São Paulo – Moroccan writer Abdellah Taïa came to Brazil to promote his first book translated into Portuguese, “He Who Is Worthy of Love” (Aquele que é digno de ser amado – Editora Nós, 2018, 131 pages). He spent two weeks in the country, participated in Ceará Book Fest, Balada Literária in Salvador, where he met Portuguese author Valter Hugo Mãe, and was in São Paulo last Tuesday (27) for the event Pré-Balada Literária at Centro Cultural B_arco in Pinheiros.
Taïa is the first openly homosexual Arab writer, having come out in 2006. He writes in French and his books have been translated into Arabic, Spanish, English, Swedish, Danish and Portuguese. The author talked to the audience about his writing process, told some stories and answered questions about the letters in his book, which he said that has self-biographical elements. Afterwards, he autographed the books, all hugs and selfies.
During the chat, Taïa said he was glad to spend this time in Brazil. “I’m happy to be here. I feel like there was a Brazilian Abdellah, whom I met here. Brazil makes me a different person. I’ve talked with some people here and I admire the way Brazilians occupy the territory of feelings. Brazil gives me a fresh idea of love, a fresh perspective on loving,” he pointed out.
Moderator Simone Paulino asked Taïa to tell “the story of Agepê” – Brazilian singer-songwriter from Rio de Janeiro, deceased in 1995. The writer was in Brazil in October last year for the first time, in Porto Alegre. He had never considered visiting this Brazilian city and had a deadline to deliver a letter that had been commissioned for a German movie, which narrates the love story of a Lebanese young man and a German-born Turkish descendant woman. “It was a posthumous letter, and it’s a true story, but they couldn’t use the original letter. I had two months to write and couldn’t pull away from the real letter. Sometimes, love can be a devilish thing. This letter would be the movie’s final sequence and had to convey a voice from the past that is still present because of love,” he said.
Arriving in Porto Alegre, Taïa was told that he had less than a week to deliver the text, since they would shoot the scene. “Then I went on YouTube and typed ‘chansons brésiliennes’ (Brazilian songs, in French), and the first video was the song “Deixa eu te amar” by Agepê. I loved that tune, understood just a few words, but the song inspired me to write the letter. Then I searched for the translated lyrics and within three hours I had the letter written. It starts like this: ‘Even from afar, let me love you a bit.” It’s a mix, a Moroccan author writing from Porto Alegre, Brazil in French for a German movie telling the story of a Lebanese guy and a German-born Turkish descendant girl,” he said. The movie’s working title is “The Wife of the Pilot” and is bound to come out in 2022.
Inspiration to write
Taïa believes that inspiration can come from unexpected places, like Agepê. He recommended the attendees to read the text “In Praise of Bad Music” by Proust, which talks about that, he said. According to the Moroccan author, a culture elitism, a hierarchy of feelings, is in place, meaning that writers give voice to elite characters and are not interested in the emotions of the poor, and said he tries to reverse this logic. He believes it’s important to get to know authors and great works, read poems, and even copy them and learn them by heart, but they should be forgotten afterwards.
“Writing is practice, practice, practice. Others’ judgment is not important. I was so rejected when I was a teenager that now I understand the importance of knowing who I should or should not show a text to. I experience this emotion even before writing. I always want to move people, make them cry. Egyptian movies also influenced me a lot; they were all I watched while growing up. We all have the power to write through images.”
How writing came into his life
Taïa told that, as he turned 12, he got to understand the world and its logic, so that he could go beyond it. “I understood that, in Morocco, French speakers were rich and Arabic speakers were poor. I needed to be smarter than anyone who tried to stop me. I chose French because it was the language of the rich; this language crushed me, and I owned it, and I wanted to go far away, but these were unfeasible dreams at the time. It wasn’t a naïve path to follow. At a very young age, 15, 16, 17 years, I had to act and think in a very diabolical manner,” he said.
He said he didn’t become a writer by reading Victor Hugo, Proust or Shakespeare. “It’s a very bourgeois idea, one that excludes people like me; by this logic, others are not allowed to exist. People are afraid of those who write, specially their family, but one needs to find the strength to keep going against the odds,” he said. The author defined himself as hyper-curious and said that in literature what exists is not necessarily said.
From 2003 to 2010, Taïa worked as au pair of a boy in Paris. In 2010, he won a literary award in France, and only then he could devote himself entirely to the craft. The award, he said, brought both money and recognition, but he said he lives a simple, modest life.
Genre: Letter
Taïa said he always wanted to write a book made up by letters – “He Who Is Worthy of Love” is written in this format. “I’m 46, I was born in 1973. When I was growing up, letters were important. I came out with a letter in an Arab newspaper in 2006. Writing a letter, reading it out loud, people relate to it. It’s a simple but deep format that everyone can understand. The word has a voice,” he said.
The book “He Who Is Worthy of Love” is a fiction work written in the format of letters, and the author says it is about a hardened heart, a barren life. “Through all this love, I reflect on the world. I have no shame in exploiting my own life, but I don’t tell secrets from others. I write how I picture you, in spite of you. We read ourselves in the books, this feeling of relating is the magic of literature,” he stressed.
Relation with Morocco
Taïa lives in Paris, in the same building where singer Edith Piaf used to live. “She’s from the real French people, from a poor background, her mother was a prostitute, and she achieved all that. Everybody likes Piaf,” he said. The writer said he goes to Morocco often to visit his brothers and sisters that still live there. Their parents have already died, as shown in the first letter of his book. He lived in the Arab country until he was 25.
His books are sold in his home country, in French, and three of them were translated into Arabic – “The Day of the King” (published in Lebanon), “A Country for Dying” and “Letters to a Young Moroccan” (published in Morocco). He said that his house in Morocco had 11 people living in three bedrooms, one for his father, one for his older brother, and the last one for him, his mother and sisters. “We were nine people in one bedroom until I was 18” – another similarity with the book, where the main character Ahmed also lives with a big family in a modest house.
Taïa said that, despite writing his books in French, he is considering writing in Arabic soon, and that it would be another creative process.
Colonialism
The author told it had been a long time since he wanted to write a book in letters, but he couldn’t do it with any theme, and he found the theme now he has lived in France for 20 years. Morocco was colonized by France from 1912 to 1956.
“It’s almost as if the French watchword is ‘we colonized you, but this is in the past.’ But it can never be like that. It creates some kind of amnesia, which France encourages. My generation started understanding this history, how [colonization] affected us, but France want us to forget it all. Through racism, xenophobia and hatred toward immigrants, this complex far-right is widespread in France nowadays,” he said.
“So people think that since I’m homosexual I’ll speak ill of Morocco and the Arab world, if I’m a Moroccan gay writer, I’d necessarily be on France’s side, our old colonizer. No, never, ever,” Taïa stressed.
The writer continued saying that he experiences this feeling every day. “In this book I wanted to reach this precise point, of how my heart got harden from my relation with my mother and what others imposed on us, and also the colonialism infused in a love relationship,” he said, giving away self-biographical bits on the book.
The author said, “when freedom becomes so skilled, it isn’t freedom anymore,” that is, as he managed to master the French language and quote (Arthur) Rimbaud, André Gide, everything he believed would make him free, it also became a kind of prison. “The book talks about that and if the reader doesn’t put the book aside and gets to the third letter, they will see I got where I wanted to, and we see that Ahmed had a revenge plot, which will only be understood in the fourth letter, he said. He didn’t want to tell much about the last letter to avoid spoiling the experience of those who hadn’t already read the book.
Self-fiction
Abdellah Taïa said he has no formula when it comes to drawing from his own experience to write fiction. “There are no rules. I guess it might sound cocky, but I have lots of interesting stories in my family and I make them my own. There are lots of characters in this book and I’m proud of it. I can’t write fiction that doesn’t involve something of mine. Generally speaking, I find it hard to step out of myself to make my art. It might be overtly autobiographical, or covertly so,” he said.
He goes on: “I’ll look at people and think of stuff. Is that autobiographical or fictional? That’s what literature is about. I’ll look at a woman, imagine stuff about her and write it down. Everyone does that, don’t they? I’m the one imagining it, so it belongs to me. That’s where my literature stands. What I pick up from the other in spite of them, and what I put in there from my own self,” he said.
The author said he’s able to dream of someone for a long time. “It might be someone I never spoke with. I can dream of them for months, daydream. That’s why I brought up Agepê; to me that’s the magic of song. Those songs have the power of summing up a feeling through very simple words. I had never even met Agepê, and all of these things opened up in me,” he said.
For him, the magic of literature happens when you read a book and you feel like you’re reading about your own life. “The idea that art knows us before we even know it ourselves. It might be an ancient book, from the 17th or 18th century, and we might recognize ourselves in those stories. It’s as if our little lives were something else that transcends us. I really believe deeply in that,” he concluded.
The event featuring Taïa was open to the public, during a lesson from a Creative Writing Workshop by writer Marcelino Freire, who also organizes Balada Literária events across Brazil. The 14th Balada Literária will take place in São Paulo from September 4 to 8, in honor of educator and philosopher Paulo Freire.
About 40 people joined the conversation with the author, with moderation from Editora Nós director Simone Paulino, who edited the Brazilian version of the book, with simultaneous French-Portuguese interpreting by Raquel Camargo, who’ll also translate the next book by Taïa to be released in Portuguese – Un pays pour mourir, due out next year.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
