An exponent of current Moroccan literature that is trickling onto our shores in Spanish translations, Mahi Binebine (Marrakech, 1959) represents the committed intellectual who has managed to transcend the borders of his country. His most recent recognition is the 2020 Mediterranean Prize for his latest novel, Rue du pardon (Ed. Stock, 2019), he is related to such important authors on the international literary scene as Tahar Ben Jelloun and Amin Maalouf. Founded in 1982, the Prix Méditerranée - which will be collected by Binebine at a sumptuous ceremony next October in the city of Perpignan - rewards works by authors from the Mediterranean basin, whether novels, essays, memoirs or short stories.
A visual artist and writer, Binebine has been able to reflect some of the most pressing social problems affecting the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, such as the spread of violent Islamism, the hopelessness of a youth that represents 60% of the region's population, illegal immigration and the mafias that control migratory flows.
With his latest novel translated into Spanish under the title of God's horses (Alfaguara, 2015. Signatura: NA BIN cab), Binebine won the 2010 Arab Novel Prize, while the film adaptation of this work, directed by the Franco-Moroccan filmmaker Nabil Ayouch (Paris, 1969), won the Golden Spike at the 57th Valladolid International Film Week and the François Chalais Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
When he wrote God's horsesThe author was afraid of being accused of terrorism apology. The novel focuses on the lives of the young men from Casablanca who perpetrated the bombings in various parts of the city in May 2003, including the Casa de España, in which 45 people were killed. After the attacks, the author visited the neighbourhood where the kamikazes came from, Sidi Moumen, to try to understand the factors that could lead young people to immolate themselves. This visit gave rise to the idea of the novel and the idea of using one of the suicide bombers as the main character. Over the next two years, Binebine visited the neighbourhood regularly and interviewed the families of the suicide bombers and many of its inhabitants.
The original title of the work, 'The Stars of Sidi Moumen', refers to the football team to which the protagonists belong, neighbours of the neighbourhood of the same name, "the natural confluence of all decadence" and so marginalised that it is hidden behind an imposing adobe wall. The novel is narrated from the point of view of Yashin, the team's goalkeeper who, after immolating himself in one of the attacks, reflects from limbo on his existence in this suburb and on the circumstances that led him to participate in the attacks and sacrifice his life, a fact he does not regret since "there was nothing much to do in life" and Yashin does not miss "not a little or a lot of the bloody eighteen years" he had to live through.
Like the protagonist of the film 'American Beauty', the late Yashin unravels the details of the existence of the inhabitants of Sidi Moumen, in a realistic and crude story impregnated with tenderness but not without a certain sense of bitter humour. Survival in the shantytown resembles that of so many other poverty-stricken places: lice, overcrowding, early pregnancies, large and malnourished families, the smell of rubbish dumps, ignorance, beatings and prostitution, sniffed glue and police extortion, among some modest joys and dreams that make the lives of the young people more bearable. It is against this backdrop that "the emir and his companions" appear, luring the members of the football team onto "the right path" through attention, work favours, help for their families or the organisation of private lessons, giving them a dignity they had never felt before. Thus begins a physical and mental metamorphosis that will lead them to "a new world in which we were going to sink little by little and which would end up swallowing them up forever".
In this work, Mahi Binebine draws a direct connection between the lack of hope for a better future and the rise of violent Islamism among some sectors of Muslim youth. As a writer committed to his society, Binebine, together with Nabil Ayouch, founded the cultural centre "The Stars of Sidi Moumen", in the same neighbourhood as the novel, where theatre, art and dance classes are taught and where cultural activities and shows are held throughout the year. The Ali Zaoua Foundation, to which this centre belongs, aims to combat the radicalisation of young people through cultural and educational initiatives.
In the work The patera (Akal, 2000. Symbol: NA BIN pat), Mahi Binebine tries once again to put himself in the place of the other, to understand the motives that lead certain people to embark on a clandestine crossing, even risking their own lives. The novel tells the story of each of the characters who meet one night on a beach on the outskirts of Tangiers to cross the Strait of Gibraltar on their way to France, "an accumulation of misfortunes gathered in such a small circle" which, however, represent those of the thousands of people who continue to attempt this crossing on one side or the other of the Mediterranean.
As they wait for the signal to tell the boatman when the time is right to launch the skiff into the sea, the narrator - a young man whose promising future as a student is cut short by circumstances - unveils the different situations that have brought them together that night in this place. His cousin Reda is fleeing a life as a beggar in Marrakech; Noura travels with her baby to reunite with her husband who emigrated to France and whom she has not heard from for a year; the Algerian teacher Kacem Djoudi escapes the war in his country; while the Moroccan Berber Yusef tries to seek refuge far from a place where he has seen his family disappear, poisoned by mistake by eating flour mixed with rat poison. Finally, the Malians Yarcé and Pafadnam have made a dangerous journey from their country in search of a better life.
They all seek the arrival in the promised land, harbouring the hope of a paradise to which the English translation of this work openly refers, Welcome to Paradiseand that, as for their compatriots from God's horsesis as appealing as it is elusive. The original title of the work, CannibalesThe European businessmen who will suck the blood out of migrants as soon as they set foot in Europe.
The pateraThe book, a finalist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2004, attempts to restore the identity of those thousands of people drowning in a Mediterranean Sea that has undoubtedly failed to manage the issue of migratory flows correctly. A work that is an interesting contribution to the literature on immigration for its sober and honest style, for its vision - focused more on the impulses that lead to departure than on the difficulties that plague arrival - and for the multiplicity of voices that it brings together and that bring us closer to immigration as an experience that is as much an individual as a collective phenomenon.
The following works by the same author are available in Spanish Stories from Marrakech (Abada, 2005. Symbol: NA BIN his) and Pollen (Akal, 2003. Symbol: NA BIN pol). All the works by Mahi Binebine mentioned in this article can be found in the Fatima Mernissi Library of the Fundación Tres Culturas, so their call numbers have been included to facilitate the reader's search.
By Natalia Arce
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