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Sohn ihres Vaters
Auch sein achtes Kind ist eine Tochter. Verzweifelt darüber, erklärt der marokkanische Vater sie kurzerhand zum Sohn. Als Zahra ihr Schicksal entdeckt, entscheidet sie, sich dem Wunsch des Vaters zu beugen. Und so wächst sie vor der Familie, den Verwandten, der Nachbarschaft als Knabe Ahmed auf. Tahar Ben Jelloun erzählt diese ungeheuerliche Geschichte durch ein Kaleidoskop orientalischer Märchen und entfaltet seine gesamte Erzählkraft.
182 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
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About the author
Tahar Ben Jelloun
244 books2,237 followersTahar Ben Jelloun (Arabic: الطاهر بن جلون) is a Moroccan writer. The entirety of his work is written in French, although his first language is Arabic. He became known for his 1985 novel L’Enfant de Sable (The Sand Child). Today he lives in Paris and continues to write. He has been short-listed for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 390 reviews
January 19, 2018
This bewildering, hallucinatory book begins with the fairytale-like story of an eighth daughter who is raised by her father as the male heir he never had. No one else in the family knows the secret; named Ahmed, (s)he is dressed as a boy, treated as a boy, and speedily inducted into the ways of the patriarchy. ‘His sisters served him his lunches and dinners,’ we are told. ‘He did not allow himself any tenderness towards his mother, whom he saw rarely.’
We are being promised, it seems, a parable about the gender imbalances of Moroccan society. Ahmed gradually retires from communal life and spends hours alone in his room, staring in solitude and confusion at his naked female body. He has absorbed what seems to be a fundamental lesson:
Ben Jelloun never takes the easy route when playing with these ideas. Just as it looks like he is building to a grand critique of religious authoritarianism, someone bursts out, ‘If our women are inferior to men, it's not because God says so or because the Prophet decreed as much – but because they accept their fate.’ Later, when our protagonist goes out into the streets finally presenting as a woman, she immediately comes up against male harassment and the male gaze. But even this is presented in unusually complex terms:
Orientalism by way of street harassment, mediated by a transgender narrator and ultimately filtered through the gaze of a male author? You can see that there's a lot to think about in this small book. The pronouns shift and switch repeatedly, sometimes within a sentence (‘he no longer slept with the acrobats, but in the women's caravan; she ate and went out with them’). This is even more apparent in French, where even in the first-person sections the gender of the speaker is always and unavoidably marked.
I read L'Enfant de sable in two one-day chunks, which was a strange experience, because the second half of the book is in many ways quite unlike the first. I see that a lot of reviewers wanted a whole novel about gender fluidity, a Maghrebi Orlando, but in fact that's not what this ends up being. Ben Jelloun's prose, always very poetic, starts to come apart, to fly off into something much more uncertain and metaphorical.
To be fair, he warns you at the start. ‘This story is also a desert,’ he (or one of his narrators) says; ‘you're going to have to walk over the burning sands in bare feet, walk and shut up, and believe in the oasis forming on the horizon….’ I rather warmed to this reader-unfriendly approach. As one of his walk-ons says late in the story:
The play with gender identity turns into a much wider interrogation of the social violence that underpins patriarchy; and this, in turn, becomes an interrogation of the way narratives themselves are even told. At first, our protagonist's story is being told by one of the public storytellers in Marrakech (for more on these guys, see this obscure review that I wrote yonks ago); in the second half of the book, this voice is replaced, and then replaced again, as various characters relate their own opinions on what exactly happened to the central character. Are they even a central character anymore? It's hard to know who is who, and what is supposed to be taken seriously, which version of the truth we are expected to approve.
Just go with it. Ben Jelloun will take you off somewhere; you might not want to go, but he'll take you anyway, and then drop you, miles from where you started, looking around in an unfamiliar landscape, full of new and strange ideas.
We are being promised, it seems, a parable about the gender imbalances of Moroccan society. Ahmed gradually retires from communal life and spends hours alone in his room, staring in solitude and confusion at his naked female body. He has absorbed what seems to be a fundamental lesson:
Etre femme est une infirmité naturelle dont tout le monde s'accommode. Etre homme est une illusion et une violence que tout justifie et privilégie. Etre tout simplement est un défi.
To be a woman is a natural disability which everyone makes the best of. To be a man is an illusion and a violence which everything justifies and prioritises. Simply to be is a challenge.
Ben Jelloun never takes the easy route when playing with these ideas. Just as it looks like he is building to a grand critique of religious authoritarianism, someone bursts out, ‘If our women are inferior to men, it's not because God says so or because the Prophet decreed as much – but because they accept their fate.’ Later, when our protagonist goes out into the streets finally presenting as a woman, she immediately comes up against male harassment and the male gaze. But even this is presented in unusually complex terms:
Sortir, être bousculée, être dans la foule et sentir qu'une main d'homme caresse maladroitement mes fesses. Pour beaucoup de femmes, c'est très désagréable. Je le comprends. Pour moi, ce serait la première main anonyme qui se poserait sur mon dos ou mes hanches. Je ne me retournerais pas pour ne pas voir quel visage porte cette main. Si je le voyais, je serais probablement horrifiée. Mais les mauvaises manières, les gestes vulgaires peuvent avoir parfois un peu de poésie, juste ce qu'il faut pour ne pas se mettre en colère. Une petite touche qui ne démentirait pas l'érotisme de ce peuple. Ce sont surtout les voyageurs européens qui ont le mieux senti et le mieux évoqué cet érotisme, en peinture comme en littérature, même si derrière tout cela une pointe de supériorité blanche guidait leurs pas.
To go out, to be jostled, to be in a crowd and feel a man's hand awkwardly fondling my ass…for a lot of women it's extremely unwelcome. I can understand that. For me, it would be the first anonymous hand that touched my back, or my hips. I wouldn't turn round to see which face was attached to the hand. If I saw, I'd probably be horrified. But bad manners, vulgar gestures, can sometimes have a little poetry in them – just enough not to get angry. A light touch, that would not belie the eroticism of this people. It was mainly European travellers who best sensed, and best described, this eroticism, in painting as in literature – even though, behind it all, their steps were guided by a sense of white superiority.
Orientalism by way of street harassment, mediated by a transgender narrator and ultimately filtered through the gaze of a male author? You can see that there's a lot to think about in this small book. The pronouns shift and switch repeatedly, sometimes within a sentence (‘he no longer slept with the acrobats, but in the women's caravan; she ate and went out with them’). This is even more apparent in French, where even in the first-person sections the gender of the speaker is always and unavoidably marked.
I read L'Enfant de sable in two one-day chunks, which was a strange experience, because the second half of the book is in many ways quite unlike the first. I see that a lot of reviewers wanted a whole novel about gender fluidity, a Maghrebi Orlando, but in fact that's not what this ends up being. Ben Jelloun's prose, always very poetic, starts to come apart, to fly off into something much more uncertain and metaphorical.
To be fair, he warns you at the start. ‘This story is also a desert,’ he (or one of his narrators) says; ‘you're going to have to walk over the burning sands in bare feet, walk and shut up, and believe in the oasis forming on the horizon….’ I rather warmed to this reader-unfriendly approach. As one of his walk-ons says late in the story:
Et puis un livre, du moins tel que je le conçois, est un labyrinthe fait à dessein pour confondre les hommes, avec l'intention de les perdre et de les ramener aux dimensions étroites de leurs ambitions.
Anyway, a book, at least as I see it, is a labyrinth that's designed to confuse people – with the intention of losing them, bringing them out of the narrow confines of their ambitions.
The play with gender identity turns into a much wider interrogation of the social violence that underpins patriarchy; and this, in turn, becomes an interrogation of the way narratives themselves are even told. At first, our protagonist's story is being told by one of the public storytellers in Marrakech (for more on these guys, see this obscure review that I wrote yonks ago); in the second half of the book, this voice is replaced, and then replaced again, as various characters relate their own opinions on what exactly happened to the central character. Are they even a central character anymore? It's hard to know who is who, and what is supposed to be taken seriously, which version of the truth we are expected to approve.
Just go with it. Ben Jelloun will take you off somewhere; you might not want to go, but he'll take you anyway, and then drop you, miles from where you started, looking around in an unfamiliar landscape, full of new and strange ideas.
October 15, 2012
This book sucked. I've read other work by Ben Jelloun and really enjoyed "A Palace in the Old Village", but The Sand Child was miserable. The book starts out with a gripping premise, that a Moroccan man has seven daughters and really, really wants a boy. So when the eighth child is born a girl, the man decides to hell with it and declares her to be a boy, a fiction which he works hard to maintain until the end of his days. So far so good. Then the girl (whose name is Mohammed Ahmed) mopes around for fifty pages, complaining of loneliness, which gets wearisome. Then she decides to join the circus, and the story starts to get really interesting. Then the author chucks the whole story by saying it was just a story being told by a storyteller who has died. Some of the storyteller's listeners get together at a cafe and take turns trying to end the girl's story, since the storyteller isn't around to do it for them. The story never gets finished, and we are treated to fifty pages of patently lame storytelling. I was howling for Mohammed the girl to come back and finish her story, but it was not to be. A weak story about storytelling, this story started out with a gripping premise and just falls apart. If you want to read Ben Jelloun, try "A Palace in the Old Village," which is a much, much better book than this piece of dreck.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 3, 2015
What struck me most strongly about this work is the intense male supremacy it highlights. The laws of inheritance that Ahmed/Zahra's father's deception is designed to subvert are significant, and the voice-shifting, fragmented, erased and reiterated narration of Ahmed/Zahra's experience provides an interesting perspective to embody gender conflict, but I am most haunted by the seven nameless sisters, the meagre Macabeas who, being female, are excluded from public and narrative space.
Ahmed/Zahra's pain is murderous, driving her to suicidal thoughts and to flee her family. The sadness she describes reminded me of the 'gender sadness' Julia Serano mentions feeling before her transition. She longs to live as a woman, yet fears to give up the rights and freedoms of a man. She speaks about her tormenting conscience - but Ben Jelloun does not take this hint at feminist solidarity(?) further. She also speaks of being taught to consider herself superior to women, something difficult to unlearn.
The first storyteller says that Islam is the source of the social inferiority of women, and later another character describes the Koran as a book whose words have "the force of law yet lack a woman's perspective". But the story reveals how some men will go to great lengths to maintain the concentration of economic and social power in male hands, subverting Islam and the law. Ahmed/Zahra's own authoritarian behaviour in early adulthood is particularly revealing of the consequences of patriarchal socialisation. This is a skillful and nuanced part of the story.
Ben Jelloun makes careful efforts to socially place his various narrators, and perhaps I missed many of the significances of this because I lack experience of Moroccan society. However, the impression I got was that Ahmed/Zahra's story is not uncommon. While the focus on an individual (though divided) consciousness allows intense interior reflection and some character development that helps empathy, the fragmentation of the narrative suggests to me both public obsession (like the circus) and a multiplicity of people in Ahmed/Zahra's situation.
Ahmed/Zahra's body is constantly referred to as a secret that will betray her, but she also has a distinct male self with whom she corresponds. This self is fascinated by her and sometimes admonishes, but never objectifies her. For most of the book, the first storyteller speaks of Ahmed/Zahra as he/him, but switches when she begins to live, still ambiguously and partly in secret, as a woman, appropriately marking a social transition. This is the last moment of clarity for me, except a few subsequent mentions of political struggle, brief and vague but intriguing.
This style of writing, images flowing in succession submerged in interior reflections and unobtrusive transitions between tellers, is rarely a success for me. I find the bulk of the text unmemorable and the constant mention of dreams, death and so on wash over me as unaffecting commonplace despite its eloquence and poetry. I accummulate an overall discomfort at sexually explicit descriptions and images of illness, aging and burial, but I find it hard to make sense and meaning from these passages.
Ahmed/Zahra's pain is murderous, driving her to suicidal thoughts and to flee her family. The sadness she describes reminded me of the 'gender sadness' Julia Serano mentions feeling before her transition. She longs to live as a woman, yet fears to give up the rights and freedoms of a man. She speaks about her tormenting conscience - but Ben Jelloun does not take this hint at feminist solidarity(?) further. She also speaks of being taught to consider herself superior to women, something difficult to unlearn.
The first storyteller says that Islam is the source of the social inferiority of women, and later another character describes the Koran as a book whose words have "the force of law yet lack a woman's perspective". But the story reveals how some men will go to great lengths to maintain the concentration of economic and social power in male hands, subverting Islam and the law. Ahmed/Zahra's own authoritarian behaviour in early adulthood is particularly revealing of the consequences of patriarchal socialisation. This is a skillful and nuanced part of the story.
Ben Jelloun makes careful efforts to socially place his various narrators, and perhaps I missed many of the significances of this because I lack experience of Moroccan society. However, the impression I got was that Ahmed/Zahra's story is not uncommon. While the focus on an individual (though divided) consciousness allows intense interior reflection and some character development that helps empathy, the fragmentation of the narrative suggests to me both public obsession (like the circus) and a multiplicity of people in Ahmed/Zahra's situation.
Ahmed/Zahra's body is constantly referred to as a secret that will betray her, but she also has a distinct male self with whom she corresponds. This self is fascinated by her and sometimes admonishes, but never objectifies her. For most of the book, the first storyteller speaks of Ahmed/Zahra as he/him, but switches when she begins to live, still ambiguously and partly in secret, as a woman, appropriately marking a social transition. This is the last moment of clarity for me, except a few subsequent mentions of political struggle, brief and vague but intriguing.
This style of writing, images flowing in succession submerged in interior reflections and unobtrusive transitions between tellers, is rarely a success for me. I find the bulk of the text unmemorable and the constant mention of dreams, death and so on wash over me as unaffecting commonplace despite its eloquence and poetry. I accummulate an overall discomfort at sexually explicit descriptions and images of illness, aging and burial, but I find it hard to make sense and meaning from these passages.
March 2, 2010
I hated this book. It was on the reading list of a course I was taking so I had to finish it but it was the closest I have ever come to being tortured. Seriously, only buy this book if it is to give to a terrible, terrible enemy.
June 6, 2017
She joined the circus and it all went downhill from there.
March 27, 2020
"Essere, semplicemente essere, è una sfida"
Marocco - Anni '40-
Nasce donna ma è l'ottava femmina e da subito il padre, che si sente oltraggiato dal destino, decide che comunque sarà maschio: si chiamerà Ahmed.
Da subito si è catapultati in una struttura narrativa tutt'altro che lineare:
un cantastorie si presenta al suo pubblico come detentore delle memorie scritte di pugno da Ahmed.
Il racconto, tuttavia, sarà motivo di litigio tra altri che sostengono di sapere come veramente sono andate le cose e si passeranno il testimone conducendoci in storie all'interno della storia...
E’ un labirinto; è come perdersi tra i vicoli della Medina.
"Questa storia ha qualcosa della notte"
…ma…
… "Questa storia è anche un deserto".
La dimensione onirica e delirante imbriglia la lettura: non la si può, dunque, definire scorrevole *.
Non mancano, tuttavia, riferimenti più precisi alla Storia (e quindi una dimensione più reale) dove un popolo sottomesso comincia a sentire il colonialismo come un fastidioso prurito.
Così si dipana la storia di questa donna dalla voce greve ed il viso barbuto; di questo uomo dai seni schiacciati fin dall'infanzia.
Difficile convivere con un essere ed un apparire che non combaciano.
” Essere donna è una menomazione naturale della quale tutti si fanno una ragione. Essere uomo è un'illusione e una violenza che giustifica e privilegia qualsiasi cosa. Essere, semplicemente essere, è una sfida.”
* Edit- Leggendo altro libri di Tahar Ben Jelloun ho poi scoperto che non si trattava di una scelta narrativa particolare ma il vero e proprio stile dell’autore: un po’ lirico, un po’ ripetitivo ad effetto ciclico. Una peculiarità che divide molto i lettori.
Marocco - Anni '40-
Nasce donna ma è l'ottava femmina e da subito il padre, che si sente oltraggiato dal destino, decide che comunque sarà maschio: si chiamerà Ahmed.
Da subito si è catapultati in una struttura narrativa tutt'altro che lineare:
un cantastorie si presenta al suo pubblico come detentore delle memorie scritte di pugno da Ahmed.
Il racconto, tuttavia, sarà motivo di litigio tra altri che sostengono di sapere come veramente sono andate le cose e si passeranno il testimone conducendoci in storie all'interno della storia...
E’ un labirinto; è come perdersi tra i vicoli della Medina.
"Questa storia ha qualcosa della notte"
…ma…
… "Questa storia è anche un deserto".
La dimensione onirica e delirante imbriglia la lettura: non la si può, dunque, definire scorrevole *.
Non mancano, tuttavia, riferimenti più precisi alla Storia (e quindi una dimensione più reale) dove un popolo sottomesso comincia a sentire il colonialismo come un fastidioso prurito.
Così si dipana la storia di questa donna dalla voce greve ed il viso barbuto; di questo uomo dai seni schiacciati fin dall'infanzia.
Difficile convivere con un essere ed un apparire che non combaciano.
” Essere donna è una menomazione naturale della quale tutti si fanno una ragione. Essere uomo è un'illusione e una violenza che giustifica e privilegia qualsiasi cosa. Essere, semplicemente essere, è una sfida.”
* Edit- Leggendo altro libri di Tahar Ben Jelloun ho poi scoperto che non si trattava di una scelta narrativa particolare ma il vero e proprio stile dell’autore: un po’ lirico, un po’ ripetitivo ad effetto ciclico. Una peculiarità che divide molto i lettori.
June 14, 2025
The Sand Child is about the eighth daughter born to a Moroccan father in the midth of the 20th century. He is so desperate that he decides to let her grow up as a boy. A daughter isn't worth much. The Koran decries that a son gets three times the inheritance of a daughter. And the father's younger brothers already look with glee at his inability to sire a son, eyeing his possessions to get a grip on them.
The inferior position of women in Morocco is the starting point of this story. Surprisingly to me, this predicament is mentioned occasionally again, but the focus is on Ahmed's (or Zahra as she is later called) inner conflicts. At least in the first half of the book, before she decides to leave the house where she grew up, living the life of a recluse with her mother, opting now to lead a life as a woman. The story shifts drastically. We briefly follow Zahra as she ends up as an attraction in the circus before Ben Jelloun utilizes lots of tricks to cover the tracks.
This brings me to the structure. The Sand Child uses a storyteller to relate Ahmed's story, a common instrument in Arabian literature. He supposedly got hold of Ahmed/Zahra's diary after her death. Ben Jelloun uses him on a meta level to create uncertainty of what happened to Zahra. All storytellers get displaced from the square where they usually narrated their tales. The storyteller in question dies. But his most avid listeners meet and three of them tell their own version of Zahra's fate. The third one even might be Zahra herself. But could she be? Is the claim wrong that the storyteller got her diary after her death?
I am not accustomed to the style of writing with its flowery prose. A reference to the Arabian mindset even though the book was written in French. In the first half it's mostly internal trains of thought which are enigmatic, self-destructive, incoherent. And hard to follow. The second half has strong traces of magical realism. What happens, cannot be true. New narrators are introduced each chapter, telling conflicting fantastic tales. I really like the magical realism of South American writers like Garcia Marquez or Mutis. I also enjoy Rushdie's Anglo-Indian variant. But here, it feels mechanistic. As if Ben Jelloun wants to show us what he can do.
The important issues of the book, discrimination of women and identity, are relegated to a backseat. The front seat is taken by a narcisstic enjoyment of the prose and literary sleights of hand. For me, it was a slow read and I didn't enjoy it. The poetic style doesn't resonate with me. Your mileage may vary. Here's an excerpt when the storyteller adresses his listeners:
The inferior position of women in Morocco is the starting point of this story. Surprisingly to me, this predicament is mentioned occasionally again, but the focus is on Ahmed's (or Zahra as she is later called) inner conflicts. At least in the first half of the book, before she decides to leave the house where she grew up, living the life of a recluse with her mother, opting now to lead a life as a woman. The story shifts drastically. We briefly follow Zahra as she ends up as an attraction in the circus before Ben Jelloun utilizes lots of tricks to cover the tracks.
This brings me to the structure. The Sand Child uses a storyteller to relate Ahmed's story, a common instrument in Arabian literature. He supposedly got hold of Ahmed/Zahra's diary after her death. Ben Jelloun uses him on a meta level to create uncertainty of what happened to Zahra. All storytellers get displaced from the square where they usually narrated their tales. The storyteller in question dies. But his most avid listeners meet and three of them tell their own version of Zahra's fate. The third one even might be Zahra herself. But could she be? Is the claim wrong that the storyteller got her diary after her death?
I am not accustomed to the style of writing with its flowery prose. A reference to the Arabian mindset even though the book was written in French. In the first half it's mostly internal trains of thought which are enigmatic, self-destructive, incoherent. And hard to follow. The second half has strong traces of magical realism. What happens, cannot be true. New narrators are introduced each chapter, telling conflicting fantastic tales. I really like the magical realism of South American writers like Garcia Marquez or Mutis. I also enjoy Rushdie's Anglo-Indian variant. But here, it feels mechanistic. As if Ben Jelloun wants to show us what he can do.
The important issues of the book, discrimination of women and identity, are relegated to a backseat. The front seat is taken by a narcisstic enjoyment of the prose and literary sleights of hand. For me, it was a slow read and I didn't enjoy it. The poetic style doesn't resonate with me. Your mileage may vary. Here's an excerpt when the storyteller adresses his listeners:
Etwas oder jemand hält uns zurück, jedenfalls verkettet uns eine schwere, gleichmütige Hand alle miteinander und verschafft uns das Licht der Geduld. Der Morgenwind bringt den Gebrechlichen Gesundheit und öffnet den Gläubigen die Türen; in diesem Augenblick schlägt er die Buchseiten um und weckt die Silben eine nach der anderen: Sätze oder Suren erheben sich und lichten die Nebel des Wartens. Ich liebe diesen Wind, der uns umfängt und den Schlaf aus den Augen weht. Er stört die Ordnung des Textes und schlägt Insekten in die Flucht, die an die fetten Seiten geklebt sind.
August 3, 2017
This is a deeply strange book well beyond its unusual initial premise, that of an Islamic Moroccan girl raised as a boy to thwart sexist inheritance law. The early, fairly direct, study of social conventions and restrictions shifts as the protagonist takes on self-awareness and finds voice in the narrative. Soon, the story is overrun by sex, sexism, and sexuality, by desire and divided identity. As identity fragments, so does the narrative, as it changes hands between many tellers, some of whom die, disappear, contradict, or fabricate, until our protagonist is all but lost. At which point a certain blind librarian appears in pursuit of these vanishing traces. This last underscores the fascination and frustration of the novel, as any true human element and narrative cohesion is lost to in a somewhat arch and removed postmodern house of stairs. Contradictorily, this is just when Jelloun himself, perhaps appearing from behind his devices, seems to want most to reach us with pathos and political urgency. It almost works. Though flawed, it's a fascinating book, and a wholly singular study of Islamic North Africa.
October 11, 2017
Recensione remember.
Agosto 1994. Assisto alla rappresentazione dell’omonimo spettacolo di danza della Compagnia del “Balletto di Sicilia Zappalà danza” nell’Anfiteatro di Zafferana Etnea: notte perfetta, estiva, calda, cielo stellato, blu , ombra buona dell’Etna, profumo dolce di gelsomino, musica, quando la Sicilia era Sicilia bella.
Il dubbio sino alla fine ho pensato che Ahmed fosse veramente un uomo, poi il dubbio si scioglie.
Tornata a casa subito a comprare il libro: lirico, poetico tutto si chiarisce, più limpido dello spettacolo di danza.
Danza e parole a confronto.
September 29, 2017
O que eu deveria fazer era ir ler, ou dormir, e não perder mais tempo com esta "criança mal parida". Mas como não sei o que hei-de ler, nem tenho sono, vou destilar veneno.
No princípio é tudo muito bonito. Há um contador de histórias que se propõe contar a vida de um homem. Convida os ouvintes a entrar pelas sete portas de uma muralha, em que a primeira (a da entrada) é a porta da quinta-feira, a segunda da sexta-feira e assim sucessivamente. Como cada porta tinha um significado eu, para não perder pitada, escrevi tudo num papel. Chegou ao domingo, mandou-nos infiltrar pelas brechas das muralhas e esmerdou-se tudo. Lá fiquei eu a olhar feita parva para o meu papelinho: então, e agora, o que faço a isto?
Continuei a ler porque o enredo era interessante: um casal que tem sete filhas e nenhum filho (numa sociedade onde as mulheres não valem puto, é um drama). À oitava gravidez da mulher o marido decide que vai ser um rapaz. Não foi e o coitado do pai teve de sacrificar a ponta do indicador na circuncisão.
O "menino" cresce, faz-se um "homem" e começam os problemas. Isola-se num quarto, dorme e sonha (aqui já bocejo) até que não aguenta mais (nem eu) e sai para a vida nocturna marroquina (e eu para a leitura acelerada). Entra num circo e, como o contador da história morreu, fica-se sem saber o que aconteceu à mocinha.
Aparecem outros contadores que inventam uma catrefada de disparates. O último, pelas indicações (cego, bengala, Buenos Aires, biblioteca, labirinto, Sul, areia, Zahir, etc) parece ser o Jorge Luis Borges a fazer uma caldeirada dos seus contos. Isto já li atravessado...
Porque é que eu leio estas coisas?
1) vi-o num mapa-mundo literário, no local geográfico de Marrocos: https://verne.elpais.com/verne/2017/0... ;
2) só custou três euros (também conta).
Continuo sem sono e sem saber o que ler a seguir. Mas vou andando que amanhã é... sexta-feira - o dia da "porta que só deixará passar a felicidade. A única que se desloca e que avança ao passo do destino. Só pára para aqueles que não gostam do seu destino."
No princípio é tudo muito bonito. Há um contador de histórias que se propõe contar a vida de um homem. Convida os ouvintes a entrar pelas sete portas de uma muralha, em que a primeira (a da entrada) é a porta da quinta-feira, a segunda da sexta-feira e assim sucessivamente. Como cada porta tinha um significado eu, para não perder pitada, escrevi tudo num papel. Chegou ao domingo, mandou-nos infiltrar pelas brechas das muralhas e esmerdou-se tudo. Lá fiquei eu a olhar feita parva para o meu papelinho: então, e agora, o que faço a isto?
Continuei a ler porque o enredo era interessante: um casal que tem sete filhas e nenhum filho (numa sociedade onde as mulheres não valem puto, é um drama). À oitava gravidez da mulher o marido decide que vai ser um rapaz. Não foi e o coitado do pai teve de sacrificar a ponta do indicador na circuncisão.
O "menino" cresce, faz-se um "homem" e começam os problemas. Isola-se num quarto, dorme e sonha (aqui já bocejo) até que não aguenta mais (nem eu) e sai para a vida nocturna marroquina (e eu para a leitura acelerada). Entra num circo e, como o contador da história morreu, fica-se sem saber o que aconteceu à mocinha.
Aparecem outros contadores que inventam uma catrefada de disparates. O último, pelas indicações (cego, bengala, Buenos Aires, biblioteca, labirinto, Sul, areia, Zahir, etc) parece ser o Jorge Luis Borges a fazer uma caldeirada dos seus contos. Isto já li atravessado...
Porque é que eu leio estas coisas?
1) vi-o num mapa-mundo literário, no local geográfico de Marrocos: https://verne.elpais.com/verne/2017/0... ;
2) só custou três euros (também conta).
Continuo sem sono e sem saber o que ler a seguir. Mas vou andando que amanhã é... sexta-feira - o dia da "porta que só deixará passar a felicidade. A única que se desloca e que avança ao passo do destino. Só pára para aqueles que não gostam do seu destino."
February 12, 2024
Pentru mine, "Copilul de nisip" a fost o dezamăgire totală. Mă așteptam la o carte care să mă țină cu sufletul la gură având în vedere descrierea și subiectul. Realitatea e că am tras de mine să o termin.
Ba sub formă de povestire, ba sub formă de jurnal, se încearcă a fi spusă povestea unei fete care a fost crescută ca și cum ar fi băiat. Începutul e bun apoi povestea parcă o ia la vale și nu se mai distinge clar destinul fetei-băiat.
Controversa ar fi fost alimentată de contextul cultural și religios dar autorul nu a reușit să creeze o astfel de atmosferă după cum mi-am imaginat eu...
Ba sub formă de povestire, ba sub formă de jurnal, se încearcă a fi spusă povestea unei fete care a fost crescută ca și cum ar fi băiat. Începutul e bun apoi povestea parcă o ia la vale și nu se mai distinge clar destinul fetei-băiat.
Controversa ar fi fost alimentată de contextul cultural și religios dar autorul nu a reușit să creeze o astfel de atmosferă după cum mi-am imaginat eu...
January 23, 2019
Recensione originale: https://sonnenbarke.wordpress.com/201...
Questo libro mi incuriosiva per vari motivi: perché di Ben Jelloun avevo letto finora soltanto il breve saggio Il razzismo spiegato a mia figlia, perché mi serviva per il mio giro del mondo coi libri, e infine, soprattutto, per la trama.
Di cosa parli il libro è presto detto: in una famiglia marocchina sono nate sette figlie e, all'arrivo dell'ottavo bambino, tutti sperano vivamente che stavolta sia un maschio. Questo perché per tradizione è solo il figlio maschio a poter ereditare, altrimenti la fortuna paterna va agli altri parenti e alle figlie femmine non restano che briciole. Inutile dire che anche l'ottavo figlio sarà una femmina. Ma i genitori, insieme alla levatrice (le uniche tre persone a parte del segreto), si mettono d'accordo già prima della nascita di crescere il piccolo come un uomo anche se sarà una femmina. E infatti, così faranno. La bambina si chiamerà Mohamed Ahmed e tutti la considereranno un maschio, ignari della verità.
Questo naturalmente pone dei problemi, per esempio al momento della circoncisione o quando la bimba inizia a sviluppare i seni o le vengono le mestruazioni. Ma la famiglia riuscirà a porre rimedio a tutte queste difficoltà, e per tutti Ahmed sarà sempre un maschio.
Finché si arriva inevitabilmente alla crisi, quando Ahmed mette in discussione la propria identità. Primo segno di questo sarà il diario lasciato da Ahmed e ritrovato soltanto alla sua morte, in cui per la prima volta racconta la propria storia.
A raccontare la storia vera di Ahmed è inizialmente un uomo che si pone nei confronti del suo pubblico essenzialmente come un cantastorie, e queste prime parti del racconto mi sono piaciute molto perché, pur seguendo il diario, hanno in qualche modo carattere orale, ad esempio per il fatto che il narratore si rivolge spesso al suo pubblico, che non è solo quello dei lettori, ma prima e soprattutto quello delle persone che lo stanno fisicamente ad ascoltare.
In seguito la narrazione si ingarbuglia e vengono fuori altri narratori, finché il tutto non si fa terribilmente onirico e assume l'aspetto di un sogno, di una fantasia, di una storia vera ma dai molti finali, o di una bugia, o di tanto altro ancora, a seconda dell'opinione che il lettore deciderà di farsene. Questo carattere onirico l'ho trovato davvero eccessivo, e se si pensa che, a quanto leggo, i romanzi precedenti di Ben Jelloun presentavano questa caratteristica in maniera ancora più pronunciata, non posso davvero dire che mi venga tanta voglia di approfondire la conoscenza di questo autore.
Ciò non toglie che il romanzo mi sia piaciuto: una trama interessante, uno svolgimento altrettanto interessante per quanto a mio parere confuso. La scrittura l'ho trovata un po' troppo altisonante e magniloquente, in particolare quando sentiamo la voce diretta di Ahmed, che pare un filosofo con poco contatto con la realtà, e forse era proprio questo l'intento dell'autore.
Infine, per quanto riguarda la mia personalissima esperienza di lettura, raggiunge la sufficienza ma lì si ferma, per i motivi che ho provato brevemente a descrivere. Non so se consigliarlo o meno, ad ogni modo è molto breve e potete sempre decidere di provare, dato che non dovrete dedicare molto tempo alla lettura.
Questo libro mi incuriosiva per vari motivi: perché di Ben Jelloun avevo letto finora soltanto il breve saggio Il razzismo spiegato a mia figlia, perché mi serviva per il mio giro del mondo coi libri, e infine, soprattutto, per la trama.
Di cosa parli il libro è presto detto: in una famiglia marocchina sono nate sette figlie e, all'arrivo dell'ottavo bambino, tutti sperano vivamente che stavolta sia un maschio. Questo perché per tradizione è solo il figlio maschio a poter ereditare, altrimenti la fortuna paterna va agli altri parenti e alle figlie femmine non restano che briciole. Inutile dire che anche l'ottavo figlio sarà una femmina. Ma i genitori, insieme alla levatrice (le uniche tre persone a parte del segreto), si mettono d'accordo già prima della nascita di crescere il piccolo come un uomo anche se sarà una femmina. E infatti, così faranno. La bambina si chiamerà Mohamed Ahmed e tutti la considereranno un maschio, ignari della verità.
Questo naturalmente pone dei problemi, per esempio al momento della circoncisione o quando la bimba inizia a sviluppare i seni o le vengono le mestruazioni. Ma la famiglia riuscirà a porre rimedio a tutte queste difficoltà, e per tutti Ahmed sarà sempre un maschio.
Finché si arriva inevitabilmente alla crisi, quando Ahmed mette in discussione la propria identità. Primo segno di questo sarà il diario lasciato da Ahmed e ritrovato soltanto alla sua morte, in cui per la prima volta racconta la propria storia.
A raccontare la storia vera di Ahmed è inizialmente un uomo che si pone nei confronti del suo pubblico essenzialmente come un cantastorie, e queste prime parti del racconto mi sono piaciute molto perché, pur seguendo il diario, hanno in qualche modo carattere orale, ad esempio per il fatto che il narratore si rivolge spesso al suo pubblico, che non è solo quello dei lettori, ma prima e soprattutto quello delle persone che lo stanno fisicamente ad ascoltare.
In seguito la narrazione si ingarbuglia e vengono fuori altri narratori, finché il tutto non si fa terribilmente onirico e assume l'aspetto di un sogno, di una fantasia, di una storia vera ma dai molti finali, o di una bugia, o di tanto altro ancora, a seconda dell'opinione che il lettore deciderà di farsene. Questo carattere onirico l'ho trovato davvero eccessivo, e se si pensa che, a quanto leggo, i romanzi precedenti di Ben Jelloun presentavano questa caratteristica in maniera ancora più pronunciata, non posso davvero dire che mi venga tanta voglia di approfondire la conoscenza di questo autore.
Ciò non toglie che il romanzo mi sia piaciuto: una trama interessante, uno svolgimento altrettanto interessante per quanto a mio parere confuso. La scrittura l'ho trovata un po' troppo altisonante e magniloquente, in particolare quando sentiamo la voce diretta di Ahmed, che pare un filosofo con poco contatto con la realtà, e forse era proprio questo l'intento dell'autore.
Infine, per quanto riguarda la mia personalissima esperienza di lettura, raggiunge la sufficienza ma lì si ferma, per i motivi che ho provato brevemente a descrivere. Non so se consigliarlo o meno, ad ogni modo è molto breve e potete sempre decidere di provare, dato che non dovrete dedicare molto tempo alla lettura.
December 4, 2018
Almost nothing happened in this book. I never give ratings this low, and I hate to do that, but honestly, it felt like the author was struggling with the concept of non-consensual gender re-assignment and then just wrote an entire book about someone spiraling out of control because of it. There are hundreds of thousands of books and films about people who are assigned a certain gender at birth and then struggle later on, individuals who are forced through this as an adolescent; there are also extensive books coming out of this region about families socially transforming one of their female children into a male in order to provide many things for the family in terms of status, social mobility, financially, etc. It is clear that in this story, that got out of hand. But it began with that occurrence, and then the rest of the book was just the main character, pretty much shut in his/her room, trying to cope with the ramifications of that. It was heavily and unrelentingly patriarchal, and not just on a cultural level but on a familial level. I found myself being swallowed up by the writing itself but not the narrative at all. However, what I will say is that I adored the way it was told. I love when in contemporary literature there is an exultation of the story teller, the bard, the local orator. This not only glorified that but also allowed for the story teller to interrupt the storytelling towards the end in a way that finally jolted you back into the plot for a moment. Not enough to change anything, but the focus of that role was so lovely for me.
Again, seduced by the author's words...
"This story has something of the night; it is obscure and yet rich in images; it should end with a feeble, gentle light. When we reach dawn, we shall be delivered. We shall have aged by a night, a long, heavy night, a half-century, and a few white pages scattered in the white marble courtyard of our house of memories. Some of you will be tempted to dwell in that new residence, or at least to occupy a small part of it, suited to the dimensions of your bodies. I know that the temptation to forget will be great: oblivion is a spring of pure water that must on no account be approached however thirsty you may feel For this story is also a desert. You will have to walk barefoot on the hot sand, walk and keep silent, believing in the oasis that shimmers on the horizon and never ceases to move toward the sky, walk and not turn around, lest you be taken with vertigo. Our steps invent the path as we proceed; behind us they leave no trace, only the void; So we shall always look ahead and trust our feet. They will take us as far as our minds will believe this story." (8)
This is beautiful but reading it over now it seems like somewhat of an omen for what is to come in the story....Hmmm
Again, seduced by the author's words...
"This story has something of the night; it is obscure and yet rich in images; it should end with a feeble, gentle light. When we reach dawn, we shall be delivered. We shall have aged by a night, a long, heavy night, a half-century, and a few white pages scattered in the white marble courtyard of our house of memories. Some of you will be tempted to dwell in that new residence, or at least to occupy a small part of it, suited to the dimensions of your bodies. I know that the temptation to forget will be great: oblivion is a spring of pure water that must on no account be approached however thirsty you may feel For this story is also a desert. You will have to walk barefoot on the hot sand, walk and keep silent, believing in the oasis that shimmers on the horizon and never ceases to move toward the sky, walk and not turn around, lest you be taken with vertigo. Our steps invent the path as we proceed; behind us they leave no trace, only the void; So we shall always look ahead and trust our feet. They will take us as far as our minds will believe this story." (8)
This is beautiful but reading it over now it seems like somewhat of an omen for what is to come in the story....Hmmm
October 18, 2015
This was selected as a January/February group read in my Great African Reads group here in GoodReads. So of course I had not read it until now. To be fair, it isn't the easiest book to get a copy of, and I had to wait until mine came in from interlibrary loan.
In The Sand Child, a father is anticipating his eighth child (and eighth daughter) so he declares that the child will be male, regardless of reality. Ahmed is raised as a man and benefits from the various perks of being male in Morocco, from household authority to inheritance. But he also must struggle with concepts of identity, family, and truth.
That's the story as first presented, but then the novel morphs into a reflection on storytelling as the same basic story is told again with different outcomes. I'm still not quite sure I know the "actual" ending, but I also am not sure I care. The language is beautiful - the translator should win some kind of prize - and I would like to share a few bits:
"I do not tell stories simply to pass the time. My stories come to me, inhabit me, and transform me. I need to get them out of my body in order to make room for new stories."
"To be a woman is a natural infirmity and every woman gets used to it. To be a man is an illusion, an act of violence that requires no justification."
"A book ... is a labyrinth created on purpose to confuse men, with the intention of ruining them and bringing them back to the narrow limits of their ambitions."
"I am haunted by my own books."
"A story is like a house, an old house, with different levels, rooms, corridors, doors, and windows. Locks, cellars, useless spaces. The walls are its memory. Scratch the stone a little, hold your ear to it, and you will hear things!"
In The Sand Child, a father is anticipating his eighth child (and eighth daughter) so he declares that the child will be male, regardless of reality. Ahmed is raised as a man and benefits from the various perks of being male in Morocco, from household authority to inheritance. But he also must struggle with concepts of identity, family, and truth.
That's the story as first presented, but then the novel morphs into a reflection on storytelling as the same basic story is told again with different outcomes. I'm still not quite sure I know the "actual" ending, but I also am not sure I care. The language is beautiful - the translator should win some kind of prize - and I would like to share a few bits:
"I do not tell stories simply to pass the time. My stories come to me, inhabit me, and transform me. I need to get them out of my body in order to make room for new stories."
"To be a woman is a natural infirmity and every woman gets used to it. To be a man is an illusion, an act of violence that requires no justification."
"A book ... is a labyrinth created on purpose to confuse men, with the intention of ruining them and bringing them back to the narrow limits of their ambitions."
"I am haunted by my own books."
"A story is like a house, an old house, with different levels, rooms, corridors, doors, and windows. Locks, cellars, useless spaces. The walls are its memory. Scratch the stone a little, hold your ear to it, and you will hear things!"
August 14, 2023
داستان ناراحت کننده ای بود و عجیب اینه که واقعی بود. داستان دختری که بین خواهرهای دیگش باید زندگی کنه و تو کوچه و خیابون بره، ولی نقش بازی کنه که پسره. چرا؟ چون پدرش بعد از داشتن هفت تا دختر، دلش پسر میخواسته و به همه گفتن که پسر دار شدن 😐
February 18, 2022
Prim parte mi-a placut. Mi s-a părut foarte interesantă tema sexualităţii duale şi toate prejudecăţile, obiceiurile, tradiţiile din lumea personajelor, precum şi lupta interioară a Zahrei/Ahmed. Dar lectura mi-a plăcut până la moartea personajului principal. Apoi parcă a luat-o razna povestea şi m-a pierdut. Stilul este cel specific al lui Tahar, îmi plac "ciudăţeniile" cărţilor sale, au un aer aparte, ceva ce îi este specific, iar mie îmi place. Îmi plac şi ţinuturile unde se petrec acţiunile cărţilor, îmi place izul oriental al acestora. Dar la un moment dat, cartea aceasta a devenit prea ciudăţică şi greu de digerat.
March 6, 2013
J'ai lu ces deux romans dès leur sortie, j'étais étudiante en psycholgie, et me voici mère de famille, ha! Si je les ajoute à ma liste ici, c'est dans l'espoir de recevoir des recommandations de livres qui ressemblent à ceux-la... mais c'est assez improbable!
L'enfant de sable: Je m'en souviens comme d'un livre extrèmement poétique et effrayant à la fois. C'était un roman d'atmosphère, alternant extrème beauté (la langue est superbe, et malheureusement les mots me manquent pour décrire un tel talent litéraire!) et la brutalité, la cruauté de certaines vies. Un des plus beaux romans ayant marqué ma période de jeune adulte. J'ai alors 'suivi' l'auteur et acheté tous ses nouveaux titres mais j'ai été décue par la suite - je n'ai plus retrouvé dans ses héros de jeunes femmes au destin tragique qui me touchaient autant que cette enfant-femme-homme m'a touchée.
La nuit sacrée: C'est la suite du premier tome mais le rome est légèrement moins bien. Peut-etre parce que certains passages sont très difficiles à supporter. Trop brutal et trop abstrait comparé au premier tome.
Si ces romans m'ont marquée c'est que j'y ai trouvé deux choses que j'aime par-dessus tout dans les romans. D'abord, une beauté litéraire inouie. J'ai passé de très beaux moments à lire et relire certaines phrases que j'ai trouvées extrèmement belles. Je ne les ai plus en mémoire mot pour mot et pourtant je sais que je les ai gardées en moi. De la poésie en prose, du roman en poésie, ah, quel bonheur, ce bain dans la beauté de la langue, ca fait du bien!
Deuxième point. J'ai également découvert quelque chose d'une culture lointaine que seul un bon roman peut permettre de découvrir. Pour la meme raison, j'adore Rohinton Mistry qui pourtant a un tout autre style genre Zola. Ni les images extraordinaires du National Geographic, ni les meilleures théories de la neuroscience ou psychologie interculturelle ne peuvent nous permettre de comprendre, en les ressentant directement, certaines émotions et sentiments vécus dans certaines situations particulières, historiquement et/ou géographiquement. Un roman comme 'L'enfant de Sable' sait le faire.
December 17, 2009
From the beginning this story is veiled – a story within a story. On the novel’s fifth page we are introduced to a ‘storyteller’ who has already begun the tale of Ahmed, a Moroccan man who is actually a woman. The temporal progression is linear at first. Through the storyteller, we hear of the woes of Ahmed’s father, whose wife has given birth to seven daughters. Determined to be the architect of his own fate, he announces that his eighth daughter is his son. Ahmed grows up with the realization that ‘he’ has been privy to many things from which, as a girl, he would have been excluded. He welcomes his circumstance at first, but as he grows older its burden begins to weigh on him. The story begins to unravel, losing track of itself in both time and space through various digressions. The storyteller disappears and several listeners from his audience take it upon themselves to finish the story. They provide three possible endings along with commentary and analysis, including many frank statements that Islam punishes women and that their society is hypocritical about gender and sex. Yet despite these directly critical remarks the novel becomes overwhelmingly vague, implicit and indirect. There are multiple subplots along the same lines as Ahmed’s story: women who are disguised, or who disguise themselves as men, perhaps suggesting that gender COULD be both rigid and fluid and Islamic societies. In the end, though, the overriding statement seems to be that while it’s quite obvious to everyone that men and women enjoy inequitable privileges in this society, the problem becomes somehow unspeakable. The harder the characters search for explanations, rationalities, or plausible outcomes, the more fleeting they become, and the story slips away. I wouldn’t say this was one of those books I could read over and over, but it’s written in an interesting way with considerable skill.
August 17, 2019
Titolo: La Perplessità
Dopo la nascita di sette figlie femmine un padre che voleva disperatamente un maschio a cui tramandare la sua eredità decide che l'ottavo figlio, indipendentemente dal sesso di nascita, sarà il maschio a lungo atteso.
Ha inizio così la storia di Ahmed, nato donna ma cresciuto come uomo.
La storia intrigante, la scrittura molto bella (anche se a volte si perde un po'troppo per i miei gusti, ma comunque mi ha incantata).
Ma a metà libro tutto cambia.
C'è ancora un protagonista di cui raccontare la storia?
L'intimo diventa universale ed ognuno può dare la sua interpretazione della storia.
All'inizio mi sono arrabbiata (e avrei voluto gettare il libro dalla finestra) poi ho cercato di capire e alcune riflessioni importanti mi sono arrivate.
Ma sono comunque giunta alla fine con tanta fatica rispetto all'entusiasmo iniziale e letta l'ultima riga nel mio cervello è comparso un fumetto con uno sbuffo di fumo, la scritta "mah", e un grande alone di perplessità.
Insomma mi sento come un'innamorata tradita e delusa quindi questo testo potrebbe essere più positivo di quanto lo giudichi io.
Dopo la nascita di sette figlie femmine un padre che voleva disperatamente un maschio a cui tramandare la sua eredità decide che l'ottavo figlio, indipendentemente dal sesso di nascita, sarà il maschio a lungo atteso.
Ha inizio così la storia di Ahmed, nato donna ma cresciuto come uomo.
La storia intrigante, la scrittura molto bella (anche se a volte si perde un po'troppo per i miei gusti, ma comunque mi ha incantata).
Ma a metà libro tutto cambia.
C'è ancora un protagonista di cui raccontare la storia?
L'intimo diventa universale ed ognuno può dare la sua interpretazione della storia.
All'inizio mi sono arrabbiata (e avrei voluto gettare il libro dalla finestra) poi ho cercato di capire e alcune riflessioni importanti mi sono arrivate.
Ma sono comunque giunta alla fine con tanta fatica rispetto all'entusiasmo iniziale e letta l'ultima riga nel mio cervello è comparso un fumetto con uno sbuffo di fumo, la scritta "mah", e un grande alone di perplessità.
Insomma mi sento come un'innamorata tradita e delusa quindi questo testo potrebbe essere più positivo di quanto lo giudichi io.
December 15, 2017
A story is like a house, an old house, with different levels, rooms, corridors, doors and windows. Locks, cellars, useless spaces. The walls are its memory. Scratch the stone a little, hold your ear to it, and you will hear things!
February 11, 2014
I can't help but feel, after having finished the Sand Child, that at least part of the story has eluded me. I kept having the nagging sense that there was stuff referred to about which I was totally ignorant and so I couldn't pick up the allusions, be they cultural or historical or religious. This is definitely a book that requires multiple readings, if not close study. It requires excavation, a slow uncovering of all its treasures.
There are two elements to the book that fascinate me most, and a third which I will mention in passing and hope someone else can perhaps pick up or fill in for me. I see shadows of this third element but cannot flesh them out. sigh.
The first is the absolutely engrossing and befuddling labyrinthine structure of the narrative. Ben Jelloun is masterfully interrupting the reader's expectations on authorial voice, utilizing, in a really brilliant way, the benefits of oral tradition. His approach to this story is always done sideways. But first I should outline the core around which the novel is built. Basically a man has seven daughters and no son. God or fate has thwarted him, humiliated him. He resolves to raise this next child whom his wife is carrying as a boy, regardless of their actual sex. Alas, the child is born a girl. What happens to this boy Ahmed throughout its childhood, adolescence and adulthood?
But anyways, back to my discussion on narrative. We have, at first, the story as told to the audience by a professional storyteller, who also happens to possess a notebook that contains passages from the diary of Ahmed. The storytelling slips between the storyteller's rendering and the abrupt diary passages. Also, some interjections/ objections made by the audience. And then we find out that the storyteller has died (I think), leaving the story unfinished. Three audience members (two older men and one woman) meet over a series of days to tell their ending of the story. And lastly, of the story emerges a voice that claims to have been buried within it, trapped (I think) somehow by the convoluted web that this existential drama has created. This last voice is the voice of the storyteller revived (which doesn't make sense to me?), explaining the origin of the story and how he has struggled with it, and ultimately failed it.
So, yes, there are a lot of voices to contend with in this short novel, a lot of perspectives and interpretations of the central premise, the possibly impenetrable kernel of the story - often referred to within the pages of the book as the riddle. I loved these attempts to unravel the riddle, and what the different logics of each retelling/ ending tell you about the teller and the audience. I cannot think of another novel that matches Ben Jelloun's brilliance in this regard (Anyone?).
The other element of the book deals, unsurprisingly perhaps, with its central riddle. The question of sex, gender, truth and politics. How our lives are necessarily corporeal and temporal (or are they?) and how that structures our possibilities and experiences.
As a side tangent, there was recently a similar story told in the Canadian media of parents who had decided to raise their child 'genderless'. What does that even mean? Well, from what I could gather, they were not telling anyone the sex of their child, allowing the child to determine for themself (lacking a proper pronoun here - lol) their he- or she-ness. See the story of Storm
The story was originally meant as a public interest fluff story but became the center of public debate as people reacted very strongly to it, some suggesting that the parents were traumatizing their child or ruining his/her life. Anyways, I couldn't help but think of this recent episode because it parallels the novel in some ways and, like the storyteller's audience in the novel, it captured the public's interest and imagination in a really powerful way.
The fact that Ben Jelloun has so many paths for his story connects to how at its core lies a deep existential puzzle - in what ways are we indivisible from our bodies and in what ways are we not? Is it a cruel torture to raise a female person as a boy/man or the other way around? Can we imagine what Ahmed would face, how he/she would feel? There are certainly stories out there where women in some societies have passed themselves as men in order to achieve some goal - but those stories only really deal with the performative issues of gender roles, and elide the deeper questions of being male and female.
The final element is the question of whether this book can be read as an allegory for colonialism, or the extent to which it might be interpreted as commenting on colonialism in some way. There is some reference throughout the book to political struggle, but these direct references are tangential (at least according to my interpretation). Still, I get the nagging sense that there is something in the view of this book as an allegory, I am just not able to piece it together.
Though this book is only 165 pages, it provides practically a lifetime's worth of material to ponder/ meditate on.
There are two elements to the book that fascinate me most, and a third which I will mention in passing and hope someone else can perhaps pick up or fill in for me. I see shadows of this third element but cannot flesh them out. sigh.
The first is the absolutely engrossing and befuddling labyrinthine structure of the narrative. Ben Jelloun is masterfully interrupting the reader's expectations on authorial voice, utilizing, in a really brilliant way, the benefits of oral tradition. His approach to this story is always done sideways. But first I should outline the core around which the novel is built. Basically a man has seven daughters and no son. God or fate has thwarted him, humiliated him. He resolves to raise this next child whom his wife is carrying as a boy, regardless of their actual sex. Alas, the child is born a girl. What happens to this boy Ahmed throughout its childhood, adolescence and adulthood?
But anyways, back to my discussion on narrative. We have, at first, the story as told to the audience by a professional storyteller, who also happens to possess a notebook that contains passages from the diary of Ahmed. The storytelling slips between the storyteller's rendering and the abrupt diary passages. Also, some interjections/ objections made by the audience. And then we find out that the storyteller has died (I think), leaving the story unfinished. Three audience members (two older men and one woman) meet over a series of days to tell their ending of the story. And lastly, of the story emerges a voice that claims to have been buried within it, trapped (I think) somehow by the convoluted web that this existential drama has created. This last voice is the voice of the storyteller revived (which doesn't make sense to me?), explaining the origin of the story and how he has struggled with it, and ultimately failed it.
So, yes, there are a lot of voices to contend with in this short novel, a lot of perspectives and interpretations of the central premise, the possibly impenetrable kernel of the story - often referred to within the pages of the book as the riddle. I loved these attempts to unravel the riddle, and what the different logics of each retelling/ ending tell you about the teller and the audience. I cannot think of another novel that matches Ben Jelloun's brilliance in this regard (Anyone?).
The other element of the book deals, unsurprisingly perhaps, with its central riddle. The question of sex, gender, truth and politics. How our lives are necessarily corporeal and temporal (or are they?) and how that structures our possibilities and experiences.
As a side tangent, there was recently a similar story told in the Canadian media of parents who had decided to raise their child 'genderless'. What does that even mean? Well, from what I could gather, they were not telling anyone the sex of their child, allowing the child to determine for themself (lacking a proper pronoun here - lol) their he- or she-ness. See the story of Storm
The story was originally meant as a public interest fluff story but became the center of public debate as people reacted very strongly to it, some suggesting that the parents were traumatizing their child or ruining his/her life. Anyways, I couldn't help but think of this recent episode because it parallels the novel in some ways and, like the storyteller's audience in the novel, it captured the public's interest and imagination in a really powerful way.
The fact that Ben Jelloun has so many paths for his story connects to how at its core lies a deep existential puzzle - in what ways are we indivisible from our bodies and in what ways are we not? Is it a cruel torture to raise a female person as a boy/man or the other way around? Can we imagine what Ahmed would face, how he/she would feel? There are certainly stories out there where women in some societies have passed themselves as men in order to achieve some goal - but those stories only really deal with the performative issues of gender roles, and elide the deeper questions of being male and female.
The final element is the question of whether this book can be read as an allegory for colonialism, or the extent to which it might be interpreted as commenting on colonialism in some way. There is some reference throughout the book to political struggle, but these direct references are tangential (at least according to my interpretation). Still, I get the nagging sense that there is something in the view of this book as an allegory, I am just not able to piece it together.
Though this book is only 165 pages, it provides practically a lifetime's worth of material to ponder/ meditate on.
December 21, 2023
Une narration volontairement décousue par l'auteur mais qui n'a pas réussi à me captiver ou à me convaincre. Le style emprunte beaucoup au monde des contes, de la rêverie et est riche d'un certain onirisme. Onirisme décrit par un style bien trop verbeux et pompeux pour qu'il en soit agréable.
Je n'ai pas du tout été sensible à cette lecture, ni même aux moults personnages l'habitant. Je ne pense pas relire cet auteur.
Je n'ai pas du tout été sensible à cette lecture, ni même aux moults personnages l'habitant. Je ne pense pas relire cet auteur.
March 19, 2019
طفل الرمال : الطاهر بن جلون
ترجمة : محمد الشرگـــي
عدد الصفحات : 177
تدور أحداث الرواية في أحد مناطق المغرب لم يحدد المكان بالضبط لحكمة منه بحيث انها قد تحدث في كل مكان خصوصا في تلك الفترة السابقة، تروى أحداث هذه الرواية على لسان أحد الرواة المشهورين، الذين يجوبون الأسواق الشعبية و المقاهي، و يتناوب على سرد أحداث هذه القصة العديد، فمنهم من قال انه شاهد عيان و منهم من قال أنه سمع بها من مصادر موثوقة...
الرواية تجسد معاناة أب بائس في مجتمع ينظر لانجاب الذكر كانتصار كبير، أما حين يكون المواليد من الجنس الآخر فهي لعنة مسلطة على تلك العائلة، هذا ما جعل الأب المتسلط يزيد في تسلطه و يكبر كل يوم حقده الذي يتطاير شرره كلما لمح أهل بيته، خصوصا الزوجة التي اعتبرها بؤرة الشؤم و هي سبب تلك اللعنة، لتصبح مع مرور الوقت دون همة دون طموح ذات شخصية مسلوبة مشوهة المعالم، ليجعلها تخضع دون أن تنبس بإيماءة حتى بطرف عينها، لتجد نفسها مشتركة في مخططه الشيطاني ذلك، بأن يكون المولود الثامن ولدا حتى لو كان عكس ذلك، جاء اليوم الموعود لتكون بنتا ثامنة لكن في نظر الكل هي ولد #أحمد فكان من يحملون هذا السر ثلاثة الام، الأب، القابلة التي كانت على شفا حفرة القبر كما ذكر الأب.
تمر الأيام و الطفلة المسماة أحمد تعيش في دلال الصبي ولي العهد أو الوريث، فكان كل شيء يسير كما يشتهي الأب و لكن الحقيقة ستبقى تنغص حياته و تبقى تطل عليه من خلف الجدران بين الشقوق في حضور الولد الذي كان متوضع في ازدواجيته على عدة أصعدة كجسده الانثوي الكامل، بغطرسة ذكر كانت تلاحظ حياة اخواتها و امها وسط هذا القهر، فكيف ستكون هويته الفردية أمام العوام، و خاصة المحيط الذي يتخبط في تقاليد و أعراف جلها ظالم، دون أن ننسى المجتمع الذكوري الذي تعيش المرأة تحت رحمته من جهة و وجود المستعمر الذي يجاهد على طمس هوية الشعب، بكل الطرق الممكنة
كان أسلوب الكاتب كأنه يسرد حقائق عن عائلة معروفة و هي عائلة أحد التجار الأثرياء الذي خاف ان تذهب ثروته لجيوب إخوته الحاقدين كون لا صبي يحمل اسمه و يرثه، ليضع ذلك القرار نصب عينيه و يحاول جاهدا ان يكون كما يريد، تكبر البنت الولد و الاب مصدق كذبته، ليتزوج #أحمد ابنة عمه لينتقم من همه، و لكن يحدث مالا يحمد عقباه... لكم ان تتخيلوا ما جرى فهو عكس المتوقع تماما....
بعد هذا الزواج الشكلي تدخل البنت الولد في صراعات داخلية تجعلها تتخبط، ليكون هنا تغيير المسار نحو البحث عن هويتها الضائعة منذ أكثر من عقدين من الزمن.
ليكمل الكاتب الأحداث في الجزء الثاني عنوانه ليلة القدر
⭐⭐⭐⭐
#اقتباسات
نحن جميعا ضحايا حمقنا المدفون في خنادق الرغبة التي لا ينبغي تسميتها
الايام احجار يتراكم بعضها فوق بعض
إن الزمن هو هذه الشارة التي ستنسدل بعد قليل على المشهد و تلف بطلنا في احد الأكفان
انه لم يعد لديه طاقة أو قوة احتمال صورته، و الاقسى من ذلك لم يعد يعرف لأي شيء يشبه أو لمن، لم يعد هناك أية مرآة تعكس صورته، كانت كل المرايا مطفأة، و وحدها الظلمة و حدها العتمات ببعض خطوط الضوء كانت ترسم على المرايا
احمد ليس غلطة طبيعية، بل اختطاف اجتماعي باختصار
#afaf
ترجمة : محمد الشرگـــي
عدد الصفحات : 177
تدور أحداث الرواية في أحد مناطق المغرب لم يحدد المكان بالضبط لحكمة منه بحيث انها قد تحدث في كل مكان خصوصا في تلك الفترة السابقة، تروى أحداث هذه الرواية على لسان أحد الرواة المشهورين، الذين يجوبون الأسواق الشعبية و المقاهي، و يتناوب على سرد أحداث هذه القصة العديد، فمنهم من قال انه شاهد عيان و منهم من قال أنه سمع بها من مصادر موثوقة...
الرواية تجسد معاناة أب بائس في مجتمع ينظر لانجاب الذكر كانتصار كبير، أما حين يكون المواليد من الجنس الآخر فهي لعنة مسلطة على تلك العائلة، هذا ما جعل الأب المتسلط يزيد في تسلطه و يكبر كل يوم حقده الذي يتطاير شرره كلما لمح أهل بيته، خصوصا الزوجة التي اعتبرها بؤرة الشؤم و هي سبب تلك اللعنة، لتصبح مع مرور الوقت دون همة دون طموح ذات شخصية مسلوبة مشوهة المعالم، ليجعلها تخضع دون أن تنبس بإيماءة حتى بطرف عينها، لتجد نفسها مشتركة في مخططه الشيطاني ذلك، بأن يكون المولود الثامن ولدا حتى لو كان عكس ذلك، جاء اليوم الموعود لتكون بنتا ثامنة لكن في نظر الكل هي ولد #أحمد فكان من يحملون هذا السر ثلاثة الام، الأب، القابلة التي كانت على شفا حفرة القبر كما ذكر الأب.
تمر الأيام و الطفلة المسماة أحمد تعيش في دلال الصبي ولي العهد أو الوريث، فكان كل شيء يسير كما يشتهي الأب و لكن الحقيقة ستبقى تنغص حياته و تبقى تطل عليه من خلف الجدران بين الشقوق في حضور الولد الذي كان متوضع في ازدواجيته على عدة أصعدة كجسده الانثوي الكامل، بغطرسة ذكر كانت تلاحظ حياة اخواتها و امها وسط هذا القهر، فكيف ستكون هويته الفردية أمام العوام، و خاصة المحيط الذي يتخبط في تقاليد و أعراف جلها ظالم، دون أن ننسى المجتمع الذكوري الذي تعيش المرأة تحت رحمته من جهة و وجود المستعمر الذي يجاهد على طمس هوية الشعب، بكل الطرق الممكنة
كان أسلوب الكاتب كأنه يسرد حقائق عن عائلة معروفة و هي عائلة أحد التجار الأثرياء الذي خاف ان تذهب ثروته لجيوب إخوته الحاقدين كون لا صبي يحمل اسمه و يرثه، ليضع ذلك القرار نصب عينيه و يحاول جاهدا ان يكون كما يريد، تكبر البنت الولد و الاب مصدق كذبته، ليتزوج #أحمد ابنة عمه لينتقم من همه، و لكن يحدث مالا يحمد عقباه... لكم ان تتخيلوا ما جرى فهو عكس المتوقع تماما....
بعد هذا الزواج الشكلي تدخل البنت الولد في صراعات داخلية تجعلها تتخبط، ليكون هنا تغيير المسار نحو البحث عن هويتها الضائعة منذ أكثر من عقدين من الزمن.
ليكمل الكاتب الأحداث في الجزء الثاني عنوانه ليلة القدر
⭐⭐⭐⭐
#اقتباسات
نحن جميعا ضحايا حمقنا المدفون في خنادق الرغبة التي لا ينبغي تسميتها
الايام احجار يتراكم بعضها فوق بعض
إن الزمن هو هذه الشارة التي ستنسدل بعد قليل على المشهد و تلف بطلنا في احد الأكفان
انه لم يعد لديه طاقة أو قوة احتمال صورته، و الاقسى من ذلك لم يعد يعرف لأي شيء يشبه أو لمن، لم يعد هناك أية مرآة تعكس صورته، كانت كل المرايا مطفأة، و وحدها الظلمة و حدها العتمات ببعض خطوط الضوء كانت ترسم على المرايا
احمد ليس غلطة طبيعية، بل اختطاف اجتماعي باختصار
#afaf
Read
April 27, 2020THE SAND CHILD by Tahar Ben Jelloun, tr. from the French (Morocco) by Alan Sheridan, 1985/1987.
This novella is likely to be one of the oddest books I'll read in 2020. I finished it a few days ago and was at a loss how to talk about it. Still am. But I'll attempt...
A man has 7 daughters, and when his wife becomes pregnant once more, he decides that even if the child is a girl, he will raise the child as a boy. He swears his wife to secrecy and bribes a midwife, and when the 8th daughter is born, the plan begins... He even has an elaborate plan to fake the circumcision.
The child grows apart from the sisters and assumes the role of the junior patriarch, receiving more attention and education than any other sibling. The plot begins to unravel when puberty sets in.
Or does it?
This entire story is narratively nested in the story of a traveling bard /storyteller. He tells this story of the 8th daughter to a group in market square, and leaves the tale unfinished, so that others pick it up and take it in different directions - some disgustingly violent, some trippy, others more mundane. Similar to the salon-style "exquisite corpse" style storytelling, or an elaborate game of "telephone". The reader is left with a confusing and amorphous maze of possibilities of what actually happened to the 8th daughter.
There's an inherent queerness to the story that could probably be mined even further, but I was honestly trying to just figure out the structure and style, and how Sheridan was able to get this across in a translation of the original French!
If it isn't obvious enough from the description, there are heavy Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino vibes. Borges even makes a brief appearance in one of the extended stories as the 'blind librarian'.
Hard to completely recommend because I spent a good amount of the time trying to figure out what was going on 🤔 but simultaneously admiring the experimentation and wonder of storytelling arts.
Ben Jelloun has a few others in translation, and I'm curious to pick them up after this wild ride.
This novella is likely to be one of the oddest books I'll read in 2020. I finished it a few days ago and was at a loss how to talk about it. Still am. But I'll attempt...
A man has 7 daughters, and when his wife becomes pregnant once more, he decides that even if the child is a girl, he will raise the child as a boy. He swears his wife to secrecy and bribes a midwife, and when the 8th daughter is born, the plan begins... He even has an elaborate plan to fake the circumcision.
The child grows apart from the sisters and assumes the role of the junior patriarch, receiving more attention and education than any other sibling. The plot begins to unravel when puberty sets in.
Or does it?
This entire story is narratively nested in the story of a traveling bard /storyteller. He tells this story of the 8th daughter to a group in market square, and leaves the tale unfinished, so that others pick it up and take it in different directions - some disgustingly violent, some trippy, others more mundane. Similar to the salon-style "exquisite corpse" style storytelling, or an elaborate game of "telephone". The reader is left with a confusing and amorphous maze of possibilities of what actually happened to the 8th daughter.
There's an inherent queerness to the story that could probably be mined even further, but I was honestly trying to just figure out the structure and style, and how Sheridan was able to get this across in a translation of the original French!
If it isn't obvious enough from the description, there are heavy Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino vibes. Borges even makes a brief appearance in one of the extended stories as the 'blind librarian'.
Hard to completely recommend because I spent a good amount of the time trying to figure out what was going on 🤔 but simultaneously admiring the experimentation and wonder of storytelling arts.
Ben Jelloun has a few others in translation, and I'm curious to pick them up after this wild ride.
January 2, 2019
Brzo se čita, upija se u zenice. Potpuno drugačiji sil pisanja i pripovjedanja, potpno neobično slaganje rečenica. Neobuzdana priča. Natrpana emocijama između redova. Prelazim na drugi dio :)
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July 27, 2017Tahar Ben Jelloun’s literary work has always been characterized by a narrative ambiguity
consciously and systematically infused in his texts. His creations are the intersection of tales,
legends, Moroccan rituals and ancestral myths. The originality in his writing resides in his
incredible ability to build a perfect symbiosis reconciling different aspects of the Moroccan
culture with daily life. The characters he creates can only exist in an imaginary world which
allows them to transcend all barriers of language in order to evoke the forbidden about the body,
sexuality and the situation of women. The Sand Child is no exception.
The Sand Child is a novel that could be read on many levels. The deeper one gets, the
more confusion they harvest. It is at first the story of a girl, that was to be brought up as a man as
a means of retaliation of her father on his inability to produce an heir. The father forcefully
reversed the She to a He and named the newborn Ahmed, marking the inception of a life of
doubt and uncertainty. The book traces the brief existence of this boy created in all parts by his
father. It is the reconstruction of an instable and ephemeral osmosis of a sand child that was
robbed of his right to exist. It is the story of absolute solitude. The text trickles of an unbearable
sadness and cruelty that could only signal a voyage to the realm of insanity.
The story is also to be read as a parallel and a critique to the traditional Moroccan society
with its fair share of hypocrisy and taboos when it comes to sexuality and its deep connection
with women’s status. The novel exposes how within the traditional Morocco, the woman exists to
produce a male, forever submissive to men’s will, humiliated and forced to accept her destiny.
The man on the other hand uses and abuses of the power automatically conferred to him by
tradition and strengthened by the socialization process. He is haunted by the perception of others
and by his sexual frustration because of the violent and constant repression of his desires.
The novel is most importantly a reflection on identity and the process by which it is
constructed. Is one born woman or do they become one? In essence, it hides a deeper question
about gender and its connection to the body. What happens when an individual refuses their body
and tries to transcend it? The story of Ahmed/Zahra, designed within endless metaphors and
multiple voices, is an attempt of Tahar Ben Jelloun to explore unknown layers of the gender
question in a society stifled by traditions and rotting because of its hypocrisy. This paper aims to
analyze some of the processes by which the gender question is addressed in the Sand Child.
When Ahmed realizes his condition he first tries to accept it. He even recognizes his
conflict by stating that he knew he lived in the illusion of another body. The fact that the
protagonist lives as a genderless individual is important in understanding the ideological and
existential conflict depicted in the book. It generates within Ahmed an anxiety that he cannot
resolve. While he is aware of his ambiguous identity he is still unable to understand the enigma
that constitutes his existence. Ahmed exists in the midst of that existential confusion that the
reader gets the chance to live with him through the seven gates, symbols of his evolution process
from birth to childhood to adolescence, marriage…Each of these stages are portrayed in violent
internal clashes vis-à-vis his identity. The ultimate outcome remains the same at each stage;
Ahmed is unable to resolve the dilemma that his existence constitutes. One of the most violent
internal confrontation came when Ahmed got his first menstruation putting him face to face with
the real nature of his body. Another violent clash was with the death of his father that drove him
to assume the role of the man of the house and a complete realization of his situation.
Assuming the privilege of being a man while it contradicts his physiognomy led him to perpetuate the traditional injustice towards women thus tearing his being apart from within and trying to
exteriorize that pain through plain cruelty towards his mother, sisters and wife.
While reconstructing the story-telling process, The Sand Child is characterized by a
multitude of voices that increases as the reader progresses towards the end of the novel. From the
beginning of the story the reader comes across an all-knowing narrator presented in the third
person and working as an anchor in the evolution of the narrative. The storyteller on the other
hand, speaks in the first person and relates the story of Ahmed using the book he gave him
before his death. The protagonist, in lights of the storyteller’s words, takes a supernatural
dimension that is strengthened even more with the slow involvement of the public in molding the
story and adds an intangible aspect to the existence of Ahmed and his being a mistake of nature.
This plurality could also be read in parallel with Ahmed/ Zahra’s increasing search for defensive
mechanisms to protect his sanity. The multiple voices that come from time to time to complete
the story are processes that stress on the existential crisis the protagonist was living.
This intervention of the storyteller is elevated when he reports about the brief
correspondence that allowed Ahmed’s masculine side to maintain a connection with his feminine
side. Through these letters, Ahmed develops two distinct and separate spaces, the result of his
genderlessness. These letters are vital in the sense that they represent the first space (symbolic)
where Ahmed can undertake the role of a woman. This is a significant hint to help the reader
understand the splitting of his personality and the upcoming identity crisis. The fact that the last
chapter was entitled the Gate of the Sands is a clear hint to the end of the fragile existence of
Ahmed, neither man nor a woman but an erection out of sand that is naturally bound to collapse,
to disappear from existence in a stormy way, to leave without a trace.
Overall, the novel could be interpreted as a metaphor to the existential crisis of the author
that also serves the purpose of a collective conflict of a whole country undergoing colonial rule –
the French colonization of Morocco. The protagonist tried endlessly to embrace his existence
yet, as he discovers his body and his real personality, Zahra starts a rebellious act against Ahmed
to reach a version of the story where she accepts the womanhood she was denied. This
acceptance comes in her joining the circus and the disappearance of Malika. This acceptance
comes under question when the reader realizes that Ahmed/ Zahra’s evolution process is
accompanied with the absence of a space that exclusively belongs to the character. Throughout
the story, the protagonist is excluded from all the spaces he tries to penetrate even for a brief
lapse of time. In the end, the character is even driven from his inside because his existential crisis
cannot allow the presence of two consciousness when he possesses one body. Thus the being
Ahmed/ Zahra is denied the right to exist and the ending is left open for that purpose.
At the end of the story, Ahmed who also happens to be Zahra does not own a real space
he/she could make his/her own. She does not have a gender, nor a personality or a consciousness.
These characteristics are attributes of the very conflict she embodies. The story leaves us in utter
confusion when trying to define the being called Ahmed but also Zahra, a being that existed but
never really existed, passed but without leaving a trail, lived as if dead and kept coming to haunt
the minds and bodies of the audience through the words in his book. Zahra and Ahmed but
neither of them. Zahra/Ahmed who is an incarnation of the body she could never conquer and an
inlibration of thoughts and characteristics he could never embody.
consciously and systematically infused in his texts. His creations are the intersection of tales,
legends, Moroccan rituals and ancestral myths. The originality in his writing resides in his
incredible ability to build a perfect symbiosis reconciling different aspects of the Moroccan
culture with daily life. The characters he creates can only exist in an imaginary world which
allows them to transcend all barriers of language in order to evoke the forbidden about the body,
sexuality and the situation of women. The Sand Child is no exception.
The Sand Child is a novel that could be read on many levels. The deeper one gets, the
more confusion they harvest. It is at first the story of a girl, that was to be brought up as a man as
a means of retaliation of her father on his inability to produce an heir. The father forcefully
reversed the She to a He and named the newborn Ahmed, marking the inception of a life of
doubt and uncertainty. The book traces the brief existence of this boy created in all parts by his
father. It is the reconstruction of an instable and ephemeral osmosis of a sand child that was
robbed of his right to exist. It is the story of absolute solitude. The text trickles of an unbearable
sadness and cruelty that could only signal a voyage to the realm of insanity.
The story is also to be read as a parallel and a critique to the traditional Moroccan society
with its fair share of hypocrisy and taboos when it comes to sexuality and its deep connection
with women’s status. The novel exposes how within the traditional Morocco, the woman exists to
produce a male, forever submissive to men’s will, humiliated and forced to accept her destiny.
The man on the other hand uses and abuses of the power automatically conferred to him by
tradition and strengthened by the socialization process. He is haunted by the perception of others
and by his sexual frustration because of the violent and constant repression of his desires.
The novel is most importantly a reflection on identity and the process by which it is
constructed. Is one born woman or do they become one? In essence, it hides a deeper question
about gender and its connection to the body. What happens when an individual refuses their body
and tries to transcend it? The story of Ahmed/Zahra, designed within endless metaphors and
multiple voices, is an attempt of Tahar Ben Jelloun to explore unknown layers of the gender
question in a society stifled by traditions and rotting because of its hypocrisy. This paper aims to
analyze some of the processes by which the gender question is addressed in the Sand Child.
When Ahmed realizes his condition he first tries to accept it. He even recognizes his
conflict by stating that he knew he lived in the illusion of another body. The fact that the
protagonist lives as a genderless individual is important in understanding the ideological and
existential conflict depicted in the book. It generates within Ahmed an anxiety that he cannot
resolve. While he is aware of his ambiguous identity he is still unable to understand the enigma
that constitutes his existence. Ahmed exists in the midst of that existential confusion that the
reader gets the chance to live with him through the seven gates, symbols of his evolution process
from birth to childhood to adolescence, marriage…Each of these stages are portrayed in violent
internal clashes vis-à-vis his identity. The ultimate outcome remains the same at each stage;
Ahmed is unable to resolve the dilemma that his existence constitutes. One of the most violent
internal confrontation came when Ahmed got his first menstruation putting him face to face with
the real nature of his body. Another violent clash was with the death of his father that drove him
to assume the role of the man of the house and a complete realization of his situation.
Assuming the privilege of being a man while it contradicts his physiognomy led him to perpetuate the traditional injustice towards women thus tearing his being apart from within and trying to
exteriorize that pain through plain cruelty towards his mother, sisters and wife.
While reconstructing the story-telling process, The Sand Child is characterized by a
multitude of voices that increases as the reader progresses towards the end of the novel. From the
beginning of the story the reader comes across an all-knowing narrator presented in the third
person and working as an anchor in the evolution of the narrative. The storyteller on the other
hand, speaks in the first person and relates the story of Ahmed using the book he gave him
before his death. The protagonist, in lights of the storyteller’s words, takes a supernatural
dimension that is strengthened even more with the slow involvement of the public in molding the
story and adds an intangible aspect to the existence of Ahmed and his being a mistake of nature.
This plurality could also be read in parallel with Ahmed/ Zahra’s increasing search for defensive
mechanisms to protect his sanity. The multiple voices that come from time to time to complete
the story are processes that stress on the existential crisis the protagonist was living.
This intervention of the storyteller is elevated when he reports about the brief
correspondence that allowed Ahmed’s masculine side to maintain a connection with his feminine
side. Through these letters, Ahmed develops two distinct and separate spaces, the result of his
genderlessness. These letters are vital in the sense that they represent the first space (symbolic)
where Ahmed can undertake the role of a woman. This is a significant hint to help the reader
understand the splitting of his personality and the upcoming identity crisis. The fact that the last
chapter was entitled the Gate of the Sands is a clear hint to the end of the fragile existence of
Ahmed, neither man nor a woman but an erection out of sand that is naturally bound to collapse,
to disappear from existence in a stormy way, to leave without a trace.
Overall, the novel could be interpreted as a metaphor to the existential crisis of the author
that also serves the purpose of a collective conflict of a whole country undergoing colonial rule –
the French colonization of Morocco. The protagonist tried endlessly to embrace his existence
yet, as he discovers his body and his real personality, Zahra starts a rebellious act against Ahmed
to reach a version of the story where she accepts the womanhood she was denied. This
acceptance comes in her joining the circus and the disappearance of Malika. This acceptance
comes under question when the reader realizes that Ahmed/ Zahra’s evolution process is
accompanied with the absence of a space that exclusively belongs to the character. Throughout
the story, the protagonist is excluded from all the spaces he tries to penetrate even for a brief
lapse of time. In the end, the character is even driven from his inside because his existential crisis
cannot allow the presence of two consciousness when he possesses one body. Thus the being
Ahmed/ Zahra is denied the right to exist and the ending is left open for that purpose.
At the end of the story, Ahmed who also happens to be Zahra does not own a real space
he/she could make his/her own. She does not have a gender, nor a personality or a consciousness.
These characteristics are attributes of the very conflict she embodies. The story leaves us in utter
confusion when trying to define the being called Ahmed but also Zahra, a being that existed but
never really existed, passed but without leaving a trail, lived as if dead and kept coming to haunt
the minds and bodies of the audience through the words in his book. Zahra and Ahmed but
neither of them. Zahra/Ahmed who is an incarnation of the body she could never conquer and an
inlibration of thoughts and characteristics he could never embody.
April 21, 2020
Sometimes I recognize it; sometimes I reject it. It is my finest, subtlest mask. The voice, deep, gravelly, does its work, intimidates me, and throws me into the crowd to show that I am worthy of it, that I bear it with confidence, naturally, without excessive pride, without anger or madness. I must master its rhythm, its timbre, its melody, and keep it in the warmth of my entrails.It's rare these days for me to bowled over by the quality of a story in and of itself. This entails a balance of prose and plot and poise that inexplicably draws me along in ways of susceptibilities that I have sometimes been previously made aware of, oftentimes am caught off guard by. This is not a book that I loved, but there is a strength to it that best demonstrated itself at the beginning and the end, the middle posing an uneasy threat whose lack of resolution was likely why I rate this work higher than I am wont to do these days when someone who is not explicitly queer writes about queer themes. Jelloun's queer interrogations were likely a side effect than a cause, but in speaking of gender and its abusively vivisectional tyranny, he every so often touched upon trans experiences in ways that made me wonder whether he had done some work in interrogating his own relation to gender: what "passes", what doesn't, and what separates him from the great expanse who must often go on great journeys to discover their birthright in a world that, I hope, more often allows them to survive the process.
This work is not at all straightforward to the cishet sense, and I will admit that my eyes glazed over around the 2/3-3/4 mark when the themes started tending more towards transploitation than anything else. However, there is a true intent toward interrogation of structures of poetry, theology, history, social norms, and economics through a story where a single switch between the intonation of one of two words is enough to bring about a weight of Machiavellian confusion and, every so often, revolution. I found the brief mentions of collective action and international mirrors of blighted working class neighborhoods to fall in line with this analysis, and while there really isn't much in the way of concrete resolution, there is a demonstration of awareness of how genderqueer folk are sensationally represented in contrast to what is likely to actually happen as the result of a confluence of opportunity and shame. Someone who is actually trans, and indeed actually trans and actually haling from an Arabic/Muslim culture, will have more credible evaluations of the material than I offer here, but all I can say is that Jelloun does something does something with the material that begins as a past without defining its future, and it's that future that I hope makes use of this text in order to grow something that is both more true and more free.
This month has been one of slowly and surely feeling my way through various changes, more good than bad, and the one thing I've come to realize is that I have to stop restricting my celebrations of my queer identity to the comforts of my reading chair. It does me no good to still be limiting myself to a theoretical position of life, especially now when i have the opportunity to truly break out of the work-school-errands-repeat cycle that I've stuck myself within as a form of "emancipation." As such, I've pledged that, much as I have slowly but surely improved my economic worth during the last few months, I will also work on slowly but surely establishing myself on a plane of existence that I still am far more comfortable expressing online than off. Jelloun didn't spawn this resolution so much as that his work came at a convenient time for me to express these thoughts I've been cogitating on, but it's always good to note when a representation of queerness, with all its convulsive inconclusiveness, doesn't piss me off. Now all I need to do is follow through on this walking the walk and talking the talk on a more physical, mortal plane.
October 31, 2019
Singolare, onirico ma come suggerisce il titolo, di forma non ben definita se non quella dei contesti molteplici con la quale è presentata, attraverso un caleidoscopio di diversi narratori in prima persona, i quali si alternano con la propria versione (pur sempre in continuità) di una storia già di per sé bizzarra per quanto possibile nell'arretrato mondo maghrebino del passato. Una femmina è difatti costretta a vivere come maschio sin dalla nascita per coercizione paterna, trovandosi a fronteggiare una crisi a riguardo della sua sabbiosa identità, registrata prima su diario e in seguito tramite racconti surreali, quasi sempre in un Marocco immutabile dalla dominazione francese alla modernità, vivisezionato nelle sue sfaccettature.
March 17, 2016
Ci sono libri che andrebbero letti una sola volta, per conservare intatta la magia della scoperta di una narrazione diversa da quella normalmente sperimentata, perché la storia continui a scintillare intatta nella memoria, senza che la ripetizione di una narrazione conosciuta la faccia scivolare in secondo piano rispetto al modo in cui è narrata.
Questo è quanto mi è successo rileggendo a moltissimi anni di distanza Creatura di sabbia.
L'eccesso di parole si è mangiato la storia, che pure trovavo e trovo ancora bellissima e originale,l'ha messa sullo sfondo, e ha dato spazio alla noia.
Questo è quanto mi è successo rileggendo a moltissimi anni di distanza Creatura di sabbia.
L'eccesso di parole si è mangiato la storia, che pure trovavo e trovo ancora bellissima e originale,l'ha messa sullo sfondo, e ha dato spazio alla noia.
February 6, 2020
Bello lo stile dell’autore.
Molto poetico e forse fin troppo onirico per me.
Sarei curioso di leggere qualche altra opera che abbia la stessa provenienza.
Molto poetico e forse fin troppo onirico per me.
Sarei curioso di leggere qualche altra opera che abbia la stessa provenienza.
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