From the city of Toulouse in France, I remember the Garonne River, an ancient university, and a professor, indifferent to his appearance, specializing in phenomenology, who had translated “a little” of Gramsci—his name was Gérard Granel. I also recall a cosmopolitan university city, with several Arabs, most notably serious students from Morocco, or Maghrebis, from whom I learned lessons in behavior, “nationalism,” and culture.
I remember a left-leaning bookstore called Clarté. The manager advised me to purchase two magazines, one called Fikr and the other Anfas, a well-known Moroccan magazine in French. His words were confirmed by a medium-height Moroccan young man named Mustapha Hogga, who was holding a thick book titled: The Writings of the Famous Psychanalyst Jacques Lacan.
The Moroccan young man, who would later become a friend, said: Anfas is a highly valuable leftist magazine concerned with democracy and enlightenment, overseen by a Marxist Jew who has been imprisoned multiple times and is a supporter of the Palestinian cause named Abraham Serfaty. I had heard of him once in Damascus through my friend Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm, the university professor, who had published a book that garnered attention: Love and Platonic Love, and who would later publish a bold book after the historic June 1967 defeat, 1967: Self-Criticism After the Defeat, which was reprinted several times.
The Moroccan young man said: “You will find me at the university city,” and he mentioned his address precisely, promising to introduce me to pro-Palestine leftist friends, specializing in various fields, including Marxist philosophy. At that time, I was preparing a doctoral thesis, entitled “Alienation in Marx.” Alain Guy, a kind professor who had Spanish roots, advised me to slightly change the topic, so it became “Religious Alienation in Young Marx.” He pointed out the importance of Marx’s 1844 book The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, which beautifully addresses human liberation and alienation in its various forms.
To affirm our friendship, Mustapha Hogga gifted me George Politzer’s book Elementary Principles of Philosophy, which, oddly enough, had been translated early into Arabic, even before the works of another Marxist, Roger Garaudy, the Stalinist scholastic, who, around that time (1969-1970), published The Turning Point of Socialism. Later, he would release Marx and Alienation as well as Boundless Realism. However, some Moroccan comrades I met described him as a “theoretically weak philosopher” and recommended reading the works of Henri Lefebvre, the brilliant, multifaceted scholar, who dwelled extensively on the works of the innovative Marxist, Louis Althusser.
I noticed that these young Moroccans embraced “cultural modernity” in its various forms, whether French-sourced or translated into French. Structuralism was at the forefront of all publications, and they all respectfully referenced Anfas magazine, with its diverse topics, promoting and elucidating its content as if it were the “center of publications” and everything else were mere annotations and references.
They were close to structuralist Marxism, represented by Roland Barthes, Nicos Poulantzas, at the height of his rise, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, which later made cultural production in Morocco qualitatively different from the rest of the Arab world. Moreover, they diligently spread what they learned among Arab cultural circles. This was evident in their Sunday cultural activities, where they regularly gave lectures at the university city, complemented by book exhibitions and sales, whether about African liberation movements or, naturally, the Palestinian cause, or the promotion of theoretical and critical thought, including the writings of young Lukács, Gramsci, and Frantz Fanon. Poetry also held a significant place, including the poetry collections of by Mahmoud Darwish, Adonis, and the poems of Abdellatif Laâbi, who was translating some Palestinian poetry.
I remember one of them, perhaps named Najib, who was studying physics and gave a lecture on Georg Lukács’s book, History and Class Consciousness. Another, perhaps named Youdi al-Arabi, who was focused on sociology, praised the writings of Henri Lefebvre, accompanied by a Trotskyist girl who spoke about “Ernest Mandel.” They, in turn, introduced us to Arab Marxists who had gained fame in France, like the Egyptian economist Samir Amin and sociologist Anouar Abdel-Malek, author of the renowned book, Ideology and the National Renaissance. During that time, two Egyptian activists, writing under the name of “Mahmoud Hussein,” published a well-known book in the early 1970s, entitled Egypt: A Society Ruled by the Military.
Perhaps it was the organized cultural work of these Moroccans, whose number did not exceed ten—among them were a few workers—that led them to gather at a house in Blagnac, in the suburbs of Toulouse, where they held various activities every Friday. These included teaching French to Arab newcomers in need of assistance. Among them was a doctor married to a Frenchwoman who treated patients and sometimes even furnished medicine. As I recall, the treatment was not limited to a specific group but included Arabs and Africans, whether they were university students or others, some of whom occasionally participated in Anfas magazine, which served as a kind of identity and banner.
I recall one of their activities—a poster distributed at the university city condemning the clashes in Jordan between the “Fedayeen in Amman” and Jordanian forces, or their persecution and pressure.
I am not sure if what I recall is accurate or if it contains errors, as more than fifty years have passed, and the names have shifted from their places, faces have wrinkled, and memory has weakened. However, that “unique” romantic experience, which does not often repeat itself, has not faded from my memory.
Today, I remember old comrades with whom I exchanged letters for a short while, only to be forgotten. But, I have not forgotten Anfas magazine. I carried five issues of it to Damascus, where they rest among the few remaining books in Damascus, a city I left fifteen years ago. The magazine was borrowed by several friends who have since passed away: Sadiq al-Azm, Elias Marquess, and a third philosopher without “books” who taught at the Syrian University and was named Ghanem Hina.
The last time I flipped through Anfas magazine, it had begun to deteriorate somewhat due to moving between several cities. I, too, had become somewhat worn down, not by choice.
Translated from Arabic by Aomar Boum