[In the following review, Elia questions Ben Jelloun's ambivalent portrayal of sexism in his short story collection Le Premier amour est toujours le dernier.]

Winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, the Moroccan poet, novelist, and short-story writer Tahar Ben Jelloun differs from his francophone Maghrebian contemporaries in that his work does not highlight colonial oppression but focuses instead on the struggle within his own society, with special emphasis on love and tormented male-female relationships. His latest collection of short stories, Le Premier amour est toujours le dernier, expounds on this dual theme.

The collection features twenty-one short stories, some published as early as 1973 and 1976. I can only applaud Ben Jelloun's persistence in exposing women's oppression and am relieved that he does not suggest Arabs are the only culprits: Spaniards and Italians are equally guilty, as illustrated in the stories “Le mirage” and “Monsieur Vito s'aime.” Still, it is somewhat facile to accuse Southern Europeans of machismo. Although many of the stories are located in France, no Frenchman is depicted negatively. I am also disturbed by the subtext of these stories: all the beautiful women are tall, slender, white-skinned, and wide-eyed, with a luxurious mane of hair. Whether covered in jellabas or donning “des robes mal fermées,” their perfect figure will not escape the author's gaze. They generally have “la poitrine blanche et ferme,” “le sein parfait,” “le sexe charnu.” Above all, the most attractive are the quietest; their reserve makes men lose all control, as we can see in “L'amour fou,” “Ruses de femmes,” “Les filles de Tétouan,” “Des robes mal fermées,” and other stories. “Pudique” seems to be the greatest compliment Ben Jelloun can bestow on a woman. If she responds, she becomes “un peu envahissante et trop gourmande.”

This gender stereotyping, the binary opposing of the ideally passive woman to an active man, is the very essence of sexism. And when passivity, rather than response, is equated with consent, rape is the next logical step. Thus, in “Les filles de Tétouan” a woman is asleep on the beach. A man walks by.

Il s'arrete, s'agenouille pres du corps qui reve. Sans parler, passe ses mains taillées dans la roche du mont Dersa sur la poitrine blanche et ferme de la femme qui commence a se reveiller. … Avec quelque precipitation, l'homme dechire la culotte large et blanche de la femme, releve sa djellaba en laine marron dont il tient le bord entre les dents et penetre en silence la femme qui ne dit rien.

Pornography has repeatedly depicted the victims of rape as “enjoying it.” Is this any different? The woman begins to awake, and, “Trop heureuse pour parler, elle regarde le ciel.”

Chinua Achebe convincingly argues that Joseph Conrad is “a bloody racist” even as he denounces colonialism. Similarly, at no point does the omniscient Ben Jelloun, a seasoned writer, fully dissociate himself from his male protagonists, who are frequently writers themselves. Many of the stories are framed within the first-person narrative of an Arab storyteller, resulting in an ambivalent effect of distancing/placing the author.

When Ben Jelloun was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1987 for his novel L'Enfant de sable, angered Arab critics accused him of pandering to foreign critics' taste for the exotic, providing them with stereotypes that do not represent the Morocco they know. Some compared him to V. S. Naipaul, praised by Europeans and rejected by many people of color. Still, L'Enfant is to this day Ben Jelloun's most widely read and studied work, particularly outside the Maghreb. With its depiction of perverse Arab men and tormented relationships, Le Premier amour is slated to become another such controversial, if successful, book.