Hisham Matar explores the connection between literature and justice
Excerpts from an interview:
Q. What is ‘My Friends’ about?
It’s a novel about a group of Libyan friends living in exile in London. They came as students and then events meant that they couldn’t return. They attended that infamous demonstration on 17 April 1984 in front of the Libyan embassy in London, which was on St James’s Square in the heart of the city.And they were demonstrating because the dictatorship had arrested and tortured some of their fellow students at universities in Tripoli and in Benghazi. Something very dramatic then happened, from the first floor window of the embassy, some staff sprayed the demonstrators with bullets and they injured 11 Libyan demonstrators. Miraculously, none of them died. But Yvonne Fletcher, a young policewoman, did meet her end and that event has been in the psyche of both of my countries, my country of origin, Libya, but also my adopted country, Britain. And so it’s an event that has always marked me very deeply. And these friends are all of them in some way touched by it.
So the book opens with Khaled bidding farewell to his most intimate friend, Hosam, who is immigrating to what he refers to as the ever ever after America, California, the place from which people rarely return, he says. And so to Khalid, it feels very much like a, like a final farewell. Khalid decides to not take the bus back to Shepherd’s Bush, where he lives, but to actually walk back across the city. And it’s in that walk that he tells the history of that friendship and with it, of course, also their history with the two places that have obsessed them — London and Benghazi — where they’re both from.
Q. Moments of meeting and greeting and farewells in the book seem to have a soul…
I’ve always been fascinated by that opening of Ovid’s ‘Metamorphosis’, where here’s a writer who wants to tell the history of creation from the first moments and onwards. And Ovid imagines the beginning of creation being a chaotic situation. Ovid’s idea of chaos is slightly different from ours. We use it today to mean a jumble of meaningless activity that’s disorganised. But in Ovid’s time, and in his language, that word meant a state of indifference. And so the opposite of it is not indifference, it is meaning, connection. Friendship is a sort of relationship that is very difficult to have a set of rules around. It can metamorphose into something different. And so that form of connection is really at the heart of this book. And that’s why I think farewells and reunions are very powerful in this.
Q. When you read the novel, there is all this milling around the friends which they are trying to navigate, isn’t it?
A lot of people who live in exile or are obliged to live away from their home and their family and the people they grew up with have to somehow relinquish or at least put on hold the life that they had expected for themselves. And they come into this other place and have to really be constantly involved in acts of translation. I came to England when I was 15 years old. And a good Arabic upbringing teaches you that you must always decline when you’re offered something. So if somebody asks if you would you like a cup of tea, you decline. And only when they ask you a third time are you permitted to say yes. When I came to England, I never got a cup of tea, because I would decline and manners here are that you mustn’t insist. And the immigrant, the exile, the refugees having to constantly navigate this world.
Q. What did it mean to you to write this? To write this novel?
It comes out of this passion that I have for this thing that we are sharing and that I feel it’s something that I really want to take seriously. The kind of writing I do takes time and it takes a lot of silence around it. This is not a novel that is written from a position of advocacy. It’s interested in the silent, complex activity of the human heart and how we might observe it.
Q.
Sometimes it’s best to express oneself in solitude where you can be heard in the manner you wish to be heard. There is a mannerism there as well.
This is not a conscious effort on my part, but if I am to sort of step back and try to observe it from a distance, I think I am concerned by the disease of impatience. And I think our time is really vulnerable to it. We yearn for distraction. We have come to a conclusion that somehow that’s where our salvation is. And the things of true value really need time. And, similarly, these ideas that we’re talking about, they take time to engage with. They take time to write, but, hopefully, they also endure. I can think of certain books, they remain with us, a certain kind of companionship. It’s not just about the quality of things, but it’s also about questions of justice. I do think that there’s a really interesting connection between attention and justice that one of the best ways to cause someone harm is not pay them any attention. If you knew their name and where they lived, what was their favorite colour, what their parents were like, how their home smells like, then it will be very difficult for you to cause immense damage to them. So all of this for me is to do with writing and reading and living.
Q. You have shown through the testimonies in your literature how much you can pack into a lifetime.
There’s a philosopher who I enjoy to read, Schopenhauer. And somewhere Schopenhauer says, isn’t it interesting that we grow up with this mantra that life is too short? That’s what everybody says, what would life be like if you were to proceed on the basis that life was exactly the right length? I’ve always thought that was fascinating because I just thought that actually does change one’s mind.
Photo courtesy:
Diana Matar