L'homme qui m'a donné des racines et des ailes

Mohammed Chafik:
The Man Who Gave Me Roots and Wings
By Fatema Mernissi



There are people who come into the world at the right time. I am one of those people. I was born in 1940, in a Morocco that believed very strongly in its Nahda. According to my favourite dictionary, 'nahda' (an Arabic word of ten mistakenly translated as Renaissance, though it has nothing to do with giving birth) means 'energy' ('at-taqa'), and the verb 'nahada' means 'to stand up' or better yet, 'to assume a fighting posture' (1).' In the Morocco of my childhood, people were convinced that they could drive out the French and Spanish troops who were colonising them and create a fabulous new future for themselves. Just as Europeans were killing each other in what they called the Second World War, Arabs were convinced that a civilisation so full of self-destructive violence could no longer dominate the world and that it was possible to escape from it. In my Morocco, the religious authorities dreamed of educated women who wore no veils, and in 1947 they opened a women's school in the Qaraouiyine, the medieval university of theology in Fez, the city where I was born (2). In my neighbourhood, an alem (a religious authority) opened one of the first private co-educational schools where, between prayers, boys and girls were asked to learn history, geography and mathematics and especially to sing and do gymnastics. It was to this school that my father sent me.
What my father had not foreseen was that colonisation was going to take a different, more insidious form: that of a Cold War or the atrophy of Arab brains, which was pre-programmed as soon as Standard Oil of California discovered oil in Saudi Arabia in 1933, and which snuffed out any dream of renewal by financing one of the great mechanisms of censure and terror in the history of humanity. (3) , An Arab power that financed democracies that liberated the brain and unleashed human capital was perceived as contrary to the interests of the American strategists who were redrawing the map of the world.' In June 1948, the American Secretary of Defence, James Forrestal told the Joint Chiefs of Staff: 'Arabia should henceforth be considered as included within the defence zone of the Western Hemisphere,' notes Antoine Basbous, the di rector of the 'Observatoire des pays arabes' and an expert on Islamism, to explain Bin Laden and the events of September 11, 2001 (4).'The war in Palestine in 1948 'sounded the first death toll for the Arab renaissance'.(5)

In 1954, adolescence was for me a chaotic crash landing into a depressed Morocco where occupation troops were still present and there was scarcely a sign of their withdrawal in 1956, the year of so-called 'independence'. The latter was no more than the draping of an apparatus of terror in amore oriental cloth; an apparatus that drew its strength from a perverse West that praised human rights in the morning and fornicated with despots in the evening. And it was precisely in 1954 that a man came into the classroom of the Middle School for Muslim Girls where I was studying and revealed a secret to me: I could continue to cultivate the dream of Nahda all by myself. Like the vestals in temples deserted by the gods.

The Young Professor Who Praised Diversity

This man's name was Mohammed Chafik. He was tall and thin, and his eyes looked into space with the intensity characteristic of visionaries; you feel you exist for them, but they are fascinated by something bigger. I later understood that his lofty carriage and his ramrod straight back proceeded from the tact that he did not move through space, as did the more mediocre among us, but through time. And his time resembled that of Albert Einstein, who reminded us that 'The distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.' (6) He taught me to respect no border that affects my sovereignty as a human being, whether it be spatial, like the veil, or temporal, like the notion of progress which depreciates the past, cuts me off from millions of years and reduces my identity. Roots and wings, he constantly repeated, that is what a good teacher can give his pupil. He succeeded in helping me surmount the feeling of despair that overwhelmed my generation, surrounded as it was by a Cold War fraught with extremism, and he did so by opening up to me vast prairies of memory: 'The generations called upon to promote and manage the era of the opening up of our Maghrebin societies will recognise a historical fact that has been officially obscured for decades, if not for centuries: Punicised, Hellenised, Latinised, strongly Arabised, and then superficially Gallicised, North Africa remains fundamentally Berber.' (7) Whereas the extremists who were baying all around wanted to send me back to the mythic caliphal harem, denying me the sovereign right to move through streets and parliaments, here was a young man who came back to the city of Fez to challenge borders, destroy calendars and to invite me to roam freely through a past that escapes Saudi Arabia and the Americans who supported it!

Moreover, he was handsome, which was hardily surprising, since he came from Beni Sadden, an area in the suburbs of Fez that was famous for the beauty of its men and women. He was young, but above all dazzlingly eloquent. He came into my classroom one rainy morning in the autumn of 1954 and greeted us without smiling, which was odd in a city where politeness required one to show one's gums. He declared that he was going to teach us something I had never heard of: ' At-tarjama'. At break time I ran to the dictionary and discovered what the word meant: 'To translate someone's words ('tarjama lahu') means to explain them in another language.' (8) I closed the dictionary and took it in my arms as if it were a lover: the idea of travelling between languages enchanted me. But when class resumed, Professor Chafik told us that his translation course was going to help us move back and forth between Arabic and French. My heart sank, for I was afraid of the French; I found them cruel. As if he were reading my mind, Professor Chafik added that 'To learn the enemy's language is al ready to begin transforming him.' An unaccustomed silence came over the class: this man was speaking to us about the enemy in a different way. The other teachers, embittered by the events in Palestine, told us that to speak the enemy's language was to betray the Arab nation! This man told us the contrary! One key concept came back again and again in his course: 'Tafutah', opening up in the sense of regenerating dialogue with foreigners.

To Open Up to the Enemy is to Capture His Strength

He spoke of opening up to the other as a strategy both for surviving and for flourishing. This was the key concept in his worldview, and he never ceased to teach it. 'Clearly, it is the opening up of the mind that is at issue here. We are talking about a deliberate and sustained effort on the part of the individual to grasp the foreigner's point of view.' (9) He was to bring polemics to my school for young Muslim girls and then to Morocco as a whole, by rejecting xenophobia: '1Ishall tell these supporters of cultural xenophobia,' he later wrote with defiance, 'that I am Francophone and proud of it, without having the slightest passion for France. Like all Moroccans of my generation, I have serious reasons to execrate France and yet I do not hate it, for it is my country's weakness that makes France strong." (10) The idea of conceiving colonisation and its opposite -the liberation of individuals and peoples - in terms of a circulation of energy, rather than borders that block identities and erect exclusion, delighted Professor Chafik's female audience, which was haunted by the nightmare of a harem that the extremists were beginning to brandish. But the turmoil in the translation class suddenly over spilled into the whole school system and beyond, reaching the city's intellectual elite. For although this young professor was barely twenty years old, he was expressing dissidence based on the Arabic language and the Koran which he often cited. But to support his thesis of the secular nature of political power, which set off alarm bells among all the police watching over the world, both local and international, he touched upon a taboo: the Berber language.

To proclaim one's Berber, Kurdish or Christian identity was to weaken the Arab nation by allowing it to crumble away, cried the preachers in Saudi Arabia, who had massive resources enabling them to use the holy scripture as a strategic weapon to diffuse censorship and exclusion: 'Saudi Arabia has published 53 million copies of the Koran...(11)' Hence the danger represented by such thinkers as Mohammed Chafik, who did not draw their notions of democracy from a West contaminated by its own Cold War. Chafik's conception of democracy was rooted in a Koran which cites linguistic pluralism as one of Allah's miracles: 'Islam, as a religion and a worldview, has a very clear position regarding pluralism, be it linguistic or ethnic. The verse of the surah 'The Romans' sums it up very well: ' And among his miracles the diversity of your languages and colours. There are, truly, signs for those who know how to decode them." (12) Chafik points out that diversity, celebrated as a divine miracle in the Koran, 'is constantly reconfirmed by scientific discoveries as a manifestation of a rich and balanced environment. And little by little, humanity has become convinced that linguistic diversity enriches thought and energises culture, because each language organises reality in a different way.' (13) But the true miracle is that Mohammed Chafik's voice, as dissonant as it was, made itself heard in Morocco despite the cacophony of an Arab world deafened by the Saudi extremist media machine. Professor Chafik influenced many generations including that of the young King Mohammed VI, who was his most prominent royal student. Morocco is one of those rare countries where democratisation is currently making unprecedented progress, where Berber is recognised as one of the official languages, civil society is encouraged and women have invaded the parliament.

How can this be explained? Some people will tell you that Morocco has chosen the path of democratisation because it has no oil, but only human potential as a source of energy and wealth. Others will tell you that our democratisation is on the right path because Moroccans have had an opportunity to listen attentively to thinkers like Professor Chafik and to celebrate them as guiding lights during the darkest decades of the Cold War.

Needless to say, if you suggest to Professor Chafik that tolerance, linguistic pluralism and diversity, and the recent creation of the Royal lnstitute of Berber Culture is in some sense the realisation of the dream that he has stubbornly tried to share since he made up his mind at the age of eighteen to become a teacher, he will smile with the modesty that befits all great men and tell you that you are exaggerating. But I persist in saying so and I repeat to my teacher, Mohammed Chafik, that the audacity I have had, which has allowed me to travel the planet and discover the world for myself without being impressed by mediocre extremist propagandists, is certainly due in large measure to my grandmother Yasmina, who was illiterate, as was his own, but also and especially to the tact that he convinced me in his translation classes that I had roots and wings.

Translated from French by Steven Rendall. Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development © 2002

Notes:
1. Ibn Manzhur, .lisan al-Arab. (The Language of the Arabs; Cairo: Dar al-Maarif, 1979), 6:456.lbn Manzhur was born in Cairo in 1232 and died in1311.

2. Photos of this event, in which the theologians invited women to share their academic space now seem almost surrealistic. Consider, for instance. the picture of Professor AbdelhadiTazi on page 182 of his book on 'The Qaraouiyine University' (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Lubnani. 1972).

3. George Corm. .Le Proche Orient éclaté. (Paris: Gallimard.1991). p.63.

4. Antoine Basbous, .L. Arabie Saoudite en question. (Paris: Editions Perrin [www.editions-perrin.fr. August 2002]).

5. George Corm, .Conflits et identités au Moyen Orient: 1919-1991. (Paris: Arcantere. 1992). p. 97.

6. Quoted by Paul Davies in his book 'About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution. (New York: Sirnon and Schuster, 1995). p. 70.

7. Les générations appelées a promouvoir et a gérer I'ere d.ouverture de nos sociétés maghrébines se rendront a une évidence historique officiellement occultée pendant des déciennies sinon des siecles: punicisées, hellénisée, latinisée, fortement arabisée, puis superficiellement francisée, I' Afrique du Nord demeure foncierement berbere: Mohammed Chafik, 'Le Vécu individuel d'une apparence identitaire pluridimensionnelle.. manuscript written 12 September 2002, p. 11. This manuscript was published in the daily newspaper .Le Journal'. p. 2.

8. I came across this expression again years later in .Lisan al-Arab.: .Tarjama kalamahu idha fassarahu bi-lisanin akhar: Ibn Manzhur, 'Lisan al-Arab'.

9. Mohammed Chafik, .LeVécu indiyiduel..:, p. 2.

10. Ibid., p. 10.

11. Ibid..p.10.

12. Mohammed Chafik. Al-Lugha al Amazighiya' (TheAmazigh Language; Casablanca: Le Fennec, 2(KX), p. 8. Amazigh is the name the inhabitants of North Africa. Whom the Greeks called Berbers, originally gaye themselves. Professor Chafik reminds us that among the Greeks, the word .barbaros' meant any non-Greek, whether or not civilised. See: .Le Vécu indiyiduel..., p. 1. As for the Koranic yerse cited, I giye my translation of yerse 22 of surah 'Ar-Rum': 'wa min ayatihi...ikhtilafu alsinatikum wa alwanikum. Inna fi dhalika la-ayatin li-alamin'.

13. Mohammed Chafik, . Al-Lugha al Amazighiya', p. 8.

salut


Qui a encore ce texte en francais !?

J ai deja lu ce texte en francais sur le site du Journal www.telquel-online.com ( Le Maroc tel qu'il est ) , mais je ne l ai lus trouvé dans les archives

SVP qui a ce texte en francais !?

merci d avances

[FidoQc]

C'est de la pub gratuite pour un homme et un seul, pourtant le travail est fait par plusieurs...... :-( :-( :-(