Why did you choose to come to the Nice Book Festival?
Because it is a magical city that I only briefly saw in 2004 when I came to the Cannes Festival. I could not pass through the region without seeing this city. I believe it is one of the significant cities of the Mediterranean, and you can take my word for it given my involvement in the Mediterranean region. Not only am I the Ambassador of the 16th Mediterranean Games held in Pescara (Abruzzo/Italy) starting June 26, 2009, but I will also receive the “Lazio Award for Europe and the Mediterranean” in July 2009 in Rome. Nice has such history and beauty that one cannot be insensitive to it. I will absolutely return to simply let myself be carried away by its air, swim in its waters, admire its fountains, and its new square with statues that become colored with magic at night…
What does the French Riviera inspire in you?
The grandeur and beauty of Mediterranean civilization. The sound of its cicadas in the summer, its extraordinary products such as olives, lavender, fruits, sublime nights, and the colors of the sky at sunrise and sunset. This coast is beautiful, rugged, magnificent in its seabeds, diverse in its humanities, its cuisine, and the sweetness of life there!
What were your expectations for the 2009 Book Festival?
I was looking forward to contact with visitors, the connection that can link me to others. At the end of it, this Festival allowed me to find competent and determined people (the Festival agents…). Among the visitors, I was extraordinarily happy to reunite with a friend from Morocco who lives on the French Riviera. Also, my department head at a Parisian hospital where I specialized in Psychiatry, another friend whom I had lost touch with for 12 years.
Was it difficult for you to establish yourself in this environment as a woman?
I no longer feel the difficulty of asserting myself as a woman. Certainly not in France, and even less so in Nice where the welcome is simply generous, strong, and friendly. Nice is full of Mediterraneans; we are all the same in the warmth of living, cordiality, and hospitality. In another way, I no longer feel ostracism against women anywhere because I have learned to speak to men and there are wonderful men out there.
Most of your works deal with the condition of Moroccan women, in a few words, how do you perceive it today?
I believe she is the most advanced in the Arab and Islamic world while saying that my goal today has surpassed my region. I live in the quest for universality and universalism.
What has been the evolution of women in your view?
That of all women in the world: the quest for a better status, the pursuit of dignity, of the ability to be mature and dignified. Whether they succeed sooner or later is not the question because women around the world progress very rapidly in a world that can no longer do without them and all their abilities and skills.
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