L’histoire peut attendre, the sole novel authored by celebrated Moroccan poet Rachida Madani, is a complex, if not confounding, work, one that contests and overtly muses upon the implicit and explicit tenets of narrative construction.Footnote 1 From the outset, the author weaves a text that catches readers off guard and keeps them off balance as they grapple with an amalgam of poetic invocations and personal reflections, antithetical assertions and images, dueling narrators, and a commingling of the fictional and the real, the past and the present, the physical and the metaphysical. The framing narrative, the macro-text, depicts the comings and goings of fellow passengers on a train, but no figure of prominence emerges among the throng of traveling companions to draw or sustain the reader’s focus for any length of time. Allusive males and females arrive and depart, intemporal, yoked neither to past nor future. Though these fellow passengers are occasionally targeted for extended commentary, none prove to be aesthetically significant. In fact, the author makes every effort to avoid interaction with those around her (“J’échappe au flot de paroles et ramène mon regard sur ma feuille” [18]; “…je me colle d’avantage à ma vitre de façon à ce qu’elles me croient profondément absorbée par l’agitation des voyageurs sur le quai” [72-73]).

In point of fact, the narrator’s primary focus is not the train’s passengers, but rather the novel she prepares to write. This is what motivates her to board the train in the first place. As the train makes its way forward, toward no destination in particular (“Mais je n’ai besoin de m’arrêter nulle part, toutes les gares se valent” [9]), the novel-writing endeavor becomes increasingly arduous. With each stalled plot-line and renewed effort, she becomes increasingly frustrated with her task. In fact, the text in process proves to be as amorphous and directionless as the macro-text that frames it. Despite the narrator’s (Khalida’s) struggle to construct a coherent sequence of events, no proposed narrative trajectory gains prominence over any other. Plot lines are launched, morph, and ultimately collapse as the train makes its way forward, toward no discernible destination. Like the train, the novel ambles without direction; each random episode, like each indistinguishable station, appears to be but a harbinger to the next in a plexus of variables and uncertainties. Temporal coordinates that might otherwise serve to anchor the narration shift without warning. The narrator’s trek towards some anticipated epiphany (“J’avance, entre fascination et crainte, vers mon double que j’interprète comme espace viable, lieu de tous les possibles, de toutes les réalisations” [10]) meanders through an entangled maze of aborted scenarios and inscrutable dream sequences. It is not clear whether the fictional foray is intended to effect a liberation from the brute pain of a real trauma, or to rhetorically re-create, and thereby, transcend it. The present, dilatory and ill-defined—diffused and evanescent—fuses with a past that emerges in bursts of blurred snapshots too fleeting to re-construct into a coherent whole.

What does emerge from these chaotic and mismatched threads is a deep and sustained probing of the creative process, its muteness, its inexpressibility, its unruliness, as well as its purgative potential. The author’s futile efforts to harness the creative urges on which successful art depends establishes the driving force of the novel. The adversarial relationship between the author and her unfettered inspiration is metaphorized in the novel by the battle for supremacy between Khalida and the fictional hero with whom she routinely engages in lengthy conversations and debates throughout the work. Though both are intent on creating a book, their textual goals are prioritized quite differently. While in theory, the author recognizes and respects the essential role sub-conscious and mysterious psychic forces play in the creative process, Khalida also believes she bears ultimate responsibility for consolidating these creative impulses into an organic whole. Though she gives lip service to a willingness to surrender rational control of the writing process to these intangible creative urges (“Enfin libre, souveraine et déchaînée, elle [the writer’s hand] courra sur le papier” [10]) and though she pledges to use only those words “qui veulent bien venir jusqu’à moi” (20), she is palpably disconcerted when these words run counter to her intended goals or otherwise compromise her authorial design.

Despite her articulated vow of subservience, Khalida clearly sees herself as the prime mover of the narrative construct. The fictional hero is her subordinate, a malleable character over whom she holds the power of life (“inventé par moi, et rendu réel par le seul pouvoir de mon imagination” [45]) and death (“je sais aussi qu’une simple contraction de mes cinq doigts agiles réduirait en papier froissé ces quelques feuilles” [45]). The hero is hers to maneuver as she pleases (“j’aurais à l’inventer, à le réinventer, à le revendiquer à grands cris, puis à le renier jusqu’à le faire disparaître en brouillant les pistes” [10]). After all, inspiration, no matter how essential or formidable, must be molded, sculpted like clay. Consequently, she is quick to rebuke her hero when his efforts fail to meet her expectations. She berates his disorganized manner (“Tu confonds tout à plaisir! C’est décourageant à la fin!” [106]), his blatant inconsistencies (“Et lorsque j’insistais, tu me servais une histoire, à chaque fois différente, un récit abracadabrant, sans rapport aucun avec notre projet de départ” [137]), and his unpolished style (“[v]ersion sans poésie, livide et délavée” [112]). She also manifests no small measure of resentment and astonishment when she finds she is unable to bend the text to her will (“Je demeure perplexe, me demandant comment ma main a pu désobéir à ma volonté” [70]; “Mais d’où m’est venue l’idée de la cicatrice sur le poignet gauche de cette femme? Par quelle élucubration de mon esprit en suis-je arrivée à imaginer ce drame?” [23]).

Unlike her undisciplined hero, the would-be author is goal-directed, with definite ideas about what constitutes a good novel. The text she plans to write must be original (“la feuille blanche, sur la petite table orange du train, attend non pas des anecdotes le récit d’une vie, mais quelque chose de nouveau” [11]), must offer a coherent and controlled sequence of events (“le déroulement d’une intrigue qui se joue à leur [good writers’] seule intention” [23]), and, perhaps most importantly, it must accomplish an essential extra-textual mandate: the restoration of her fractured sense of self (“…l’écrit qui me réconcilierait avec moi-même” [95]). Khalida’s identity crisis, a frequent subject of commentary in the text, was occasioned by her twin sister’s untimely and agonizing death. In order to pen this multi-purposed opus, Khalida leaves hearth and home behind, convinced that the creative process can find its optimal expansion only when wholly divested from the reality of lived experience.

Once she embarks on her journey, however, she finds it difficult to bear the textual mayhem that ensues. She is unable to sustain the few kernels of inventiveness she manages to churn out, and this lack of inspiration leads to frequent bouts of self-deprecation (“…si je devais faire comme eux [talented creative writers], j’y perdrais sûrement des plumes!” [23]). Chagrined when promising plot lines abruptly collapse (“Une histoire est morte ainsi sous mes yeux, sans que je puisse en connaître le dénouement” [22]), or when the tale turns ludicrous (“Khadir: une femme aérienne, quelque chose comme un cerf-volant dans le ciel des illusions? Dieu, quelle histoire!” [32]), she frequently bemoans her authorial shortcomings (“Moi, je tourne autour d’un arbre sous lequel j’ai dessiné un homme, sans pouvoir rien en tirer” [23]). An uncorralled rush of words lie in a dormant heap upon the page: words recalling words, words foretelling, words in quest of a recital that is, and must be always deferred, forever untold.Footnote 2 Consequently, the exegetical trope, over-arching, traces the contours of an impossible hermeneutics, of an ever-expansive distance from closure. So that, in the end, the super-accumulation of language comes to reflect none but its own struggling effort to communicate elusive thoughts that defy articulation. In point of fact, the story will not only wait; it is not to be told. Whatever truths the author endeavors to communicate are subject to distortion, both by words that betray and by readers who misinterpret. Whence the whole of the narrative is controlled by the impending-ness of images (of locales and destinations, of events and of moments) that will and can never come to be, and, in consequence, can never be deemed definitive. It is such that the ever evolving and never-ending story can be made to triumph over the historical and the real: once narrativized, events can be transformed into an alternative hermeneutics of difference and otherness, offering an uncharted terrain of semiotic ciphers. The text thus provides infinite possibilities for alternate readings, never-ending metamorphoses that counter a transcribed record of lived experience.

From the outset, the title of the work forewarns of this salient outcome: the story can wait. Khalida’s desire to advance the narrative is countered by an equally compelling desire to defer its completion. Almost immediately, she abandons her project in order to indulge in idle contemplation of the countryside (“Mon regard va de ma feuille au paysage” [13]). At several points in the novel, Khalida deliberately puts the narrative on hold (“L’histoire peut attendre”) in order to let her thoughts wander freely. At one point she pauses to linger voluptuously over a sketch of her hero (“Le dessiner, modeler son visage et sa bouche … lui insuffler vie plus tard. L’histoire peut attendre” [24]), to gingerly stroke his moustache (“…mes doigts s’attardent sur la bouche, frôlent la moustache” [24]), to bask in the enraptured contemplation of a fantasized encounter (“L’histoire peut attendre …. Il s’agit à présent de se laisser imprégner l’un par l’autre” [41]), or simply to let her imagination run wild (44). The pleasure she derives from these deliberate points of suspension contrasts markedly with the frustration and tension that accompany the writing process.

In contrast to these pleasurable interludes, the task of novel construction is stressful and fraught with obstacles and distractions. The stuffy compartment, the comings and goings of intrusive passengers, the desire to sleep, all create an atmosphere ill-suited to the mental concentration Khalida’s narrative project requires. Numerous writer’s blocks also hinder her headway progress. What was intended to be a salutary exercise (“naviguant entre récifs et abîmes, dans le seul but de me maintenir la bouche hors de l’eau” [11]) is submerging her instead. It seems the more she struggles to control the narrative, the less triumphant the results (“Et c’est ainsi que je retombe tout près des racines, prise dans les vrilles d’un récit qui s’embourbe: ni conte, ni poème, ni roman” [120]).

Khalida foists much of the blame for her wayward text on the fictional hero, and most notably upon his refusal to provide the meaning behind the word “Khadir.” Khalida believes her fictional hero can elucidate this conundrum, but he refuses to satisfy her curiosity. Her dependency on the hero for the solution to this puzzle de-stabilizes the power dynamic that originally defined their relationship. The hero’s knowledge of Khadir’s identity renders Khalida subordinate to the hero-muse over whom she presumed to have total control. It is now the author who depends on her hero for survival (“Comment fuir le vautour du mutisme, si tu te dérobes à mon appel?” [74]).Footnote 3

The combative relationship between Khalida and her fictional hero ultimately reveals two diametrically opposed approaches to narrative production. Whereas the author quests an ordered sequence of events and some sort of final resolution, the fictional hero, an avatar for creative inspiration, believes a text’s potency resides in its capacity for infinite expansion, its ability to morph into an endless spiral of variations, spin-offs and retellings, all based upon a single theme or source. Like the narrator’s destination-less voyage, the hero believes the narrative artifact need not propel a chronological sequence of events forward, toward a specific, pre-envisaged, end-point. Rather, he views the ideal text as one that has the potential for perpetual extension. From his vantage point, a narrative’s potency is most acute during the process of its unfolding. Consequently, it is a text’s capacity for infinite self-generation, not the finished product, that determines a tale’s ultimate worth. This coveted capacity to exponentially expand a narrative kernel is exemplified in a number of embedded narratives found in the text, such as the account of the young boy wielding a sword in the middle of a bullfighting ring. Khalida’s dream sets this elongated episode in motion, but narrative control is ultimately ceded to the child-character, who then recounts the tale of his birth, childhood, and early incarceration (53–57). This account gives way to a third narrative, one rooted in the child’s hallucinatory vision when on a glue-sniffing high (57–59). Significantly, the phantasm never reaches an end point because the effects of the drug always wear off just prior to the hero’s anticipated triumph. A second, more powerful example of textual expansion is the hero’s inconsistent and multiple explanations for the meaning of the word Khadir. Like Scheherazade, the hero uses story telling (a seemingly endless supply of variants on the meaning of the word Khadir) to ensure his survival, that is to say, the text’s continuation. Khadir is first depicted as an angel dispatched to rescue the hero from physical and metaphysical harm (25–31). She is then depicted as a woman wearing an emerald coat who comes to his rescue (97–10). The hero later insists Khadir is but a meaningless shriek from a delusional, fever-stricken traveler (102–105). He returns to his rescue scenario when he refers to Khadir as the woman who tended to him after she found him in a drunken stupor, his body collapsed against a tree (108–110). He then claims Khadir is a password used by political subversives to gain entry into a safehouse (137–139). Next, Khadir is identified as the name of the boat that the hero boarded in search of a better life (147–154). Finally, he claims Khadir is a name he calls himself (“Khadir c’est moi! C’est mon histoire, celle d’un homme désespéré qui a voulu fuir un pays où toute forme de vie était devenue impossible” [147]).

The hero’s ever-changing explanations for the word Khadir and the author’s deliberate pauses (the story can wait) are not the only obstacles to the text’s forward progress. As the novel approaches its mid-point, the author abruptly decides to rely less on her imagination and to turn to her past in order to chart a more clear-eyed narrative path. After she learns that her original hero, a political activist, was killed by the authorities (“Il n’a été ni jugé ni condamné, simplement porté disparu, volatilisé! ” [79]), she elects to search for inspiration in memories from the past (“C’est par le souvenir que je puis te rejoindre, toi qui n’es pas encore, et m’atteindre, moi qui ne suis plus” [81]). The narrative thus comes to resemble memoir more than fiction. Diary entries and letters from her sister are transcribed in full, and in the process, a triangular relationship between her sister, her former lover (a man bearing an uncanny resemblance to her fictional hero) and the author comes into view. The fictional hero and the man both sisters loved become indistinguishable from one another. The author then reveals she has her own idea about the origin of the word Khadir. It was a nickname coined by the lover who was unable (or pretended to be unable) to tell one twin from the other (“Quand tu ne savais comment faire pour nous distinguer, tu essyais de t’en tirer à bon compte en nous appelant toutes les deux indifféremment Khadir. Un prénom interchangeable, inventé lors de tes accès de fièvre” [107]). This sudden overlap between fiction and reality raises the question as to whether we are dealing with a fictionalized history or a historicized fiction. Does the panoply of evanescent allusions in the ongoing narrative point to a fictional project or to the reconstruction of a past? Is this a poetic of exile, or is it no poetic at all?

Against the backdrop of a text oscillating between aesthetic invention and real-life tragedy and an author (anxious for closure) and hero (striving for deferral), who grapple for control, metatextual strategies relentlessly center stage the novel’s contrived underpinnings. Khalida frequently muses on her work in progress, ponders its potential complexity (“Quel gâchis si mon récit, à peine entamé, cessait de se corrompre, fatalement abîmé par sa propre expansion!” [23–24]), reflects on her ability to finish the work (“Qui continuera le récit que j’ai commencé?” [113]), and contemplates the potential status of her literary reputation (“Et peut-être qu’alors je pourrais enfin me proclamer conteur, poète ou charmeur de mots à la belle étoile” [122]). She engages in lengthy conversations with her fictional hero; she longs to join him in the fictional realm (“Je désirais follement entrer dans son monde, qui m’était totalement interdit, et voilà que je ne me retrouvais qu’en moi-même, en pleine fiction!” [42]). She apostrophizes the reader who struggles to make sense of the textual clues she leaves behind (“Dis-le-moi donc toi, qui comme ce laboureur qui défriche vaillamment sa terre, t’attaches au dur labeur de me lire!” [111]). Fictional characters, like the five ladies in the cave and her hero, offer counsel regarding narrative production. The hero bemoans his dependency on the author (“Je sais que rien ne m’appartient à vrai dire, pas même mes paroles: on me les dicte, on me les fourre dans la bouche” [124]), at one point complaining he feels like some character in a bad novel (“Je me sentais comme un personnage de fiction, allant à vau l’eau, entre les lignes d’un mauvais roman” [101]). Literary works infiltrate the narrative: The Thousand and One Nights, “Little Red Riding Hood,” the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

One of the most cogent metatextual truths to emerge from this assortment of self-reflective commentaries is that authorship is a fundamentally self-destructive act, one that confers agency upon the reader. This was the precise counsel provided by the five women in the cave (“De toute façon, ton récit, s’il naît en toi, n’existe véritablement que dans l’imagination de ton lecteur” [66]), an unpleasant truth confirmed by the fictional hero as well (“Si le lecteur me connaissait autant que j’ai appris à le connaître, il comprendrait que je ne suis pas homme à vivre en marge de l’histoire” [131]).

In L’histoire peut attendre, the reader confronts a being, a would-be author, seized by, and lost within, tropes of removal and reversal, tropes uncomfortably juxtaposed against the backdrop of real sites and sounds that engulf her while the “bête infernale” plods along the heavy-laden tracks. Every mile traversed leads further from consonance, whence the blank page takes on a brand of amorphousness, hinged, burrowed, trapped between poetic plenitude and spiritual vacuity. This is perhaps the most compelling message communicated by the text: the power of words resides in their capacity to dissemble rather than reflect, to conjure meanings the author never intended, to transcend rational intent and break the stranglehold of compulsive fixations (“Et voilà qu’à votre insu, ils se mettent à signifier ce qu’ils veulent, et vous n’y pouvez rien!” [38]).

The protagonist is thus engaged in a would-be project of flight and escape, bemoaning the ill-defined limits of her ever-expanding displacement, yet circuitously transcribing the very reality she is intent on escaping. There is no transcendant closure, no final answer to the author’s obsessive quest to find the meaning of Khadir. The rail ride, a seemingly interminable trek of disjointed and episodic vignettes, recollections, dreams and nightmares, does finally come to an abrupt end, but at an unspecified and insignificant destination. The macro-novel, L’histoire peut attendre, does not so much end as run out of pages. The micro-novel the author intended to write waits yet for completion. It lies out of sight on a table in her home (“Et elle détournera la tête, pour qu’au traître rayon d’un soleil couchant, il ne voie pas ses yeux jalousement fermés sur une ébauche de livre” [175]).

Khalida’s return home suggests that she has come to terms with the demons the writing project was intended to defeat. As the novel progresses, she appears increasingly resigned to the cruel fickleness of fate, and ready to embrace whatever perils and pleasures life has to offer (“Je ne veux plus rien prendre, mais cherche à tout donner, ne désirant plus que me délester avant d’entreprendre les dernières étapes du voyage. J’ai été à l’extrême bord de moi-même et jusqu’au sommet de la dune brûlante, personne ne peut m’accuser de désespoir!” [169]). Though Khadir has no completed novel to show for her efforts, the final pages reveal a humble surrender to the whims of fortune, and a willingness to forgive the cosmic forces responsible for taking her sister, and to forgive herself for having survived. This forgiveness is embodied in the text by the insertion of the holy man who puts the author’s tragedy into cosmic perspective.

Khalida’s peace of mind confirms that the art of narrative construction can provide a measure of soul-saving solace, even in the absence of a finished product. The narrational act proves to be its own reward, something the author suspected from the outset (“J’irai même plus loin que les autres, je prétendrai qu’elle [l’écriture] refait le monde!” [118]). As the final image of the novel, a fearful child begging for a story, confirms, it is the story-telling, not the story, that provides comfort and relief. Footnote 4 In Madani’s novel, the child asks only that a story be told, no matter how threadbare the content (“J’arrive pas à dormir. S’il te plaît, raconte-moi une histoire…l’histoire d’Al Khadir” [175]). The familiar story of a man who had the gift of making verdant a colorless world is just the vehicle; what comforts the child is the narration itself. For the author as well, the deceptive and distorting words became transcendent during the creative process, nullifying the need for closure. Significantly, then, this complex meta-textual enterprise encapsulates the self-sustaining production of non-mimetic referentiality flanked by the unconventional charms of woeful, if lovely, poeticized incantations. The jaunt, along whose course we may revel and flourish, invites us gradually, progressively, compellingly to confront a stunning poetics of perpetual deferral and of infinite regress.