Women should be equal to men in the Arab world…should
we wish to step forward.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Quoted in Morocco Times |
It's a book without concessions. I wrote it feverishly, bewitched
by it, surprising myself with an inner strength.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
On his 2001 novel This Blinding Absence
of Light |
The mistake we make is to attribute to religions the errors
and fanaticism of human beings.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Islam Explained (2002) |
I am a French writer of a peculiar kind, a Frenchman whose
native tongue is Arabic, a language that holds my emotions and
affections, I am a Moroccan with no identity problems, one who
feeds on the popular imagination of Morocco - a country I will
never leave.
Tahar Ben Jelloun |
Emigration is no longer a solution; it's a defeat. People
are risking death, drowning every day, but they're knocking
on doors that are not open. My hope is that countries like Morocco
will have investment to create work, so people don't have to
leave.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Quoted in The Guardian, May 2006 |
Racism is first and foremost self-hatred. And when it's erected
into a system, it spreads out from the self and includes one's
fellows.
Tahar Ben Jelloun |
In the 70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered
if they'd take my passport away. But now, like those writers
I admire - Joyce, Beckett, Genet - I feel only a metaphysical
exile.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Quoted in The Guardian, May 2006 |
For a long time I searched for the black stone that cleanses
the soul of death. When I say a long time, I think of a bottomless
pit, a tunnel dug with my fingers, my teeth, in the stubborn
hope of glimpsing, if only for a minute, one infinitely lingering
minute, a ray of light, a spark that would imprint itself deep
within my eye, that would stay protected in my entrails like
a secret. There it would be, lodging in my breast and nourishing
my endless nights, there, in the depths of the humid earth,
in that tomb smelling of man stripped of his humanity by shovel
blows that flay him alive, snatching away his sight, his voice,
and his reason.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
This Blinding Absence of Light, opening
lines |
When I was extremely tired, pages of Balzac or from Victor
Hugo would sometimes bombard me all mixed up together.... Losing
that inner strength immediately affected my situation in the
hole: my cell shrank. The walls closed in on me; the ceiling
dropped. I had to react quickly and recover that ability to
be in touch with distant and imaginary worlds.... I reach out
with both arms. I touch the walls. Sitting, I lift them up.
I'm two inches from the ceiling. The walls must move back. I
push them with the palms of my hands. I stand up, still hunched
over, and try to raise the ceiling as though it were a lid.
I will repeat this operation all day long. When I collapse in
exhaustion, I will know that I have managed to gain an inch
or so. The abstract problem - of memory - can be solved by acting
on something concrete,, the area of my incarceration. If I succeed
in organizing my mental library, I am saved. The walls will
no longer oppress me. If I escape in my mind by recovering the
characters imagined by my novelists, I won't have a problem
with my space anymore.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
This Blinding Absence of Light |
Gradually I built up my library again. There were not many
books, but there was one I had read at the time of the competitive
entrance exam for the Moroccan Civil Service Academy (I flunked
it by one point): Camus's The Stranger. Ah, what joy, what delight
to rediscover those pages where every word, every phrase, is
carefully thought out! For a solid month, I recited The Stranger
to my companions. I remembered poor Abdelkader dying because
no one told him stories anymore. With Camus, I felt at ease
and was only too happy to recall certain passages. This conferred
on them an immense importance that went far beyond the story
of the crime. A novel related in a dungeon, in the presence
of death, cannot have the same meaning, the same consequences,
as it would when read on a beach or in a meadow, in the shade
of cherry trees.
... Like a distant murmur, I heard someone repeating the opening
of the book.
"Mama died today. Or perhaps yesterday, I'm not sure. I
received a telegram from the nursing home: 'Mother deceased.
Funeral tomorrow. Deepest sympathy.' The meaning isn't clear.
Maybe it was yesterday."
Then I heard a different voice.
"Today, I am going to die. Or maybe tomorrow. I don't know.
My mother will not receive a telegram from Tazmamart, or any
deepest sympathy. The meaning isn't clear. Maybe it was yesterday."
Another voice.
"Then, I shot four more times at a motionless body, into
which the bullets vanished without a trace. As if I were giving
four brief knocks on misfortune's door."
Tahar Ben Jelloun
This Blinding Absence of Light |
The
ideal Valentine gift! Get our outrageously funny quotes book at -
