Home » Tunisia » Hassouna Mosbahi » النهر مرتين»، دار الآداب، (We Never Swim in the Same River Twice)
Hassouna Mosbahi: الطلييتيم الدهرالنهر مرتين»، دار الآداب، (We Never Swim in the Same River Twice)
The Arab Spring began in Tunisia, prompted by widespread corruption and leading to the authoritarian president Ben Ali being deposed. This novel follows the stories of three male friends living in this era and showing us that the Arab Spring did not bring the promised freedoms and prosperity.
The three friends are Saleem, Aziz and Omran. Omran has been living in Paris and has been suffering from insomnia for five months. We learn the reason why later. His doctor suggests it is because of his exile. He does not really believe him but a friend supports the theory so he returns to his family home in Tunisia and sleeps like a log. He now seems to alternate between the two countries. In a visit to Tunisia he meets Saleem and Aziz and they become friends. Omram is an intellectual and he is reading works of philosophy. He readsphilosophers who reflected on the physical world and lit his way forward whenever he felt lost in a thorny labyrinth or dark tunnel. Interestingly he, like the others seems to focus on Western culture and Tunisian and Arab culture seem to play very only a small role in their lives. His favourite philosopher is Montaigne who, as Omran wishes to do, sought to shelter himself from the world’s troubles. But he also reads and enjoys Spinoza, and Kierkegaard. However, we later learn that the author that first got him interested in books was the Egyptian writer Taha Hussein and, in particular, the first volume of his memoirs, given its Arabic name in this book but translated as An Egyptian Childhood and, later, as The Days.
As is the case with many people in Tunisia his mortal enemies are the bearded ones. These are the self-appointed religious fanatics and we get several accounts of their actions in this book. They harass, attack and, in some cases, kill communists, intellectuals, non-Muslims and people drinking alcohol (which two of our three do). We see them attack a brothel and beating up the prostitutes. Most people have either been victims of them or know someone who has.
The book actually opens with Saleem. He has a job but seems to have been neglecting it. He clearly has mental health issues, undoubtedly, at least in part, brought on by the political situation. His default position is to go to bed and he has been doing that for some years. When there was a demonstration at university, he would avoid it by staying in bed. He himself comments The fact is that I have never been good at anything except sleeping. He too has met the black beards. One day he took the train to work but inadvertently took one going in the opposite direction. By the time he realised this, he was in the capital. He gets caught up in a screaming mob shouting Death to infidels, libertines, Jews, and Christians!” He hides in a shared taxi and falls asleep. When he awakes he realises he is going in the wrong direction.
Like Omran he likes foreign culture. He and his wife (an English teacher) are interested in jazz but also US writers. Indeed, he dreams that he meets Carson McCullers and alks to her about her relationship with Annemarie Schwarzenbach.
Aziz is less interested in foreign literature but, at Saleem’s suggestion, he reads Carson McCullers. Aziz is something of a hypochondriac . However he does enjoy the cinema, of course preferring foreign films. He, like Saleem, is lazy. My lively imagination has allowed me to tour the world without being forced to step outside my apartment! Thanks to books and films, I have experienced many famous large cities. He does not like change, always shopping in the same place, drinking in the same bar.
We learn something about their earlier lives. Omran, for example lost his father when he was fourteen . He like the others was around when Tunisia was fighting France for its independence and we get a grim picture of that.He went to university but did not conform with the traditional views on literature held by the teachers, telling them that they only studied poets whose style and subject matter are worthless. We learn how he made his way to France and what he did there.
We go back and learn their earlier history, their often troubled childhood and what they did during the Tunisian fight for independence. Omran was the most politically active and his move to France (via Algeria and East Berlin) was prompted by his activities and the fact that he had aroused the ire of the authorities. Aziz became involved, as a child, with a French widow while Saleem, at least initially had a fairly conventional life.
Mosbahi does not hold back on his views that Tunisia is a mess and the world is a mess. We see lots of cases of violence, chaos and a country falling part. This country, which I love, now seems alien to me, and I also feel that my link to it is growing more tenuous day by day could have been said by any one of them. Saleem rapidly sinks down – Everything suggests that I am sinking into mud or tar and will soon reach a bottomless pit. Omran is close to a student who is having issues with her parents and realises that he may be better off in France while Aziz also thinks of leaving. The focus is on these three friends but there are other characters we meet who also have their problems, exacerbated by the political situation in Tunisia. One of them, Ibrahim, comments I told you the Middle East had become a shipwreck, ruins, and rubble and that the Arabs have stepped out of the flow of history, because of their superstitious mentality, from which they will never recover!
While fairly depressing about both Tunisia and the world – there is a lot of criticism of the world’s dictators, for example – this is superb book, showing in great detail how Tunisia and other countries are falling apart, primarily because of dictators and fanaticism. If there is an escape, Mosbahi seems to suggest that retreating into culture, mainly books but also cinema and music, may be the answer. The number of primarily though certainty not exclusively non-Arab books and authors he mentions show that he is clearly extraordinarily well read. However, he seems to feel while individual dictators may be toppled, as has happened in Tunisia, more will arise and the fanatics and their violence will also remain. As he says there is devastation occurring everywhere in the world. Inquisitions will return. Books will be burned again. Poets will be slain. Philosophers will be banished. Women will be stoned.
The title, by the way, is from Heraclitus (No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man).
Publishing history
First published in 2020 by Dar al Adab
First English translation in 2024 by Syracuse University Press
Translated by William Maynard Hutchins