Machaho Tellem Chaho

'It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression. Accordingly it is to literature that we must look, particularly in its more concrete forms, namely in poetry and drama, if we hope to discover the inward thoughts of a generation.' Alfred North Whitehead

I have just been to an exhibition at the Mosaic Rooms, London, called  The Last of the Dictionary Men  which presented in audio, video and photography the history of Yemeni sailors who came to South Shields (UK) at a time when the north of England's maritime industry was thriving and needed foreign hands to come and work. These men ended up settling and staying in the UK. They attest to the birth of what is called here "Arab-British identity". The exhibition is a project brought to fruition by film director Tina Gharavi  and was structured in three parts: Portraits from photographs taken and hand painted by the renown Egyptian photographer Youssef Nabil. A projection of Tina Gharavi's film King of South Shields which presents the Yemeni-British men who met Muhammad Ali (yup, THE Muhammad Ali) who came to the North East of England in 1977 and had his wedding blessed in South Shields at its Al-Azhar Mosque (the first purpose built mosque in Britain...

No, this post is not about Syria but it is about continuing the flagging, in a bite size fashion, of my burning question about History with a capital H in Algeria and how it is being told and written, bearing in mind that a succession of regimes in DZ since independence have been narrating by force and coercion a very slanted, if not purely fabricated historical narrative. Who is safekeeping the real* memory of Algerians and Algeria? How can this History be kept alive, be told and accessed.  I believe that DZ writers (novelists, poets, that is 'fiction' not non-fiction) are playing that role. So, as I was meeting one of Syria's great writers, Nihad Sirees , for the wonderful Arab Lit to talk about literature, I thought I'd ask about the role of the writer as a historian. Here it is . *I know, what is real... but I think that largely by this term I mean 'factual' and most importantly, I mean investigative and investigated (these two forming the bigge...