دستور نيوز
When the reader approaches the world of the Moroccan writer Mohamed Souf (born in 1950 in Casablanca), he feels that he is entering not only books, but also an entire human geography that breathes between the words. There are writers who write the story, and there are others who let the story write them. Mohamed Souf seems to be one of those who slowly formed within the cracks of Moroccan life, where social memory mixes with the voice of the self, and the narrative becomes more like a quiet attempt to understand the world, not just explain it. For him, writing is not considered a linguistic display or a passing response to the call of literature, but rather a long path of listening to reality as it speaks in a faint voice from the margins.
From his first collections of short stories, it was clear that this voice was taking shape away from theoretical noise or aesthetic pretension. There was a writer who entered writing as he entered a new verse, with hesitant but sincere steps. In “Ruptures,” the beginnings appear as an attempt to feel the pulse of language, an attempt to discover how reality can be transformed into a narrative. Then the circle expands a little, and the Moroccan reality with its heavy shadows begins to seep into the texts, not as a political slogan, but as daily life that accumulates within the conscience. Little by little, the world that Muhammad Souf writes becomes more relevant to the people who live in areas that history does not pay much attention to.
In this dialogue on the electronic newspaper Hespress, a literary project unfolds that does not scream as much as it reflects. It is as if the writer is writing from the position of a humble witness who does not claim heroism, but he also cannot distance himself from the heat of what he sees. In his stories and novels, the world appears to be already cracked, but it is a familiar crack, a crack that resembles life itself when it cracks under the pressure of days. Here, writing does not turn into a direct statement of resistance, but rather into a slow act of self-recovery, as the Moroccan self experiences the weight of transformations, and learns with time how to breathe even within the suffocation.
For him, the novel in turn is not founded as a project to write official history. Rather, it is an attempt to listen to those who usually pass outside the grand narratives. When he talks about reality, it seems as if he is revisiting another history, the history of those who paid the price for great stories without their names being mentioned in the books. That idea alone is enough to open up a different horizon for his novelistic project, one that believes that literature is capable of rearranging light so that the margin appears in the center of the picture.
What gives this project its uniqueness is that intimate relationship with the place. The place is not just a background for events, but rather a living memory that speaks. The Carian, for example, does not appear as a miserable social decoration. It is a world full of human dignity. And in those tin houses that may appear to the passing eye as mere poverty, the writer sees human energy that is not measured by usual standards. From here, the narrative turns into a kind of symbolic justice, justice for those who lived life steadfastly without expecting a reward.
What is also striking is that the writer, storyteller, and novelist Muhammad Souf, as a faithful guardian of the margins, does not talk about his literary project in a tone of certainty. On the contrary, there is a clear humility, but rather a beautiful doubt, about the meaning of writing itself, as if he writes because he cannot help but write, not because he wants to declare a final position on the world. Perhaps for this reason his texts seem close to the reader, because they do not claim to possess the truth, as much as they merely try to touch it.
Through this dialogue/celebration within the pages of Hespress newspaper, the image of a writer is formed who sees literature as an ongoing dialogue between experience and language, between reality and imagination, and between what is said and what remains silent. It is a literature that knows that its real impact does not occur in politics or economics, but rather in the person himself. That small change that occurs within the reader after a beautiful page, in his view, is the only miracle that literature can promise.
Perhaps this idea in particular is the most appropriate introduction to reading the world of Muhammad Suf. Entering his texts is like sitting at a slowly maturing literary table, a table where questions are cooked over the fire of experience, and where stories are presented with the flavor of reality, where nothing is final, and nothing is complete, except that faint feeling that writing is still capable of giving life additional meaning.
Dialogue text:
In your collections of short stories, the world seems torn apart, as if it were being written from the cracks of the soul, not from the surface of events. Was your writing an early act of resistance against a suffocating political and social reality, or was it an attempt to restore a Moroccan self that you felt was slowly being robbed?
Very good question. Writing stories came in stages. For example, we cannot say about the first group, “Ruptures,” that they represent an act of resistance against anything. They were attempts through which I sought to enter the world of writing without my creative awareness of the suffocating reality. Then came the group “Birds… and the Search for Nests,” which addresses your question and through which reality with its sediments is revealed. However, it was bordering on the naivety of a beginner. As described by the late friend El-Kamri Bashir, they were texts characterized by descriptive realism. More closely linked to reality, the restoration attempt that came in your question emerged, a group of “very usual cases” appeared, in which the images, in my opinion, reflected the Moroccan self that is groaning under the weight of a reality that practices sadism on it. In the group that followed, the feeling of futility took root in the “Circle of Impossibilities” group, and became more deeply rooted in the “Here is the Real Madrid” group.
And after that, I believe, and I may be wrong, the “Sons of Cain” group came, in which there was a strong whiff of the cracks of the soul, and the word “soul” here has a special meaning that led to highlighting what interacts within the self, which may be my self and your self, through the “I claim that” group, and the worlds began to take another direction in the “Zaman Abdul Raouf” group. I might claim that the act of resistance here has disappeared or its manifestations have always been absent within the space of self-restoration.. In the end, I found myself committing stories without premeditation and without struggle against a reality that we have come to know how to breathe within its suffocation of us.
From the novel “The Traveler of Ould El Mekki” to “The Lean Years,” a narrative path is taking shape that addresses the major transformations in Morocco. How do you see the relationship between the novel and political transformation? Were you writing history from the perspective of the margins, or were you writing the margins to become counter-history?
The work of fiction, whatever it may be, is based on reality. From there, the creator signs formations on it in form or content, but reality is always the rule. In discussing this reality, the dialogue on historical transformations begins. Many of the novels are international and Arab, including Moroccan ones. Reading them reveals a political reality, not as the official news reports it, but from a perspective that has nothing to do with the official one. The writing by “Rahal Ould El Mekki” did not aim to discuss transformations as much as it was spontaneous, drawn from a reality that we live in, similar to the characters in the novel.
The same applies to the rest of the works. There is a monitoring eye and internal interaction that makes writing a history of those whom history ignores. If you open a historical book, you will find in it nothing but the wars fought by this or that ruler, and you will find nothing but history’s applause for this or that leader. As for those who wrote history with their lives, and the cost of it was bereavement, orphans, and widows, there is no talk of them except as numbers that achieved victory or tasted the bitterness of defeat. Most fictional works follow this approach, that is, they basically monitor the margins.. The question is: Do you really make it a counter-history??
In “Children of the Karian,” the marginal city is present as a tragic hero. Is the Karian for you a geographical space or a metaphor for social destiny? How do poverty and dignity intersect in your narrative without turning into a sloganeering discourse?
Al-Karian is more than a tragic hero. He is simply a realistic hero (if this description is correct). It is true that it is a geographical space that entered history from the huts and faces of the poor that refuse humiliation and subservience… and the Karyan deserves an epic work with multiple heroes. In every tin house, as they used to describe it, there are people who raise their hats to them. This is why the late colonialist Mohammed V was called the King of Central Carian. What has been reported in the news represents only the tip of the iceberg. Human dignity comes first. It is not limited to a particular social situation. Dignity is what gave the Karian boys the energy that made them stars in music, theatre, cinema and sports. The beautiful thing is that these stars are proud to be children of the Carians, and therefore the sloganeering speech is completely canceled because the conversation is a reality that people of this country lived without any spoils or any goal.
Between the desert and the city, between the mud and the asphalt, characters are distributed. Does the desert still inhabit you as a first memory, or has the city become a narrative destiny from which there is no escape? How do you reconcile in your texts the innocence of origin and the cruelty of transformation?
My first memory is Carian Central. Karyan is clay and asphalt. The shadow – that is, the Karian – is a narrative destiny that I do not think about escaping. I do not consider even the transformation mentioned in the question to be a transformation for the simple reason that it occurred smoothly. My departure from Alkaryan was just a transition. Most of the shantytown residents were gradually moved to the Sidi Bernoussi neighborhood. In this neighborhood, I did not separate from my acquaintances. We only changed from a wooden house to a house made of stone, with corners and a roof. Therefore, texts are generated spontaneously and without much effort. In short, the original is still HoHo. The cruelty of transformation is absolutely unthinkable.
You are a storyteller, novelist, and translator. Is translation, for you, an act of dialogue with the other or a deconstruction of it? How did your translated readings influence the construction of your narrative language? Were you looking for a universal horizon for the Moroccan self or for a mirror that reveals its fragility?
It is true that translation is merely the act of communicating with another. As for deconstruction, it is absent. The truth is that the narrative language comes spontaneously, and I do not remember – at least – consciously that I was influenced by what I read from the translated works as much as it was from the Arabic works. I come from a generation that adored Khalil Gibran. While we were students, we almost memorized his phrases to compose the topics of the composition, and we waited for the teacher’s admiration and rejoiced at the point that came to us thanks to the writings of Gibran, Mikhail Naima, and the book Al-Rabit Al-Qalamiyya, before we – or at least to me – appeared upon us – or upon me at least – Ihsan Abdel Quddus, Youssef Al-Sibai, and from Morocco, Muhammad Al-Sabbagh. As for searching for a horizon, then it required an awareness greater than me and beyond my capabilities.. The search for a horizon and the mirror that reveals its fragility were two aliens. My creative fragility – if there really is creativity – are terms I began to encounter when I started reading critical studies. These studies benefited me to some extent, but they also tired me.
The political dimension is present in your works without turning into a direct statement. Do you think that literature should remain in the shadow area, or should it risk collision? Where do you place yourself between the witness writer and the involved writer?
This question brings me back to talking about reality. The writer is, by nature, a witness and also involved. Literature does not tend towards the shadow area. Let’s take an example from the university. The furthest students from the shadow area were the students of Arabic literature. They are the ones the official authorities suffered with. They were monitoring any official action and responding to it with whatever means were available to them. Most of those who lived through the Years of Lead were students of arts colleges. You would only find a few of the prisoners of conscience at that time from schools other than arts colleges. This clearly means that literature is far from the shadow area.
In “Let It Go,” surrender seems more like existential wisdom than defeat. Is it a personal philosophy or a reading of the transformations of a generation that experienced defeat and deferred dreams? Is your writing a form of relief or confrontation? But they are together. Doesn’t defeat make you think deeply about the way things are?
It is true what you say about the transformations of a generation full of brokenness. I will not hide from you that a number of the characters in the story I experienced closely. I experienced their brokenness and dreams that turned into nightmares. Here also lies the return to reality, just as the hidden desire lies as an incentive to write… let us say it is a kind of relief. No confrontation. Because I see that confrontation does not increase or eliminate oppression. The friend Muhammad Moatasem read in it – that is, the novel – a kind of agnosticism. Therefore, her philosophy is commendable. The charm of creative work is that it dialogues with its reader, who may be more wise in reading it than the writer himself.
The titles in your project are not fleeting; They are interpretive keys. How do you choose a title for your text? Do you think that the title is the political threshold of the text, or its aesthetic threshold?
In fact, you come uninvited. Sometimes it is present even before you start writing the work, sometimes when it is finished, and still others emerge from the heart of the work before it is completed. Perhaps it is the writer’s temperament. In “Rahal Ould Al-Makki,” for example, “Sakhanni” was used as a title before writing. “Sons of Al-Kariyan” instead of a title that has remained with me. The work is “Dar Luqman.” There are titles that have a political threshold, which are many, and others that are very few aesthetic, such as “Death for Life,” which was printed in Tunisia in 1984. There are also titles that have no threshold, in my opinion. This is what some friends disagree with me about.
The Moroccan self in your texts is not one; It is torn between tradition and modernity, between the sacred and the everyday. Do you consider yourself an identity crisis writer? Or a writer of impossible reconciliation with times that change faster than language? Reconciliation writer??
This is an honor I do not claim. Let’s say it holds for a time that does not change. The fragmented self clearly declares its presence not only in imaginative writings, but also in the daily lives of each of the forty million people who live in this country. I am looking for a self that is not fragmented, and I will continue to search in vain, even among those whom some may consider to be far from fragmentation or to be its creators. For every fragment. Life is fragments.
If we asked you today to rewrite your path again, what would you keep from the young Muhammad Sof, and what would you rebel against? Do you still believe that literature is capable of making a real impact in a reality conflicted by politics, economics, and consumer culture?
I am not saying that I wish youth would return one day. I love my old age and find it a peaceful haven that looks at the daily calmly, with a deep breath, and by saying, “Let it go.” Even if you do not let it go, it is going against your visions and perceptions. Literature has the ability to give awareness greater volume and its effect creeps into the soul with confident calm. It has never happened that literature had a real impact on politics, economics, and consumer culture, as stated in your question. Its impact only affects the individual. Its effect varies from one individual to another. Otherwise, it remains just a dream, and a dream is the most beautiful thing that literature gives you. When you finish reading a beautiful, influential literary work, you become a different person than you were before you started reading. For my life, this is an achievement that cannot be achieved by anything other than literature and art as well. That makes him proud.
Open word
In colloquial language, “You cooked me.” May God forgive you.
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Sof: Dignity turned the “Karian boys” into stars… and literature hates the shadow area
– الدستور نيوز
اخبار منوعه – Sof: Dignity turned the “Karian boys” into stars… and literature hates the shadow area
المصدر : www.hespress.com