The subversive rug or how art reconciles with suffering in the postcolonial Maghreb: a reading of Laila Lalami’s ‘The Storyteller’

Abstract

ABSTRACT Research on illegal immigration rarely checks the postmodernist propulsions that hinge on postcolonial subjects and their choices. In the following essay on Laila Lalami’s last piece, titled: ‘The Storyteller’ in Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (2005), an argument is specified through the Moroccan-American author carefully tracing Murad’s rise from the dregs of angst. This rise reflects the lives of disenchanted Maghrebi youths seeking illegal immigration or harr’ga as part of impinging postmodernism on postcolonial experience. Embracing the future in Murad’s circumstances could be possible via affective, not cognitive, means, by investing in cultural memory. Following his deportation from Spain, Murad, the failed harr’ag, becomes emotionally damaged, a force of destruction propelling his own annihilation. Only when abiding by the story he learned from his deceased father does he notice his chances of reconciling with suffering. Through the medieval story of Ghomari, the rug weaver, whose art brought down a despot, Murad shakes off the two American tourists’ emotional oversight of what it means to be postcolonial. Eventually, Murad decides to become a writer: an artist and dreamer. By combining phenomenological, existential, and mythical insights, the essay highlights how Lalami’s story leads readers to discover an empowering narrative for the Maghrebi youth; affective empowerment rooted in shouldering responsibility and emulating the mythic hero.