In the name of Bilqiss

The 35-year-old writer and filmmaker does not hesitate to challenge preconceived ideas and venture into taboo territory. Her latest novel is a courageous, thought-provoking story about the plight of women in the land of jihad.

When we met Saphia Azzeddine at a luxury hotel restaurant in the west end of Paris, she was devouring a club sandwich and French fries. The writer discussed “Bilqiss”, her hard-hitting new novel about a woman sentenced to death by stoning, a grim topic riddled with pitfalls that she skilfully manages to avoid. Bilqiss received the death penalty for calling the neighbourhood faithful to prayer while the muezzin was asleep on the job. The story is set in a Middle Eastern country occupied by the US Army where religion has been corrupted. The title character sharply stands out from her environment: she is free, headstrong and unbowed. She loves literature and speaks perfect English but oversteps the bounds of her gender role in a part of the world where women are considered innately guilty because they pervert men and stray from Allah’s path. The self-proclaimed representatives of true Islam punish Bilqiss because of her love of art and freedom, her straight talk — and the stockings, so-called enticing bras, make-up and other items in contradiction with fundamentalism that are found in her home. “I go very far into the accusations against Bilqiss, which are true,” the author says. “In that part of the world, any madman can issue a fatwa against women who tweeze their eyebrows or buy the wrong sort of aubergines at the market… You have to be able to laugh and make fun of them!” This tragic, thought-provoking story about the plight of women in the land of jihad steers clear of oversimplification by depicting the relationship between Bilqiss, a free-spirited young woman, and Leandra, an American journalist barricaded behind her certainties. Written like a screenplay, the book describes two brands of Islam, one peaceful, the other fundamentalist. The novelist, more “an observer than an activist”, recalls that the oppression of women is not confined to the Middle East. “Sakineh, Malala, the Nigeriens of Chibok… The number of wives beaten to death by their husbands in Spain and France is soaring. These are predominantly Catholic countries, so none of this has anything to do with religion. It’s time for women to wake up and perhaps become barbarians themselves…” Ms. Azzeddine readily admits that characters in all her books express some of her views. Her first novel, Confidences à Allah (“Confiding in Allah”), already about a woman who stands up for herself (Léo Scheer, 2008), met with critical success. Then she wrote Combien veux-tu m’épouser ? (“How Much Do You Want to Marry Me?”, Grasset, 2013) before taking a break in cinema, appearing in L’Italien (2010) alongside Kad Merad and writing as well as directing Mon père est femme de ménage (“My Father Is A Cleaning Lady”, 2011). Shunning the social whirl, she has quietly carved out a coherent career away from the spotlight. “Independence has a price,” she says. “It takes longer to gain recognition.”

At the end of her last novel, Ms. Azzedine, who was born in Morocco and grew up in Agadir, wrote a touching tribute to her father, Boualem, “first among feminists”, thanking him for “filling me with culture with the means at his disposal […] transmitting his religion instead of stupidly shoving it down my throat and having incommensurable faith in his wife, his daughters and his sons.” Besides Morocco, Ms. Azzedine has lived in Switzerland and France, feeling at home wherever she is.