Many followers and critics, not to mention the general public, may not pay attention to some names in the Arab or Qatari intellectual and cultural scene until they hear the news of their departure from this world.
Professor Muhammad Ibrahim Boualo is an example of this type of creators who passed away a few days ago. To begin exploring his creative career, which was not simple in any case.
The late Boualou was born on March 28, 1936 in the city of Salé, from a well-known Salawi family, originally close to Tlemcen, but originally from Hadramaut, eastern Yemen. A number of its members were historically known for their specialization in mathematical sciences, in addition to a group of scholars in the fields of Sharia and language, and ending with some National figures, especially in the city of Salé. Among them we can mention his relative, the musician and artist Abdel Karim Boualou, one of the faces of the national movement in the city of Salé, who Arabized the book by the Frenchman Alexi Choutin, “The Artistic Journey to the Egyptian Land,” published in 1932, and edited by Dr. Rachid Al-Afaqi, to be Published as part of the “Doha Book” series. The author of the book, Alexis Chottin, is the person appointed by the French colonial protectorate as inspector of indigenous fine arts. He also served as director of the Arab Music Institute in Rabat, known as “Dar Al-Tarab.” It is a book that tells the story of the journey of Moroccan musicians to participate in the First Arab Music Conference held in Cairo in March/April 1932.
A dual academic and militant path
Professor Boualou began his professional journey as governor of the library of the Faculty of Arts in Rabat, commissioned by its dean at the time, Muhammad Aziz Al-Hababi, after he returned with Muhammad Abed Al-Jabri from Damascus with a preparatory year certificate in the Arts branch in 1959, with the aim of obtaining a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in Rabat, where they accompanied both Zubaida Bourahil. , Al-Tahir and Aziz, and the Algerian writer Abdelmadjid Meziane, who was the coordinator of the Algerian National Liberation Front in Morocco, and held prominent positions in Algeria after independence, such as the Ministry of Culture and the presidency of the Supreme Islamic Council until his departure.
Boualou became a professor in the Philosophy Department in 1961, served as head of the department in the 1970s, and continued to teach there until his retirement in 1997.
I knew him for the first time when I moved to the Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences in Rabat to study as a student in the Philosophy Department in the early nineties of the last century. His philosophical lesson was profound and interesting. He was imprinted with a special character in his teaching method, a method that kept all students drawn to his lesson from beginning to end.
What I remember of his manner was that he rarely sat in his chair. Rather, he used to teach us his lessons while wandering around the classroom or the hall sometimes, so he was truly walking.
This method was strange to us students at the time, so much so that I returned to attend one or two of his lessons a few years after I graduated from the university, to find that he followed the same approach and had not changed it.
In addition to his academic teaching at the university, the late Boualou was a committed fighter in the ranks of the federal movement, especially the moment he rose to prominence in the National Union of Popular Forces and then the Socialist Union until the departure of Professor Abderrahim Bouabid, where he moved away from the party in the context of the departure of a number of faces after the transformations he experienced after that.
In addition to his union struggle within the National Syndicate for Higher Education, Professor Boualou was a committed intellectual who contributed, along with Captain Abderrahmane Benamr and Professor Ahmed Al-Satati, to issuing the magazine “Aqlam” between the years 1964 and 1982, before it was banned along with other cultural magazines in the Years of Lead, and it can be distinguished. Between two stages in its existence; The main feature that was unique to it in its second phase was that it expanded its openness to Moroccan pens to include brilliant names in the Moroccan cultural scene, such as Muhammad Abed Al-Jabri, Muhammad Zniber, Idris Al-Saghroshni, and Muhammad Al-Qibli, in addition to the doctor Abdel Karim Al-Omari, Kamal Abdel Latif, and Salem Yafout. , Muhammad Waqidi, Muhammad Barada, Muhammad Sabila, Abdel-Kabir Al-Khatibi, Abdel-Qader Al-Shawi, Muhammad Al-Sarghini, Habib Al-Farqani, Abdullah Raji, Hassan Al-Menei, Ahmed Al-Majati, Abdel-Razzaq Al-Dawai… He wrote in the magazine, in addition to the Moroccan intellectuals mentioned above, faces Brilliant Arab cultural figures such as Hassan Hanafi, Abdel Wahab Al-Bayati, Abdel Salam Al-Ajili, Zakaria Tamer, Yassin Rifaia, Shawqi Baghdadi, Amin Nakhla and Ghada Al-Samman…
Mania University Magazine
You may find in “Aqalam” an announcement of the determination of Algeria, which has just emerged from brutal French colonialism, to establish a national arts troupe, or an obituary for the writer Mahmoud Abbas Al-Akkad, or news of the severity of the illness on Badr Shaker Al-Sayyab, or news of the determination of a writer such as Taha Hussein, Mikhail Naima, or Abdel Aziz. Al-Douri or Zaki Najib Mahmoud on the issuance of books, or an announcement of the publication of Professor Al-Jabri’s book “The Thought of Ibn Khaldun… Sectarianism and the State,” or a funny article by Professor Taha Abdel Rahman entitled “Your Looks” (January 1965 issue) in which he comments on Sartre’s saying “Hell.” He is the Others” and includes a vertical poem, “Ba’i”, which is known for being a thinker and philosopher and not known for being a poet, or a critical study in the collection “Circles of Zeros” by the poet Muhammad Al-Sha’ara written by Professor Kamal Abdel Latif, who is known for being a professor of philosophy, not a literary critic, or a poem by the professor. In it, Abdellatif Zeroual talks about love and death, evoking the image of the martyr after his martyrdom. Not a year had passed since he published this poem in Aqlam magazine until he was sentenced to death. He was martyred under torture about two years after his poem was published when he was over twenty-three years old, or a dialogue with the poet Ahmed Al-Majati. With the Palestinian poet Khaled Abu Khaled during his visit to Morocco at the invitation of the “Moroccan Association for Supporting the Palestinian Struggle” and the “Union of Moroccan Writers” in 1973, or the poem “The Mahdi’s Wedding” written by Ahmed Abdel Muti Hijazi about the martyr Omar Benjelloun, or a story entitled “Lemons.” “The magazine published it in the June 1976 issue of Muhammad Abdel Nabawi, a young man in high school at the time who now heads the Supreme Council of the Judicial Authority. He concluded it with an excerpt from Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “They Killed You in the Valley” (A Stranger in My Homeland… A Stranger in the House), in which he criticizes the practices of some agents of the authority in Their dealings with a street vendor and with a student who wanted to defend him in the face of the injustice to which he was exposed. It was published alongside an article by Professor Abdel Salam Benabdel Ali on the criticism of historicism according to the Marxist philosopher Althusser, or a short story by Muhammad Ojar entitled “The Path to the Other World.” Along with an article by the writer Alan Bosky entitled “I do not agree with you, Solgenstein,” or the poem “Victory Salute to Major Imam Ayatollah Khomeini” by the poet Muhammad Al-Wadih Al-Asfi, and Ahmed Hanawi’s poem “Excerpts from Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iliad,” along with the poem “Al-Shawan.” by the poet Abdel Karim El Tabbal in the September 1979 issue, or Abdel Ilah El Tahani’s poem “Status Looking for a Title,” in which he criticizes Camp David and the Sadat regime, in addition to the story “The Republic of Pops” by the playwright Salem Akuinde, in which he criticizes a group of obsolete manifestations of slavery that degrade the dignity of citizens. In the January 1979 issue…
In addition to Professor Boualou’s patronage of this diversity, he encouraged promising writers. He published a story by a high school student from the city of Ibn Ahmed entitled “Attempts to Expel Rot from the Village” in the April 1980 issue. This young man was none other than Hassan Najmi, who would later head the Moroccan Writers Union.
The establishment of “Aqalam” was a cultural project that coincided with the founding of the “Union of Maghreb Writers,” of which the deceased was one of its founders and a member of its first central office, which initially bore the name “Union of Maghreb Writers” due to the high ceiling of the dream of unifying the Arab Maghreb at the time.
In this magazine, the martyr Moroccan political leader Omar Benjelloun published one of his most important analytical articles about Palestine, under the title “The Palestinian Issue and the Role of the Moroccan Intellectual,” exactly in the May 1972 issue, which formed a theoretical framework for re-establishing national and national awareness of the Palestinian issue after the 1967 setback.
46 issues of “Aqalam” were published in an irregular manner, due to the factor of repression and restrictions to which the serious and committed culture was subjected during the Years of Lead, until it stopped due to the ban it was subjected to. Later, Professor Boualou will resume this project in another magazine, accompanied by Professors Muhammad Abed Al-Jabri and Abdel Salam Ben Abdel-Aali in 1997, which is the magazine “Thought and Criticism.”
The deceased also founded another magazine that did not last long, entitled “Story and Theater,” in 1964, with Abdul-Jabbar Al-Suhaimi, Muhammad Al-Arabi Al-Masari, Muhammad Barrada, and Ali Umlil. He also launched the “Health Magazine” with Dr. Abdel Karim Al-Omari in 1976, and it was one of the first magazines to be published in the Arabic language and concerned with health matters in Morocco and the Arab world.
One of the most prominent story writers in the Arab world
The late Boualou is considered one of the most prominent short story writers in Morocco and the Arab world, as he wrote a number of stories that took a realistic, committed approach in which he championed the issues of the oppressed, the poor, and the marginalized, at the moment of dreaming of building the nation after liberation from colonialism.
Boualou began writing his stories early in the late 1950s, when he began publishing them in some Moroccan and Arab platforms, such as “Al-Rai Al-Aam” (Syria), “Al-Tahrir,” “Filastin,” “The Liberator,” “The Socialist Union”… before publishing them in short story collections.
This interest began for him at the same stage in which a group of Arab innovators began to spread their creativity in this field, such as Youssef Idris in Egypt, Zakaria Tamer in Syria, and the martyr Ghassan Kanafani in his diaspora in the Gulf and Lebanon, but fame and the attention of critics and the Arab media did not reach him as he received the names. Other Arab women who have become prominent names in the field of Arabic fiction writing for various reasons: Among them may be the Egyptian Revolution for Youssef Idris, which raised the slogan of victory for the poor and marginalized, especially in the Egyptian countryside, whose people suffered double from poverty and disease, and he was the doctor who conveyed the people’s groans and pain. As for Ghassan Kanafani, the association of his name with the Palestinian issue and the tragedies that the Nakba left behind on the Palestinian people and his treatment of them, and his role in rebuilding the national consciousness of the Palestinian people and all Arabs, played a major role in its spread, especially since his life culminated in his martyrdom.
As for Zakaria Tamer, “Poetry” magazine and its owner Youssef Al-Khal had a role in publicizing it, adopting his creative achievement, and transferring it from local circulation in Syria to become circulated on the Arab level in the context of the wave of modernity that that magazine announced to herald in the Arab literary arena. But Professor Boualo did not have these special contexts that helped spread his name in the Arab cultural space, despite the great similarity between him and Zakaria Tamer, even in terms of interests. In addition to their preoccupation with writing stories, their interest focused on childhood, through the publication of the late “Azhar” magazine in 1976, in which he wrote all its chapters and drew its pictures, which opened children’s hearts and minds to science, knowledge, and joy in a manner that took into account their age and opened the way for their intelligence and imagination. Meanwhile, Zakaria Tamer was one of the spiritual fathers of “Osama” magazine, which he founded in 1969 with writer Saadallah Wannous and cartoonist Mumtaz Al-Bahra.
In addition to his interest in stories, Boualo was interested in theatrical, novel, and screenwriting. Among his collections of short stories, we mention: “The Roof,” “The Knight and the Horse,” “The New Building,” and “The Whale and the Fisherman.” He was one of the first creators of the very short story, in which he wrote: “Fifty Stories in Fifty Minutes,” “The Community,” “It Matters to You,” and “The Big Picture.” And “Before Eight,” which was not released.
Just as he composed in the theater: “The First Round,” “Four Students,” “The Agreement,” “The Return of the Bastards,” “Let’s Act,” and “Documents from the Twentieth Century.”
He also wrote the novel “The Escape.” But writing stories was his greatest passion, as he began and ended his creative path with it.
The late Boualou was faithful to the saying of Epicurus, “We must philosophize while laughing.” He repeated it in his lessons, practiced it in his teaching method, and embodied it in his various creative writings, stories and narrative narratives, just as he embodied it with communication and lightheartedness in his human relationships. May God have mercy on him and honor his resting place in the lands of the immortals.
*A Moroccan writer interested in issues of culture and the history of ideas
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2024-04-17 20:56:27
