Two ‘Little Prose Texts’ by Abdallah Zrika
The following two “little” texts are translated from Abdallah Zrika’s Petites Proses published by L’Escampette in 1998. The author himself translated the texts from Arabic into French. The translations from French into English are by Moroccan poet El Habib Louai.
My Sister’s Cry in Black and White
By Abdallah Zrika
Translated by El Habib Louai
I always think of photography as a room where the dead are washed. It all started the day my brother died at seventeen, just when I was five years old. They were washing his body in a bedroom when my sister burst out accusing a man of stealing my brother’s photo that was hanging on a wall next to a wardrobe. I still remember his shoes lying next to a ladder. Since then, every time I pass one of these photographers’ “boutiques”, I stop for a moment as if I were looking for my brother’s photo that was stolen on the day he died. Long years have passed. One day, I wanted to take photos of people, but I couldn’t. It was as if their faces had weighed so heavily on my chest that I couldn’t breathe. By now, the features of my brother’s face have almost faded from my memory, but a few images still stick to my retina: that of his black shoes placed near a ladder, rivulets of water flowing beneath the door of the small room where he was washed, a tiny sewing machine in one of the corners. I always imagine these things in black and white, maybe because of the photo of my brother that was in black and white, perhaps because the color of death that faded from my memory. Then one day I found myself in the shoes of a collector, avidly cutting up everything he could get his hands on to the extent that my bedroom was flooded with magazine and newspaper clippings. One day, a friend noticed my “mania” and gave me a camera. I’ve never handled it, but I sometimes touch or open it. One day, I finally decided to use it. I didn’t take anyone’s portrait, but I did take photos of towns that had appeared in magazines, trying to place them in compositions of my own next to various objects I found around the house. To this day, I’m unable to take anyone’s picture as if I were afraid of provoking the death of my “model”. All the photos I use belong to people who are not related to me. I like to take photos of inanimate things and in particular of things with which I feel a sense of intimacy. For example, the shadows cast by peas near a jar, or the glow of a candle devouring the darkness on a wall, or a bare foot on a staircase step shaded in black. I’ve found myself attached to everything that belongs to the world of darkness and shadows because they embrace the earth. I distrust faces because they remind me of death and that they will be stolen the day they’re washed. I can still hear my sister’s scream, but whoever stole the photo of my dead brother didn’t think of stealing the ladder, the shoes or the sewing machine. He stole the photo of a dead man being washed in an almost dark room. Above all, he robbed me of the dearest thing to me: he stripped me of the portrait of every living person, condemning me to never being able to photograph anyone. But this has opened up another world to me, one that no one would dream of robbing me of: the world of things in total solitude, things that do not seek to expose themselves to our gaze. For this reason, I like to see myself as a worn ladder hanging on a wall, or as shoes that smell of indifference, or as a sewing machine that occupies a corner with softness and calm. For this reason, I refuse to be a portrait.
My Grandmother’s Shroud
By Abdallah Zrika
Translated by El Habib Louai
When my grandmother died, an old man rode his old bicycle and went to look for a shroud. His white beard was practically touching the handlebars. I saw him from far away. He was led more by the wind than by himself, and the shroud rested on the handlebars. He threaded his way zigzagging under the force of the wind. The alleys were narrow and tortuous. Sometimes a shack moved forward on the track as he tortured himself. The wind, which was extremely strong, inflated the shroud. At times, I imagined it was not the old man riding, but that the alleys were turtles inside him, or else it was the shroud of the wind, or the shroud of the bicycle billowing. I don’t know how long it was until I heard a clamor that I prefer not to remember. Part of the shroud was caught between the spokes of the wheel. The old man fell off the bicycle straight onto his head and dropped dead a few minutes later with my grandmother’s shroud in his hands.
Born in Casablanca in 1953, Abdallah Zrika grew up in the slums of Ben Msik. He composed his first poems at age twelve & self-published his first book (Dance of the Head and the Rose) in 1977. In these so-called “years of lead” of political repression & student unrest, the book was an immediate popular success with the younger Moroccan generation—as were the many poetry readings he gave to audiences that often numbered in the thousands. In 1978 he was arrested and condemned to two years in jail for disturbing the public order and for supposed crimes against “the sacred values” of his country. Since his release in 1980 he has continued his career as a writer, becoming one of Morocco’s major voices. Abdellatif Laâbi called the early work “brutal, disheveled, wild, blasphemous, one could be tempted to say that it is voluntarily ugly—the same way people found Picasso’s paintings ugly,” while he sees the more recent work as having “restructured itself to make room for the visionary” by becoming a “crucible in which human and historical matters are transmuted. . . . After having called for the destruction of the old world, he has now put his shoulder to the task of reinventing life.” Of Zrika’s ten or so books, three have been translated into French.
El Habib Louai is a Moroccan poet, translator, musician and assistant professor of English at Ibn Zohr University, Agadir, Morocco. His research focuses on the cultural encounters, colonial discourse and postcolonial theory and he worked the Beats’ archives at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Fulbright grantee. He took creative writing courses at Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado where he performed with Anne Waldman and Thurston Moore. His articles, poems and Arabic translations of Beat writers appeared in various literary magazines, journals and reviews such as Al Quds Al Arabi, Al Moutaqaf, Jadaliyya, Arabli Quarterly, Al Jadeed Magazine, Al Arabi Al Jadid, Al Faisal, Al Doha, Middle East Online, Ragged Lion Journal, Big Bridge Magazine, Berfrois, Al Markaz Review, The Fifth Estate, Lumina, The Poet’s Haven, The MUD Proposal and Sagarana. Louai’s Arabic translations include America, America: An Anthology of Beat Poetry in Arabic, Michael Rothenberg’s collection of poems entitled Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story both published by Arwiqa for Translation and Studies, Bob Kaufman’s The Ancient Rain published by Dar Al Rafidain, Giorgio Agamben’s What is an Apparatus and Other Essays and Diane di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters, both published by Dar Al Libiraliya. He also contributed with Arabic translations to Seven Countries: An Anthology Against Trump’s Ban published by Arroyo Seco Press. Louai published two collections of poems: Mrs. Jones Will Now Know: Poems of a Desperate Rebel and Rotten Wounds Embalmed with Tar which was a finalist for the 2020 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry.