This article aims to highlight the relationship between the spatial dimension and the narrative sequence of Amar Mezdad's text, with the representations of space being perceptible in their various forms as the text progresses.Footnote 1 Establishing parallels between space and parts of the story makes it possible to shed light on such representations and their relationships. How, for instance, do narrative moments represent space and what do the narrative suspensions (such as digressions, dialogues, and comments) contain in terms of indicating space? More concretely, this article provides a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the narrative of the novel Tettḍilli-d ur d-tkeččem Footnote 2 in order to identify spatial indications, to note where they occur, and to determine their significance. We pay particular attention to the moments where these indications are inserted and to who provides them. The main objective is to characterize the statements that various narrators make about space and relate them to parts of the text.
The choice of text is no accident. Although the spatial dimension is important in Mezdad's writing on the whole, Tettḍilli-d ur d-tkeččem is distinctive in its stylistic treatment of the significance of space. There is a clear relationship between the representation of space in the narrative sequence and the discourse about space in parts outside the main narrative (digression, dialogue, and commentary). Thus, a summary of Tettḍilli-d ur d-tkeččem that deliberately focuses on the spatial dimension of the frame narrative (Meẓyan's and Sɛid's voyage from Algiers to Iɣil-Uzzal) and a description of the novel's narrative structure is followed closely by an analysis of the indications of space in the embedded narrative (Utudert's life) as well as the digressions, dialogues, and commentaries.
Summary of The Novel
The events depicted in Tettḍilli-d ur d-tkeččem take place on a Friday in the summer of 2012 (28-30). It is the story of two friends (Sɛid and Meẓyan) who are compelled to travel from their place of residence, Tamaneɣt, to the village of Iɣil-Uzzal in the highlands of Kabylia. Meẓyan relates that he received a call from his friend Utudert, who insisted that he and his friend Sɛid rush to join him in his village. Before Utudert provided any more information about why this was so urgent, the call was interrupted. After that, the two are unable to reach their friend (7, 28, 168). Without any details or explanations regarding the urgency of this situation, Meẓyan and Sɛid set out the next morning for Tamurt, believing that their friend's mother has died. The narrator reports that Utudert's idea of surprising his friends with the celebration of his (re)marriage has been successful (176).
The journey provides an opportunity to insert several dialogues, comments, descriptions, and short stories into the narrative. These insertions contribute to the stylistic structuring of the text while also offering discussions of several other subjects.Footnote 3 As the two friends approach the village of Iɣil-Uzzal, they come across a pedestrian who is headed in the same direction and bring him along with them in the car. This encounter with the character Bu-icubaɣ adds new life to the conversation and a discussion opens up again on various topics such as the dialectic of scientific progress and the Taqbaylit code.
When they reach Utudert's village, Meẓyan and Sɛid realize that the emergency was just a trick to surprise them and that they've arrived for the (re)wedding day of their friend, who is celebrating in the presence of Dr. Legziri and his friend Sliman (a former doctor who was a victim of a terrorist attack during the black decade). They take advantage of this occasion that has brought them all together to discuss and debate ideas as they did in the past. After the wedding meal, Meẓyan and Sɛid start to make their way back home. Throughout their journey from Lezzayer (Algiers) to Tamurt (Kabylia), the reader becomes aware of the spaces as well as the discourses about them.
The ultimate destination of the journey is expressed as early as the novel's first page; the character Meẓyan refers to it as “Asammer,” which means the east side of the capital, Algiers. “We took the road towards Kabylia.”Footnote 4 On several occasions, the trip's narration is punctuated by references either to changes in topography or the difficulty of the voyage, depicting the journey as a kind of ascent. These references inform the reader that the characters on this journey are leaving the plain to enter the mountains, that the road uphill is rough and winding, and that the ascent is a challenge to be overcome.Footnote 5
The Structure of The Novel
Tettḍilli-d ur d-tkeččem consists of 31 titled chapters of varying lengths.Footnote 6 Embedding is a primary structuring element in this novel, and it is clear from the series of chapters (their titles bear the marks of narrative alternation) that there are narrative boundaries and realities that correspond to a frame narrative and others that correspond to embedded narratives. This table summarizes the essentials of this organization:
The novel alternates mainly between a first frame narrative that tells the story of the journey of two friends, Meẓyan and Sɛid, and a second narrative, embedded in the first, that presents the life of the protagonist Utudert, also a character in the frame narrative. The narrator combines these narratives to reinforce the organizing principle of embeddedness in Tettḍilli-d ur d-tkeččem.Footnote 7
The novel's main story is told over the course of fourteen chapters, spread out across the beginning of the novel (Chapters: 1, 2, and 5), the middle (Chapters: 16, 18, 20, 22, and 23), and the end (Chapters: 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, and 31). The narrative volume of this story makes up 111 pages; as a whole, the novel contains 201 pages. The chapters that recount this primary storyline have some features in common: they begin either with a description of a place or a character (Chapters: 1, 18, 20, 23, 26, and 27) or with a dialogue between characters (Chapters: 5, 16, 22, 25, 28, and 30) addressing different themes. Meanwhile, all the chapters that tell of Utudert's life, which constitutes the second story, begin with narration that is part of a logical succession of events. This style of writing also applies to the other chapters (Chapters: 3, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, and 21) that relate stories other than the frame narrative or the embedded narrative. These stories are also important structuring elements and constitute a second level of narrative digression.
The frame narrative stretches out from a moment in the night when the character Utudert phones his two friends, Sɛid and Meẓyan, and then continues the next morning when the two friends set off from the capital to Iɣil-Uzzal in Kabylia. This story ends on this same day of Ḥertadem (30).Footnote 8 Several embedded narratives enter into Tettḍilli-d ur d-tkeččem's frame narrative. A framed (or embedded) narrative is present when there is a first (frame) narrative that frames the second narrative. It is developed by the process of immersion, Footnote 9 which consists of having a narrator intervene within the story so as to tell one story that is grafted on to another.
The Mezdadian narrator constructs a multi-layered embedding structure for Tettḍilli-d ur d-tkeččem. The functioning of this narrative immersion is distinguished by the fact that the second narrative includes almost the same characters and spaces as the first narrative and also that several other short digressive narratives take place within the frame narrative. The second story, which has such substantial narrative volume (told in 8 chapters), is about the married life of the novel's main character, Utudert. It is a sequence of events in the life of a couple with a child who are about to separate because of conflicts caused by the incompatibility of views and ways of life that pit the mentalities of villagers and city dwellers against one another. The content of this story is told by an omniscient extradiegetic narrator, except for chapter 7, which is told by Utudert himself.
Frequently, the characters in Tettḍilli-d ur d-tkeččem start to tell stories (which account for extremely little narrative volume) themselves, thus becoming narrators of one or more narratives embedded in the frame. The character Sɛid himself introduces these narratives during his dialogues with Meẓyan. The following table lists some of these narratives:
Furthermore, the second story itself has an important embedded narrative recounted by the character Dr. Legziri just after he appears in the novel. Over the course of three chapters (11, 13, and 15), this auto-diegetic narrative relates the outings of a group of young students who put on theatrical plays every Friday. The same process applies when the character Bu-icubaɣ appears and another mise en abyme of the main story is established as he tells the story of the donkey that fell into a well (chapter 21). As Ait Ouali astutely observes, these narratives are largely derived from the oral tradition or from what characters (who become narrators) read in the press or hear on the radio.Footnote 10 It is therefore an assemblage of hypertexts which, from the Genettian perspective, constitutes a transformation of another text that is further developed or dramatized within the frame narrative.Footnote 11
Embedding in this novel is important, because each embedded narrative is necessary for the overarching story; as John Barth states, “the framed stories specifically trigger the next major event in the frame-story.”Footnote 12 Thus, the narrative of the character Utudert's unhappy life (second narrative) provides the background that to some extent explains the reasons for this character's remarriage after the failure of his first relationship. It is this second narrative that constructs the identity of the character Utudert throughout the novel, while the array of embedded narratives serves to enrich its main story. In terms of content, the frame narrative of this novel is less important than the second narrative, despite the fact that the latter depends on the former and rests on top of it, like the floor of a building that is constructed on the basis of other floors, in accordance with a coherent hierarchical logic.Footnote 13
The analysis of Tettḍilli-d ur d-tkeččem's narrative structure has made it possible to identify the different forms of narrative embedding and the relationships that connect the frame narrative to the other framed narratives. All of these narratives juxtapose several scenes of debate and exchanges of opinion triggered in the dialogues between the characters of the narrative frame. Generally, these dialogues between the characters, mainly between Meẓyan and Sɛid, bring up issues such as: tradition and modernity, Kabylity, and the representation of identity in relation to the spaces occupied. These dialogues are usually followed by the narrator's comments, which are relevant to the signification of the spatial indications and the overall meaning of this novel.
In addition to Tettḍilli-d ur d-tkeččem's varied structure of narrative suspension, there are descriptive pauses that give details about where the reported actions take place (11, 19, 28, 71, 72, 98, 99, 110, 111, 147, 152, and 155). The descriptive technique deployed in this novel, structured around the journey and the perspectives of the characters on that journey, is what Antoine Albalat would refer to as a progressive description.Footnote 14
Remarkably, the appearance of new characters within this novelistic unity, as Todorov points out, inevitably leads to the suspension of the previous story so that a new story can be told.Footnote 15 In addition, the multiple digressionsFootnote 16 (embedded narratives, descriptions, extended conversations between characters, commentary, and the author's personal reflections) suspend the time of the event being narrated by disrupting its progression; they are, however, very rich in terms of novelistic space and its symbolic meaning for this novel.
Complementarity Between Narration and Discourse in The Representation of Space
The main spaces of the frame narrative are Lezzayer (the starting point), Abrid (the path) towards Tamurt, and finally Iɣil-Uzzan (the destination). As previously mentioned, this itinerary participates in a kind of ascent by evoking certain topographies such as the hills, the Djurdjura mountains, and the forest.
The spatial mosaic in this novel is also formed through embedded narratives, digressions, and comments made by the characters and the narrator. Unlike the spaces in the frame narrative, which are generally geographical and/or topographical spaces – abrid (road), tiẓgi (forest), tiɣaltin (hills), adrar (mountain), taddart (village) – the spaces in most of the embedded narratives are named; they are spaces that exist in the toponymic dictionary of present-day Algeria, such as Lezzayer, Wad-Ɛissi, Irjen, Imceddalen, Tubiret, Akfadu, Asif asemmam, Ssuq Lexmis, Bgayet, Tamaneɣt, Leblida, Larebɛa (n At-Yiraten), and Lḥerrac. Thus, by analyzing how space is organized in this novel, it is possible to observe that the symbolic treatment of the different spaces is structured in such a way that narration and discourse distinctly complement one another.
The main story of this text is related by an omniscient extradiegetic narrator. The narration of actions follows the characters' movement in the area between Tamaneɣt and the village of Iɣil-Uzzal. The route towards this village is conveyed in terms of ascent with powerful descriptions throughout the journey.Footnote 17 Spaces are mentioned along the way: the plain, the hills, the mountain, and the forest.Footnote 18 The village of Iɣil-Uzzal is meticulously described from a short distance away (as the two friends approach the village) and also from the outside as well as the inside; there are the alleys and the houses based on the abraḥ.Footnote 19 Throughout this journey, other spaces such as Tamurt, Tamdint, Tudrin, Tubiret, Lḥerrac, Sbiṭar, Lḥebs, Lycée, Annar, and Tasdawit are mentioned in the dialogues between the characters as well as in the comments.
Throughout the entirety of the embedded narratives, Mezdad prefers to keep the same spaces as those of the main story. Generally, all the stories told in this text take place primarily in Tamurt (Kabylia) and secondarily in Lezzayer (Algiers). The time it takes to travel from the second space to the first one is marked by the journey. There is a process of complementarity that is introduced with the depiction of the landscapes during this voyage that is part of the frame narrative, the spaces in the framed narratives, and the perspectives that the characters (narrators) and/or the narrator have on the spaces, especially the village/city space duality.
This duality, formed by an oppositional relationship between the space of the village of Iɣil-Uzzal and the space of the city of Algiers, is mainly visible in the lives of the characters in the city (mainly Algiers for Utudert and his in-laws and the city of Tizi-Ouzou for the character Bu-icubaɣ and his family) and in the village (Kabylia). As noted by Butor, such duality suggests the mutual influence between spaces and characters.Footnote 20 This dichotomous relationship is represented predominantly by Utudert and his Algerian wife, neither of whom successfully integrates into their new environments. Utudert's young wife, who was born and raised in Algiers, refuses to continue her life in the village after her first days as a newlywed; she protests and calls village life savage and considers herself a daughter of Tamaneɣt.Footnote 21 Meanwhile, despite having spent many years in Algiers after studying at the university, Utudert is unable to get his bearings there; he prefers his native village, which for him is the source of a simple and happy life.Footnote 22 These feelings relative to spaces (the city or the village) drives characters such as Utudert and Bu-icubaɣ to leave the urban space for the village in a quest for well-being.Footnote 23 Similarly, Utudert's girlfriend Neǧma, his first wife, and Bu-Icubaɣ's family leave the village for the same reasons.
The narrator relates that the departure from the rural space (with the rural exodus being one of the themes of Tettḍilli-d ur d t-tkeččem) is mainly caused by the lack of resources in the villages, whereas the city provides opportunities for improved living conditions: work, school, university, hospitals, and security.Footnote 24 However, the novel represents this urban space negatively in terms of moral and human values. In several passages, the city is associated with debauchery and poor habits.Footnote 25 Although the village may lack luxury, prestige, and material comforts, some characters represent ancestral values in such a way that it comes to symbolize collective living, mutual aid, purity, and a love of life. This is how several characters in this novel such as Utudert, Nna Megduda, Bu-icubaɣ, Dr Legziri, Sɛid, Meẓyan, Ferruǧa, and Sliman feel, and it seems that the narrator of the frame narrative largely shares this sentiment.
Another aspect of complementarity in the depiction of the symbolism of the space between the narration (especially in the frame narrative and in the embedded narrative) and discourse (digressions, comments, and descriptions) is established with the positive connotations of Lezzayer (or Tamaneɣt) as a place of personal and professional development (including universities, places of residence, work spaces, and Dr. Legziri's medical office). Before it became a place of marital life, Algiers was a place of university studies for Utudert and his friends,Footnote 26 and a place of cultural activities and friendship (Dr. Legziri's narratives: chapters 11, 13, 15). After finishing their studies, several characters moved there in order to work.
The reader will also notice this complementarity in the images of disenchantment, starting from the space of Tamurt, a term that recurs frequently throughout this novel. Representing Kabylia or Algeria as a whole, this space is approached negatively in the short, embedded narratives as well as in the narrator's comments and characters' remarks. The narrator recounts, for example, that Utudert's first love, Neǧma, had left Algeria immediately after finishing her university studies because she was so disappointed by the desperate state of the country: “She hates the village to an unimaginable point, if she stays there she would lose her life.Footnote 27 This sentiment is shared by Meẓyan, who believes that any child born in Algeria will certainly experience suffering and frustration.Footnote 28 The narrator also expresses the same thoughts regarding this situation: “this country is a prison without doors, both on the left and on the right, no one finds themselves there as they wish. Many people died for this country, those who survived the war are in remorse.”Footnote 29 Without community values such as mutual aid, the image of Tamurt (symbolizing Kabylia) is likewise disappointing.Footnote 30 In several passages, Kabylia (through the village space) is represented as a place where life is difficult.Footnote 31
As a study of space in the novel Tettḍilli-d ur d-tkeččem, this article has aimed to identify how the spatial dimension is inscribed both in the narrative and in the moments of narrative suspension (including comments, descriptions, second narratives, and dialogues) and, in so doing, has provided some answers that foster broader reflection on Mezdad's writing style. Generally, space is presented as a topographical reality in narrative and as a toponymic reality in discourse. Narrative suspensions such as comments, dialogues, and descriptions provide information that marks how characters perceive the village and urban spaces. The narrative structure of this text, which is based both on embeddedness (at several levels) and on a variety of digressions, supports its two spatial aspects. Indeed, the movement of the two friends from Algiers to Kabylia provides an opportunity to apprehend space as an ascending journey. The insertion of details about spaces in their toponymic and symbolic dimensions is information found in the comments made by the narrator and the characters as well as dialogues between the latter. And finally, the writing of space in the novel Tettḍilli-d ur d-tkeččem appears to be based on variety in terms of its (topographic, toponymic, symbolic) representation as well as a unity provided by the complementary nature of the information about space between narration and discourse.
Appendices
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