مؤلف : ابراهيم عيسى
(FRA)
J'ai fini de lire ce livre il y a un petit moment mais j'ai enfin un peu de temps pour écrire dessus ... Livre que j'ai adoré, malgré la scène frustrante de fin, un beau cas de cliff-hanger s'il en est.
La vie d'un imam star de télévision, présentateur d'une émission religieuse très suivie, et les pressions qu'il subit de toutes parts : ses humeurs d'homme normal ; sa conscience de savant qui répugne à produire de la religion "prête à porter" pour grand public alors qu'il n'aspire qu'à l'érudition et la réflexion poussée jusqu'à l'hétérodoxie ; le gouvernement (on devine l'ère Moubarak) qui a besoin de lui pour combattre les "islamistes" et ramener un jeune très riche, de la famille rapprochée du Raïs, à la raison lorsqu'il déclare vouloir se convertir au christianisme et que tout le monde a échoué ; la société qui attend de lui des déclarations classiques et traditionnelles et des fatwas sur tout et n'importe quoi ...
Personnage attachant, un peu cynique, on apprécie le recul qu'il a sur sa vie et sa profession, et finalement la différence implicite qu'il fait entre la foi (qu'il a) et la religion (comme système social, auquel il ne croit pas plus que ça). Quand il a affaire au jeune qui prétend vouloir se convertir, il ne cherche même pas à le convaincre de revenir vers l'islam, le considérant comme de toutes façons aussi ignorant de l'islam que du christianisme, il ne voit dans les déclarations du jeune qu'une manière de se révolter contre sa famille, ce qu'il comprend parfaitement. On sent le jeune momentanément déstabilisé par cette position inattendue d'un homme de religion, et commence à voir en lui une figure paternelle qu'il n'a jamais eue, partageant avec lui des conversations tantôt père-fils, tantôt d'égal à égal. Mais je n'en dit pas plus sur l'histoire du jeune, cruciale à la fin du roman.
Il ne partage plus grand chose avec sa femme, qu'il aime par habitude, et qui est devenue elle-même une femme d'affaire. Elle refuse qu'il entre en contact avec leur fils depuis qu'il est tombé malade, maladie qui avait provoqué chez lui une forte dépression où il s'était montré incapable de faire face à la réalité. On découvre ensuite pourquoi sa femme s'est éloignée de lui sentimentalement, tout comme on découvre ce qu'il l'a attiré, lui, à une autre femme ... Histoire de couple réaliste, qui traverse toutes sortes d'épreuves.
Ce roman nous donne à voir les relations du monde médiatique, religieux et politique, et forcément, "tout le monde est rhabillé", personne ne s'en tire vraiment avec un beau rôle, hormis peut-être les personnages principaux auxquels on s'attache malgré leurs défauts ... En tous cas intéressant de noter qu'un tel livre soit publié pendant la brève ère Morsi et Frère musulmans au pouvoir, ce qui me fait dire qu'ils n'étaient pas les pires, bien qu'ils ne soient pas les meilleurs !
Mais la fin du roman est terrible, un beau cliff-hanger comme on en connait peu, et bien que le livre soit très bien, je suis assez frustrée par cette fin inattendue (ou l'est-elle vraiment ?).
A noter : tous les dialogues sont en dialecte égyptien. Je n'y connais pas grand chose donc j'ai dû rater quelques références et choses intéressantes, mais l'histoire globale se suit sans problème. Simplement je le relirai le jour où je connaîtrai mieux ce dialecte ...
(ENG)
I finished reading this book sometime ago but I'm trying to get enough time to write about it ... I loved this book, even though I don't know much the egyptian dialect (all the dialogues are written in it, but nevertheless, even for someone like me, you can understand the main story without difficulty).
The life of an imam, TV star, main presenter of a religious mainstream TV programm, you follow a period of his life, and get to see all the pressure coming down on him from everywhere :
- his inner thoughts about having to present a mainstream TV show with ready-made fatwas for people who don't like to think too much, while he himself love nothing more than learning things and deepening his knowledge and questionning things, to the point where he appears sometimes almost heretical;
- the government (you guess a Mubarak-era one) pressuring him to fight the "islamists"- meaning salafis and Muslim brotherhood;
- the same government requires his services to take care of one young guy who happens to be of the very close family to the Raïs, and who declares to want to convert to christianity;
- the society in general represented by people who follow him everywhere like a superstar as soon as his steps outside his house, asking all kinds of advice and fatwas on unimportant subjects ...
Reading the book you get to like this character and his wife and their problems as a couple, his cynicism towards society, and how he acts with the young wannabe convert : he doesn't try to convince him to go back to islam, he just doesn't consider the young man as knowledgeable in either religion for his decision to be worthy of notice, he just think it's the only way he found to rebel against his family ... The young man discover in the imam a sort of fatherlike figure he never seemed to have, and they discuss more and more like a father and son, but it didn't prepare me for the surprise at the end ... Of which I won't say a thing, read the book first !
You also discover the personnal story of this imam, how he became an imam by chance more than by a careful plan, how he loves his wife by habit and why it became so, his depression after his son's falling ill, why his wife, a successful business woman, became estranged, and why himself nearly falls in love with another one ... All very ordinary live stories in a sense, but add to that the whole critic of the relaitonship between politics, religion and medias, and getting such a book published during the brief Morsi and muslim brotherhood government in Egypt is interesting (and makes me think that they were not the worse of the lot, if not the best !).
Just one very frustrating thing : the end is a beautifull cliff-hanger with no end ... I guess you have to imagine it yourself, but still, I would have like to have a proper ending !
Mais la fin du roman est terrible, un beau cliff-hanger comme on en connait peu, et bien que le livre soit très bien, je suis assez frustrée par cette fin inattendue (ou l'est-elle vraiment ?).
A noter : tous les dialogues sont en dialecte égyptien. Je n'y connais pas grand chose donc j'ai dû rater quelques références et choses intéressantes, mais l'histoire globale se suit sans problème. Simplement je le relirai le jour où je connaîtrai mieux ce dialecte ...
(ENG)
I finished reading this book sometime ago but I'm trying to get enough time to write about it ... I loved this book, even though I don't know much the egyptian dialect (all the dialogues are written in it, but nevertheless, even for someone like me, you can understand the main story without difficulty).
The life of an imam, TV star, main presenter of a religious mainstream TV programm, you follow a period of his life, and get to see all the pressure coming down on him from everywhere :
- his inner thoughts about having to present a mainstream TV show with ready-made fatwas for people who don't like to think too much, while he himself love nothing more than learning things and deepening his knowledge and questionning things, to the point where he appears sometimes almost heretical;
- the government (you guess a Mubarak-era one) pressuring him to fight the "islamists"- meaning salafis and Muslim brotherhood;
- the same government requires his services to take care of one young guy who happens to be of the very close family to the Raïs, and who declares to want to convert to christianity;
- the society in general represented by people who follow him everywhere like a superstar as soon as his steps outside his house, asking all kinds of advice and fatwas on unimportant subjects ...
Reading the book you get to like this character and his wife and their problems as a couple, his cynicism towards society, and how he acts with the young wannabe convert : he doesn't try to convince him to go back to islam, he just doesn't consider the young man as knowledgeable in either religion for his decision to be worthy of notice, he just think it's the only way he found to rebel against his family ... The young man discover in the imam a sort of fatherlike figure he never seemed to have, and they discuss more and more like a father and son, but it didn't prepare me for the surprise at the end ... Of which I won't say a thing, read the book first !
You also discover the personnal story of this imam, how he became an imam by chance more than by a careful plan, how he loves his wife by habit and why it became so, his depression after his son's falling ill, why his wife, a successful business woman, became estranged, and why himself nearly falls in love with another one ... All very ordinary live stories in a sense, but add to that the whole critic of the relaitonship between politics, religion and medias, and getting such a book published during the brief Morsi and muslim brotherhood government in Egypt is interesting (and makes me think that they were not the worse of the lot, if not the best !).
Just one very frustrating thing : the end is a beautifull cliff-hanger with no end ... I guess you have to imagine it yourself, but still, I would have like to have a proper ending !
