Houris by Kamel Daoud

Long before I´ve read Houris by Kamel Daoud, the 2024 Prix Goncourt winner, I´ve read a lot about the controversy. I am fascinated by the violent clash between governments and literature, but I am in team literature. But curious to see how governments try to control literature, and expose it.

The ways in which governments are desperately trying to control the narrative goes very far. In the case of Kamel Daoud, French-Algerian citizen, it brought him the danger of being imprisoned if back to Algeria. The long arm of politics can operate as far as it can get: Daoud was supposed to attend recently a literary event in Italy, but due to a recent gas-agreement between Italy and Algeria, he could have been arrested. There is no price to pay for ´national identity´. 

What Daoud put into question in his book is the massacre of civilians during the ´dark decade´ in Algeria: 1992-2002. During the clashes between fundamentalists and the Army, 200,000 civilians died. I´ve learned in the French school about it and I am in awe that after so many years there is still no clear historical agreement about what happened. Especially, when thinking from the point of view of the victims. But, that´s nothing new under the sun: Armenia genocide happened more than a century ago with at least four time casualties and there are still some - governments especially - fully denying it ever happened.

Houri refers in the Islamic faith to the pure women with beautiful eyes - dark, beautiful eyes - that are waiting in paradise to be companions to the faithful. The famous virgins the wearers of bomb-stuffed jackets dream about before blowing themselves in the middle of populated places killing innocent civilians. Is there any reward for the innocent children killed during the paradise-induced detonation? Need to investigate.

The storyteller is a woman, Fajr (dawn in Arabic)/Aube (down in French). She survived a massacre committed in Oran, while playing dead, witnessing the slaughter of her parents and sister. Her throat was sliced, she lost the capacity of talking. A victim without a clear voice. In addition of being left voiceless by her condition as a woman. A woman that should be always kept under control, including when she only wants to offer her services to women - like in the case of the hair salon, opposite the mosque, stirring the (un)righteous anger of the imam next door. She goes on a road trip by herself, to counter her limitations and push away the social limits.

Her life is a retelling of her story, numbers mean more than a mathematical calculation, they account for facts of the past, numbers of the victims, dates, encounters. The narrative line is intertwined, with the past and the present overlapping. Sometimes it is not easy to follow exactly the train of thoughts, but the story follows the traumatic memory patterns, with sudden images igniting vivid re-enactments of events from times past.

The woman character voice in the story is very clear and realistically encompasses the struggles of women, from victims of violences - of any kind - to expected caretakers and submissive citizens. It is a social model that a book like Houris may distrupt. Hence, the institutional hate.

Rating: 5 stars