On the sidelines of the programming of the Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad at the 30th edition of the International Book and Publishing Fair, the Cafe du Lassen in Rabat, in partnership with the French Institute of Morocco and the Hiba Foundation, organised, April 20, 2025, a meeting on the cultural and humanitarian legacy of the Moroccan writer, visual artist and activist Edmond Amran El Maleh.
Addressing the event, documentary filmmaker and authr Simone Bitton described Edmond Amran El Maleh as great writer and a “role model” who taught her to strike a balance between the political and the poetic, which she has been able to convey in her films, in which she attempts to give a voice to the voiceless and to convey strong messages.
Ms Bitton pointed out that Edmond Amran El Maleh was a person of an open and curious nature, who enjoyed meeting his friends, travelling with them and questioning them about a range of key issues. Explaining that Edmond Amran El Maleh was strongly committed to preserving the identity of the Moroccan-Jewish community under its various aspects.
The director of the film “A Thousand Days and a Day” said: This balance between literature and politics, and the use of literary writing as a political tool, is what she followed in the documentaries: giving a voice to the voiceless, and talking about the Palestinian issue from a Moroccan Jewish perspective, for example; referring in this regard to Edmond’s positions in defense of the Palestinian cause and the Moroccan Jewish identity that has been erased, and recalling that she met Edmond Al-Maleh in France thanks to the Palestinian diplomat Leila Shaheed, the director of the film ‘A Thousand Days and a Day: Hajj Edmond’, said that she got to know Edmond Al-Maleh in France.
Ms Bitton also recalled Edmond Elmaleh’s struggles about what she calls the “internal asylum” that she shared with Amran Elmaleh, which is primarily a linguistic asylum, due to not learning Arabic in childhood and thus feeling that they were stripped of a part of the Moroccan identity.
Al-Jouiti: Amran was a weaver of friendships
The author Abdelkrim Jouiti, said for his part that the literary works of Edmond Amran El Maleh, were characterised by the fact that he predominantly used words in Moroccan darija in addition to French.
Speaking about his encounters and travels with the author, Mr Jouiti highlighted Edmond Amran El Maleh’s love of words and the imaginary from an early age, which fed his passion for writing.
Abdelkrim Jouiti, recalled stories with Edmond, whom he described as a weaver of friendships and relationships, a friend of everyone, whose house was a corner where writers, artists and plastic artists gathered, and was able to create relationships with all segments of society, whether intellectuals or simple people, whose quotes he would not hesitate to quote alongside those of great thinkers and philosophers.
After describing his political career within the Moroccan left and the issues he faced due to his political positions, Jouiti said that his departure from the party he belonged to was a gift to literature and Moroccan literature.
As for his relationship with imagination and language, Jouiti said that what distinguished ‘Amran’ was his ability to play with words, and his admiration for the Moroccan Darija, which he believes best embodies the Moroccan personality, which is reflected in his literary works, and also in his choice to publish his books in small publishing houses in France because his writings were full of Arabic and Darija words that he would not compromise on.
