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It was an incandescent Rachid Boudjedra that the public of the Algiers International Book Fair (SILA) found on Sunday afternoon at the Palestine “Ghassan Kanafani” stand. In front of a packed and attentive room, the writer, known for his uncompromising positions, delivered a poignant plea for the Palestinian cause, mixing personal memories, anger and political loyalty.
“If I was called to fight in Palestine, I would do it. I will fight alongside Hamas,” he said bluntly, triggering a round of applause. For him, resistance, in all its forms, is not only a right, but “the only legitimate choice of a people that we seek to erase. Faced with horror, famine and systematic destruction, there is no longer any neutrality possible,” he insisted.
Entitled “Palestine to the Marrow”, from the name of his next book to be published, the meeting had all the makings of a profession of faith. Faithful to his outspokenness, Boudjedra revisited more than half a century of intellectual and militant complicity with the Palestinian cause. “I knew Palestine up close, in its pain and in its dignity,” he confided.
The writer thus revealed that he had made a clandestine visit to Palestinian territory in the 1970s, in the midst of revolutionary ferment. “It was dangerous, yes, but necessary. Many of us wanted to understand, to share this fight,” he says. He recalls nights spent in refugee camps, passionate discussions with progressive Palestinian activists, and even meetings with anti-Zionist Jewish intellectuals, emphasizing that “there were some who refused to be complicit in a racist and colonial project. They were rare, but courageous.”
His new book, “Palestine to the Marrow”, promises to be a hybrid work, between testimony, essay and literary cry. He will explain: “I wrote it this year, in shock at the images from Gaza. I put all my rage, all my tenderness, all my shame into it too. Because to remain silent is to be complicit.” The work is currently being edited and should appear soon with an Algerian publisher.
Boudjedra, now 83 years old, says he has been living “Palestinian nightmares” for months. “I dream of skeletal children, of mothers digging with their hands in the rubble. They are no longer images, they are an obsession,” he confides. He describes Gaza as “the mirror of our lost humanity”, and Israel as “the incarnation of modern barbarism, supported, financed and applauded”.
But despite the rage and the pain, the novelist keeps faith in the resistance. Maintaining that “Palestinians have this supernatural strength, they fall, but they always get back up. This is their victory, the real one. The one that neither bombs nor blockades can erase.” The author of “The Repudiation and FIS of Hate” concluded his speech by declaring that “We often speak of hope as a fragile word. But in Palestine, hope is a weapon. It is passed down like a torch, from generation to generation.”
Speaking of the meeting, the author declared to Young Independent that “some writers now fear writing about the Palestinian cause, for the lure of rewards from the West. They are the fornicators of History.” And added: “I know many authors who no longer dare to approach Palestine, for fear of being refused a visa or losing the favor of Western institutions. Some even fear compromising their chances of obtaining literary prizes in the Western world.” Then, after a heavy silence, he continued: “In the end, it all comes down to courage, you either have it to tell the truth, or you choose silence in exchange for privileges.”