An Iraqi poet’s view of the merits of literature
“It’s time for other people from other cultures to read us and know us
better through our literature.” - Iraqi poet Muhsin Al-Ramli
By: Sharmila Devi
The Arab Weekly
Muhsin Al-Ramli is an Iraqi poet, playwright, short-story writer, novelist
and translator who has lived in Spain since 1995. He was born in the village of
Sudara in northern Iraq, in 1967, published his first work in 1985 and writes
in Arabic and Spanish. He teaches Arabic at the Saint Louis University in
Madrid.
He fled Iraq after the death of his brother, poet Hassan Mutlak, who was
hanged in 1990 after six months of imprisonment during which he was tortured
for his involvement in an attempted coup against Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein.
In 2006, nine of Ramli’s relatives were killed in Iraq and their severed
heads were found in banana crates. He uses the incident in the opening of his
novel “The President’s Gardens,” which recounts the effects of Iraq’s wars on
ordinary people over the past 50 years and which was recently translated into
English to glowing reviews. He spoke with The Arab Weekly via e-mail.
The Arab Weekly (TAW): You wrote your novel “The President’s Gardens”
partly as a response to the killing of nine of your relatives. Have you
achieved any peace, if that is possible?
Muhsin Al-Ramli (MAR): “Yes, up to a point. I feel relieved because to
express something helps the one who says it and the one who hears it. A human
being has to express himself and everything he does in life is a form of
expression.
“As for the book, I’ve received thousands of messages of thanks from
relatives of victims in Iraq and that makes me feel that I’ve helped the many
who are suffering to raise their voices further, something that allows them to
be supported and heard.”
TAW: Is the killing of your brother still part of your motivation to write
and in what way? How do you think he might have reacted to your work?
MAR: “I wish my brother were still alive and could read this and my other
books, which I wrote to please him. Part of my task is to continue writing so
that his name survives as long as I’m alive.
“He was my master and my idol. He confronted the [Saddam] dictatorship
directly and lost his life when the dictator was at the height of his power,
control and savagery.
“Many national Arabs see this dictator as a hero, a leader and a source of
pride and I want to tell them who he was in reality, this tyrant, the murderer
of my brother and my people, through a literary description of the disaster and
destruction that he brought to Iraq and above all the great harm and pain he
caused to families, lives and the souls of people.”
TAW: Do you feel the translation into English, Spanish and other languages
of your novels and those of other contemporary Arabic writers is helping to
bridge Western ignorance of the Middle East and in what way?
MAR: “Yes but very little up to now because this vacuum is too deep.
There’s a general ignorance in the West about Arab culture, literature,
people’s complex situation, history and modern reality.
“The press, which both manipulates and is manipulated, is not enough, nor
is it the best medium for knowledge. For example, the press talks of victims in
terms of numbers, while literature focuses on the human and on every victim,
his circumstances, his thoughts, feelings and dreams.
“We have got to know other cultures better, among them the West and Latin
America, more through literature than the press. It’s time for other people
from other cultures to read us and know us better through our literature.”
TAW: Have you noticed any change in attitudes among your students towards
the Middle East since you started to teach Arabic language, literature and
culture?
MAR: “Without a doubt, many came to my classes out of curiosity and took
them as a secondary option but they’ve ended up wanting to specialise in it for
the rest of their lives. Others are living in Arab countries or have married
Arabs.
“In general, people fear the unknown and tend to judge it badly or
superficially but when they open themselves up and get closer, they get to know
it better and, in some cases, fall in love with it. Knowledge is the key to
everything.”
TAW: Your last trip to Iraq was in 2014. Are you planning any trips back?
How do you feel about Iraq now? Do you feel optimistic about its future?
MAR: “I want to and must visit Iraq when I can, especially now that my
people have been liberated from [the Islamic State] ISIS after four hard and
savage years.
“I want to see my sisters and nephews, who were miraculously spared.
“As for the future of Iraq, it will continue to be difficult, complicated
and hard. No one could yet say that Iraq is in the hands of Iraqis. It’s not a
truly sovereign country and its running is in the hands of others, such as
Iran, the US and other foreigners.”
TAW: Do you think that Arabic language literary prizes are helping to
encourage more Arabs to read fiction?
MAR: “Yes, to a great extent, although these prizes often hurt the quality
of the literature when they encourage writers and those who are not writers to
produce too much too quickly in order to participate. They also sometimes give
the prize to mediocre works for reasons that have nothing to do with quality.
“But the marvellous phenomenon these days of being able to read many novels
in the Arab world is not thanks to prizes but because the young, who are a
majority of the Arab population, are looking for a vision of the world, a form
of understanding it and themselves and their identity, especially without the
weight of ideology, philosophy and loss of faith in books of religion,
politics, official education and even history books that contain so much manipulation.”
Written BySharmila Devi
Sharmila Devi is
a former British correspondent in the Middle East and writes extensSharmila
Devi is a former British correspondent in the Middle East and writes
extensively on political and social issues in the region.
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