Bibiana Collado Cabrera, Abdellah Taïa & Anna Starobinets (english translation) | Gutun Zuria 2024

spe for welcomes you to International literature Festival now we present the conversation between vivana coad cabera teacher and writer abdela Taya writer and journalist and Anna EST robinets journalist and writer this conversation combines three types of literature that initially might seem parallel and unlikely to cross paths from different geographical areas they address the experience of social rejection in their literature please it's time to turn off your mobile phones and enjoy the [Applause] conversation I think that we're ready to go everybody's ready with their devices Channel Two for the English if anybody's listening to the English good evening and thank you very much for coming here tonight thank you for spending these few minutes with us and the idea is that we want to hold a fluent conversation we want to speak to each other and uh what we are going to do is uh tying up links between the different books and as I've already had the opportunity of reading these books thanks to the translations into Spanish I'm going to be the person that is going to kick off with this conversation perhaps you've been looking things up on Google or perhaps you've been um making inquiries on the books and the three texts that bring us together here this book byd by ex Us by vivana but I wanted to start off by pointing out something that I believe is important and I think that is going to unite us and this is just a short story that I would like to tell you my mother is called Maria and she never went to school uh they were three siblings two boys and one girl and the only one that went to school was the one of the boys the boys the youngest boy the smallest boy and in fact my mother was not even included in the register in the census because well anyway in those days in those past days they registered when she was old practically when she was going to get married which was also when she learned to read and write so that she could get her driving license and I am her daughter and I have a degree in Spanish philology I'm also have a PhD in Latin American literature and I'm here invited by the International Festival of the letters in Bidwell with two International writers so the first thing that I would like to say to you people is thank you and if I start off by pointing this out it's because I believe that the origin and uh your Circ IR stances where you come from are going to be um key elements in all three books and in the case of yasas the uh the main uh protagonist betri is going to be seeing herself in anecdotes that seem to be unimportant but which remind her all the time about the place where she comes from and also what her Origins are like and uh and in the case of laa something similar is going to happen because we have this person from Paris with his studies in French literature however these people it seems that they never ever find the place where they're to supposed to be because there's a system and there's a circumstance that is reminding them that they're not where they're supposed to be and in a way what you also have to look at the issue of location is going to be one of the key elements because it's going to determine the possibility of carrying out that that exercise of the body and of fatherhood which is something that has to be carried out so I think that in all three we're seeing subjects that are influenced by the circumstances that are influenced by where they come from and that this is going to be an important thing in our writings so I wanted to give you the floor and perhaps this could be the starting point for the conversation I I don't know perhaps ABD would like to say something and uh kick off yes thank you very much good evening I will take the floor well thank you very much for having invited us to talk about some very important things at least for me which have to do with your origin the origin of Origins that is and I was really moved to listen to you talk about your mother Biana because it's clearly I clearly would have never become a writer if it wouldn't if I wouldn't have been the son of my mother a woman called Bara alali who's a woman born in Morocco who comes from the country and uh she lived in a city very close to a city called B bedel which is a very poor place and her first husband well France sent her first husband to a war to the war in indos Sheen in the 50s France sent her first husband and that first husband lost his life in what is nowadays Vietnam and in fact he was buried there too and uh France paid her a certain amount of money for this death they paid the money to the family to the first husband and what they did was use that money keep that money and they expelled my mother they threw her out that was in the ' 50s and then my mother who was I think 21 years old at the time I don't know how she managed to do this not only as far as surviving as concern but also to find a new man a new person with whom she had nine children and this uh man I'm talking about a Moroccan woman okay between inverted commas that um people considered to be illiterate and she was everything but illiterate so for me or from my point of view and just like for you Biana it's very important to talk about this path that takes us to the moment where I ABD that what I did was write and get my Works published and I objectively believe too that the the fights that I've been involved in and the struggles that I have been involved in are not as significant as the struggles that my mother was involved in because I was born in 1973 and uh my mother this woman that I've described had already found another man and she managed to migrate to Rabat which is where I was born so the writing that stems from me is not only the end result of my um university studies and it's not it didn't only happen because I met Victor Ugo or B for instance but also comes from the fact that I lived with this woman who' covered this path that who always spoke out loud and who couldn't care less if other people considered to be an undignified woman or a bad woman I think that so the fact that I'm a homosexual I dare say and I was born in 1973 I think that I've also learned thanks to this woman I've learned to exist and to R resist and to write too because writing is not only about having a university training it's not that or having academic training it's something that originates from the roots of an Imaginarium that goes beyond ourselves and it's as if it stems from a shout a shout that came that arrived before weed did and the other thing I'm doing is following the shout it I'm following where it takes me that's what you have to do you have to shout you have to shout all the time and uh all you for uh inviting me here and coming here I want to apologize for my English because it's not my native language and uh so I I actually when I speak Russian I can do much better you just you can imagine that everything I say is like twice as smart so um um I I'm very touched by both um both of your stories but I was uh like in in a in a kind of a panic thinking of what I can uh suggest here and I decided to not to start from my past although no okay I'll say a few words about my past I think um uh I um had a chance to become a writer due to the um fact that in Russia we had a quite a very narrow um uh period of freedom in which you could actually like in which I could being um absolutely U like I'm coming from a normal family which has nothing to do with literature philology or whatever my mother is a programista was a geop physician so um um I had the opportunity to enter the university because at that period of time like in the end of '90s in the begin beginning of um uh 2000 it was it was a period when it was really if you if you wanted to reach some goal that was possible so I just decided to study philology and I started studying philology and then uh the same happened with um me becoming a writer we at that period we had a possibility of really um proposing your text to various publishing houses and we had various publishing houses now we have one and yes one huge which swallowed all the the small and I could write whatever I wanted so now I I think of that time uh as of some lost uh paradise and I actually lost the I I I lost not only that freedom but the country itself um I'm currently I currently live in bissi it is a city in Georgia um I left I'm kind of a writer in Exile I left Russia after the war started and um I'm safe as a living body but um I really feel that this maybe um in a way that is that is um that may ruin me as an author because when you write in Russian you actually need to to be surrounded with Russia so it's it's and and of course you need to be published um and all the readers most of the readers are also there so um as Russian language is my main tool um I just uh try to figure out how I can do with without it because I cannot skip to another language and this language is somehow like it looks a little bit doomed at the moment so are you worried about what could happen um what can happen like um in what way no no with writing and with literature actually most of bir things have already happened with writing and literature in Russia uh two days ago I um some uh right like we have some writers that uh that left Russia after the war started or a little bit later because it's it is really like the choice is very narrow you either stay there and keep silence in all ways like you keep silence in conversations and you keep silence in your books you just pretend that nothing is happening you and you write about something else that is possible but I didn't think I could do that or you like you struggle you try to do something about the situation but that is a that way brings you to finally brings you to prison and some of my friends are already there so um no or you leave then you leave but but then you are separated from your main uh tool from from from the language itself and and of course from the material that is there so um what happened what happened is that those who stayed are e either silent or they are quite happy uh with what is happening there and two days ago uh they came up with um forming it is called the uh creative Union of 24th of February which was the the day when the war started and that creative Union of 24th of February is a union of writers Russian writers and I know uh half of those guys I am like 10 or maybe 15 years ago we were drinking vodka together after some literary festivals just like this one um and we were friends so now uh they came with that came up with that statement that um all the en all the enemy writers like myself those who betrayed their country oh uh should never be published in Russia anymore and so that all the money should be transferred to them because they as they say because they stayed with their people wow and that is so soet that is all all all the words are from my from my Soviet childhood dear me dear me wow wow well yes it's a very complex situation you've been talking about now and the truth is that we could uh carry on talking about this and if you want to carry on talking about that go ahead and please do so should make a joke now no no look well Viana is writing for you like a war yeah well yes perhaps well I think that it would be interesting it would be beautiful for us to for each of you to talk about your book and also describe what it is those books are telling us or things that cannot be told I think that that would be a beautiful thing to do and I think that what we could also think is what has happened about your books and in the case of Anna well it's very interesting to see that being a marvelous science fiction author with a lot of recognition in Spain you have been very popular and it's a book that doesn't have to do with science fiction and well perhaps you could talk a little bit about that and then perhaps you um and Abdullah could talk about your own book I think that what you have in common are books that talk about what uh people usually don't talk [Music] about things that receive no attention or not or are not put under the spotlight things like that yes I fully agree with that and uh sometimes when we impose silence you Al always have to find some kind of strategy to do away with that Strate that silence and try to find a way of expressing yourself but in my case and I have to say that I'm always at War firstly because I'm homosexual and when I was a child I was under the the impression that I was living in hell and that there was only hell that was my final destination but I think that the war that had to be fought was based on not accepting what everybody else was telling me to do that I live in hell and that is my ultimate fate and the only hope that I had so what I had to do is find some kind of space Within Myself in my body as a child and as a teenager I had to find a space where I could turn things around completely where I could um ignore what other people were saying they were trying to annihilate me they were trying to destroy me as a person and it's the kind of everyday death that I was experiencing I don't know where I'm got the energy from to do this but I did like my mother did I think that I copied what my mother did and I found this uh space where the war that I fight that I have to fight every day allows me to feel comfortable with myself and well the fact that you look at what um my mother has done for us or she's never going to understand the homosexuality of her child as a homosexual as I am a homosexual but I feel that I feel very close to this woman because she is not homophobic neither are my sisters nor are they racist it's the system it's the political system that is racist and homophobic that is the people governing Morocco those are the people that um sometimes use your friends and family to kill you and when I understood that it was like a revolution in my head and that is that uh my mother and my sisters when people insulted me or when they looked at me um with an evil eye so to speak I had to say that it well it wasn't their words it was the words of the system it was the words of the people in power that wanted to eliminate us so it wasn't a war to destroy it was a war to um deny the beauty of my life I have six sisters all of them are older than I am and they were born before I was born and they've had time to generate a sort of Universe of solidarity and I sincerely believe that yes okay I'm a boy and I'm homosexual but I'm like them I'm a girl just like they are really and I don't find that that is an insult because I was there to help them I use them as a source of inspiration too and when for instance they wanted to have uh sexual intercourse with a neighbor or with a fisherman or with a fishmonger I understood it perfectly well I was the messenger boy for their love I was the sexual messenger boy for my sisters and uh when I was a child I thought that that was was beautiful because I was the the boy that Moroccan Society said that was supposed to be very strong and had to become a man and had to be a good man but I was uh the guy that helped these sisters of mine to be what the system didn't want to be so let's say that one of the major Wars for me one of the major struggles for me had to do with feeling that uh Pride my sisters used to grab me by my hand and say look come along with me because I'm going to I'm going to meet up with love and this is not a political metaphor and this is what they used to say to me in Arabic come with me because I'm going to meet up with love and uh I was not interested in being the biggest or the strongest guy or the guy that's always right no I wasn't interested in that I wanted to be a girl just like my sisters were without forgetting that I was a boy of course because I'm not uh um I'm they were six and I was only one and I'm not transgender and the other brothers were very heterosexual so they don't enter into the formula here so I think that I was very lucky because I was there with six girls and that between them and myself there was something something in the air and I'd even say that it's even better than that and even though in spite of what people did to them or even in spite of what people told them to tell me they were homosexuals like me they lived my homosexuality too they experienced it I'm not sure if this makes sense what I've just pointed out but I think that the war the war because here we are talking about this issue here today I don't know how to express this or how to explain it well the important thing for a child is not to be successful and to become a star to become a major star but rather for you to um stick to an idea of love and and in my head in my Supreme intelligence as a child I always connected with these women even though they were protecting me and that's where the war was for me and then when I became a writer I'm a writer because I'm the son of this uh woman of this uh wonderful mother and also because I've lived with these other sisters of mine I'm their voice it's not only me or myself and all of that has to do with me and my Persona do you recognize yourself in what I've just pointed out do you have um brothers and sisters Anna no I I that was my biggest problem as a child that I was alone and maybe I actually um that's why I developed uh a lot of plots inside my inside my head because I actually I didn't have anyone to discuss that with and um what in what age have you have you were you born in in France or you came there at at some point I didn't quite understand no no I was born in Morocco and I lived for 25 years in [Music] Morocco and then after that I migrated to France so you were 25 years old then I see I'm sorry about I'm sorry sorry about the question um well well talk the talk about look at him please I want to talk about my book b I've spoken about everything except for my book I didn't answer your question I guess uh but are those things you've told us about somehow connected to to to the book to the plot yes uh my family appears in all my books in each and every book my family is the most extraordinary thing that I have in my life but I don't want to monopolize the floor here but bana do have brothers and sisters I'm interested in knowing how you have managed all those Wars in your family all of those [Music] struggles what's happening with yeos exost as I said before there is a main protagonist that is called berri in the book and who has to deal with these minor situations that apparently seem to be more or less daily events but which are going to have a big influence on her and are going to produce cracks which at the end of the day makes everything blow up so in other words the war that appears in this book and which I think in a certain way appears in our three books is a war against the Imaginarium that uh is present in our lives and that inas it has to do with uh something that we have inherited from Pro from poverty as I point out in the book and it really goes beyond what is purely economic because in the book we we have the mother we have the grandmother in other words these women are the these exhausted horses yustas in Spanish and these animals that work a lot that are very powerful that end up feeling absolutely exhausted and that um had to go through a number of circumstances but now it's berri and berri is no longer having the same experience as her grandmother and no longer has the same experience as her mother either but however is still um sharing that uh imaginary in other words that something that uh breaks us and influences us and I always say this and I think that this is the case because my mother although when she dies even if she owns three mansions and 13 cars and I don't think that that is going to happen she will die feeling poor because poverty is in your head because it's an issue of how we think about the world and how we feel in the world it has to do with being on a stage like this and one feeling nervous because you feel that yes this is not your space or that I'm going to do some paperwork somebody and you feel com uncomfortable or that somebody reminds you that that is not the space in which you should be so based on these anecdotes which is what this is what berri is going to be talking about in the book so she goes to the University at a given point in time and she tries to study a career there she tries to forge ahead and she notices that the rest of the people that are in that circuit do not have the same circumstances and that is obviously going to have a big influence on her or there are some family scenes that are going to crop up continuously throughout the book that have to have to do with music for example what kind of music did we listen to how do we move to the music how do we speak and here I think the interpreters are going to go mad and I would like to apologize to them beforehand was don't know how this is going to be translated but in any case be for instance is grows up thinking that her house or her home should be the only one in the world where they listen to music by Manar and Berita The Wil and that the rest of the homes of the world listen to Bob Dyan or to Leonard Cohen and that the I'm or that she is possibly the strange person and when she becomes older and older and into certain spaces there's somebody that is pointing this out all the time is that is pointing out these references as if they were not the suitable ones in that particular space so I know that this I know that this in reality I think that this is an experience that practically everybody has gone through and if it's not with music it will be with Cinema or with any other thing and I'm not sure if you've ever had close to you somebody somebody that has said to you and don't you really know this film director and haven't you seen this film are you sure that you haven't seen this very very interesting film I can't believe it so when somebody asks you that question they are pointing at us and they're being condescending and what they're telling us is that they're talking at us from the level of the elite and they're saying that our references are not equally legitimate or that they don't occupy the same space as ours so this is what I was interested in talking about in other words those scenes that continues to remind of where we are which is what is going on okay have you solved your technical issue there Anna at that very moment my battery went low and yes it was just no translation so I I well don't worry I was talking about Manolo scad and that collapsed the whole thing he was a sort of flamco singer but anyway um sorry about that well this is a bit traumatic well what I was talking about I was saying that in the book we have these minor situations that have to do with music and with film making and even with the way people eat or what they eat and there's a very small scene a very simple scene in which betri is abroad she's studying abroad she has an arasmus Grant and she's having her meal at the University's dining room she takes fruit and eats it well how do you eat fruit where you grab the knife you cut it in half and you take it directly to your mouth that's how they eat it at home like the Shepherds have done when they were sitting on a rock in the middle of the countryside and her colleagues at the University looked at her and laughed as if they found it very funny and it's not even offensive and they find that it's very funny the way she was eating her fruit and she automatically feels if she's being pointed out with a finger um because this is something that has to do with her Origins and since that day i instead of eating fruit I at yogurts so it's these little scenes where all of a sudden you go click and this is where the imaginary crops up and we have these tiny tiny scenes and we move on to others that are going to be much more severe or much more bigger that have to do with the world of universities and with the difficulties that people have to join an institution as a professor and this also has to do with the power relations that are established because well there's even more pressure there because betri is a woman and a university Professor got to show up a man older than she is and he's going to um make as much as he can of that particular situation so I think that I've now updated you on what I was saying before so much you just reminded me about the story that my friend she's an a Very she was a very famous Anthropologist in Russia but she is now announced the Enemy of the State so she escaped from there and she now settled in Paris so she told me yeah she she's a part of this problems program scientists in danger so being a you know there is a program scientists in danger when you escape from the regime and such things because in Russia she would be in prison but I not talking about this uh again like she told me the story that she like two weeks ago maybe it's just it's just the same she came to and they they had some kind of uh party with other Anthropologist with French Anthropologist and she's a Russian Anthropologist and they had meals various food wine and everything and there was cheese and she started like it's a maybe it is a Russian tradition but where is a if there is a piece of cheese you cut it into pieces and you um invite all the others like to to take it and in Russia I'm not sure about Spain but in Russia cheese is what you eat before the meals it's not a dessert and in France in turned it turned out to be a dessert and all she said that no one was really making fun of her but that they all laughed and she said like in in your story and she said that she felt absolutely um AB absolutely like from from that she came from some from space from another planet yeah um okay and as for my book are we talking about our books right um it's a p that I need to tell you another sad story because I do write a lot of uh funny books just trust me but this uh look at him in Spanish it is tiar it is a documentary book about it is my personal story and that was really my attempt to somehow to uh to uh defeat the whole system uh I mean the medical system I I have two kids and my older daughter is uh 19 now and my younger son is eight but between them there should have been another child and that is where was that was very unfortunate to pregnancy because due to some male formation uh that boy was not going to survive so I found out that that he's not going to survive when I was approximately in the middle of uh my pregnancy and the medical system in Russia is rather it is it may sound rather strange but you can um you can if you have enough money for private clinics you can uh use them all your life and you can have no idea of what is happening in the so-called governmental clinics and they're and those governmental clinics they are the the descendants of the Soviet system and they are still Soviet so in if something happens if something goes wrong with pregnancy uh private clinics immediately kick you off to that governmental system they say like we don't deal with such things and that that is one of the phrases that I use in the book A Lot such things because such things is like some female things connected to um it's like to to sex Gynecology uh giving birth and some ugly nasty bloody things that should be somehow hidden so if even the doctors did not dare to to call it as it was they said okay such things some some bad pregnancy so I had to go to governmental Clinic to solve they also called it solve the problem and so and here I need maybe to explain that Soviet system we had what we call the punitive Gynecology and also punitive psychiatry um meaning that those two departments medical departments were the most cruel uh and actually they sometimes even were used as to punish someone who for instance decid not Gynecology but Psychiatry but gynecological system in Soviet Union was always extremely cruel to women and it somehow followed the path of um um they had a very very special understanding of the concept of strength a woman as each member of the society uh just like in Sparta should be strong because if you are weak you are a bad member of this you're a bad uh tool in this big organism so uh you need to be strong and only if you are strong you get some respect if you are weak and if you complain if you have some problems and if like with that Spartan boys boy who is bitten with a fox and who who needed to be silent because if the fox bites you and you scream it means that you are weak and you are actually doomed you need to like strength and respect in in this Soviet approach implied that if you are grieving if you are losing your baby or whatever you should keep sad that is like that is a virtue not to show you grief and all the doctors um deal with this with no compassion at all absolutely they um and it's like it's not an appropriate thing to do even for instance to call this unborn baby a baby because uh again in Soviet Union abortion was a means of contraception so if you call that a baby that would imply that women um like did really bad things and for them it was contraception and um so all the system um implied that nothing bad was happening at all and they were really surprised that I was um grieving crying and they were even more surprised when I asked them if that would be possible to to to keep this pregnancy to the term and then to say goodbye maybe to the to to the baby because they just they had no regulations for that they insisted that it should be terminated immediately and uh there were no possibility actually to to choose another path so afterwards when I when the problem was solved this way or another in a year after that I decided to write a book about this whole um anti-human approach and it was not I I wanted it to be not only aimed at protecting like women with pregnancies at risk it was just about the this anti-human approach which still perceives with us so I even like when one of the doctors was very rude to me and my husband he was Furious about that and he said okay I want to go I want to go and like I want to kick his face for that for what you've told you and I said no don't do something I will don't do anything I will I will kick him with words afterwards so I wrote the book in order to to break and and and is it is also a very unsafe topic it is a taboo you cannot actually talk about that uh in face of the audience and especially in a book because books are not created for talking about such ugly things like um gen genology and all that stuff women's stuff so after I published a book um the war really started because it was uh a great Scandal and like I wanted I was a little bit worried about this book when I wrote it that it is so sad that no one was going to read it but I was mistaken everyone read it because all the media uh wrote how how awful uh the the the the the existing of the book is and this book was uh shortlisted for a quite a prestigious award which is called Russ um National bestseller and the jury and it got into yes it got to the short list and the jury uh said that it is um it's it is a shame to have such a book in the short list because literature is not for such things they again they used the same the same words so um I don't know what to add to this another sad story of mine well I think that it's interesting to see that all three books um talking about things that are still tremendously uncomfortable because they're talking about the bodies uh about things that happen to your body and which happened very frequently too much more frequently than we think and which are still addressed as if they were anomalies in a certain respect but personally I wanted to ask you are you surprised by the very good welcome this book has had abroad at least in Spain because I think that it's been a very very outstanding book and I think that it breaks you up completely when you read it itth breaks you up a lot and I think that there are many many readers that are very excited about this book I was very surprised about that and actually well it sold very good in Russia although it was like ugly enough to things but people really wanted to read it so it sold good in Russia but Spain was on the second place the book was translated into several other languages including English but only Spanish readers somehow um wanted to read it um and they were several editions and yes first I was very surprised by that and uh so when the one of the one of the journalists and I gave a lot of interviews about about that book for Spanish journalists so um I just asked one of them um as if I was interviewing her why actually she that why are you Spanish so interested in this Russian Soviet nightmare why and uh and then she explained me a little bit so I understood that for Spanish readers it is also about uh what you've mentioned about losing control over your body but it's on the opposite side of of of this you know this is the uh on the Polar side like in okay in Russia I lose control in the way that I cannot prolong this uh pregnancy and I need to terminate it in the most cruel way that you could can imagine I'm not going to to to describe it but it's bad it's not um up to dat so to say and in um in Sp in not only in Spain by the way but in Latin American countries as well that is uh when we talk about this late termination it is another just the opposite program you sometimes cannot make an abortion if you want it you need to you also lose control over your body because some people in the government or I don't know in the church they decide for you that you need to keep it to the term and actually what I was I was uh aiming at is at proving that actually a woman has the right to choose uh one of that like that both options should be open and even if she all right she chooses but but that there should be no space for for well even if you have a right to do that uh and but everyone looks at you and says okay look what she's she has done she has committed a sin uh that this reaction is also like it's medieval so what I think why Spanish women and maybe men like the book is that um they also want to to have that control over their decisions uh about their bodies well I think that there's lots of hunger generally speaking about talking about all those things that people couldn't talk about before and that is one of the subjects has to do with bodies and with this lack of control which in many instances is something that is there open to all and in fact there were several texts uh that appeared well there were several places where they translated your book and they were talking about grief and natal loss and any everything that had to do with the moment of managing a body before and after but in any case we have very few minutes left so if you want we can now move on to the questions to see if well I have six sisters and I've gone through the six pregnancies of my my sisters and I was the young boy that helped my sisters I helped them delivering the babies and I've um seen all of these things that have to do with women that we men are not supposed to know about and I know a lot about this intimacy and I have carried the babies of my sisters on my shoulders and perhaps homosexuality has brought me closer to the this sexual and biological reality of women and to whatever is reduced by the bodies of women and this is something that is I'm perfectly familiar with I'm not sure if I'm supposed to talk about my book or isn't it really worthwhile now I've got one minute left to talk about my book well okay I've got one minute left to talk about my book well I've written several books and some of them have been translated into Spanish and I just wanted to point out something and regarding what you said before for Biana all of those little details that betray our social Origins and which let's say make us feel poor but we are poor internally it's a deep rooted poverty I was born in the Arab world and speaking Arabic but I've written all of my books in French but I and I didn't go to Paris or France believing that they were Superior to me that they were better than my sisters and my mother and well whenever there were Rich Moroccans who appeared on television in the'80s my sisters and my mother used to criticize them they criticized the Moroccan power and the Moroccan authorities and the rich Moroccans that were using French the language of enlighten but it was also the language of the French colonization in Morocco and that is how you can see how the power and the rich Moroccans were subjecting the rest of the Moroccan population by speaking a language that wasn't their own language and by telling them that Arabic as uh you only speak Arabic you're poor you're poor in your own language in your own language but my mother and my sisters when these people appear on television that is the people with power that is the rich people the Moroccan intellectuals who studied in Paris at the sbor and who then went back to um Morocco to civilize us with the French method when my mother saw that she fell out laughing she laughed out very loud indeed because she criticized the king Hassan III and he criticized the way he dressed up and she used used to say look he's now going to quote the Quran so she was destroying the political discourse people were using uh foreign language French as if French represented Freedom much better than Arabic and that for me was a major political and literary lesson and when I reached out to the French language I didn't become a small Arab that wanted to be accepted in Paris or France no the opposite what I I tried to do I tried to maintain myself in that position that my mother expressed perfectly well because I was uh my mother was illiterate between inverted commas and she was also a peasant and she was everything but illiterate because she understood absolutely everything and she wasn't even afraid of the king and when the police came knocking on our door to say you could not build another floor on top of your house uh my mother reinvented the language to know how to speak to the police officers and how to convince them to convince the people with power and convince the police well I would just like to say that I understand this discourse that has to do with poverty it's something that exists and it also surrounds me but as far as I am concerned well thank goodness that we had these women that were not afraid of the king of Morocco nor were they afraid of the police nor France and for them the idea of freedom and emancipation was something that they were building for themselves in parallel and I believe that writing and the model that I have to stick to as a native and with the country previously colonized by France was the model that was designed and implemented by Mel and I didn't feel as if I were a tiny guy compared to the French or the Spanish writers and uh in this Western world that is presented as if it were all about freedom and emancipation and as if freedom and emancipation that was um carried out by my mother and my sisters that invented and reinvented didn't have such a big effect and they were not able to produce um and such a significant Revolution as what happened in Paris well my sisters and my mother have always been very revolutionary but they've never followed what happened in the western world and there's still a very colonizing language that I believe that somebody like myself could say well no the Moroccans or people like me are people that don't understand anything and that Arabic is all about illiteracy and about being submissive but my mother couldn't care less if her neighbors called her a witch because she was a witch in a certain way but she also taught me to do witchcraft and I still apply that and I also apply that to my sexual lovers in Paris thank you very much man thank you very much mother you want to ask any questions now we can see the audience now because before you were sitting in the dark we couldn't see anybody so now we can see you guys and we feel a little a bit closer to you people well I have a question for Mr T on this issue of Witchcraft and all of these other ideas that have to do with these heads that think in such a peculiar manner in the book how because this forms part of an imaginary that is related to the language and to the Arab culture although we have our own witchcraft in France too too but I think that it's something that um reaches out to all languages and when you speak in another language sometimes it's difficult to express these things because the power of this witchcraft has to do with the language and it's not easy to transfer it to another language well I'm uh wrri in a language that is not my own language and I use the Arab and Moroccan uh Witchcraft and I think that in writing is all about witchcraft or sorcery and as I have experienced that with my mother for instance I also well know the Moroccan prostitutes that are the most marvelous women in the world and all of these women knew that these men were people that had been told look you have the power but they couldn't use the same weapons as the men and they were using something that is much more important and which is linked to the original imaginary so to speak of the land of Morocco and this also has to do with Egypt and something that the French colonization had not erased and that's the most important thing because the French colonization tried to um transform Morocco and the Moroccans and France left leaving us uh with a very poor point of view of what we were really like but these women refused to accept as they were bad towards men which is what they had to do by using this Witchcraft and I perhaps well perhaps this is why I've been so fortunate because I was born homosexual because these women had no shame of saying these things in front of me because they said well this little homosexual is of no matter no concern and this position that I had as a little man that is of no importance whatsoever had gave me access access I saw them do absolutely everything not only that but sometimes we used to get up at 2:00 in the morning and we used to go to the houses of certain people and stood outside and cast uh sorcery and waited waited until the next day to see the outcome so it's not about an imaginary that people imagines the 1,000 kns and that people believe that this is a very Oriental thing that only has to do with the Arabs and Africans no for me this is a real science and it's a real way of resisting the power of men and how to castrate men and that's what it's all about because my mother and my Six Sisters managed to do that but my mother my six sisters were not that good and doing that but in any case my mother did manage to do that but you have to bear in mind that when I say this it was a legitimate way of Defending yourself and the final Target was not how to enslave these men but they had no other option at their uh disposal but anyway I could read I could write lots of books about this but the issue is that I don't want to reveal the secrets of my mother and my sisters and for me it's important to keep their secrets Under Wraps because this is what allowed them to resist uh the real life they were living I don't write books to hurt them they have told me this and I just apply I apply this to my writing but in any case a long life to Witchcraft do you know any witches are you witches yourselves no do you also practice Witchcraft and sorcery well you have the possibility of um publishing a manual on witchcraft to dominate men well if you're willing to reveal the secrets please do go ahead because that would be a very interesting read yes I I will do that one of these days but I'm not going to give you the recipes though because if you give people the recipes well then there's something that you kill off completely Well we I'm the translator of um Abaya into Spanish well many many thanks for your work and although ABD although I understand what Abdullah has pointed out today Abdullah says that his writing is all about war he's always Waring against the world and against society and uh the Moroccans are fighting against colonization too but I have the opposite experience as uh the reader of his works and as the title of today is all about war and Truce I think that the books by abdah are an example of Truth and even of peace because you always talk about wars about the true Wars and then you talk about the social wars you're talking about the wars between different classes or between different races of the migrants against the non-migrants or against those that are working but then these wars it turns out that these wars when these uh people become individualized because we're talking about people in the works of by AB that's when you can understand that it's these social groups that actually are Waring against power but when they have uh names and when they are neighbors when it's your next door neighbor and your downstairs neighbor the only thing you can do is understand each other and that's how you can understand why in the war you had a certain attitude and not another and even why your hair was cut off in The Liberation because of the criminal um reaches an agreement with the police officers so these are beautiful um stories of uh peace and Truce so I love your work and I'm delighted to have read your book thank you very much thank you very much for your kind words thank you very much liia thank you I have a question well be up there's a question for you that I could also have for the other two but you've spoken a lot about your mother or you've spoken about the women in your family as a source of inspiration that is perhaps the past but from now on which do you think are the issues that are going to serve as an inspiration relative to the Future for future novels or for future writings that you want to share with us with your public with your audience and for you two guys for Anna and for Abdullah could I take your text into a classroom and say that you are writers in Exile which is like a genre because a Moroccan who lived in morocc until age 25 and whose mother tongue is Arabic so I could therefore think that perhaps we could include you under that category like Mina ALU somebody that is Arab but writes in French produces in France in French and is in Europe and for Anna who has to live in Exile because after the many things you've spoken about this reinforces the idea that we have about Russia do you consider yourself to be a Russian writer in Exile or exiled and uh I'd also like to ask you for your in your case abdalah if in the Arab world has your novel be translated into Arabic are you read in Egypt or in Jordan for instance how what how does it work when you say that you're when you openly say that you're homosexual because that's another Taboo in the case of Anna well perhaps now unfortunately it's very sad to say this but perhaps uh your sales will increase because anything that criticizes at least this happens in Europe a regime like putins is something that is also very welcome as regards the political Elites that's what my question is all about and for you bana how do you project yourself thank you well it's a Pity because we have one minute left so I'm going to try to be very brief and give them the floor but what I'd just like to point out that in the novel in jagas ex exas I'm not talking about the past the story that I'm telling and even though these uh characters appear is not the story of the previous generations but rather of the present generations and future Generations something that I found was very important in the case of this book because in the end it's like a catalog it's like a sample book of class violence and uh how this is going to show us how this uh social element is not true and how it works and will carry on working in the future I am a teacher I'm working in fourth year and uh now I'm working I'm sending kids to the university and I know that they've been promised something and they're never going to achieve that promise at least in most cases it's going to be impossible for them to do so but this has to do with that crack with that Gap with that promise that has been broken with this false modernity or without false progress that has not really happened and that's what I'm meant to say before and although we have all that gen genealogy these are texts that are analyzing the present and the future too and uh well I can't say anymore because we're running out of time so we've run out of time so go ahead please very short um I as I um now live in Georgia um I and uh I understood that I need really that the only way for me is to use this cir the real circumstances around me so I had an idea of a novel when I was before the war when I was settled in mosc and um I found a way to preserve the whole story but I changed the circumstances so now part of the plot is is part of the action is taking part in Georgia which is actually very good because there are some witches monsters and um by the way a lot of Witchcraft in in this novel this is sci-fi this not about uh my um sufferings uh so uh I uh explored and researched a lot of gean mythological creatures which are extremely interesting and no one in the world knows about that so I decided to to add them to to the plot and uh so that would be a novel combined um a novel with those added georan atmosphere and creatures and I think for that novel is it it is pretty good yes yes because there's witchcraft in the book because it contains witchcraft so that's why it's going to be so good well as regards the issue of being exiled or not [Music] I have this uh card as a homosexual that I can show you so that you can cry but when I write I try not to mention that very much and I don't want to become a victim I don't want to make people sorry for me because otherwise it's all going to be about me and myself and as I said I was born into a family with 11 people in it and uh the only way of surviving in that family was to not accept people's rejection because I felt that they were rejecting me so what we have to try to do is change those people that live with you it's only me that can change those people and this is something that I understood when I was a little boy and in a way I've been successful because they didn't throw me out and my mother gave me money to pay for my bus ticket so I could go to Rabat every day to the university she got up at the same time as I did and I eventually understood that was her way of accepting me without actually saying so in words so I was not exiled nor I didn't accept that so if you accept Exile that means that you um sentence to being on your own forever and ever I don't want to be on my own I live on my own I have problems with Paris and with France too because what I can see is that there are not very many people that I can get in touch with but if my mother rejected me I went back to her so in other words It's All About Love again when there's no love a time comes when you have to make it up so that you don't drop dead I didn't want to drop dead in fact so what can I say look Mommy I'm homosexual accept me because if I were to say that she would she would reject me and she's going to exert that power of society even stronger on me so when I wrote my book I did so based on this option of trying to get closer to them and I didn't write the book saying look I'm in Exile and I'm much better than my mother I'm better than my sisters too and it's me and myself that understands the world better than they do no because if I were to do that it's as if I were to acquire a sort of superiority that is going to give rise to a narcissistic and egocentric literature that I'm not at all interested in and this is my conclusion thank you very much thank you thank you I