Najat El Hachmi: “I would pay millions to a cleaning lady before I would pay Lamine Yamal.”

BarcelonaThe writer Najat El Hachmi was born in Morocco (Beni Sidel, 1979) and arrived in Vic when she was just eight years old. You can imagine her adolescence when you read the novel. The secrets of the Nur, in which a twelve-year-old girl who wants to be a writer discovers the racist and classist world and her Muslim and sexist family. Najat El Hachmi has become a renowned writer, with awards such as the Ramon Llull, the Nadal, and the Ciutat de Barcelona, and she fights for equality and freedoms to triumph, both in the country that welcomed her and in her home community.

What's the nicest thing people have said about your latest book?

— One day my daughter was reading it. We have a habit of going to bed together to read before she goes to sleep. She looked at me and said, "It's so weird to be in bed with the author, and on top of that, she's your mother."

The protagonist of the novel is Nur, a very observant, very intelligent girl who lives in a racist and classist society and a Muslim and sexist family. Would a book called The secrets of Lamine and that the protagonist was a child and wanted to be a soccer player?

— Something I often say to kids in the talks I give at high schools and schools is: "Let's see, do you think it's right or wrong to be discriminated against because of your origins?" "Wrong," they reply. "It's racism. I can't be treated badly just because I was born somewhere else." "Okay. If you think this is wrong, why do you think it's right for your sisters or other girls to be discriminated against because of their sex? We can't defend anti-racism and be sexist at the same time." We must ensure that this much-needed reflection on anti-racism leads us to defend all freedoms. We must educate people extensively about freedom of thought and expression.

Is Lamine Yamal an example of anything?

— Lamine Yamal shouldn't be an example of anything other than a good footballer. The other day in Parliament, they talked about him as an example of an integrated immigrant, and to begin with, Lamine Yamal isn't an immigrant. He's from Rocafonda and La Torreta, the two neighborhoods where he grew up. We're making him a foreigner to use him as an example.

I was telling you in the sense that it can be a reference.

— But this is very deceitful. It happened to me when I was in high school and I won a prize. I was interviewed on TV3 and they asked me: "Does winning a literary prize mean you're integrated?" Well, you don't need to win a prize to be integrated. It's very deceitful to only value people when they achieve certain milestones that we consider important here. And all the illiterate women who come from the countryside? These women do much more for Catalan society than soccer players.

Because?

— Because they are contributing to sustaining life. Without life, there is nothing; there is no capitalist system, there is no consumption, there is nothing. And life is a fundamental task that we women perform: reproducing and caring for people who need care. If I had to pay millions, I would rather pay millions to a cleaning lady than to Lamine Yamal. Or to doctors, nurses, nursing assistants. Why do we pay them so little when our health depends on them, when we are admitted to a hospital and are between life and death?

There is that verse by Maria-Mercè Marçal: "To l'atzar he blessed three gifts: having been born, of lower class and of being born oppressed, and the tèrbol atzur of being three voltes rebel" ["I am thankful at random for three gifts: having been born a woman, of a lower class and of an oppressed nation, and the murky blue of being a three-time rebel."] I would like you to rephrase that for yourself.

— I'll tell you the truth: I wish I hadn't had all the rebellions. I know I've been given plenty to write about, but I'm so tired of having to explain my identity and the injustices that come with being a woman.

What did you think the last time you saw a woman wearing a veil walking down the street?

— Adult women are a different story, but what really catches my attention is when I see little girls wearing headscarves. And I'm seeing more and more little ones. The other day I walked into a fruit shop and saw a girl who was about six or seven years old, wearing a headscarf and covering her arms. This girl lives in a kind of apartheid. She carries a prison within her, one that will haunt her all her life, that marks her, that denotes who she belongs to, and therefore she is not an individual person, but completely assimilated into the group of origin, according to the norms that men have chosen for her.

How old were you the last day you wore a veil?

— 23 years old. In fact, it was just before publishing my first book. It was the final break.

Where did the veil go?

— I don't know, I should have thrown them all away. It was so humiliating for me to have to carry it... Suffocating, it was like erasing who I was, disguising myself as someone else. Especially because of the whole being forced to submit. When you don't want to do something and they force you to do it, this bending is one of the most terrible things that can happen to a person.

Who did you have to face to take off the scarf?

— I always had a problem with my father. We come from a village in northern Morocco where girls didn't wear headscarves, but when women got married, they had to cover themselves as a sign that they were married, busy, and that you couldn't even look at them. I got married to get out of the house; this is a different story.

Did you marry who you wanted?

— Yes, but in circumstances where it was very difficult to make the right choice. We saw each other secretly, all I wanted was to get out of the house, and marriage was a legal form. I'd gotten used to the idea that, having grown up in Vic, I wouldn't have to wear a headscarf. My father didn't accept that I wouldn't wear a headscarf after I was married. Although I didn't live with him, I used all the weapons I had at hand. Sometimes I'd put it on in case I ran into my father on the street, and then I'd take it off...

Is there a final conversation with him to try to reason with him?

— No, because he was blackmailing me the most painful thing anyone could do: "If you don't take him, you'll never see your mother."

You arrived in Vic in 1987. How have Vic and this society changed in the last forty years?

— I used to have a more optimistic view of this integration into society. I was lucky enough to end up at a school—Jaime Balmes—where there were very dedicated teachers, very committed to the neighborhood, who treated us very normally. When I wrote the first book, I am also CatalanI truly believed in the possibility of reshaping Catalan identity and making it more inclusive. The economic crisis hit, and it was a huge disappointment, because so many people who had been here for a long time found themselves completely marginalized. Many had to leave; I have many relatives in France, Belgium, and Germany who didn't want to leave. At the time of the cuts, immigration was severely damaged. There was a very active policy of saying, "You were the last ones to arrive, now you can go."

And what would you say is the situation lately?

— Now there's a resurgence of outright racist rhetoric. There are people who support a Catalonia where no one fits in, only themselves. They remind me a lot of Islamist fundamentalists, because they take elements that they claim are authentic and pure, that everyone should join this cause, and the rest are left out. Most Catalans don't fit into that scheme, because most of us are impure, luckily. Why do they think they have the patent on Catalan identity? What's even more infuriating is that, suddenly, all the problems are due to immigration. For ten years, it hasn't been a problem at all. When they say that specific discriminatory measures should be taken for those of us of foreign origin, what does that mean? If a child doesn't have food and is of foreign origin, will they be prevented from eating? Are we willing to go that far? Because theory is one thing, but they don't explain how they'll do it. Are we willing to vote for a party that lets children go hungry based on their origins? Are we willing to let them not go to school? Are we willing to do that apartheid?

If you try to put yourself in the shoes of a person who has always seen, more or less, the same human landscape, and that landscape changes, do you understand why it causes anxiety or distress?

— Well, I can understand that, but I think there should be a step toward getting to know others and not simply rejecting them. Obviously, the concentration of many people from the same origin in the same place also harms immigrants and is counterproductive. What's not normal is that we're segregated. A large part of my insistence on talking about religion and Islam is aimed at trying to break the endogamy that often develops in these neighborhoods.

And should a limit be set? In Vic, for example, 30% of people are foreign nationals. Can it be assumed that it will reach 50%?

— The question is why people go to Vic. If they go, it's because there's work, not because they have a mania for everyone to go to Vic. There are many companies there that hire people of immigrant origin... The issue is how this population integrates into society. It's not that they're a hindrance because they're from outside; the key is how we educate families in many values that they perhaps didn't have in their country of origin. Saying this isn't far-right. Coming from a democratic country isn't the same as coming from a country where you haven't had democracy. We can educate boys and girls in schools, but we also need to act within families, and that's not happening. There has to be a commitment from the immigrant population to the fundamental values of democracy. It has to happen.

The last time you heard someone say "we," did you feel part of that "we"?

— I don't know, I never know. When will I be allowed to say "we"? Look: since I was 8 years old in Vic, I haven't lived anywhere but Catalonia. My children were born in Catalonia, I speak Catalan, my husband is Catalan... What else should I do? Wear a beret? I've thought about this a lot. In the end, the other, the one who isn't "we," is just as much a person as I am. I feel the suffering of a person in Gaza as my own. We are human. And if we function on the basis of humane treatment of others, collective identities take a backseat.

What's the last reason that makes you optimistic, that makes you think this is going to end well?

— I'm not generally very optimistic. I'm just critical...

But you're critical of everyone, including Islamic fundamentalism, which must tell you everything...

— And they point fingers at you, with the danger that comes with being pointed at. I don't know, in France they killed a teacher for wanting to talk about freedom of expression in school.

Do you mean that you have had that fear?

— When I was on Instagram and receiving death threats, I thought about it, and in the end, you take precautions to try to protect yourself a little. Being anonymous is one thing, but what I think is more dangerous is when organizations publicly accuse you of crimes you didn't commit.

Who are you talking about?

— Islamist organizations that claim to represent Catalan Muslims but are actually fundamentalists.

We still have to mention a reason for optimism...

— The way my 13-year-old daughter and many other girls I meet see the world, they no longer even consider that they could be less than boys. And the teachers! I'm grateful for the teachers my daughter has had, teachers who do an amazing job.

A song you've been listening to lately.

— Minouche, by Rachid Taha.

The last words of the interview are yours.

— Me? No question? I don't know. I've talked a lot, I always talk a lot.