From the oral tradition..
If one had to look for a literary point in common between Marrakech and Essaouira, there is no doubt that the taste for the oral tradition would unite them. Indeed, the Jemaâ el-Fna square, the emblem of Marrakech well beyond the Moroccan borders and since its construction in the twelfth century, is renowned for being a mecca for live performances. Initially dedicated to the holding of justice and then to trade, it became a point of convergence for popular cultural practices, as confirmed in the 17th century by Al-Hasan al-Yusi, who evokes the "halka", the circle of spectators in the middle of which a storyteller takes his place, in his most famous text with strong autobiographical overtones, Al-Muharat. The tradition will endure as it will be mentioned again by Elias Canetti, future winner of the 1981 Literature Prize, when he describes his stay in the Red City in the early 1950s(Les Voix de Marrakech : journal d'un voyage, Le Livre de Poche). Finally, the great Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo will start his novel Makbara (Fayard editions) on the Jemaâ el-Fna square itself, a place he loved so much that he worked for its inclusion in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity established by UNESCO, which was acted upon in 2001 and finalized in 2008, a little over ten years before he lost his life in Marrakech at the honorable age of 86. His body now rests in the Spanish marine cemetery in Larache, south of Tangier, not far from that of Jean Genet (1910-1986). In addition to the memories of the writers, the collective memory also keeps the name of certain artists who tried to amuse or move their public, such as Flifla, one of the "hlaikia" who officiated during the protectorate and at the time of Independence, or Malik Jalouk who had brought back from his travels an inimitable repertoire, and Sarroukh (in French: "the rocket"!) who so impressed Goytisolo that he wrote about it in his essay Les Chroniques sarrasines (Fayard). Essaouira is also a city of shows, even if they are often held indoors, as the project to build a City of Arts and Culture, initiated by King Mohammed VI, which should include a 1,000-seat theater, demonstrates. It must be said that the city is the one that saw the birth of the greatest playwright of Morocco, Tayeb Saddiki (1939-2016). Pioneer of his discipline, radiating throughout the Arab world, he also initiated the creation of the festival souiri Music First in 1980 and founded several companies. His play Molière ou Pour l'amour de l'humanité, which transposes the life and work of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin in the twentieth century in Morocco, is discovered at Eddif. On the other hand, his novel which takes place in his native city, Mogador, fabor is now out of print with the same publisher.
...to written literature
By playing with genres, Tayeb Saddiki demonstrates that written literature is not neglected in Essaouira. Edmond Amran El Maleh, for example, although born in Safi in 1917, came from a Souirie family, a fact not forgotten by the local branch of the Union des Ecrivains, which began its activities in 2015 with a vibrant tribute to him. An active campaigner for independence, a champion of multicultural Morocco and a philosophy professor, he lived in Paris before retiring to write fiction, having established himself as an intellectual. Proclaimed Grand Prix of Morocco in 1996, he died in Essaouira in 2010, and some of his writings are still available, such as Parcours immobile, which traces the destiny of a young man from a good Moroccan Jewish family who sets sail for Europe, available as a digital file from La Découverte, or his epistolary account Lettres à moi-même from the famous Casablanca publisher Le Fennec. Finally, it would be impossible to consider the literature of Essaouira without mentioning Alberto Ruy-Sánchez, who was born in Mexico City in 1951 and won the prestigious Prix Xavier-Villaurrutia in 1987 for Los Nombres del aire(The Faces of Air, Editions du Rocher), the first volume in the series of novels he dedicated to Modagor.
200 km inland, writers who have acquired a certain national or international renown are just as rare and precious, and can also be counted on the fingers of one hand. Nevertheless, Mohammed Ben Brahim (1900-1954) made it to posterity, earning himself the priceless nickname of "Poet of Marrakech". Although we are unable to read his verses, it is said that he wrote them in honor of King Mohammed V... and of the man who did everything to overthrow the sovereign, Thami El Glaoui, known as "The Black Panther".
Closer to home, three names are more familiar to us, especially as these three authors have forged strong ties with France, where they studied and even still live: Mahi Binebine, Mohamed Nedali and Jamila Abitar. The first was born in Marrakech in 1959, and excels in two artistic fields: painting - some of his works are part of the prestigious permanent collection of the Guggenheim Museum in New York - and writing, where he happily navigates between the two sides of the sea, publishing alternately in France (Stock, Flammarion, Fayard, L'Aube...) and in Morocco (Le Fennec). His first novel, Le Sommeil de l'esclave (The Slave's Sleep), published in 1992, won the Prix Méditerranée and is the story of a man's return to his Moroccan childhood. Since then, Mahi Binebine has published some fifteen titles(Rue du Pardon, Le Griot de Marrakech, Mon Frère fantôme...) in which he deploys and chisels a style as gentle, but rarely innocent, as his paintings. His younger brother by three years, Mohamed Nedali, is published by L'Aube, and is also beginning to lay claim to a fine bibliography of novels that do not ignore contemporary events. In Le Poète de Safi (2021), for example, he portrays a young man frustrated at not finding a publisher, who decides to declaim his more or less subversive poems at a mosque microphone, at the risk of attracting the wrath of the police and Islamists. He also published Evelyne ou le djihad? in 2016, as well asLa Bouteille du cafard ou l'avidité humaine, Triste jeunesse, Le Bonheur des oiseaux... Finally, Jamila Abitar, born in 1969, delves into the poetic vein in several collections available notably from L'Harmattan(L'Aube sous les dunes, L'Oracle des fellahs, Le Bleu infini).
