- Attar’s hoopoe calls upon the soul-birds to seek in mastery of their passions for the Pearl that never dies, the precious jewel of spiritual fulfillment within. – Michael Barry, The Canticle of the Birds
In the Maghreb today, the beautiful holy city of Fez, Morocco’s capital of spiritual knowledge and culture, is a contemporary beacon of peace, tolerance, and openness to the world’s cultural diversities in what is continuously a politically roiled MENA region. This distinction owes much to the vision and focused work over the past twenty years by Dr. Faouzi Skali, the country’s leading Sufi scholar, and well-known anthropologist and ethnologist. In a recent interview where he pays homage to the leadership of Morocco’s King Mohammed VI, he cites His Majesty’s dedication to ‘the vital combat for the harmonious coexistence of cultures’. He observes:
- The aspiration of the Kingdom over centuries has been to seek to reinvent Andalusia, beyond geographies, as a state of culture, a state of mind…. It’s a question of restoring Fez to its original place, as a pole of culture, a world capital of the spirit…. It’s [also] a question of establishing a new notion of development, that one could call ‘civilizational’ and in which patrimonial development comprises both cultural development and socio-economic development. (Translated from the original French.) – ‘Faouzi Skali, président du Festival de Fès des musiques sacrées: «La culture est une priorité pour le Roi»’, Aujourd’hui Le Maroc, August 2, 2014
Through Dr. Skali’s founding and annual production of two major international music festivals, the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music and the Fes Festival of Sufi Culture, a newer framework for Islamic society is developing based on the ancient spiritual values in Sufism that developed during the interrelated histories of al-Andalus (present day southern Spain and the Maghreb) and the territories encompassing today’s Near East and South Asia between the 9th and 13th centuries. The two festivals have come to represent symbolic bulwarks against Salafist or Wahhabi extremism. Indeed, in recognition of Dr. Skali’s ongoing achievements, France recently granted him its highest award, Chevalier (Knight) de la Legion d’Honneur.
It’s important to note that Sufism’s ethos and esthetic permeate the two Fez festivals through Dr. Skali’s deep knowledge of Sufism’s historical, literary, and philosophical thought. This year’s festival themes gave focus to two personalities from the period known as ‘The Zenith of Islamic Mysticism’ during the 12th and 13th centuries: one, a tribute to the sublime Persian Sufi mystic poet Attar (c. 1145 – c. 1220), and another to the great Andalusian Sufi mystic poet and philosopher, Ibn Arabi (1165-1240).
The Fes Festival of World Sacred Music:
The June 13-21, 2014 edition of the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music represented its 20th anniversary celebration. The scope of the entire programming was dazzling. The festivities centered in and around the Medina and ran from 9 am to midnight. Thousands of international and local world music fans, renowned scholars and authors, activists, artists, and even the Fassi children were the participants in what has become a most magnificent interfaith, intercultural festival. The annual event has by now become the touchstone for all sacred music festivals worldwide. Its ethos as a meeting of cultures and religions continues to generate a progressive and cosmopolitan profile for Morocco, so tenuously present in the MENA region except for parts of the Maghreb.
The opening night concert in the grand Bab Makina venue carried the theme of the entire festival: ‘Conference of the Birds: Journey of Cultures’, in allusion to and inspired by the masterpiece of Persian medieval poetry, ‘Manteq ot-Teyr ‘ (Language or Speech of the Birds) by the 12th-13th century Sufi poet Farid Ud-Din Attar. In the mystical allegory of the human soul’s yearning for union with the divine, the hoopoe bird invites all birds to set forth on a most difficult journey in search of their king or queen of birds, the Simorgh. They must survive arduous passage through seven valleys as their path of spiritual initiation: Quest (or Desire), Love, Mystery, Detachment (and Serenity), Unity, Bewilderment (or Awe), Annihilation (or Denouement).
The 2 ½ hour long, spectacular and completely original production was conceived of by the artistic directors, Layla Skali-Benmoussa and Dr. Faouzi Skali. In the program notes, they state:
- This ancient tale inspired us to present this as the adventure of our own age: the journey of different cultures from all corners of the world as they seek meaning and transformation through their encounters. Here, the birds are symbols of different cultures, each with a common bond in their spirit. They undertake with joy, and sometimes with pain, that changes and utterly transforms them. The journey forces them to let go of ghosts that haunt them, doubts and mysteries, and to follow a path that involves ordeals, some exhausting and painful. Only thus can they find and feel the highest ideal of what it means to be human.
Through seven tableaux representing Africa, Amerind, India, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and China and featuring 60 performers from 20 different countries, the production was a richly finessed tapestry of seven cultures. Splendid literary references were woven in throughout: Amadou Hampate Ba; Jorge Luis Borges; extracts from the Garuda Upanishad, the Ramayana, and the Gita Govinda; the Old Testament’s ‘Song of Songs’; St. Francis of Assisi; and Lao Tsu. In the festival’s fascinating and innovative re-creation of Attar’s tale, those modern and ancient classic references adroitly reflect and expand upon the medieval Persian ‘frame story-within-a-story’ structure of the actual poem.
Animated by traditional music, song and dance, acrobatics, narration and theater staging, there were outstanding performances by Lebanon’s Abeer Nehme as the hoopoe, Senegal’s Musa Dieng Kala, Bolivia’s Luzmila Carpio, India’s Manochhaya Barata Natyam dancers, Seville-based Ladino singer Mor Kabasi, Hungary’s St. Ephraim Choir, Fes’ own Sufi singer Marouane Hajji with a fine chorus and two whirling dervishes from Turkey, and finally, China’s Wang Li.
Thus, in one breath-taking evening the festival revisited and celebrated the myriad of cultures it has explored and presented over the past 20 years, while giving specific focus to Morocco’s creativity and imagination.
A week later on Friday morning, the magic of Attar’s work also inspired the children from the Fes La Fontaine primary school to create their own version of a ‘conference of birds’, a delightful ‘theater of sacred music’, with costuming, world music, choreography, and spoken word. What a joy, to know that Fes introduces world cultures with such imagination and sophistication to seven, eight, and nine year-old children.
Over the course of the festival, the afternoons and evenings in the Medina venues were filled with an abundance of the world’s traditions of spiritually-related performances. There were a plethora of styles and collaborations: from Morocco, Mali, France, Spain, Ireland, Pakistan, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, the U.S., Senegal and South Africa, Mauritania and India, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Year after year, the festival serves as a haven for some of the artists who, due to political complications or crises, are unable to perform in their countries.
The Bab Makina in all its splendor was the formal concert setting for some of the world’s greatest and favorite stars including Senegal’s Youssou N’Dour in a collaborative tribute to Nelson Mandela with South Africa’s Johnny Clegg; Iraq’s swoon-worthy tarab master Kadem Saher; France’s opera tenor Roberto Alagno in special performance with Mediterranean musicians; and the American guitar legend Buddy Guy whose stunning show was opened by the New Orleans Hot 8 Brass Band.
Most impressive each year is the evening of Sufi sacred music, and this year’s Bab Makina presentation was filled with the glory of Judeo-Arab Andalusian music with the renowned Fes Arab-Andalusian Orchestra led by Mohamed Briouel. They accompanied some of the finest Fes Sufi ‘sama’ singers including the favored, young Marouane Hajji. And were joined by Morocco’s Sephardic singer Francoise Atlan and Israel’s Lior El Maleh who is known for his lead vocals with the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra.
Some of the festival’s international stars including Kadem Saher, Musa Dieng Kala, Luzmila Carpio, and the Hot 8 Brass Band delivered free-to-the-public concerts in the grand open-air Bab Boujloud plaza. They were joined by many of Morocco’s popular groups. These concerts are filled annually by thousands of locals in an atmosphere of ecstatic joy and communion.
But it was within the Medina’s smaller venues where performances were often as moving and powerful as the bigger concerts. At the Batha Museum, the afternoons and evenings were packed with crowds, either in exuberance or meditative wonder. Mali’s beloved Rokia Traore delivered one of the best concerts there. Her program notes recalled an African proverb: ‘The human body is so small in relationship to the spirit that dwells within it.’ Her recent album ‘Beautiful Africa’ was the theme of her performance, where she beguiled with her lilting music, and charmed with her dancing. One of her songs embellished the festival’s theme, ‘Tuit Tuit’, as she evoked the migratory bird with trilling harmonies.
The Irish Altan ensemble had groups up on their feet dancing one evening in the museum garden in festive joviality to Celtic melodies that embrace a sacredness at its heart. Delhi’s Ustad F. Wassifudin Dagar from a long lineage of North India’s most ancient Drupad musical tradition, filled a warm afternoon with his contemplative music with droning tanpura accompaniment and pakhawaj accents, once sung in temples with its Vedic hymn origins. On yet another pleasurable afternoon, Spain’s Jordi Savall gathered a group of musicians who created a dialogue between the orient-occident, Morocco and Spain. They explored most successfully ancient Spanish Christian music and the great traditions of North Africa. Instrumentation included Jordi Savall on bowed lyre and rebab, Driss El Maloumi on oud, Hakan Gungor on kanun, and Houcin Baqir on percussion.
From the fabled Silk Route, a trio of the Bardic Divas mesmerized the air with their dark, burnished music from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Wearing plumed hats and finely adorned robes, they sang and accompanied themselves with sacred instrumentation, lutes (dombra and dutar) and a two-stringed fiddle (kut). We were transported from Fez to faraway steppes and plains in Central Asia.
During the Medina Nights there were two sunset performances that I was thrilled to see, both in the Dar Adiyel, hidden deep in the Medina. The author and professor of Persian literature in Paris, Leili Anvar, presented a musical reading, ‘The Canticle of the Birds, Tales of Wisdom and Love’ based upon the work of Farid Ud-Din Attar. (See below book discussion.) With the participation of Frederic Ferney as her reading partner and accompaniment by 3 musicians on sarangi, double ney, tanbur, and daf, we experienced a riveting and entertaining enactment of some of Attar’s parables. Exceptionally knowledgeable in Persian literature, Leili Anvar wove in two stories from Rumi’s ‘Masnavi’: the controversy between Chinese and Byzantines on the art of painting and the snares of Satan. One day soon I hope to see this theater-musical piece in other festivals.
Fez has a very young, startlingly good Malhun star, all of 13 years old: Nouhaila Al Kalai. Backed by a traditional orchestra of violins and ouds and chorus, she held the her audience captive with this traditional form of Moroccan music that over time borrowed its modes from Andalusian music. Malhun was originally unsung poetry or ‘qasida’ developed by male artisans in the medinas of Fez, Meknes, and Marrakesh, as far back as the 16th century. It’s now a sung poetic art of long narratives bewitching the listener with elements of mysticism, storytelling, and love poetry.
Here are some verses Nouhaila sang by Ahmed Lel Grabli, a 19th century weaver from Fez. (The gentle cadence and mellifluous rhyming is sacrificed in the English, alas.) ‘And if the strings of the lute were then vibrating/ I will sing my song with resonant voice/ Airs filled with symbols and metaphors/ You watering me with the divine wine of your amphora/ The candles flare, throwing their light/ In an atmosphere so sweet and sylvan.’
Newest Festival Highlight, A ‘Living Itinerary’ in the Fez Medina:
The entire history of Fez began with its ancient Medina, still relatively intact and the largest in the Arab world. Thanks to the cultural activism of the architect Layla Skali Benmoussa known for her valiant rehabilitation and renovation work in the Medina, and also a key director with the festival, she has created a remarkable and long overdue historical itinerary through the Medina. She worked in collaboration with Frédéric Calmès, the journalist and Sufi Hamadcha musician, a specialist in culture and the traditional arts of Morocco. There were several itinerary dates during the festival and the Medina visits suddenly became a very popular, most impressive, new integral event.
It was a 6 hour long trek starting early one sunny morning inside the utterly lovely Jnan Sbil Arabo-Andalusian Garden (on the northwestern edge of the Medina and west of the Place Boujloud) with Frédéric Calmès as lead guide in our descent through the labyrinthine maze. The Oued Fez River and the Oued Jawahir (river of pearls) flowed through the garden. A broken down water wheel remains as reminder of how the medieval city was once powered by water wheels that provided craftsmen and their workshops with power. His affable presentation was phenomenal, filled with scientific data and archeological research concerning the engineering and architectural history about the origins of the city, as well as pertinent discussions on the Fez religious environment and its spiritual traditions.
The rich, fertile Saiss plain and its abundant river waters were first discovered by Moulay Idriss I and and his son, Moulay Idriss II, 12 centuries ago. Subsequently, the ingenious 11th century Almoravid Dynasty engineers developed a water management and distribution system that flowed down through one of Morocco’s most fertile valleys, the Sebou River basin, the actual location of the City of Fez today. The narrow winding streets in the Medina were once actual flowing waterways, fulfilling the Fes Andalusian period needs for water in riad households, hammams, artisanal craftings (tannery), mosques, schools, and gardens.
Our itinerary revealed the ‘hidden’ secrets in the Medina’s authentic interior, and what wonders and hospitalities we experienced along with refreshment stops for mint tea, fresh fruits and pastries in a renovated riad and in the home of a traditional leather master craftsman; we went inside the original ‘repartiteur’ or water distribution depot, a vaulting, cavernous structure where the Fez River water began to be meticulously directed into the Medina through tunnels and tiny furrows; the medieval Bouanania clock with its mystery of 13 hours, whose complex chiming mechanism depended on timed water flows and weights; the glorious Bouanania madrasa (school) dating from the 14th century under a Marinid Dynasty sultan; a visit to the Ouazzaniya Zaouia with Sufi singers and a talk about Fez Sufi spirituality; the ancient mosque (Mosquee de la source du cheval) where the great 13th century Sufi mystic author and poet, Ibn Arabi, received spiritual illumination. At each turn, we learned and viewed more information about the vital importance of the Medina waterways and storage systems under mosques and schools, and where fountains graced our path.
Proceeding into the Henna Souk we visited one of the last Fassi pottery artisans still hand-making containers and cups with a special clay and cedar resin that permeate drinking water with cooling, healing properties. In the same souk we were introduced to the amazing discovery of a ‘maristan’ or psychiatry hospital dating from the 14th century where until 1946, patients would come to be cured of mental imbalances based on the 4 humors of the personality of the individual along with other arcane calculations. Here, we listened to an old oud player of precisely the Andalusian music known since antiquity to restore harmony to the soul.
The Fez Medina is known and famed worldwide as the best artisanal crafts production center in all of Morocco. Its finest weavings, embroideries, and leather crafts are in massive demand all over the country. The medieval Sidi Moussa tannery was a de rigueur visit along with an enticing babouche shop. We wound our way to the spiritual and historic center of the Medina where the founder of Fez, Moulay Idriss II, is buried. It’s a doubly sacred site as he was also the son of the founder of the Kingdom of Morocco itself, Moulay Idriss I. Finally, on the open-air top floor of a fabulous carpet showroom, we surveyed the vast green rooftops of the grand Fez
Karaouine Mosque and University, the oldest university in the world, built in 859 by a woman, Fatima al-Fihri. The interior, according to Frédéric Calmès, has a capacity for 20,000 worshipers.
The hours spent over the course of the ‘Itineraire Vivant’ during the festival were among the most intriguing and spellbinding I’ve ever spent in Fez. I would gladly revisit the ‘real’ Medina again through the vision of Layla Skali Benmoussa and Frédéric Calmès, for there is so much to savor, so much to absorb, and so much to marvel over.
Favorite New Book Publications Discovered in Fez:
It is with awe and enthusiasm that I recommend you acquire these books to read and treasure. The authors will illuminate your life as they have mine.
‘Esprit de Fes’ by Faouzi Skali (French):
There is finessed refinement in Dr. Skali’s prose poetry French text in his newest book, ‘Esprit de Fes’ (Spirit of Fes), Editions Langages du Sud, with contemplative quotations by many other historical poets, writers, philosophers, intellectuals, and thinkers, and so beautifully reflective of the Andalusian Sufi heart. This is a joyous spiritual journey in Fez whose photographs and visual arts images capture great festival musical moments by musicians from all over the world. But the book also holds several images of the city of Fez itself, its detailed architectural wonders throughout the mosques and shrines, madrasas, palace gates, and gardens. It is one of the finer poetic introductions to Fez and her history that I’ve seen in a long time. One hopes for an English edition for wider appreciation. The opening text reads:
- Fez is the inheritor of the astonishing medieval Andalusia where Muslims, Jews, and Christians enriched themselves through their [shared] experience and their differences. The city of Moulay Idriss is a sanctuary. The Sufis, initiates of Islam, have always called it the ‘Zaouia’. Pope Sylvester II (10th century) and the Jewish physician and philosopher Maimonides lived there. Ibn Arabi the mystic and metaphysician, Ibn Battuta the traveler, Ibn Khaldun the sociologist, Ibn Al Banna the mathematician… all these great figures have sojourned in Fez. (Translated from the original French)
Bearing their witness, the University of Karaouine safeguards the extraordinary manuscript collection of religious, philosophical, natural and cosmological sciences. The religious and spiritual dimension of the city is its foundation, its ‘culture’ of holiness, undeniable. The numerous shrines or ‘zaouias’ in Fez have constituted the secret soul of this city for centuries.
The book’s photography, iconography and design are embellished by the calligraphy art of Fez artist Mohammed Charkaoui. There was an informal exhibition at the Musee Batha of his wooden tablet paintings whose black pigment ground made with almond shells and gum arabic are graced by his Kufic calligraphy images in gold oil paint. (These tablets are the original sacred ‘lawh’ slates employed by students of the Quran.) Each tablet painting featured a word or words transformed into iconic Kufic design, including Spirit of Fez, Beauty, Knowledge, Sacred, Dialogue, Happiness, Liberty, Culture, Love, Wisdom, and Creation. The artist traces his calligraphic ancestry to a great grandfather from the 17th century who studied calligraphy at the Fes University of Karaouine. Mohammed Charkaoui is among a small vanguard of Moroccan master calligrapher teachers who have been reviving the tradition over the past 10 years. His art is in demand throughout Fez where he paints large murals in refined settings.
‘The Canticle of the Birds’ by Farid Ud-Din Attar (English and French):
Lest we forget, during and following the al-Andalus period so closely linked with development of Maghrebian Sufi history, thought and inquiry, Central Asian and South Asian territories were also the heartlands for inspiration by many great Sufi mystic poets, philosophers, and artists. In particular, one recent publication symbolizes in so many ways the epitome of that geographical and artistic historicity. (And whose original poem served as creative theme for the Fez Festival as discussed above.)
From the publishing house Editions Diane de Selliers in Paris, we now have a true contemporary magnum opus, 12th century Persian poet’s Attar’s ‘The Canticle of the Birds’. In the forward, Diane de Selliers writes, ‘The poem’s countless Koranic and Biblical allusions and mystical profundity, the musicality of its verse, and finally the sheer assonance with the poem’s original name led us quite naturally to translate its title Manteq ot-Teyr as ‘The Canticle of the Birds.’ (Usually known as ‘The Conference of the Birds’.)
‘The Canticle of the Birds’ first appeared in the French edition 2 years ago and the ultra-elegant 4000 cloth-bound, slipcased copies sold-out immediately in 6 months. (It’s a massive tome, weighing several pounds.) Dr. Leili Anvar, esteemed professor of Persian literature with INALCO in Paris had undertaken the monumental responsibility of rendering the classical Persian text into exquisite French. The English version with translation by Dick Davis just appeared a few months ago. It has received two major awards: Iran’s 2014 World Book Prize of the Year on Persian Civilization by the National Academy of Iran and France’s 2013 Montherlant Prize for Writing on Art by the National Academy of Fine Arts.
What makes this edition so exceptionally ‘collect-worthy’ and a reader’s supreme delight are the pictorial research, introduction and commentaries by Dr. Michael Barry, the art historian and professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and eminent specialist in the civilisations of the East. The publication features 207 superb Persian, Turkish, Afghan and Indo-Pakistani miniatures from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, from public and private collections from around the world. This must be one of the most beautiful books ever created.
There are not enough superlatives for Dr. Michael Barry’s erudition and eclectic knowledge of cultural, political and religious histories, the fine arts, literature, and philosophical inquiry. Through the manuscript illuminations and detailed commentaries, newer light is cast upon historical encounters between civilizations, their artistic iconographies and knowledge crucibles, and the intercultural impacts from the 7th century onwards. Most admirable among the reproductions are the figurative illuminations from the manuscript of Attar’s poem, commissioned by a sultan in Herat in 1487, and located today in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Canticle contains invaluable and useful historical information, including a glossary, a timeline and map, and background on the schools of painting and major painters in the Eastern Islamic world.
In visual counterpoint musicality, Dr. Barry’s juxtaposition of illustrations with his commentaries illuminate, give pause to reflect upon, the beauty and significance of Attar’s text. He subtly transforms and enlarges upon the entire text presentation by his own ‘stories-within-stories’, so emblematic of classical Persian literary structure and of the poem itself. One experiences rapture in the reading of what unveils itself to be a profound introduction to the dimensions of a spiritual, mystical initiation: Sufism. Dr. Barry neatly sums up the Canticle’s meditative experience in his great introduction:
- But to leaf at leisure through the pages of this book, with reproduced paintings by Behzad and the greatest artists of the Persianate world, opening, one after another, magic windows on the deciphered symbolism of one of the culture’s greatest literary masterpieces, is to enjoy today a luxury once allowed only to princes in the ancient Persian lands.
‘Malak Jan Nemati’ by Leili Anvar (English, French, Farsi, German, Italian):
Apart from Dr. Leili Anvar’s own poetic introduction and as translator of the new French edition of ‘The Canticle of the Birds’, she is a cherished Rumi scholar and has published two books about the tremendously popular Sufi poet. A woman with the soul of a poetess, she often appears during the Fez Festival onstage to recite and read Persian Sufi texts with graceful intensity, Dr. Anvar has also published a tribute book about the Persian Kurdish mystic saint, Malak Jan Nemati (1906-1993), the sister of Ostad Elahi, the well-known master sacred tanbur musician, spiritual philosopher and jurist. ‘Malak Jan Nemati, Life Isn’t Short, But Time is Limited’ originally appeared in French with Editions Diane de Selliers and is now available in English through Arpeggio Press.
Her research into universal spiritual traditions led her to meet the blind Sheikh Malak Jan Nemati in person before her passing in 1993. Dr. Anvar in an interview in Fez made clear that the Sheikh, affectionately known as ‘Saint Jani’, had totally ‘transformed’ her own life. Her book carefully documents and traces Malak Jan’s early life as student and later on as guardian of her brother’s mystical path and teachings, along with compilations of her poetry and sayings in this rare and moving book. Both Malak Jan Nemati and Ostad Elahi, according to Dr. Anvar, represented ‘modern extensions of Persian Sufism’.
Although Malak Jan became physically frail in her advancing years, this study pays endearing homage to an inspirational heroine and woman of enormous resilience, discipline, courage, charity, and enlightenment in the remote Western Iran Kurdish village, Jeyhounabad. Through the affirmative and passionate biographical text by Dr. Anvar, one senses a testament of her own personal path that became imbued by the radiance of Malak Jan’s life and work and whose central preoccupation was spiritual knowledge that she considered ultimately, self-knowledge.
And, what a thoroughly modern, independent woman in Malak Jan one perceives in this passage about the spiritual leader:
- Malak Jan, for whom the ‘Quintessence of Religions’ was the cornerstone of her reflection and teaching, lived far removed from the outside world, yet she was not only well informed about the news but also acutely aware of the pulse of the world: social issues, shifting mindsets, psychological and spiritual upheavals, etc. She was worried about the increasing sectarianism pervading and disrupting the region, and considered the ensemble of divine religions to be one unique Religion, which is why spiritual students from such diverse backgrounds and origins would come to see her. Above all however, she always made a distinction, both in her practice and in her teachings, between universal spiritual principles and secondary dogmas that concerned rituals and social issues. Here again, the modernity of her thought with respect to religious and spiritual matters should be measured against the backdrop of her time and place, which was doubly limited by the mindset of the Ahl-e Haqq on the one hand, and the dogmatic inflexibility of Islam’s orthodoxy on the others. She constantly reevaluated prevailing norms to fine-tune them to what she considered essential to spiritual action: self-knowledge, serving others, and the perfection of the soul.
Preview, Abdelwahab Meddeb’s ‘Portrait of the Poet as a Sufi’ (French and eventual English editions):
By far, one of the strongest, iconoclastic and brilliant among all contemporary Maghreb writers is the Tunisian French poet and philosopher, novelist and artist, the cultural critic, Abdelwahab Meddeb, who is about to release his most recent poetry entitled ‘Portrait of the Poet as a Sufi’, Editions Belin, Collection “Extrême Contemporain”, Paris. An unusually imaginative polymath whose numerous books, articles, and weekly radio broadcasts on France Culture (Cultures d’Islam) and Medi1 (Chronicles) I consistently admire, Abdelwahab Meddeb’s new book promises to be yet another wondrous voyage through space and time. Prepare to accompany this contemporary Sufi poet as he shares his myriad insights, perceptions, sensations, mirrored in his poetic musings. The back cover of the book reads:
- Neo-nomad, the poet walks along the horizon of the world. He is alert to what the body senses during border crossings. The gift received shifts towards Aya, the subject of love, between whose presence and absence lies the poem’s dedication. It is built around epiphanies that provoke contemplation of what is to come, at the intersections of women, words, wines, nourishment, of trees and celestial bodies, and of the truth that brings forth painting and architecture. Reading the world as a book, the poet deciphers what is offered to him in order to interpret the enigmatic. Meaning streams from the physiology of feeling, sensation, emotion. The poet nibbles at tiny plots of the cosmos, to which he adapts as gregarious traveler. His escapades lead him afar, from Korea to the Caribbean, Bengal to the west coast of America. And at a closer range, his sojourns link Tunis to Berlin, Tangier to Paris, Madrid or Lisbon to Cairo, Alexandria to Siwa or Jerusalem to Istanbul. Always drawn to passion for the Truth, the wanderer never renounces focus. Beyond dogma, he dreams about the “complete verb”. He restores the gleaming brightness of a broken mirror through these poetic fragments, transcribing the detail his seismographic body captures as he traverses the territory of Eastern and Western languages. Such is the Sufi of a new genre, in quest of the global poetry of our time, its material to be found wherever the poet reinvents his country with each step on his journey. — Abdelwahab Meddeb, writer, poet, academic, radio broadcaster. (Translated from the original French)
During this festival visit to Fez, I remarked to friends that I felt as if I were in the center of the world, wherein there exists the real possibility of peace among so many cultural diversities. Many centuries and places of spiritual inspiration and yearning were celebrated through this edition’s confluence of music, dance, theater, itineraries, forum dialogues, art and literature, not to mention the vibrant encounters with truly great friends in Fez and from all the corners of the earth. It is an experience that blesses and uplifts every festival visitor and participant every year. Do make plans to attend the 21st edition, May 22-30, 2015.
Forthcoming Part II: The Fes Festival of Sufi Culture
Author: Evangeline Kim
