Mohamed Said Raihani
Encyclopedia
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
translator, novelist and short-story writer born on December 23, 1968 in Ksar el Kebir, north of Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
. He is a trilingual writer (writing in Arabic, French and English), author of seven works in fields of literary fiction and criticism and a member of Moroccan Writers’ Union.
He is the founder of Neo-experimental literature
Neo-experimentalism
Neo-experimental literature is a trend, since 2006, in Arab literature.The school name was coined by Moroccan short-story writer Mohamed Saïd Raïhani and his circle in Morocco...
, a movement recently inaugurated in modern Arabic literature (known in Arabic as المدرسة الحائية).
Childhood and early attractions towards arts and literature
Mohamed Saïd Raïhani was born on Monday December 23, 1968 in Ksar el Kebir (MoroccoMorocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
) where he got his primary and secondary schooling before going to Tetouan
Tétouan
Tetouan is a city in northern Morocco. The Berber name means literally "the eyes" and figuratively "the water springs". Tetouan is one of the two major ports of Morocco on the Mediterranean Sea. It lies a few miles south of the Strait of Gibraltar, and about 40 mi E.S.E. of Tangier...
north of Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
to carry on his university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
studies in English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
.
In his early life, he was fond of plastic arts but as he could not access Fine Arts School in Tetouan, 130 kilometers away from his hometown, since he was not yet fifteen years old, he shifted to literature, at the age of sixteen.
When he was sixteen years old, he tried writing his autobiography in French. Yet, on joining the university, he began writing short plays in English, being at that time a great fan of the Irish famous playwright George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
.
He also tried short story writing as he was fascinated by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
’s writings. However, right after his university studies, he joined the sector of National Education as a teacher. on the literary plane, he shifted right away from writing in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
into writing in Arabic, the language of his daily life and his deepest dreams.He, however, kept his love for short story that dates back to his childhood.
In fact, when he was a little boy, a lady who was a friend of his mother’s used to visit them every afternoon to tell them wonderful stories that were nothing but the "Arabian Nights". To this magic story-teller, he did a very special tribute in the first chapter of his "photo-autobiography" entitled "When Photo Talks".
This lady has kindled his passion for fiction since his very early childhood, enabling him master the craft of telling stories before even learning the literary writing techniques.
First steps towards fictive writing
As far as writing is concerned, Mohamed Saïd Raïhani admits being very grateful to “CompositionComposition (language)
The term composition , in written language, refers to the collective body of important features established by the author in their creation of literature...
”, a period he used to like most in the elementary school years. In periods of “Composition”, he felt fully free to write as he pleased and, gradually, he found out his growing inclination towards literary writing. However, reading books of great writers set his eyes wide open on worldwide literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
.
His early readings were guided by nightly television series he used to watch every night. Thus, «Les Misérables
Les Misérables
Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...
» by Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
was perhaps his first French-speaking book that he may have chosen with his own hands at the age of thirteen. Thus, late at night,he used to read on paper the same episodes of the series he had watched on TV in the early eighties.
Early narrative texts
"In Love" and "Open, Sesame!" are Mohamed Saïd Raïhani’s first short stories written by the end of 1991 when he was 23 years old. "In Love" was not published until fifteen years later. However, "Open, Sesame!", was published on May 9, 1994 on one of the greatest literary Annexes in the 1990s Morocco, "Bayan Al Yawm Al-Thaqafi”.The central theme in "Open, Sesame!" is repeated several times in Mohamed Saïd Raïhani’s early short stories: Flood. "Open, Sesame!" remains “a short story which invests dream as a narrative technique in a journey from individual dream to the collective one”, wrote Moroccan writer Mohamed Aslim in his preface to Mohamed Saïd Raïhani’s first collection of short stories "Waiting For The Morning” published in 2003.
Literary Philosophy
In 2003, Mohamed Saïd Raïhani wrote a short story entitled "The Three Keys" (published in the collection "Season of Migration to all places", 2005). This short story "The Three Keys", contains his philosophy related to fiction writing. "The Three Keys" defends free expression, urges love of the written work and dreams of reaching the real reader.It is a desire to reconcile the text with its free wild nature:"When Freedom, says Mohamed Saïd Raïhani in an interview with "Le Matin" a French-speaking daily newspaper, will be the direct background of fiction, Love the storyline and Dream the dominant form of narration, only then short story will have taken a wider step to emancipate itself from the present restrains. Yet, writers should realize that Immunity is not necessarily reserved to diplomates but it is also writers' and artists' as well. When writers will realize that and believe in it, they will meet Freedom and will write free texts where they can dream and love to the last dregs."
Frictions with the Authorities
After the notorious suicide bomb attacks in Casablanca on Friday May 16th 2003, Mohamed Saïd Raïhani published a manifesto entitled "From the Culture of Life to the Culture of Death" which cost him dearly as Moroccan authorities chose to punish him in his own office to avoid stirring further doubts in human-right circles.From the following year, 2004, Mohamed Saïd Raïhani started a new tradition in Moroccan culture by publishing yearly the "October Manifestoes" which are all gathered in a book released at summer 2009 as "History of Manipulating Professional Contests in Morocco". In an open letter From Mohamed Saïd Raïhani to the Moroccan Minister of National and Higher Education, Professional Training and Scientific Research, Rabat / Morocco, on February 12th 2010, he wrote:
“Regarding professional contests, I published thereon, as your Excellency knows, a whole book entitled "History of Manipulating Professional Contests in Morocco” released in 2009. However, I am afraid that this very book should be at the source of this brand-new kind of sanctions that has been projected on me for all these seven years and that does not seem to resemble any of the ordinary sanctions that other writers throughout History have suffered either by having their books seized or confiscated or even burnt. The brand-new kind of sanctions which has been focused on me for all these years attempts cleverly to “circumvent” the real problem occurring originally in the “cultural” sphere away to the “professional” field, for fear of making a hero out of the writer.
This newly-coined sanction makes use of all the administrative tools available for taming and repressive goals but too far from the context and the circumstances that are at the origin of the real crisis triggered by my signing and circulating "October’s Yearly Manifestoes" which extended over five years, from 2004 to 2009, before been gathered in the above-mentioned book, "History of Manipulating Professional Contests in Morocco”. This new punitive invention aims, unfairly and unscrupulously, at barring the way before my professional career in order to dwarf me professionally, administratively and financially”.
Works
- The Singularity Will (A Semiotic Study on First-names) in 2001
- Waiting for the Morning (Short StoriesShort storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
) in 2003
- Thus Spoke Santa Lugar-Verde (Short StoriesShort storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
), Naji Naaman Prize-Winner in 2005
- The Season of Migration to Anywhere (Short StoriesShort storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
) in 2006
- The Three Keys: An Anthology of Moroccan New Short Story (In Three Volumes:2006-2007-2008)
- The History of Manipulating Professional Contests in Morocco (syndical manifestosManifestoA manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
) (2009)
- Death of the Author (Short StoriesShort storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
) in 2010
- Letters to Moroccan Minister of Education (2nd Volume of The History of Manipulating Professional Contests in Morocco, 2011)
- A Dialogue between Two Generations (Short StoriesShort storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
) in 2011 (A collection of short stories co-authored with Moroccan short-story writer Driss seghir)
External links
- Mohamed Said Raihani's Site
- In Love, A Short Story By Mohamed Said Raihani
- Mohamed Said Raihani Interviewing Danish Poet Niels Hav
- An open letter From Mohamed Saïd Raïhani to the Moroccan Minister of National and Higher Education, Professional Training and Scientific Research, Rabat / Morocco, on February 12th 2010 (written in French)