Mustapha Jmahri: El Jadida is my reason for being

The Jdidi author returns with a new book,In the shadow of El Jadida, an autobiography or rather fragments of life that have documentary value.Meeting witha fascinating storyteller of local history.Libé: You trained at the Higher Institute of Journalism and found yourself in research related to local history. How did you get there?Mustapha Jmahri: At the very beginning of my career, I started by writing short stories in Arabic in the daily newspaper Al-Alam. I actually published four collections of short stories, two in Morocco and two others in Syria under the aegis of the Union of Arab Writers. Then one day, while I was in Rabat, pursuing my journalism studies, I saw for myself that the readers' interests were not necessarily literary or artistic. For multiple social, cultural and political reasons, other more pragmatic trends captured interest such as history, sociology, economics, me…