Ismaël Diadié Haïdara, an exiled Malian poet and writer, says ‘There is no world other than the one that gives us the language we speak.’
‘Linguistics and Literature Magazine, July – December 2024’ issue published the ‘Dialogue with Ismaël Diadié Haïdara’
Interviewed By Selnich Vivas Hurtado, University of Antioquia (Colombia)
Selnich Vivas Hurtado
It has been stated many times that language is the homeland. That understanding, although suggestive and, why not, revealing, in biographical, social and historical terms, does not, however, apply to your work. In what languages does your heart express itself most openly? In which of them do you feel most sober and humble?
How much have the different European and African languages served you to expand your poetry and your philosophy of life?
Ismaël Diadié Haïdara
Boro kaa na gar wura ngu yo doo, nda a gar ciini djeeno, a hin ka djankam. (Whoever does not find gold in his house, if he inherits old words, can walk with the rich.)
So say the Songhay. To speak a language is to belong to the world that it produces. There is no world other than the one that gives us the language we speak. Therefore, our language is our homeland. The Songhay was the first thing that reached my ear when the breast milk reached my lips. In it I have known love and fear, tenderness and hatred, I have cried and laughed according to the meanings that were given to things. As a child I did not know another world until the French language imposed at school came to me at the age of seven. That language imposed itself on me, on my world. It means for me and mine, loss. I have gone from orality to writing, from my world to the universe of the other. Like the “indigenous” without my language, I live orphaned in the world. That poverty made me live between the imposed French and, in the end, the Spanish of my ancestors learned again. I have chosen to write in Spanish because it is the language of linguistic scarcity for me. My lexicon is poor, it forces me to great economy of means when expressing myself.
Spanish leads me to the sobriety of images and metaphors, condemns me to humility when expressing myself and, aesthetically, it fits with my own philosophy of sobriety. I believe, with Wittgenstein, that “Everything that can be said, can be said clearly: and what cannot be spoken about, it is better to remain silent.”
SVH
Your relationship with Spanish, with Spain and the cultures of Latin America is very special. How are the stories of African peoples connected with those of peoples of other continents through meditation and philosophizing? What contributions of African cultures could be perceptible in Europe and America?
Ismaël Diadié Haïdara
My paternal roots are Andalusian and Spanish. This weaves a sentimental relationship with Spain and Latin American cultures in which I see a reflection of my history. Sometimes a Latin American is closer to me through his history and his relationship with the Spanish language than another African. With the Latin American I share the loss (sometimes partial) of the indigenous mother tongue and Spanish. On my trip to Colombia, for example, I have felt deeply close to the indigenous and the intellectuals with whom I share the need to decolonize non-Western cultures without rejecting what Europe can give us as positive.
‘My poetry comes from the women of my home’
SVH
Timbuktu is a sonorous, magical word, a poem in itself, with a great lesson for the world. Who was the founder of that library and how do the manuscripts that you preserve explain the paths back and forth between Europe and Africa?
Ismaël Diadié Haïdara
Paths that could contradict the oppressive and racist readings that Africa is inferior and has not created wealth or culture for the world. My ancestor, Sahili, was born in Granada in 1290 and died in Timbuktu on October 15, 1336. His great-nephew, Ali b. Ziyad al-Quti, born in Toledo, was expelled after the revolt of Muslims and converted Jews that ended with 1,600 houses burned in the fires, called Magdalena, on July 22, 1467. After that uprising against intransigent Christian policies, Ali b. Ziyad went into exile in Gumbu where he married Princess Kadiya Syla, elder sister of the future emperor Askia Muhammad, and niece of the Sunni King Ali the Great. In these exiles my story is woven. When in 2012 I went into permanent exile in Spain, temporarily settling in Granada, I have done nothing more than follow the path of my ancestors. When they arrived from Granada and Toledo, they found African lands with universities, libraries and ancient cultural traditions. To say that Africa has no culture is to engage in colonial, provincialist and racist discourse. Today the library has 12,714 manuscripts that have in their margins 7,100 texts written by my ancestors between the 15th and 19th centuries.
SVH
The role of women, creators of the tebrae, is the aspect that most attracts young people in Colombia when we talk to them about the poetry of Mali and Niger. How would you characterize this sung poetic form? What relationship did your grandmothers and relatives have with this poetry? How current is this poetic form among African women today? Is it still a critical genre against patriarchy?
Ismaël Diadié Haïdara
Tebrae is the plural of tebría. The tebría is a two-verse poetic genre created by the Hasaniya women of the Sahara Desert. They are unmarried, young women who meet on the dunes, who compose brief poems to their loved ones. These poems are sung and circulate orally and anonymously. The Songhay world of Sahel has other poetic genres; the tebrae comes to him from the Hasaniya world. I have served in part to the dissemination of the genre between the two peoples. The part of my family related to this poetic genre is that of the woman who breastfed me when I was born, because my mother had little milk. That woman’s name was Aïshe bint Mahmud ben Sheikh, she was the sister of the judge, logician and historian Muhammad Mahmud, author of more than twenty works on law, logic and history. The tebrae belong to the cultural world of my second mother. With Western schooling, this genre of oral tradition is threatened with disappearance. Poets today write like Rimbaud or Baudelaire and leave aside their original and ancient form of expression. My job is to rescue those voices, save the tebrae by opening them to the world. Its only theme was love. I have tried to open it to all topics.
SVH
Not only as a researcher, but rather as the creator of your Tebrae (2021), to what extent could we say that the thought and sensitivity of women from past centuries are very necessary to heal our contemporary way of life? The capacity for astonishment and heartbreak inherent to your poetry make possible a clause of vitality, an invitation to serenity and wandering.
Ismaël Diadié Haïdara
We live in a one-dimensional world, dominated by voice poetics of the Western tradition. However, from our languages of the African desert, from my birth, to the jungle of the Amazon, which I dream of crossing one day, there are other languages, other ways of living love, the world and death, loneliness and sacrifice, rootedness and wandering. Women through the stories, proverbs, and songs of my land have educated me. They are the repositories of the word. We were born drinking his milk and listening to his words. In this tormented world they taught me serenity, and in the face of the misery of the man who seeks to be having, they taught me sobriety. My great-grandmother, Diahara Mamhud Kati, did a silent fast every day, her sister Aïsata Mahmud was a gyro, a wanderer. My mother and old Tombo, who was at her service, taught me their lives exemplars. My poetry comes from the women of my house.
SVH
Another sand book, those that open and close and are new each time, is De la sobriedad (2020). This summa sanatorium frees us from the self-imposed yoke of consumption. Technology, you say, has increased our dependence on things, on the accumulation of objects that ultimately make life sick. In the midst of your journey through various cultures, what concept do you have of the world that today is debated in sophisticated and increasingly bloody wars?
Ismaël Diadié Haïdara
Today’s man lives poor in the world. To be, you need to possess. To be happy, you need to go through department stores every day, as the philosopher Zygmunt Bauman said. Boro kaa go dira ka taasi hay di kaa go nga hunde dira cindereynte. (He who is looking for what is inside him is lost.) I lived my childhood in a town that did not know money. Everything was done through barter. Milk,bmeat, wheat and rice were bought, the tailor and the shoemaker were paid with rice or millet. It is possible to live with little and in peace. Henry David Thoreau has also taught it. The “indigenous people” of America, whom I admire so much, also, as well as the Bushmen.
SVH
If possible, we ask you to please write us a tebrae in Songhay and send it to us in an audio format. It would be very valuable for our university if that language could be heard.
Ismaël Diadié Haïdara
The cirow diyo go hem key is the right one.
If the birds sing, lend them your ear.
Life is now.
Dongo bíidi wax and he huna.
I live in the shadow of Dongo, God of lightning.
Wherever I have set foot towards exile, the fire has followed me.
The woman is not a boro diyo but she is a fool.
Boro in the woyne is not going to handy korey.
Just as men come one after one, so they leave.
Whoever does not go with the sun, the white moon takes him.
(English version: Ashraf Aboul-Yazid)
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