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2008—If All of Rochester Read the Same Book…

A Conversation with Laila Lalami

W&B: You have stated that the impetus for Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits was an article in Le Monde online about an accident in which 15 Moroccans drowned trying to cross the Straits of Gibraltar on a fishing boat. Were you aware of this issue of emigration before reading that article?

Lalami: Yes, I had heard about these trips, anecdotally, but that article in Le Monde, along with the many others that appeared in the Moroccan and Spanish press, testified to the frequency of boat crossings. It became clear to me that these journeys were part of a larger trend, a sort of social phenomenon, and I was mystified by them. Why would people risk their lives for the sake of a chance at a new start? So in the beginning there was this big question in my mind.

W&B: You were educated in Morocco and came to the United States to pursue a doctorate in linguistics; you now live in California. How did you bridge the gap between your own immigrant experience and that of the characters who find themselves in desperate enough circumstances to risk their lives to leave Morocco illegally?

Lalami: Most of the Moroccans who undertake these journeys are people who have no job opportunities and very few useful educational prospects, whereas I have been very fortunate in receiving a good education (first in Rabat, the capital, and then in London and Los Angeles) and in finding employment. But beside these surface differences, there is a lot that connects me with my characters. I was born and raised in Morocco, after all, and have the same language, culture and reference points.

The differences we have, however, are precisely what sparked my imagination. I created four characters that are very different from me and enjoyed walking in their shoes, so to speak. I like creating book people! I also think that the process of characterization in some subconscious way involves a journey of personal exploration. When I finished writing the book, I found that in fact I had many traits in common with my characters.

W&B: In order to write about experiences, beliefs and choices different than your own, did you just apply your imagination to your observations or did you engage in a research process? Did you meet, for example, with any tour guides in Tangier to learn about that trade? Do you know or did you visit the specific towns, cities and neighborhoods that are included in the book in order to obtain accurate details?

Lalami: I was familiar with Tangier, because my family used to go on vacation there when I was little, but I still wanted to make sure that my details were correct, so I consulted a lot of maps. I also did some research on illegal immigration in the library and on news sites. But in the end, I had to set all my research aside and start writing. I wanted to inhabit my characters’ lives fully, and, in order to do that, I had to let go of the research.

W&B: Are any of your own experiences, desires or fears reflected in those of any of the novel’s characters? Do you feel a particular kinship with any of the characters?

Lalami: There are definitely bits and pieces that are mine. For instance, Faten goes to the same university I went to in Rabat and her arguments in favor of the headscarf are ones I heard often from a couple of my classmates. Likewise, Murad has a degree in English and loves to read novels, much like me. I think I feel closest to Murad, however, because the whole book grew out of a short story about him.

W&B: Were any of the characters stubbornly difficult to get into the mindset of? Which was the most difficult character for you to understand and write?

Lalami: The character of Faten was probably hardest to write. The problem for me was that the issue of religious fundamentalism is constantly present in the news media and therefore the readers have particular expectations of the material. For instance, the Muslim headscarf is constantly associated with religious fundamentalism, which is itself connected to Islamic terrorism, so to write about a woman who chooses to cover and make her a whole, unique, complex character was not easy. And it was also difficult because I am not particularly observant myself, so I had to really explore all that in her character.

W&B: Was the fate of each character in mind once you created them or did any develop later? Did any surprise you?

Lalami: No, I had no idea where they would end up when I started writing about them. All I knew was that they were all on the boat going to Spain together. I tried to follow each thread where it led me, first by exploring their lives before and then by figuring out what happens to them after they land on the shores of Spain. I was not surprised by what happened to some of them (I always knew Murad would have to go back to Tangier) but I certainly did not expect what happened to others (I didn’t realize that Faten would end up a prostitute in Madrid).

When I was writing the first part of Faten’s story, I did not know she would become a prostitute in Spain. I started out asking myself how a beautiful, fragile girl, who is forced to leave the country, would survive once she was in Spain. I went with the idea of her becoming a prostitute out of curiosity, but in the end it seemed like the natural development for this character because she tends to be at once extreme and shallow about her beliefs.

W&B: An exploration of the practice of the Muslim faith is prominent only in the story of Faten and her friend Noura. How does this reflect the religious profile of contemporary Morocco?

Lalami: Given what we see in our news media, it’s easy to believe that people in the Muslim world wake up every morning, reach for their Korans and start their day by consulting the latest fatwa. But of course that’s not true. People in Morocco, as anywhere else in the world, are too focused on trying to make ends meet to think about religion all the time. It is true, of course, that over the last twenty years, there has been a resurgence of religious fervor around the world, and it’s been particularly evident in the Arab world, where the post-colonial regimes failed to deliver on the promises of independence.

W&B: The book provides an interesting dichotomy between Noura’s more modern parents and the fundamentalist Islam practiced by an increasing number of the younger generation, as you mention, such as Faten. How does this reflect your experience of the growth of more conservative Islam in Morocco, and would you equate it with the increase of Christians in the U.S. identifying as fundamentalist?

Lalami: I think the book tries to take the dichotomy of fundamentalism vs. liberalism and give it a bit of a twist. In “The Fanatic,” each character claims to believe in one thing, but does another. For example, the father thinks of himself as an educated, liberal, fair-minded individual, but he also reveals himself to be a corrupt man who will stop at nothing to prevent his daughter from covering. The mother thinks of herself as a human rights activist, but she asks the father to “do something” about Faten. Noura thinks of herself as an idealist who wants real change to come to the country, but she cheats at her exams and then asks her father to intervene to save Faten from expulsion. Faten thinks of herself as a religious individual and an honest person, but she, too, cheats at her exams. To me, “The Fanatic” is a story about hypocrisy and about competing fundamentalisms, the secularist and the religious, which is why the title of the story uses the definite article, which is gender-neutral in English. I do think the story is relevant to many areas of the world, including the United States, where Christian fundamentalists wield enormous power in the political process. Like the characters in my story, some of these people may claim to believe in a benevolent and loving Christ, but their campaigns against gay people, to take just one example, put the lie to those claims.

W&B: “The Fanatic” is just one example of how corruption is exhibited in many forms in the book. Is this a particular concern for you?

Lalami: Yes. This is a big problem in Morocco, so it’s impossible to write the kinds of stories I was writing without mentioning corruption specifically. It really is a huge obstacle to sustainable development and to the establishment of a real democracy.

W&B: The book also reveals more positive elements of Moroccan culture, especially with family and home being an important part of people’s lives. Food also plays a prominent role in all of the stories. It is used in various ways from the social aspects of taking tea in a café to a holiday meal connecting an immigrant to home to its use as a panacea for a troubled marriage. Were these connections intentional or merely part of a detailed documentation of the lives of the characters?

Lalami: I had not consciously done that, but it is true that in Morocco we tend to socialize by visiting each other at home and having a meal, so, yes, that kind of connection over food is important.

W&B: Setting can give both conflict and character to fiction. Each of your characters adapts to their new social milieu, with both losses and gains in their “character,” their personal integrity and their sense of whom they are. They have conflicts in both milieus, but their conflicts are different. Is this in some ways the heart of your book, and of the emigrant/immigrant experience in general? If so, what factors do you think influence whether emigration/immigration is, on balance, a positive or negative influence on a person’s life? How does your book speak to that?

Lalami: When my characters embarked on their journey, I think they really believed that life would be better on the other side, and on all fronts. The myth of immigration, of a brighter tomorrow, is very powerful. In the book I wanted to have an image that is a bit more realistic. I think moving from one country to another changes you, and I wanted to acknowledge that change rather than gloss over it. Some aspects of their lives may be better, and some aspects may not at all.

W&B: The novel begins in media res, with the four main characters preparing to board the boat to cross the Straits of Gibraltar, goes back in time to explore the reasons each chooses to make this perilous journey, and in later chapters reveals what has become of their efforts to emigrate. Did you play with the structure of the book; for example, did you write each character’s full story and then weave them together?

Lalami: The structure of the book came to me in a very organic way. It all started with a short story titled “El Dorado” in which Murad tries to cross the Mediterranean Sea on a boat, along with a group of other undocumented immigrants. In the process of revising this story, I realized I was adding flashbacks of his life before the trip, so I decided to take these flashbacks out and put them in a separate story featuring the same character, but set in a different period of his life. Then I became interested in each of the other people on the boat with Murad and pretty soon I had a collection of stories, each from a different point of view, with the only connecting thread being that these characters make the same decision about emigrating illegally. Still, I felt that something was missing. Then I realized that what I needed was to reach closure with each of these characters, to find out what happened to each of them after the captain abandons them. Once I realized that I had this interesting structure, I decided to focus on the four main characters. That was how Hope came into being.

W&B: Speak about how you chose Murad as the character through whose eyes readers are introduced to Faten, Halima and Aziz and also as the character whose story closes the book.

Lalami: As I mentioned earlier, the book grew out of a short story in which Murad was the protagonist. This is why the main story that connects all the characters is told through Murad’s point of view, and why his stories bookend the others.

W&B: The shifting points of view are reminiscent of many contemporary novels, including Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter, which was an “If All of Rochester Read the Same Book…” selection. Did you experiment with point of view while you were writing Hope?

Lalami: I did. I had a boat full of different people with one shared experience, so it was very natural to want to give each of them a voice. I tried writing from the point of view of each character, from the first person and from the third person. In the end, I chose the third person because it felt most natural for me.

W&B: You wrote Hope in English, which is not your first language. Why did you make this decision? Also, how did your knowledge of linguistics come into play in the decisions you made in writing the book?

Lalami: Actually, English is my third language. My first language is Arabic and my second language is French. I received, to my long-lasting despair, a semi-colonial education that never emphasized Arabic as much as French. In the Morocco where I grew up, one needed to master French in order to succeed in the sciences or business or medicine. In those days, all these subjects were taught in French in public schools. And in terms of children’s literature, the bookstores themselves had far more offerings in French than they did in Arabic. Sadly, while I can read Arabic and write it competently enough, I do not master it to the level where I could write a work of fiction. So when I started writing, it was in French.

I started taking English in high school, at the age of 15, and majored in English in college. After I moved to the States, I continued writing in French, but it quickly became clear to me that French comes with an enormous colonial baggage when one is writing Moroccan characters. I switched to writing fiction in English in 1996. For me, language is a tool. Right now I am trying to cook a Moroccan dish using American utensils. Obviously the dish will not taste the same. But perhaps you will find something else in it that you might not have otherwise.

My background in linguistics probably instilled in me a sensitivity to syntactic structure, and a desire to be as semantically precise as I can. I am very fastidious and slow in my writing process, much to the despair of my editor, I am sure.

W&B: In an earlier essay you noted that there is a Moroccan Arabic slang term, harragas, for the Moroccan immigrants who perished in the Straits of Gibraltar that means “those who burn.” Our research turned up some interesting etymological information for that term.

Lalami: No one really knows the provenance of the term harraga, but it is now part of the modern lexicon now. There is a TV show in Morocco where the producers try to find missing people by hosting their loved ones and having them talk about the moment they left, and several of the people on the show have been parents of youth who attempted to cross, so it’s definitely a term and a phenomenon that is very much alive.

W&B: What parallels do you see between the plight of Hope’s characters and the issue of immigration as it is currently being debated in the U.S.? How do the responses of the government and citizens of Spain differ from how the issue of immigration is currently being debated in the U.S., particularly in relation to Mexican immigrants?

Lalami: There are many similarities. Spain is the largest recipient of immigrants in Europe, and the United States is the largest in the Americas. Voters in both Spain and the United States consistently cite immigration as a concern. Politicians in both countries try to get elected on platforms of “getting tough on immigrants” and so on. Just as people come from all over South America to Mexico to try to cross the border to the United States, people come from all over Africa to Morocco to try to enter Europe.

W&B: How are the conditions for Moroccans trying to emigrate to Spain and other points in Europe now? Has anything changed since you wrote the book?

Lalami: A lot of money has been spent on new fences around the Spanish presidios of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco, on border patrols in the Mediterranean and on funding law enforcement. But this hasn’t really dampened the desire of people to immigrate. People come from many parts of Africa to Morocco and wait there until they can cross to Europe.

W&B: In an earlier interview, you expressed surprise that Hope could be considered a political book. Have your thoughts on this possibility changed as racism as well as ethnic and religious conflicts have flared up around the world since its publication?

Lalami: I hadn't expected that reaction because the novel is about four ordinary human beings from Morocco, and I didn't think that such a set up would be necessarily considered political. But I can see why people thought of it that way, considering how immigration has been turned into an election issue. And also considering how religion is playing a part in global politics.

W&B: What has been the response to Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits in Morocco?

Lalami: The response has been wonderful. The book was reviewed favorably in many of the local newspapers and magazines, and even appeared in one of the local bestseller lists. When I spent time in Morocco in 2007, I gave a number of readings at universities and it was lovely to be able to discuss the book with my readers.

W&B: Was your family in Morocco supportive of your efforts in writing the novel?

Lalami: I was born in Rabat, to a bookish, lower-middle class family, and I naturally gravitated towards books. I started writing when I was about nine years old, but in those days in Morocco, there was no question of doing something as arty as writing. My parents, especially my father, drilled in me that I had to do something “sensible.” So I trained in linguistics rather than literature and after finishing my doctorate, I worked as a linguist for a software company, writing stories and essays only at night or on weekends. Eventually, the need to devote myself to fiction became too strong to ignore and I started to write full time. Now my parents are my biggest supporters.

W&B: When you were growing up, did you have access to literature from various cultures, written in many different languages? What writers influenced you then or do you most appreciate now?

Lalami: As a child, I read everything from Spiderman comics to Alexandre Dumas. Later I went through a phase when I read a lot of mysteries and romance novels, and then around the age of thirteen or fourteen I started to read a lot more literary fiction. I always find it hard to pinpoint specific literary influences, because in some way everything that I read or experience or see influences me. Writers I have always admired include Chinua Achebe, Tayeb Salih, J.M. Coetzee, Mohamed Choukri, Leila Abouzeid, Ahdaf Soueif, Graham Greene and Orhan Pamuk, among many others.

W&B: How do you see the popularity and legacy of Paul Bowles in terms

of his influence on how people see Morocco?

Lalami: It depends on whom we are talking about. I don’t know of any Moroccans who would look to Paul Bowles for a story about Morocco, but it’s certainly true that many American readers might look to Bowles for a story about the country. I think he is a fine prose stylist, but I am not a big fan of his writing because I find it devoid of any compassion for his characters.

W&B: How did the writing of a novel differ from the book reviewing and journalism that you now are publishing?

Lalami: I think that writing fiction involves a process of discovery. Often, I don’t know what I’m writing about until after I’ve written many drafts of a story or a chapter. But in writing non-fiction, I know immediately what I want to say and I spend my time trying to figure out the best way to say it. The other difference is that it takes me a lot longer to write fiction than non-fiction. My new novel, which is coming out in 2009, took me four and a half years to write.

W&B: Tell us about that new book.

Lalami: My new novel, The Outsider, is about a young man from a Casablanca slum who discovers that his entire existence has been a lie—his dead and respectably poor father turns out to be a wealthy businessman who is very much alive. This discovery sets the young Youssef on a journey to find his father, and the truth. The story is set in modern-day Morocco, against a background of corrupt liberalism and Islamic fundamentalism. It explores themes of identity and belonging, whether in a family, in a social group or in a political faction. It also deals with the fraught relationship between facts and truth.

W&B: You write a popular blog called Moorishgirl. Has being a blogger changed the way you think of yourself as a writer, or of the possibilities of publication in general?

Lalami: I blog because I like to have a space in which to record my thoughts and opinions about world events or literature or culture, and while it may have affected my awareness of events in these different spheres, I don’t think it has changed the way that I think of myself. I am just a writer who happens to enjoy blogging.

W&B: The novel ends with Murad intending to embark on a practice of writing. How do you see the power of storytelling?

Lalami: I think there is a deep connection between storytelling and our survival as a species. Scheherazade has to tell a story each night in order to survive, after all. I think Murad’s decision to start telling stories is a way for him to save his father’s legacy from oblivion.

W&B: The final chapters explore whether the rewards were worth the risk each character took in leaving Morocco. Some readers might consider the position each character is left in at the end of their story rather ambiguous. Perhaps this is a way of acknowledging the uncertain nature of all our futures and that hope can exist in any situation.

Lalami: Exactly.

W&B: How did you settle on the title of the book? The human characteristic of hope is clearly defined in some ways, at least, as dangerous, but is it also a confirmation that hope can overcome personal and social struggles, that people in desperate situations can survive?

Lalami: I wanted a title that would contain both the positive and negative aspects of the immigration experience. Although they come from different cities in Morocco and although they are leaving the country for different reasons, my characters all share a deep hope of a better tomorrow. What intrigued me was the idea that they were risking their very lives for the sake of a better life. This is a very dangerous gamble. So I wanted a title that had both hope and danger in it, which is how it came about.

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