Urban Library
"Return to Dar al-Basha"
from Urban Library
23 January 2008
Hassan Nasr, 1994
English translation by William Hutchins, 2006
Rebuilding the Hafsia Quarter of Tunis
This is an undulating poetic novel about the old city of Tunis. The main character Murtada, who Nasr addresses in the first, second, and third person, has returned to Tunis after a forty year absence. The city—or what happened to him as a child there—pushed him away. People are always running from cities, so this isn’t unusual. What may be unusual, however, is that in an act of self-discovery Murtada returns.
The medina of Tunis unfolds in Nasr’s hands; here are the turns of narrow lanes, the smells, the light, the tastes, the conversations, the poetry—and the crushing, debilitating, humiliating force of all of it, of rote Islam, of poverty, of colonialism. Murtada flees. He roams the earth, existing between language and culture, between poverty and riches. And then:
You discovered that you were no more capable of returning to Dar al-Basha with your heart at peace than of washing your hands of it or of taking a break from thinking about it. What should you do?
Murtada decides to restore his family house in the old city. It’s an act of reclamation—body and soul—and one of love. One of the great gems of this book (and there are many), is a conversation Murtada has with his cousin, who is comfortably middle-class, lives in a new suburb, and has no use for the old city and its ways. The cousin doesn’t want to help restore the old house.
“Listen, Mr. Murtada. The world has changed. People have stopped looking backward. That old house no longer has a role to play. It played its part, but that’s over. It’s not good for anything now—no way. People’s lifestyles have changed. The way they live has, too. Their manner of thinking is different. That old house and all those old neighborhoods need to be torn down, so they can be rebuilt with structures that have the amenities that correspond to the requirements of modern life. The world is pushing forward. Anyone who continues to gaze behind him, at the past, will be left behind. He’ll miss the train.”
These ideas caught Murtada off guard. He did not want anyone to think he agreed with them, and he looked for ways to rebut them. He tried to remember a relevant Qur’anic verse, but to no avail. None came to mind, but some ideas surfaced from things he had read. He proceeded to outline these: “Your steps as you advance into the future will be firmer if you glance back. For the future to be as firmly rooted as possible, the past must necessarily be reviewed. There can be no future, Mr. Nur al-Din, without a past.”
The exploration only starts here; Murtada must bare himself to the dirt and rock of the city, only then, after a kind of urban-love-making, can there be salvation.—-NRP
