Yasmina Khadra is not only one of the most appreciated authors in the world, but also a member of the rare club of men who have adopted a female pseudonym.
While great women writers felt forced to hide under masculine names like George Sand, George Eliot or Fernán Caballero in order to publish and be accepted, the Algerian military officer Mohammed Moulessehoul did the reverse process: he chose the name of his wife to write freely .
At 66, the exiled author in France publishes in Spain
La sal de todos los olvidos
(Alianza), one of the stars of the recent Valencia Negra festival, where we meet.
Ask.
You looked for a pseudonym to write freely.
Why a female name?
Response.
In the Army I started writing under my real name, but the military command wanted to control my texts and I decided to go underground.
I spent 11 years writing in hiding.
Why my wife?
We made a deal: I write the novel and she gets paid.
With this I also recognize everything she has done for me.
Without her, I would have achieved nothing in life.
It is a way of constantly paying homage to him.
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Q.
And what have you done?
A.
Everything.
He supported me during the terrorist war [against Islam, in the 1990s].
It has been my reason for surviving this war.
He traveled everywhere with me, to any lost town in the Sahara, he has been a nomad with me and has traveled all over Algeria with me.
She has given me three wonderful children and has loved me as much as I love her.
She even she has agreed to go into exile with me.
I could write a novel about the courage my wife has shown.
Q.
Do you consider yourself an exile, then?
R.
All writers are when creating a world that only belongs to us.
The only country in which we feel at home, at ease, is in the words, the texts.
For me, writing is a way of taking revenge for everything that reality throws at me.
Q.
You entered the Army when you were nine years old.
Why?
R.
My father, who was an Army officer, put me as an intern in a military institution, a cadet school.
I never chose it, but I accepted my destiny because I am a man from the Sahara and since childhood we have been taught that we will never know what the future holds.
I have followed my destiny.
At first it was a bit strange, but thanks to the problems, the damages and inconveniences that I have suffered in life, I have become the man I am today.
P.
And your parents have known that you left the Army?
R.
Yes, but I had already finished my military career and I only had one choice: either I would become a general or a writer.
It was clear that he wanted to be a writer.
Neither my father nor my mother agreed that I should leave the Army because they did not believe in literature.
My mother did not know what she meant and for my father it was a waste of time.
But hey, when he saw the success I've had around the world, he already thought that maybe he was wrong.
My mother was tortured and lost a breast to electric shocks, but she doesn't hate anyone."
P.
I have read that your mother was illiterate and at the same time a magician of words.
A.
You don't learn poetry in college.
Poetry is in the spirit or in the heart.
And not knowing how to write or read does not mean not knowing how to speak.
I have found many more poets among illiterate people than among university students.
Q.
What did your mother teach you?
R.
He taught me to breathe soul into anything.
She knew how to say things with great sensitivity and for her everything was music.
She is a woman who has suffered terribly, first, because her husband fought in the war of independence and she was persecuted for it for years.
She was tortured and she lost a breast due to electric shocks and she, despite everything, she has never experienced hatred towards anyone.
She knew that hate was useless, because she destroys you before anyone else.
Spain is the only country in the world where I feel happy
Q.
Do you hold a grudge against France?
R.
That is history and not because France has colonized Algeria I am going to hate the French.
I live in Paris with my wife and three children and my largest readership is in France, they are five million.
P.
But on occasions you have criticized that you have not been recognized in France.
A.
I don't want to talk about it.
I have a problem with certain literary circles that have not accepted me, they do not accept that the most translated French writer in the world is Yasmina Khadra.
But I have friends everywhere, in Spain, in Portugal, on the moon and I have readers even on Jupiter.
They read me there,
tsiu tsiu tsiu
I've seen the Martians from Jupiter!
(laughs).
Q.
You live part of the year in Spain.
What is your sentimental relationship with this country?
R.
It is the only country in the world where I feel happy.
Not even in Algeria I feel so happy.
I don't know why it is, but there is something… perhaps the Andalusian that is still there.
And it's not the weather, which is the same as in Algeria.
Perhaps it is that people are less stressed than in other parts of the world, they are more spontaneous, they don't judge you, if they don't want to talk to you they don't, but not out of contempt.
Spanish maturity is very evident.
He left Algeria "because he wanted to be a free writer," he says.
But his new book is a return to Algeria.
Exiled in France, with one foot in Spain and the other in his country, it can be said that he has achieved freedom.
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