L-Għarib

By Albert Camus

Translated by Toni Aquilina

Published by Faraxa, 2023

The effect of the spirit summoned by Albert Camus in 1942’s L’Étranger eludes the modern, Western, linear measurement of the passage of the human experience, thus lingering on. It reflects the Classical Greek perspective of an elliptical arrow of life’s unfolding and undoing, refracted by Nietzsche’s perception of humanity relieving itself of its suffering through endless adaptations of its plights of scripts, narratives and scores.

In Toni Aquilina’s latest interpretation of this modern classic, Meursault can only relive his struggle with his temporal and spatial dimensions, in order to engage the reader in a blinding walk under a relentless sun.

The Fates have already set out the span of coffee spoons allocated to the main character and narrator in Camus’s tale, before this is brought up short. The thread is strong, but short, intense, and by necessity finite.

Meursault is condemned to death by guillotine, the terrible egalitarian scythe that sets free the brotherhood of man, because he readily accepts cups of coffee with milk from the beadle at the old people’s home at his dead mother’s wake, and does so with relish. His recognition of this simple pleasure at what is judged to be an abomination by the prosecutor at his trial is, Meursault further realises, a sore that displays the moral wasteland that lies inside him.

In Aquilina’s taught language, fraught with tension that is on the brink of possibility, between respite and despair, escape through life and closure through death, the contrasts evoked in the natural surroundings relentlessly emerge through the narration of the characters’ actions like sharp twigs on the shrivelled underbush that somehow persists in surviving.

Aquilina’s balanced approach evokes the tension exhibited in Ennio Flaiano’s 1947 Tempo di uccidere, that drew another fragile oasis in 20th century European existential meandering played out in African sands.

Translator Toni Aquilina

This translation of Camus’s work leads us to the episode when the lost Italian soldier and narrator finds comic solace in remembering how his unit had made fun of the official who pinn­ed numbered papers to ske­le­tal branches and jutting rocks every 50 paces in order to trace his way through the boundless, shapeless labyrinth of the Ethio­pian desert, only to regret not hav­ing thought of doing so himself.

Aquilina’s delicate, sensitive, mindful approach even allows for dashes of mirage-like salvation through moments that suggest Meursault may find his own white envelope near the river, as Flaiano’s soldier does, which he recognises as his own because his name is printed on the front. This is described as the most important missive of his life because it is a reminder that he, identified by that name and surname, is the only human who may respond to it, and that by doing so he is still alive.

Aquilina’s delicate, sensitive, mindful approach even allows for dashes of mirage-like salvation

A great deal has been written about the different ways in which Camus’s text has been translated into different languages. L-Għarib gestures towards the foreigness and outcast nature of Meursault, a man in an inhospitable land, seeking shelter, l-għarb, from the arid storm, by being true and accountable to his understanding of life, in thought and in action.

While sharing roots yet not the development, the term is suggestive in its proximity to the Maltese word for Arab. Indeed, by taking into account the socio-political dimension, one observes how Meursault is a Frenchman transplanted into the shifting sands of a French Algeria that was witnessing the reclamation of the territory by the Arabs and, at a later stage, the Berbers, in so doing addressing the state of not being at home in one’s own land.

Albert Camus

In the novel, the Arabs are relegated to a shadowy, menacing presence, acting as a foil, at best, to the evolution of Meursault’s story. Since Conor Cruise o’Brien’s 1970 sharp criticism of Camus’s orientalism in handling Arab characters as expendable props, the topic of identitarian and politi­cal blindness in Camus and other writers, poignantly captured by Meursault’s shooting of an Arab man in the furnace of the sands, has gained in importance.

Kamel Daoud’s 2013 Meursault, contre-enquête, or The Meursault Investigation, provided the perspective of Haroun, the now elderly imaginary brother of the killed man, who notes that Meursault seems to have been overwhelmed by the overpowering sun and the too much salt that led to a lack of sight of the Arab community surrounding him.

Indeed, Meursault, a name evok­ing death and salt, has a predecessor, albeit spelt slightly different, Mersault, suggesting the sea, mother and salt, featuring in Camus’s earlier novel, La Mort heureuse/A Happy Death.

Aquilina’s translation invites us to enter this vertiginous cycle. Just as searching for an honest, revelatory connection with one’s natural and social context may lead to dishonest truths, reading seminal tales for our times through inspired, careful writing, is never enough and necessary.