; civil war 27, 34, 47, 69–83; colonization 35–46; disaffected youth 75; distortion of history 46–59; Family Code 1984 70–71; French justification of colonization 35–36, 42, 60; French war crimes 38; historical trauma 59–69; marginalization of women 15; pain 76–78; patriarchal dominance 27, 28; post-colonial feminism 28; violence 69–83 Algerian intellectuals 70; assassinations 30–31, 52–53 Algerian War of Independence 2, 27, 46; ‘post-independence womanhood’ 15; see also Algeria Alloula, A. 31 Alloula, M. 40, 45 Alsultany, E. 7, 11, 12 Amine, K. 194–95 Amrane-Minne, D. 49, 58, 63, 72 Antoon, S. 219–20 Anzaldúa, G. 29, 124, 141, 173

Arfaoui, K. 257 assimilation 41; beurs 153, 168; codes of assimilation (inflexibility) 41, 156, 166; France 21, 151–86; resistance to 158, 186; retaining identity 173–75; suppression of difference 163 Baccar, J. 2, 10, 13, 21–22, 255; background 194; experimental theatre 194–95; fight against censorship 193–94; language 213; madness as political dissent 21, 63, 68, 195–96, 198–99, 206, 255; patriarchal violence 208–13; redemptive power of theatre 195; schizophrenic society 211–12; state opposition 194; theatre of social consciousness 194; see also madness Bacchetta, P. 57 Bacqué, R. 47 Badran, M. 68 Balibar, E. 163–64 banlieues (France) 20–21, 160–61; beurs 153–56; marginalization 153, 155 Barrada, Y. 112, 122–23 Barsali, N. 154–55, 160, 162, 175 Basiouny, D. 224 Bayat, A. 231, 245 Beaud, S. 157, 159, 180 Begag, A. 152, 153 Belghoul, F. 152 Belhassen, H.Z. 256 belonging 90, 95, 104, 165; beurs in France 153, 158, 183, 186, 254; language 183; Muslims in France 163; social exclusion 180–82; transnational spaces 110, 114, 149; whiteness 173 Ben Ali, Z. 196, 197–98, 256 Ben ‘Ayed, ‘A. 194

278

Index

Ben Jelloun, T. 10, 108, 120, 197–98 Benameur, S. see Bey, M. Benguigui, Y. 152 Benhadj, A. 71 Benitez-Rojo, A. 110 Bensmaïa, R. 30, 69 Benosmane, F. 63 beurs 153–56, 159; identity 181; marginalization 186 Beverley, J. 220; testimonial narratives 89–90, 96, 228 Bey, M. 2, 11, 19, 28, 31, 69–83, 253; Algerian civil war, 69–84; allegories 39–46; background 32; de-colonizing ‘freedom’ 35–46; non-dit 32–33; pain 77; sexual violence 46; silence 75; testimonial narrative 72–75 Binebine, M. 108 Blue Bra Day 15, 16, 22; summary 247–49; see also Soliman, L. Bouazizi, M. 198 Bouderbala, S. 257 Bouraoui, N. 28 Bouteldja, H. 152–53 Box, L.C. 49–50, Browdy de Hérnandez, J. 4 Burke, J. 157, 159 Camus, A. 1–2; dissident creativity 2 Carlson, M. 31, 195, 210, 230 Carn, W. 49, 51, 53, 54, 58 censorship: Algeria 47, 74, 76; dissident creativity 2; Egypt 219, 223–24, 235; fight against 8, 193–95, 217; France 59; silence and 111, 247; Tunisia 198; violence and 3, 34, 221 Charef, M. 152, 158 Chatterjee, P. 48 Chirac, J. 35 Cixous, H. 13, 208, 215; whiteness 210, 213 clandestine migration 20, 108–9; background 111–15, 115–18; identity 110–11; language of illegality 109; stereotypical representations 109; see also Lalami, L. Cole, J. 243–44 Cole S. 243–44 colonialism: collective memories 36–37; colonial fracture 155, 173–75; French national identity and 163–64; historical subversion 37; implicit patriarchies 47–48; violence 3, 57

cooke, m. 4–5, 6, 8, 12, 68 creativity: definition 1, 216; honesty 13–14 Daoud, Z. 112, 115, 120 Darwish, M. 10, 194 de-corporealization 3 de-territorialization 3 Dehghanpisheh, B. 197–98 Delorme, C. 155, 162 Derrida, J. 13, 229 désenfantement 92 dissidence: definition 1; good faith, as an act of 9 dissident creativity: censorship 2; civic engagement, as 5; Francophone Algerian women 27–85; proactive nature of 4; rebellion against violence 1, 2; responsibility of the writer 1; social injustice, against 2, 5; social responsibility, as 5 Djaout, T. 30–31, 52 Djebar, A. 1, 2, 10, 11, 19, 28, 253; ambiguity of status of women 48–53; background 28, 31–33; femininity 54; language 18, 27, 31, 75, 78; manipulation of history 46–47; ‘orientalization’ of Arab women 143, 146 Donadey, A. 6–7, 14, 47, 48, 59–60, 64, 175 Dongala, P. 4 Driss, M. 194 Durmelat, S. 154, 159–60, 161 Ebadi, S. 256 Ebeid, N. 246–47 Ech-Channa, A. 2, 11, 13, 16, 19; absentee fathers 105; disenfranchisement of youth 97–100; illegitimate children 100–103; Islamic faith 93–94, 207; maternal activism 91–94; pain 89–91, 95, 96–97, 253; single mothers 103–7; social and sexual dispossession 89–94, 254; social critique 91–94; social justice 91–94, 105–7; testimonial narrative 89–94, 94–96 Echchaibi, N. 154, 160, 184–85 economic dispossession 4, 89, 108, 173 Egypt: democratization 232–33; Egyptian revolution 15, 16, 22, 218–23; military violence 224–25, 238–39; Sadat 8; Supreme Council of

Index

279

the Armed Forces 219, 222–23, 239; theatre 223–24; see also Soliman, L. El Amrani 20, 108, 254; clandestine migration 115–22; commemorating the dead 121–22; disenfranchisement 119 El Khayat, G. 91–92, 99, 105, 201, 215 El Saadawi, N. 1, 2, 22, 10, 200, 255; creativity 14, 216, 234; dissident creativity 217, 234–35, 239, 241, 255; Egyptian revolution 249–50; fitna 7–9; patriarchal societies 92 Elalamy, Y. 122 Eluard, P. 35, 37 Ennaji, M. 3, 91, 93, 96, 101, 120, 126–30, 135–36

Geesey, P. 78, 80 Gettleman, J. 239 Ghazli, M. 174 Gilbert, S. 209 Glissant, E. 110 Grace, D. 240 Guène, F. 2, 20, 254; beurs 153–56; disenfranchisement 152, 162; education 180–81; gender 177–80; identity 152–56, 165–67, 174; language 183; marginalization 157–59; minorities in France 151–52; otherness 167–73; social exclusion 180–82; solidarity 175–77; subaltern rights 182–85, 254; whiteness 173–74

Familia 194 family 38, 50, 54, 81, 100, 125–26, 136, 175–76, 178; citizenship 206; domestic abuse 101, 103, 127; historical silence and auto-censure 61, 62, 67; patriarchal model 55–56, 130, 165–66, 169, 197, 210, 250, 255; space 30; violence 29 Family Code 1984 (Algeria) 70–71, 72; female resistance to 70–71 Family Code 2004 (Morocco) 91, 103–4, 128; gender discrimination 91 Fanon, F. 42, 43–44, 46, 76, 167–68, 173, 177 Farred, G. 182, 184 Ferrer, X. 123–24 fitna (chaos): creating chaos through writing 7, 9; women as a source of 79 Flesler, D. 114 Foucault, M. 98, 195, 197, 201, 203–4, 210, 212 France 20–21; accountability in Algeria 35, 59–60; ‘civilizing’ Algeria 30, 35, 42, 44; dehumanizing of Arab populations 42–43; ethnic diversity 163–65; national identity 163; Parisian housing projects 159–63; self-justification of colonization 35–36, 42, 60; see also banlieues; beurs Frangieh, B. 214–15 Freedman, J. 141, 142, 167 fundamentalism see Islam

Habitations à Loyers Modérés (HLMs) 159–63 Hache, C. 152 Hargreaves, A. 153, 158, 174, 181 Harlow, B. 10, 241 Hassan, W. 18 Hiddleston, J. 51–52, 69 Hind, O. 32, 36, 37, 40 Hocine, B. 58 Hollande, F. 60, 152 Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits 20; background 122–25; summary 125–37, 139–49; see also Lalami, L. Hoyet, M-J. 194, 198 Hron, M. 65 Humphrey, M. 47, 63 Husain, Sarah 11

Gallaire-Bourega, F. 28 Gana, N. 216 Ganzeer 220, 226 gender-based violence 1, 3, 7, 44–46, 89, 93, 131, 142

Ibn Ziyad, T. 112–13 identity 110, 147–49, 152–56, 165–67, 174; assimilation and retaining identity 173–75; beurs 181; clandestine migration 110–11; language 17, 213–16; loss of identity 92; madness and 195; otherness 114–15 Imaken, N. 28 Indochina 174 Islam 16, 31, 69, 75, 79, 140, 147; attacks on artists 256; Europe, rise in 177; France and 154, 163–65, 167; fundamentalism 69, 72, 176, 180, 197–98; negation of 154, 178; orientalism and 14; patriarchal system 42, 70; religious radicalism 75; single mothers 104; social justice 16, 90, 93–95; social welfare for the dispossessed 16; women and 72–73, 84, 145, 167–69

280

Index

Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) (Algeria) 30, 52; 1991 elections 71; political splits, 71 Islamophobia 42, 114, 146, 183 Jacinto, L. 93, 103 Jaïbi, F. 194, 195, 196 Jamal, B. 141, 142 Jarmakani, A. 14, 16 Jaziri, F. 194 Jolaosho, O. 4 Junan 21–22; background 197–99; summary 196, 199–203; see also Baccar, J. Kalisa, C. 3, 29, 75 Keaton, T.D. 163, 164, 178, 181 Kessous, M. 154 Khan, I. 44 Khan, S. 145 Khanna, R. 28, 253 Khatibi, A. 13, 31 Kiffe-kiffe demain 20–21; background 152–53; summary 157–59; see also Guène, F Killian, C. 168, 170 La Seine était rouge (The Seine was Red) 19, 34; background 59–61, 64–65; summary 61; see also Sebbar, L. Laâbi, A. 17 Lalami, L. 2, 19, 20, 108, 168–69, 254; clandestine migration 110–11; domestic abuse 127–33; economic crisis, impact of 136–37; gender-based violence 137–39; identity 110, 147–49; support networks 133–37; see also clandestine migration language 18, 27, 31, 75, 78, 213; belonging 183; body language 13; creative activism 2; dismembering the language of violence 2; French, use of 31; identity and culture, importance to 17, 213–16; language of illegality 109; subaltern rights 184–86; verlan 183; vernacularity 182–83 Lapeyronnie, D. 174 Laronde, M. 59–60 Lazreg, M. 15, 41, 44, 55, 56, 57, 66, 70 Lodge, A. 182 loss 11, 32, 136, 146; bereavement 92–93; loss of identity 92; memory and 147–49; see also pain Lugones, M. 10, 91

McKinney, M. 158, 174 Maalouf, A. 75 Madani, A. 71 madness 21–22, 255; de-institutionalized activism 203–7; identity and 195; Junun 193–217; marginalization and 195; non-conformity 196, 198–99, 203–7, 213–17; patriarchal violence and 195, 198–99, 208–13, 255 Mahfouz, N. 10 Majaj, L.S. 10, 14 Mansour, K. 222 marginalization 15, 20–21, 22, 157–59; madness and 195; non-conformity 196, 198–99, 203–7, 213–17; women in Algeria 15; young beurs in France 153, 155 Martinez, L. 71–72 Masrouki, H. 194 Matoub, L. 31 Mayton, J. 256 Medlicott, D. 236–38, 241 Meguid, I.A. 223 Mekki, S. 152 memory 7, 11, 30–33, 118; deliberate forgetting 61–63; migration 113, 116, 119–22, 146–49; psychological impact of Algerian War of Independence 175–76; public/private dichotomy 63; resistance 240; sanity and 36; shared, 29, 224, 227; testimonial narrative 94, 228, 230, 232; theatre 224, 226; see also language; madness; silence Meringolo, A. 255 Mernissi, F. 91, 105–7, 138–39 Messaoudi, K. 70–71, 79 Meyerson, M. 114 migration: memory 113, 116, 119–22, 146–49; see also clandestine migration Miller, C. 8 Miseria 19–20; see also Ech-Channa, A. misogyny 71–73, 79, 84, 207, 243, 248–49; see also patriarchy Mitterand, F. 35–36 Moi, T. 5–6 Mokkedem, M. 28 Morocco 90, 113, 123–24, 139–40; emigration 109, 111, 115–18, 134–36; post-colonial society 91–92, 106, 119–22; status of women 129–30; tourism 138–39; violence against women 96, 100–101, 127–29, 253 Mougharbel, Z.A. 17

Index Mouvement des Indigènes de la République 152–53 Mubarak, H. 22, 218–23, 232, 237; see also Egypt Munif, A. 9 Muslim Brotherhood 235, 249–50; violence against women 244 Naber, N. 7, 11, 12 Nagaty, Y. 245–46 national identity 48; colonialism and 163–64; immigrants to France 20–21, 158–59, 163, 182; racialization 164; see also identity National Initiative for Human Development (Morocco) 119–20 National Liberation Front (FLN) (Algeria) 30, 35, 47, 49, 59; 1991 elections 71; government 70–71 New Theatre 194 Nini, R. 108 Nini, S. 152 No Time for Art 22; summary 224–28, 232–33; see also Soliman, L. North Africa: dissident creativity 1; see also Algeria; Egypt; Morocco; Tunisia Nouvelles d”Algérie (Algerian News) 19, 69–84; historical background 69–72; see also Bey, M. Orientalism 41, 57, 243; Arab women and 14–18, 29, 34, 40–41, 45–46, 142–47; representation of immigrants 137, 142–43; tourism and 138–39 Orlando, V. 92, 94, 95–96 otherness 6, 36, 41, 167, 170, 182, 209; identity 114–15, 170; immigrants 114–15, 154, 159; language 182–83 pain 7, 11, 12–13, 20, 22, 62–63, 89–91, 253; human cost of pain 96–97; language of pain 64, 67, 75–77, 95–96; migration 108, 109, 135; testimonial narrative 89–94, 97–107 Papon, M. 59, 68 patriarchy 1, 28, 64, 66, 71, 80–81, 83, 90, 127, 195–97, 249–50; binary oppositions 42, 91–92; coloniality of power 42; construction of ‘woman’ 97, 100–101, 207–8; cultural identity 156, 164–66, 169–70; family configuration 55, 100, 130, 197, 255; inhumanity 255; language 63, 68, 75,

281

248; madness and 208–13; otherness and 6–7, 213–14; patriarchal racism 34; social dispossession 91–92, 98; violence and 92–94 Pierre papier cendre et sang (Stone Paper Ashes and Blood) 19, 34, 35–46; political context 35–36; see also Bey, M. post-colonialism 2–4, 10, 30 Pratt, M.L. 113 prison 8–9, 53, 56–58, 225; abuse 234–40; activism 64–65, 66–67, 240–41; impact of 241 Quayson, A. 76 Quijano, A. 36, 42 Razack, S. 42 Rédouane, N. 115, 120 resistance 64–65, 70–71; activism 68; Algerian civil war, 71–72; Algerian War of Independence 84; assimilation and 158, 186; memory 240; solidarity networks 65–69 revolutionary forms of action 1, 3 Rosello, M. 161 Rouane, H. 152 Rouge l’aube (The Red Dawn) 19, 34, 46–59; background 49–50; summary 50–59; see also Djebar, A. Rumi, M.J. 216 Rushdie, S. 5 Sabry, S. 142 Sabry, T. 6 Sadat, A. 8, 235 Sadiqi, F. 3, 93, 120, 126, 130, 135–36 Saïd, E. 13–14, 41, 137–38 Salhi, Z. 28, 46, 50, 53, 58, 69–72 Saliba, T. 10, 14 Sansal, N. 108 Santa Barbara, Joanna 39 Sarkozy, N. 35, 36 Sartre, J-P. 6, 163 Scarry, E. 76–77 Sciolino, E. 158, 163 Sebbar, L. 2, 10, 19, 28; ambivalence of hybridities 33; Franco-Algerian solidarity 66–68; historical silences 59–60, 61, 253; language 31, 33–34; migratory textuality 33–34; silence 59; women’s resistance 64–65 Sebti, Y. 31 Sérafin, A. 4 Sessions, J. 38, 39, 42

282

Index

sexual violence 19, 20, 22, 44–46; absentee fathers 105; illegitimate children 100–103; oppression 19–20; single mothers 103–7; testimonial narrative 89–94 Shohat, E. 40, 42 silence 19; Algeria 27–85; assimilation, through 168; criticism of 75; distortion of history 46–59; female historicity 28–29, 48–49; historical trauma 59—69; neglect, through 168; see also Sebbar, L. Silverman, M. 163 social exclusion 180–82 solidarity 175–77 Soliman, L. 2, 10, 16, 22, 255; background 218; censorship 221, 224; democratization of space 231–32; resistance 240–42; sexualization of violence 245–47; silence 221, 230; testimonial narratives 228; violence against women 221–22, 243–44 Soueif, A. 10, 11, 13, 231, 256 Sparks, H. 184 Stam, R. 40, 42 Stora, B. 30, 31, 35–36, 40, 47, 54, 61, 174–75 Stuhr-Rommerein, H. 221–22 Suarez-Navaz, L. 112, 122 subaltern rights 175, 184–86 Suleiman, O. 219 Sunderman, P.W. 10, 14 Tantawi, M.H. 219, 248 Tahrir Square 218–51 Tarr, C. 153, 154, 166–67 Tchaïcha, J. 257 Teriah, M. 108 testimonial narratives 13, 96; memory 94, 228, 230, 232; pain 89–94, 97–107; sexual violence 89–94 theatre: experimental theatre 194–95, 220, 222; memory 224, 226; redemptive power of theatre 195; social justice, for 218; staging violence 21; theatre of social consciousness 194 Thomas, D. 153 Tocqueville, A. de, 39 Tomlin, J. 231, 235, 239 Tormenta de Especias 20; see also El Amrani, L.

torture 232, 235, 239–40; colonization 22, 35, 41–43, 50–51, 57—8; see also violence transnational aesthetics of writing 17, 20 transnationality: female resistance 65–69; Franco-Algerian solidarity 66; violence towards clandestine migrants 108–9, 141–42; see also clandestine migration Triki, F. 11 Tunisia 21; constitution 194; revolution 194, 196, 216–17, 218–19; state corruption 197–98; theatre 194–95 Valassopoulos, A. 186, 207 Vassallo, H. 66 vernacularity 182–86 victimhood 22, 99, 118 violence 1, 89, 111–15; domestic violence 3, 92, 94, 125, 127–28, 197, 211; gender-based violence 1, 3, 131, 142; Muslim Brotherhood 244; public condemnation through writing 11; public disclosure of 3, 7, 62, 242; war and 18–19, 38–39 Walcott, D. 121 war 18–19; crimes against civilians 38–39; ethnic cleansing 39; see also Algeria; violence ‘whiteness’ 173–74, 210, 213 women: female body 47–48, 73, 77–78; representation of 16; sexuality 79; see also patriarchy Woodhull, W. 40, 43 writing: act of rebellion, as 3; ethical responsibility of 5; revolutionary forms of action 1, 52; revolutionary knowledge production 1; writing war 72–77; see also creative dissidence; theatre Yacine, K. 31 Yuval-Davis, Nira 66 Zahnd, E. 7, 12 Zahrouni, R. 194, 196–97, 202, 205, 211, 212 Zayzafoon, L.B.Y. 16 Zemni, N. 195 Zimmerman, H-C. 222–23, 242 Zinaï-Koudil, H. 28, 73, 84 Zitouni, A. 152 zombification 206, 214, 239; see also identity; madness