Born in 1973, Abdellah Taia is the first openly-gay Moroccan author to address the gay scene in North Africa. During OUTober, a celebration of LGBTQ culture here at Georgetown, I saw a friend post on Facebook about Taia’s new movie Salvation Army, an adaptation of the eponymous novel featuring a young, gay Moroccan boy.
And then I saw the comments. They were from two well-traveled, well-off young Moroccans I got to know while studying in Morocco for a semester, and whom I consider good, trustworthy friends. They lambasted Taia, saying they were ashamed he was from their homeland because of his openness about his sexuality. I was in shock. I bought two of Taia’s best-known novels right away—Salvation Army and An Arab Melancholia. (He has written six novels total; only the above two are translated into English.) Both feature young, gay Moroccans coming to terms with their sexuality. Taia depicts the culture of sexual tourism found on the beaches of Agadir, a gang-rape, a romance with an older European, and sexual feelings for an older brother—risqué topics even in liberal societies, but ground-breaking in Moroccan society.
I read Salvation Army in French (L’armee du salut) and English, and found that Taia’s work carries its literary value in translation. I doubt that it carries the same polarizing social force, though. We may never understand the intensity and power of Taia’s stories in his context, but he does do a good job illustrating why they are so powerful.
All of Taia’s novels were originally written in French—not Arabic, which Taia considers his mother tongue. In fact, French is not an official language of Morocco. Only Arabic and Amazigh (Berber) are listed in the constitution, though you wouldn’t know it from daily life. School is conducted in French and Fusha (Modern Standard Arabic, a formal version of Arabic that is used on the news, in diplomacy, and taught at Georgetown, but very different than the Arabic spoken in the streets.) At home, Moroccans speak Darija, a mixture of French, Arabic and Amazigh. It is virtually incomprehensible to other Arabs and is very far from the MSA Georgetown students slave over in our intensive classes.
Darija is basically never written. Moroccan street signs and school assignments are in Arabic and in French, and the language of private journals probably depends on the authors’ cultural context. Taia, growing up in a poor Arab family with few ties to the cosmopolitan colonizer across the Mediterranean, wrote his journal in Arabic. Still, he chose to write his novels in French.
In an interview with AlAkhbar, an Arabic publication, Taia said, “I am forced to write in French! This makes me feel like a traitor. A traitor to my family and my ancestors.”
I don’t think he is a traitor to his country. I think he is the opposite. He is trying to reconcile his sexual identity with his cultural one without demonizing either. He hasn’t given up on Morocco, even though he lives in France and writes in French.
In fact, I think he reappropriates the French language. Taia said to the Moroccan French-language newsmagazine Telquel that he “writes poor, meaning with a very simple vocabulary and a particular rhythm.”
His writing may be “poor” in word choice, but it is saturated in beauty. I usually like the challenging, erudite exhibitionism of Nabokov, Pynchon, and other intelligent show-offs. But Taia’s concise sentences are clear-eyed and enthralling. They wear a Moroccan honesty and intensity that I felt in every interaction I had there. You can experience the same intensity in his work, where you know that some of the content is fictional, but nothing feels more genuine.
The combination of straightforward writing style and emotional vulnerability is totally disarming. Taia refuses to hide. This puts so much power in his words and allows you—forces you—to identify with Taia’s characters and therefore face yourself.
This style is in contrast—consciously, I think—to the very florid French writers idolized by his young protagonists, like Gustave Flaubert and Emile Zola. Taia uses colonial language, but in his own way, according to his own aesthetic and principles.
I want to see the movie version of Salvation Army, because I bet Taia’s aesthetic eye will translate incredibly into colors and pictures. It is slated for release in France early next year, and I hope it makes its way over the pond to our theaters soon after.
I will always be an outsider to Moroccan culture, even though I was welcomed there as warmly as if I had been born and bred. Perhaps more warmly, compared to some of native Taia’s experiences. I hope that he faces less discrimination as his books become more widely read. With National Coming Out Day and OUTober still on our minds, I hope we can all learn from Taia’s bravery.
