In 1999 Kamel Daoud (Mesra, Algeria, 1970) was a young journalist for Le Quotidien d'Orane who came face to face with the brutality of the civil war ravaging his country since the early 1990s. Witness to the Had Chekala massacre, which left a thousand of the more than 200,000 dead in the conflict, the horror of those days was etched into his soul, waiting to become literature. "Like all young people, I was a bit naive and innocent, but the profession of journalism taught me that you can never tell everything, that there are stories that cannot be conveyed. The most difficult thing for those of us who have reported on a war is to return to reality. Many end up committing suicide, but another option is to write books, and I have chosen this," he jokes with unusual seriousness to EL MUNDO during his visit to Madrid, where he presented Huríes (Cabaret Voltaire), the novel that won the Goncourt Prize, France's top literary award.
Narrated with an intimate and delicate female voice, that of Aube, a woman who survived a throat-slitting during that massacre, forever rendered mute, the novel is an interior monologue in the form of a diary in which the protagonist recounts her raw story to the daughter she carries in her womb, who wonders whether to bring her into this hostile world for her gender. "Literature, even when it speaks of reality, can never escape the symbolic, just like dreams. Thus, Aube is the metaphor for a country that has lost its voice, just like its women," he asserts.
"The situation of Algerian women is tragic, and this is not visible from the outside. The image that the regime sells is that of Algiers, but a country is not just a capital, and in the 90% rural areas of Algeria, women live under a religious regime of oppression and terror," explains Daoud, lamenting that this situation is common in the Islamic world. "Shortly after publishing the book, in Afghanistan, the Taliban prohibited women from speaking on the streets. In my country and in all repressive regimes, whether Muslim or not, it happens like this. I believe it is because women represent life, and fanatics are jealous of this being that gives life. Furthermore, women are the mirror of the weaknesses and strengths of a society, and every dictator ends up not tolerating being confronted with their reflection."
The aforementioned silence, omnipresent in the book, affects a civil war known in the country as the décennie noire (Black Decade), after which a national reconciliation law prohibited speaking about anything that happened during those years. "Forgetting may be necessary at the beginning of peace, as a brief period of reflection for passions to calm down. However, over time, if it persists, it becomes a dangerous weapon that hinders building a future," reflects Daoud, deeply criticized in his country for daring to give voice to those years. "If this forgetting persists, it becomes a way to hide the facts and not assume their consequences, becoming dangerous for the notion of justice and for the memory of the younger generations. At some point, Algeria should repeal that prohibition, for the sake of the new generations, but for now, no one is interested in remembering what happened."
"Algeria should repeal the prohibition on speaking about the civil war for the sake of the youth, but for now, no one is interested in remembering what happened"
In this regard, the writer believes it is nonsensical that the civil conflict is obstinately concealed while the war of independence from France fought between 1954 and 1962 continues to be glorified. "This is because Algeria's recent history has been built on decolonization, and that narrative of the war against the West allows the country's elites and ordinary citizens to seek culprits and create a state project based solely on that opposition, without considering how absurd it is to blame something that ceased to exist over 60 years ago for current ills," argues Daoud.
"On the contrary, the civil war does not offer a clear scapegoat, as the Islamists, very powerful in the country, cannot be blamed. It seems that when a Muslim kills another Muslim, it means nothing, it doesn't matter to anyone, whereas if a Westerner kills a Muslim, then they are a martyr. And this is a global issue. People now get outraged by the deaths in Gaza, and they are right, but it's because they are killed from outside, while no one has ever said anything about the 200,000 dead in our civil war."
A fervent anti-Islamist for years, which earned him a fatwa in 2014, the writer has not hesitated to criticize in his novel the drama of the re-Islamization of Algeria, which transitioned in a few decades from a secular socialist state to an increasingly religious and dictatorial republic. "Upon coming to power in the 1990s, the two ministries claimed by the Islamists were Justice and Education. From there, they have been shaping future generations for years and turning citizens into believers to control society," denounces the writer, warning that this process is evident in the entire national construction of his country. "First, they attacked Algerianness and told us all that we were Arabs, which is not true, erasing a rich and diverse history. Then they attacked the language, called Arabic when it is not, trapped by the sacred and politicized and ideologized, to the point that if you criticize Arabic, you are accused of attacking God."
"The regime attacks writers because it has built a national fiction that does not allow anyone to question. The dictatorship is another fiction, but with an army behind it"
The next step, Daoud continues, has been to control culture, exemplified by the recent arrest of writer Boualem Sansal, for whom the regime has requested 10 years in prison this week, accused of "attempting against national integrity" for his texts, banned in his country and critical of religious obscurantism and Islamist resurgence. "The regime attacks writers because it has built a national fiction that does not allow anyone to question. The dictatorship is another fiction, but with an army behind it," he asserts. "Moreover, Sansal's case is a clear message to intimidate other future writers. They want to terrorize those who could tell things differently and question their homogeneous view of Algeria."
Despite his strong criticism, the writer, an atheist for years, wants to differentiate between Islam and Islamism, a crucial distinction, he believes, especially in Europe. "Islam is in the books, and Islamism is on the streets. Islam is seeking God, an intimate and private experience, while Islamism is about seeking power and imposing a worldview on others," he clarifies. "If you give a cookbook to a cannibal, they will eat you following a recipe they read in it, but you cannot blame the book for that," he says with a faint smile.