News
The organizers of the PEN World Voices festival have announced their theme and program for this year. I will be taking part in three events. Here’s the first:
History and the Truth of Fiction
When: Wednesday, April 25
Where: Hemmerdinger Hall at NYU: 100 Washington Square East
What time: 1–2:30 p.m.
With Arthur Japin, Laila Lalami, Imma Monsó, Michael Wallner; moderated by Colum McCann
Free and open to the public. No reservations.
The second:
Where on Earth: The Refugee Emergency
When: Thursday, April 26
Where: Lang Recital Hall, Hunter College: 695 Park Ave.
What time: 3–4:30 p.m.
With Ishmael Beah, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Laila Lalami, Saadi Youssef; moderated by Russell Banks
Free and open to the public. No reservations.
And the third:
An Evening with The Moth
When: Thursday, April 26
Where: 37 Arts: 450 West 37th St.
What time: 8–10 p.m.
With Neil Gaiman, Pico Iyer, Laila Lalami; and John Hodgman as your MC
Tickets: $30 (includes wine and beer)
Purchase tickets from Ticketmaster: www.ticketmaster.com or (212) 307-4100
I know what you’re wondering. And yes, I would be nervous, except I haven’t left the house in four days, haven’t showered in two, I’m on my fourth cup of coffee, and I am almost done with Chapter 11 of my novel. My brain is fried, and I have no room for nerves.
I have a story in a new anthology called X-24: Unclassified, edited by Tash Aw and Nii Ayikwei Parkes. It’s a slightly older piece; I haven’t written any new short fiction this year since I’m trying to focus on finishing the novel. But the book includes fantastic contributions by people like Naomi Alderman, Daniel Alarcón, Mohammed Naseehu Ali, Sefi Atta, and many others, so check it out.
I was relieved when I had to travel to Rabat for the Fulbright Symposium because it meant I would get away from the news coverage of the foiled terrorist attack in Casablanca. Last week, As Sabah published a color picture of the torn body of Abdelfettah Raydi, the 24-year-old man who blew himself up inside a cyber cafe in Sidi Moumen on March 11. Al Massae showed the second terrorist, 17-year-old Youssef Khoudri, while he was transported to Ibn Rochd Hospital. An Nass, meanwhile, printed a photo of him being stitched up. Not to be outdone, La Vie Economique did a dossier on the events, and included a photo of the severed head of Raydi.
Despite the sensationalism, the articles accompanying the photos were, for the most part, well researched and interesting. They included interviews with the man who had alerted police, with witnesses and survivors, and with the terrorists’ family and neighbors. Many journalists asked why nothing had been done about the shantytowns in Sidi Moumen since the attacks of May 2003, and cautioned that more attacks remain possible so long as there is fertile ground for them. But a columnist for Aujourd’hui le Maroc fumed that “barbarians should not be pitied.” (You’d think you were reading Max Boot.)
The details that have emerged certainly give pause: the seizure of 200 kg of explosives in Sidi Moumen; the fact that Raydi had already served two years of prison for suspected Salafi activities before being released in an amnesty in 2005; the claim that it took only two weeks to convince Youssef Khoudri–an illiterate mint seller and sometime drug user who lived in a one-room house with his five siblings and parents–to take part in the attack; the suggestion that the targets included the police headquarters on Zerktouni; and so on.
All this took me back to my work. Large parts of my novel are set in Sidi Moumen and it is difficult to write about something knowing not only that it could happen, but that it does happen. It’s not easy to use one’s imagination while at the same time grappling with a similar reality. In the end, I had to shut off the real in order to focus on the fictional; I had to stop reading the papers–at least until coverage subsides–so I can finish my novel. The symposium came at the right time.
Posting will be light to non-existent for the next three days while I travel to Rabat for the annual Fulbright Symposium. Come again soon.
“Diane Schoemperlen’s In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters is structured around the 100 stimulus words from the Standard Word Association Test. Each of these words– words like “soft”, “mutton”, “priest”, “red”, “needle”, “thirsty”–becomes a jumping off place for Schoemperlen to explore the different forms of love (as child, as mother, as wife, as lover) in her character Joanna’s life. While such a structure could feel like a gimmick in the wrong hands, Schoemperlen uses it to frame a strange and beautiful meditation on the wayward ways of the heart.”
Gayle Brandeis is the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write and The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel, which won Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change. Her second novel, Self Storage, was recently published by Ballantine.