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Influences

Three people whose work changed the way I read the Arab world.

  • Music · Morocco

    Abdelwahab Doukkali

    Born in Fez in 1941, he gave classical Arabic song a Moroccan voice: more than 400 songs, written in a “third language” halfway between classical Arabic and everyday Moroccan speech. He shows me that belonging to a tradition and inventing within it can be the same gesture.

  • Literature · Palestine

    Ghassan Kanafani

    Writer and journalist (1936–1972). He read literature as a form of resistance and named the cultural isolation of Palestinians under occupation “the siege”. He taught me that writing is also a way of standing one's ground.

  • Cinema · Morocco

    Nour-Eddine Lakhmari

    Director of the Casablanca trilogy (CasaNegra, Zero, Burnout). He films what society prefers not to see, yet insists that change is possible.

    “Anyone in Moroccan society can work on themselves to become better.”

    Quoted in my ZERO dossier

More to come — this list grows with my reading.