Recensie: Een indrukwekkend boek over vriendschap: Hisham Matars roman My Friends

Een boek over vriendschap, en hoe het is om in ballingschap te leven. Dat is My Friends in een notendop. Een indrukwekkend nieuw boek van de Amerikaans/Libische schrijver Hisham Matar, winnaar van de Pulitzerprijs in 2017. Matar is wonderwel in staat de geschiedenis te verweven met fictie.

• Lees hieronder twee fragmenten uit de roman.
• Lees een fragment uit De terugkeer
• Lees een fragment uit Anatomie van een verdwijning

Khaled en Mustafa leren elkaar kennen als achttienjarige studenten in Edinburgh. Als er in Londen een demonstratie is tegen het Libische regime bij de ambassade besluiten ze daarheen te gaan. Khaled raakt gewond als er vanuit de ambassade wordt geschoten op de menigte. Daarbij komt een politieagente om het leven. In de nasleep ontmoet hij Hosam, een schrijver die ook is gevlucht. Lopend door Londen herinnert hij zich deze periode uit zijn leven, en zijn jeugd in Libië. Matar schrijft met heldere tederheid. De kracht van literatuur, de revolutie in Libië, de pijnlijke waarheid van de leugens tegen zijn ouders vanwege hun veiligheid, de intense vriendschappen met Mustafa en Hosam, de angst te worden gevonden door het regime; Matar zuigt je als lezer in al deze gebeurtenissen en emoties.

Een prachtige nieuwe roman.

Reny van der Kamp is boekverkoper Engelse literatuur bij Athenaeum Boekhandel Spui.

‘The mystery that surrounded the identity of Hosam Zowa excited my parents and especially my father. He was a historian, part of the first generation to go to university after independence, which is to say, given te restrictions the ltalian occupation placed on Lybians, he was among the first in the country to get a higher education. He went on to get a PhD from Cairo University. When I was growing up, he had to me the reliable air of one who believes in time, in the human initiative to measure it, but also in its supremacy over human affairs, that everyone, their deeds and character, will not only yield to time but be revealed by it, that the true nature of things is concealed and the function of the days is to strip away the layers.
After 1969, the year Qaddafi assumed power, my father quietly turned down academic posts and lucrative positions on state-sponsored committees and disappearances into a job that suited neither his talents nor his ambition: he became a general history teacher in a middling school in a low-income neighbourhood of Benghazi. Eventually he was promoted to headmaster. He accepted only because refusing would have raised suspicion.’

[…]

‘I leave the mosque and turn back towards the city, towards the bright lights of Soho, the landing and the falling place, where I spent that first night I came to London, intending only to be here a day and then return to Scotland, only to remain for what is now thirty-two years.
Seven months into my life in Edinburgh, I received yet another opened letter form my mother. In those days, she and I used to exchange weekly postcards or letters. She was writing to tell me about an exciting rumour stirring in Benghazi.
“The mysterious author of that frightening short story about the monstrous cat is finally coming out with a book. It will be published under the same title: The Given and the Taken. Do look for it and when you read it let us know your opinion. She then ended her letter, as she often did, with the words, ‘I wrap you in my remembrance’. But now, thinking of the intruder between us, the sentiment made me embarrassed.
It turned out Mustafa had once met my mother briefly when she drove by to collect my father. ‘He insisted on introducing us,’ Mustafa said proudly. I informed him of the news and he, having missed the broadcast, was even keener than I to find the book. He telephoned all the Arabic bookshops in London and one in Manchester, where he had a maternal uncle. None had it or knew of it.
It was shortly after that when we heard that the authorities had rounded up a number of students from the University of Tripoli and Benghazi’s Garyounis University, the school Mustafa and I most probably would have gone to if we had not been so lucky, and thrown them in jail.
There were claims that several were tortured and some killed. It made me terribly anxious. I tried my best to ignore it. Mustafa, though, was visibly distraught. he sais he had not been able to sleep hearing the news. ‘You know how people exaggerate, I told him, I'm sure it's not that bad'.
He looked at me and said nothing.
The following morning he came knocking at my door. He walked in before I could answer. I was still in bed. He pulled over a chair and sat beside me. He stood up again and went to the door and flung it wide open. ‘What's going on?’ I said.
‘Are you sure no one else is here?’ he whispered.
‘Why, what happened?’
He shut the door and sat down again, like a doctor visiting his patient. He smelt of cigarettes and sweat. I remember thinking, whatever it is, keep calm and don't get involved. The thought brought back my father’ s words at the airport.
‘A demonstration will take place tomorrow,’ he whispered, ‘in front of the Lybian embassy in London. I checked train times and the bus schedule. Nothing will get us there in time. We have to go today to make it. pretty much right now. Spend the night there. I found a hotel.’
he then looked at me and how many times have I thought back to how his eyes were at that moment: nervous, uncertain, seeking reassurance.
‘It'd be fun, wouldn't it, to go to London?’ he said.’