“Childhood Without Rain” by Idris Lakrini.. A universal novel that delves into the world of childhood

Moroccan writer Idris Lakrini evokes a child’s memory that carries within it lines of drama, intertwined, complex and intricate, with what it contains of stories of joy, sadness and innocence, and of pain and suffering through the feelings of a young child who opened his eyes in the countryside to a harsh nature with a group of hills and rugged areas that he does not know what lies behind them? Holding on to threads of hope and dreams, clinging to the edges of life despite its harshness and his struggle with it!

The reader will find himself behind or in the middle of the events of this novel, with different details of place and different languages. Therefore, I see it as embodying the universality or cosmos of childhood!

Colin Wilson says about the novel: The novel changed the consciousness of the civilized world: We say that Darwin, Marx, and Freud changed the face of Western civilization, but the influence of the novel was greater than the influence of these three combined!

Childhood Without Rain is a novel of difficult biographical literature, because it is the ‘first seed’ that the writer plants about his experience, by presenting himself, revealing what is hidden, and revealing himself to the reader, the partner who awaits something new in the writer’s privacy!

Because biographical literature is a distinct literary genre among all literary genres, Colin Wilson also says about it: “The novel is considered the first for the writer to record his autobiography, so it is like poetry and the story in which the autobiography is also recorded.”

We also find historically that all literary genres that have been written, stories, novels, and poetry, have been subject to many readings in criticism. Despite the difference of opinion on this, we find some of the – criteria – that enter into the heart of the subject, each according to his own effort.

Every critic has his own culture, source, style, methodology, philosophy, and approach that he works on in the context of any biographical or non-biographical work, whether it is a novel or poetry. As a result, he comes out with a human literary product that he sheds light on!

Every critic flies, expressing his imagination, imagination, tools, and literary critical language, and enters into the imagination of the writer. Biographical literature is also subject to creativity, contemplation, relaxation, pleasure, and beauty.

Between reality and imagination, there are titles and connotations of a truth that has become entrenched in the imagination, mind and memory of the writer Idris Lakrini, interspersed with insights and illumination, far from interpretation and explanation of the content of the language in its eloquence when choosing the appropriate structures for events, characters and places and their complex relationship that he worked on in his biographical novel “Childhood Without Rain”; he wrote his memory today with what his eyes saw yesterday, and what he felt in his heart, emotions and mind.

In addition to the volume of abbreviations, metaphors and their metaphors that grew and developed and were nurtured at the beginning of the first awareness of childhood that carries his mischief, play and education, and the transition to a memory that has exceeded fifty years of age and is still glowing in its method and style due to academic scientific influences (law, politics, international relations and crisis management), all these factors made his language easy – sober that expresses his personality in expressing that childhood that was written “with the mind of the first awareness of childhood”, which still lives inside him, but in the form of the educated, enlightened civilized person, not the naughty, mischievous one.

Self-change in the writer’s personality between nature and the embrace of school

Between reality and imagination, the child’s emotional and mental personality crystallizes, especially in the field of education and nature, which affects the human imagination, in villages, rural areas and towns far from cities, which contributes to building a child with an emotional and social self.

During this period, and in light of this reality, the construction process took place (building a dramatic relationship with the place, the cemetery, the school road, the spaces, the orchards, the mosque, the school, of course with all the characters who influenced him), forming a distinct characteristic with imagination in the writer’s personality, as he draws what he sees in a smooth manner in his simple, beautiful language between death, the cemetery, contemplation and joy, between the chirping of birds, the scent of flowers and the fragrance of the place! This contradictory image was shattered by the wailing and crying of women that tears apart nature and its tranquility! But it triumphs for life… It is a wonderful scene!

Because he loves playing with clay to make different beautiful models and loves drawing a lot, he used to draw his own world with many different colors like paintings made by adults! He dreams of building a spacious world in the future.

Literature, including writing the art of “the novel”, is considered a means of knowledge for humans to enter the world of art and write with imagination and fantasy to understand art and realize its role; considering that “the novel” is the mirror in which the writer sees himself, so we are faced with an experience that depends on memory and consciousness, and it is a style expressing that childhood.

Since art develops multiple skills in the child and adds experiences that support him in his studies, and refines his aesthetic sense and artistic taste, these experiences instill in him the relationship of communication between knowledge, science, literature and imagination, and form an aesthetic tendency within him that appears even after a period of time, as happened to many novelists who wrote their first novels after the age of fifty or sixty!

As now, the “legal doctor” and novelist Idris Lakrini, who wrote about his childhood with the mind of a man of law, opens his novel influenced by Naguib Mahfouz’s opinion about life and the need to return to it repeatedly in order to master it. Here, the relationship with his mother, who was responsible for him in the absence of his father who had immigrated to France to work, is documented; his mother who was his first and last refuge, and he would seek her help when he was attacked by others!! Or when he needed her, she was his homeland, in whose arms he felt safe and warm.

Simplicity and kindness are also taken as the outcome of life from Confucius, and Isaac Newton contemplates going to the beautiful, intelligent nature that loves simplicity in discovering things! Because he considers himself a son of nature!

Rain has more than one meaning in the novelist’s imagination.

In his novel, the writer evokes all the vocabulary he experienced in his childhood as showers of rain that refresh the soul. For example, we see him take from the Sufi Sheikh Jalal al-Din al-Rumi the radiance of the tormented soul when the rain cries, and the fear of suffering, worse than suffering itself, from Paulo Coelho.

This is also confirmed by Mahmoud Darwish, that death does not hurt the dead, but hurts the living! He praises and repeats the saying of Muhammad al-Maghut: “Death is not the greatest loss, but the greatest loss is the one who dies within us while we are alive”!

Some feel the rain and others just feel wet! This is how it is with Bob Marley, the country singer who belongs to the world of the writer himself who aspires to peace, freedom, fighting poverty and belonging to love in all its forms. This is his message in life and within his village that lies between two ancient cities: Fez and Meknes, close to another ancient city, Zerhoun, that village that prepared him as a young man and then opened up a wonderful future for him… He worked on all these metaphors with projections of the reality he lived and in today’s language!

The compass of vision in the narrative relies on a magical world and soars in thought, spirit, mind and fertile imagination in the connotations of childhood:

Self-portraits, honest narration, and a special philosophy about the world of childhood as if it were happening today. The narrator plays his childhood thoughts for us – like a symphony – that believes in destiny and soars in space with its human thought, and weaves for us with the magic of nature and its language, and what happens in the place – the village – that he believes is the future of the country because of the events he experienced there that are still stuck in the thought of childhood that was not wet by rain, and with a spirit that believes in the course of life and its victory.

The father’s estrangement and absence from home outside the country in France, despite the fact that his mother was like a father and mother to him at the same time, as well as the deaths that befell the family, are all factors that made him the man of the house.

Within the narrative, we find him searching and following up on his father’s conditions through Mr. “Hamid,” his father’s companion abroad. He asks him about his father’s conditions and how he lives with the cold there in France. A question that a child of this age cannot think of!

He would reply: “Your father is fine, but he often came home soaked in the rain,” and the child would burst into tears.

Therefore, rain appeared in all the titles he narrated in Childhood Without Rain, with different connotations that strike deep roots!

The child, with his adventures at that age, seemed as if he had read the Dutchman Van Gogh in his life, and what he was living between art and reality, between drawing and imagination. Idris was a lover of art and a lover of books and reading, holding onto imagination, soaring in knowledge and exploration beyond the mountains. Therefore, his personality seemed as if it were the result of openness to reality, with an increase in the degrees of early awareness, as he was determined to learn in an amazing way, looking forward to the future in building what was around him anew.

Early intellectual openness and the objective equivalent in building the novelist’s character:

The writer confirms this with a quote by Abbas Mahmoud Al-Akkad, who says: “I love books, not because I am an ascetic in life, but because one life is not enough for me.” Here we stop before concluding in order to leave it to the honorable reader to delve into the worlds of “Childhood Without Rain,” and what remains is critical reading and expressing artistic and academic opinions that shed light on such a diverse and varied type of literature in terms of style and methodology.

Thanks to the writer, Mr. Idris Lakrini, who took us back to our childhood, to those places, to the spirit of mischief, and to the responsibility that we bore together when we were young. We dreamed of a bright future, inspired by the beautiful quote of the Irish satirical writer, George Bernard Shaw, which was mentioned in “A Childhood Without Rain”: “Make sure you get what you love, or you will be forced to accept what you get.”

The sense of humor and wit that I have become accustomed to in the writer over the course of several years, I also found in this novel, whose “funny and exciting events seem to have wet us as we sat under the roofs,” despite his choice to call it “Childhood Without Rain.”

The writer was telling me about his childhood events years before the work was published, in the finest detail, and about his love for the village of Beni Ammar, which lies between Fez and Meknes, and about his beautiful dreams that accompanied his move to the city, which was very different from his small town, and I was listening with pleasure and asking him to write.

Through the narration, I understood Helen Keller’s saying: “Your success and happiness lie within you,” which the self-taught writer employed in this biography, which embodies, with its events and anecdotes, a “collective childhood” that transcends time and place.

Finally, an opinion that must be said:

We often see one opinion and another opinion for the continuity of critical development, so there are two parties in this issue, one party that delves into biographical literature criticism and one party that rejects it, and the difference has its validity. I hope that I have indicated what is clear in this novel that filled childhood with enjoyment. We will leave the rest of our reading for the reader to explore and sail with us in his childhood and this childhood.

Today I am happy twice: First, that the author wrote and then published the novel and gave me a copy of it along with the critical reading. Second, I dedicate this reading of mine to the beautiful pleasure we shared with A Childhood Without Rain.

* Iraqi critic residing in the Netherlands