Tachelhit and literature
The number of Berber languages is impressive, for in Morocco alone there are at least three: Tamazight (in the center of the country), Rifain (in the North) and Tachelhit (or Chleuh), which is the most widely used (about 10 million speakers) and which itself is the subject of several variations, depending, for example, on whether one is on the Demnate-Ouarzazate axis or in the Souss region. The geographical area populated by the Berbers (who call themselves Amazigh in the singular, Imazighen in the plural) is also amazing, we could thus, without aiming at exhaustiveness, quote Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, but also Niger, Egypt, Libya .. This undoubtedly explains why one of the first functions of the oral tradition was to transmit information from village to village, a role devolved to the imdyazen, itinerant poets who would have been born a little further north, towards Tazrouft, but whose practice would have spread rapidly throughout the High Atlas. Eloquence and memory, such are the qualities required for an art that has to evolve: the informative vocation has indeed given way to performance. Thus, the amdyaz, accompanied by musicians, competed with his peers in poetic jousts, exploring all the themes of a repertoire (tamdyazt) which was as much interested in religion as in love, in historical episodes as in eminent local personalities. Few are those who today play this role, however fundamental, because it was at the crossroads of pedagogy, politics and entertainment, and this disappearance worries, even if the Amazigh poetry remains, in a more lyrical form, popular in the region of Souss where the word which designates it (amarg) qualifies more broadly a feeling that we could bring closer to our nostalgia.
Unlike other related languages, Tachelhit has been the subject of an abundant written literature (in Arabic, Latin, or even Tifinagh or neo-Finagh alphabets) since the 17th century, even if this literature (poetry, religious or legal treatises, scientific works, etc.) was rather reserved for scholars. Some people were keen to preserve this heritage, such as Arsène Roux (1893-1971), a French linguist who bequeathed his library and the many Tachelhit manuscripts it contained to the Institut de Recherches Méditerranéennes in Aix-en-Provence, where it can still be consulted. For all that, Berber culture has been - and remains - threatened, which explains why in the 70s and 80s a generation of writer-activists appeared who used fiction and the novel (ungal), on the one hand to describe their reality, and on the other hand to constitute a literary heritage of weight. Without forgetting the forerunners who are no longer with us, such as Ali Azaykou (1942-2004) and Ahmed Adghirni (1947-2020), we could also mention Ahmed Assid, born in 1961 in Taroudant, who used all media channels to promote Berber identity, Brahim Lasri, who was born near Agadir where he founded the local section of the Tamaynut association, or Zaid Ouchna, who tirelessly collects the songs and Amazigh traditions. In 2001, the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture was founded, and ten years later Amazigh became an official language on the same level as Arabic. Finally, in 2020, 17 novels in Tachelhit were published, a figure that is still modest but in constant evolution.
From Marrakech..
On the emblematic square of Marrakech, Jemaâ el-Fna, it is rather the live show which is in the honor. This tourist mecca with a worldwide reputation was built in the twelfth century: it was in turn dedicated to the holding of justice, trade, before becoming a point of convergence of popular cultural practices as confirmed in the seventeenth century, Al-Hasan al-Yusi. Indeed, in his most famous text, Al-Muharat, with strong autobiographical overtones, he evokes the "halka", the circle of spectators in the middle of which a storyteller takes place. The tradition will endure as it will be mentioned again by Elias Canetti, future Literature Prize winner in 1981, when he describes his stay in the Red City in the early 1950s(Les Voix de Marrakech : journal d'un voyage, Le Livre de Poche). Finally, the great Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo will start his novel Makbara (Fayard editions) on the Jemaâ el-Fna square itself, a place he loved so much that he worked for its inclusion in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity established by UNESCO, which was acted upon in 2001 and finalized in 2008, a little over ten years before he lost his life in Marrakech at the honorable age of 86. In addition to the memories of the writers, the collective memory also keeps the name of certain artists who tried to amuse or move their public, such as Flifla, one of the "hlaikia" who officiated during the protectorate and at the time of Independence, or Malik Jalouk who had brought back from his travels an inimitable repertoire, and Sarroukh (in French: "la Fusée"!) who so impressed Goytisolo that he wrote about it in his essay Les Chroniques sarrasines (Fayard).
Since then, Marrakech has produced its own writers, including Zaghoul Morsy (1933-2020) who, after writing poems for Grasset in 1969(D'un soleil réticent), published a novel at La Différence in 2003(Ishmaël ou l'exil), Mohamed Loakira, born in 1945, whose poetic work (published by Marsam) earned him two Grand Atlas Prizes, and above all, Mahi Binebine, who was born there in 1959. A man of many talents, Binebine shines in two distinct artistic fields: painting - some of his works are part of the prestigious permanent collection of the Guggenheim Museum in New York - and writing, thanks to which he happily navigates both sides of the sea, publishing alternately in France (Stock, Flammarion, Fayard, L'Aube, etc.) and in Morocco (Le Fennec). His first novel, Le Sommeil de l'esclave (The Slave's Sleep), the story of a man's return to his Moroccan childhood, was awarded the Prix Méditerranée in 1992. Since then, Mahi Binebine has published some fifteen titles(Rue du Pardon, Le Griot de Marrakech, Mon Frère fantôme...) in which he deploys and chisels a style as gentle, but rarely innocent, as his paintings. His youngest son, Mohamed Nedali, is published by L'Aube and is also beginning to claim a fine bibliography in the novel genre, which does not ignore contemporary events. Thus, in The Poet of Safi (2021), he plays a young man frustrated at not finding a publisher who decides to declaim his poems, more or less subversive, at the microphone of the mosque, at the risk of attracting the thunderbolt of the police and Islamists. He has also published Evelyne or jihad? In 2016, but alsoLa Bouteille du cafard ou l'avidité humaine, Triste jeunesse, Le Bonheur des oiseaux..
...in Essaouira and Agadir
Essaouira is also a city of shows, even if they take place indoors, as evidenced by the construction project of a City of Arts and Culture, initiated by King Mohammed VI, which should include a theater of 1,000 seats. It must be said that the city is the one that saw the birth of the greatest playwright of Morocco, Tayeb Saddiki (1939-2016). Pioneer of his discipline, radiating throughout the Arab world, he also initiated the creation of the festival souiri Music First in 1980 and founded several theatrical companies. His play Molière ou Pour l'amour de l'humanité, which transposes the life and work of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin in the twentieth century in Morocco, was published by Eddif. On the other hand, his novel Mogador, fabor, which was set in his native city, is now out of print with the same publisher. For his part, Edmond Amran El Maleh, although born in Safi in 1917, was nevertheless from a Souirie family. This had not escaped the attention of the local branch of the Union of Writers, which began its activities in 2015 by paying a vibrant tribute to this activist for independence who was a champion of multicultural Morocco. After working as a philosophy teacher, it was only at retirement age that Edmond Amran El Maleh decided to launch into fiction, with success since he received the Grand Prix of Morocco in 1996. He died in 2010 in Essaouira, and some of his writings are still available, such as Parcours immobile, which traces the destiny of a young man from a good Moroccan Jewish family who embarks for Europe (a title that La Découverte offers as a digital file), or his epistolary account Lettres à moi-même, available from the famous Casablanca publisher, Le Fennec. Finally, we must mention Alberto Ruy-Sánchez, who was born in Mexico City in 1951 and won the prestigious Xavier-Villaurrutia Prize in 1987 for Los Nombres del aire(The Faces of the Air, published by Editions du Rocher), the first volume of the series of novels he dedicated to Mogador, the ancient city of Essaouira.
To conclude in beauty, it is impossible to forget Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine, who was perhaps one of the greatest Moroccan writers of French language. He was born in 1941 in Tafraout, the splendor of the Anti-Atlas, into a family of shopkeepers, but at the age of 20 he moved to Agadir, as the beginning of an eventful life, since in 1965 he went into exile in Paris, becoming a worker by day and a radio host for France Culture by night. Having begun by publishing in magazines (Encres vives, Présence africaine...), he was caught by success with his first novel, Agadir (unfortunately out of print at Seuil), which was rewarded in 1967 by the Prize initiated by Jean Cocteau, that of the Enfants terribles. Here again, one could see the sign of the ban on his books in his native country, to which he returned, finding death in Rabat in 1995. Nevertheless, it is possible today to discover the extent of his talent - for he also liked to travel in literary genres - by turning to his poetry(Soleil arachnide, Gallimard), his story(Il était une fois un vieux couple heureux, Points), his tale(Une Odeur de mantèque, Points) or his diary(On ne met pas en cage un oiseau pareil, éditions William Bake). Saphia Azzedine, born in 1979 in Agadir, seems to share this taste for change since she has lived in Morocco, Switzerland and France, and because she works as much as a scriptwriter as a novelist. Confidences à Allah, published in 2008 by Léo Scheer, was well received, and was followed, among others, by the very remarkable Bilquiss (Stock) in 2015 and by Mon père en doute encore, by the same publisher, in 2020.
