Review of the novel The Horse’s Mouth Tells the Truth by Maryam Al-Alawi

WWhen a novel from the Arab world is set in 2010/2011, you automatically think it must be a story about revolution. At that time, millions of people in the Arab world, starting in Tunisia, took to the streets to demonstrate for freedom and social justice. But the first novel by Moroccan writer Maryam Al-Alawi, “The Horse’s Mouth Tells the Truth,” takes place in the Arab world, but in Morocco. While autocrats in neighboring countries were violently ousted from their semi-thrones after years in power, things remained largely calm in Morocco, also because King Mohammed VI was there. The constitutional reform was announced shortly after the first mass demonstrations at the end of February 2011.

Although Alaoui begins her story in June 2010 and we follow her heroine through her life in the old town of Casablanca in the following months, the revolutions of the so-called Arab Spring are only a side note here. Dashmiya plays the main role in this novel, which is about nothing less than life itself and women’s survival in patriarchy. A system in which women who take liberties are punished harshly – by family and society. There is no place in the male-dominated societies of the Arab world for women who allow themselves to be tempted, looking for a little happiness of their own.