Laila Lalami, do you know her? I suppose the majority of you do not. I discovered this name when doing research on American writers of Arab origins. She‘s a gifted writer. Yesterday, I received a book written by this Moroccan writer entitled Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits . It is about a bunch of people who try to reach Spain illegally on a life boat. After reporting the trip details and the arrival on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, she tells us the story of the people in a series of flash backs.

One –the girl with a scarf – could be one of the girls I met at the university in Raba- those girls with tough attachment to religious matters. I am not criticizing religion. But, I recognized in this character the personality of many girls that I used to know at the university who had could not stop talking about religion. It is at the university that you can meet such people who enjoy showing you the right path. They insist on details not important at all.

What is captivating in this novel is its simple way of telling the characters’ lives. When reading the book I had the feeling that I was going back in time to those university and high school years. I felt like hearing our neighbour narrating one of her daily suffering with her drunkard husband.

Lalami describes the streets I lived in and the some of the people I knew. When reading the book I felt taken back in time as if living one of the afternoon discussions that used to take place in our house when neighbours meet to talk their sufferings out.

The girl with fanatic thoughts, the beaten wife, the idle young man, all these I had knew. What I want to say is that the writer is describing Moroccan life as it is. Not putting cheerful colours on it to give it a false image to please tourists. She is telling the story of the marginalized.

As a reading of immigration problems Lalami proposes that we look at the origin of them. To stop it we have to help these people with financial and social problems. Get the beaten woman free from that violent husband and get her children a decent home no one in Brarek. Faten, the fanatic girl, needs help and the idle young man with a high computing degree. To solve the problem is to help these people have a secure and respectful source of income. To stop it is to stop people like Larbi and ToufiQ: people who cheat and accept taking bribes. These are responsible for the problems that our society is living.

To change things in the country is to find cures for solve its social and economic problems and to fight corrupted elements.

I am reading a book that tells a story I know

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