CONSUMO DE ALCOHOL Y TABACO

L'Enfant de sable and La Nuit sacrée provide the reader with various characters/narrators all of whom seem to correspond to these various spheres of actions. However, as Mélétinski says:

Le personnage principal [... ] est porteur de la fonction biographique, tandis que "les personnages secondaires" portent des fonctions de complication de l'intrigue (i.e. une fonction d'aide ou d'obstacle au héros) ou bien une

fonction d'objet de ses sollicitations.*

Accordingly, as we shall see, one can interpret Ben Jelloun's texts as bearers of one principal narrative voice; other voices can be regarded as secondary, or indeed as mere "pastiches'' to conceal the sought-after object of the main narrative voice - that is, the identity quest.

To borrow Greimas's terminology®, the principal narrative voice. Si Abdelmalek (see diagram below, p. 116), can be regarded as an "actant" who embodies different "acteurs" - that is, different characters. And this actant, in turn, is a cover for the creator of the text. On this issue, Jameson writes :

It may turn out that a character or actor in a given narrative in reality serves as a cover for two separate and relatively independent actants;

or that two actors, independent personalities and separate characters in the story-line, amount to little more than alternating articulations of an

actant structurally identical in both contexts.®

As such, Ben Jelloun's different characters or "acteurs" all function as the same "actant". Though Ben Jelloun's narrative structure does indeed reveal itself as a

Evgueni Mélétinski, "L’étude structurale et typologique du conte" in V. Propp, Morphologie du conte, pp.204-205.

® Algirdas J.Greimas, Sémantique structurale. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986.

® Frederic Jameson, The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism. Princeton/London: Princeton University Press, 1972, p. 125.

classical tale, what makes it distinctive is its lack of plot and intrigue. A focus on the role of the different narrative voices (acteurs) will show the monotony of the text to which Propp refers.

The opening pages of Enfant de sable set up an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue to prepare for the story of Ahmed, "Un brouillard épais et persistant..., cette couche blanche..." (ES, p.9). This setting is in fact misleading; and as the reader progresses through the novel, he/she is made aware that there is no intrigue or mystery and that the narrators who rally each other to tell the story of Ahmed are actually making up the story as they go along (as does the writer, since the narrators are all his creations).

The narrative of Enfant de sable is more intricate than that of La Nuit sacrée due to its polyphonic structure and the interaction between the narrative voices. No one narrative voice is distinctive; each absorbs the others, creating a puzzling game of interaction from which a single voice emerges, which the reader associates with Ahmed. But behind and alongside the voice of Ahmed, the reader can also detect the voice of the principal narrator, who despite various disguises, stands for the writer of the novel.

Fna, an open public square in Marrakesh noted for its huge diversity of people and activities: fortune-tellers, snake- charmers, dancers, acrobats, story-tellers and so on. The gathering of people is almost endless hence the name of the place as El Fna (infinite, endless). To listen to a story, people gather around the story-teller and form a 'halqa' (meaning circle or ring in Arabic). The 'halqa' is an important structure for the story-telling for it forms a closed space around the story-teller and creates a certain intimacy between the listeners and the story-teller; further the 'halqa' becomes detached? from its actual time and space and fosters both the concentration of the story­ teller and the readiness of the audience to journey towards the fantastic and the unreal.

The 'halqa' in Enfant de sable is formed around the first narrator Si Abdelmalek. Though Si Abdelmalek is seemingly the main narrator, members of the 'halga' challenge his story and provide their own either because they pretend to have had direct contact with Ahmed ^ s diary or because they identify with the content of the diary. As such the novel provides the reader with different interpretations

^ A knowledgeable story-teller uses various theatrical devices such as pantomime and singing, or makes a dramatic entrance to attract the audience’s attention. He (a public story-teller is almost always a man; women, such as grandmothers, are confined to the private family sphere of story-telling) would normally draw his listeners’ concentration by stating that his story is a true-life account and would justify this by providing factual events that the audience is likely to know. Also, he would supply stereotypical daily-life happenings that most listeners are likely to identify with.

emanating from different narrative voices, each pretending to tell the true story. The variations in the story of Ahmed are not necessarily contradictory. Every new narrator takes up the story at a point of disagreement with the previous narrator making thus the new version either complement the previous one or challenge it. As such the story does not seem to have an end, or, more precisely, it seems aimless. Consequently, it moves endlessly in a circular movement just like the shape of the 'halqa' (see diagram on page 116).

To comprehend this intricate and, so to speak, vicious circle of the novel's narrative structure, it is instructive to look at the different narrators from a psychoanalytical perspective. From that perspective the different narrative voices in L'Enfant de sable can be understood as the overdetermined agencies of the writer. According to Laplanche and Pontalis, overdetermination is:

[Un] fait qu'une formation de l'inconscient - symptôme, rêve, etc.- renvoie à une pluralité de facteurs déterminants [... ] La formation renvoie à des éléments inconscients multiples, qui peuvent s'organiser en des séquences significatives différentes, dont chacune, à un certain niveau d'interprétation, possède sa cohérence propre.®

As such the different narrators state that they uphold the truth about Ahmed. Or to be more specific, the story of

® J.Laplanche and J.-B.Pontalis, Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse. p.467.

I

Ahmed's Diary (Direct Contact) Ahmed's Diary (Indirect Contact)

Letters Fatima's Brother Halqa Halqa Halqa Blindman

I

Ahmed and the multiplicity of voices which want to determine his identity could be summarised as the writer's own quest for identity via his fictional creation, distancing the whole quest from reality. This whole quest could be about truth. It could be regarded as the confused, unspoken and misrecognised search for a true self. The different narrative voices could represent the plural voice of a fragmented self - the writer.

The first narrator, Si Abdelmalek, tells the story of Ahmed from the content of the latter's diary which he claims to possess. Early in his narration hej)

(identifies with the writer of the diary he reads to the audience, "Je suis ce livre"(E S . p.13). The book could also stand for the novel L'Enfant de sable which is Ben Jelloun's 'diary'; thereby the statement "Je suis ce livre" could be understood as an autobiographical engagement and Si Abdelmalek (from Arabic meaning the one who possesses) as the possessor of the book's content. In this sense. Si Abdelmalek, or the writer Forthat matter, is the creator and owner of the book.

The book and its content which the narrator identifies with is described as a big mansion with seven doors. Through each door the reader steps into a slice of Ahmed's life, which is spread over twenty years. The diagram above

(p.116) shows the different versions of Ahmed's life as told by different tellers; either because they pretend to

be connected directly to the hero or because they claim to know the content of his diary. Each one of the tellers represents a metaphorical door which, when opened, provides a view of the inside of the mansion/novel. Conceiving the book through the metaphor of the house is significant in the structure of the novel. Associating literature with an architectural structure is highly suggestive. If one is to look at the novel from different angles (or explore it by entering different doors) one will gain different perspectives on the story, each providing a different meaning. The crucial point of such metaphoricity of literature is to imply the multiplicity and diversity of meaning drawn from a single given story-line. When the narrator of Enfant de sable provides the following analogy:

Une histoire, c'est comme une maison, une vieille maison, avec des niveaux, des étages, des chambres, des couloirs, des portes et fenêtres, des greniers, des caves ou des grottes, des espaces inutiles (ES, p.206).

he implies that it is a rather complex architecture hence the existence of some hidden dark corners such as 'greniers', 'caves' and 'grottes'. And earlier, using the same metaphor he says: "Le livre est ainsi: une maison où chaque fenêtre est un quartier,..., c'est une maison d'apparence, un décor de théâtre..."(ES, p.108). Accordingly, the reader is told that the novel is not only intricate but is also a façade, a mask. It is not a reflection of reality. It is analogous with theatre, which

by implication means that the characters are performers and do not stand for real people. Interestingly enough one could regard the characters in Ben Jelloun's book not only as his overdetermined agencies, but also as actors whose role is to act and cover up for the author's reality. Further, the role of the reader is reduced to an empirical level, whereby the reader becomes a mere observer witnessing the events as they unfold before his/her eyes through the doors or windows of the book/mansion. As such, the reader seems to be prevented from deploying his or her active and interpreting role. This method of structure and narration can be a deliberate masking device employed by the author to mislead his readers. The quest for identity is his own and in fulfilling his task he takes a devious route suggesting that the novel is mainly metafictional.

The writing of both L'Enfant de sable and La Nuit sacrée involves a circular movement . The narrator of L'Enfant de sable addresses his listeners in the following words:

Amis du Bien, sachez que nous sommes réunis par le secret du verbe dans une rue circulaire, peut- être sur un navire et pour une traversée dont je ne connais pas l'itinéraire (ES, p.15).

which suggests that the speaker/writer does not himself know the plot of the story. It is a story whose itinerary he makes up as he speaks/writes. This improvisation proves that there is initially no factual story. The metaphor of the circular street is a reminder of the 'halqa' and also suggests the helplessness and confusion in the search for

truth about the self.* This metaphor occurs many times in both novels and sometimes alternates with other metaphors such as 'river' and 'boat'. These metaphors are also crucial as they suggest a journey into the self which is so far unknown to the narrator. Through 'water' and 'boat' metaphors, the reader can easily notice the striking similarities between Tahar Ben Jelloun's L'Enfant de sable and La Nuit sacrée and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The journeys of Si Abdelmalek (and later other narrators) and Marlow are both journeys into the unknown.

The unknown is what surrounds the identity of Ahmed and those who narrate his life. His life becomes like a puzzle and the narrators like players each putting in a piece of information to fill in the gaps and the uncertainties which surround his existence. Si Abdelmalek invites his listeners to contribute to the making of the story:

Cette histoire a quelque chose de la nuit; elle est obscure et pourtant riche en image; elle devrait déboucher sur une lumière,...Nos pas inventent le chemin au fur et à mesure que nous avançons;...J'ai besoin de vous. Je vous associe à mon entreprise. Je vous embarque sur le dos et le navire (ES, pp.15-16).

and points to the fact that it should lead them towards the light. The use of the conditional tense in the sentence "elle devrait déboucher sur une lumière" suggests the

® For further reading on the theme of labyrinthine streets, see chapter on Ben Jelloun in Marc Gontard, Le Moi étrange. Paris: L ’Harmattan, 1993, pp. 13- 46.

feeling of probability and uncertainty on the part of the narrator as whether the quest for the true self will be a successful one or not. The narrator and the audience are no longer separate. They act together to fulfil their task. As the author's psychic agencies they unite under the appellation of "complices"(E S . p.18); and later, their role as contributors in the making of the story and in the search for truth is made clear by the following words; "Nous ne sommes plus des spectateurs; nous sommes nous aussi embarqués dans cette histoire qui risque de nous enterrer tous dans le même cimetière" (ES, p.24). The search for truth seems to be predicting a gloomy outcome. At the outset, the narrator makes his audience aware of the potentially fateful consequences of the search: it might end in the downfall of all involved. From Ahmed's diary, the narrator reads out a passage which suggests that the knowledge of one's truth brings fear. It is important to note at this point that as Ahmed stands for a displaced metaphor of the author, the following words should be understood as the author's own writing rather than that of a fictional character:

II est une vérité qui ne peut être dite, pas même suggérée, mais vécue dans la solitude absolue, entourée d'un secret...qui se dégage parfois en des instants de lassitude où l'on se laisse gagner par la négligence...La souffrance vient d'un fond qui ne peut non plus être révélé...Cette vérité telle une abeille dans un bocal de miel, prisonnière de ses illusions, condamnée à mourir, étranglée, étouffée par la vie. Cette vérité ... me tend un miroir où je peux (sic)me regarder sans être troublé par une profonde tristesse (ES, pp. 43-44).

Such fear and apprehension of truth implies a fear of what the writer is looking for. It is only later in his writing, as his story progresses, that it emerges that the writer is confused about his identity. By presenting to the reader an ambiguous and ambivalent character he puts his own ambiguity and ambivalence into the text. At this stage, as the above quotation shows, there is a fear of what his search might reveal; it seems as if he deliberately turns in a circle so as to avoid any revelation, hence the numerous allusions to circular streets. He compares truth to suffering, it is profound, and one makes great efforts to avoid it. Like a slip of the tongue, it reveals itself during moments of negligence in the form of illusions, i.e. of what might be true. The truth he is looking for is latent and hidden; but what he confronts is nothing but a reflection, an illusion suggested by the word 'miroir'.

Pursuing further the metaphor of the mirror,^® Ben Jelloun locates truth in a "grenier de maison hantée"(ES. p.44), in other words in the obscure depth of one's psyche, and warns that looking too much into it one might step in the "territoire des rats"(Ibid). Sylvia Plath's poem about introspection. Mirror. is a key reference here. Both Ben

For further reading on the theme of the mirror in La Nuit sacrée, see Lucy McNeece, "Discours à la dérive: à travers le miroir ou r& riture à l’envers" in Yvette Benayoun-Szmidt et. al. (eds). La Traversée du Français dans les signes littéraires Marocains. Toronto: Editions La Source, 1996, pp.87-96.

Sylvia Plath, "Mirror" (1961) in Ted Hughes (éd.). Collected Poems. London/Boston: Faber and Faber, 1981, pp. 173-174.

Jelloun and Plath reflect on issues of self-exploration and introspection. Both use the metaphor of the mirror to suggest that if one tries to delve into the meaning of one's self, one is bound to come face to face with an unpleasant reality. Both Ben Jelloun and Plath use an animal associated with ugliness as a metaphor for the undesirable discovery which stems from self-introspection: a 'fish' in the case of Plath and 'rats' in Ben Jelloun's.

However, for Ben Jelloun it is always possible to outplay the truth. He makes his characters aware of the dangers of self-introspection and avoids the truth about his self being revealed and recognised. Thus Ahmed writes, "J'évite les miroirs...la vérité qui ne peut être dite” (Ibid) and continues "La vérité s'exile; il suffit que je parle pour que la vérité s'éloigne"(ES, p. 45) suggesting thus that truth is evanescent. Ben Jelloun's narrative seems subject to "un fading brusque, dont la trouée permet à 1'énonciation de migrer d'un point de vue à l'autre, sans p r é v e n i r . T h e use of words provides a certain meaning which could be perceived as true, and a meaning is no longer unique if there exists another meaning so that in the end there is a chain of meanings, or a chain of 'could- be-truths'.

The opening sentence of La Nuit sacrée begins with these

words: "Ce qui importe c'est la vérité"(NS. p.5). As such the writer makes the reader believe that his second novel will reveal what lies behind the ambiguity of his character, but only to make the latter state in a few lines below, "Amis du Bien! ce que je vais vous confier ressemble à la vérité"(NS, p.6). In other terms, truth is unreachable and what appears as truth is but a resemblance.

The writer's use of different narrative voices to displace his own involvement is a tactical strategy whereby the predicament of the androgynous Ahmed/Zahra remains unacknowledged as his own predicament. Accordingly the narrative moves in a circular fashion, as does the quest for truth. However, to pin down the writer, so to speak, and