Abdelfattah Kilito on the State of Arabic Language & Literature

This article translated from Moroccan press by Melanie Magidow

(Hespress April 28, 2018, Wail Bourchachene)

Abdelfattah Kilito, Moroccan writer and literary critic, deplored that his Masters students in the last several years before his retirement “really read nothing.” In an interactive lecture at Ibn Tufail University in Kénitra, he stressed that the students were not familiar with important literary references and prominent writers.

Regarding the titles of his books, Kilito said they were not determined by commercial motives. Laughing, he added, “The commercial aspect is hardly existent in Morocco.” In recent years, he said, he was no longer following the work of young Moroccans in French.

Having studied at American, French and Moroccan universities, he said that it was the title of one of his recent books that led people to read it. He added that he came up with the title “I speak all languages in Arabic” after three in the morning while reading Kafka, and received the inspiration as baraka, a “blessing.”

Writing literary criticism in both French and Arabic, he explained that he is most comfortable translating from French to Arabic. “I am closer to Arabic than French, and this is not surprising because I learned Arabic before French. When I write, I write in both languages. Sometimes I leave what I write in one language, picking up in the other language. “

Kilito referred to a story from The One Thousand and One Nights (or The Arabian Nights) to illustrate how cultural heritage remains important through travel, learning, knowledge and interaction with other cultures and perspectives.

He said, “In a story from 1001 Nights, a person in Baghdad once heard a voice saying, ‘Your fortune is to be found in Cairo.’ So he traveled, sleeping in mosques for his accommodation, only to find his fortune near his own house because the ruler in Cairo told him that he heard a voice three times saying: ‘There is a fortune in Baghdad at this house near this tree.’ The traveler recognized the description of his own home, returned, and dug up the treasure.”

“If he had not traveled, this man would never have found the treasure,” explained Kilito. “The voice did not lie to him because he had to travel to learn.”

Kilito also referred to a text by Borges in which someone was looking for the water of eternal life. He found it, and became immortal, and then started searching for a spring to take away this immortality so he could be rid of it. Kilito explained that this person was really looking for death, but he didn’t know it until he lost it.

“In order to know that what we are looking for is close to us, we must depart and return,” the author of Literature and Estrangement (Al-Adab wal-gharaba) said. “But do we go back?” He asked. “I don’t know.”

Kilito, an avid reader of Moroccan philosopher Abdeslam Bin Abdelali, said, “The reason why 1001 Nights became the most famous Arab book instead of the Maqamat of al-Hariri is that the Maqamat is still a prisoner of the Arabic language.”

He compared it to the writing of Averroes (Ibn Rushd in Arabic), which was “transmitted to Hebrew, Latin, and other languages,” calling on the audience to envision how Ibn Rushd’s tomb was tranferred from Marrakech to Cordoba after he “we neglected him and his books, while he was received by others.” The fate of 1001 Nights is like the fate of Ibn Rushd who the Europeans received as “their philosopher.”