March 21, 2016
Moroccan filmmaker and author Taïa (An Arab Melancholia) uses monologues to describe the passions and torments of the brief life of Jallal. Jallal’s mother, Slima, was abandoned as a child and raised by Saâdia Tadlaoui—an introductrice, or a woman “who helps couples unite on their wedding night.” Slima became a prostitute, and as a boy in Salé, Morocco, Jallal is raped by some of Slima’s customers. When he is 13, his mother is taken by the secret police, who rape and torture her for three years, years that Jallal spends in Cairo. Slima reunites with Jallal in Cairo but also meets Mauod, a Muslim convert from Belgium. The two fall in love and marry, their passion for each other intertwined in their own form of Islam. In time, Jallal finds his own soulmate in another Belgian convert, Mahmoud, a terminally ill young man. Together, Mahmoud and Jallal find a way to enact one final expression of their love and pain. Taïa sharply etches the anguish and ecstasy of his characters. He is adept at depicting love for others as well as love for God, alongside humanity’s capacity for great cruelty. This is an undeniably powerful work.