Writing non-Arabic .. Do you make Arab creators foreign writers?

Aref Hamza-Germany

When we asked Iraqi novelist and poet Abbas Khadr, who has been living in Germany since 2000, if he would like to present him as a resident Iraqi novelist? Or as a German writer of Iraqi origin? Especially since he has a nationality and wrote his last four novels in German directly, he replied that each writer writes in Arabic and belongs to a specific place can be named as a writer linked to his place: Syrian writer, Lebanese writer, and so on.

According to him - in an interview with the island Net - The situation is very different, he does not write in Arabic, but directly in German, so his books are considered a productive part of German, and considers that the most accurate definition is "German writer of Iraqi origin."

There are also several statements, both former and famous, of the French novelist of Moroccan origin Tahar Ben Jelloun insisting that he is a French writer, not a Moroccan.

Does foreign language writing make the novel belong to the culture of the language in which it was written? Is this writer considered a foreigner or remains an Arab?

Problematic identity of texts
Mohammed Hayawi, an Iraqi novelist based in the Netherlands, finds that the deepest and most effective link between the writer and his original affiliation is, of course, language, as a tool to embody the deep self-ego in isolation from other cultural influences.

"For those who were not born in their second country, there is an unconscious characteristic that compels them to reconstruct the meaning in their minds in their native language and then formulate it in their second language. This is a physiological, not intellectual, characteristic."

All in all, the subject of the writer, his possibilities and the worlds he writes about is his true identity no matter what language he writes.

For his part, Boumediene Belkabir, a university professor, researcher and novelist with the Algerian novel "Baghoul Baghoul", said that there is already a controversy about writing in a language other than the mother tongue.

This is based on the fact that language can be included as a determinant of the identity of the text, is the language a neutral element and merely a tool or intermediary between the author of the text and the reader wherever it is? This controversy rises from time to time, but it has not stopped, especially in societies that know linguistic duality or linguistic diversity.

Divisions of society and culture
Asked by Al Jazeera Net about the reasons behind this controversy, Belkabir said that, often, ideology, political reality deteriorating and amalgamated history contribute to ignite this debate, and load the issue more than energy.

He added that this causes cracks and divisions within the society that go beyond the cultural scene, and divides the members of the community into a nationalized stream and a "francophone" or "frkophone" stream as defined by Algeria at some point in its history, especially in the 1990s, and the prevailing language is the language of treason and labor. Society plunged the extremes of radicalism and exclusionism into a complex crisis.

Exile and homeland
Syrian novelist Omar Kaddour, who lives in France, says we are used to the other language being exile for refugees or migrants.

He adds that the most important thing that the immigrant brings to the new place is the language in which he formulates his past life in his first place, and the first thing that confronts the refugee is the language of the other, which is the most prominent expression of exile because he does not know, or do not master enough to feel belonging to the new place.

Kaddour, however, notes that exile may become a home when the alternative language replaces the mother tongue. This is a tedious and rare process among the first generation of refugees, but when alternative language becomes a language of thinking, but when it becomes the language in which a person's dreams come asleep, it means that she is home.

The problem of la Francophonie
Hayawi says that the alienation or contradiction experienced by the writer when he writes about the topics dumped in the local, the language of the first country that was deeply rooted in consciousness, and the strange or new language incompatible with its vocabulary and formations with the vocabulary and formations of those worlds.

He went on to say that it is different for some Moroccan writers because of the Francophone and French education and circulation from childhood to adulthood, it allows them to think automatically in that language, they do not suffer from a duplication at some point deep in their minds, even if it happens in the subconscious writer.

It is quite different for other writers of Arab, Indian or Latin origin, who came to their homelands after their consciousness developed in their countries of origin, and their minds were able to have the mechanism of working the original language in their subconscious, even if they write in second languages.

War booty
Belkbir agreed to put forward Hiaoui, and said that the Algerian cultural scene was known as double linguistic, there is a generation writes in French, and some are written in Arabic, and there are those who write both languages ​​at the same time or move from one language to another.

In recent decades, there are those who have written in Italian or English and other living languages, but there are categories belonging to the cultural milieu that consider the literature written in French is not classified as Algerian literature, but those achievements belong to French literature.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that these literary texts have an identity, and the evidence that the Algerian novel contributed to the definition of the cause of the people fell under the yoke of French colonialism, so it is considered an Algerian literature written in French as Algerian literature written in Arabic.

When asked about the opinion of French critics about this controversy, Belkabir said that the most prominent rejects the belonging of these literary works to their country, as they consider that the novels written by Algerian writers in French are in the ranks of foreign literature, which is different in detail and different from French literature.

Kaddour felt that the text written in the new language belongs to it before any other consideration, and his writer directs it to its reader in the first place because the reader has been involved in the text since the writing began, considering that there are Arabic novels revolving in European countries and remained counted on the Arabic novel and not on its place or people, On the other hand, there are novels in Arabic itself that the writer takes into account the Western reader before the Arab.