Albert Memmi

Albert Memmi (1982)
by Claude Truong-Ngoc

Albert Memmi (Arabic: ألبرت ميمي‎; born 15 December 1920, in Tunis, died 22 May 2020 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) was a Tunisian Jewish writer and essayist who migrated to France. His most famous work is The Colonizer and the Colonized.

Quotes

The Pillar of Salt (1953)

• We lived at the bottom of the Impasse Tarfoune, in a little room where I was born one year after my sister Kalla. With the Barouch family we shared the ground floor of a shapeless old building, a sort of two-room apartment. The kitchen, half of it roofed over and the rest an open courtyard, was a long vertical passage toward the light. But before reaching this square of pure blue sky, it received, from a multitude of windows, all the smoke, the smells, and the gossip of our neighbors. At night, each locked himself up in his room; but in the morning, life was always communal, running along the tunnel of a kitchen, mingling the waters from the kitchen sinks, the smells of coffee, and the voices still muffled with sleep.
• Sleep, when one has no worries, tastes like honey.
• Then the long walk in the sun brought us back to the coffeehouse where we always found the same crowd of Sabbath friends, cheerful and loud, smelling of eau de Cologne and of snuff. How blessed was the Sabbath coffeehouse where we remained pure because there was no cigarette smoke and where our conversation remained courteous because we were forbidden to play cards! In addition, I enjoyed a child’s privileges: everyone had a smile for me and welcomed me, making room for me. Seeing myself treated in this manner by grown men, I felt that I assumed a man’s dignity.
• Oh yes, poverty is something to be ashamed of, and this was clear to me from the mutterings of my own parents, from their remarks about the Oukala of the Birds and their pity for the Choulam family. As for me, I despised the poor. Fraji had to pay with shame the price of his poverty and I too, if we were poor, would have to pay with my own shame. In the disorder of my awareness, I made that day a great and unhappy step forward. I noted that I too wore new clothes only rarely and was forced to receive, like Fraji, bundles that stank of mildew and dirty linen and from which all the expensive buttons had been removed. I now understood his suffering fully, the shame that I had poured forth upon him in the presence of Chouchane and the other kids. His suffering and shame were my own too; on my own shoulders I now felt the burden of the same contempt, as if I had his hair, all clammy with filth, and his eyes like the headlights of a car. I felt that I had become Fraji.
• Since that day, I have slowly acquired the uneasiness about my clothes that characterizes the poor who are ashamed. I was no longer at my ease in any suit: I felt that I was badly dressed and that I attracted the attention of all. I feared, even when wearing a new suit, the mockery of others at my unsuccessful attempts. That is how I became what is known as careful of my clothes.
• My mother tongue is the Tunisian dialect, which I speak with the proper accent of the young Moslem kids of our part of town and of the drivers of horse-trucks who were customers of our shop. The Jews of Tunis are to the Moslems what the Viennese are to other Germans: they drag out their syllables in a singsong voice and soften and make insipid the guttural speech of their Mohammedan fellow-citizens. The relatively correct intonations of my speech earned me the mockery of all: the Jews disliked my strange speech and suspected me of affectation, while the Moslems thought that I was mimicking them.
• I was cornered, without any escape, and began to think of death for the first time in my life. Without being at all strange or foreign, this idea of suicide was born within me quite spontaneously and gently, like the world coming to life at dawn. At once, suicide seemed familiar to me, like a release, and I was surprised how convenient and tempting so serious an action could seem. The ultimate solution to my problems was within my own power.
• In moving to this new street that we called the Passage, Mother saw an old dream of hers come true. She was now living again with all her family... All day long, whether for a pinch of pepper or a sprig of parsley, to find out what time it might be or even for no good reason at all, the whole staircase re-echoed with their various names. Actually, they derived comfort and pleasure from constantly finding each other at home, and the other tenants felt like trespassers in this hive of solidarity. After dinner every evening there was a gathering of the clan in Uncle Aroun’s flat, where a detailed post-mortem of the day’s events would take place, while everyone gossiped and munched squash seeds. Thus, each of us remained completely visible to all the others, and the whole family, by pooling its problems and its hopes, acquired a collective soul.
• It was in the Passage that I discovered tribal life and learned to hate it. How happy had been the intimacy of our blind alley, now lost for good! As long as I had lived alone, I had lived in peace.
• How vain and futile are all theoretical and philosophical constructions of the mind when compared to the brutal realities of the world of men! The European philosophers build the most rigorous and virtuous moral codes, and their politicians, brought up by these teachers, foment murders as a means of government.
• Once I had overcome my rage against Vichy, the numerus clausus, and the Fascist Legion, I began to doubt the treason of France. To accept it would indeed have been unbearable. All my ambitions, my studies, and my life were founded on this choice. How much would I have to uproot in myself now? What would be left of me? It was in this dreadful moment that I finally caught a glimpse of my ruin. If I rejected what I was becoming would I be able to return to what I had been?
• Travel if you wish, taste strange dishes, gather experience in dangerous adventures, but see that your soul remains your own. Do not become a stranger to yourself, for you are lost from that day on; you will have no peace if there is not, somewhere within you, a corner of certainty, calm waters where you can take refuge.
• If my nose had been too long that might have been fixed in a couple of weeks in a clinic, or a gangrenous arm could be amputated, but I had a heart that was defective. My misfortunes were never chance encounters, and I could not easily avoid them. The more I get to know myself, the more aware I become of this. To put an end to this state of affairs would mean putting an end to myself, to die or to go mad. My principal's temporary appointment would end one day, but I would never find the solution to my problem because I am that problem.
• Before one scoffs at national pride and the fatherland, at wealth and good manners, love of one's country, family, and traditions, one must have arrived at a proper evaluation of one's country, have had enough to eat, and have received a good education. Then one can look on from afar and make wisecracks. But I have no sense of humor and not enough courage to be cynical.
• If my principal had only known how I envied him! This average Frenchman from Burgundy, with his old culture and good background, a university man and a Republican of good family, suffered because he was in a foreign land! I am ill at ease in my own land and I know of no other. My culture is borrowed and I speak my mother tongue haltingly; I have neither religious beliefs nor tradition, and am ashamed of whatever particle of them has survived deep within me. To try to explain what I am, I would need an intelligent audience and much time; I am a Tunisian but of French culture... I am Tunisian, but Jewish, which means that I am politically and socially an outcast. I speak the language of the country with a particular accent and emotionally I have nothing in common with Moslems. I am a Jew who has broken with the Jewish religion and the ghetto, is ignorant of Jewish culture and detests the middle class because it is phony. I am poor but desperately anxious not to be poor, and at the same time, I refuse to take the necessary steps to avoid poverty.

The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957)

The Colonizer and the Colonized. Earthscan. 2003. ISBN 978-1-84407-040-4. 

• The most serious blow suffered by the colonized is being removed from history and from the community. Colonization usurps any free role in either war or peace, every decision contributing to his destiny and that of the world, and all cultural and social responsibility.
  • p. 137
• Racism... is the highest expression of the colonial system and one of the most significant features of the colonialist.

"Who is an Arab Jew?" (1975)

• We would have liked to be Arab Jews. If we abandoned the idea, it is because over the centuries the Moslem Arabs systematically prevented its realization by their contempt and cruelty. It is now too late for us to become Arab Jews.
• As far back as my childhood memories go – in the tales of my father, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles – coexistence with the Arabs was not just uncomfortable, it was marked by threats periodically carried out.
• The Jews were at the mercy not only of the monarch but also of the man in the street. My grandfather still wore the obligatory and discriminatory Jewish garb, and in his time every Jew might expect to be hit on the head by any Moslem whom he happened to pass. This pleasant ritual even had a name – the chtaka; and with it went a sacramental formula which I have forgotten.
• Never, I repeat, never – with the possible exception of two or three very specific intervals such as the Andalusian, and not even then – did the Jews in Arab lands live in other than a humiliated state, vulnerable and periodically mistreated and murdered, so that they should clearly remember their place.
• I have described in Pillar of Salt how the French authorities coldly left us to the Germans. But I must add that we were also submerged in a hostile Arab population, which is why so few of us could cross the lines and join the Allies. Some got through in spite of everything, but in most cases they were denounced and caught.
• It must be acknowledged that not many Jews took an active part in the struggle for [Tunisian] independence, but neither did the mass of Tunisian non-Jews.
• I continued to defend the Arabs even in Europe, in countless activities, communications, signatures, manifestos. But it must be stated unequivocally, once and for all: we defended the Arabs because they were oppressed.
• But now there are independent Arab states, with foreign policies, social classes, with rich and poor. And if they are no longer oppressed, if they are in their turn becoming oppressors, or possess unjust political regimes, I do not see why they should not be called upon to render accounts.
• I arrived in France, and found myself up against the legend which was current in left-wing Parisian salons: the Jews had always lived in perfect harmony with the Arabs. I was almost congratulated for having been born in such a land where racial discrimination and xenophobia were unknown. It made me laugh.
• The Arab Jews are much more distrustful of the Moslems than are the European Jews, and they dreamed of the Land of Israel long before the Russian and Polish Jews did.
• [This] argument stems from the cogitations of a part of the European Left: the Arabs were oppressed, therefore they could not be anti-Semites. This is ridiculously manichaeistic – as though one could not be oppressed and also be a racist! As if workers have not been xenophobic!
• Even today the official position of the Arabs, implicit or avowed, brutal or tactical, is nothing but a perpetuation of that anti-Semitism which we have experienced. Today, as yesterday, our life is at stake. But there will come a day when the Moslem Arabs will have to admit that we, the “Arab Jews” as well – if that is how they wish to call us – have the right to existence and to dignity.

Racism (1982)

• Racism rests upon and functions as a kind of seesaw: the persecutor rises by debasing and inferiorizing his victim.

• There is a strange kind of tragic enigma associated with the problem of racism. No one, or almost no one, wishes to see themselves as racist; still racism persists, real and tenacious.

• Racism does not limit itself to biology or economics or psychology or metaphysics; it attacks along many fronts and in many forms, deploying whatever is at hand, and even what is not, inventing when the need arises.

Decolonization and the Decolonized (2006)

• Israel, however, is not a colonial settlement, which would therefore be legitimate to destroy, an idea the Arab states have tried to promulgate. Aside from its domination of the Palestinians, which is unacceptable, it has none of the characteristics of such a state. Nor is it a product of the Crusades, a religious excrescence of Europe, destined sooner or later to vanish off the map from Christianity's lassitude.
• Like Palestine for the Palestinians, Israel is a national fact, the response to an untenable condition and a collective desire, with its own imaginary, binding it, rightly or wrongly, to this earth. This is how the United Nations viewed the situation when it determined the constitutions of the two sovereign states.
• When seen in its proper context, compared to the magnitude of the problems—demographic, economic, political, social, cultural, and religious—that now face the Arab world, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict turns out to be a minor drama in a small corner of the world, just one among many.
• Obviously, the misfortune of the Arabs does not arise from the existence of Israel; even if the country didn't exist, none of these problems would be resolved.
• There is no mystery to the Arab texts used for domestic consumption; they openly discuss the destruction of Israel. Didn't the first president of the Algerian republic, Ben Bella, go so far as to declare that, if he had had an atomic bomb, he would have launched it against Israel, which had become a kind of absolute evil?
• To speak of Israel in terms other than as a historical, even metaphysical, disease that the Arab world needed to be cleansed of became a form of blasphemy that had to be punished. Giving it a place on a map was a sacrilege, a felony. As if, by denying its existence, it could magically be made to disappear. This effort was facilitated by the fact that the Jews served as an excellent scapegoat for the problems of others. Israel's existence was far too convenient.
• There no longer exists, if there ever did in the Arab-Muslim world, that great public tribunal characteristic of democracy, where everyone can publicly give his opinion without unnecessary risk. True controversies are rare, except possibly for unimportant details, where disagreements occur against a background of underlying unity. As a result, any condemnation of wrongdoing and scandal always comes from the exterior, from those outside the community, leading to suspicions of bias or perversity.
• Hardly a word about the condition of women is heard. Not a single statement about the fate of minorities, some of whose members have contributed to the independence of their country at the risk of their life; not a sign of recognition. On the contrary, they most often find themselves being gradually eliminated from the country's civil-service bureaucracy. In this way a great occasion is lost to build, at least in words, an open and multicultural nation, one that includes the Algerian Kabyles, the Egyptian Copts, Jews and Christians … precisely what intellectuals living in the West demand for themselves in their host countries!
• If you raise a baby crocodile in your apartment, one day he will eat you. The Americans gave aid to the Taliban in fighting the Russians and later went to war with them. The Israelis initially encouraged the Palestinian fundamentalists in Hamas, who then turned against them. The ruler knows this; he knows that if the fundamentalists gain power, he will be eliminated. To avoid this he will practice a balancing act, sometimes granting them favors, sometimes tightening the screws. The Islamic veil, the beard, the mosques, the confraternities serve as escape valves, but all the Arab governments know they are raising crocodiles in their midst. This providential aid, granted through the intermediary of the priests, is not disinterested. It is a poisoned alliance, where everyone, using his own weapons, tries to neutralize, then despoil, the others.
• The suicide bomber denies the rules so painfully acquired by human societies, the outline of a moralization of war. It is a reversal of the gradual humanization of human societies. They cut the throats of journalists, who are only doing their job, abduct or machine-gun tourists, who have arrived from another part of the world and had the misfortune to want to amuse themselves. A tract that appeared in Casablanca before a horrendous attack, one that was distributed only in the mosques, exhorted its readers to make no exceptions for women or children—all of them were considered guilty and deserved to die. The same justification has been advanced by Palestinian leaders: all Israelis without exception must be attacked. Islamic terrorism appears to have declared war on the entire world, including the Arab countries that fail to align themselves with its objectives. Tunisia, Morocco, even Saudi Arabia, the leading sanctuary of the Arab-Muslim world, have been struck. Until recently, Palestinian bombers concentrated on Israeli or Jewish targets; now the battle has extended to the world at large.
• One of history's ironies is that Kosovo, a Muslim territory, owes its survival to the assistance of the Americans, just as Nasser's pseudo-victory against France, England, and Israel was obtained through the intervention of the Americans and Russians.
• It was as if, by denouncing their rulers, I had insulted the people, which was exactly the opposite of my intent. For by illuminating these lapses, I believe, rather, that I have helped to demystify the situation. Therefore, I devoted exactly four pages to the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The subject is inexhaustible and convenient. I pointed out the deplorable situation of the Palestinians and urged the creation of a Palestinian state—something I have done for thirty years, even when no one else was willing to do so, including the Arab states (see my Juifs et Arabes [Jews and Arabs], Gallimard, 1967). But I wondered why there had been such emphasis on the conflict, with its four thousand dead—deplorable like all deaths but hardly comparable to the millions of deaths in Africa, for example. As I write this afterword, a massacre in Darfur has left thirty thousand dead and displaced close to a million people. I have suggested that such chaos has been one of the most effective pretexts for tyrants to excuse their hold on power and the state of catalepsy in which they maintain their populations.

Quotes about Memmi

• There has never been a moment when reading Freire that I have not remained aware of not only the sexism of the language but the way he (like other progressive Third World political leaders, intellectuals, critical thinkers such as Fanon, Memmi, etc.) constructs a phallocentric paradigm of liberation-wherein freedom and the experience of patriarchal manhood are always linked as though they are one and the same. For me this is always a source of anguish for it represents a blind spot in the vision of men who have profound insight.
  • bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994)