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Fiction

An Open Letter to Mohamed Bouazizi

By Boualem Sansal
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
German Trade Prize winner Boualem Sansal pens a tribute to Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian whose self-immolation set the events of the Arab Spring in motion.

Dear Brother:

I write these few lines to let you know we’re doing well, on the whole, though it varies from day to day: sometimes the wind changes, it rains lead, life bleeds from every pore. To tell the truth, I’m not quite sure where we stand; when you’re up to your neck in war, you can’t tell till the end whether to celebrate or mourn. And there it is, the crucial question: whether to follow or precede the others. The consequences aren’t the same. Some victories can fall short, while some defeats are the beginnings of truly great victories. In this game where death always takes you by surprise, there is the time before and the time after, but only one extraordinarily fleeting moment to make up your mind.

Look at those poor Yemenites, who rejoiced when their miserable Saleh was carted away on a stretcher. They said to themselves: he is dead, now we shall live at last. But the monster came back to life, mad with rage, and he will be without pity. The Westerners hesitate to let him go. There’s no relief in sight, only caciques on the lookout, jihadists lying in wait, and tribes armed to the teeth: you can’t make a democracy with that. Same thing elsewhere: people don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Gadhafi drives humanity to despair, refusing to die; Boutef drives God to despair, refusing to speak his final prayer; and what to say about Assad, he drives Death to despair, killing faster than it does. How long it is, this Arab spring, and how uncertain its days.

I won’t say anything about Tunisia, dear Mohamed; you’re the last person I want to offend. But you know, that’s how the caciques in your country are, indefatigable, clever as chimpanzees, unctuous as insurance agents, giving with one hand what they take away with the other. They get it from the Phoenicians, who were so devious and grasping one wonders how they ever disappeared, if they ever really did. Bourguiba the great shofet was all smiles and smooth manners; he undressed people with his charm. In truth, he only gave them what was theirs already. Women having rights—what could be more natural? That’s what he succeeded in doing, giving Tunisian women what they’d gotten already, from God and from themselves: beauty, intelligence, freedom. In Tunisia, they say, “Bourguiba gave us,” but this is an error, and from such errors dictatorships are born. What someone gives you, another can take back. Bourguiba was in power for thirty years, as long as Mubarak and Saleh, and it was his creature Ben Ali who succeeded him. It’s time to open our eyes: there is no freedom but that we give ourselves. If Ben Ali’s successor promises freedom and democracy, we must drive him out; he is a dictator. The Tunisians have better things to do, don’t they, than explain to him that they’ve given themselves freedom and democracy, and expect from him sound management of the country’s budget, the rest is none of his business. So: no speeches, no religion, no quavering voices, no acts—none of it! And watch out for famous men; they are thieves of revolutions.

The other bandits in the brotherhood—the Bouteflikas, the Mubaraks, the Ben Alis, the Assads and their gang—have tried hard to imitate Bourguiba, but despite him revert quickly to their true natures: murder, torture, robbery.

Jesus once said something like: he who makes the wine is not he who drinks it. You, Mohamed, brave and noble son of Sidi Bouzid: you delivered the spark, your task is done, the task is ours now to finish. Cross my heart and hope to die, we’ll finish it; our children will live in the peace we have made for them.

But let’s take the long view for a moment. Can he who does not know where to go find the way? Is driving the dictator out the end? From where you are, Mohamed, next to God, you can tell that not all roads lead to Rome; ousting a tyrant doesn’t lead to freedom. Prisoners like trading one prison for another, for a change of scenery and the chance to gain a little something along the way. And that, you see, is where I fear for our revolutionaries. They lack perspective. In ‘88-‘89, we drove the dictator Chadli, not the worst bandit ever, from Algeria, and what did we do right after that? Threw ourselves into the arms of Islamists, abandoned ourselves wholly to trabendo, that carcinogenic trade in contraband, and, as little streams feed great rivers, we made ourselves black marketers on a global scale. Did we stop there? No, not at all, we deserted our children, they became fish food or were lost in the cesspits of illegal immigration, with the promise of a short, barren life. And, quite proud of ourselves, we grew thick as thieves with Bouteflika, the worst bandit on earth.

Dear Mohamed, if you can come back, tell them you didn’t set yourself on fire for this, tell them you wanted the dictatorship and its shadows, all its shadows, the straitjackets of clannishness and nepotism, the racism of the State and anti-Semitism as the only way of looking at the world, Islamism or exile as the only hopes—that you wanted all these fatal things swept from our path to make way for a life that is clean, peaceful, warm, and friendly.

Dear Mohamed, dear hero, it is not given to one person to light the fire and make the soup, but it is just that all should dip their bread in it. We must free ourselves of our evils, but also care for the petty, the deranged, the mad imams, the traffickers. Lest we replace an ignorant, corrupt elite with a jargon-ridden elite every bit as profiteering, living mainly in the West where the local democracy accepts them with difficulty, for such is democracy: it recognizes only its own, those who have fought for it. I feel like that’s how things happen in the Arab world, which is trying to wake from several centuries of daydreams and despotism, but it’s true that in the smoke and tumult of suppressions, it’s hard to tell truth from falsehood. Urgency is imperious, and keeps us from seeing very far.

That’s what I wanted to say to you, dear Mohamed. If you could show yourself and enlighten us, it would be nice—from up there you know the future of the world.

Boualem Sansal
Algiers, Spring 2011

Translation of “A Mohamed Bouazizi.” First published in Le Monde, June 15, 2011. Copyright Boualem Sansal. By arrangement with the author. Translation copyright 2011 by Edward Gauvin. All rights reserved.

English French (Original)

Dear Brother:

I write these few lines to let you know we’re doing well, on the whole, though it varies from day to day: sometimes the wind changes, it rains lead, life bleeds from every pore. To tell the truth, I’m not quite sure where we stand; when you’re up to your neck in war, you can’t tell till the end whether to celebrate or mourn. And there it is, the crucial question: whether to follow or precede the others. The consequences aren’t the same. Some victories can fall short, while some defeats are the beginnings of truly great victories. In this game where death always takes you by surprise, there is the time before and the time after, but only one extraordinarily fleeting moment to make up your mind.

Look at those poor Yemenites, who rejoiced when their miserable Saleh was carted away on a stretcher. They said to themselves: he is dead, now we shall live at last. But the monster came back to life, mad with rage, and he will be without pity. The Westerners hesitate to let him go. There’s no relief in sight, only caciques on the lookout, jihadists lying in wait, and tribes armed to the teeth: you can’t make a democracy with that. Same thing elsewhere: people don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Gadhafi drives humanity to despair, refusing to die; Boutef drives God to despair, refusing to speak his final prayer; and what to say about Assad, he drives Death to despair, killing faster than it does. How long it is, this Arab spring, and how uncertain its days.

I won’t say anything about Tunisia, dear Mohamed; you’re the last person I want to offend. But you know, that’s how the caciques in your country are, indefatigable, clever as chimpanzees, unctuous as insurance agents, giving with one hand what they take away with the other. They get it from the Phoenicians, who were so devious and grasping one wonders how they ever disappeared, if they ever really did. Bourguiba the great shofet was all smiles and smooth manners; he undressed people with his charm. In truth, he only gave them what was theirs already. Women having rights—what could be more natural? That’s what he succeeded in doing, giving Tunisian women what they’d gotten already, from God and from themselves: beauty, intelligence, freedom. In Tunisia, they say, “Bourguiba gave us,” but this is an error, and from such errors dictatorships are born. What someone gives you, another can take back. Bourguiba was in power for thirty years, as long as Mubarak and Saleh, and it was his creature Ben Ali who succeeded him. It’s time to open our eyes: there is no freedom but that we give ourselves. If Ben Ali’s successor promises freedom and democracy, we must drive him out; he is a dictator. The Tunisians have better things to do, don’t they, than explain to him that they’ve given themselves freedom and democracy, and expect from him sound management of the country’s budget, the rest is none of his business. So: no speeches, no religion, no quavering voices, no acts—none of it! And watch out for famous men; they are thieves of revolutions.

The other bandits in the brotherhood—the Bouteflikas, the Mubaraks, the Ben Alis, the Assads and their gang—have tried hard to imitate Bourguiba, but despite him revert quickly to their true natures: murder, torture, robbery.

Jesus once said something like: he who makes the wine is not he who drinks it. You, Mohamed, brave and noble son of Sidi Bouzid: you delivered the spark, your task is done, the task is ours now to finish. Cross my heart and hope to die, we’ll finish it; our children will live in the peace we have made for them.

But let’s take the long view for a moment. Can he who does not know where to go find the way? Is driving the dictator out the end? From where you are, Mohamed, next to God, you can tell that not all roads lead to Rome; ousting a tyrant doesn’t lead to freedom. Prisoners like trading one prison for another, for a change of scenery and the chance to gain a little something along the way. And that, you see, is where I fear for our revolutionaries. They lack perspective. In ‘88-‘89, we drove the dictator Chadli, not the worst bandit ever, from Algeria, and what did we do right after that? Threw ourselves into the arms of Islamists, abandoned ourselves wholly to trabendo, that carcinogenic trade in contraband, and, as little streams feed great rivers, we made ourselves black marketers on a global scale. Did we stop there? No, not at all, we deserted our children, they became fish food or were lost in the cesspits of illegal immigration, with the promise of a short, barren life. And, quite proud of ourselves, we grew thick as thieves with Bouteflika, the worst bandit on earth.

Dear Mohamed, if you can come back, tell them you didn’t set yourself on fire for this, tell them you wanted the dictatorship and its shadows, all its shadows, the straitjackets of clannishness and nepotism, the racism of the State and anti-Semitism as the only way of looking at the world, Islamism or exile as the only hopes—that you wanted all these fatal things swept from our path to make way for a life that is clean, peaceful, warm, and friendly.

Dear Mohamed, dear hero, it is not given to one person to light the fire and make the soup, but it is just that all should dip their bread in it. We must free ourselves of our evils, but also care for the petty, the deranged, the mad imams, the traffickers. Lest we replace an ignorant, corrupt elite with a jargon-ridden elite every bit as profiteering, living mainly in the West where the local democracy accepts them with difficulty, for such is democracy: it recognizes only its own, those who have fought for it. I feel like that’s how things happen in the Arab world, which is trying to wake from several centuries of daydreams and despotism, but it’s true that in the smoke and tumult of suppressions, it’s hard to tell truth from falsehood. Urgency is imperious, and keeps us from seeing very far.

That’s what I wanted to say to you, dear Mohamed. If you could show yourself and enlighten us, it would be nice—from up there you know the future of the world.

Boualem Sansal
Algiers, Spring 2011

Lettre à Bouazizi

Cher frère,

Je t’écris ces quelques lignes pour te faire savoir que nous allons plutôt bien mais ça dépend des jours, parfois le vent tourne, il pleut du plomb, la vie nous échappe par tous les pores. A vrai dire, je ne sais trop où on en est, quand on est dans la guerre jusqu’au cou, c’est à la fin qu’on voit s’il faut faire la fête ou porter le deuil. Et là, vient la question cruciale : faut-il suivre ou précéder les autres ; les conséquences ne sont pas les mêmes, une victoire peut tourner court et il est des défaites qui sont le début de vraies grandes victoires. A ce jeu de la mort surprise, y a le temps d’avant et il y a le temps d’après, mais il y a un seul instant, extraordinairement fugace, pour se décider.

Regarde ces pauvres Yéménites qui se sont réjouis du départ en civière de leur misérable Saleh. Ils se sont dit : il est mort, nous allons enfin vivre. Mais le monstre est revenu à la vie, fou de colère, il sera sans pitié. Les Occidentaux hésitent à le lâcher. Pas de relève à l’horizon, il n’y a que des caciques à l’affût, des djihadistes en embuscade et des tribus armées jusqu’aux dents, on ne fait pas une démocratie avec ça.

Pareil ailleurs, les gens ne savent sur quel pied danser, Kadhafi désespère l’humanité, il refuse de mourir, Boutef désespère Dieu, il refuse de faire sa dernière prière, et que dire de l’Assad, il désespère la Mort, il tue plus vite qu’elle. Qu’il est long le printemps arabe et que les jours sont incertains.

Je ne dis rien sur la Tunisie, cher Mohamed, tu es le dernier que je voudrais vexer. Mais tu le sais, les caciques dans ton pays sont comme ça, increvables, malins comme des singes, doucereux comme des assureurs, ils te promettent d’une main ce qu’ils sont en train de t’enlever de l’autre. Ils le tiennent des Phéniciens qui étaient si rusés et si âpres qu’on se demande comment ils ont disparus, si vraiment ils ont disparus. Bourguiba le grand suffète n’était que sourires et belles manières, il déshabillait les gens par enchantement. Ce qu’il leur donnait n’était en vérité que choses leur appartenant en propre. Que la femme ait ses droits, quoi de plus naturel. C’est ce qu’il a réussi à faire, donner à la Tunisienne ce qu’elle tenait de Dieu et d’elle-même, la beauté, l’intelligence et la liberté. En Tunisie, on dit « Bourguiba nous a donné… », c’est une erreur, de ces erreurs qui mènent aux dictatures. Si quelqu’un te donne, un autre peut te le reprendre. Le Bourguiba a gardé le pouvoir 30 années, autant que le Moubarak et le Saleh, et c’est un Benali, sa créature, qui lui a succédé. Il est temps d’ouvrir les yeux, il n’y a de liberté que celle qu’on se donne soi-même. Si le successeur de Benali promet la liberté et la démocratie, il faut le chasser, c’est un dictateur. Les Tunisiens ont mieux à faire, n’est-ce pas, que de lui expliquer qu’ils se les sont données eux-mêmes, la liberté et la démocratie, et qu’ils attendent de lui une gestion saine du budget de l’Etat, le reste ne le concerne pas. Donc, pas de discours, pas de religion, pas de trémolos, des actes, point ! Et gare aux notables, ce sont des voleurs de révolutions.

Les autres bandits de la confrérie, les Bouteflika, les Moubarak, les Benali, les Assad et consorts, avaient bien tenté d’imiter Bourguiba, mais n’est pas Bourguiba qui veut, ils revinrent vite à leur vraie nature : le meurtre, la torture, le vol.

Jésus a dit quelque chose comme ça : Celui qui fait le vin n’est pas celui qui le boit. Toi, Mohamed, noble et courageux rejeton de Sidi Bouzid, tu as délivré l’étincelle, ta tache est terminée, il nous revient de finir le travail. Et, croix de bois croix de fer, nous le ferons, nos enfants vivront dans la paix que nous leur préparons.

Mais voyons le fond. Celui qui ne sait où aller, peut-il trouver le chemin ? Chasser le dictateur est-ce la fin ? De ta place, bienheureux Mohamed, tout près de Dieu, tu le sais, les chemins ne mènent pas tous à Rome, chasser le tyran ne donne pas la liberté. Les prisonniers aiment quitter une prison pour une autre, histoire de changer d’air et de gagner un petit quelque chose au passage. Et là, tu vois, j’ai peur pour nos révolutionnaires, ils manquent de perspective. En Algérie, en 88-89, nous avons chassé le dictateur Chadli, qui n’était pas le pire des bandits, et qu’avons-nous fait après, nous nous sommes jetés dans les bras des islamistes, nous nous sommes adonnés à corps perdus au trabendo, cette petite contrebande cancérigène, et, petits ruisseaux faisant les grandes rivières, nous avons fabriqué des trafiquants planétaires. Est-ce tout ? Que non, que non, nous avons abandonné nos enfants, ils sont allés nourrir les poissons en mer ou se sont perdus dans les cloaques de l’émigration clandestine, sur une promesse de vie stérile et courte. Et tout fiers, nous nous sommes accoquinés à un Bouteflika, le pire des bandits sur terre.

Cher Mohamed, si tu pouvais revenir, dis-leur que tu ne t’es pas immolé pour ça, tu voulais que la dictature et ses ombres, toutes ses ombres, le clanisme et le népotisme comme des camisoles de force, le racisme d’Etat et l’antisémitisme comme seul regard sur le monde, l’islamisme ou l’exil comme seules espérances, que toutes ces choses mortifères disparaissent de notre chemin et cèdent la place à la vie propre, tranquille, chaleureuse, amicale.

Cher Mohamed, cher héros, il n’est pas donné à la même personne d’allumer le feu et de cuire la soupe, mais il est juste que tous y trempent leur pain. Il nous faut nous libérer de nos maux mais aussi soigner les mesquins, les détraqués, les imams fous, les trafiquants. Sinon on remplacera une élite ignare et corrompue par une élite jargonneuse tout aussi profiteuse, vivant pour l’essentiel en Occident où la démocratie locale les accepte mal, car telle est la démocratie, elle ne reconnaît que les siens, ceux qui se sont battus pour elle. J’ai l’impression que les choses se passent ainsi dans ce monde arabe qui tente de se réveiller de plusieurs siècles de rêvasseries et de despotisme, mais c’est vrai que dans le fracas et la fumée des répressions on distingue mal le vrai du faux. L’urgent est impérieux, il empêche de voir loin.

C’est cela que je voulais te dire, cher Mohamed. Si tu pouvais te manifester pour nous éclairer, ce serait bien, Là-haut vous savez l’avenir du monde.

Boualem Sansal
Alger, en ce printemps 2011

 

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