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151 chapter 9 | Fille de harki | Relating to the Father, Country, and Religion in the Writing of Zahia Rahmani I want to testify, but I don’t know how—Zahia Rahmani, Moze My nieces sigh over all of the low blows they are dealt, ‘‘Arabs,’’ ‘‘Muslims’’ . . . They close themselves o√ to the violent e√ects of the shock that teaches them that, even if they were born in this country, of a blood that believed in a future for its children, they will never have a homeland.—Zahia Rahmani, France, récit d’une enfance (France, narrative of a childhood) Z ahia Rahmani’s literary work stems in many senses from a need to testify to a torment that is intense, immense, and inevitably extends beyond expression. It is no accident that she often has recourse to the terminology of the trial in her writing, for she has repeatedly felt a need to defend herself against a slew of accusations directed at her person. But as Anna Kemp has pointed out with respect to Rahmani’s first novel, ‘‘The narrator may not be able to fully bear witness to her father’s life and acknowledges that her attempts to do so inevitably constitute a form of betrayal’’ (109). The writer is aware that her words will never completely represent—or make reparations for—wrongs committed on both sides of the war that o≈cially came to an end the year she was born but whose repercussions continue to be felt. This awareness means that Rahmani can never totally do justice to the past, but she can nonetheless stage it in innovative literary terms that cry out for reconsideration, for renewed understandings of the multiple factors that make up contemporary identities, and for new ways of naming herself and others. In the very title of her 2005 publication ‘‘Musulman’’ roman, Rahmani calls attention to the complexity of Muslim identities. Placing ‘‘Muslim’’ in quotation marks—and in the masculine form—and juxtaposing it to the generic classification of novel are movements that establish a distance between the female narrative voice and the labels applied to Rahmani. The autobiographical text draws from various crucial moments from her past to point to the reasons why the writer is compelled to address her linguistic , national, and especially religious belongings in the present. While international current events and political tensions are only evoked in 152 Reverberations metaphorical terms, it is nonetheless clear that the post-9/11 global climate , and specifically the treatment of Arab prisoners during the war in Iraq, have prompted this work. Defining herself in the light of recent historical developments, Rahmani answers to the name ‘‘Muslim,’’ but with an informed hesitancy. Her innovative prose draws from sources as diverse as the Qur’an, oral tales from her native Berber tongue, and children ’s books in French, in order to present a composite image of an idiosyncratic heritage that cannot be fully encapsulated in the designation Musulman. The author’s resistance to labels is an underlying theme running throughout the book. The inclusion of the word novel in the title is just the first in a series of gestures that are meant to challenge—and disrupt—the reader’s expectations. For, unlike a novel, ‘‘Musulman’’ roman is divided into five acts preceded by a prologue. These divisions seem to imply a play, and the possibility of performance arguably changes the reader’s approach to the work. But, while dialogue plays a crucial role in this text, it is clear that this is not a typical theatrical piece of writing. What seems to be highlighted by these unusual chapter divisions is instead their dramatic content: the work revisits striking episodes that date from an ancient and recent past and that range from religious roots to personal struggles, from the epic to the intimate . The author has chosen to evoke these episodes in an elliptical style, with a syntax and a rhythm that do not belong to the typical structure of the French language in which she writes. She has also opted to include a variety of names that make the reader question who is who and what a name—proper or otherwise—really signifies in the end. The book opens with a return to origins: the first-person narrative voice admits that she has become ‘‘Muslim’’ again. The identity she had fled as a five-year-old child just arrived in France is one she has been forced to readopt...

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