Meryem bent Ali
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Meryem bent Ali (born 1878) was a member of the Ouled Naïl tribe of Algeria.
Life[edit]
While the exact date and place of her birth have not been recorded, the presence of Meryem bent Ali has been attested in Biskra, Algeria in the 1890s, where with her cousin Mbarka she achieved notoriety as a belly dancer and sex worker. Émile Laurent[1] and Jean Lorrain[2] both wrote of her being there at the time, as did André Gide, who had his first heterosexual experience with her in late 1893–early 1894 during a voyage to North Africa with painter Paul Laurens. Here is the description Gide gives of her in Si le grain ne meurt [If it die…]:
Meriem was amber-skinned, firm-fleshed. Her figure was round but still almost childish, for she was barely sixteen. I can only compare her to a bacchante – the one on the Gaeta vase, for instance – because of her tinkling bracelets too, which she was continually shaking. I remember having seen her dance in one of the cafes of the Holy Street, where Paul had taken me one evening. Her cousin En Barka was dancing there too. They danced in the antique fashion of the Oulad, their heads straight and erect, their busts motionless, their hands agile, their whole bodies shaken by the rhythmic beating of their feet.[3]
Having returned to Europe, Gide was undergoing a course of treatment in Champel, Switzerland, in summer 1894, when his friend Pierre Louÿs came to meet him. Gide recounted his North African travels to Louÿs, including his experience with Meryem, and recommended that his friend follow suit. Louÿs, who was actually on his way to the Bayreuth Festival, changed his plans and went instead to Biskra, intent on taking the young Algerian as his mistress. He and travelling companion André-Ferdinand Herold arrived in Algiers on July 17, and a week later made for Biskra, where they met Meryem on July 24.[4] Louÿs spent the night with her, and the following day set off with Herold for Constantine with the idea that Meryem would join them there, which she did on August 1.
They would live together in Constantine through August 12. Though their relations were turbulent, Louÿs was taken with Meryem and under her spell revised Les chansons de Bilitis [The Songs of Bilitis], which he was writing at the time. As he explained some six months later in a letter to his brother Georges Louis, Meryem “caused me to completely rework Bilitis in her image, from the day I first saw her…. She was a wonder of grace, delicacy and ancient poetry.” To his brother he would also confide:
Through the Arab women of the Algerian south (who are not Moorish), I understood, I saw the living women of antiquity, in 1894. That's why Bilitis is truer, more ancient and more alive than Chrysis.
Louÿs completed Les chansons de Bilitis after returning to Paris in late August 1894. Published that December by the Librairie de l'Art Indépendant, the first edition bore a double dedication – “To ANDRÉ GIDE // M.b.A.[5] It was dated “Champel, 11 July 1894,” four days before Louÿs and Herold set out for Algeria, retroactively foreshadowing of the influence she would exercise over the work.
Death[edit]
The date and place of Meryem's death have not been recorded; in fact, very little is known of her after her contact with Louÿs. According to Jean-Paul Goujon, the latter's biographer, she wrote to both Louÿs and Herold on September 1, 1894, following their return to France, and in early 1895 Louÿs telegraphed Gide who was back in Biskra, inquiring, “How is Meryem?” Gide replied: “She is waiting for you.”[6] Thereafter she disappears from the historical record, joining the ranks of untold numbers of child sex workers whose lives and deaths have not been documented and whose names and stories remain unknown to us.
References[edit]
- ↑ See « La prostituée arabe » in Archives d'Anthropologie criminelle, de Criminologie et de Psychologie normale et pathologique, tome 8, 1893, pp. 315–322.
- ↑ See Heures d'Afrique, Paris: Bibliothèque-Charpentier, 1899, pp. 206–210
- ↑ If it die…, tr. Dorothy Bussy (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 255.
- ↑ This chronology is based on the entries in Pierre Louÿs : Journal de Meryem (en collaboration avec A.-F. Herold), suivi des lettres inédites à Zohra Bent Brahim, J.P. Goujon, ed. (Paris: Librairie Nizet, 1992).
- ↑ I.e. M[eryem]b[ent]A[li].”
- ↑ See Pierre Louÿs : Journal de Meryem…, pp. 19–21.
External links[edit]
- François Pouillon. « Tourisme sexuel et littérature ». La Revue, 2016, pp. 126–128.
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