Mudhakkirāt Randā al-Trans by Ḥāzem Sāghiyyah: how to handle difficult topics in a biography

This paper will deal with Hazem Saghieh's recently published, by Dar Al-Saqi, Mudhakkirat Randa Iltrans. It is the biography of Randa Lamri, an Algerian transexual and LGBT rights activist. Told in the first person, it starts from the pre-birth accident that engendered her peculiarity, going through her earliest childhood, when the little Fu'ad realizes that he wants to be a girl, until when, eventually, she flees to Lebanon escaping death menaces. In between develops the story of her progressive gaining consciousness of her gender difference and its real meaning, counter a dark background of any kind of vexation imposed by a traditional and male dominated society, sometimes lightened by glimpses of happiness and discovery. Above all, the book breaks a taboo: it talks openly about a topic dealing with sexual diversity at its extreme consequences. And it does it, willingly, sympathizing with the portrayed character. Besides the importance of the subject itself, we find the authorship extremely relevant: Hazim Saghieh is a well known Lebanese writer on politics and society, as well as a reputed politics columnist for the London based daily paper al-Hayat. Subject and authorship are, thus, the main features that mingle with the inextricable duplicity of the work as genre: the strict cooperation between the author and the protagonist position the text on the boundary between biography and autobiography. The whole gives to the work interesting peculiarities. Firstly, the story itself is the bulk of the work's value: writing about it is a courageous stand in itself. However, this doesn't mean that this biography is not a work of art: the writing intervenes, here, almost fictionalizing the story, giving to it an aesthetic (and, eventually, marketable) value. Precisely, entire sets of values are engaged and faced through clear and well functioning mechanisms. It is my interest, here, to clarify whether its not being a work of fiction brings not to operate the taboo breaking activity on the aesthetic level: while it is extremely subtly crafted, as a book it doesn't look like it wants to gather attention for its aesthetic value. To complicate this level of analysis comes the weight of the authorship. In fact, the author, Saghieh, put at stake a lot of his “artistic and professional capital” in this operation. Furthermore he doesn't hesitate in taking position about the topic, at every level. Also considered as a novel, the wok has been seen as a diversion from his habitual production. I will try to show how and through which mechanisms Saghieh exercises the authorial control, keeping strong and visible links with his intellectual activity, and leaving his mark on a story which is not 'his'.