A teeming and chaotic city that stretches along the Atlantic coast of Morocco, the economic heart of the country, Casablanca, “the noisy ocean”, does not have the exotic and picturesque charm of cities like Chefchaouen, Essaouira or Marrakech.
But this city of four million inhabitants is the perfect place to portray a changing Morocco, through the fate of a couple of modern professionals belonging to the upper middle class. A city which is also a formidable laboratory of the status of women in Morocco.
This is what Tahar Ben Jelloun does in his most recent novel, THE casablanca lovers, which makes us follow a couple of young Moroccans strangely matched, from their meeting during their studies in France until their divorce. While Nabile is a humanist doctor, reader of Cioran and Montaigne, amateur of auteur cinema, Lamia is a pharmacist and a businesswoman, venal and ambitious – and much richer than him.
No, not a romance novel, but a story of love and betrayal, which for the two protagonists takes place under the gaze of their young children, servants and their respective families. A decade of sawtooth years, and the end of which is not written.
“It’s a standing city, like Céline talks about New York, insofar as everyone gets up very early in the morning, says the Franco-Moroccan novelist, joined at his home in Paris, just back from Casablanca where he went to present his novel. It’s a dynamic, energetic city, where there are a lot of traffic jams, pollution, like in all big cities. »
It is in this context that he wanted to situate this story, which according to him could not have taken place in the same way, he explains, in small provincial towns like Fez, Meknes or Tetouan. “In small towns, everything is known very quickly, whereas in Casablanca, you can get lost and you can hide very easily. »
Casablanca lovers is a story of love and sex in which the writer, member of the Académie Goncourt since 2008, has chosen to alternate points of view. A ruthless analysis of a couple from the wealthiest classes in Morocco, the novel is a nod to Ingmar Bergman’s television miniseries Scenes of life marital (1973), from which a film of the same name was made a year later, in which a couple tears apart for about ten years.
The family, “a huge octopus”
The writer, born in Tangier in 1947, living in France since the 1970s, Prix Goncourt in 1987 with The sacred night — the first novel on the condition of women in Morocco —, has for a long time examined a Moroccan society crushed under the weight of traditions. He has explored the condition of women, social lies, sexual violence (The Sand Child, honey and bitterness) and the racism of Moroccan society (The marriage of pleasure) than the hell of the couple (marital happiness).
Thanks to the power of money, after cheating on her husband (who was beginning to annoy her) for months and being abandoned by her lover, Lamia will be able to feel free enough to leave her husband. “She could have gone on like this without betraying him, but betrayal was kind of on its way in a big city like Casa. It happens often. »
But it will take time for him to find peace: “My nights were populated by judges and courts where I saw my parents, my in-laws, my husband, my children, Khadija the cook and even Lahcen our driver lecturing me. and remind myself that betrayal deserves hell. »
You also quickly realize that there are a lot more than two people in this marriage. Nabile has also, in a way, married his wife’s family, whom he himself compares to “a huge octopus”. “That’s a registered trademark made in Morocco. When you get married in Morocco, you get married with the family too,” says the writer. Is it a blessing or a curse? “It’s still annoying, he sighs. They intervene on everything. But sometimes it’s good, like when they can babysit. »
Nabile is a reader character to whom the author acknowledges having lent his own literary tastes. “I would so much like to spread reading in Morocco. We have a real problem: young people don’t read. And if they want to read, let them start with Montaigne or Cervantes, that wouldn’t be bad. That’s what I tell them when I go to see them in schools. But Nabile is an idealist. It is expected that it is the man who dominates financially, but here, it is rather his wife. This is something very new in Morocco. »
Hypocrisy of Moroccan society
The novelist shows well in THE casablanca loversonce again, the deep hypocrisy of Moroccan society on many issues: the prohibition of relations outside marriage, homosexuality, alcohol consumption.
In the eyes of Tahar Ben Jelloun, two articles of the Penal Code of the Moroccan kingdom remain scandalous. One prohibits “licentious or unnatural acts with an individual of the same sex”, while the other punishes sexual relations outside marriage. “It’s completely anachronistic, insofar as all Moroccans make love on the right and on the left when they can and where homosexuality exists as in all the countries of the world”, says in an indignant tone this former professor of philosophy in Morocco, who holds a doctorate in social psychiatry.
From there to say that literature can be a vector of social change, on the other hand, there is a step that the novelist will not dare to cross. “What will change society is the will of women. It is they who hold civil society. Then the legislative: the repeal of stupid and anachronistic laws. »
“I am an observer. I watch and I transcribe. If a novelist goes with the hair of society as it is, for me, he is a bad novelist. A novelist is someone who searches, as Balzac said. He searches society, shows what we don’t want to see. »
We want to return to him the question that Lamia asks Nabile when they meet and he tries to share his passion for reading with her: “What is the point of reading a novel? No need for Tahar Ben Jelloun to think long. “It’s for having a good time. To start. It helps to know that other things exist outside of oneself and one’s house. Then, possibly, it could make you think a little bit. »