El3auda

Umm Kalthoum | أم كلثوم
Singer | مطربة

“عمري ما كنت بأتوقع ابدا حاجة قبل ما تحصل. بأبقى خايفة”
“I never expect anything before it happens. I’d be afraid.”
#العودة

Yamina Benguigui | يمينة بن قيقي
Film Director and Politician | مخرجة سينمائية وسياسية

‎وبقيت العودة في أذهان أمهاتنا وآباءنا. كانت صناديقنا مكدسة في الردهة، كما لو كنا مستعدين للمغادرة في أي لحظة... كنا جزءا من عالم ثالث: لقد تخلى عنا المغرب العربي، وبالنسبة لفرنسا، لم نكن موجودين... كنا دائما من هنا ومن هناك.

“The return remained in our parents’ heads. The boxes were piled up in the hallway, ready to go... We were part of a third world: the Maghreb had abandoned us and for France, we didn’t exist…We were constantly from here and there.”

#العودة

Mohamed Majd | محمد مجد
Actor, Morocco | ممثل مغربي

“One must know how to respect one’s principles so as not to encourage mediocrity.”
#العودة

Mahmoud Messadi | محمود المسعدي

“At the end of my high school studies, I found myself facing existential questions. Who am I? From whom am I? What is the meaning of my existence? What is the value of my existence? …This is because my French teacher taught French literature according to the French school program…Our French program explored the period between the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, we studied the great French writers, poets, and thinkers. They told us that this is high literature, this is high literature, this is high intellect: the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Baudelaire. We moved between eras of human intellectual thought, human emotion, of human art through these great intellectuals and they told us “this is civilization and this is culture whilst you, history has passed you by” or “your history has passed,” creating a feeling of intellectual oppression and of intellectual injustice. I finished my highschool with a desire to go back to who we are, and to return to our origins.”


#العودة

Simplicity | البساطة
The best of words are those that are few and meaningful | خير الكلام ما قل ودل

Ghadames, Libya | غدامس، ليبيا

“Ghadamès is one of the oldest and most celebrated Saharan cities, called the ‘Pearl of the Desert’, (جوهرة الصحراء) by Arab sources. It has played a key role in the cultural and economic life of the region as an important and peaceful hub for caravan trade as part of the trans-Saharan network. From at least the late first millennium BCE it was occupied by indigenous peoples, called the Phazanii, and has been a point of interchange between major cultures and religions from the Garamantes and Romans who called it Cydamae, the Byzantines, Christianity, the Islamic conquest, Ottoman control, visits by European explorers in the 19th century and subsequent interventions during the colonial period and WWII. Throughout, it has maintained its own particular customs and practices.

Ibrahim Al-Koni | ابراهيم الكوني

“The desert is not a hidden city, the desert is a hidden existence. Where there is nothing in our view, then there is everything. The miracle of the desert is in its ability to combine these two opposites. It is literally nothingness, but it is actually nothingness that produces everything. She is the creative nothingness. And if this was not the case, it would not have been the repository that surrounded us with prophecies, so it was serious about us in relation to the promise of prophecy for salvation. And our tragedy is that in the desert we see nothing but emptiness.”