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Rabat – Moroccan writer and journalist Aziz Sadri released his first novel titled ‘Weld El-Karian’ (the shantytown boy), published by Dar Al-Bashir for Culture and Science in Egypt.
The novel is depicted through the perspective of a fictional character plotting a series of real and fictional events concerning poverty, prostitution, terrorism, and electoral corruption in Morocco.
Born in 1985 in Casablanca, Sadri majored in English studies and got his bachelor of arts in 2007 at the faculty of letters and human sciences at Hassan II in Mohammedia. He later immigrated to Canada for a few years and came back to Morocco to pursue a master’s degree in E-journalism.
With “Shanty town boy” being his first novel, Sadri stated in an exclusive interview with Morocco World News (MWN) that it took him six months to decide and write the plot of his novel.
“I wrote most of the novel last year during my stay in the US. I went there for a visit and I got stuck due to the lockdown at the beginning of the pandemic, so I seized the opportunity to write and rewrite all parts of the novel,” he said.
The story revolves around a boy with a poor financial background who sought knowledge and education as a way of salvation and escapism from an “undesirable” and “frightening” society.
Sadri was influenced by his own childhood experience while growing up in the notoriously deprived neighborhoods of Morocco, such as Karyan Centrale, Touma, and the Lido neighborhood in Fez.
“The boy [main character] struggles to make a name for himself amid the chaos and the anarchy. Reading was the most efficient method for him to escape reality,” he told MWN.
Sadri revealed an exclusive extract from his 184-page novel in a press release to MWN, “When I was in the second year of university, I was afraid that life would be lost amid the whirlpool of dreams and aspirations and the parents’ belief in the graduation of their son, who would, one day lead them out of the sea of darkness to the righteousness of light.”
When asked about the moral of the story, he wishes to unveil the reality of the shanty towns and to encourage everyone to read through his writings, “as a writer, I have a large sphere to express my thoughts and ideas freely,” he added.
Among his reasons for not disclosing the identity of the main character until the end of the novel, he emphasized that “shedding light on the sufferings and pains of the outcasts regardless of the person’s name” is what he aimed to focus on.
“I turned to my father for advice on my journey into the unknown, and before he knew where I was going, he rejected the idea completely, my words hitting his ears like nails in an eardrum.”
“My father’s tongue was held fast to speak … I looked at him as if I saw a glint of tears in his eyes, so I fell silent and withdrew … I told him: I have two options, neither a third nor a fourth, either to emigrate to the frost of Canada or to die in the middle of the Gulf flame”.
