Ismaël Saidi was in Yssingeaux on Friday for performances of the play “Tribulations of a Muslim from here” taken from the book which himself wrote and tells his story.
This is a great tool for raising awareness in the face of hate speeches that mark the news. But the small audience gathered Friday evening at the Yssingeaux theater seems to show that interest seems low. The evening, offered by CORA 43 (Operational Committee for the Fight against Racism and Anti-Semitism), was however free.
In this show, the author and actor Ismaël Saidi tackles with humor and tenderness, his personal journey, the themes of identity, migration or even anti-Semitism.
The play is taken from his autobiographical novel “Moi Ismaël, un Muslim here” (Éditions Librio Flammarion, 2017), which traces the construction of the author / narrator, caught between two cultures, Belgian and Moroccan, two religions, the Islam and Catholicism, two countries, Belgium and Morocco.
Son of Moroccan immigrants, originally from Tangier, Ismaël grew up in Schaerbeek, Belgium, and attended a Catholic school where he learned prayers and eats hosts, which greatly worried his father … existence of Ishmael: Madame, the upstairs neighbor who, when he is a child, takes him under her wing, makes him do his homework, gives him a taste for reading and writing …
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