Soukaina HABIBALLAH

Nini ya Momo

bilingual performance (Arabic / English) by Soukaina Habiballah
the entire cycle of poems is performed by the poetess in both languages

sound: Zouheir Atbane from a collection of collected Moroccan lullabies in the many languages of Morocco
stage direction : Henri jules Julien

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In Nini ya Momo, Soukaina Habiballah interweaves the voices of a grandmother and her grown-up granddaughter, who speak to each other through the mother's absence. The granddaughter has recently given birth to a child, and is eager to break free from the circle of female subjection by questioning her grandmother: why is she so determined to keep her in the oppression she herself has suffered?

Habiballah's feminism is not modelled on and could be described as decolonized. The poetess draws attention to the unyielding need for women to extricate themselves from transgenerational trauma: "it's now my turn" concludes the poem gravely.

On stage, she interweaves the Arabic and French versions of the poem and becomes her own translator, as if the two voices were alternating in her own body, her own poet's psyche. As if the two women in the poems lived inside her, in the exceptional gentleness and striking presence of her voice.

The narrative poem is bathed in the atmosphere of a cruel, even violent fairy tale. The performance benefits from a soundscape created by Zouheir Atbane from Moroccan lullabies collected from very old women in the many languages of Morocco.