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 with

a 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, memoirs and monographic study.

In those days, I also noticed that publications on large cities like Casablanca and Rabat and imperial destinations like Marrakech and Fez abounded while small historical cities like El-Jadida and Azemmour no longer held the attention of researchers.

I wrote my first article on El Jadida in the defunct magazine Lamalif in 1987. The article was titled: El Jadida: history of a city. The same year, with the complicity of the director of the French Institute of El Jadida, I organised a round table on the theme: "The history of El Jadida told by its former inhabitants" in which former Jdidis, Moroccans and foreigners, took part, in the presence of an audience vividly seduced by the vibrant testimonies presented.

The interest aroused by this first meeting meant that it was re-edited twice in 1988 and 1989. The three round tables succeeded in responding to the wish of those interested in local history, particularly students of Chouaîb Doukkali University, that is to say, knowing the bibliography relating to the history of El Jadida and its province.

What does El Jadida represent for you?

I can affirm that El Jadida, for me, is my reason for being. It is a city that, through its alleys, its port, and its Medina, tells me the story of my family. A family of great sailors who were always attached to it since the first half of the 19th century. Indeed, my three paternal grandparents were from father to son raïss at the port, that is to say, master-mariners.

Can we say that the family bond is the secret of your attachment to El Jadida?

To answer you objectively, I would say that indeed there are three secrets to this attachment:

The first secret, I just mentioned it in the previous answer which consists of the family bond. The second is to satisfy as much as possible a request for information emanating from young students and also from simple readers in search of knowledge about their immediate environment. The third secret is to satisfy a personal curiosity that pushes me, from one work to another, to unveil parts of this immediate but also unknown local history.

What are the Jdidi personalities you have met and who have marked you the most?

I will limit myself mainly to two names: Abdelkébir Khatibi and Nelcya Delanoë. First, Khatibi, a Moroccan sociologist and novelist, encouraged me several times to continue in this research which remains despite everything marginalised. It must also be recognised that Abdelkébir Khatibi was indirectly behind the bibliography that I devoted to El Jadida. This happened following my participation in the writing workshop he led in 1990 at the headquarters of the Doukkala Association and to which he invited the novelist Claude Ollier. During this workshop, Khatibi spoke about the relationship between writing, the city and the region and suggested the preparation of a literary bibliography on El Jadida, an idea that I adopted while focusing the work, for practical reasons, on the historical aspect.

The second personality is Nelcya Delanoë, writer and professor of History at the University of Paris-X, and from a Jdidi family. She often advised me and also prefaced my book: The Jewish community of the city of El Jadida. Moreover, I always take advantage of her advice.

Most of your works are linked to El Jadida. Could you write on a subject other than this theme?

At the very beginning of my career, I started by writing short stories in Arabic. Recently also for four months, I wrote my autobiography. In my humble opinion, it is not a question of writing about something other than the history of this city, but it is that I feel invested with a task that several other researchers desert. Because we must not lose sight of the fact that this type of research requires a lot of time, a lot of self-commitment and where one can, despite all efforts, only restore fragments of the past.

You are so launched in the search for historical documentation of El Jadida. Does the city lack historical documents?

Indeed, a lot is missing for a researcher interested in the history of the city. Personally, I had to overcome several difficulties, among which the problem of the absence of archives and the lack of documentation.

At the city level, no local archive fund is exploitable. My question is therefore the following: where are the archives of the municipality dating from the Protectorate period? Same for the archives of the regional hospital, those of the port, Public Works and the Chamber of Commerce. I tried several years ago to ask to use the archives of the Chamber of Commerce, but in vain.

This is the reason why, being a journalist by training, I tried, from the point of view of the methodological approach, to enrich my written sources by resorting to two tools not falling under the written word: oral testimony and field investigation.

You are a journalist, writer, researcher and professor at the same time. In which hat do you feel comfortable?

In my opinion, the common point of all these hats remains the same, that is to say, the inclination towards writing and culture. These four aspects complement each other like streams that flow into a single river. Especially since History is a multidisciplinary and complex discipline. And as Professor Abdeslam Cheddadi specifies: "It is not enough just to be a historian, but, one must also be a sociologist, anthropologist, have notions of law, philosophy and social sciences.

My ambition is therefore to contribute to promoting the local and regional cultural aspect and help in the accumulation of knowledge on the history of the city of El Jadida and the Doukkala in general.

Can you reveal your projects to us, after the publication of your autobiography In the shadow of El Jadida?

Currently I am in the process of carrying out two projects: the first, the release of the second revised and expanded edition of my out-of-print work on the Jewish community of the city of El Jadida and the second concerns the collection of documentation and testimonies on the old personalities of the city.

Benchmarks

Mustapha Jmahri, graduate of the 3rd cycle of the Higher Institute of Journalism in Rabat, first worked as a journalist for a short period at the RTM at the end of the 1970s before starting a career as a press officer for about twenty years within a public establishment in El Jadida.

Author-publisher of the series Les cahiers El Jadida (13 works), his autobiography has just been published recently in Paris by L'Harmattan.