Allal al-Qairawani
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Allal is a short story by
Paul Bowles Paul Frederic Bowles (; December 30, 1910November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with the Moroccan city of Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his ...
written in
Tangiers Tangier ( ; ; ar, طنجة, Ṭanja) is a city in northwestern Morocco. It is on the Moroccan coast at the western entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Spartel. The town is the capi ...
in 1976 and first published in the January 27, 1977, issue of ''Rolling Stone''. It appeared in his short fiction collection '' Things Gone and Things Still Here'' (1977) published by
Black Sparrow Press Black Sparrow Press is a New England based independent book publisher, known for literary fiction and poetry. History Black Sparrow was founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1966 by John Martin in order to publish the works of Charles Bukowski ...
. The story is among several that Bowles wrote concerning "transformation" or an exchange of physical or psychological characteristics between humans and animals.


Plot

Allal is born in a hotel to a fourteen-year-old servant girl. He is informally adopted by the childless cook and his wife when the owner fires the young mother. She returns to her family in Marrakech and is never seen again. As the boy grows up, he discovers that he is the object of amusement and scorn among the townspeople, who regard him as "a child of sin" and "a meskhot (italics)- damned". Allal labors for room and board at the hotel, but is denied wages. He moves to town and becomes a brickmaker. He lives in a hut alone. Allal forges a deep and virulent hatred for the townspeople. A dealer in venomous snakes arrives in town, and Allal volunteers to help the elderly man retrieve his snakes when his two serpents escape from a basket. The local residents, alarmed, drive Allal and the old man away as public nuisances. Allal invites the old man to his dwelling for the night. The snake dealer assures the youth: "Snakes are like people. You have to get to know them. Then you can be their friend." Allal is intrigued by the snakes, and allows them to be released in the hut to feed them. Allal discovers he has an overwhelming desire to possess one of the snakes, a red cobra. He devises a scheme to lure the snake from its basket when the old man is asleep. Allal captures the snake and conceals it in a nearby oasis. The next morning the snake dealer is distraught at the loss of his snake, but does not suspect Allal, and departs. Allal trains the cobra to obey his commands with offerings of milk, eggs and kif paste. The youth also imbibes large servings of kif. In a state of ecstasy, Allal discovers that the snake has coiled itself near his head, and communing with the serpent, he feels himself drawn into the creature through its yellow eye. Upon awakening in the morning, Allal discovers he has exchanged perceptions with the cobra: "he was seeing through the eyes of the snake, rather than through his own." He experiences life through that of the snake. Allal travels into the town in the shape of a snake. He is detected by a resident, who flees back to town and returns with several others to locate and kill the venomous snake. Allal flees, and bites a child he encounters. When Allal returns to his home, he discovers the snake in the form of a terrorized, naked youth, "the eyes with no mind behind them." The townspeople break down the door, the youth rushes out screaming. He is captured and taken to an insane asylum. The men search the hut, and Allal emerges with "the rage that had alway been in his heart" and bites two of the men before his head is severed with an ax.


Theme

The theme of "transference" or "transformation" occurs in several of Bowles's short fiction, including "The Scorpion" (1945), 'The Circular Valley" (1950), " You Are Not I" (1948), "Mejdoub" (1974) and 'Kitty" (1975). Author
Gore Vidal Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and e ...
notes a similarity between the metamorphosis of the boy Allal into a cobra and the Toaist tale of the human Chuang Chou and the butterfly: The "anthropomorphism" ends badly for both Allal and the snake. Literary critic Zoubida Hamdaoui writes: Hamdahoui adds that the reader is left with the disturbing suspicion that "the snake had the human Allal in his power" until its head is severed by the townspeople.Hamdaoui, 2013 p. 186


Footnotes


Sources

* Bowles, Paul. 2001. ''Paul Bowles: Collected Stories, 1939-1976''. Black Sparrow Press. Santa Rosa. 2001. * Hibbard, Allen. 1993. ''Paul Bowles: A Study of the Short Fiction''. Twayne Publishers. New York. * Hamdaoui, Zoubida. 2013. ''Themes and Story-Telling Strategies in Paul Bowles's North African Fiction.'' Tesis Doctoral.
University of Granada The University of Granada ( es, Universidad de Granada, UGR) is a public university located in the city of Granada, Spain, and founded in 1531 by Emperor Charles V. With more than 60,000 students, it is the fourth largest university in Spain. Ap ...
, Spain. https://digibug.ugr.es/bitstream/handle/10481/29918/21922500.pdf?sequence=1 Retrieved August 19, 2022. * Vidal, Gore. 1979. Introduction to ''Paul Bowles; Collected Stories, 1939-1976''. Black Sparrow Press. Santa Rosa. 2001. {{Paul Bowles 1977 short stories American short stories Gothic short stories Short stories by Paul Bowles Third-person narrative fiction Works originally published in Rolling Stone