[In the following review, Mortimer discusses how Ben Jelloun utilizes the character of the ailing patriarch in Jour de silence à Tanger to create a “sober and poetic text of introspection and retrospection.”]

The patriarch looms large in Francophone Maghrebian fiction. Evoking the anger and resentment of Driss Chraïbi (Le passé simple) and Rachid Boudjedra (La répudiation), he is portrayed with compassion and comprehension by Tahar Ben Jelloun in the Moroccan novelist's most recent work, Jour de silence à Tanger, a novel he dedicates to his own father.

Unlike Chraïbi and Boudjedra, Ben Jelloun focuses neither upon the abuse of power within patriarchal society nor upon a son's challenge to patriarchal order. His protagonist, an aged patriarch, wages a war against time, a battle that he knows he is destined to lose. The old man comments ironically, “Je suis trop jeune dans un corps trop vieux.” “Le dernier témoin d'une époque,” the ailing man is living his final days as a prisoner of both time and space. He is confined by illness to closed-off chambers, to an enclosure which, like the protagonist, is in a state of decay, disintegration, and discomfort. Moreover, this room offers no escape except through memory.

Attached to the outside world by telephone, the convalescent knows that this communication link is not only fragile but futile; most of his friends have already passed away. Although a chauffeur hired by his son proposes to take him for a drive, he has lost connection with the world beyond the four walls of his room. As the failing patriarch struggles against the physical illness that has attacked his weakening lungs, he acknowledges that his true struggle is against encroaching solitude and impending death. He exclaims: “C'est peut-être cela la mort: des voix familières qui traversent la terre et nous arrivent méconnaissables.” Moreover, bereft of meaningful family relationships that might have supported him—his wife and children remain enigmatic shadows—the man, his health rapidly failing, is sustained mainly by memories of past joys.

As voices fail to reach him and communication breaks down as well, objects assume importance. He recalls his superb Venetian mirror, which, as a fragile repository of memories, metaphorically represents his situation. In his mind both he and the mirror face a common enemy, the destructive force of the chill wind that blows from the East. The old man would like to use the mirror as an arm against his enemies: “Ah! Si ce miroir pouvait faire disparaître quelques ennemis irréductibles!” The reflecting glass holds the promise of mystery and sensuality for this solitary individual who has lost all power. On this long silent day in Tangiers the old man's final vision is a fantasy of escape: a beautiful young woman on a bicycle carries him away from the decaying enclosure to a meadow bathed in light and mirrors.

Alternating first- and third-person narrative, Ben Jelloun presents his readers with a sober and poetic text of introspection and retrospection that eschews sentimentality and exoticism. In his portrayal of the Moroccan patriarch the novelist creates a haunting and powerful portrait of a man coming to grips with his own mortality as he watches the sands of time running out.