Abla Farhoud (1945-2021) | The final journey of a humanist in exile

Quebec novelist and playwright Abla Farhoud died on 1^er December in Montreal from incurable cancer. She left peacefully, surrounded by members of her family. Her relatives and her admirers describe a woman of great humanity with a universal outlook.

Abla Farhoud’s final journey came the day after the death of another important figure in Quebec literature, Marie-Claire Blais. Born in Lebanon in 1945, Abla Farhoud arrived in Quebec with her family at the age of 6.

She was the mother of Mathieu Farhoud-Dionne, alias Chafiik, a member of the rap group Loco Locass, and singer-songwriter Alecka, for whom she wrote songs. Her children recently organized a farewell celebration for her. Relatives and friends were invited to visit him briefly or send him a testimonial.

“Abla asked us to organize a day where love, friendship and music will be there. We invite you to drop by her house throughout the day for a brief or less brief visit and enjoy the festive, unique, intense energy of Abla. We know how important this day will be for her and we wish it to be a success, a celebration of her greatness, ”they wrote in this touching note.

“Abla was luminous until the end,” wrote her friend Claudine Bourbonnais, journalist and presenter at RDI, also holder of a master’s degree in contemporary studies on the Middle East.

Another close friend, Fathi Belhadj, who has lived for more than 25 years in Montreal and now lives in Tunisia, had known the novelist and playwright in the 1990s during her Festival Images du monde arabe. Abla Farhoud, he said, made him read his books before sending them out for publishing.

“The meeting with Abla was exceptional,” he says. His cooking witnessed our discussions on the music of words. I would say she enjoyed a certain kind of benevolent sincerity. His French had a different music, I am a reader of Quebec authors. In his language, there was sun. ”

“We talked a lot about the condition of the emigrants without falling into the catchphrase,” he added. I remember that once, when talking about her mother, she told me that oriental women expressed their love by cooking meals for their children. She spoke to me a lot about her mother and especially her silences. In her novels, I think she wanted to carry the voice of this silent mother. ”

Exile

Abla Farhoud returned to live in Lebanon from 1965 to 1969. She then moved to Paris to study theater, which she will finish at the University of Quebec in Montreal in a master’s program started in 1973. She was actress before writing her first dramatic text, When i was grown up, premiered during the Women’s Experimental Theater Festival in 1983.

His pieces, nearly ten if we count the unpublished manuscripts, were produced all over the Francophonie, notably in France, Belgium and Côte d’Ivoire. They have also been translated and performed in the United States and Lebanon.

His first novel, Happiness has a slippery tail, was published in 1998 in France and won him the France-Quebec Literary Prize the following year. It was followed by six more novels and one story, five of which were published by VLB. In France, his play Girls of 5-10-15 ¢ won the Arletty Prize, and her novel Omar’s Fool, the Prize for the French-speaking novel.

Several other of his publications were also finalists for literary and theater prizes in Quebec and France.

The work

At VLB, what should be his last novel, Havre-Saint-Pierre, forever, will be published in 2022. A book focusing on the link between two Lebanese brothers who have lost sight of each other, indicates its editor Alain-Nicolas Renaud, who saw the novelist last week during a final working meeting.

According to Lucie Lequin, a retired Concordia University professor emeritus, qualifying Abla Farhoud as a migrant writer, although true, remains reductive since human experience in all its facets interested her.

“In her work, she was concerned with the life and the point of view of women especially, those who seek to take their place. She’s a feminist writer, I would say, natural. Mourning is a central theme for her, that of the country, romantic relationships, the death of a sister, the mental illness of a brother. His books deal with many forms of pain, but there is always a strong desire to live in them. ”

In his most recent novel, The last of the snoreaux, published in 2019, Abla Farhoud made her main character say, as in a poem: “I always wanted to write / Write to the end of the road / Leave the books and go / It’s not heavy, a book / Leave my books to the world that I would have left ”.