Memories of Al-Andalus: Between “Paterista” and Testimonial Poetry

Chapter 1 Memories of al-Andalus: between “Paterista” and Testimonial Poetry

Hakim Abderrezak opines that “illiterature [illegal migration literature] invites [us] to rethink issues associated with globalization […] to expand scholarship beyond national demarcations in light of the presence of a third party (Spain) in the traditional pole Maghreb-France” (462).1 Therefore, Spain has a new gen- eration of Spanish “Beurs,” which will “enrich Iberian literature” (Abderrezak 468). The first contemporary Moroccan literary works addressing the migration of African citizens to Europe originate in the 1950s and continue into the 1970s. They were written in Arabic or French by a variety of Moroccan authors publishing in Morocco, including Muhammad Zafzaf, Driss Chraïbi, Abdallah Laroui, and Tahar Ben Jelloun, among others. On February 7, 1992, three hun- dred Maghrebs were shipwrecked off the coast of Almeria, Andalusia, in an at- tempt to reach Spain. The first Moroccan intellectuals who reacted in Castilian to this modern, clandestine migration did so in a supplement of the daily fran- cophone Moroccan newspaper L’Opinion called “L’Opinion Semanal” [“Weekly Opinion”], and in the cultural section of La Mañana del Sahara y del Maghreb [Daily News of The Sahara and The Maghreb].2 These texts reflect the cultural shifts that were occurring around the turn of the twenty-first century. Every year from 1995 to 2008, approximately forty thousand Moroccan and Sub-Saharan migrants landed on the coasts of

1 Part of this chapter was published as an article in Across the Straits: New Visions of Africa in Contemporary Spain, under the title, “Abderrahman El Fathi: Between ‘Paterista’ and Testimonial Poetry.” 2 “L’Opinion Semanal” was the original title of the supplement, and its publication spanned from 1982 to 1992. During that period, the title was often referred as “La página en español” [“The Spanish Page”]. La Mañana (1990–2006), was the first and only Moroccan newspaper produced in Rabat by Moroccan nationals and printed entirely in Castilian. I am going to develop the narrative about migration appeared in “L’Opinion Semanal” and La Mañana in chapter 2. Just for reference in this chapter, in 1988, Mohamed Azirar published as a feuille- ton (supplement in French newspapers) Kaddour “el fantasioso” [Kaddour “The Dreamer”] in “L’Opinion Semanal.” In 1990, Abdelkader Uariachi’s El despertar de los leones [The Awakening of Lions] became the first Moroccan novel written entirely in Spanish and published in book format. Later, in 1993, Mohamed Sibari published El Caballo [The Horse], the first Moroccan novel about migration written in Castilian, whose main character is a desperate young man who wants to migrate to Spain.

Andalusia and the Canary Islands.3 In reaction to the increasingly aggressive language of Spanish media reports on the modern migration phenomenon, at times comparing it to the Berber invasions of the eighth century, a new “re- sistance fiction” arose in Morocco between 1995 and 2000. This new phase of Moroccan literature, written in Castilian, tracks the North African presence in Spain over the centuries as a way to validate the new migrant experience. During this period, fifteen novels and short story collections sharing this con- cern over migration were published in Morocco and Spain.4 Such new and critically acclaimed Moroccan immigrant literature is exem- plified by the work of Abderrahman El Fathi. While he is considered “the poet of migration,” his works differ from other migration writers living in Morocco. While migration literature by Moroccan authors has most often been published in prose (particularly in short story format), linking it to Moroccan oral tradition, El Fathi’s genre is poetry, and he is a best-selling author not only

3 According to UNESCO, in 2005 there were just over two million North Africans in Europe, but estimates from the countries of emigration are nearly double that. More than half of these émigrés are Moroccan, and Spain is currently the country that receives the second highest number of Moroccan immigrants after France (Civantos 27). 4 Amazigh is the correct term for “Berber,” the indigenous people of northern Morocco and Algeria, whose main language is Tamazight, not Arabic. As I will elaborate in chapter 2, in 2004, Catalan presses began publishing female Moroccan or Amazigh authors who write in Catalan and have lived in Catalonia since their childhood. Just for reference, in 2008, the “Ramon Llull Prize for Catalan Authors” was awarded to Moroccan / Amazigh immigrant Najat El Hachmi for her novel L’últim patriarca [The Last Patriarch]. This was the first time that the Llull Prize was awarded to a nonautochthonous Catalan author. In previous works, I analyzed the paradigms of the Moroccan literature about the diaspora of Maghrebis in Spain. For more information, see Ricci, “El regreso de los moros a España: fronteras, inmi- gración, racismo y transculturación en la literatura marroquí contemporánea” [“The Return of Moors to Spain: Borders, Immigration, Racism and Transculturation in Contemporary Moroccan Literature”], “La literatura marroquí de expresión castellana en el marco de la transmodernidad y la hibridación poscolonialista” [“Moroccan Literature in Castilian, a Transmodern and Postcolonial Approach”], “Najat El Hachmi y Laila Karrouch: escritoras marroquíes-imazighen catalanas en el marco del fenómeno migratorio moderno” [“Najat El Hachmi and Laila Karrouch: Catalan Writers of Moroccan and Amazigh Descent About the Modern Migratory Phenomenon”], “L’últim patriarca de Najat El Hachmi y el forjamiento de la identidad amazigh-catalana” [“Najat El Hachmi’s The Last Patriarch and the Forging of an Amazigh-Catalan Identity”], “African Voices in Contemporary Spain,” “El arte de hacer fic- ción sobre el proceso de evolución del orientalismo literario occidental en la cuentística de Ahmed Ararou” [“The Art of Making Fiction about the Evolution Process of Western Literary Orientalism in Ahmed Ararou’s Short Stories”], Literatura periférica en castellano y catalán: el caso marroquí [Peripheral Literature in Castilian and Catalan: The Moroccan Case], and ¡Hay moros en la costa! Literatura marroquí fronteriza en castellano y catalán [Moors on the Coast! Borderland Moroccan Literature in Castilian and Catalan].