My admiration and appreciation for the thinker and novelist Dr. Said Ben Said Al-Alawi remained undiminished from our first encounter at the Janadriya Festival nearly ten years ago until our next meeting at the Asilah Forum a few months ago. Sy Said’s personality combines the authenticity of his culture, the breadth of his literature, the sophistication of his morals, the sweetness of his speech, and his pride in his experience. He wrote about national literature, discussed reformist ideas, and discussed his own biography. Aral Al Fassi. He delved deeply into the novel and wrote the kindest, most profound articles. Here is evidence of the strength and stature of a person with a wealth of knowledge, which continues in the text of the dialogue.
• What was Meknes like when you were born?
•• A city with two wings, or two parts if necessary, similar to the largest city in Morocco. The (modern) wing was created by French colonialism, and this wing is European in all its structures, its inhabitants, its settlement system, and the (traditional) part or wing is an authentic city, Islamic in its systems and organization, and this is due to the vision planned by the French colonizers, and I was born, raised, and educated in an authentic city, and so is the entire generation to which I belong.
• Who chose your name?
•• My full name is a compound name, Muhammad Al Said. Muhammad is the name of his maternal grandfather and Al Said is his paternal grandfather. In my name, my father – may God have mercy on him – was eager to please both mother and father. Due to the reckless actions of the French government, Muhammad was removed from his name, the definite articles Arif and his mother (Al-Sayed) were also removed, and his family and friends remained unchanged, becoming “Sayed.”
• Through your personal experience, do you see that the environment influences the individual?
•• To get results. For me, the impact was strong and clear. I grew up in a family where most of the men were lawyers. My father taught at a religious institute in the city, and he had a huge and diverse collection of books at home, and every afternoon he would pull out a book and immerse himself in reading. The library was huge and contained books on history, literature, jurisprudence, interpretation, and non-hadith “modern” books (written in the languages of the time). These include, for example, the book “Al-Hilal”, publications of the “Author, Translation and Publication Committee”, books on education and biography, etc. But as a child, that library seemed like a strange world to me, and I didn’t have the courage to step inside it until I reached secondary school. However, my father was happy to buy what I requested from what I had seen at the market or heard about in children’s books. I also point out that my father (who was a feared jurist or “religious scholar”) graciously responded to my teenage questions and arguments, answering them sarcastically with a smile and a joke. And the public library (in the city, not far from my house) became my favorite place since I was 12 years old. From then on, I became passionate about going to the cinema once a week and immersing myself in that world, considering it my unforgivable right. I had a lot of friends around me, most of them from school. We played together as children (within the hours we were allowed to spend outside the home) and as teenagers, we gained freedom and learned to wander the lanes and alleys of the ancient city. Then we learned to read novels and adventure books together. The first of these is the biography of Antara and the Thousand and One Nights. While we happily exchange books and magazines, we can’t help but mention radio and its fascinating world. We flip through radio stations looking for songs and entertainment programs. These are photos of the environment I grew up in. These strongly influenced my love of imagination, reading, music, and literature had a strong influence on the development of my personality.
Conversations about environment and upbringing are controversial, so even if I have a yearning in my heart, I refrain from speaking further for fear of them taking up the entire scope of the conversation.
• When did you realize that your future depended on literature and culture?
•• As I entered adolescence and left the world of my childhood, I was captivated to the fullest by this author’s personality. I had painted a rosy picture of her in my imagination, but it was painted more vividly by what was around me in the conversations of writers and biographical narrators. For example, I was fascinated by Yousef al-Shibai and his stories about officers and soldiers and his friend, the movie star Ahmed Mazar. I found in Tawfik Al Hakim an ideal role model and wanted to emulate him in every way. She loved theater and spent part of her life in a city of art, magic, and imagination. After that, I found myself drawn to Ernest Hemingway and his world. I was an avid reader of Arabic novels. In the first stage, they read novels translated into Arabic, and in the second stage, they read novels written in French or translated into French. Since I was 15 years old, I had dreamed of being a writer myself, but I wasn’t going to accept this job instead. (A secret that only two of my friends knew) I wrote short stories and plays, and I still have one novel. Meanwhile, his colleagues wrote thoughts, memoirs, composed poems, but with the exception of Abd Rabo, they “forgot” all this as the stage of their studies progressed and turned away from it. The dream of becoming a “novelist” remained with him, he always remained an avid reader of novels, and “novelist” remained with him until God willing. At a fairly advanced stage in life, a novelist comes out of the basement, writes and publishes his or her first novel.
• Between your interest in philosophical thinking and your interest in writing novels, what do you see yourself as?
•• Perhaps this is a question you should ask your readers. When I published my first novel (Mistakes of the Night), which thankfully received recognition and welcome from a group of critics and literature professors at Moroccan universities, I thought that in the eyes of the majority of my university colleagues, as well as journalists and literary critics, this problem had something to do with a new (phenomenon) in Morocco: the arrival of novelists from the worlds of history, philosophy, and politics. I am one of those newcomers. Then, gradually, I began to lose the attribute (foreigner) and the names of weak slaves began to be mentioned among the people mentioned by Moroccan novelists, and as much as it embarrasses me, I admit that it is something that pleases me. Because, in my mind, I place novels very highly in terms of intellectual production. Not everyone who is called a novelist has that qualification. I’m still worried that I might be one of those people. Suffice it to say that five of his six published novels were the source of a memoir, a university thesis, and a book chapter on criticism by a university professor.
• How many publications have you published so far?
•• 6 novels and 15 theory books. One of them is in French, and there are three university presses, two of which are also in French. Most of my publications were published by publishers in Lebanon and Egypt, and a few were published in Morocco as part of the publications of the Rabat Faculty of Arts.
• Who do you think is Morocco’s “father of philosophy”?
•• There is no doubt that he is the late Muhammad Aziz al-Hababi. He was the author of the first PhD thesis (at the Sorbonne in 1954) and the first Moroccan philosopher whose name is associated with the creation of a philosophical doctrine (Islamic individualism). And Aziz Al Hababi’s name is associated in our minds with the founding of Morocco’s first modern university and the study of philosophy there: the University of Mohammed V.
• How is elite culture reflected in society’s behavior?
•• Perhaps by elite in your question you mean, as far as I know, the cultural elite, or a group of people called intellectuals. If so, my answer will have to do with, on the one hand, the image portrayed of the intellectual in the Arab social consciousness and the role we see for him. On the other hand, it is also related to the high circulation rate of books and magazines, the demand for cultural television programs and cultural websites on the Internet. If we compare these percentages in our Arab world with the countries of Europe and America (north and south), and even with the major countries of Southeast Asia, this problem evokes regret and pity in our Arab reality. Our educated elite cannot influence Arab society. If the main role of intellectuals is to raise consciousness and advance, then the Arab educated elite in the current reality has nothing to do with it.
• What is your position on the award? Do you think it is free from “prejudice”?
•• On the occasion of this conference, I would like to express my sincere and strong respect for the efforts emanating from all organizations organizing book prizes in the Arab world: public government agencies and civil society. And after greetings and cautions, I would like to add that this issue is not without irregularities that, in some cases, impede the operation of the awards (for various reasons, starting from the establishment of the recitation committee and selection committee, right up to the broadcast of the final episode). (I don’t think it’s necessary to mention it.) In any case, it seems to me that the institutions responsible for planning and operating (be it government agencies or belonging to civil society) are required to carry out a comprehensive review to eliminate the spread of crime). The phenomenon of “paralysis” (as the Egyptian brethren say), and other phenomena, tarnishes the reputation of the prize and distorts the image of the institution to which it belongs, not to mention its negative impact on cultural activities and Arabic books.
• When did your relationship with Saudi culture begin? Who first caught your attention?
•• If by Saudi culture we mean culture insofar as it is a cultural expression specifically related to the Saudi society and people, then the direct answer is that this connection started with television and that is what introduced me to the world of Saudi Arabia (outside the image of Saudi Arabia, the homeland of Mecca and Medina, the land of Hajj and Umrah), which I then began to observe and connect with firsthand, thereby allowing me to participate in the events of the Janadriya festival. Several times. If you mean ideas and culture in the sense of (scientific culture) as social scientists talk about it, then my relationship with this culture is an old one through the mediation of Saudi intellectuals whom I know in many intellectual forums within and outside the Arab world. The same is true of people I have come to know through their writings (novels, political ideas, critical studies, and the editorial pages of widely distributed Arab newspapers). I am proud to have had the friendship of some wonderful friends whose names come to mind, including Osman al-Rawaf, Mujab al-Zahrani, Abdullah al-Ghadami, Abu Bakr Baqadir, Turki al-Hamad, Mishari al-Daidi, and Turki al-Dakhil. Among the people I was lucky enough to know, I would like to mention the poet, ambassador and minister Abdulaziz Khoja, his brother Iyad Madani, and the eminent and noble Abdulaziz Al-Sabil. I would appreciate it if you would use this honorable podium to convey my greetings and heartfelt love to all of you. I look back and say the people I mentioned are not a private list for me. I ask you to have mercy on them, for there are many of my brothers in the kingdom, some of whom have found God’s forgiveness.
