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Crossing Boundaries: Morocco's Many Voices

March 2016

“Untitled,” by Hicham Benohoud
Image: Hicham Benohoud, Untitled, Oil on Canvas, 2013 Courtesy of the artist and Galerie D’Art L’Atelier 21
Image: Hicham Benohoud, Untitled, Oil on Canvas, 2013 Courtesy of the artist and Galerie D’Art L’Atelier 21

This month, Words without Borders features writing from Morocco. The work in these pages—translated from French, classical and Moroccan Arabic, and Tamazight—explores questions of privilege, sexism, repression, and the tension between tradition and modernity to reveal the richness of this underrepresented literary culture. Fouad Laroui’s diplomat loses his pants but keeps his wits. Poets Siham Bouhlal and Ahmed Bouanani meditate on love, loss, and the past. Mohamed Leftah pens an anguished account of a suicide, and Abdallah Zrika finds his text has a life of its own. In revealing portraits of relationships between the sexes, Khadija Arouhal decries the restricted roles of women, while Malika Moustadraf’s young pauper seethes with resentment and lust. Mourad Kadiri imagines a backstory for the habitués of a popular café. In their first English publications, Mohamed El Khadiri depicts a sexual transaction turned confession, and Soukaina Habiballah dissects a rose. We thank our guest editor, Emma Ramadan, who contributes three translations and an illuminating introduction.

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