Arab Literature Prize for Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin

The writer Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin, whom we had met in February at the start of the literary school year in Mali, has just received, for The Jango, translated from Arabic (Sudan) by Xavier Luffin, and published by Zulma last February for the Arab Literature Prize. Created in 2013 by the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation and the Arab World Institute (IMA), it rewards an amount of 10,000 euros to a writer from a member country of the Arab League and author of a written book in French or translated from Arabic to French. The jury also wanted to give a special mention to Weeds by Dima Abdallah (Sabine Wespieser).

We had met him for the first time when he was in Paris for his first publication in French, The Messiah of Darfur. He did not come from Sudan, but from Austria, where Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin has been living in exile since a number of his books were censored and after a journey marked by three imprisonments between 1993 and 2000: the State (still then represented by the fallen Omar al-Bashir) having asked him to commit black and white to stop writing. To that he said no. And he left. The Jango, the most appreciated book by his compatriots (prize of the great Sudanese writer, Tayeb Salih in 2009) and the most censored until having been burned, is today translated into French: it confirms the very high quality of pen of a playful, cunning, daring, tender, esthete writer. And deeply committed. We find the author at the literary re-entry of Mali (February 18-23) where Kadidiatou Touré, a student in English, became during the debates in Bamako his interpreter for the Malian public.

As much as The Messiah of Darfur was a war book, written on the battlefield, he confided to us when it was published by Zulma, as Les Jango is above all a total immersion in the midst of this population of seasonal, nomadic people. , described by the narrator of the book who decided, with his best friend, both unemployed, to join the city of al-Hilla, one of the central cities in the geography of these field workers. The name of this city located not far from the borders with Eritrea and Ethiopia has been changed and the imagination of the novelist has galloped, but Baraka Sakin knows his subject, since his family is related to the Jango: ” I dated them at a very young age, sometimes they were even housed by my mother, but I did not realize until decades later that they were really special people. They have their culture, their expressions, their way of life, songs that belong only to them. However, they do not come from the same tribe at all, but from several of them, and are fundamentally united only by working the land. In one of the languages ​​of Sudan, Jango means those who travel. They are found in a triangle in eastern Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. ”

« The Jango are alike in everything. They hopping like old crows dancing around prey. “ Thus opens the book of these men and women, and also of those whom we do not know if they are men, women, trans in potential, in the stories which run about the inhabitants of this small town. It is also said that the mysterious and rebellious Safia would have something of a hyena … The author did not wait for the explosion of gender studies and antispeciesism to treat all these themes with superb freedom in a context where we weren’t necessarily expecting them. And this in a novel made of embedded narratives, which gives to hear a multitude of voices, all in pursuit of the true story of such and such, in accordance with local mores.

“In the open-air cafes or bars where we find ourselves in this region, and which I frequented for many months, continues Baraka Sakin, I heard my close neighbor speak but also what another said in a neighboring courtyard, since voices are constantly mingling and that’s how I wanted to write this novel. ”

A thousand and one nights at the Jango’s

Who is the mother of the seductive Wad Amouna? And the father, then, of this boy who grew up in prison and who was a very young victim of the ardor of the pedophile cook? The art of Baraka Sakin to tell a story, preferably of family, love or sex, through the words of one, then the other, then leaving the reader “in the air” to s’ go and join other destinies, and come back to them later. Impossible to reveal the outcome of these thousand and one nights spent with the Jango, but we will know from the author that the tree of death, which inspired him to conclude, is not only the fruit of his imagination. : “The Jango never come home, after a job somewhere, they change location, but on the other hand, they do have a tree called death, under which they come to die. ”

What also runs throughout the novel is this revolt of the Jango, farmers for a season mistreated by the government, which will endeavor to find a more “serious” culprit behind this “shit” revolution in the non-sense. figurative: the Jango, for lack of means and weapons, demonstrate by covering the bank of the small town and all that can be affiliated with said material, “Omar al-Bashir had imaginary enemies everywhere and wanted the world to his boot, ”comments the writer, who notably quotes Israel in the novel. “One of the ongoing projects of the Sovereign Council currently in place is to completely renew the country’s foreign policy”, underlines the writer, who was contacted by the new authorities to occupy the post of governor of Kassala, the region of the east of the country where he was born, but he refused. “Even if the Prime Minister is a good man, I will not be able to shake the hand of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan or that of Hemeti [Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, chef des Janjawids], who have so much blood on them and are part of the transitional government. ”

In the meantime, the writer follows the news of his country, but also, from one trip to another, the translations of his books from Arabic. He tells us about the one he titled “Samahani”, forgive me in Swahili, and which recalls how the Africans of Zanzibar were the slaves of the Sultanate of Oman, another subject that did not bother everyone. okay! We do not know what will happen to the one who occupies his research today, Germany facing a third world war …

The Jango Macondo

It is time in bookstores in France to taste the style (salute the translator Xavier Luffin), the formidable presence of the characters (whose entrances and exits of stages must be spotted, but gymnastics becomes fun!), The sensory dimension, the delicacy of emotions and inventiveness of situations, in other words, time to enjoy reading what is happening at Al-Hilla, the Macondo des Jango, between a few glasses of marissa (the prized alcohol), the he atmosphere of the brothel, the confidences of women on pleasure, the tears of the narrator to whom love appears to disappear too quickly and the political landscape even if we do not understand everything.

To rub shoulders so closely in this novel with these seasonal workers from another continent, we find many points in common with those of the region of Manosque, described by Catherine Poulain in A white heart. And this is just one example. When a book whose setting is completely unknown to you joins the human adventure to such an extent, then we can truly speak of universal literature.