Abdellah Taïa : A Country For Dying

today's episode is brought to you by Roger Deacon's water log a masterpiece of nature writing in which Deacon embarks from his home in suffk to swim Britain the Seas rivers lakes ponds pools streams locks Moes and quaries and in the process offers enchanting descriptions of natural landscapes and a deep well of humanity boundless humor and unbridled Joy Susan Casey says water log is an adventure a meditation a celebration of wild swimming a delight in this book Roger Deacon has captured the magic of the liquid world with a new introduction by bony and a new afterward by Robert McFarland waterlog is out on May 25th from tin house and available for pre-order now I'm unusually excited to share today's conversation between Portland and Paris with Moroccan writer abdella Taya who is as wonderful in the real world as his books are to read for people who listen to the show regularly you know I take a moment before we begin to talk about some of the many reasons why you might consider transforming yourself from a listener to a listener supporter whether it be the resourcer emails that point you to further things to explore after the conversation the best things I discovered in preparing for it and the most interesting things that either abdella and I refer to during it or collectible items from writers from Nikki finny Ricky duor and Ursula lwin among many others but I particularly want to highlight the bonus audio archive today because today's edition to it continues a tradition of doing a long form conversation with the translator if a book being discussed is in Translation and Emma Ramadan is the winner of the 2021 pen translation award for today's book and we talk about why she is attracted to abdella ta's work what challenges there are in translating it and abdella himself asks Emma a question but the conversation also goes into many other things stereotyping and sexism within the translation industry questions of representation and scarcity about the appeals of co- translating about the benefits of more out-of-the-box translation experiments and a particular interest of Emma's the relationship of translation to the body and the role of the translator's body in Translation so if you're interested in finding out about how to subscribe to the bonus audio archive or to look through the many different potential rewards and Gifts available to supporters or perhaps you simply want to become a supporter to join the community of people who are not only receiving a backstage look at each episode coming together but also to participate in shaping the future of the show of who we invite next as future guests head over to patreon.com betweenthe covers and check it all out and now for today's episode with abdella Taya [Music] [Music] good morning and welcome to between the covers I'm David name and your host today's guest is Moroccan writer and filmmaker abdella Taya despite being born inside the rabot public library where Tia's father was a janitor and where his family lived until he was two T does not connect his own writing or his journey toward becoming a writer to other books or to a literary pedigree but rather to Sal the neighborhood outside of rabbot where he grew up and to the three- room house where he his parents and his eight siblings lived abdela taaya has lived in Paris for the past 20 years but it was films not books that fueled his desire to go to France to live under the same Skies as French film star Isabella johnni it was Egyptian movies American westerns that he would see on TV that pushed him to study French in Morocco to study French literature as part of that so that he could ultimately study film in Paris and yet today abdella taaya is best known for his writing for his autobiographical novels and stories and for being the first openly gay Moroccan writer coming out in the Moroccan magazine tell and then publishing an open letter in Morocco titled homosexuality explained to my mother fortunately for us many of his books have been translated into English these include the Story collection another Morocco and the novel Salvation Army and an Arab Melancholia all published by semiotext and the novel infidels published by seven stories press in 2010 TAA won the French literary award La PRI def Flor for his book lour de and in 2014 taia made his directorial debut with the film adaptation of his novel Salvation Army which won the jury Awards of Festival Premier PL Doner and Festival Tu deev and the best feature film at the Durban International Film Festival in South Africa this film is also widely considered to have given Arab Cinema its first gay protagonist T has also published two photo books Morocco 1900 1960 with feder miton and Egypt the martyrs of the Revolution with Mahmud farag and Deni da he's also the editor of the Anthology letters to a young Moroccan abdella TAA is here today on between the covers to talk about his latest novel from Seven stories press translated by Emma Ramadan a country for dying the winner of the 2021 pen translation prize veton win says the following of abdell ata's latest book a country for dying is a knife of a novel short sharp and Jagged abdela TAA ruthlessly uses that knife to cut away sentimental Notions of love romance family and Nation he exposes how colonization has shaped sexual desire expression and exploitation and leaves us with a memorable powerful work Ren sasine for the Paris review says a country for dying depicts a Paris distinct from the stuff of anglophone fantasies T who came out as gay in Morocco where homosexuality is illegal in 2006 poignantly portrays the lives of immigrants in a city and country that is frequently hostile to the and openly questions France's perception of itself and its immigration policies finally Edmund white says abdela Tad dramatizes the reality of zahira and zanuba iraan prostitutes in Paris at Sea in the stormy Straits between the Sexes and nationalities estranged from their families but absorbed by their loves and Fantasies this is Aur and a Creed deor heart and body crying in the lonely City Welcome to between the covers abdella TAA thank you very much for inviting me I hope my English is good enough for you to understand what I will be saying yes your your English is quite fantastic I've listened to you speak quite a bit um I wanted to start with talking about voice as a writer in relationship to self and in relationship to story but before we do I think it would be good for people to hear the origin story or one of the origin stories for this book about when you first arrived in Paris full of romantic ideas of what Paris could be and saw someone on the ground outside of the bank could could you Orient the listeners to how that became one way this book came into being uh I I arrived here in France in Paris in 1999 and of course I was only 25 26 years old and he was totally in love still with all the mythical uh cultural um things about France meaning the Museum of Lou the old French movie theaters and Isabella Jen and fr and all these people that are icons and more than icons for French uh and for France and but as soon as I was here just uh to be in this real it called France you see you see immediately the difference at the same time I was still totally enamored and in love with everything that is friend but at the same time I saw so many people in the streets in the Subways uh looking like me like meaning Arabs Muslims Africans black people but at the same time marginalized while being in the center of France the center of Paris and I remember remember very clearly that I was in the neighborhood of barbes which is one of the main centers of Paris uh it's the 18th ariso and I was there because I was trying to have a bank account I had to open that and just to do that it was extremely complicated but I was in the bank the French bank called K Le Leon LC and while I was going out coming out from the bank I saw a woman uh literally on the floor um totally uh destroyed uh totally abandoned um she was not a crazy woman but it was obvious that that this woman was um not welcomed in France not welcomed in uh in in in Paris it was obvious that she lived things that here in France as an immigrant in France that totally um changed her physically changed even her eyes and what struck me the most at this that woman was looking like exactly like my mother so it's it's I was attracted to her immediately because I saw it's my mother never dreamed to to come to Paris or to go to France this was not for her and she never fantasized about France or the French people or the French culture but it was like my mother being here and destroyed in uh this country called France and this city called called Paris I felt the the the the more than a connection with her and it was so ironic that me just coming here just arriving in the West in France with a big Ideas Big Dreams I am going to be a writer I will make a film you know I was already I mean uh possessed seriously with all these ideas and here in front of me it was an a serious image of what the West could do to immigrants and to How the West could attract people how Paris how France attracts people with romantic ideas of culture of France and so many things but yet when they are here they are just being exploited um and and sent sent sent sent away that woman was a prostitute because I talked little bit with her I didn't ask her are you PR or something like that but just from the being next to her I I I sensed that she was a prostitute meaning that she was much much more exploited than my first thoughts about her just me making a connection between her and between her and my mother and when I left her it was obvious for me this was this was 1999 that I have one day to write um a book a novel a story about a woman like her in a city called Paris in this land of Freedom that doesn't give freedom to people like her Arab Muslim and like me of course yes well one of our main protagonists zahira is a Moroccan prostitute in her 40s in Paris and I wanted to ask you about inhabiting her voice partially because a lot of your work despite being called novels is heavily out of biographical but more because when you were in conversation with colum toin for Skylight books you were about to read a section of a country for dying and you said to the audience before you read that that what you were going to read was in the voice of zahira which is not you and you made that clear but then you stopped yourself and said but actually it is you that you can't write except by pulling all that you know and all of who you are into a character even a female prostitute so talk to us about this gesture of I'm going to read you zahira and zahira is me well first of all I am now 47 years old meaning that uh my Illusions about life and about France and about anything that could happen on this planet Earth are far gone like I like now I see things clearly like I mean politically economically even when the people are in love I see what is going on and I'm telling you this just to explain that the idea of to be an individual with one voice is not something for me this idea that I am defined only by one thing and by one voice and I am only speaking and writing from that only that one voice is wrong for me because it is clear that anyone on this planet Earth right now is here still alive because so many other people before him built up something for him not in order to be a writer like me or something but just prepared the paths prepared the the the the the roads uh uh for him so um before reading uh the the the the the beginning of my novel when I was in conversation with calm typing I actually that that answer was not even prepared in my head it just felt uh natural to me because uh I cannot uh be a writer uh with one dimension with one voice I canot even if I you said that my novels are autobiographical most of the people would understand it's only about me it's only about my stories about my gay Adventures or my gay struggles or fights and this is wrong because although yes I I am gay and I had a lot of horrible experiences in life but while experiencing all this I was surrounded by so many people and from those people I got uh I got um I'm not going to to to use the word support but I got influences I got their voices I as you said in the beginning I grew up in um in a poor family like a really really poor house three rooms uh 11 people 11 persons in three rooms and one room for the Big Brother one room for my father and the last room for Six Sisters my mother my little brother and me that was nine people people so we were all in one teeny tiny room during maybe I don't know 18 years or something like that meaning that I was me as little buddy little buddy boy uh hearing and everything happening in the bodies of my sisters it it was not uh it was too much promiscuity uh too much um body into another body a voice into another voice and at that time there was no internet there was no social media there was this is 1980 and 1982 8385 the only thing we had is Is Us in this thing called life and the people expressing saying things not necessarily to emancipate themselves not necessarily to be free in order to be free one day but just because we are human beings and when we are next to each other something has to come out through the voice so there was my mother screaming all day long the 66ers explaining and trying to invent theories about the world and about love and about sex there was my little brother who was totally totally I mean the he was the favorite of my mother and it was me the gay one I was not I would not say that I was rejected but I they gave me the feeling that I was special but at the same time they didn't send me away they didn't reject me I was there with them so I feel I feel that the voices of my sisters the voices of my mother um as are it's not and this is not even a metaphor they are literally all in me so when I write and this is truly for me the definition of literature and writing because yes you prepare a book yes you structure it and you spend many years preparing it but while doing the writing literally other things happen and for me what happens every time is that the Echoes of the voices inside of me uh the other people that I just maybe met by chance in the streets that impose their voice in me on me in in in in in my my my books there is a literature with only one voice one dimension would would seem to me extremely poor so I know that what I am saying here it's the opposite was being said today because there is an encouragement to be an individual and to be free and to express yourself and all that stuff I am with that of course but I don't am at the same time aware that sometimes that encouragement to be that individual sometimes feel just like um I don't know Comm commercials on TV do this buy this go here uh and it just something media tells you to do and and give you the gives you the illusion that you are free but at the same time you have only the illusion of the Emancipation yes and you you have only the illusion that you are you and I don't think literature is literature cannot be only about one you in me there are all these voices and there is certainly for sure Zahir and aiz and other people yeah so so zahira and zanuba the two Central prostitutes in the story they view or one way they view prostitution is as a form of acting and they watch a lot of Bollywood films watching the actresses in the films and you yourself having have these recurring homages to female film actresses from suad hosney to Marilyn Monroe to Isabella Johnny and You' said that you wanted to as I said in the intro live under the same sky as a Johnny and in your story turning 30 you say that Isabella Johnny her singing voice has sort of usurped or replaced the memory of your mother's own voice has be almost become your mother's voice um in your novel infidels there's this line I am the son of Marilyn Monroe and in a country for dying which has this amazing extended love letter to a Johnny you say a Johnny doesn't act that is her great strength she is incapable of acting she is she is we know that we understand it we take her hand we are with her in her the world will soon fall into a trance the superseding of every limit so I wondered and maybe you've already answered this already but would it be correct to say that you aren't acting either that you aren't acting when you're zahira or when when you're zba like a Johnny you aren't acting well if you have that feeling while you read in my books that would be a huge compliment to me because nothing can top this if this is the feeling I gave you when you were reading my books that for me I don't want anymore compliment about my my my what I do in in life but you know Isabella aen I was not introduced to her uh through someone who was like obsessed with the history of Cinema or something like we were just my mother and my sister watching the Moroccan TV and suddenly her face appeared on on this small screen in the 80s and we were just Teeny Time really poor family watching everything on one channel we had in Morocco and my mother said oh what's happening to this girl my mother who knew nothing about Isabella Jenny felt a connection with her she didn't know that Isabella Jani had an Algerian father she didn't know that in the way Isabel aani inhabited inhabit the the characters in movies there is something coming from us but she recognized that on the screen she recognized the way like she she was not impressed with the fact that she is French she was not impressed with the fact oh this is sh a Chic French actress she saw in her face and in her eyes something that is like us and my mother was illiterate my mother was coming from the country side she was she she didn't she had no idea who Marlin Monroe was or Kine dener or Mary stre or all these people but in Isabella Jan she saw something that is coming from our world meaning the possessed people so later I found out that Isabella Jenny made one of her biggest roll was in a film called possession by Andre zavi and in that film literally there is a scene of trans or where she's um doing this this dance of possessed people I used to watch and see in my poor Moroccan reality so the intuition of my mother making the connection between Isabella Jen and US was totally uh true and sincere well I I had seen a lot of Isabella Johnny films uh over the years but um I wanted to watch more of them in anticipation of our conversation um and so I watched uh Le morier uh one deadly summer and then I watched possession which I had not seen and which is now one of my favorite alltime films and my mouth was hanging open watching that entire film her her performance it's you you you you aspire to describe her performance in this book and um and come as close I think as possible with words but um I wanted to talk I'm glad you brought a possession because I want to talk about possession with you um not the movie but the phenomenon of being possessed um because in most of your your books you engage with Jin and you've talked about in relationship to Arab poetry how Arab poets would have their own Gins to help them find inspiration to right and about how only those who are possessed or Sorcerers can speak to jins in in your interview in bomb you say my literature is always about a voice imposing itself on Me on the book and on the readers a voice that says I in a very naked way it's an eye haunted by other Eyes by other pasts other tears other spirits and and finally in your open letter homosexuality explained to my mother you say mother Morocco is not the others the government the clergy the Eternal scoffers The Hooligans the obstacles the jealous the petty the the whole of Morocco the one that I carry in me and the one that I address in this letter is you it's a Morocco that is not perfect a Morocco tense and feverish a surging Morocco possessed so so talk to us about gens and possession which is one one unifying aspect of your body of work well first of all I am so happy I wrote that letter in 2009 and my mother was still alive so she heard about the letter and someone translated to her to her what is in the letter she was not happy about it but uh I am happy now that she's dead that to know that I was enough generous and intelligent to write a letter where there is that much love for her and not trying to tell her you didn't understand me as a gay person so you don't exist for me as a mother I I never said that to her I always cherished what she did for all all of us and when it comes to Poss uh I I hope that the people who will hear me saying these things will not take this as a metaphor it's not a metaphor I grew up in a world in Morocco where there is a distinction between human beings and the Gen and and not everyone is capable of being seeing them and communicating with them some people are possessed by them and through these people who are possessed by gin we can communicate we can um we can ask things we can do things we can do good things and bad things we can uh one of my sisters was possessed with with with jines so I saw during all my childhood and my uh my adolesence my the body of my sisters when the Gin wakes up in her in her body what happens to her body she like she she she falls down she she she she leaves her first conscience if I might say and suddenly someone else uh starts to speak through her body and her voice and that person was not a person that thing inside of her was not a human beings with some something else so it is something that impressed me extremely and that I respected so much and that I feared at the same time so much because I saw my mother in fear as as me but at the same time doing something something in order to communicate with these voices this genes inside of the body of my my my my my sister for me it was um extraordinary experiences it was horrifying experiences but at the same time it was U like a materialization of the idea of what we call the invisible what land visible because we think that we know everything we human beings and that we see everything and it's of course it's we don't we we we just have this illusion that we see and we understand and we have control on our minds and our brains which is not true but witnessing these experiences with the body through the body of my sister gave me so so so much uh linked like a true link to the this idea of invisible and when because because uh I was living that in true life I was not studying that in order to be a writer one day these things just happened in my life so all these things all this love hate fear for the Gins and the ceremonies we invented for them the food we used to prepare for them and the dances the the the singing all these things became with the years now that I am a writer aesthetic becames um um literary structures I use uh became um a way of being a sensation a state of mind and I think all my books are about this yeah this state of minds and these voices and me trying to bring literature and the readers with me in those State of Mind yeah and I was wondering I guess I wanted to ask you about Sorcerers and and possession also because I notice that in your books and maybe this is true in reality that most of the people either possessed or who are who have access to the Gins are women or in the new book there there's a Jewish sorcerer or a Berber who's a sorcerer so people who aren't from the mainstream they're Mar in some capacity or another and I didn't know if if um if there's a connection there for you that something about um being connection to the invisible world you have to be on the margins of society in some fashion now that you are saying it I of course I understand the analysis you are making here and it's true that I never saw uh like a sorcerer or coming from Bourgeois people or from the elite Morocco or something like that it's most of the time people who are already abandoned by the power abandoned by the rich people and of course so in a way sociologically we can say that to be a sorcerer and to use sorcery is a way to resist to the to the elite people to the to the rich families in Morocco because you know even if you wanted to do bad things to them through soryy you have that right because you don't have other weapons and certainly the fact that women you have much more women in Morocco uh and in the Arab world in general using sorcery and believing in Gins it means something sociologically it means something about the situation of women and how they resist the masculine domination the the the men domination and how they fight them back they do bad things to men they they of course and they have the right and actually uh I I didn't grow up with a mother who was presenting herself to us and to me as a good woman my mother didn't care about being presented as a good wife or as a good woman she was always thinking whom we are going to manipulate in order to have a little bit of money in order to have food because she was facing harsh reality of poverty and she understood that being honest is not going to bring her little money money and food for the 11 persons she was in charge of and believe me my father never did that it was her for 11 person so now that I am older I find this uh extremely extraordinary and and extremely powerful extremely generous that this women uh that was my mother did all this not for her in order to to buy jewelries or clothes or to be presented as The Good Wife of the neighborhood no no no it was as it was weapons for her to construct something for us from the food to the house to the Future so I ended up not doing what she wanted me to do but yet during 25 years she even though she saw that I was gay and I was the disappointment for her but she did not reject me she did not get tell me tell me go away she didn't she she so yes sorcery certainly and this is I am saying this like consciously now certainly is a way to resist the power in Morocco yeah for sure well a question I would ask most writers which I think might be the wrong question for you is given how much of your work is drawing from your own childhood experience and your own personal story what you g gain from calling the books novels versus Memoirs but when I think about this notion of possession and also you describing yourself for 18 years in a room with eight other people where maybe the the borders between one body and another and one voice and another are all blurred and identity becomes much more um fluid um I wonder if it's a relevant question if it is a relevant question I'm curious if there's something that calling the book a novel allows you to do to tell your true story that a memoir wouldn't allow you to do as a true story I have to admit that I just don't care about this uh like Memoir novel short story that's what I suspected this is just uh I don't know how to say this this is just a marketing thing that is being discussed with the publishing houses because they have to put it's it actually it has to do with the distribution even of the book like the distribution for a novel is not the same for a memoir etc etc but me I just don't care I just uh while preparing a book or or even a short story or short text to choose something that is extremely brief extremely tin teeny tiny like a moment or or a specific uh one minute in a moment that I will make uh a chapter about or whole novel about uh that's what this when it comes to structuring in a book in a book I always always choose very at least I try to choose very carefully the the specific moment I will put in this chapter and another moment in the following chapter with the hope that I will become a very good sorcerer like the Moroccan one Moroccan Sorcerers and just by putting this moment next to this moment next to this moment something will happen like some we can call it a magic a literary magic I totally believe uh uh for instance if I could write books without using words that would be heaven but that's impossible for now because I always want just I don't know just you know some sometimes I am in in in in a bus or the Subway at just being next to someone during 15 minutes or 20 minutes a man or a woman a lot of things happened there between the two of us and we didn't even speak a lot of things are being uh being expressed being h a lot of things are happening so uh that and those things don't need words yes now I love that well I I I want to I want to um stay a little longer with this question of identity and voice and self um you've talked about and also written about the dangers to you of being an effeminate boy in Sal where you grew up where where people acted or pretended as if homosexuality didn't exist but at the same time you were under the threat of rape by men in the neighborhood and that ultimately you had to wear a mask of a man to suppress your effeminate nature as a means of survival and in your wonderful Paris review conversation with edir Louie you talk about how abdela your given name is no longer your real name that you have a secret name that is now your real name and your secret name has the first name of an Egyptian actor that you love and that abdela is now your writer's name so in a way your given name has become a mask of sorts this all may me think of the other main character zanuba a a close friend of zahira and a fellow prostitute but one who's in the process of going through gender confirmation surgery and a lot of this book is told through stories stories told by zanuba to zahira that we get to over here or stories told about other family members some of them some seem which seem mysterious or mythical but also these long moving conversations between zanuba and Aziz her former self but she isn't speaking to aiz her former self as a grown man she's speaking to Aziz The Boy The Boy that she was in childhood immersed in the world of having many sisters before she had to really conform to any categories so in a way before she was forced to wear any masks so talk to us more about zanuba and her surgy which is both a gesture toward freedom but also I think maybe surprising to her becomes an act of mourning as well for the boy Aziz well F first of all um it is very uh sad to me as a person um to to say that uh yeah yes I loved my family and they were poor Etc and I was they they were to me life the light they were uh the center of everything they were even Hollywood they were even the Cairo they were my Hollywood they were my stars my sisters were my like my true stars and I didn't at that time uh this is the 80s I didn't uh hard Hollywood or French movies were just something uh we we used to watch on TV but the them as bodies as an inspiration and it was them and the fact that they they knew what was happening to me and they didn't um they didn't um do anything actually to to to to to help me in a way or another uh because they knew what was going on that all these people were raping me this was not this is not a metaphor or something in any way possible and um very I I was in a big danger at a certain moment because uh they were the the society was putting me because I was that that very light eminate boy happy but Happy meaning for them you can use him for whatever you want and that's uh that that's like a killing processes for for teeny tiny body a boy this is this is not even an adolescent this is a boy it's not a teenager so for me today 47 year old man sometimes like I just cry like why they did not this or of course I can understand what was politically the situation in Morocco what was sociologically going on there and even the idea the identity of being homosexual didn't exist in Morocco and actually even in the west it was still very hard like even in this is the 80s like yes it was New York or America this was just uh was the first years of something that so imagine this is in Morocco and I understand that for them in in in in in the in the sociological structure they lived in very poor to have a boy that he that was special let's call him that was something that were that was going to make them more weak in the society is going to it's not something that will help them and they had no they had no and this is very hard to say maybe no other options that to they could not protect me they could not go to the street and to the neighbors and tell them well this is our son stop theing because saying these things meant uh uh to to be sure of what they were doing to be proud of their gay son etc etc and all these things things were impossible at that time and actually even they are still impossible and even today in Morocco in in so many countries and actually even in France and this this idea and this is something this is another illusion about the West um that so many people think that even in the west you can be totally you free as G because there are the laws but the reality is is is um is something else so in order to to save myself literally because I didn't um because again I they were for me the the world life all these people I I I could not imagine somewhere elsewh to go did that somewhere else didn't exist what I used to do around 11 12 is from time to time I would just go and wonder in the the streets in around our neighborhood and uh and cry cry cry cry cry cry alone while walking cry cry cry cry and then go back and at a certain point I maybe that was me starting to be an intellectual or maybe already a writer I started to invent this other me this other uh with another name and at sometime sometimes another name and uh for instance I used to go next to some houses where some men used to live and I was in love with them or something like that and in front of the house I was sit there and invent a story just in my head and go back I think my me being a writer started here this ability in real life to to save myself and that was extremely hard to do through imagining things but only in my head this was not uh like uh the beginning of my writing career or something like that I had no idea yeah about I had no a desire to be a writer or something it was just this is how I use how this is what I invented in my brain in order to save myself to start talking to myself and invent other avatars of me yes uh and to talk to them and to to make things with them in my head uh in order to say myself I I'm glad you brought up that the West isn't some Paradise where these problems don't exist because I wanted to ask you something about zahira and zanuba something that they both have to confront as prostitutes and that is the white French imagination of the Arab for instance Zen nuba is asked to dress as a Savage Arab Boy by white intellectual customers or in the conversation between zanuba and her former self Aziz when zanuba says to aiz that she won't regret becoming a woman disas says you wanted to become the woman you always believed you were deep down well look at yourself in the mirror you are you've succeeded you're beautiful you're magnificent ravishing the parisians are going to adore you make you into an example of a liberated Arab who's not ashamed not like the others those from the village who are still rotting in ignorance and submission you've succeeded my dear Bravo Bravo and I wonder I guess I wondered about you abdella TAA the author and whether people try to make you into an example of the liberated Arab in a way that becomes self- congratulatory for France because it seems like in your work you do everything in your power to make this impossible for the white French reader but I'd be interested to hear how you're received or not received in the French imaginary well uh first of all I'm enough lucky to write books and they are published and they have some readers here in France and they are translated many language that's a huge privilege it's like so whatever the way I am treated by the media or some people I I I I don't forget that that this is a privilege um and a chance yes I am talented but still still it's it's a privilege I worked for that but it is still a privilege well I think just by reading this novel a country for dying it is clear what I think about colonialism and French colonialism French neocolonialism and how uh how how deep still uh and the the the Vision they have for Arabs and Africans is still so much racist so much Colonial and the problem is today like today 2021 is that it is very hard here in France to to have a serious conversation about this topic with white French people and because quickly you realize they are bored and quickly you realize that the are they don't know that much about the colonial time and most of the time some people would tell you oh come on France left Morocco 50 years ago uh like you hear certain reactions that are astonishing and and most of the time when people would answer me oh come on France left Morocco six 50 or 60 years ago and I told them about the French Revolution happened to two two centuries ago and you are still obsessed with the with French Revolution how about that very very very strange in a country that is obsessed with its own history uh to to to see that we the ex colonized people now that we are brave enough courageous enough to to to to go through that past and try to clean it up finally and just go to what what happened in the recent history this is not even very very long time history but is I have to admit that this is extremely depressing to me because in the French media in the even with my friends like now it's became it's like what's going on in America with the the Trump people and other people like there is a polarization that is that is happening wit uh Circles of friends people you love this is not coming from the official enemies or people like you said this is his just dump he don't know no no no this is coming from really cultivated people and um um but yet again just reading this novel a country for dying you have all the answers uh about what I think about that but saying this uh I don't want um my what I try to write and my books to become uh a space just to have commentaries about what is being said in the media today this doesn't work for me yes because and maybe to say this is arrogant but I'm going to say it uh because I think literature has to go deeper than this just to be only what is happening today like the struggles of today it has to reflect that yes uh but it has to go beyond that and and I don't want my novels to be like people uh having sociological conversations or saying Michelle F said that and other said this and made this film and all for me this I love all these people at just named I adore them but the way they are used in the conversations today for me it just petrifying like they are frozen in a certain image and I don't want my novels to my novels has to do with the have to has have to bring I don't know the the the the dirtiness of real life the dirtiness what what is being dirty for for real and certainly not to clean it up in order to make it look French Chic or something like this yeah uh well I you know listening to a lot of conversations that you've had or watching conversations that you've had I love how you continually refuse literary influence you've talked about how you've felt like book seem Bourgeois compared to cinema but when people bring up you liking movies by fast Bender or Douglas cir you also push back against this saying art Cinema was not an influence either it was cheap popular movies that were and similarly you studied PR and Jan and admire them but they aren't influences and recently one interviewer brought up pooa as an influence and you bring him up often your but you pushed back and said no pooa isn't an influence and Nicki Minaj is doing many of the same things which I loved um you've also said Arab literature with perhaps the exception of shukri isn't an influence either that your book is not made of other books or necessarily even in conversation with other books and that this is clearly a question of class for you and I wanted to link this to to a question you're often asked about why you write in French or perhaps another way to phrase it why do you continue to write in French when the original reasons to do so to live in France to make films has been achieved and the reason I ask this is because of many things you often say about French first and foremost that originally you Associated it with the Arrogant Moroccan Elite the powerful and moneyed people in Morocco not the people you knew and loved you also have said that you still feel inferior within French and you've also said that the language is not one you think will stay in you forever that if you were to move to Argentina for instance that it would probably vanish and be replaced quickly by Spanish but I wondered does French nevertheless give you something advantageous a mask a distance a space to write in that Arabic wouldn't or in other words what what keeps you from switching now to writing in Arabic now that you're both known and loved on your own terms well first of all when when when someone says I grew up in a poor family and I lived in poverty most the people hear something fash and poor they don't they don't don't realize what does it mean to be poor even when you try to explain people are very quickly bored with the reality of being poor and I say this to you because I cannot Escape that feelings inside of me of the humiliations of being poor the people looking at you because you are just poor in Morocco in rabbat in even in the neighborhood where I used to live which was a poor neighborhood but even in within that neighborhood there was some people who have more money than others and certainly not even here in France so there was no way for someone like me living this poverty extreme poverty to dream about the idea to become a writer and to construct them it seemed to me from the people I used to watch on TV some writers they seemed like living in I don't know uh Beverly Hills of the world or and even in the way they were speaking and expressing things and maybe I am here totally unfair to them but I am this is how I felt it felt not only to me but to my sister too and the only way in order not to be totally dominated by them and by their words we used to laugh at them with the intellectual posture and the yes and I'm talking about the Moroccan speaking Moroccan writer speaking French and reting what they learned in Lon and talking about this and that's meaning meaning oh if you want to be considered as a writer you have to restite I don't know Jean Jun or Marcel PR if you if you start talking about Marcel PR people will take you seriously but you if you only talk about your mother who is doing sorcery you are just poor guy who is not sophisticated enough in his brain in order to become as a good writer as someone who is who know Jean Paul S and Simon De yes but really me I that would be for me uh the biggest betrayal ever to to say that my mother for instance who was elate was not clever was not intelligent was not able to to think of her world and to struggle inside of her world and just for instance to go now and to talk about her as an oppressed Arab woman an oppressed Muslim woman and only talk about her from that perspective and not say what was the richness yes it she was poor but her life was extremely rich with so many many events happening today and her screaming nonstop all day long and all night long sometime so you see this poverty people they don't want to hear it they only want you to say I escaped poty and I am now this free gay Arab living in France and Paris and just celebrate me as that but me I I and I have no choice here the my my first images my first struggles the what is what we can call transgressions my mother dealing with police begging police people the man to let us go kissing their hands and inventing a character just to to to to to stay safe somehow so so you see this is big lessons of life and and it explains I think everything why my writing is like the way I am I am I am doing it and it's certainly not when I come here to France and I if you ask me who is the biggest filmmaker for you today I I would tell you um Robert Bon for me he is French but for here the way we talk about Robert Bron he it's seems like he he is not accessible to anyone and I F and I feel that this is wrong I'm sure that Rober BR in his grave is not happy about this yeah the fact that his Cinema is only an elite Cinema is considered as an elite Cinema is something that hurts me actually somehow because I'm sure if my mother was still alive if I show her certain films by Rober br so she will understand them because I me personally I feel that Robert Bron was Moroccan Because he believes in spirituality and sorcery and he he puts some magic there in his in his films and I'm sure that Morocco or someone in India or I don't know in AR China and anyone poor or very poor would understand that language uh and he engages with poverty exactly and but he did it in a very rich way so until now the the way we treat the PO poor people and the poverty it has to be done in a certain way it's and this uh this thoughts I'm trying here to give you is something that I had when I was already a teenager like for instance when I used to go to rabbat the capital of Morocco with all these fancy people I already invented um characters avatars that I will use just to stop their hate and their their their separation and it was the same thing when I was writing the screen play of my film Salvation Army the first important thing I put in my mind not tell the story of this gay Moroccan boy as it is expected the victimization uh the the the Western uh point of view on a gay Arab boy it has I it has to be um well he has to be like me as clever as me as as tortured as me as aware of what's going on really as me and not only a teeny a little boy effeminate yes raped but at the same time he is clever he's he knows what is going on so not again not only one they they mention yeah well when you mention Michelle Fuko and Roland Bart you've also talked about how you resist looking at your works or Works in general of literature through the perspective of literary Theory because it would be in a way being colonized the second time as a writer to take that way of meaning making as a way as a frame through which to look at what you've done it made me wonder about how you felt about the fact that you are now yourself the subject of scholarship that there's an entire academic book hundreds of pages long by Tina dransfeld Christensen entitled writing queer identities in Morocco abdela taaya and Moroccan committed literature it's a book that compares and contrasts you to other Moroccan writers but uses you as the central subject and the ways that you have reshaped the discourse and trajectory of Moroccan literature and how how does that feel for you is that that must feel I can't imagine how that feels actually well uh one day my big brother who never helped me when I was little gay in Morocco heard that I was invited to American universities and that impressed him so much and he to he told his daughter to tell me that he's proud of me but he was proud of what right I made to America but um you know uh we are all only humans Flesh Blood skin and we need to be caressed and to be talked with love and gentle at a certain moment not with when it's too late so of course it's a huge privilege to be that to have American universities or other people in Denmark like Tina or other countries it's a huge privilege and I helped them when they asked me to have interviews and I I I I I answered the questions and uh I I read the books but I don't read it like with the did they get this right or I am I actually even if they got it wrong it doesn't matter to me yeah yes and I I read it and I luckily for me I have the ability to forget about that uh which means that I am just an arrogant person I am obsessed with own ideas there is no one will change my ideas and the ideas of the other people inside of me the the voices Etc but of course it's a huge privilege but I don't know it doesn't interfere uh with my idea of writing books or writing stories or writing anything but you know when I I say that I don't want to be colonized by other books it it is not even uh like a gesture of of like I'm playing the hero here no I don't know if you take Jean j he produced his literature in in a certain social and political context that is his and his books are the the the production of that and his life the prison he was in when he was a little boy Etc ETA so I don't know how I can take that that thing that that are the things that are specific to him and to put them into something that is specific to me that would be for me impossible to do yeah well part of the reason why I wanted to bring up Tina's book writing quer I identities in Morocco is I want to return to this at least briefly to this question of why French and not Arabic um or at least not that question but what are you doing within French to make French French for you or to to change French because because you know I was listening to your translator am and Ramadan speak and she says that your French is very different than the French of others she translates and in this book writing queer identities in Morocco Tina dransfield Christensen quotes you talking about how you proceed in French through your first origin which is poverty and this is what Christensen says this poverty is reflected in T's literary style which he himself has characterized as POA France not Mo France as in bad French which some reviewers both French and Moroccan have accused him of but quote unquote poor French as in a language that reflects his poor background but simultaneously resists the norms and conventions of rich or so-called good french so so maybe for all of us non-french speakers could you talk about your French um the POA France for us I think French at first was such something that we used to hear on Moroccan TV so it was far from us and then for certain reasons we used to go to the capital rabbat and there you would meet certain people using French phrases or French words in order to say something about them meaning that they are superior to you and and actually they they did more than that they would like insult you or just because they you they were able to speak French they would they would allow themselves to have a certain um postures and like for instance if you are waiting in line and something and suddenly a a bouro Moroccan women from rabbat she could go without being in the line just because she was the boura woman with the the French and we would all accept that and this is something that I lived during many many years so even when I studied French literature in the Moroccan University of Raba University Muhammad fif in rabbat a lot of students with me in the class were coming from the boura system the French schools in Morocco until now until now there are still French schools in Morocco and only the very very elite people would have enough money to send them so I remember very clearly the way they used to look at me and who like all in me may maybe you you don't see it but for them it was clear like all in me physically my gesture the way I am poor and I will stay poor and this is my destiny just because I don't know French if this is not the the the the a true image of what the meaning of the French colonization is I don't know what would be and yes France left Morocco in 1956 but the French language is still until today um used is still being used by the bouro and the rich as a way to separate themselves from the rest of the Moroccans this is extremely sad this is iy telling you here this is extremely sad it means that if you only know Arabic you are nothing in your own country Morocco it's like I tell you you David in America if you know only English you are nothing how would you feel and like this is what I grew grew up in and of course and I think this is my right I wanted to not stay in poverty and I said okay I going to learn your language that French language and I'm going to be better than you in that language of course it was a very silly of me to think that but a miracle happened in the university and I don't know how or why I became the the the best student during five years I don't know how how I did it because I am just coming from the public schools which I where I learned everything in Arab except five hours of French each week and I don't know like like um Revenge dynamic or in my brain was so hard and it became I don't know like a Terminator I love that like like merciless like but yet being this presenting to the world this very nice polite face that I now people only see in me when they make me first but inside of me I I became that Terminator so when I learned French it was with the intention to kill them all those those Rich Moroccan people who wanted to who were already killing us all yes I so I learned it with the desire not to be French as them not to be uh bouro as them not to be Frozen in French like I used to see them them I I wanted to be I don't know I wanted to be better than them in French and but I didn't I did and repeat it here I didn't want to be French I didn't I remember clearly that when we you were when we when we were uh studying I don't know Je Andre Paul verin and all these people I was not these these names of course are huge in the French culture at like big big big big big names like even even Hollywood stars are nothing compar to them in the space of French culture but yet me meeting them in my years in University of Rabat I felt like Paul verin what he was talking about was very similar what I was living I I didn't feel like oh what a big master of words he is I of course he was but what he was talking about the misery the the rain the the Complicated Love Stories the the cries the of course the hom hidden homosexuality and all that it felt Moroccan it didn't felt this is French Chic reality to me so in a way I thank God if he exists that I was not I didn't feel inferior inside of the French culture at that time yeah and and that's what made me a writer because and this is of course Very paradoxal because I am coming from nothing like literally nothing and yet with that nothing I come to the French language and I tell them I'm going to be better than you and in your French language I'm going to put what is me it's extremely arrogant very subversive it's great I didn't think of me as a subversive I didn't at that time but this is I don't know intuition of Life yeah but again I repeat it I was so much surrounded with so much hateful people Rich using French against us in order to diminish us that I have the right motivation just in front of me they will not kill me and I will be better than them yeah well it's foolish but that's what somehow made me a writer well now that we're talking about languages let maybe it's a perfect time to hear you read in yet another language um we had talked about maybe having you read the the beginning of the Isabella Johnny section where zanuba is telling the story of a johnni to herself as a boy as the boy aiz Isabel aani she is Algerian like you and me she appears she disappears she reappears she is here she is no longer here we search for her we thought we had forgotten her but she is always somewhere she hides she sleeps she forgets herself she loves she goes far very far I think she frequently leaves this world what we call the world the round earth the blue and black Sky I am convinced Isabel aani is not like the rest of us she is not made of Flesh and Blood there is only water in her body this woman carries in her something we don't know yet future the future as it is depicted in science fiction movies better much better than that men and women reated in another time not the present not the past but what will come the sublime that Sublime explosion that never stops spending and H first Echo we sometimes hear at night Isabel aani was Bor born then in in that moment precisely I think we call it the Big Bang there was nothing absolutely nothing boom everything begins life not Life as we know it today no life in a mad Rhythm a hellish but completely bearable heat a cosmic conscious there are not yet human beings other beings other creatures other intelligences but Isabella J so white so black so blue nude of course carrying in her all the lives speaking all the languages mastering all the signs she is not a goddess she is the spark her fire captured us human kind is forever attached to her in fear in ecstasy we listen through her we hear what happens in her the voices of all the world we exist to follow her love her adore her venerate her wait for her is she coming is she here not yet not yet in fact she is already here in in Us in you in me this world today doesn't understand Isabella Jen doesn't love her the way she deserves men see her only as a very talented and very temperal actress they are wrong 10,000 times wrong Isabella Jen the actress cannot be defined by the idea of a career she is beyond that Beyond that modern triviality to say that she is making a career is an insult to someone like her that woman invents and acts out things that are much more modern than we could imagine incarnations and interpretations that tell us everything absolutely everything do you understand aiz are you following me I know that you love Isabella Jan just I do remember how the two of us were Swept Away by the film The Story of idel ACH do you remember that movie we watched it one sad afternoon on Algerian television do you remember what she says near the end that's unbelievable thing for a young girl to walk on water cross from the Ancients to the new world to join her love that thing will I do that's what she said isn't it she is the one who said it not the character it's possible I've mixed up her words it doesn't matter those words convinced us us that this woman was indeed from our home country Algeria in shambal and also from the other world her conviction and her favor sent Unforgettable shivers down our spins gave us memories that would last forever you and I we try to learn by heart the sacred words she spoke in the film we might have invented them reinvented them the film entered once and for all into our Eternal memory the face of Isabel aani who loves who suffers who cries who yells who runs who jumps Who falls a haunted face inhabited by all of us one face and only one face and nothing else we never grow tired of it we did we that there and tortured face madly in love courageous and alone in writing in Clairvoyance in the Beyond Isabel aen is also a c Clairvoyant in the proper sense of the term she sees here beyond the man who made this film truly understood her he placed Isabel aen in situations where the world seizes to be the world the world ends a journey continues for weeks and weeks every day we cried thinking about that film that body in love that wondering that distress that sadness that absolute Solitude embraced and when we learned that this woman was Algerian Algerian do you remember what we did aiz we went to the public bath to the ham you went to the ham aiz and you tenderly made love with three men at the same time that was your way of being in love and in recognition you understood then the reason for that mysterious and miraculous attachment to Isabel aen she was better than Algerian with in her floats something that you too had and that you recognized so clearly in her you were not wrong no no Isabella Jenny was from another world yours you saw in her your idea of possession how one takes within oneself the entire universe before and after how one adorns oneself in it how one then and cries in it Isabella J was exactly that the truth according to you beauty are seen through your eyes gazing at the world and what they had captured storen been listening to abdella Tha I read from emed ramadan's translation of a country for dying so sometimes on the show I invite other people to ask questions of the guest and I had this fantasy that I would somehow be able to contact Isabella Johnny and I'd get her to record something and I would play it for you right here because I had this there's a listener of the show who writes for one of the best film magazines in the United States and happens and I reached out to him and I was like do you have any connections because he interviews people like Denny Levant and Claire Deni and he knew of quite a big French film director closely and reached out to her and unfortunately she didn't have a way to get a connection to a Johnny but I just want you to know I tried really hard to have a Johnny be part of the program today that means the word to me uh earlier you said that one of the reason I wanted to come to Paris is to be under the same sky as Isabella Journey yeah yeah and and you know it's like when you are depressed or you feel like oh the God and the word suddenly are so sad what do you do you watch Marlin Monroe and suddenly you understand that Marlin Moro is not only an actress yeah else it can't be this trivial she's only an actress she gives and I think that's what makes Marlin mon Roso so so alive until now that people sees what she GES she gave and for me isab J is maybe bigger than Marin Monroe but it's it's just something that she gave me and and this is not a Star Trek thing or like I'm or Obsession or a queer Obsession or something like a gay for it's I don't know it's we say in French she has the light she has the light yeah and don't in on top of the fact that she is incredible actress in terms of acting and she was nominated to Oscars to French Oscars the Cesar and all that stuff but that doesn't count that's this is not what makes herself special the the the Oscars of the French sayah no no no it's every time that she appears not only in movies like she's here you you you stop being you I stop being me and I am her and like I am in her in everything she and it doesn't mean that I I I agree with everything she says it's something else that I am inside of her I don't know that many people who who can have this that effect yeah that effect on me except the sorcerers that was yeah and I think maybe Isabella JN she she she must I am sure of that she must believes in the same things as me like the sorcery the gyms otherwise she can't be that good actress well in all of your books your your women while marginalized and you've spoken to this are nevertheless really powerful um in your open letter to your mother you said mother you surely do not know it but this desire to Rebel it's you who gave it to me in our family you've always been the guide the schemer the rebel the one who makes things happen you understood quickly that you had no other choice but to be a man in a place of men to be better and braver than all the men around us and I feel like we see this rebellion and scheming and bravery in many of the women in your books but there's also I think a recurring portrayal of the humiliated man and I was hoping we could talk about that a little bit this book opens where we learn the life expectancy in Morocco is 56 years old and that zahir's father fought in IND China for France and yet received no retirement pay from France for his service in the military and when he gets sick and comes home from the hospital he's exiled to a half-finished second story of the house and the family is supposed to stay separate from him for their own health and nobody visits him yet they can hear his footsteps upstairs he's abandoned and ultimately he kills himself and there's a similar situation portrayed in your early books with the father banished upstairs and dying in early death and and in this book zahira is haunted by her failures regarding her her father the zahira we see is super kind a caretaker she calls her prostitution humanitarian rescue because she focuses her clientele on poor immigrants she takes care of zanuba during her surgery she takes care of mojab the gay Iranian revolutionary who she gives Refuge to during the month of Ramadan in Paris but all of her caretaking seems also to be a negotiation with her guilt around what she didn't do for her father when he needed her so I was hoping we could maybe spend a little bit of time talking about this Fallen man character which feels like the diminished or fallen or humiliated man that seems to be a figure in a lot of your work also you know sometimes I think that straight man are just so poor they know nothing they they just are born and they the world tells them that they have the power and they act like they have the power but they don't have the power and yet they impose on the women and lgbtq people their illusion of power and we have now other choice but to fight that illusion of power they impose on us but deep down now they are just lost and we are attracted to what are their messy chaos uh and this for me is coming from the the the images I've seen with for my father my father was uh my My real father in real life um he was tender he was he was sweet he was but he did he was not able to fight he was not uh with the time uh and I loved him but at the same time I at certain point I cannot help but he was not there in the street to scream and to fight with the people it's my mother who did it he was just constructing somehow this very romantic uh image of himself a depressed guy man in Morocco and okay I'm depressed do the work for me uh and I'm here I'm talking seriously um because this I I am witnessing even today with the husbands of my sisters in Morocco and with the lovers loves concubines of friends I have here in France white French women what they live like the the the amount of submission it's unbelievable like U the sub Mission imposed on us by straight men who only have the illusion of the power is beyond what we can think of but um when it comes to my novels um yeah it's it's the image of my father there trying to be a romantic depressed guy uh the loser guy um the one who is who he said this is something that you hear a lot in Morocco straight man depress telling people do something for me or I will jump or I will commit suicide you know that man straight man commits suicide much more than statistically there is this it makes you think uh that even when they are in troubles they are putting on us their egocentric and um narcissistic image of themselves losing the power so in a way I'm trying to say here that my father was lucky more than lucky to have a woman like my mother who not only gave him sex on a very daily basis because at some point this is only what they want sex and not only that but she buildt the whole thing the whole meaning of the world to him and um the the beginning of the novel a country for dying this is not what is being narrated but I wrote this novel in 2012 2013 2015 and and it was published in France in 2015 and since that like if I had to rewrite the beginning of this novel I will be harsher on him and it put much more uh interes re reevaluation to the mother because the mother in the beginning here she is only described as a dictator yeah there's another humiliated man in the book alal that I want to talk about at some point but before we get there I reached out to Viet ton win to ask have him ask you a question um I know you've met um when he was on the show we we talked about his most recent book which also takes place in Paris is centered around the French Vietnamese Community but whose primary interactions in the book are with the French Algerian community of Paris this is a viet's question for you um a country for dying includes a move to Saigon on in 1954 why did you feel it necessary to have that place and time in the novel what is added by including this particular something that you didn't have to include I wondered if it may have something to do with an interest in comparative Colonial experiences well first of all thank you very very much yet for this question I love you very much and I love your I read only the sympathizer when it was translated in in in French so I didn't read the the the book he just published thank you very much for the question fet um I included Saigon and in Morocco they call it lushin andin into China in Morocco and in France this is until now the name is Lin in in Arab Moroccan Arabic he was in andin he was in he did Lin oh he's there in Landin this name was just there before even me understanding what does it mean colonization France colonization it was part of our life of something happened in the past for for for some people from my family and other families and something horrible happened to them and the the some sacrifice happened to them and some killing happened happen to them and the whole this whole horrible experiences were condensed in one name Landin andin Landin so I put the The Saigon and Lin in my novel it appears really at the end and I'm not going to to ruin the the the surprise for the readers I'm not going to say what really happened it just adds that layer of how complex and how brutal was the the French colonization and how they used uh people the bodies of people and send them wherever they want in order to be more exploited than in their own country Morocco because here you find the ant of zba Zena being sent in uh to Saigon in the 50s by the French and being used for sex by the French soldiers and I'm not going to tell everything what's going on there but it's what what I told you earlier like me as a writer here speaking to you writing in French being translated into English I am here because someone did some sacrifices for me and that person is my mother in the 70s and the 6 she did something for me like literally she didn't understand me as a gay person but she feed me she gave me food she gave me money to take the bus to go to university and all these things are huge have huge value and I have to tell them to the world and not only talk about myself as the writer self-made writer it doesn't mean nothing so in a country for dying when Z zenab the The Prostitute the end of Z then of Z appears suddenly we it gives another light of the actual exploitation of the immigration in the France today this exploitation didn't start 10 years ago it started many many years many many years ago yeah that's the first intention the second intention for me is I always like uh to bring something surprising at a certain point I don't want my characters or the people speaking like to be to like like the character of Allah suddenly he's there there is nothing that prepares the the the appearance of alal in in the book and suddenly he's there and I love this way of structuring my books as something that is just shake the books and Shakes the book and Shakes the reader like who's this guy who's speaking what is he saying who guy and like suddenly the guy the reader is not even sure of what he's reading but at certain point he will make I hope a sense of what I am trying to to write about well viet's new book the one that takes place in Paris unlike your book um is very much a book in conversation with other books and a book in conversation with postcolonial and anti-colonial theory in other books and mentions a lot of thinkers and philosophers and right around the time that we spoke president macron and its education Minister Frederick Vidal they spoke out against postcolonial theories and they characterized them as an American contamination of French universities and they coined the term Islam leftism and they said that the pedagogy of French universities would be examined to remove the influence of Islam leftism and mcon also spoke last fall in the L in the largely black and brown suburbs of Paris saying to that audience that one of the reasons they were unhappy was not because of their material conditions but because of these postcolonial theories from America that were making them unsatisfied but one of the ironies at least for me is that a lot of these theories that he's calling American either originated from or were heavily influenced by frankophone thinkers France feno IM C Jean paulart were all crucial to the American po Colonial theory development that he's calling American which really is coming from colonized french-speaking people through America and coming back to France but I guess I wanted to hear your thoughts about the Contemporary moment if you have any um about this uh move to the right of macron and Vidal um and the way that they're targeting uh or inventing a term called Islam leftism which didn't really exist um and it has very vague connotations what are your thoughts on um on this with regards to the current situation in Paris if you remember earlier I was telling you about the ignorance about us I see every day in so many white French people and every time I can't help but feel sad like I am asked to not only to accept their ignorance and their racism and I am asked to to teach them things about us and everything you teach them they it it is being erased immediately but and you have to tell them again every day something else about you and uh it's revolting of course it's um it's exasperating but at the same time I don't want uh to be uh trapped in in in in in in because all this discourse these words are being put in the media with intentions and I don't want to be that guy who will be here systematically answers to everything they will invent uh just for political reasons to them I think I have literature and I have like interviews like here for you to express uh colonization postcolonization to give right images about us without every time without putting what I am saying and writing about just to answer them because it will make it gives them it will give them much bigger honor it will just validate that they are imposing the right debate to have and what is the wrong debate you see what I mean yeah no totally so I am convinced I have my convictions and I and and I and I'm involved politically I write sometimes articles etc etc but the times who are living it's extremely scary sometimes you say something and some people will take that phrase and suddenly you find yourself in in in in I don't know it's in chaotic social media that means nothing just people being obsessed with one phrase or one word so I think here me I have to be extremely uh called uh C when it comes to dealing with these things and not to be uh impatient and not to to jump in the traps they are putting for me as an Arab or people like me as an Arab and as a Muslim because I consider consider myself as a Muslim and I am a Muslim gay and Muslim and Arab and I don't want me and my writing to be to have only to have a meaning that I am doing that this to answer their questions yes that would be too poor for me I am somehow answering I'm I'm somehow um talking about what I hope what's going on the in our world today but I don't want you see what I mean I am too much arrogant anyway to Too Much self-conscious of my my value and I know that there are not that much gay Arabs who who are who are writers and in the world and or published gay Arab writers so I know and this is very arrogant to say I know but I am conscious the fact that I I I have a certain value you and I have um my voice counts and I will never as much as I could let other people take me and use me as the the the the gay Arab that French our friends freed yeah no I feel like your work your work um really Embraces complexity and contradiction and I I um in a way that makes it hard to to pigeon hole or Define you in a way that you could be used that way I think I I want to I want to stay with that a minute because this this section that Viet points out both the presence of Moroccan soldiers fighting in France in fighting for France in Vietnam and the presence of Moroccan prostitutes in Vietnam for white French soldiers who didn't want to sleep with Asian women it made me curious just to learn more about that history and learning that in fact tens of thousands of North African Arabs fought for the French in Vietnam or anden but also that when France exiled the king of Morocco there were a whole bunch of Moroccan soldiers who switched sides um and fought alongside the Vietnamese and there's even a monument in Hanoi called the Morocco gate to commemorate the soldiers who did this and kind of like this complicated history I feel like your book s do a similar complicated thing narratively and politically for instance I feel like your books both Embrace and critique Islam at the same time that they both Embrace and critique Morocco at the same time that you show France as a seductress and also ultimately a country that fails to live up to what it promises and the books feel deeply immersed in Arab culture but also in infidels for instance you evoke a North Africa pre- arabization and pre-islam with the Berber Warrior Queen kahina who led her people against the Arab Arab invasion of North Africa in the 7th Century it feels to me like you have this awareness of intersectionality in your books in the way you construct narratives also I don't know if that's if that's the right way to say it but um but one of the ways I see it is in the the way you have the presence of black characters and your inclusion of anti-black racism within the Arab world I'm thinking of the character kabino in an Arab Melancholia who's a hotel cleaner in Cairo and also a refugee from darur when his parents were beheaded by Sudanese Arab gorillas and he hates Kyo because of its racism and he gets stoned in the streets but I was also hoping we could talk about the chapter in a country for dying called may she burn which feels like a complicated intersection of misogyny and racism ultimately because when people find out in Morocco that the money zahira is sending home for them has come from prostitution there are people who want her dead but nobody I think wants her dead more than alal who wanted to marry her but was rejected by her mother probably because or at least partially because he was black um can you can you talk about this section and writing this section from Al's perspective I will uh I will never present myself uh as like a good person or only a good person uh this is a common knowledge like when we are dealing with anyone in real life so literature has to reflect that there is no other way to to make like um for me to to write only like someone who is you know a good person or like the now binarism everything has to be ambiguous because that's what we are we all have little bit of evil inside of us we are all placed in situations where we do things that are not right because this is how human beings constructed what we call Society human societies so that's extremely important in all my books like even the gay Heroes even me they always add a little bit of evil it's it's because because that's reflects for me reality the basic reality of human beings if you add to this ambiguities uh someone who is black in Morocco so the level of complexity just explodes and I have to admit that even me the gay person reject oppressed uh and raped and lot of bad things that happened to me when I was little even me at a certain point I was racist towards black people because that's what was being uh placed in Morocco society when it comes to black people so I like for instance maybe I am even ashamed to say this like I for a long time I was not even attracted to black man can you imagine this and 20 years ago I had to to like to to rethink myself like this is not right why like and I understood that the the implant the racism implant in me are are so so so strong and without me even thinking about that I am a racist against black people yeah because usually most people when you tell them oh this is a racist thing what you just said or we just said oh no I'm not a racist most people would say exactly but me knew I was I think not I I think I was racist in because that's what was put in side of me I was not thinking of black people like I was not even thinking of them until 20 years ago so uh I I I remember it started I started this serious thinking when I arrived here in Paris somehow my brain uh confrontation with white French society here in Paris suddenly you see yourself in other people living somehow the same otherness than as you and and these people they could be totally the opposite of you in real life but still they leave something as similar to you they could be I don't know someone like in infidels the the the hero became the terrorists but it doesn't mean a terrorist is only someone that is supposed to be condemned has to be much more the the developed so the character of alal comes from um from all this thinking and um and from actually uh something that is uh that really happened in in in in real life when I was a teenager there was a black family and they were there and I I I I knew some stories about them but with the years I just didn't pay attention and suddenly I started to think about them and and and I remembered uh that one uh boy when a young man in that family who was he was black and he married a white white white uh Moroccan women from the city of F and the City of f it's the the the center of what what what what the Moroccans calls call the Moroccan civilization Soph Moroccan sophistication because like she was so white and that provoked a scandal in in my neighborhood how come they were saying this so white women from F yeah the city of f this black black black guy like you see and I remember even my sisters being shocked what is this and and this story I used it here in the in in in the book with the character of Zahir and how she betrayed alal by refusing to marry him and to follow what her mother told her to do yeah well I I want to return to your conversation with edir Louie and I'm gonna I'll make sure to link to that conversation because it's so good he said something I thought was interesting and I wondered if you agreed with it he said I think my work and yours no longer ask the question of integration into collectives but rather how to flee and He suggests that the centering of flight in a narrative opens up new possibili and that comment made me think of two stories in a country for dying two stories of escape the story of zenb zahir's Aunt who mysteriously disappears and everyone sort of feels as if she's escaped but not knowing where and that not knowing becomes sort of mythological and her story is is captivates everybody in their imagination and then there's also another story called The Happy tale of Nima and I wondered if you could speak to their role in the book or to how much or how little edir Louise uh characterization of flight and Escape being Central to your writing feels feels true to you I have to admit that I am in love with the idea of to leave leaving just leaving appearing to to stop something to cut use a knife uh to to be merciless sometimes not that you are mer merciless person but you are put in certain situation you you just stop it and it comes I think from what happened to me as a gay person when I was little I you could you cannot talk with the people you cannot enter in serious conversation with them you cannot convince them you can they all the all thing they want to do it to put their power on you so you have to be much more clever than them and cut the con ation leave and to be in a certain way that impresses them and you just leave and this gives me a lot of pleasure I have to admit this power of leaving of going away and ending things um with the time of course it become it became um a problem when I was when I have when I have love relationships because I am still dominating dominated until now by this idea of I want to leave I am not I'm going to leave but in the book here country for ding all these characters left their first countries they thought France was going to be the place where to find dreams true dreams to find Freedom but France betrayed them and is treating them as their Invisibles they are yet exploited but are invisi to the French elit and to the French society but the novel and this is I think this is what I want to do while writing this book is yes yes they are exploited by France yes they are invisible to friends but I don't treat them as Invisibles I don't treat them as poor characters they are extraordinary full of life people and the whole novel I think yes it is sad tragic but at the same time they they do a lot of crazy things full full full of life France doesn't want them but they impose themselves on France and on Paris yes Paris doesn't allows us to go here and there but in this place where we cannot be we are we already have roots and we they construct something without the blessing of France or parisians yeah and they reach the level of dreaming in a place that doesn't accept them which is a place that a gay person understands and Masters very well well when you mention that your books are tragic but so much else it's funny because you you mean if you just describe the lot of your books whether they involve rape or prostitution or racism it doesn't really capture the experience of reading any of them I mean the first words that come to mind when I think of reading your books is tenderness and love and openness and possibility and I don't mean that in a naive way but um because all these other things that we've been talking about for the last two hours are all there and are are very present and there's a lot of pain and fear and loneliness but the tone feels different than that somehow the tone the the note that you strike it's in real life like you when you you are struck in your heart you have like something bad happened to you you you I don't know you you scream you cry during 15 minutes and then you don't know you put Nicki Minaj and you dance to it it doesn't I am not depressed all day long I'm depressed I don't know at 10 a.m. and at 12 at noon I I am with niiki Minaj and then I am depressed again at 4M and here we go so uh yeah life life has much more possibilities for us than we think of and I want this to be in my novel I don't want like to to have like uh again I don't want to be I I hope I succeed in this to have my characters defined only with one dimension I don't I want them to be alive alive when you watch Jen Kelly Dancing Yeah like until today you you like sometimes this is I spend some like the whole day doing only this watching J KY dancing on YouTube or or one of my favorite think it's Freda and Rita hward when they dance and sing I'm oldfashioned I don't know if you know this song it's Sublime yeah so you are you cry and then you finish crying and you watch Fred and R hward this is this combination of the two things while talking about colonialism postcolonialism racism it this important issues has to be brought I hope in a very live way and in expected way like last week I put on my my my my Facebook that I love Instagram so that I love Nicki Minaj and so many people were surprised oh he loves Nicki Minaj like like how come a writer like they would and I realize that I find Nicki Minaj extremely talented extremely flamboyant extremely American and non-american same time I find her the way she uses the voices the way she dances the way she transforms her bodies she is and she writes Nicki Minaj writes her own songs and but some people were disappointed with a Moroccan writer like me uh giving praising Niki Minaj it's I am disappointed on these people disappointed in me because of niik well as as we're coming closer to an end I wanted to ask you about one last thing about the shapes of your books because even though your books are full of stories told by one person to another or conversations between a character and their ancestor or a character and their former self or conversations happening in the realm of Dreams or the imagination or perhaps of a possession even though your books are full of stories your books are never shaped like stories they don't have traditional story arcs the characters don't arrive at a place of resolution nothing is linear and there really is no ending it's not like it just stops I don't feel like the books stop but I was curious if you could talk about that about story shape and endings also so I told you I I love knives so I am just KN yeah I cut like it's like in cinema you have the editing is very important and sometimes you have to cut the scene in in not to finish the scene you have just to cut you have to be yeah and I Al told you as well earlier that I I before writing I choose extremely very carefully the moment the te tiny moment I going to write about in this chapter and this chapter and for me it's the combination the of these moment that makes a book for me uh I I I I just love the the yeah to cut again it's it's not not to give it all it's like when you're having sex it's impossible to give it all or at least you have to to give the other person that you are not giving him all otherwise he will leave you and nothing else will happen or it will be only repetition of the act of sex or the act of love you always have to I don't know and I have to admit that these things I learned it when again I was little boy in like in real life I had to to be way ahead of a certain people to know to sense the danger before even they have it in their mind so you have to say something in order to change the whole the whole the whole situation and again all you you said that my my French is poor and it's true I do really feel that I am poor in in in French language I yes I studied the big French literature but I somehow it didn't stuck in my mind what is in my mind it's this idea that I have nothing and with nothing I'm going to to do something it's like when many many days I had with my mother and my sister when I was a little boy you wake up and there is nothing to eat and for the whole day so what are we going to do because you have to eat in order to survive yeah you you wake up and you have nothing so from that nothing you have to invent something so I just feel that this is uh this is a good strategy of writing good literature well I don't want to misquote Emma and I may be misquoting her but when I was listening I think I remember her saying she never calls your French poor but I think she she comes closer to calling it perhaps naked or be um in a way that is hard for her as a translator than a more ornate referential French because she has to get every she has to get the emotional veilance of every word right because it's it's stripped down to a certain Essence I don't know if that sounds like like something true to you and I may be misspeaking for her but no no this is totally true because this is my style like I have uh teeny tiny phrases like some phrases it's only one word like sometimes one the whole paragraph is one word like I like this idea of um I don't know it's like when you go sometimes for a retreat you Retreat so you just leave what is what you don't need yeah you put I don't know the bone I love this idea while while WR about the blood and the sperm and the the dirtiness I only put it only put there the bones the dryness I I it has not to be yeah but again this this thing uh at the beginning I didn't think about it that much it just came out naturally out of me because I was coming from a circumstances where I was told that you are poor you are going to stay poor all your life and even you speaking in French is poor and when I first started to be published the Moroccan some Moroccan reviewers were saying that my French is poor that the way I write is I don't they were saying I don't have vocabularies they are not impressed with like this and thus I am not a good writer but me hearing this I just remember some people I used to watch on Moroccan TV and I was not impressed with their fancy words too much complicated words that meant anything it just meant that they were trying to impose on us their power by using French yes I hope that my poor French my poor words at least give the people the readers some emotions that's the that's all I want it feels like it's a grand victory abdella that it must feel amazing that you um have succeeded on the level of language and on the level of story and self or on your own terms that way well it's not a success story The Way It Is told but uh I am happy I stayed faithful um to my mother uh and what like my mother was speaking poor she was poor everything was all in her she and and and and I saw the people who the way directed to her so but yet through that self poor self she was she constructed a lot of things um so that's why in my letter to her I say to her you are my Simon De like why do I need to go to Simon De yes I go to it when I study in University when I read but when I write it's it's only her it's good mother dictator merciless heart tender SC screaming nonstop heartless um a good sorcerer a bad sorcerer a good human being a very bad human being all that and I think literature has to be this well it was such an immense pleasure to spend all this time with you abdella um thank you so much for um talking with me today well thank you very much David for the invitation and I hope uh it will make some sense for the people who will hear us I'm sure it will I send you all my love and all my Salam we've been talking today to abdella Taya about his latest book a country for dying from Seven stories press translated by Emma Ramadan you've been listening to between the covers I'm David NE your host [Music] today's program was recorded at the volunteer powered non-commercial listener sponsored full strength makeshift home office of me David NE to find out the latest about abdella TAA you can follow him both on Facebook and Instagram today's bonus audio archive an hourlong in-depth conversation with award-winning translator Emma Ramadan joins many other long form conversations with translators in the bonus archive from Sophie Hughes the translator of Fernanda melchor to Ellen Elias bersuch the translator of duka ugesic as well as bonus material from everyone from Phil metc to anif Abdul rakib to G Greenwell to find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio or about the many other potential benefits of becoming a listener supporter of the show head over to patreon.com between the covers or if you prefer a one-time donation you can do so via Paypal at tin house.com support in addition to seven stories press I'd like to thank semiotext for providing copies of abdella's first books in English I'd also like to thank the tin housee team Elizabeth DEA and Alisa oie in the book division Jacob Vala in the art Department yesu caner in publicity and Lance Cleland the director of the summer and winter ten house writers workshops and finally I'd like to thank imray L brog and Barbara brownie for creating the outro their album IMR log a sapi can be found on iTunes and Barbara Browning's Trove of ukulele covers can be found at soundcloud.com barbar Brown [Music]