The search for identity is the task of every person and is the essential message of the novel “The voice of my mother” by the writer Abdelkader Benalija from Netherlands with Moroccan origin who to the news agency Fena talked about his novel, the phenomenon of the cultural memory, immigration and the impressions of stay in B&H.
Benali resides in Sarajevo and at the Summer Book Fest promoted his new novel “The voice of my mother”.
“We all carry within us a variety of conflicts, collisions with ourselves when growing up in the rural culture and meeting with urban culture. A search for “me” is the core of my novel”, said at the beginning of the conversation Benali.
Emphasizes the search for what was once, specifically longing for the time when a man was tied to specific people and places.
“I long for the past, for the times when I was an open book, and when we were totally free and clean. In the literature, these are the greatest moments”, considers Benali and adds that is the dream of every writer to put these things into the present.
“The reason I am writing is my desire to be completely free, so the images from the past to put into words” explained Benali, who was born in Ighazzazen, in Morocco 1975, but with his parents immigrated to the Netherlands when he was four years old.
“’I am getting better, I am all wiser and crazier”, he said in an interview with news agency Fena.
According to him, the man must be crazy enough to be able to combine countries that can not be combined.
“The Netherlands and Bosnia and Herzegovina can not be combined, it is simply impossible. There are different cultures, history and traditions. Netherlands can not be compared with Morocco. A little madness is needed to combine two incompatible things”, explained Benali.
Yet, he added, people are doing it, as artists and as people, which is a kind of creative madness.
Benali stresses that if someone wants to become a bigger and stronger man, must do artistic piece out of his life, but to still be you.
“Move closer to yourself. “The voice of my mother” is the resistance, the resistance against monoculture”, he added.
In the following interview came up the question of xenophobia, which he says he is very familiar with.
“I saw it and I felt it. It is hard. It is a direct enemy of civilization. Where xenophobia comes, everything else disappears. It is the enemy of the universe and the poison for the soul”, said Benali
“It is compelled to destroy everything around him. My job is partly a response to xenophobia, so it is written words as a remedy to the wound called xenophobia”, highlights Benali.
In a world where everyone is crazy, he says that only writer remains normal.
“Just like music, like the music of this region that is a story for itself, you can not close in the cage. It takes its time and transcends all. Just like the word”, he explained.
“Ten years ago, a visit to Sarajevo would have been completely different. Now I feel that moment. I feel that this is my place. Next year I have to come back here “, said Benali.
At his first Sarajevo coffee came to the conclusion that this could be his new place, and that if he has to choose between Sarajevo and Nice, he would choose Sarajevo.
History and culture ties Sarajevo with Morocco.
During his visit to B&H, Benali spent three days at the Jablanica Lake.
“Every night I run around the lake and people don’t watch and don’t notice me. I feel like I am one of them”, said Benali.
“Some things which we carry in us, our doubts, anxiety, ways of thinking and odors, we can not share in a foreign country. Those we carry with us and we can feel them just in our country. Here you can share those with your people”, he explained.
Talking about his homeland, Morocco, said that it took him long to understand Morocco, because he did not understand himself.
“Only when I began to understand myself, began my understanding of Morocco and Moroccans in a foreign land, and all the beautiful and much less pleasant things that go with it. But I feel all now”, he added.
He points out that immigrant have privileges, or certain aspects of freedom in terms of freedom of an “alien” who sees everything as an outsider.
Abdelkader Benali writes novels, stories, poetry, travel writing and theater plays, literary reviews and he is the regular columnist in the most famous Dutch newspaper “De Volkskrant”.
For the first novel, “The Wedding on the Sea”1997 was nominated for the prestigious award “Libris Literatuurprijs” which he got for the second novel “The long-awaited” in 2003
He was also a journalist, war reporter from the Middle East, and in the Netherlands is known for the excellent TV shows “The Writer and the City” and “Benali about books.”
Abdelkader Benalija works have been translated into a dozen languages, including English, Spanish, German and Italian.
(Source: Fena)
