The Literary Review articles from January 1998

The Literary Review archives from January 1998

An introduction to Maghrebian literature.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... We selected the Title "North Africa: Literary Crossroads" in the interest of truth in packaging as well as to provide a label broad enough to encompass the multitude of faces that the northwest comer of Africa presents, in what is one of the most...

The richness of diversity. (fiction writer James Gaasch of Algeria)(Interview)
January 1, 1998... I was born in Algeria -- colonial Algeria -- in Aflou, a village in the Highlands of southern Tiaret (today an Islamist fiefdom). My father was the director of a school of "native boys," he was an "instituteur du Bled," or country school teacher,...

An Algerian childhood.
January 1, 1998... I learned another very important lesson from the games we played during my childhood. It was while playing them that I learned, here and there, with my Arab, Kabyle, French, and Spanish playmates, that a thing or an animal could have several...

The Chaplets of Attachment: The Exile of Ibn Hazm. (includes commentary on French-language Maghrebian writing)(North Africa: Literary Crossroads.)
January 1, 1998... If only I could move one step ahead every thousand years, I would already have started on my way. --Dante Ibn Hazm: theologian and jurist, Arab poet (Cordova, 993--Badajoz, 1064). He lived under the Omeyyade Dynasty of Muslim Spain which...

The Girls of Tangier.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... The Girls of Tangier have a star on each breast. Accomplices of the night and the wind, they live in seashells on the shores of love. Neighbors of the sun, that blows morning to them like a teardrop in the mouth, they own a garden. A garden...

Four poems.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Spoken Place a most extreme faith in which sheets which silences do you lull to sleep this snow and (without saying why) calmly bestow upon it your down-soft breath which prey surrenders which...

Three poems.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Han Meilin's Bird(1) the bird -- freed from Han Meilin's(*) fingers -- lands set in rubble. a multi-colored tuft hatched in spring; he drinks the dew beneath my windows combs his feet through my grass....

The Bone Seekers.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... 1 They always managed to arrive in the different villages they crossed during the hottest hours of the day. The cicadas, crushed beneath the anvil of the heat wave, slept in silence on the bark of the ash trees. You could go up to them,...

Two poems.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Under the Cherry Trees A guard stands watch under the cherry trees Night descends in the valley Faces disappear behind barbed wire In the streaming July sands A cry between two steel bars holds the dream of...

Three White Days.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Three White Days.(*) Two in June, 1993, the third in March of 1994. Three Algerian days. The whiteness of dust. That dust which no one could then make out, but which, invisible and fine, would infiltrate the mourners who flowed toward you,...

Death Unfinished.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... But, what should I search for then, while I unravel this deathly procession? -- (sorrow seizes me, perhaps desire will take me, suddenly snatch me up, to cross over there, me at my turn to the other side, to rejoin them, relieved and joyous,...

The Burial of Kateb Yacine.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... In Le Blanc de l'Algerie, a book published in 1986 by Albin Michel, from which this extract recounting the funeral of Kateb Yacine is drawn, Assia Djebar unreels a procession of Algerian writers, "over at least one generation, caught at the...

The Frigidaire.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... One day my leg stopped loving me. It hurt. In order to punish it, I got in the habit of leaving her behind at home whenever I went out. It was in this manner that I went all over town in public, limping, supported by crutches. Each time I came...

Mimouna.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Mimouna is a very beautiful young woman who lives in a very small hamlet in southern Morocco. Her breasts are firm and her eyes are black. She is always smiling and pays no attention to the gabbing of the older women who are beginning to...

Poem.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... i am living--my exile of cold and fog i live in expectation waiting--waiting WAITING to rediscover my language erased by the torture of acculturation in the vaults of my being my language of and pious presence of...

Nedjma, the Poem. the Knife.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... We had prepared two glasses of blood Nedjma opened her eyes amid the trees A lute was making much of the plains transforming them into gardens As black as sun-soaked blood Nedjma lay beneath(1) my soothed heart I breathed...

Center of Gravity.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... It was the promised exile the oblivion of memory The restrained flourishing of a despotic garden It was the skilled ebbing of the unreachable past Always chosen above the present And residing its place between them,...

Two poems.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... you possess no soul you possess no heart you possess no body soul heart body empty and sterile categories if I use the word body it is because I bear hatred for the soul's perversion if I use the word...

Love in the Garden.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... In Algiers Near the Bibliotheque Nationale In the heart of the city There is a large garden With at its center A little pool And around it Flowers Trees Benches Where Old men ...

The Sahara A Seamless Silence, A Starkness Without Flaw.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... My encounter with the Sahara surpassed by far all my expectations. Perhaps I was not sufficiently prepared: when nearing the gates of strange cities one must not be porous, if one does not wish to be completely lost there. I had hitherto liked...

Jews, Tunisians, and Frenchmen.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... I have already told how, upon arriving in Paris a long time ago, I went to see an old writer, French-Jewish as people said back then. I told him about my perplexity in the face of my triple identity: Jew, Tunisian, and Frenchman. After listening...

From Tombeza.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Since noon I've been in this room which serves as a junk room, a storage place for brooms and maintenance products. It is also used as a toilet for the relatives of the helpless and bedridden, who come to empty the patients' plastic chamber pots...

Three poems.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Ever since their return from exile it has been raining splinters of stone just prior to the massacre shall they deliver from the confines of shadows the light that burgeons in them light in equipoise upon their...

Four poems.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... I Don't Know How to Speak of Paris . . . I don't know how to speak of Paris of her streets, her gilded fires of her young, smiling girls her grand, bewildering tower. I don't know how to speak of Venice of...

From Dust.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... 1. The millenial gallop grows faint under the wing sheath of the wind . . . Honored guests of the wind, escorted by the great winds of exile, by shadows of huge plumes, The dust columns have come from tree saps and island...

A Whole Host Tows Its Listenings....
January 1, 1998... A whole host tows its listenings out to the depths of the rolling night For one must lay claim silently to luminous waves of breakers and to secure an escort of obsequious pain of a prophet afoot. I ascend to the flank of the...

Children of the Narrow Streets.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... In the middle of the street full of dust and sunlight, you were caught up in a group of musicians. They were accompanying the wedding gifts, piled on a cart pulled by a horse as fat as a mule, that Jbilou had offered to his fiance and which were:...

Five poems.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Rose Says the Rose at the Twilight of Desire . . . Rose says the rose at the twilight of desire like time freezing into eighteen rubies The sap of a fresh dawn is not buried in my petals And all this blood, my love of...

Now That Death.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... puts a bit more darkness in our eyes a bit more snow in our hair what have we retained of the embraces the naked entwinings of our nights what taste is left on our lips of all the fruit we tasted and of the...

Renaissance.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... 1 gl. . . gl. . . gl. . . agouli goula goulgali galaglagli gligli liglig agoula goul goul lagou gou gougali ali ligalou alouli ouli lialou gligli goula agoula agoulagali li igoula agl aglgali 2...

The South Wind. (includes commentary on Arabic-language Meghrebian writing)(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... That night it felt better in the man's gathering room than in the women's, not because it was any larger but there was no door to block access to it, and the gaps in the walls were not covered by clay; it was a courtyard with a rooftop. As to the...

To My Fevered Homeland/Abdel Krim.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... In the very beginning I had a name whose sounds were unknown I had, in the end, many names known by the children of shantytowns and in the publicity driven circles of charlatans I had many names that harken back to...

Speaking of Flies is Forbidden.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... I didn't keep track of the days I spent in my prison cell; I thought much more about torture than about the passage of time, however ponderous. More than two hours have elapsed. Now I realize that I could lose my sense of time and of my...

Belonging to the Extent of May Sail....(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Belonging to the extent of my sail I have no exile other than my country To escape Towards the sea Or to leave the ramified land to its people And perceive my loss Belonging to the extent of my sail I...

Advice to My Kinfolk to Be Used After My Death.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... If one of those days I were to die in your midst but will I ever die do not recite over my corpse Koranic verses but leave them to those who trade them for a living do promise me a couple of acres in Paradise ...

Winter.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Earth misses its Spring No grass on the surface no gull on the water The last woman returns from the house of springs No bracelets on her hands no henna on her palms No sandalwood to be burnt in braseros Let open the...

Then We Left Mecca....(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Then we left Mecca and kept away from the caravan routes. After a brisk ride, we reached the sandy wilderness. On the sand, our gallant camels trod along so gently one would have thought their hoofs no more than touched the ground and we kept...

The Gangway to the Elevator.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... My own father did not match up to his father and grandfather. But he was quite someone. He kept his father's lands and some of his decorations. Upon his return from the Syrian campaign, he was offered a red burnoose and was appointed Caid.(1) He...

Why.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Why have they left me behind, alone Squandering my fish into the river waters Screaming to the blue birds But master be once with me Dismount Sir, at my place, for here in its first jars is the old wine Autumn...

An Instance.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Rivulets pay taxes to the sea And banks drive them as armies towards the aim. Thirst destroys the fields And its daggers stick in their throats as rust What age are we in then The sea gets wider Yet...

Five Isefra. (includes commentary on Berber Tamazight writers)(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... 1. I tried to raise a fine garden With all the flowers of my soul And all the trees worthy of envy: Trellises with crimson grapes, Peaches the shade and lucence of amber. . . The basil and the rose are...

Oh God! Pressured He Left in Haste. (North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Oh God! Pressured he left in haste This year will be a happy one Why must we behave this way? We abandon truth in favor of lies We fail to visit the poor And flatter the rich And now we are afraid God shall...

Good Bye, Akbu.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Good-Bye, Akbu The fun is now over The wise will refrain from talking Since friends and companions have gone, and left us crying, Everyone is to himself However, in daylight we shall tell And my heart...

Love, Love, Love and It Was Like a Nightmare.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... I opened the closet That I had closed in my youth. The love book that I had left Was covered with dust The dust that covered it, I shook it off The book said: Who is waking me up? Not knowing it was me....

My Life and Kenza.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... My arms may be powerless But I still have my voice Which shall break out and be heard They said: The mountain has broken its chains And you were not there to see it The news spread by word of mouth it is today...

My Guitar.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Oh Guitar which I had in my youth Sing that I might forget my grief Remind me of the winds of bygone days When art and music were always with us When we greeted each day with flowers and song When we responded to...

Your Name.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Your name which has no root Has disappeared in the fog Despite your ancestry Like a spring flower Fading in the summer For it is too late to call out Please, man of your word Tell this history With...

Butterfly.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... O brain without memory Offspring of fog Going nowhere When you were told tales Under oppression Your head became a stone I fancy you as a butterfly Carried by the wind Vanishing while making poetry...

An Algerian Childhood. (includes commentary on North-African French writers)(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... I learned another very important lesson from the games we played during my childhood. It was while playing them that I learned, here and there, with my Arab, Kabyle, French, and Spanish playmates, that a thing or an animal could have several...

Four poems.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Mirrors Now I have returned To the empty house All the mirrors are dead All the fires extinguished Where have the days gone Their sun at the windows The walls no longer echo The garden has wilted...

Four poems.(North Africa: Literary Crossroads)
January 1, 1998... Bread and Water Don't prevent the stone from clinging to my voice it is more supple than the sea between my fingers The stone knows its host cares more for you than I do at its extinguished heart it...