The original language, the preferred language

“Literary production in the language of origin among the Moroccans of the world” is the theme of the second round table organized this Saturday, February 10, 2018 at the stand of Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad (CCME) at the Casablanca book fair.

The authors  Abdelhamid Bajouki, a Moroccan-Spanish actor, Mohamed Miloud Gharrafi, French-Moroccan poet and novelist, and Taha Adnane, a belgian-Moroccan poet and writer, took part in the meeting hosted by Mr. Abdellatif Maroufi, CCME project manager.

In his introduction, Mr. Maroufi emphasized “the extraordinary diversity of the Moroccan community abroad, estimated at more than 5 million people living in more than 100 countries” and the deep changes that it has experienced. He spoke about the growth of the moroccan community, which got  feminised, youger and the economic and cultural changes that have taken place in the host countries.

Abdelhamid Bejouki: a vision of the birth of Moroccan literature abroad

Mr. Bejouki, said the  Moroccan immigration takes part  in the cultural animation in Spanish society: “Moroccan writers in Spain have brought the two shores -of the Mediterranean- together and applied common values”. It is an “irrefutable cultural added value”

This is the main reason why the Moroccan-Spanish association qualifies Moroccan literature in the original language as “realistic, transnational and hybrid.

Mr. Bejouki gave several examples of Moroccan writers who have an impact in the artistic landscape on both sides of the Mediterranean, such as the pioneer Mohamed Ben Azouz who published in 1942 the first Moroccan prose book in Spanish entitled ” Travel to Andalusia “, Abdellatif Al-Khatib or Mohamed Temsamani.

Answering the question of the moderator on the reasons that led him to publish a novel in Arabic, he replied that his three novels in Spanish deal with professional issues, including legal issues, but when ” I needed to speak about myself, I did it in my native language. “

Mohammed Miloud El Gharrafi: Literature in the original language is not an anomaly

“I am told why do you write in Arabic after 28 years in immigration? Would this question be asked to a Spanish citizen living in France who writes in Spanish? “.

For the novelist, writing in the original language is normal for the generation of writers who had already started writing in their country of origin and have made the choice « to migrate ».

“The characteristics of literature in the original language in our time, especially, in Arabic, are no longer sufficient to deal with the problems of migration, but raise broader issues, such as the place of the Arab intellectual in the world.

Taha Adnane: “The Brussels melting pot allowed me to preserve my identity”

The poet Taha Adnane says that he “arrived in 1996 in Brussels as a semi-finished product, whose  educated in Morocco”.

“Unlike Paris, the capital of the French language, in Madrid capital of the Spanish language or Berlin, capital of the German language, Bruxells had for me the advantage of living in linguistic insecurity,” he said.

 Newsroom