The Picaresque Public Intellectual: Dialogue with Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar

Abstract

“Let this book be fiction,” Rodaan Al Galidi wrote at the beginning of his novel Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg (2016) [Two Blankets, Three sheets (2020)], “so that the world in which I stayed for years, transforms from fiction into non-fiction”.2 In the ambiguity of these words lies a comparison as well as a difference with the first modern novel: M. de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605-12). Don Quixote travels through the Spanish countryside and intentionally decides to believe in a fantasy, to suspend the disbelief to say it with a 19th century axiom. Pretending that he is a famous knight, Quixote keenly transforms sheep into soldiers and windmills into dragons. Semmier Kariem, the protagonist in Al Galidi’s text, mixes reality and illusion as well, but not because he decides to play and suspend the disbelief, rather because he does not know where the boundaries of imagination and reality are. Coming from the desert in Iraq and having dwelled for years through the Middle-East, the protagonist lacks a fundamental knowledge and understanding of the Dutch well organised society and institutions. During the nine years of his asylum procedure, everything is strange and incomprehensible. Holland is the land of structure and control, of arrival and registration, handing over and taking in. Every asylum seeker receives “two blankets, three sheets, one towel, one pillow and a pillowcase” which must be returned once the applicant leaves for another location. Every single piece is checked over again and again.