A Country for Dying

A Novel

translated by Emma Ramadan, by Abdellah Taïa

Translated by Emma Ramadan

Winner of the 2021 PEN Translation Prize

An exquisite novel of North Africans in Paris by "one of the most original and necessary voices in world literature."

Paris, Summer 2010.

Zahira is 40 years old, Moroccan, a prostitute, traumatized by her father's suicide decades prior, and in love with a man who no longer loves her.

Zannouba, Zahira's friend and protege, formerly known as Aziz, prepares for gender confirmation surgery and reflects on the reoccuring trauma of loss, including the loss of her pre-transition male persona.

Mojtaba is a gay Iranian revolutionary who, having fled to Paris, seeks refuge with Zahira for the month of Ramadan.

Meanwhile, Allal, Zahira's first love back in Morocco, travels to Paris to find Zahira.

Through swirling, perpendicular narratives, A Country for Dying follows the inner lives of emigrants as they contend with the space between their dreams and their realities, a schism of a postcolonial world where, as Abdellah Taïa writes, "So many people find themselves in the same situation. It is our destiny: To pay with our bodies for other people's future."

Collected in

Literature in Translation NEW RELEASES Recommended Reading: New and Bestselling Books Queer Liberation - More than just Pride Month

Buying options

Paperback

$15.26

$16.95

Publish Date: 2020-10-06

ISBN: 9781609809904

Pages: 112

Ebook

$6.59

$10.99

Publish Date: 2020-09-29

ISBN: 9781609809911

Pages: 11

“A Country for Dying is a knife of a novel—short, sharp, and jagged. Abdellah Taïa ruthlessly uses that knife to cut away sentimental notions of love, romance, family, and nation. He exposes how colonization has shaped sexual desire, expression, and exploitation, and leaves us with a memorable, powerful work.”

– Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer and The Refugees

“Abdellah Taïa dramatizes the reality of Zahira and Zannouba, Moroccan prostitutes in Paris, at sea in the stormy straits between the sexes and nationalities, estranged from their families but absorbed by their loves and fantasies; this is a cri de coeur and a cri de corps, heart and body crying in the lonely city.”

– Edmund White

“Abdellah Taïa is one of the most original and necessary voices in world literature. ... With each novel Taïa grows as an artist and expands our knowledge of what it means to be an outsider inside the Muslim world.”

– David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife

“Taïa’s novels often feature a semi-autobiographical gay protagonist negotiating a sex life in a working-class Moroccan milieu. The novella-length “A Country for Dying” is quite different; out of a polyphonic onslaught, Taïa fashions a globe-trotting yet tenuous story. The author, who grew up in Morocco and lives in France, excels when contrasting the dreams of two of his three main characters, all of whom are North African prostitutes, with the grimness of demimonde Paris. (Taïa writes in French; “A Country for Dying” was translated into appropriately gritty English by Ramadan.) Zahira, one of the protagonists, repeatedly witnesses her male Arab clients being “used by this city that mistreats them with no remorse, and by their white French bosses who exploit them under the table without a hint of guilt.” The other Parisian prostitute, Aziz, insists that he wants to “become the girl I had always been, long before I came into the world,” yet finds himself wrestling with the finality of gender reassignment surgery. Taïa’s third main character is Zineb, Zahira’s paternal aunt, who strayed from her village in French-ruled Morocco as a teenager and was raped by a French police chief. Thus “dishonored,” she embarked on a life of prostitution. Zineb’s tale is set in 1950s French Indochina, where she tells a client about her fateful past as well as her piteous fantasy of becoming a film star in India. It jars with the stories of Zahira and Aziz, owing to its brevity and altogether different time and place. Nevertheless, Taïa adroitly conveys the sobering message that, whether in the mid-20th century or in the early 21st, sexual stigma is often irremovable, and can even foreclose the possibility of a return home.”

– Rayyan Al-Shawaf, The New York Times Book Review

“Immigrants in Paris seek political, economic, and sexual refuge in Taïa's heart-wrenching tale of postcolonial identity crisis. Zahira, a 45-year-old prostitute, is haunted by memories of her father's suicide in Morocco when she was a child, and of Allal, a possessive Moroccan who loved her decades earlier. In Paris, Zahira looks out for an Algerian protégé, Zannouba, on the eve of Zannouba's sex reassignment surgery, and Mojtaba, a gay Iranian dissident, whose innocence awakens Zahira's maternal instincts. For Zahira and others, solace eludes them in the form of lost or unrequited love, a theme Taïa distills in a nested story of Zahira's vanished aunt, Zineb. Enlisted by the French to service soldiers in 1950s Indochina, Zineb is left adrift between the family she's left behind and a love she can only sell. Taïa's blunt style is shot through with an immediacy accenting the high stakes for those chased across borders and running from their own pasts ("You thought you had fled our world," says Allal). But Zahira is not free, and Allal has not forgotten her; he is coming now to Paris, planning to kill her. In the churning gears of this compact, deeply moving novel, crises of identity prove more solvable than those of the heart.”

– Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“The Moroccan writer Abdellah Taïa’s novel A Country for Dying (translated from the French by Emma Ramadan) depicts a Paris distinct from the stuff of Anglophone fantasies. The story follows three characters: Zahira, a forty-year-old Moroccan sex worker in love with a man who does not return her feelings; Zahira’s friend Zannouba, who undergoes gender confirmation surgery and reflects on questions of trauma and identity; and Mojtaba, a gay Iranian revolutionary who by chance stays with Zahira for the month of Ramadan. Taïa, who came out as gay in Morocco—where homosexuality is illegal—in 2006, poignantly portrays the lives of immigrants in a city and country that is frequently hostile to them, and openly questions France’s perception of itself and its immigration policies.”

– Rhian Sasseen, The Paris Review

“A pocketable, one-sitting read, Abdellah Taïa’s "A Country for Dying" is an engrossing transcontinental and transgenerational fable sweeping from coastal Morocco to northern France over the course of five decades. With terse, biting prose beautifully translated from French by Emma Ramadan, it is a startlingly topical and succinct examination of race, relocation, isolation, and identity.”

– Logan Webb, World Literature Today

“Despite its brief length, Abdellah Taïa’s novel covers a lot of territory, both temporally and thematically. This is a work that concerns itself with intimacy, with desire, and with identity—and which finds multiple permutations of each to discuss. Throw in a plot that grapples with colonialism and generational trauma and you have a complex, thoughtful novel.”

– Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders

“In this newly translated work of fiction, the Paris-based Moroccan writer and filmmaker looks at sexuality, desire, and identity in a post-colonial world... [In] these vignettes and monologues, Taïa offers American readers glimpses of lives few of us are likely to see outside of this book. Lyrical and impassioned.”

– Kirkus Reviews

“In his new novel, A Country for Dying, Abdellah Taïa explores the lives of migrants in Paris, offering an unusual and uncomfortably real perspective on what it is to exist between places. Cut off from their own countries yet marginalised by their new home, his characters live fragmented lives that often play out at night-time or in dark, shadowy spaces. Themes such as gender, sexuality, religion and identity are explored in some detail as well, making this brief work of fiction – published by Seven Stories Press in a seamless translation by Emma Ramadan – something deeply profound and complex.”

– The Monthly Booking

“I think anyone who likes Ocean Vuong’s work would also love reading this book. It’s about a prostitute and her son, a young gay Muslim who becomes a jihadi. There are multiple characters in this perpendicular narrative, such as a good friend of the prostitute who is going through a gender transition, and it’s a fascinating window into the lives of impoverished North Africans in Paris, dealing with the politics of their own identity and their sexual identity. The prostitute is in love with a man who’s no longer in love with her, and everything is kind of complicated and twisted. I like the fact that the novel bounces around narratively; it’s not a classic three-act structure, it’s more perpendicular and really gets inside the lives of these characters. Whenever I go to Paris, I’d never normally meet people like the characters in A Country for Dying. I love how books give me a window into other people’s lives, especially those people whose paths I would not normally cross. If you look at my films, the vast majority of them are based on books. I find that if you write an original script, no matter how good it is, it just somehow doesn’t quite scratch beneath the surface enough in the way that a book does.”

– Wayne Wang, director of 'The Joy Luck Club' (1993) and 'Coming Home Again' (2020)

“A Country for Dying is filled with imaginary letters, dialogues, and soliloquies where Taïa completely foregoes dialogue tags. Some of the most beautiful moments here emerge when dialogue turns into all but a string of poetic lines, and it becomes pleasantly unclear who the speaker and addressee are. These instances embody the to-and-fro of Taïa’s style, where an adult is always one feeling away from becoming a child again. We may not know who’s speaking but we know something ancestral is being written, or rewritten, in a way that recalls the dialogic narration in Manoel de Oliveira’s Visit or Memories and Confessions... The poetic register of A Country for Dying is wrought by an eventfulness triggered by the tiniest things that just keep on echoing generations later: a memory, a song, a stranger. In one particularly poignant, and ever so fleeting, sequence in the book, Zahira visits the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris for the first time late at night with Mojtaba, a wounded Iranian man she takes in for a month before he disappears. It’s almost closing time, but instead of leaving, Mojtaba tells her that they should stay to enjoy the gardens alone in the wee hours—and they do. “The French are gone,” he tells her. “The garden is ours.””

– Diego Semerene, Slant Magazine

“More Paris you say? "A Country for Dying" by Abdellah Taia is a swirling narrative with characters who struggle with loss – of a part of oneself, of homelands, and of love. Yet, even though all that, there can be hope.”

– Monica Carter, LGBTQ Writers in Schools Manager, Lambda Literary

“The novel’s writing style encourages the reader to engage with the text not on their own terms, but on the narrator’s; in other words, the author’s style itself is part of the author’s message. In “A Country for Dying,” there may be beauty, but it is an unforgiving beauty that does not soften or shy away from the realities of the queer experience. Positive, legible representation of queer and trans subjects isn’t always the best. There are some conversations that are not meant to be easily digestible for everyone, Taïa’s seems to tell us. Zannouba’s lived experience is not so easily universal nor clear just because it exists in the literature.”

– Chiara Naomi Kaufman, Contributing Writer, The Wesleyan Argus

“I read Abdellah Taïa’s A Country for Dying, a symphony of immigrant experiences in Paris, which revealed to me a gritty corner of the City of Lights I’d never seen.”

– Daniel Loedel, author of Hades, Argentina, The Millions

“Through swirling, perpendicular narratives, A Country for Dying follows the inner lives of emigrants as they contend with the space between their dreams and their realities, a schism of a postcolonial world where, as Taïa writes, “So many people find themselves in the same situation. It is our destiny: To pay with our bodies for other people’s future.””

– Entropy

blog — February 25

Excerpt from “Living in Your Light” by Abdellah Taïa, tr. Emma Ramadan

From the award-winning French-Moroccan novelist Abdellah Taïa comes a story in praise of a woman, a fighter, a survivor. Shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2022.

Known internationally for his beautiful treatment of North Africa’s otherwise marginalized characters — prostitutes and thieves, trans and gay people in a world where being LGBTQ+ can be a dangerous act — Taïa’s latest novel to be translated in English shares the story of his mother, a Moroccan countrywoman who he calls Malika.

Three moments in the life of Malika, from 1954 to 1999: from French colonization to the death of King Hassan II. It is her voice we hear in Abdellah Taïa’s stunning new novel, translated by Emma Ramadan, who won the PEN Translation Prize for her translation of Taia’s last novel, A Country for Dying.

Malika’s first husband was sent by the French to fight in Indochina.

In the 1960s, in Rabat, she does everything possible to prevent her daughter Khadija from becoming a maid in a rich French woman’s villa.

The day before the death of Hassan II, a young homosexual thief, Jaâfar, enters her home and wants to kill her.

Malika recounts with rage her strategies to escape the injustices of History. To survive. To have a little space of her own.

Malika is Taïa’s mother: M'Barka Allali Taïa (1930-2010). This book is dedicated to her.

EXCERPT FROM LIVING IN YOUR LIGHT BY ABDELLAH TAÏA
TRANSLATED BY EMMA RAMADAN

All the love of this earth.

All the love that there is on this earth will not be enough for me, will not help me to bear what happens to me after you, Allal.

You went so far away, to a world I know nothing about. And you will not return.

There is nothing ahead of me now but memory, absence, love without you.

You watched me for months and months when I went to the souk with my father. You weren’t afraid of him and you let your eyes speak, follow me, enter me, and decide for me what would follow, happen. Be with you. Be yours. Be your wife. Your eyes didn’t say that I was beautiful nor that you were in love with me. No, none of that. Your eyes played, danced, and invited me to do the same. Dance with you in public, in the souk. That was what you wanted, what excited you. To see how I would react, what I would show of myself. My reaction to your stares when my father was right there, beside me. Together we carry a basket of vegetables, he and I. We are perfectly respectable. Was my father unaware? I don’t think so. He plays innocent, my father. But he’s tender. Tender and submissive to his second wife. It’s only in this souk, once per week, that I can have him all to myself. It’s only here that he dares show me any affection and buys me donuts coated with sugar.

You had planned your strategy, Allal. You went for it, you spoke. Not to me, no. To my father who, for some time, had been trying to get rid of me. Me, Malika, his daughter. He couldn’t take it anymore, watching his second wife humiliate me every day and saying nothing about it.

He said nothing, my father. He was enchanted by her, bewitched. He’d lost his head a long time ago. He let himself be guided, directed. I was his weak point. The daughter of his first marriage.

She grew up, little Malika. Seventeen years old. She’s a woman now. Entirely a woman. She must be given to someone. Find her a man. There are plenty in this vast bled where everyone keeps tabs on everyone else.

Let me help you carry the second basket, my uncle. That’s how you approached us, Allal.

It’s too heavy for you and your daughter, my uncle.

Okay, my son. May God show you the path to paradise, my son.

You were walking on the other side. My father was between us. You acted like manly men, you spoke of crops, of the sky that had been generous with rain that year, and of the French who still didn’t want to leave Morocco. You spoke of the facts of life that I didn’t yet know about. And suddenly, my father stopped and said:

You’re the son of Saleh, aren’t you?

How had he guessed? I never would have known.

I am the youngest son of Saleh, yes. I am Allal, my uncle.

Allal. That’s right. Little Allal. How you’ve grown! You don’t remember him, Malika? Look. It’s Allal. Give him your hand and greet him. Allal is like a cousin to you. Give him your hand. Don’t be shy. Allal is from the same place as us, from the same extended family as us. Same blood and same flesh. Look at him. I am here with you, Malika. Look at Allal. He has become a man. Bigger than me. Look.

Later, I understood that my father knew all about my little game. He had seen everything. My little dances for you, Allal. Your eyes permanently fixed on me. Your eyes devouring me.

It was my father, Baba, who insisted on bringing me with him to the souk, and he was the one who wanted to buy me donuts each time from the old woman set up next to a little open-air café. Your café, Allal.

You were there. In that café. You were always there.

I am standing near the old woman’s stall. I am alone. Baba told me he would be back in about ten minutes. I eat the donuts very slowly. I take my time. I let you look at me all you want. My body. My character. My history. I am strong. That is what you will love about me. A strong woman who engulfs you entirely. Not a woman just for a night. No. I am a woman for something serious, you see that, a woman to accompany you and help you as you face off against zman, time, which passes and ends up ruining us all. I am Malika. I am in very good health. I am not lazy. I see things through. I have good teeth. My hair is very black. My thighs are solid. My chest will continue to grow, don’t worry. My stomach is large. And my Berber tattoo between the eyes means one thing: I am loyal. Loyal and cunning, to be frank. But I imagine that doesn’t scare you, my cunning. You continue to watch me, you don’t judge me. I please you. I please you, I know it. Look, Allal. Look. I’ve finished eating the second donut. I start on the third. I want you to see that I have a healthy appetite. I eat. I eat. I love food, all kinds of food. I am a woman who is not ashamed to eat. Malika. Malika, Allal. It’s for you. Come. Come. When will you come?

You walk with us, Allal. Down our path. You help us, me and Baba. You carry the second basket. And you speak. You have a lot to say. I barely listen. I let myself be soothed by the sound of your voice. I enter into that voice and its world. My father is delighted. He has understood that you are a man who is not afraid. A man full of words that ring true and good stories to share. A man who reveals himself all at once, who is open, who says: Here is my heart.

Hope exists. With your body, Allal, in your heart, Allal, I will find another path. Finally flee my stepmother and her maliciousness. Thwart destiny. Grab hold of hope, have proof of it.

I will live.

Baba suddenly asks you that question, direct, too direct: What do you have in life, my son Allal?

You answer honestly. You don’t even stop to think.

I have nothing but my open-air café, my uncle. I bring it with me from souk to souk, from mausoleum to mausoleum. It’s not much, I know. It’s no guarantee of a beautiful future, I know. But I live well, even very well during the summer, with this café. I’ve managed to save up a bit of money. I live with my parents. In their house. And I have two brothers who are younger than me. I am twenty-seven years old, my uncle. It is time for me to get married. I have cousins younger than me who already have children. I want to get married.

I daydream. I look at your feet, Allal. Your feet in leather sandals. They are dirty, your feet. Strong and dirty. I want to take them in my hands, those feet, right there, on the spot. Wash them slowly, gently, very gently. And then massage them with olive oil. I know how. I practice on my father’s feet when he comes home at night from working in the field. Isn’t that right, Baba? Tell Allal that I know how to massage feet. Tell him. Tell him. This detail is very important. Men’s feet. Allal’s feet. I will always begin with your feet, Allal. And then everything will be easy. Love. Love.

The dream of love.

We’ve arrived at our house. We’re in front of the door. You place the basket on the ground. My father invites you in for a cup of mint tea. You say that you have to return to the souk to pack up your café. Baba insists:

At least a glass of water, Allal. You accept.

Bring him a glass of water, my daughter Malika.

It’s only you and me now. Baba has gone to bring the baskets inside the house. He’ll be back any minute now.

You drink the water. You’re very thirsty. I watch you drink the entire glass in one gulp. Your eyes are closed. Your head is tilted back. I see your strong neck. I see everything, everything, from close up. Heat rises in me. The dark black hairs of your short beard. Your nose, long and thin. Your lips, the color of the land here: red ocher. Your ears, huge and strange. Your head is almost shaved, like a thief ’s. You never let your hair grow, I believe. Why not?

I want to reach out my hand and caress your head.

You are a man. You are handsome. I find you handsome. I tell you this, in my heart: You are so handsome, Allal.

Did you hear me?

You are handsome. You are not rich but you are handsome.

I breathe in the smell of your body, Allal. The body of a man beaten by the sun for years and years, browned by the sun, almost black from the sun. A body that’s sweating, dripping. It is hot. It is cold. It is burning.

Allal, you come toward me. Open your legs, you say. Open them. Open, Malika.

I open them. Immediately. For you. I have been waiting for so long. I am seventeen years old. It is time. To give myself to you, Allal. Take you inside me, mix together our scents and our sweat. Our paths.

And our dreams.

You have finished drinking the water, Allal. You make no improper or uncalled-for gesture. You’re in front of Baba’s house. I emerge from my dream beside your body. I lower my eyes. You hand me the glass. Your hand touches my hand. It lasts three or four seconds. Your heat, Allal. The heat on the surface of your skin. It enters me and courses through all of me, from my head to my toes. You say goodbye.

Bsslama, Malika. Bsslama, Allal.

You leave. Right away. I watch you leave. You walk. You walk quickly. You are so light. You are skinny. You are fragile. You are a little bird. I am stronger than you.

You turned left. You disappeared from my sight. But you are still here, in the air. I see you. Your trace. Your memory. Your gentle virility.

Baba returns.

Come in, Malika. Come in, my little girl. Allal is a fine man.

It’s in God’s hands now.

You came back to see us a month later to ask for my hand. Both of your parents were with you. And your best friend too: Merzougue. He’s my brother, more than my brother, I heard you say to my father when you introduced him. Merzougue. Some- times, a friend is much better than a brother, you’re right, Allal.

Merzougue was seated next to you, glued to you. When I entered the living room of our house to serve everyone mint tea, Merzougue said:

She’s lucky, your daughter.

Baba didn’t ask for much money as a dowry. Almost nothing.

But to your parents, Allal, he spoke from the heart:

Malika will be your daughter. I give her to you. I am not selling her. I am entrusting her to you. I am not forcing Malika to do anything. She is your daughter. Life will smile on her with you and your son Allal. Life will finally reward her. I am counting on you.

Hearing these words, my stepmother stood up and left the living room. She wanted to show her disapproval of Baba’s words and what he was implying. I went to check whether or not the couscous was ready.

Baba continued his speech.

My daughter Malika lost her mother at a very young age. I couldn’t raise her on my own. In this life, a man cannot weather the storm without a wife. I married again. I had no choice.

Your father then began speaking.

You daughter Malika will be our daughter. Do not worry. And our son Allal is your son. God will guide us on this path as good Muslims with pure hearts. But . . . but . . .

But what?

The dowry is a bit too substantial for our son. How much money can you give for my daughter?

This isn’t about money. Trust is the most important thing. How much?

That’s for you to decide. Our son is a good son. A man. He is not afraid of work. He is—

How much?

Half of what you asked.

Baba turned toward me. He took my hand in his.

Malika, my daughter, you have heard what has just been said. Are you okay with all of this? I am not forcing you to do anything. Do you want to marry Allal under these conditions? You won’t tell me later that I sold you for nothing? Allal is here, in front of you. His parents are here, in front of you. You have heard everything they said. Their proposition. Money isn’t every- thing in life, but . . . but sometimes you have to know . . .

I am okay with it, Baba. I want to marry Allal. I accept what his parents propose.

You have all heard it. My daughter Malika agrees. She is your daughter now. She is yours. She is yours, my son Allal. We will celebrate the wedding in a month. Now let’s read Surah Al-Fatiha, since we are all in agreement.

Listening to these words, I looked at you, Allal. You didn’t look at me at that moment, Allal.

You turned toward your friend Merzougue and you gave each other a very warm embrace. Two friends. Two brothers.

And I understood, seeing you entwined like that for a long time, too long, that there was a secret between you. A very special bond.

Baba was even forced to intervene. He said to you:

That’s enough now, Allal my son. Let go of Merzougue and give Malika a kiss on the head.

You kissed me timidly in front of everyone. Merzougue smiled wide and warmly encouraged you.

You returned to Merzougue. You looked at each other. You were excited. You embraced again. You were entwined again. In front of us all. You were not ashamed.

What am I supposed to do, I thought, faced with such a spectacle? Who is marrying whom here?

I understand and I don’t understand. I see and I don’t see. The world of men from the bled. Solidarity between men of the bled. The gestures of men. Men spend the majority of their time together. Man to man. And what happens happens. They touch each other. While they wait. Nothing new. It’s natural. Allal and Merzougue, it’s natural. One shouldn’t ask too many questions.

Allal has a friend and a supporter: Merzougue. I shouldn’t take that away from him. I am not the only person in Allal’s life and heart.

I am not jealous of Merzougue. Do you hear me, Allal? Even when I saw you together with my own eyes on the terrace of the house, on top of each other, naked, naked, I did not become jealous. It was night. Summer. It was too hot. That’s all. I wasn’t shocked. I wasn’t devastated. I know what life is like. The facts of life.

Merzougue was here long before me.

Merzougue is not a dangerous man. When he looks at me, his eyes don’t change. His eyes are always full of tenderness.

Merzougue is all that’s left to me now that you’re gone, Allal. When I see him, I see you. I make him food. I invite him over. He comes. He eats like you, has the same mannerisms as you. He eats for you, in memory of you. I don’t cry.

Merzougue predicted what was going to happen in Indochina. He did everything to stop you from going there, so far away, so far away, to fight for the French, to fight against people you didn’t even know, to kill people who had done nothing to you. You wouldn’t hear any of it.

I’ll bring back money, a lot of money. And life will be good for the three of us. You, Malika. You, Merzougue. And me, with you. We’ll move out of my parents’ house. We’ll be free from my parents. We’ll buy land that we’ll cultivate. And we’ll have lots of children. Many, many children. We’ll be comfortable, you’ll see. I’ll wage their war and I’ll take their money. That’s my mission.

How naive you were, Allal. And how I regret not having fol- lowed my intuition: to do everything I could to stop you from walking into your own death. Death in a land that doesn’t exist for us, a country that isn’t real to us.

We listened to you, Allal. You dreamt and constructed a prosperous future for us, in front of us. You convinced us. No, that’s not true. You ate our brains. We let you leave.

Where is Allal?

Allal is in Indochina.

Any news from Allal?

Allal died in Indochina.

In 1973, ABDELLAH TAÏA was born in the public library of Rabat in Morocco, where his father was the janitor and where his family lived until he was two years old. Acclaimed as both a novelist and filmmaker, he writes in French and has published eight books now widely translated, including Le jour de roi, which was awarded the prestigious French Prix de Flore in 2010. An adaptation of his novel L'Armée du salut was his first feature film, released in 2014, screened at major festivals around the world, and hailed by the New York Times as giving "the Arab world its first on-screen gay protagonist." Abdellah Taïa made history in 2006 by coming out in his country, where homosexuality is illegal. His commitment to the defense of homosexuals in Muslim countries has made him one of the most prominent Arab writers of his generation—both "a literary transgressor and cultural paragon," according to Interview magazine. Taia has lived in Paris since 1998.

EMMA RAMADAN is an educator and literary translator of all genres from French, with a focus on undersung women novelists, experimental literature, and writers from the Arab world. She is the recipient of the 2021 PEN Translation Prize, the 2018 Albertine Prize, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a PEN/Heim grant, and a Fulbright. Her translations include Sphinx, Not One Day, and In Concrete by Anne Garréta; A Country for Dying by Abdellah Taïa; Zabor, or the Psalms by Kamel Daoud; co-translations with Olivia Baes of The Easy Life and Me & Other Writing by Marguerite Duras; and Panics by Barbara Molinard. Her translations of Lamia Ziadé ’s Mon port de Beyrouth and Ma très grande mélancolie arabe are forthcoming from Pluto Press.

Other books by Emma Ramadan

by Annie Ernaux, translated by Ros Schwartz, Dan Simon, et al., edited by Pierre-Louis Fort

A Country for Dying

A Novel

translated by Emma Ramadan, by Abdellah Taïa

Winner of the 2021 PEN Translation Prize

Collected in

Buying options

From the award-winning French-Moroccan novelist Abdellah Taïa comes a story in praise of a woman, a fighter, a survivor. Shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2022.

EXCERPT FROM LIVING IN YOUR LIGHT BY ABDELLAH TAÏA TRANSLATED BY EMMA RAMADAN

All the love of this earth.

All the love that there is on this earth will not be enough for me, will not help me to bear what happens to me after you, Allal.

You went so far away, to a world I know nothing about. And you will not return.

There is nothing ahead of me now but memory, absence, love without you.

You had planned your strategy, Allal. You went for it, you spoke. Not to me, no. To my father who, for some time, had been trying to get rid of me. Me, Malika, his daughter. He couldn’t take it anymore, watching his second wife humiliate me every day and saying nothing about it.

He said nothing, my father. He was enchanted by her, bewitched. He’d lost his head a long time ago. He let himself be guided, directed. I was his weak point. The daughter of his first marriage.

She grew up, little Malika. Seventeen years old. She’s a woman now. Entirely a woman. She must be given to someone. Find her a man. There are plenty in this vast bled where everyone keeps tabs on everyone else.

Let me help you carry the second basket, my uncle. That’s how you approached us, Allal.

It’s too heavy for you and your daughter, my uncle.

Okay, my son. May God show you the path to paradise, my son.

You’re the son of Saleh, aren’t you?

How had he guessed? I never would have known.

I am the youngest son of Saleh, yes. I am Allal, my uncle.

Later, I understood that my father knew all about my little game. He had seen everything. My little dances for you, Allal. Your eyes permanently fixed on me. Your eyes devouring me.

It was my father, Baba, who insisted on bringing me with him to the souk, and he was the one who wanted to buy me donuts each time from the old woman set up next to a little open-air café. Your café, Allal.

You were there. In that café. You were always there.

Hope exists. With your body, Allal, in your heart, Allal, I will find another path. Finally flee my stepmother and her maliciousness. Thwart destiny. Grab hold of hope, have proof of it.

I will live.

Baba suddenly asks you that question, direct, too direct: What do you have in life, my son Allal?

You answer honestly. You don’t even stop to think.

The dream of love.

We’ve arrived at our house. We’re in front of the door. You place the basket on the ground. My father invites you in for a cup of mint tea. You say that you have to return to the souk to pack up your café. Baba insists:

At least a glass of water, Allal. You accept.

Bring him a glass of water, my daughter Malika.

It’s only you and me now. Baba has gone to bring the baskets inside the house. He’ll be back any minute now.

I want to reach out my hand and caress your head.

You are a man. You are handsome. I find you handsome. I tell you this, in my heart: You are so handsome, Allal.

Did you hear me?

You are handsome. You are not rich but you are handsome.

I breathe in the smell of your body, Allal. The body of a man beaten by the sun for years and years, browned by the sun, almost black from the sun. A body that’s sweating, dripping. It is hot. It is cold. It is burning.

Allal, you come toward me. Open your legs, you say. Open them. Open, Malika.

I open them. Immediately. For you. I have been waiting for so long. I am seventeen years old. It is time. To give myself to you, Allal. Take you inside me, mix together our scents and our sweat. Our paths.

And our dreams.

Bsslama, Malika. Bsslama, Allal.

You leave. Right away. I watch you leave. You walk. You walk quickly. You are so light. You are skinny. You are fragile. You are a little bird. I am stronger than you.

You turned left. You disappeared from my sight. But you are still here, in the air. I see you. Your trace. Your memory. Your gentle virility.

Baba returns.

Come in, Malika. Come in, my little girl. Allal is a fine man.

It’s in God’s hands now.

Merzougue was seated next to you, glued to you. When I entered the living room of our house to serve everyone mint tea, Merzougue said:

She’s lucky, your daughter.

Baba didn’t ask for much money as a dowry. Almost nothing.

But to your parents, Allal, he spoke from the heart:

Malika will be your daughter. I give her to you. I am not selling her. I am entrusting her to you. I am not forcing Malika to do anything. She is your daughter. Life will smile on her with you and your son Allal. Life will finally reward her. I am counting on you.

Hearing these words, my stepmother stood up and left the living room. She wanted to show her disapproval of Baba’s words and what he was implying. I went to check whether or not the couscous was ready.

Baba continued his speech.

My daughter Malika lost her mother at a very young age. I couldn’t raise her on my own. In this life, a man cannot weather the storm without a wife. I married again. I had no choice.

Your father then began speaking.

You daughter Malika will be our daughter. Do not worry. And our son Allal is your son. God will guide us on this path as good Muslims with pure hearts. But . . . but . . .

But what?

The dowry is a bit too substantial for our son. How much money can you give for my daughter?

This isn’t about money. Trust is the most important thing. How much?

That’s for you to decide. Our son is a good son. A man. He is not afraid of work. He is—

How much?

Half of what you asked.

Baba turned toward me. He took my hand in his.

I am okay with it, Baba. I want to marry Allal. I accept what his parents propose.

You have all heard it. My daughter Malika agrees. She is your daughter now. She is yours. She is yours, my son Allal. We will celebrate the wedding in a month. Now let’s read Surah Al-Fatiha, since we are all in agreement.

Listening to these words, I looked at you, Allal. You didn’t look at me at that moment, Allal.

You turned toward your friend Merzougue and you gave each other a very warm embrace. Two friends. Two brothers.

And I understood, seeing you entwined like that for a long time, too long, that there was a secret between you. A very special bond.

Baba was even forced to intervene. He said to you:

That’s enough now, Allal my son. Let go of Merzougue and give Malika a kiss on the head.

You kissed me timidly in front of everyone. Merzougue smiled wide and warmly encouraged you.

You returned to Merzougue. You looked at each other. You were excited. You embraced again. You were entwined again. In front of us all. You were not ashamed.

What am I supposed to do, I thought, faced with such a spectacle? Who is marrying whom here?

Allal has a friend and a supporter: Merzougue. I shouldn’t take that away from him. I am not the only person in Allal’s life and heart.

Merzougue was here long before me.

Merzougue is not a dangerous man. When he looks at me, his eyes don’t change. His eyes are always full of tenderness.

Merzougue is all that’s left to me now that you’re gone, Allal. When I see him, I see you. I make him food. I invite him over. He comes. He eats like you, has the same mannerisms as you. He eats for you, in memory of you. I don’t cry.

Merzougue predicted what was going to happen in Indochina. He did everything to stop you from going there, so far away, so far away, to fight for the French, to fight against people you didn’t even know, to kill people who had done nothing to you. You wouldn’t hear any of it.

How naive you were, Allal. And how I regret not having fol- lowed my intuition: to do everything I could to stop you from walking into your own death. Death in a land that doesn’t exist for us, a country that isn’t real to us.

EXCERPT FROM LIVING IN YOUR LIGHT BY ABDELLAH TAÏA
TRANSLATED BY EMMA RAMADAN