Zajal — the Darija Poets of Morocco

 

Deborah Kapchan

 

Our business is to count the stars, star by star
to chew the wind’s haughty arrogance
and watch the clouds for when they’ll throw us a handful 

and if the earth goes far away from us
we’ll say everyone is possessed
            everyone has lost their mind
            and time, never will its letters fall between our hands
            until we write what we are

Driss Mesnaoui 1995:73

 

Counting the Stars
Zajal: poetry in dialect. There is a long history of the form in oral literature. Poets in marketplaces and public squares, storytellers recounting epics in verses those around them can understand. As any Arab will tell you, Moroccan Arabic is about as far from Modern Standard as one can get, infused as it is with syntax and vocabulary from Tamazight, the language of the authocthonous Amazighin of North Africa, and spiced with Spanish and French. And yet, the movement for writing in Moroccan Arabic, or Darija, began decades ago. The mother tongue yields secrets that classical Arabic never will. It is about emotional resonance. The problem, however, is one of translatability, of reaching into the cultural depths of the genre, not only in its oral form, but now in its written incarnations. Zajal often remains local and its poets, though prolific, are rarely known outside of Morocco.

I encountered two prominent Darija poets in 1995. 

Ahmed Lemsyeh and I met in Rabat. At that time, Lemsyeh was a schoolteacher and an activist in the Ichtiraki socialist party. More than that, he was already one of Morocco’s finest poets, who often published his work in chapbooks and in one of the daily newspapers, Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki. Lemsyeh’s was the first diwan, or poetry collection, published in Darija.

I had come on a Fulbright to study Moroccan performance traditions. After independence in 1956, Moroccan artists wanted to define an authentic Moroccan theatre. Tired of performing Molière in French and Shakespeare in Arabic, they turned to the halqa, an old form of Moroccan entertainment, combining storytelling with satire. Literally meaning a link in a chain, the halqa is a circle of people with a performer in the center, an interactive space of humor and a demonstration of verbal and gestural acuity, performed in Moroccan dialect, Darija. My first book was an ethnography of these performances in the Moroccan marketplace, including the emergent voices of women. I had read the treatises on the halqa by theorist Abdelkrim Berrechid and playwright Tayyeb Saddiqi. I had read the works of Juan Goytisolo, the Spanish expatriate writer living in Marrakech who evoked these scenes. I came to Rabat to attend the plays wherein the trope of the halqa was employed.

In 1995, however, Mohammed the Fifth Theater was closed for repairs. Or for something. Was this about censorship? In Morocco, as in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa, the critique is often hidden in symbols and in stories that take place in another time. Moroccan theater in dialect was one forum for this social critique. It was bawdy and virtuosic. But although the main theater was closed, there was a small annex in the back that remained open. And there, on my way home from Rabat’s Kalila and Dimna bookstore one late afternoon, I stumbled through the open door into a performance of zajal. The audience was ohhhing and ahhiing, enrapt with the words, and sending up affirmations like “allah!” as if at a musical concert. I did not understand everything I was hearing, but I waited until the performance was over, then introduced myself to the poet, Ahmed Lemsyeh. And so a friendship, and a project was born.

Lemsyeh was very articulate about why it was necessary to write in the mother tongue. It held the secrets of culture, he said. While American anthropologists thought the word “culture” made sweeping, damaging generalizations, Moroccan poets and artists sought to make it as salient as possible. The metaphorical density of Darija resonated differently than classical Arabic. Would an Italian write poems in Latin?

Lemsyeh drew his material from old sources like Sidi Abderrahman al-Majdub, a Moroccan Sufi mystic. Al-Majdub was still cited in the halqa centuries later. Lemsyeh didn’t quote his quatrains directly but made allusions in such a way as to revive the auditor’s memories of childhood, while creating something entirely new. He was a master craftsman of words. Listening to him, audiences would swoon.

I had already been initiated into the genre of al-malhun — sung poetry from the 14th century, also in Darija. My friend El Houcine Aggour, my roommate’s boyfriend in Beni Mellal, had listened to it nonstop when we were all living together in 1982. After preparing a sumptuous tajine or couscous for us, he would put on a tape of El Hadj Toulali singing a song about al-dablij, “a bracelet” that a suitor bought for his beloved and then lost. We learned Arabic this way, through listening to a Moroccan genre.

“We are having a reading in the park downtown on Thursday,” Lemsyeh told me. “Come. I will introduce you to the other zajalin.”

When Thursday arrived, I walked to the park shortly after the afternoon call to prayer. There was a seashell stage. People were beginning to congregate, men and women, many students, and other lovers of words. Lemsyeh greeted me. “I’m about to go on. I’ll speak to you later,” he said, and took the stage.

Lemsyeh read from his most recent publication, Shkyn tarz al-ma? (Who Embroidered the Water?)

Time sneezed
And space expanded
A ray of sun swelled
And sleep shortened
The skein got tangled and I couldn’t find the tip of the string 

Listen to Ahmed Lemsyeh reading excerpts from “Watching the Soul”:

Lemsyeh read on, encouraged by the thrall of the audience. “Give me your attention,” he said, “and use my words…Make a difference between the slaughterer and those who just bark. Silence has become their weapon.” This was social critique and a call to arms. He drew upon imagery from the bled — the Moroccan interior; skeins and looms and weaving. He used idioms not found in classical Arabic – like “listening to the bones.” He talked about as-sirr, the secret, a reference to Sufism.

When Lemsyeh was finished, another poet took the stage. He was with his young son. They read together, the father’s voice commanding, the son an apprentice. This was Driss Mesnaoui and his eldest child, Nafiss. Mesnaoui also read from his recent publication, entitled with one letter: waw [و ]. In Arabic literature this character is used like a punctuation mark, meaning “and.” /و/ signals both the end of one thought and the beginning of the next. It is the word that connects. And this is the reason, he told me later, that he entitled his diwan this way. In Sufism, he said, /و/ is also the breath. When joined with the letter ha — /هو / — it means He or God. Huwa hu, the Sufis chant. He is He, or in esoteric translation, I am that I am. (Huwa hu huwa hu huwa hu huwa hu. I myself would be chanting this with a group of Sufi women in Casablanca not long after our conversation.)

Mesnaoui was not only a mystic, he was also a social historian and critic. That day he read a poem about the Rif uprising, the colonial war between the Spanish and the autochthonous Amazigh of the Rif mountains from 1911-1927. The Moroccans were led by Abdelkarim al-Khattabi, a guerilla who spoke Tariffit (the northern Amazigh language) and Spanish. He resisted occupation and his army was successful for many years, until the French joined with the Spanish and used chemical weapons to defeat the rebellion: “The crowd drank us before we entered the city/ worry we wore it/ as we wore the wounds of the swords of deceit.” His voice resounded across the park.

those who needed a boat became, themselves, a ship
those who gave birth to us
hunger ate them before they could eat
those who raised us
the grave swallowed them before they could dig 

we found fasting the medicine for hunger
our thirst drank our tears

Listen to Driss Mesnaoui:

The audience was captivated and I understood why. He spoke with passion and presence. Like Lemsyeh, he was an attractive man, perhaps in his mid to late forties, just a bit older than me at the time. He had a gravitas about him, but was also warm and humble. The message was historical but had clear contemporary resonance.  

There was a chill in the air, the sun was beginning to set, and the reading ended. Lemsyeh came over to me. “I want to introduce you to Si Driss,” he said. We both walked over to where Mesnaoui and his son were standing.

“This is Deborah,” Lemsyeh said. “She is an American professor doing research on zajal.”

Mesnaoui greeted me warmly. “Perhaps we can get together sometime soon,” I suggested.

“With pleasure,” he answered in Darija. “Here is my number.” Mesnaoui wrote it on the bottom of a handwritten poem and handed it to me.

“I’ll give you a call soon,” I promised. And he and Nafiss were off.

Lemsyeh and I walked past the Mohamed V Theater, up the hill toward Place Petri and entered his apartment. There were already several people there, sitting in a large living room on banquettes. Lemsyeh introduced me to his wife, Amina. She was a politician with a seat in the Moroccan parliament — one of the only women in higher office at the time. Like Lemsyeh, who insisted I call him Ahmed, she was in the socialist party. She was preparing to go to Beijing for the World Conference on Women as their representative.

“Marhaba,” she welcomed me. “Sit down. We’ll talk later,” and she went back to the kitchen to supervise the women preparing the food.

Writers of many genres were there that night: novelists, journalists and public intellectuals. They all belonged to the Moroccan Writer’s Union. Ahmed was careful to introduce me to the zajalin — the poets writing in dialect. I met Mourad El Kadiri, the future president of the Moroccan House of Poetry. Although most of the guests were men, among the four women was Wafaa Lamrani, a woman of great beauty and charm, who wrote passionately about love in classical Arabic. She was the sensation in the writing world that year, and the dinner was largely to celebrate the publication of her recent book, Ready for You. Wafaa invited me to a reading she was giving in Tangier and I accepted, despite the fact that it was six hours away by train.

Ahmed came over. “La bas? Everything all right? Did you get something to eat? You know I wish Si Driss would join us…”

“He’s a very talented poet,” I said.

“He is,” Ahmed echoed. “And he stays clear of politics.”

I understood then that the lines between the Moroccan Writer’s Union and the socialist party were thin.

 

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I went to see Driss Mesnaoui soon after, taking a taxi across the bridge and into Salé. Mesnaoui lived in one of many similar-looking buildings in a new development on the outskirts of town. It was a hot afternoon. The taxi driver had to circle around the unpaved streets looking for his building, raising thick dust in the air around us. We finally found it. There was no buzzer, so I trudged up four floors to what I hoped was the right apartment. 

His wife Saida welcomed me with such profusive warmth that I immediately felt like an old friend. Their place was humble but clean, with an upright piano in the living room. Saida made tea, serving it with the kind of Moroccan sweets I find irresistible: marzipan gazelle horns, peanut butter drops, and rich butter cookies. “All made at home,” she assured me. But these sweets were only meant to open the appetite for the meal that followed.

I told Driss that I was trained in thaqafa shafawiyya, oral culture, and that I had written about the halqa. Like most people, he was delighted I took such a deep interest in his culture, and complimented me on my level of Arabic. He told me he was a schoolteacher from a rural village on the way to Meknes. His parents had a farm there.

His son Nafiss joined us for the meal, along with his younger brother Amine who was the pianist. After a green pea, artichoke, and lamb tagine,  Amine played a Chopin sonata. He was ten years old and his playing was impressive. 

Mesnaoui told me why he wrote in Darija. Like Lemsyeh, he felt it expressed what classical Arabic could not. It resonated more deeply. “The problem is,” he said, “In Morocco, literacy is still not what it should be. People read newspapers perhaps, but literature…” he shook his head. “It’s a big problem here.”

I told him about the literacy project that I had worked on in both El Ksiba and Marrakech, about the tests we’d administered to the children once a year, the interviews with their parents I’d done. “It seems to be getting a little better.” ^[1]

“Yes, shwia b-shwia al-haja mqdiya, little by little things get done,” he said, reciting a Moroccan proverb. “Still, people read newspapers, but not much else.” 

“Do you also publish your poems in the newspaper?” I asked. Lemsyeh’s poems were often there.

“I don’t,” he said. “I don’t belong to a party. I like to keep my independence. The newspapers only publish their own.” 

There were several newspapers on the stands each morning — one socialist, one communist, and several royalist. Moroccans knew the affiliations of each one. Some bought copies of all of them, to get a fuller picture. Lemsyeh was a socialist, and a vocal one at that. As I noted earlier, his poems in Darija were often in Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki. Mesnaoui quickly changed the subject and looked at me with warmth in his eyes: “Nhar kabir hada! This is a big day,” he proclaimed. Moroccans say this when they are in the presence of an honored guest. As the junior scholar at this gathering, I blushed. “Nhar kabir liya ana,” I insisted. “It’s a big day for me.”

Mesnaoui then asked Nafiss to read us one of his own Darija poems and he obliged, standing in front of the table. He read a short verse by heart, with confidence and conviction. He was clearly a poet-in-training.

“Qasm-nah taam, we’ve broken bread,” Mesnaoui said as I was leaving. “We’re friends. We need to see each other more often.”

“Aji aand-nah bzaf, come to us often.” Saida said. “Marhababik, you’re always welcome.”

 

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The next day I went to a bookstore specializing in Arabic literature. It was on Avenue Moulay Abdellah next to the Septième Art Cinéma. 

“I’m looking for zajal,” I said. 

“It’s in the poetry section,” the seller replied, walking with me to the back. 

I took books by Lemsyeh and Mesnaoui off the shelves, as well as one by El Kadiri — all writers in dialect. Then I perused the section of classical Arabic for Wafaa Lamrani’s oeuvre. One of her books was sealed in plastic wrapping. I’d understand why when I got home: it was illustrated with erotic drawings by the Moroccan artist Mohamed Melehi. There were sexual politics in these publications as well.  I left with so many books I could hardly carry them home. This was the beginning of a twenty-five year project translating Moroccan poetry into English.

In his volume entitled La Poésie Marocaine: de l’Independence à Nos Jours, Abdellatif Laâbi posits that languages themselves may contain a “hard nut of identity” (un noyau dur d’identité) and asks if it is “possible, or even legitimate, to crack this nut.” In my work, I do not attempt to pry open what resists translation so much as to infuse its materiality into English verse, to render the smells and tastes of Moroccan poetry for an Anglophone audience. Translating poetry is entering into the mind of another’s being, meditations and despair. Insofar as poetry is a repository for a collective spirit (not that it always is), translating poetry is also discerning a substrate of social ontologies, ways of being accrued over centuries. While romanticizing a national spirit may lead to the grossest of fascisms, it is nonetheless possible to speak of what Deleuze and Guattari call a milieu — the vibrations of a territory, formed by the stories that have lived there, as well as the songs, languages, and other practices embedded in its history.

Poetic Justice: An Anthology of Contemporary Moroccan Poetry was published 26 years after my first encounters with Lemsyeh and Mesnaoui. Of course much has changed in the Moroccan literary world since then. New poets are on the scene. But Lemsyeh and Mesnaoui continue to publish prolifically. They are the doyens of poetry in Darija.

The pandemic as well as the exigencies of life have intervened in recent years and prevented my yearly visits to Morocco. The last time I saw Ahmed Lemsyeh, it was around his dinner table with his wife Amina. I had been there many, many times before, partaking of their hospitality and watching their children, and now grandchildren grow up. He had just published his 25th book, and was busy collaborating on a YouTube performance of music and his recited poetry.

I also visited Driss Mesnaoui that year on his farm outside Meknes, where he and Saida have retired. We ate on their terrace, surrounded by fruits trees and rows of leafy vegetables, drinking fliu, fresh spearmint tea from their garden. In his last letter he told me about his recent publications, the conferences he’s been attending on zajal, and the dissertations that students are now writing about the movement to write in dialect. ما قدمته لي شخصيا عمري ما ننساه . أنا واشمُه في قلبي قبل ما كتبته في مذكراتي, he said to me, “I will never forget what you’ve given me. I smell it in my heart before I write it in my notebook.”

Dear Driss, dear Ahmed, I feel the same. The “letters of time” have fallen into your hands and mine, as we write what we are, translating love and poetry through the decades.

 

[1] Wagner, Daniel A 1994. Literacy, Culture and Development: Becoming Literate in Morocco. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

 

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