Farid Othman-Bentria: ‘Tangier is a phoenix, it has always known how to reinvent itself’

‘It all started when I was very young, they told me I was a very old child’. Thus begins the conversation with the Tangier poet Farid Othman-Bentria on the occasion of the publication of his first novel: Slight declaration of absences, although he prefers to call it a ‘narrative’ as it does not follow a standard structure. We are in the Café Comercial in Madrid, the city where he has lived for years. Before that it was Granada, and before that Tangier, where he was born and lived until he was five, and where he returns whenever he can. That city, which is ‘a phoenix’, is also his refuge. Its cobbled streets, its alleyways, its bazaar traders, the fog and the smoke, its mysterious characters, its encounters, love and heartbreak... all weave a story that begins with a man in a café with a brochure in his hand... and it's snowing. This book is more than a book, it is a double journey: exterior and interior, through pages full of mythological references, of thoughts, of poetics and poets, of the crossing of lives and sensations. 

How did you evolve into this first novel? 

It all started when I was very young, six or seven years old; they told me I was a very old child. At school they published my first poems. Sometimes I would be late because parents would stop me in the street and ask me for a poem, even then I thought that poetry doesn't work like that. It overwhelmed me. That happened again at secondary school. I didn't want to publish until I had my own style, I'm not talking about whether it was good or bad, because that's very subjective, but about feeling something of my own and that came when I was 26 or 27. I saw that I had evolved, that my poetry had taken shape, and so I published my first book: Un viento de madera (A Wooden Wind, 2014). People told me it was beautiful, but I didn't like that expression, I thought something was missing, I didn't feel it was right. Over time I learned the meaning of being beautiful. 

Was it a question of perfectionism? 

Not so much. I would read my poem and recognise where the sting of Neruda, Bécquer, the very clear rhythm of Whitman was... I was looking for something new, to have my own personality, maybe it was terrible, but terribly mine. And naturally I ended up having my own style, so I was open to publishing. Before my first book, I had a blog and when I made it public I realised that it provoked rereading... 

I've already had several collections of poems and the first novel: A slight declaration of absences (Esdrújula). It's not an easy title, what do you want to provoke in the reader? 

A pause. I started with the idea of retracing my steps and finding my own method. I didn't want to write a normal novel, I wanted to experiment, that's why I call it narrative. I've mixed styles, there's poetry, drama... I know it's not easy, but I also look for that pause in the title in the text, for the reader not to know what they are going to find. Let's not forget that declaration of absence is a legal concept, although I confuse it with the word slight. When someone disappears, but they don't find the body, they don't declare you dead but absent, which can be a term similar to death, it's like limbo. 

The protagonist moves through a city that he doesn't mention... Can you tell us about it?  

Anyone who knows me and has been there knows that it is Tangier, although the name does not appear on any page. Therein also lies the reason for this narrative, which has its answer in a question. If Rome is the eternal city, Paris the city of light, and so on, how is it that Tangier, which is a literary city, has no word to define it? I asked myself: ‘How can I answer that?’ and I answered it with an entire book. From there on, there is a word floating around to define Tangier, but I'm not going to reveal it. 

Tangier... How much absence/longing is there for that city? 

I always want to go back. It is my therapy city, my mother energy, it scolds you, but welcomes you without hesitation. In the narrative, I do not mention the name of the city nor that of the three main elements: the space, the observer and the person who guides the observation. I do not give names, I play with it. I let the reader know that you do not know so as not to distract them. I propose an inner journey. If you recognise Tangier it is perfect, but if not, it does not condition you to want to get to know it to make that journey, you do not need to. 

A man in a café next to a cinema. This is how the ‘narrative’ begins, then, through its pages, a variety of characters pass by, that city with life, reality and dreams, philosophy... how much of that journey is an internal journey for the author and the reader? 

Part of the challenge was knowing how to project that inner journey into an outer journey that leads us to the importance of the intangible, of space, but which, as in Joyce's Ulysses, you can travel without knowing. If you know the city at all, you can plan the route with the same structure as the book, which is a triangle with a small base. The three vertices are at the beginning with the café and the brochure, the next one, in a dialogue in the theatrical part that would be explained on Jacob's ladder, and the third one at the end of the story, and it is not the epilogue, which would be another tour and whose idea was that it would function as its own text, although you have to have read the book to understand it. It is the key that reopens the story for you. 

‘The great truth of this city is that everything is a lie, even if one does not give up trying to live it as a reality’. Is that why it can snow inside the café? 

I have seen it snow many times and in many ways in a café. I claim that magical realism is also in Berber tales, in The Thousand and One Nights, at that crossroads in Tangier. I claim it as an element of my own from the beginning. In this story, it snows inside the café from the very first pages. 

Does one need imagination to read this book?  

It's the desire to see. I wrote a poem in which I reclaimed the colours with which I want to see the world, not those imposed on me. If someone smokes in a café and a door opens and there's a gust of wind and the ash comes out and lands on my table... Why can't I believe it's snow? Why do I have to miss out on the magic?  

Earlier you talked about literary Tangier. What remains of the myth of this city? 

I think it's still there. It's all about how you want to see it. When we think of international Tangier, we have to realise that Tangier was international in the first century, not when the Statute came into being. In fact, there are writings that say that the end of internationalisation would come with the Statute. Tangier has the syndrome of the Golden Age. In Tangier there are three sunken islands, the Phoenix Islands, where, according to mythology, the phoenix used to go, immolate itself and be reborn. Tangier is a phoenix, it has been alive and inhabited for more than three thousand years, it has always known how to reinvent itself. My Tangier as a child is not the Tangier of today, but I still see it as mine. Tangier has grown a lot. It's like Granada, my other city, it has also grown and changed, the smell of the tobacco drying sheds in the fertile plain of my childhood is no longer there, but the Alhambra is the Alhambra and its image with the Sierra Nevada is incredible. When people ask me which is the most beautiful city in the world I say: ‘With the Alhambra?’ because then there's no debate. Tangiers' capacity to adapt is what keeps it so alive. 

The protagonist says that places choose us, not the other way around. Do you agree? 

Absolutely. I walk a lot, just like the protagonist of the book. As I wander, I complain that in Madrid there isn't much of a café culture, a place where you can go and sit down to read, to write, to observe. There are exceptions like this Café Comercial. Places call out to you. I know people who say they are citizens of the world, without attachments, and when they have arrived in Tangier they have stayed. If you move around you will find spaces with a special energy that tells you: ‘This is home, stay’. 

The book is full of mythological references such as the matchbox that alludes to the story of Pandora. How important is mythology to you?  

A lot. If you find the reference you pull the threads and the book grows and grows, and I think that's interesting; if you don't find it, the reading is more linear. The challenge is whether or not you detect them, you reach the same final emotion. This has been another tough exercise that has taken me a long time. 

It's also a very sensory book. How long did it take you to write it?  

I wrote it in Tangier and it was cold, I needed that Tangier light, that's why there are pauses, that's why it took me so long to write it. All the elements are there as part of the mythology: there is water, fire, earth and air. In almost all mythology, both Mediterranean and Atlantic, Tangier appears as a mythological element. Tangier is an Atlantic city in the Mediterranean. When there is mist and clouds you can't see Spain, it shows us many colours in the Strait, it has a liquid identity... The book is full of mythology, but it is not always easy to detect it. It can even be in the characters in the café. There are obvious references, others not so obvious. There are characters who appear briefly, but with names, and others who appear more and have no name. The book is also full of poetic references. The muses are mixed with virtues and sins. 

‘As you can see, there is no present. Everyone here speaks from the minute they live towards a future...’ we can read. What is time for Farid? 

Time should be an ally and we are educated to make it an enemy. We are always in a hurry. We run on the underground even though we know that another one will come in four minutes. Everything is measured in time so that you don't have it. When you meet people who don't measure it, you realise they have more. If we go to the bazaars, one of the phrases of the bazaar sellers, which I love to hear, is, referring to the West: ‘You have the clocks, we have the time’. In Tangier you can go back to the 80s, the 50s, even the future, without leaving the city. Like in The Thousand and One Nights, Tangier is also a thousand and one nights. The trick with this city is for you to experience your own Tangier. 

And speaking of time, the protagonist says: ‘Patience is not letting time pass or letting time pass’. What is patience? 

Patience begins with oneself. The greatest exercise is to understand and respect oneself. You have to know who you are and that can't be done without patience. And beware, without measuring it. It's complicated. This book is an exercise in patience, because you wait for rhythms that don't come. 

You come from an intercultural family, does that make you look at others, at your characters, in a different way? 

Without a doubt. The great family heritage and the only one that matters to me is that prism through which I see the world. In the end, you are 100% something, and the ability to be able to look without certain stereotypes or avoiding the ones we have is because of that heritage. My uncle Rachid, a wise and strong-willed man, gave me a definition of Tangier in Spanish: ‘Tangier is a balcony from which to see the world, but it is not the world’. That is the reality, from Tangier you know what is happening in Africa, in Europe, in Spain. Almost everyone knows what is happening here, but few know what is happening in Morocco and the distance is the same: 14 kilometres. The reciprocity is not the same. In Tangier, generations sit together and listen... and you learn a lot. 

And when you look out from that balcony... what world do you see? 

An increasingly worse world. For me, Tangier is also a refuge. Tangier Bay is protective, it has its mountain, its forest, it is spacious, welcoming, it shelters you from the wind, it takes you in... Where else would we be if we wanted to take refuge? 

The protagonist talks about ‘a city made of books’. Which books would you choose? 

We are going through life as if it were not life. The journey has to be completed. What books would make a city? Leaves of Grass, by Whitman; The Flowers of Evil, by Baudelaire; I Confess I Have Lived, by Neruda, the title made an impression on me, when I was 13 I thought that was what I wanted to say; and the complete works of Lorca, because Lorca kills me. Novels: The Necklace of the Dove, by Ibn Hazm, Spanish of the Middle Ages, which is the most beautiful exercise ever done to explain the types of love; Os Maia, by Queirós, a novel that, as César Navarro said, if it had not been written in Portuguese would be very well known; and, although I do not do automatic writing, I do buy automatically, and that is how I discovered my little contemporary novel, the most beautiful thing I have read in a long time: The Instruction of Lovers, by Inés Pedrosa. 

I think this book encapsulates a search. When you finished it, how did you feel? 

It's an inner journey. As an author you make the same journey that you propose. When the story had finished, I had a lot of pent-up emotion and I cried. I had the feeling of the boat arriving at the port, the excitement, but also the uncertainty, and at the same time the beauty.