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| Arabs, Jews, Forbidden Love, Mystery and Finding Oneself. An Interview with Ruth Knafo Setton - Author of The Road To Fez. The Road to Fez is a first novel of love and self-discovery that tells the story of 18-year-old Brit Lek's return to Morocco, her birthplace. Brit returns to Morocco planning to fulfill her mother's dying wish that she make a pilgrimage to Fez to the grave of Suleika, a l9th century Jewish martyr revered by both Arabs and Jews. But Brit gets sidetracked when she falls in love with her Uncle Gaby, her mother's passionate, restless younger brother and the town womanizer. Gaby tries to break free from the borders of his life as a Jew in Morocco by working with Arab potters and creating art that speaks a universal language. Moving easily between the Jewish Mellah and the Arab Medina, Gaby offers a window for Brit to see beyond the confines of their family's life in Morocco. As Gaby's and Brit's forbidden love deepens, their story is inter-voven with that of Su]eika—the achingly beautiful 17 year-old Jewish woman who was killed because she refused to renounce her faith. Setton provides a backdrop composed of fragments of Suleika's brief, mysterious life—pieces of a puzzle that don't quite fit together. Who was Suleika? Why did she choose death over life? Did she fall in love with a handsome Arab boy, the Sultan, or her own brother? The Road to Fez is a magical and luminous novel about a journey of desire that unfolds in surprising revelations, and the realization that love transcends death. An Interview with Ruth Knafo Setton Q: You deal with some very risky subjects - violence against women, religious persecution, a love story that is taboo even by today's standards. What inspired you to take all this on in your first novel? A: Suleika's brief, tragis life was the catalyst that set the whole novel into motion. What would make a seventeen year-old girl choose death over life? As I explored Suleika's story, I relized that at heart, it was a story about those in power against those who have no power. Suleika was as low a creature as you could be in Morocco - female and Jewish - but she followed her truth and took it as far as she could. her choice led me to wonder about those who love without limits - whether it is a god or another person - who break through barriers of religion, gender, taboos - and come out on the other side. As I wrote about these people, I felt I had to share their courage and visions, and found myself creating in a heightened state, in which nearly every word was charged and electric. Why all this in my first novel? One I met Suleika - and then Gaby, and shortly after, Brit - I had no choice: I was caught, forced to follow them wherever they went, no limits. Q: How much time have you spent in Morocco? Do you feel part of both american and Moroccan cultures? A: The roses from my grandfather's roof terrance in Morocco are my earliest memory, Arabic and French the first languages I heard, my mother's tales of growing up in a small town on the North African coast my bedtime stories. I lived in a Morocco of memory, image, dream and longing - the land all exiles and immigrants inhabit - also, writer. I am definiely American, rasided an deducated here, but my nights - where inspiration takes root - my nights are Morocco. Q: How much of the Suleika leganed in the book is from real stories you heard or read? What is it that drew you to that particular story? A: The first time I saw Suleika's name was in a footnote in a book about Moroccan Jews. Beautiful seventeen year=-old Jewish martyr. That was all, but I remember her name glowed and seemed to rise fromj the page: illuminated, as in a medieval manuscript. I started searching fro information about her, gound over three hundred versions of her story in the form of ballads, plays, legends, and even newspaper accounts, often contradicting each other. At first, my goal was to find out the truth about Suleika, but when I stood at her tomb in Fez, I had a sort of vision, in which I understood that factual accuracy was not the issue. If I squeezed her complex life into a single version, leaving out all the parts that didn't fit - the Arab lover, her rebellious streak, the neighbor woman in all her manifextations, the inconsistences - I would in a sense kill her for a second time. I had to enter her story myself - the way I hope the reader will. Imagine this: you are backed against the wall...sundhing on your head...juice of an orange, tart and sweet on your tongue...the smell of dust and flowers and life in your nostrils. And the ones in power tell you: Here's your choice: life or death. Life: our way, believing what we believe, joining the winning team. Or death: sticking with the losing god, theon who let you get to this oint. All you have to do is recite the eleven words of th eFormula of Conversion, and presto, death turns into life. Let's add a complication: you fall in love with the one holding the sword over you. There is no simple answer. The story deepens, complicate, diffuses, ends uptouching everyone. By interweaving the voices of "real" commentator with those of fictional characters, and songs, legends and tales, I hope that together we can piece together a life that will always be greater than its parts. Q: Two voices appear in the book, Brit's and Gaby's. In the case of Gaby, was it difficult to write in the voice of an older, somanizing, Moroccan man? A: The key to Gay is that he is not what he seems. When I penetrated the beautiftul, cruel exterior to the frustrated, restless soul of an artist fenced in on all sides, I was able to understand him. Like Brit, I had to break through the locked door of his heart. Once I did, his sections flowed with the inevitability of a dream, or a poem. Q: I thinkd readers will find themselves suprised at what oucome they are secretly hoping for between Gaby and Brit. What is it that makes the forbidden so tempting and so engrossing for the reader? And finally, the erotic an dexotic are big elements in your novel. Are there other writers who use these elements that particularly inspired you to use them in The Road To Fez? A: It's too easy to play the exotic odalisque/Rick's Café world with Morocco. I wante in-you-face exotic: where you tak risks, bit into the forbidden fruit, turn the key of the locked room, lift the veil, peer behind the curtain, become a trespasser of a country, body and soul - where the exotic and the erotic become facets of each other. The exotic is the erotic: we desire shat we don't fully know and understand. I have always loved writers who burn the page with passion, yet who can be cool-eyed and controlled: Colette, Camus, Emily and Charlette Bronte, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Borges, Proust, and somtimes D.H. Lawrence. Ultimately, I write fromj desire, about desire in its different manifestations. For me, that is the road to the heart awakening.
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| Published by Counterpoint. | |||||||
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| Author Ruth Knafo Setton was born in Morocco and resides in Pennsylvania.
Photo of Ruth by Sally Ullman. |
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