SIGN and SIGHT
Algeria’s best-known contemporary author still living in the country, Boualem Sansal has been awarded the 2011 Peace Prize of the German Booktrade, which he will accept this autumn in Frankfurt. In an interview he talks with Tageszeitung correspondent Reiner Wandler about the current political situation in Algeria.
taz: When I was in Tunisia during the revolution, a sentence from your book “Poste restante: Alger. Lettre de colere et d’espoir a mes compatriotes Algeria” kept going through my mind: “Basically we have never had the chance to talk to each other … freely, seriously, methodically, without prejudice … ” The Tunisians suddenly broke the silence at the beginning of this year. Is this free speech characteristic of the protests that are currently taking place all over the Arab world?
Boualem Sansal: Discussion is the basis of human existence. If that is taken away, we die. This is exactly what is happening in the Arab and Islamic world. It is a slow death when you can’t talk about anything, you can’t exchange thoughts with others, can’t discuss your conflicts. People rebel when they realise that they are dying. The uprisings are not economic, social or political rebellions, as people keep saying. People simply feel the need to talk. So they react. Like an animal that is going to be slaughtered reacts.
So is this the rebellion of an educated, well-informed youth that is being been denied all freedoms?
The young people see what is happening out there in the world on the Internet and on satellite TV. They witness how young Europeans and Americans live. They see their contemporaries talking, trying things out, living their own lives. And then they look around in their own countries and realise they can’t talk about anything. This is not only true for politics and discussions about the political regime or democracy, but also for everyday life. Even at home they can’t talk about anything. It’s all about respecting their parents, religion, traditions, they can’t talk to boys or girls, or even their teachers … The youth have been left completely on their own.
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