A winding path to self-discovery

Sherazade

Leila Sebbar

Translated by Dorothy S. Blair

US: Interlink, 2014, 285 pp, $17.95

The motto of Interlink Publishing is “changing the way people think about the world”. Choosing to republish “Sherazade” is clearly in line with this aspiration, for the novel gives fresh, first-hand insight into the chaotic, marginalised lives of young, second-generation immigrants in a big city like Paris. 

“Sherazade” was first published in French in 1982, but except for the absence of the electronic devices now so ubiquitous in youth culture, it seems in many ways to be very current. 

It is noteworthy that the author, Leila Sebbar, wrote at such an early stage about transnational lives and dual cultural identity — topics that have since become a prevalent theme in literature.

The subtitle of the original French novel reads: Missing: aged 17, dark curly hair, green eyes. 

After escaping from the confines of the housing estate and her Algerian immigrant family into the heart of Paris, Sherazade lands in a squat with frequently shifting housemates — Arabs, Africans, Caribbean, disenchanted French and children of mixed heritage. 

Some of them are desperate drug addicts, some pleasure-seekers, porn merchants or criminals, while others harbour revolutionary dreams. 

Sherazade shares their rejection of traditional and bourgeois society, their amorality, their mix of alienation from and belonging to France. 

But though she is a runaway teenager and joins her housemates in questionable, short-term jobs, crimes and outrageous parties, Sherazade is not drifting; she has a mind of her own, writes poetry (which one never gets to read) and she reads voraciously. 

She is also a bundle of apparent contractions: she has never seen the sea, yet is very street-wise and even sophisticated, alert to hypocrisy, manipulation and the most subtle expressions of racism. 

Much sought after for her beauty, intelligence and coolness, she at times goes with the flow, but then abruptly reclaims herself and draws strict boundaries. 

Above all, she is fiercely independent and permanently rebellious: “I go where I want to, when I want to, and my place is everywhere,” she tells her buddies at the squat when they tell her some places are too dangerous for her. (p. 92)

Yet she senses that something is missing in her life. 

Inspired by childhood memories of Algeria, especially of her grandfather, she wants to travel there. 

The many hours she spends at the public library are all about discovering her Arab heritage. 

While learning from her French friend, who is an avid Orientalist in the scholarly sense, and being  deeply moved by Orientalist paintings at the Louvre, she rebuffs the “neo-Orientalist” advances of rich Parisian yuppies who attempt to seduce young Arab and African girls for their exoticism. 

This is the story of a young woman searching for self-definition. Following her path to self-realisation, the reader is exposed to the underground world of transnational youth as well as to many references to the Algerian Revolution, to French and Algerian culture, to Orientalist paintings and French film.

The author’s writing style makes the story seems especially real and immediate. Sebbar reels off raw sensations, random occurrences and direct conversations at a rapid, sometimes dizzying, pace that approximates stream of consciousness. 

She also knows well the settings she describes. Born in Algeria to a French mother and an Algerian father, and having lived in Paris for many years, Sebbar straddles the two worlds between which her protagonist and other characters rotate.

In this book, one does not find out if Sherazade gets to Algeria or not, but Sebbar has written two sequels, “Les Carnets de Sherazade” (Sherazade’s Notebooks) and “La Fou de Sherazade”, which have yet to be translated into English.

Sally Bland