The novelist of Algerian origin, Mohamed Moulshoul - nicknamed "Yasmina Khadra" - is considered one of the pyramids of French-speaking literature.
In addition to his fluid pen, the reader hardly finishes reading one of his works until he is surprised by a new work, as he has a distinctive style that French writers rarely match in it, and his writing is not devoid of intellectual depth that indicates the major transformations taking place in Maghreb societies in particular.
Perhaps the reader feels that Yasmina Khadra is emerging in his novels from a new artistic sense as he tries to dismantle the emotional structure of Maghreb societies in the post-colonial phase.
This reader may go so far as to say that Yasmina Khadra has emptied the phrase "post-colonial" of all meanings, and that his literary works contribute to drawing the features of a new relationship between Islam and the West.
Unlike those writers who are unable to emancipate themselves from the binary families of "the colonizer-the colonized" as they look back at themselves and their societies in the post-colonial stage, Yasmina Khadra turns his back on this duality, as if he wants to say that the effects of the boundaries separating the self - as a former colony - And others - as a former colonizer - have been pardoned and erased.
This is what we see clearly in his novel "The Virtues" (Les Vertueux), where the writer is keen to appear as an intellectual who withdraws from all kinds of political conflict and ideological debate, seeking solace in solitude, hoping to find in words something to mend his wounds.
Virtue is only to grow old alone, out of sight...
In the novel "What Are the Monkeys Waiting For?"
The hero humiliates the tyrant Hajj Saad, abuses him, and subjects him to the types of humiliation he used to subject others to before he was killed by the evil of killers.
Perhaps Yasmina Khadra in this novel expresses his confidence that with the death of the tyrant and the end of tyranny, the individual will be emancipated and healed to become a complete, living being.
At that time, he had not lost hope of change, of getting rid of the power of a regime that derives legitimacy from remaining perched on the chests from the narrative of the struggle against colonialism only, and not from a new political horizon.
Therefore, Khadra was urging himself and others to take political action.
Yassin was an obscure shepherd who lived a simple life, before the hands of treachery snatched him from the arms of his poor family, to become a conscript in the ranks of the French army against his desire, and he was thrown into the trenches of the First World War that was raging in Europe.
In an attempt to embody the heroic role played by the hero of his novel, "What are the monkeys waiting for?", Yasmina Khadra announced his candidacy to run in the presidential elections in Algeria.
However, it did not take long for him to discover that his involvement in the struggle for power in this way was nothing but an illusion, which would not have led to anything other than frustration.
After acknowledging defeat and admitting his "inability to persuade", the intellectual, Yasmina Khadra, embarked on a journey towards the self, seeking inner peace and reassurance.
The focus of the novel "The Virtues" revolves around this journey, the journey of the intellectual's withdrawal from political life.
The hero of this novel, Yassin Sharakah (pronounced “kaf” here as “kaf triangular”), cannot resist the call of the desert, where he will spend the rest of his days, grazing the stars. The peak at which a person reconciles with himself and enters into peace with himself," as previously told by one of the wise camel herdsmen, whom he encountered during the wandering journey in search of his displaced family.
Yassin says, addressing himself at the end of the novel: "I have the right to take provisions from my journey as an outcast with what I see as a necessary provision suitable for the days of my old age."
He has come to believe firmly in a truth that has become sacred to him, to the effect that "no matter how violent winds dislodge the rocks of the cathedral, no matter how storms move the crescent dunes of sand, no matter how hurricanes rage on the sea, everything must calm down and things will come to complete calm."
In order for this complete calm to occur, forgetting, pardoning and forgiveness must be forgotten.
And Yassin is ready to pardon his past, he says: "I have forgiven everyone, everything."
Yassin chooses to pardon and pardon the heinous plots committed against him, and he resists his desire for revenge, after he has reached a high level of consciousness, at which point he realizes that it is futile to try to disentangle the different types of evil.
This is because things have reached a degree of similarity at which evil has become an ambiguous concept, as it has become possible to find evil within folds of evil worse than it, or to find good within folds of evil, or evil within folds of good.
Grounds of injustice in the sad story of Yassin Sharakah
Yassin was an obscure shepherd who lived a simple life, before the hands of treachery snatched him from the arms of his poor family, to become a conscript in the ranks of the French army against his will, and he was thrown into the trenches of the First World War that was raging in Europe.
He was recruited under the name "Hamza Boussaid", the name of one of the sons of Caid Brahim, a corrupt feudal lord and traitorous leader with no mercy in his heart.
After his return from the war, Yassin discovered that Commander Brahim intends to get rid of him forever so that his family can win the honor of participating in the war in the ranks of the French army and that his son - instead of Yassin - keep the military medals he was decorated with after fighting the war in France.
Yassin fled from certain death to find himself in the paths of wandering, suffering the scourge of endless ordeals.
During his search for his family, which was abandoned by Commander Brahim, it was written for him to meet again with some comrades-in-arms from wartime in France, and he also encountered new people on his way.
Fate wanted him to meet again with "Zarroq", who had previously told about his strange phases while recruiting in the French army.
Yassin found no alternative but to engage with him in the guerrilla war he was waging against the French colonialists in Algeria.
And when "Zarq" fell dead, a victim of the traitorous leader Brahim's plan, Yassin chose to settle in the city of Sidi Bel Abbas, all hoping to enjoy a quiet and happy life with Maryam, the girl he married during one of his trips to the Bani Ghil tribes (Bani Aqil) in the far east of Morocco.
It wasn't long before another calamity befell him, to find himself kidnapped from Mary's bosom, suffering two things in the hard labor prison, where he was sentenced to serve 20 years for the murder of two servants of Commander Brahim.
While he was suffering the pain of longing for his wife and young son, and the burning of ignorance of their fate in this brutal world, fate wanted his news to reach one of the French non-commissioned officers who had seen his good manners during the recruitment period, so he came to his rescue to save him from hard labor after he had spent more than half of the sentence.
When Yassin asks what he did to deserve to reap what he earned from the tragedies and calamities, his memory takes him back to the days of the war in France, so he diagnoses before his eyes the moment he shot an innocent German young man in cold blood, not knowing how his heart hardened in front of his impassioned looks.
The earth and the sky alone are the home of Yassin Al-Rai's identity
Through the novel "The Virtuous," Yasmina Khadra seeks to convey a bold message that there is no camel or camel for Yasin and his likes in the military conflicts and armed conflicts in which they were thrust as the deceivers are thrust into hell on the Day of Resurrection.
Rather, it is the innocence of the two classes, the innocence of Yassin the murderer, and the innocence of the murdered German youth.
It is difficult for Yassin al-Rai to identify with all the cases that required him to take up arms, from the issue of the French army, through the case of Commander Brahim, to the case of Zarq.
And he takes his distance from everyone, and you find him only dreaming of one thing: restoring his stolen identity, the identity of the shepherd who is determined by his strong relationship with heaven and earth, and nothing else.
Yassin's family name "Sharaga" indicates an identity rooted in displacement, Golan, and free movement between the West and the East. "Sharaka" in its origin is a word that means those who seek the East as a resort when their means of living are limited.
And if the "Sharaga" reside in the far west of Algeria, it means that they hail from the far east of Morocco.
Yasmina Khadra's choice of the name of the protagonist of Al-Fudalah's novel was not arbitrary. Rather, the intention behind it was to alert the strong bonds of brotherhood that transcend artificial borders to bring together Muslim peoples.
This saying is supported by the fact that Yassin and Maryam, his Moroccan wife from Bani Aqil, decided to leave the city to live under the desert sky, specifically under the stars of beavers, an area that bears witness to a history of coexistence that refutes the falsehood of modern artificial identities.
Yassin says: “Every night, before I fall asleep in Maryam’s arms, I remember the words of the camel hunter who saved me years ago in the Hamada region: If you want to reach the king’s summit, the summit above all peaks, all you have to do is live in peace with yourself.” .