Qui est M. Benmalek? (Sophie Viguier - Correctrice)

J'ai découvert monsieur Anouar Benmalek

Il y a quelques jours, je suis allée écouter Anouar Benmalek, un écrivain, poète et journaliste franco-algérien, lors d’une rencontre littéraire, une séance de « perco’lecteurs », à la médiathèque des Mureaux.

Anouar Benmalek est un ancien professeur de mathématiques devenu poète pour séduire une femme parlant le sanscrit, car, selon lui, les mathématiques n’étaient rien moins que séduisantes. En fin de compte, la femme était mythomane et dénuée de tous les talents admirables qu’elle s’était inventés et Anouar Benmalek était resté avec sa « mauvaise » poésie sur les bras (c’est lui qui le dit), avec l’envie d’en écrire davantage et plein de gratitude, au fond, pour sa muse involontaire. Un grand écrivain était né. À quoi ça tient ?!

Je suis confuse. Je n’avais jamais entendu parler de ce monsieur que pourtant d’aucuns qualifient de « nobélisable », pas plus que je n’avais lu ses livres, que pourtant la critique louange. Mais on me propose de rencontrer un écrivain scientifique de formation, il n’en faut pas plus pour éveiller ma curiosité et, avouons-le tout bas, un soupçon de jalousie.

Le personnage est modeste et drôle. « À quoi cela sert-il d’écrire ? » demande la bibliothécaire, un brin provocatrice. « À rien ! » répond-il, non moins provocateur, mais tout de suite il s’explique : « Ça ne sert à rien d’écrire, mais c’est l’honneur de notre espèce de se détacher de l’utile », et l’auditoire d’acquiescer admiratif.

Tous ses livres sont violents malgré lui, car dit-il, la vie est violente. Il voudrait, il essaie pourtant d’écrire des « love stories ». Il sourit. Il aimerait pouvoir s’adonner au lyrisme pur. Mais il n’y a rien à faire, ses histoires prennent place dans l’Histoire, et il est incapable de s’affranchir du contexte historique dans lequel évoluent ses personnages. Au point de transformer totalement un roman en cours à la lecture d’une brève dans le journal…

Mais il insiste, tentant sans doute de se convaincre, ou de se rassurer lui-même, il y a toujours une « love story » dans ses histoires (« tout de même menée à rude épreuve ! » souligne l’autre bibliothécaire) ; la « love story » est indispensable pour supporter la violence. Car « certains événements ne sont supportables que si par ailleurs il y a de l’espoir ».

Mais, s’il n’est pas lyrique, l’homme n’est pas non plus cynique ; il préfère l’ironie, « seule arme contre la bêtise ». Et se battre, cet homme a dû et su faire. Décrié, conspué, menacé de mort, le journaliste et écrivain engagé, admiré sur le sol français, membre fondateur du Comité algérien contre la torture, a soulevé des vagues insensées de haine intégriste dans le Moyen-Orient.

N’empêche, pour toute réaction, il hausse les épaules et mentionne l’extrême courage de ces gens considérés comme incultes sauvant, au péril de leur vie, les livres des bibliothèques de Tombouctou ; et il continue d’écrire coûte que coûte contre la bêtise et pour lui-même.

Parler de son dernier ouvrage transforme sa verve de modeste courageux en confidences timides ; il rougit, presque mal à l’aise.

C’est une lettre à sa mère, chargée du regret de ce qu’il n’a pas dit à temps, une revanche aussi pour elle, qui a traversé cette Histoire qu’il raconte et qui l’a bien maltraitée, sa mère.

La violence du cœur des hommes m’est insupportable à admettre, même dans les livres, et d’autant moins lorsqu’elle n’est pas le seul fruit de l’imagination d’un auteur tourmenté. Par conséquent, monsieur Benmalek, il n’est point sûr que je m’aventure un jour dans vos « love stories ». Mais ce livre-là, Tu ne mourras plus demain, je le lirai. Parce qu’à moi aussi ma chère maman me manque et que lire le manque des autres est une façon de combler le sien, de manque, le mien à tout le moins.

Une heure et trente minutes ont passé, déjà. C’était passionnant et enrichissant. Merci les perco’lecteurs, merci Monsieur Anouar Benmalek.

“The first Algerian writer to criticize Khomeini: Anouar Benmalek” (James D. Le Sueur, Fernwood Publishing , 2010)

Quelques extraits d’interviews d’Anouar Benmalek dans le livre : « Between terror and democracy : Algeria since 1989 » de James D. Le Sueur (Fernwood Publishing , 2010)

Sur les événements de 1988 en Algérie :

But few did so naïvely: it was understood that Algerian society could not be transformed without the government’s willingness to respect human rights. As Anouar Benmalek, a journalist writing for the Algiers newspaper Algérie-Actualité, put it in an open letter to President Chadli on November 3, 1989: « To live as a republic requires at the minimum a contract of confidence between the state and citizens. Torture is an extreme rupture of this contract. Know that one can be tortured for thinking differently; know that those responsible for this torture will continue to carry out their business, either at the old jobs or at new ones. This is what keeps all of us hostages in the grip of barbarism. »

Sur les appels au meurtre contre un écrivain :

Truth to tell, despite the international support of Rushdie by other writers, very few writers within Algeria took issue with Khomeini’s fatwa.5 No doubt Algerian writers were consumed with their own internal challenges in 1989, but nevertheless the absence of a general protest was somewhat peculiar. In this context, one person stood out as perhaps the first Algerian writer to criticize Khomeini: Anouar Benmalek, a professor of mathematics at the University of Algiers and a writer. For Benmalek the Khomeini fatwa was not only theologically misguided, but, even worse, it trivialized far more pressing concerns within the Arab world in 1989, such as poverty and oppression. For this reason, Benmalek asked sarcastically if Khomeini was really serious. How could it be that against the backdrop of “great tragedies that have been known or are known today in the Muslim world, underdevelopment, illiteracy, oppression, dictatorships, famine, that all of this is nothing compared to this book: The Satanic Verses!?”

Sur la censure et l’autocensure : 

Thus violence transformed cultural debates, but not always in the ways that its perpetrators hoped. Why? I asked Anouar Benmalek, who went into exile in 1994, this very question when I interviewed him in Paris. Benmalek’s response is crucial to understanding how violence boomeranged to become a creative cultural force in Algeria:

« The big problem for a society like Algeria’s between 1988 and 1989 was self-censorship, self-censorship that was obviously cultivated by organs of repression – the army, the SM [military security], the police and so forth. This self-censorship was extremely powerful. And, paradoxically, I would say that the violence [of the 1990s], because it was limitless, in fact liberated people and writing. Why? Because people discovered that no matter what one did – one could write or not write, write with extreme caution, or throw caution to the wind – either way, they got killed. There’s a poem about this by Tahar Djaout that I like a lot. It says this: “If you speak, they will kill you. If you do not speak, they will kill you. Therefore, speak and die.” And that’s true, because in the newspaper where I was, they killed Tahar Djaout, but they [radical Islamists] also killed the newspaper’s accountant. Why? Because he worked for the newspaper. That is to say that one can be killed for reasons that are completely ridiculous. So people said to themselves, “Die just to die? Enough! We’ve got to write what we really think.” People who had been extremely frightened no longer had any fear, because the price was the same. When they chop off your head – whether it be for some tiny little thing or for something important – it’s the same thing. Paradoxically, we owe this liberty to terrorism. But a lot of people were forced to leave; a lot were forced into exile and to leave behind that which was the dearest in the world to them. As for me, I never imagined I would someday end up in France and be laid to rest in France. Never! That was never part of the plan. I was very content living in Algeria. I had a job at the university. I was involved in the newspaper. I wrote about what I wanted, more or less. Then terrorism changed my way of life. It made me say, “So now what are you going to do? What are you going to do with yourself?” And it’s at that moment when you say, “They killed my friends, and now there remains only one thing left for me – to truly say what I think.” And in the Arab world, that is revolutionary. »

However, the fact is that revolutionary potential signaled by the end of self-censorship, as Benmalek would acknowledge, has never been fully realized.

Sur l’amnésie politique en Algérie :

In a 2007 Paris interview, the exiled Algerian writer Anouar Benmalek offered a slightly different reading of amnesty in Algeria, but agreed that Algeria has sadly chosen amnesia over remembrance. Benmalek, like many Algerians I have spoken with, expressed frustration with what he called the “recurring theme” of amnesty in Algeria. He pointed out that after the riots of 1988, the Algerian state granted amnesty for those involved in the attacks on civilians. In Benmalek’s words: “At each bloody confrontation there is an amnesty, and a culture of amnesia is interwoven in Algerian history. There are no lessons in Algeria. History offers no lessons, and each time it gets worse.”This lack of accountability has made things worse, not better in Algeria. As he pointed out, the situation went from the routine use of “torture” in 1988 (against Islamists), to “mass killings” later on “without any repercussions” and without ever bringing those guilty of heinous crimes to trial.

Fils du Sheol: Anouar Benmalek on memory, violence and fiction (The Highlander, California Riverside)

Anouar Benmalek is not a very famous name in the United States. For most people on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, the name does not really resonate — and yet, Benmalek is known elsewhere as a revolutionary intellectual internationally. A mathematician, philosopher, novelist and poet, Benmalek has often been compared to legendary writer Albert Camus (Benmalek was even nominated for the Nobel prize). Recently, he was invited by UCR’s Center for Ideas and Society to speak about his most recent novel, “Fils du Sheol,” a historical novel which catalogues the relatively unknown genocide of the Herero people in Namibia by the German colonial forces. Benmalek sat down for a conversation with Olivia Harrison, who is a professor of French, Italian and Middle East studies at the University of Southern California. 

Though Benmalek is a jack of many trades, he is most well-known for his novels. While many of them are untranslated, his novels “Lovers of Algeria” and “The Child of an Ancient People,” “examine the lives of ordinary people living in violent times, that is, under conditions of genocide, political repression, racism and religious fundamentalism.” While his recent novel has not been translated into English, it has made waves in Europe and many Arab countries.

The conversation between Harrison and Benmalek began with a discussion of the reception that “Fils du Sheol” had received internationally. While the novel has not been translated from French into English yet, there has been a very mixed international reaction toward it. Benmalek stated that while many French critics had a positive reaction toward his book, his novel has been very controversial in North African and Arab countries. In fact, because “Fils du Sheol” deals in part with the Jewish holocaust, the leaders of Al-Qaeda issued a death threat condemning his work.

However, Benmalek welcomed the controversy. He spent three years working on this novel, doing comprehensive research on his subject. The research was especially hard, because there is a scant amount of resources on the Herero Genocide.  After the English defeated the German army in World War I, they conducted interviews and compiled testimonies about this genocide, and published it in the “blue book” of which there were very few copies. These copies were deliberately suppressed by the English and German authorities for fear it may spark uprisings internationally. The research used in his novel came primarily from one copy of this “blue book,” which he spent months tracking down. 

While the conversation ranged on a various number of subjects, the primary discussion revolved around the idea of fiction and memory. Benmalek remarked that, for him, “only novels and films have the capacity to truly remember these events.” His goal with this book was not only to generate awareness for this forgotten crime against humanity, but to remember the lives of the Herero people: “Even if they were exterminated, at some point they were living people.” Benmalek’s novel wanted to capture, and render into language, the true horror of this genocide, which he stated was “a laboratory and antecedent for the Shoah” — a statement and idea many find difficult to accept.

Benmalek’s discussion was a sobering reminder of the importance of literature in the modern age, and the ongoing courage of writers around the world. While many continue to suggest that the written word is being replaced by the digital, the fact that this story about the Herero genocide remained untold for over 100 years until extensive research was conducted by a world-class intellectual suggests much about the necessity of public intellBenmalek’s discussion was a sobering reminder of the importance of literature in the modern age, and the ongoing courage of writers around the world. While many continue to suggest that the written word is being replaced by the digital, the fact that this story about the Herero genocide remained untold for over 100 years until extensive research was conducted by a world-class intellectual suggests much about the necessity of public intellectuals in our time .

Anouar Benmalek at Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041

Occidental College with support from The Markaz presents one of the world's most compelling novelists from the Arab world. Anouar Benmalek is a Franco-Algerian novelist, poet, essayist who teaches mathematics at the University of Paris Sud. Benmalek is the recipient of some of France's most prestigious literary awards and his novels have been translated into a dozen languages, including English. 

He will speak on his most recent novel, Fils de Sheol (Child of Sheol). Set in Nazi-occupied Poland, the narrative traces a character's family, and the Holocaust itself back to German Southwest Africa (present day Namibia), where beginning in 1904 the German colonial powers launched a war of extermination against the Herero and Nama people. Benmalek explores the ways in which the twentieth-century's first genocide, until recently nearly unknown, laid the groundwork for the extermination campaigns against the Jewish and Roma peoples in Europe itself. The title of Benmalek's novel, sheol(Hebrew for pit, grave or underworld) evokes images of the mass graves which men, women and children were forced to dig before they were killed. But it also suggests that by violently subjugating the continent of Africa, the European powers were digging their own grave and transforming themselves into children of sheol.  Click here for a map to Choi Auditorium, located in Johnson/McKinnon Hall, in the center of campus.

• October 12, 2017 at 4pm – 5:30pm
• Occidental College, Choi Auditorium, 1600 Campus Rd, Los Angeles, CA 90041

Une libraire: "Le livre qui a changé sa vie: L'enfant du peuple ancien"

Dans La Grande Librairie (France 5, mars 2017), une libraire: "Le livre qui a changé sa vie: L'enfant du peuple ancien"


https://youtu.be/7XQ5ISP5mvU