The Fundamentalist Reader
An interview with the real Yasmina Khadra: 'If you believe that my books are simply ordinary fiction, throw them in the garbage'
"I don't seek to comprehend a kamikaze's state of mind, I do understand it! It's you who needs to understand, and my novels help make it clear if you're willing to bother," snaps Algerian Yasmina
Khadra at an Israeli interviewer (me) who has the temerity to ask if the author is attempting to understand the mind of a suicide bomber, who blows herself up in a Tel Aviv restaurant, in the novel "The Attack."
Yasmina Khadra was somewhat of a cause célèbre in French literary circles at the turn of the century. Here was an Arab woman writing hard-hitting novels delving into the harsh realities of Islamic fundamentalism. Turns out that the she was a he; in fact, a former Algerian army
counterterror officer. Mohammed Moulessehoul, 52, a career military man, had written some detective novels back in the old country, without offending his superiors too much. But when he turned to
realistic, politically-charged topics, his army bosses demanded that he submit his material to censorship. Moulessehoul deemed it expedient
to write under an assumed name and chose his wife's. Thus authoress Yasmina Khadra was born into fleeting fame until the former terrorist-buster came out of the closet in 2001, after he had departed Algeria for the more liberal French literary climes. He still writes under his nom de plume, his wife's name. Six of his novels have been translated into English.
Moulessehoul's major oeuvre is a trilogy of novels, "The Swallows of
Kabul" (2003), "The Attack" (2006), and "The Sirens of Baghdad,"
published in English in May. The landscapes of the books are bleak and
grim; the protagonists are buffeted by even bleaker and grimmer fates.
The common theme is the malevolent influence of Islamic
fundamentalism.
"The Attack" takes place in Israel and the occupied territories. The
life of Amin Jaafari, an apolitical Israeli-Arab surgeon is blown
apart one evening when, after treating the victims of a
suicide-bombing in a Tel Aviv restaurant, he finds out that the bomber
was his wife Sihem. Driven to distraction by the inexplicable act by
the woman he loved and who gave no indication of her intention,
Jaafari becomes obsessed by the need to find out why. A U.S. company
has purchased the film rights to "Attack."
Moulessehoul doesn't speak English, so in order to interview him I
e-mailed some questions. His publisher translated them into French and
his responses back into English. He summed up the character of Jaafari
and the message of the novel: "My character seeks a truth to which he
will never have access. He's nonviolent, a surgeon with much humanity.
All of the explanations given by his adversaries don't hit him. It's a
little like what is happening in Israel. The conflict lasts because
nobody wants to listen to the other. And when I see to what extent the
proponents for peace are mistreated in the land of prophecy, I measure
how hypocritical, malevolent and extremely deceitful the discourse
is."
Moulessehoul pays lip service to condemning terror against civilians.
Despite saying that it is not justified under any circumstances, he
places Palestinian terror in a separate category. "In Palestine, it's
another form of violence, that of resistance, dignity and autonomy.
The Palestinians reclaim a homeland and the dreams that go with it.
They refuse to submit to the humiliation, to live under embargo, to be
thrown to the lions for geostrategic means that aim to change the face
of the Middle East at their expense. I'd like to point out that in
"L'attentat" ("The Attack") there are two types, that of Sihem
[Jaafari's wife] and that of the Israeli army. Now it's my turn to ask
you the question: 'Which one is more monstrous?'… For me, the two are
equally so."
On the other hand, in the novel itself Moulessehoul seems somewhat
sympathetic to Israelis and bitter about the terror against them.
Jaafari pursues his ill-fated compulsion to find out what motivated
his wife and confronts a terrorist chief with uncompromising
questions: "What tales did you tell her? How did you make a monster, a
terrorist, a suicidal fundamentalist out of a woman who couldn't bear
to hear a puppy whine?" Two of the few characters who display any
compassion or tenderness in the trilogy are Israeli friends of
Jaafari, a police officer and a female colleague at the hospital, who
make determined efforts to bring him out of his trauma.
The author was somewhat defensive when I asked him whether he'd
visited Tel Aviv, Bethlehem and Jenin, major sites he describes in
"The Attack." "I'm not fortunate enough to be a writer from the West
and to have the fame that would allow me to work in such an efficient
manner," he asserts. "I can't meet Bush or Sharon Stone and whenever I
try to solicit technical assistance, my efforts are in vain. That
being the case, instead of going to the countries where my novels are
set, I summon them. I am an attentive observer. I try to describe a
country through the mentality of its people. I have some Jewish
friends, some of whom are Israeli, and I sometimes discuss
controversial subjects with them. As for the rest, I research through
books and audiovisual records that cross my path," he added.
A previous novel "In the Name of God," set in his native Algeria, deals with
the rampages of al-Qaeda-inspired fundamentalists in the bleak
Algerian desertscape.
Despite the lack of a foreign occupier since the French left in 1962,
Moulessehoul is a firm believer that al-Qaeda is to blame for the
homegrown, ongoing Islamic terror and military counterterror in his
country, which claimed some 160,000 lives between 1992-2002. This
April, multiple suicide car-bombings, previously unknown in Algeria,
targeting the prime minister's offices and police headquarters in
Algiers, killed almost three dozen people.
Moulessehoul is insistent that terrorism in Algeria is totally
different from the situation in Israel and the territories. "There is
a big difference between what takes place in Algeria and in your
country. In my country, we are witnesses to a Utopian terrorism, one
that is senseless and without end. A gratuitous terrorism that is
destined to fail and continues out of spite. It results from an
international fundamentalism, a movement that is much more spectacular
and media-friendly than it is truly ambitious.
"Besides being an exercise in death and burnt earth, there is no
comparison to be made. Algeria battles against al-Qaeda and thus
fights to save the world. Palestine fights for its integrity, just its
integrity and the hope to live with dignity and freedom."
Moulessehoul dodges the question when asked if he expects the
phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism to intensify in the coming years:
"There again you are mistaken. I do not speak about fundamentalism, I
speak about human frailty. I speak of the humiliation, injustices, and
the folly of mankind. Of course, fundamentalism feeds off all that.
There is a serious misunderstanding that threatens international
relations. Even more serious, there is a lack of intelligence or
presence of mind to remedy it. Politically speaking, it leads to
stagnation and incompetence. Intellectually speaking, it's foolishness
that predominates. In this way, as long as we don't understand from
where it stems, the fundamentalist phenomenon will toughen and spread
throughout the planet. The Occident is too arrogant to question
itself, and the fundamentalism will take advantage of all the
hesitations and indecisiveness to enlarge its field of operations."
The first novel in the trilogy, "The Swallows of Kabul," deals with
the tribulations of Afghanis under the Taliban. "Kabul" traces how a
couple's life is wrecked by the harsh dictates of Taliban
fundamentalism. South Africa's Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee describes
it thus: "Yasmina Khadra's Kabul is hell on earth, a place of hunger,
tedium and stifling fear."
In his latest novel "The Sirens of Baghdad," the nameless Iraqi
protagonist is driven like an automaton to seek vengeance for a slight
by U.S. occupiers to his family honor. He finally comes to an
epiphanic realization that a suicide bombing attack (by him) is not
the answer: "They deserved to live for a thousand years. I have no
right to challenge their kisses, scuttle their dreams, dash their
hopes. What have I done with my own destiny? I'm only twenty-one years
old, all I have is the certainty that I've wrecked my life twenty-one
times over."
He is part of Moulessehoul's cast of flat, two-dimensional characters,
like the suicide bombers in "The Attack" (Sihem is not the only one)
and bloodthirsty Islamic guerrillas in "In the Name of God." Despite
the portraits of shallow, barely credible human beings, he paints a
compelling portrait of figures driven by motives larger than
themselves. Moulessehoul poses hard questions about people living in
harsh moral climates.
Asked if his novels, which depict the evils of extremism, could help
stem the fanatical tide, Moulessehoul replies: "That's for you to
decide. If you think that my books are capable of bringing the
necessary light to the beginnings of a solution, please advocate and
support them. But if you believe that they're simply ordinary fiction,
throw them in the garbage. My readers, in all of the countries where I
am translated, have accessed a certain reality of the world. What they
write me encourages me to believe that my work is useful. But from
that to thinking that I am capable of changing something without your
commitment is too much to ask. The planet's problem concerns all of
us. Those with good consciences need to find one another and assemble
around a common ideal. A writer needs the press, the press needs its
readership, and the readership needs the intellectual integrity of
both."
