My father wrote with kindness and patience. His Parker ink pen was a treasure he kept like anything else he had. When he opened the bag and changed the empty ink cartridge to fill it, it was a custom to see. He held that pen with the grace of the collector. Touched by his pamphlet, he wrote and wrote in Arabic and French, as if each letter had to be masterfully written, each word sounding like the sound of music. His writings were rich in calligraphy diagrams drawn in tight lines. As a child, I was fascinated by the sound of his pen as it landed on the page and saw his hand move peacefully with his mind.
My father was not a writer. He just loved writing with his ink pen. I never asked what he wrote or why he was so interested in writing. I took a quick look at his books and realized that his words were literary, thought-provoking, perhaps trying to write down a life characterized by lost dreams and being overwhelmed by the long and terrible pain of illness. I will never know. My father died more than 30 years ago, and my family lost their records. What I remember is his writing and the secret of the words that I did not care at the time for me to read.
I was ten when my father was diagnosed with oral cancer. Doctors in Morocco and France did not consider it possible to live beyond a few months, but they resisted disease for 10 years. The abuse did not cure her at all. It did not diminish his agony when his strength was gone and half of his face became cold and dry, leaving him with severe scars for years. It was hard for her to realize how devastating this devastating disease was. Frequent hospitalizations, severe fatigue, and blurred vision were exhausting. Heads turned in the streets, and the look of fear and pity must have lifted her deeply. I remember that he was very weak, but he really wanted to keep living. He read and wrote for a long time of pain and even though one of his eyes was tired, his eye did not disappear.
I know he would have told me more about his writings and their meaning had it not been for his illness. Probably, he wrote to escape the painful life after his illness. I wonder if she wanted to impart wisdom to her children who were so speechless that she could not pass them on. Likely, he came to the rescue of his wife as a government worker. Alternatively, drawing letters on a page provides a comforting reflection that they have not found anywhere else. I will never know.
I still remember my father with vivid words. The advice of a letter graduate who studied philosophy in college he, the eldest, was forced to drop out of school after the death of his father to take care of his family. His story of that time was often marked by sadness, unfulfilled desire and loss of childhood. His home library testified to dreams that were soon solved. The beautiful blue tome of the Islamic exegesis in Arabic was carefully prepared along with the French books of Descartes, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Zola, Hugo, Maupassant.
I did not ask why these writers, why the list of books, if there was a union in the group, but I understood later that, apart from their education in the Quran school, my father’s education in the 1930s and 1940s Morocco was in hand. for French teachers during colonial times. He often talked about a mature teacher who insisted that everyone repeat the false colonial rhetoric, “La France est ma nouvelle patrie” (France and my new country) at the beginning of each lesson with a teacher who called them “petits indigènes” (young people) and gave them French names. When I was a child, my father’s education was in the service of the kingdom, a teaching ability that seemed to be a charitable gift. He told us: “When the French rule over you, they control your emotions.” That’s it. Significant meanings in short sentences. I had to read it for myself later to understand the difference my father had between the physical punishment of the Koranic school and the hypocrisy of modern colonial education. Learning was compelling or repetitive.
But in spite of the badness of the empire, my father was a staunch supporter of French philosophy and literature. He spoke French fluently and clearly, an intentional symbol perhaps in exchange for the colonial language. As the Algerian writer Kateb Yacine puts it, we have preserved the French as a ‘war spoiler’ despite the wording of our defeat. Perhaps that is why my father wanted to embellish the French language with simple words. His memory of the degrading school had to be fixed through the soft pencil of his pen. This is how he found himself humbled at a young age because of the violence of colonial education.
Whether he was shocked by his illness or frightened by the darkness of colonial memory, my father did not say much about himself, his history, or his dreams. At times, her silence was different because she was tired, but in retrospect, her speech was flawed because, like many of her contemporaries, she did not want her children to be burdened with a history of pain and humiliation. Not everyone has the opportunity to be talented and calm to highlight the past and make it for themselves and others. My father was not one of them. Her articles did not have the wisdom to change lives, nor did they have the advice to know for myself. Perhaps, her writing concealed talent or grievances for lack of language or physical strength to be the guiding words for her children. I will never know.
Looking back, I wanted to say as Jorge Luis Borges that I was further educated by my father’s library, that the books on their shelves and their favorite writings filled the seed in me. I do not know why my father wanted to be a philosopher, why he read the books of Descartes and Hegel, why he continued to read the Quran and its translation. I was too young and too confused to ask him these difficult questions, but something deeper was bothering him. Perhaps the most intriguing is the connection between his deep-seated beliefs and the subtlety of philosophical skepticism. I wanted to say that I was fulfilling my father’s dream of becoming a teacher and student, that their wise love of reading and writing was the source of my first awakening, or that I am speaking today to be silent. . And maybe all is true. I am an extension of my father’s broken future and it is wonderful to hear, even for a moment, that their lifelong dreams never came true.
But I have no way of confirming this connection. If there was an insatiable desire of a writer or student in my father, he was able to hide well. I searched frantically for his little things, which seem to be sitting in an unsightly garage, in his books hoping to find information or to find a hidden note in one of his books, but my insistence only brought frustration and anger. The things I really appreciate in remembering my dad are gone and only my thoughts can save this part from being forgotten. His writing is on me like a whisper, an obscure memory that just passes through the unsightly but painful whips.
Perhaps that is why writing like Marabu, as a Muslim does not come to me easily or peacefully. My words come to the page like an argument, a destruction, an eagle, a show of face to face with my truth, my history, and my culture. Contrary to the peace I think of in my father’s writings, I feel motivated, empowered, a kind of call that is made as a result of the pain of allowing unanswered insults, a lot of uncontrolled prejudice. “I build my language with stones,” said Martinican poet oudouard Glissant. I build my own as if stones were thrown at me, and I wonder why some are able to write without complaint while others see their writing criticized for unresponsive response, bitter singing to inflict pain and monitoring damage. I want to restore the restricted peace of my writing from the evils of the work that always awaits the subaltern writer. I do not want my pen to be a sword, or its ink to be detestable. My language should not feel like bleeding should be stopped, lest it cause serious damage that cannot be repaired. My words were not shot like arrows in a world of simultaneous enmity. I do not shy away from fighting a righteous war and I believe in the gift of a sharp tongue and a strong pen, but I do not want my writings to be always noisy, weapons, cries of distress and injury. I wish my pen would match my dad’s movements.
I have to believe that it is the unmistakable beauty of the father’s writings that I adhere to, a wordless poem that I try to remember to interpret my writings and save me from the law of supplication, protection, and violence of the answer given. On the day of his death, the eyes of my father returned for a few minutes to see us again. It was an amazing moment of temporary happiness before unspeakable grief, but I remember it now as I still see a glimpse of her love notes. My dad’s books were packed, and maybe that’s a good enough memory to have. His words were not to the reader, the editor, but to himself. He wrote and wrote, as Gloria Anzaldúa urged us, not to allow ink to cool down in our writing. “Write with your eyes, as those who paint a picture,” he would say, “and your ears like the singers, and your feet like the dancers. I may not know what my father wrote or he wanted his writings to be for the benefit of everyone, but he left me the greatest lesson of all. Do not hand over your pen to someone else.
