Typical scene in a Moroccan old town still today
Photo: iStock/WHPics/Juan Garcia Auniän
Moroccan literature has developed a prosperous niche existence in German-speaking countries in recent years, which is primarily due to authors such as Leila Slimani, Mahi Binebine, Tahar Ben Jelloun and Mohamed Choukri with his novel “The Naked Bread”, which was published for a long time in his country of origin was forbidden. Real underground or samizdat authors have not yet made it into the book department stores in Europe.
The themes of at least the works translated here are repeated. At the top are poverty, brutal patriarchy and the overwhelming lack of prospects among adolescents. The author Meryem Alaoui, born in Casablanca in 1975, also fits into this grid thematically. Her highly acclaimed and award-winning debut novel “Horse’s Mouth Makes Truth Known” made it into the shortlist for the Prix Goncourt, the most important French literary prize, and has long since been translated into English and Spanish.
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The protagonist is 34-year-old Dschmiaa, who has been working as a sex worker for 15 years in order to somehow support herself and her little daughter. The center of her life is in the old town of Casablanca. It all started for her like a love film on television when, against her mother’s objections, she married the handsome Hamid, a Stenz straight out of the cliche Bible. The horror quickly sets in, physical and psychological blows become the norm. Her husband is addicted to hashish and is no longer sane.
For Dschmiaa, all that remains of this relationship is “the cold ashes of the embers that you thought you would use to roast thousands of muttons.” Hamid sells his wife to other men, she is raped as they please and he makes a profit. Almost overnight, Dschmiaa falls into the dark world of vileness. Alaoui draws this history into focus, avoiding any role as a victim. Dschmiaa has a gruff defensiveness about her that makes her seem likeable to a certain point. She may be a “strong” woman due to the circumstances, but she is certainly not emancipated or even “independent,” as some luminaries of the fast evolution say on the Internet. Anyone who is dependent on a pimp is not independent.
When Dschmiaa becomes pregnant shortly before her husband flees to Spain, she doesn’t want to breastfeed the baby, change diapers or kiss it. A short time later she sends little Samia off to her mother. As an immoral person, Dschmiaa is a piece of the puzzle and a reflection of society. The fact that everyone is unbearable makes it more bearable for readers, but what Alaoui wants to achieve with this typecasting is not clear. She herself comes from a middle-class family; her father was a highly decorated politician who wrote verses.
Dschmiaa is pragmatic, more or less realistic, eager to take action and completely removed from anything emotional. If she has an expensive suitor, ideally she will collect seven euros. She articulates herself in the language of the street, direct and raw, ironic and sometimes cynical, and thus supposedly keeps the outside world at bay.
In one passage, Alaoui has different types of suitors parade, for example “the mad one”: “Your ass is his right. As he gallops along like an eager policeman, he kicks around, hits you, tears your shoulder off. He sees crowds cheering him, you are whipped by his hands and the air that he stirs up with his ride. As soon as he is finished, he looks defiantly and menacingly at his kingdom. But then you meet his sticky glory in your eyes, and illusion turns to hate. He strikes because he is just himself. A tormented, drunken, lonely man.”
The love films in US cinema always end with the wedding celebration. Looking back, however, the TV-addicted Dschmiaa understands that “the scriptwriters, these villains, don’t tell you where the journey is going. Instead, they leave you hanging after the wedding feast.” Now Meryem Alaoui is simply rewriting the script of Jamiaa’s life. And it is actually the film that opens the door to a different life for her. A young, Dutch-Moroccan and rather hippie-esque director enters the stage who wants to make her debut film about the neighborhood and a prostitute. Dschmiaa mentally christens them “horse teeth”. She even gets the leading role, but it is by no means the leading role of her own life. It’s becoming Bollywood-esque: Dschmiaa becomes a celebrated film star.
She’s now being celebrated in her own neighborhood: “Everyone wanted to know what it’s like on the other side.” Soon she’s on a plane to LA to collect prizes. The main plot takes place between June 2010 and 2013. The so-called Arab Spring is only touched on. »In Casablanca and all of Morocco everything has been going haywire since this Tunisian poured petrol on himself. The city center has never been empty for two Sundays. All the people who are in want, have nothing to eat, are waging war against their wives, are not happy with their circumcision, they are all taking to the streets.”
Alaoui only highlights this time of turmoil under negative auspices: women from Dschmiaa’s class become fair game, for the young people reeling in a revolutionary frenzy as well as for the religious. Compared to its neighboring countries, things remained politically relatively quiet in Morocco. King Mohammed VI Shortly after the first mass demonstrations, announced a constitutional reform (which, of course, cemented the oppression).
Meryem Alaoui, who is married to the dissident Ahmed Reda Benchemsi, has been living in Morocco again since 2018 after emigrating to New York. In “Horse Mouth,” women are attractive if they are strong and have eyes “as beautiful as cow eyes.” Her second novel, “Sweet Chaos,” which will be published by Gallimard in 2023 and is set in New York, will probably not lure anyone away from the Bollerofen, unless you are into swinger clubs.
Meryem Alaoui: Horse’s mouth tells the truth. A.d. Francis v. Barbara Sauser. Lenos-Verlag, 312 pages, hardcover, €26.
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