{"id":10074,"date":"2013-09-09T00:27:55","date_gmt":"2013-09-09T04:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=10074"},"modified":"2013-09-09T18:19:57","modified_gmt":"2013-09-09T22:19:57","slug":"tahar-ben-jelloun-by-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2013\/09\/09\/tahar-ben-jelloun-by-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Tahar Ben Jelloun: “By Fire”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here<\/a> to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0webpage. Tahar Ben Jelloun\u2019s \u201cBy Fire\u201d (tr. from the French by Rita S. Nezami) was originally published in the September 16, 2013 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Click<\/a>
Click for a larger image.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is the second piece of fiction in translation in a row, and the third in four weeks. I haven’t checked, but this must be some kind of record. In contrast to last week’s author, though, Ben Jelloun has been translated into English for some time, though I have not read his work before.<\/p>\n

Betsy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tahar Ben Jelloun\u2019s \u201cBy Fire\u201d has appeared in the September 11th issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.\u00a0Ben Jelloun, born in 1944, is an expatriate of Morocco living in France and writing in French. Set in an unnamed Islamic country, \u201cBy Fire\u201d tells a young Arab man\u2019s story: educated, but no job; in love, but no hope of marriage; the oldest son in a large family, but no hope for any of them; a citizen, but with no hope of protection from the police.\u00a0What startles me about the story is Ben Jelloun\u2019s point of view:<\/p>\n

There was too much injustice in the country, too much inequality and humiliation.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story makes no effort to blame the West for the young man’s problems.\u00a0The dream of Canada is like a beacon for the young man\u2019s fianc\u00e9e, even though the route to Canada must be through bribing corrupt officials.<\/p>\n

Ben Jelloun makes every effort to detail the way in which Mohammed is slowly driven to despair by the situation in his own country.\u00a0The young man has not one thought that it is Israel who has caused his problems, or the United States, or France or any other outside force. His suffering is at the hands of his own countrymen: lies, corruption, destruction of his property, threats, coercion, and a severe beating bring the young man to the end of his rope.<\/p>\n

Fire begins and ends the story: first, the young man burns his diploma, but in the end, it is himself he sets afire.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the story of a simple man, like millions of others, who, after being crushed, humiliated and denied in life, became the spark that set the world ablaze.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a separate essay to be written about the way Ben\u00a0Jelloun makes use of the word humiliation. <\/i>I think there is far more to be said about how he means that word to work, but in my ignorance, I am not the one to say it.<\/p>\n

While the story reminds me of the present situation in Egypt, and the men in Syria who have been driven to rebellion, it is actually a specific tribute to a specific man: Mohamed Bouazizi, who began the Arab Spring when he set himself ablaze in Tunisia in 2010. Bouazizi has not been the only man to set himself afire in the Arab world.\u00a0Others followed in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt,\u00a0Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere, and we are not yet done. The Tunisian government fell, Libya rebelled against its tyrant, the government in Egypt fell, and now Syria is in flames.<\/p>\n

Mohamed Bouazizi\u2019s death was no ordinary death.<\/p>\n

Ben Jelloun depends upon simplicity and a straightforward style to honor Bouazizi\u2019s memory, and he depends upon his vision of poverty to give the story its scope.<\/p>\n

Discovering that the story is based on a real man\u2019s death makes it unforgettable, but in the end, it is the form of fiction which gives the story its power. Free to imagine Mohamed\u2019s mother, brothers and girlfriend, Ben Jelloun\u2019s style allows the story to rise above reporting to something more universal. Most of all, Ben Jelloun honors these men when he insists upon recognition for the conditions that brought them to their deaths: that poverty created of their lives a vast and crushing denial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker\u00a0webpage. Tahar Ben Jelloun\u2019s \u201cBy Fire\u201d (tr. from the French by Rita S. Nezami) was originally published in the September 16, 2013 issue of The New Yorker. This is the second piece of fiction in translation in a row, and the third in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,455],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-yorker-fiction","category-tahar-ben-jelloun"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-2Cu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10074"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10080,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10074\/revisions\/10080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10074"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}