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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): Welcome to This Being Human. I’m your host, Abdul-Rehman Malik. On this podcast, I talk to extraordinary people from all over the world, whose life, ideas, and art are shaped by Muslim culture. 

 

Hisham Matar: When I started to write, I realized actually you’re not the authority in that way. You are actually just…you’re trying to come upon yourself. You’re trying to write the sentence that you didn’t ever think that you might write.

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hisham Matar has been one of my favourite authors since I read his first novel, In the Country of Men, back in 2006.  He has a real gift for exploring the complexities of identity, exile, and belonging. Over the years, his stories have resonated with me, not just for the power of their prose, but for the way they feel like intimate conversations about what it means to be human. Most recently, I had the privilege of listening to Hisham narrate his latest novel, My Friends, as an audiobook. His voice felt like he was confiding something exceptionally personal to me. The novel is a moving meditation on friendship and its many dimensions—how it changes, challenges, and shapes us over time. These are ideas he also meditated on at a recent talk at a literary festival in Italy, where he reflected on the heartbreaking state of the world, and the challenge of seeing it all with clarity and purpose. Because I’d had Hisham’s voice in my ear for days, it felt like we were catching up like old friends. Our discussion moved easily from Hisham’s writing process to his thoughts on cities as living characters to the profound connections that shape our lives. The result is one of the most memorable episodes of This Being Human yet. And I hope you think so, too. 

 

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Abdul-Rehman Malik: As I have been listening to My Friends as an audiobook, and I have so loved it, I didn’t realize initially it was you. And then as I’d watched a few things, I was like, I’m pretty sure this is Hisham Matar reading his own book. And of course it is. And it’s very beautiful. I think it’s even more beautiful as you’re narrating it. I’m sure as an author, you bring a sensibility to the words and tone that is specific to you and your writing. And so it’s quite wonderful to experience that. 

 

Hisham Matar: Thank you very much. Thank you. You know, when you’re writing one of the many things that I found endlessly fascinating about writing is that you’re doing lots of things. But one of the things that you’re doing is that you are creating style in some sense, right? And style is partly connected to sound and the rhythm of something. But when you’re writing, when you’re alone in your room writing, the last thing you want to do is read it aloud to yourself. But the reason I said yes is because I thought it would be a very good way to reciprocate the many pleasures I got from being read to, you know, because before I learned to read, actually quite a while before—I was a late learner, you know, mainly because nobody knew that I couldn’t see properly until I went to school. Of course, my parents were horrified to discover it. But, you know, I didn’t really see a word until I was six, when I put on my glasses. So I remember my first encounters with literature were lying on my mother’s belly as she was reading to me, the Arabian Nights and me hearing it, but also feeling it through her body, you know? And so I thought, you know, I’m going to have a go here. And I went to the studio and there was this lovely man who was producing it. And then you suddenly realize that you’re actually reading it to one person. You know, the imagined person— you, in this case, walking around with it, listening to it.

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I thought that your lecture that you delivered in May in Florence, Italy, “To Know and to Know Not,” which was serialized in Harper’s magazine, was such a profound, beautiful and I have to say frankly emotional meditation on the time that we’re living in, but also your craft as a writer. And and that you chose, as you were just describing now, Hisham, this experience of not…I wouldn’t even say not seeing clearly because, as you so beautifully take us into your childhood experience, I’m there with you as you’re speaking about that childhood experience. I actually don’t see you as not seeing clearly. You yourself saw very clearly in your own way, in your own world, and you adapted a way of seeing the world and the way you describe that jarring experience of putting on your glasses and being able to quote unquote, see clearly for the first time. And then yet realizing that in that seeing clearly, you had lost something was…I found it breathtaking. 

 

Hisham Matar: That’s a beautiful way of putting it. It’s, um…I suppose I agree with those, you know, with lots of the people that have, those great artists that have really affected me, you know, whether it’s Abu Ala Al-Ma’ari or Ovid or Titian or….They’re working in different genres—writers, painters from different parts of the world and different times. One of the things that they share is that they really do think that the way that we perceive the world, the way that we attend to it, informs our ideas about it. And so the fact that I was born with this, you know, very poor eyesight and I couldn’t see distinctions. The fact that, for example, I thought that when I put my hand on my father’s arm, it sort of merged with his flesh, you know, my fingers. That, in other words, to touch is to merge, you know? Has affected my ideas about what actually occurs when I reach my hand out to you and shake your hand. Our blood rhythms are sort of touching there, you know, that there’s something quite profound about that gesture. And I attribute it back to that moment.

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: You describe in that same magnificent talk, the hot bitterness of dispossession. It was another kind of breathtaking conjoining of words. The hot bitterness of it running in the veins of those around you, and more bewildering, in your veins. And this experience, as you describe it, having been birthed into your identity by a long history of possession and dispossession. Of colonization. Of prejudice. Of things being stolen and taken away and replaced. And you arrive at that place, and then I wonder if that feeling of dispossession is similar to that sense of frustration and boredom that you talk about as a place of creative emergence. 

 

Hisham Matar: I mean, to state the obvious, we’re all born into the aftermath, you know? We’re all born into stories and we’re born into possession and dispossession of a certain kind. But in my personal experience, you know, coming from North Africa, being born in 1970. So I’m born 20 years into a very fresh and incomplete independence and there was still this sense of diminished or broken or not quite knowing really what the future holds. And at the same time, existing in a world that has very specific ideas about who a North African Arab Muslim is and does. I’m just thinking about my parents, you know, the way that they moved in Europe then. Of course, people had specific ideas about who they are or what they might be thinking, but they were more informed, whereas now, there is sort of…you do walk around with this baggage somehow. You realize to what extent that the world has very specific ideas about you. All this to say that I think part of the thing that I’ve been very preoccupied with is how do you, on the one hand, find all the vitality needed in order to engage with your aftermath, with your history? At the same time, do it in such a way where you’re not manipulated by narrow responses to that that are around you? Because that, to me, seems to me like the genuine liberation, right? That’s the place where you can really exist unsupervised in some sense, you know? 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Yeah, that notion of being unsupervised, Hisham, of existing on your own terms, it feels like a profound challenge. But it also is not a challenge that’s merely like an obstacle. It’s a structure. You describe it in that same, those same words from Florence, as a realization that you are outside of a boundary. That you exist outside of a center. As I was reading that and processing it and listening to you now, wondering how you, as a writer, express the whole of yourself…sometimes as a writer, as a journalist, even sometimes as I’m talking about these things, I feel like I’m talking into the boundary and the boundary is becoming more defined. And in a way, my words are helping define my boundary. And I’m asking myself the question, have I somehow embraced that boundary? Do I want to exist outside of it? Does the center mean anything to me anymore? Maybe I need to redefine a center. Those are some of the questions that come into my mind—I wonder if you contend with the same, Hisham. 

 

Hisham Matar: Absolutely. I mean, those are the questions, in a sense, right? I mean, if you are interested in finding a form of expression that isn’t supervised, that isn’t premeditated, but if you want to…if the point is to find something that’s truly, you know, independent in some way, then those are the questions! And I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know how to do it, but I can tell you that, for me, one of the things that I’m trying to do is, I want to come upon myself. I used to think, as a reader, when I was young and and dreaming about what a life in literature, or what, I believed that I had the soul of a writer, but I didn’t have the pen, right? So I thought, well, what if, you know, what would it be like if this soul had a pen? Like, what would that look like? You know? And I would read the books that I loved and I would think, God, how’d you do that? How does that put together, you know? How is this book put together? And in my fantasy, then, the person that really knew how it was put together is the writer, you know? Whereas, well, when I started to write, I realized, actually, you’re not the authority in that way. You are actually just…you’re trying to come upon yourself. You’re trying to write the sentence that you didn’t ever think that you might write. In other words, to write isn’t an act of, an expression of authority or command. Like, I’ve gone, I’ve figured it out, I’ve found all the words that I need and I’ve sat down and put them down. No, it’s actually, for me at least, I sit down and write exactly when I don’t have the words. When I am filled with whatever it is, an emotion, an idea, a state, an image, that genuinely seems unsayable. And I need to find the language to create a space for it. Not to say it, because you can never say it. You know, if you’ve ever loved someone so passionately, you can never, ever, whatever you say to them, will never communicate that love. You’ll have to do 1,000,001 things. In fact, for most of us, you have to live a whole lifetime to express a little bit of the love that you feel towards that person. And so, in a similar sense, with writing, you are finding words that are not going to say it, but they’re going to conjure it. And this is the part that I find really hopeful about writing, is that you cannot do that unless you sustain a certain level of confidence that a complete stranger would read that and would meet you halfway, you know, they would get it.

 

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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): I have a small favour to ask you. If you enjoy this show, there’s a really quick thing you can do to help us make it even better. Just take five minutes to fill out a short survey. This is the Aga Khan museum’s first-ever podcast and a little bit of feedback will help us measure our impact and reach more people with extraordinary stories from some of the most interesting artists, thinkers, and leaders on the kaleidoscope of Muslim experience. To participate, go to agakhanmuseum.org/tbhsurvey. That’s agakhanmusic.org/tbhsurvey.  The link is also in the show notes. Thanks for listening to This Being Human. Now, back to the interview.

 

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Abdul-Rehman Malik: Your latest novel, My Friends, has been celebrated writers and critics all across the world. And Mabrouk. Congratulations. 

 

Hisham Matar: Thank you. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: On all of the amazing accolades that it has received and I’m sure will continue to receive. The book sort of arrived in front of me, Hisham, at a time when I had been thinking a lot about friendship. And I have been thinking, as I approach 50, I’m five years behind you. Thinking a lot about what friendship means. And this book is such a…I mean, I think words do escape me. It is an exploration of friendship that is…it’s like looking through a prism. It’s like looking through a prism and finding friendship displayed and discussed and parsed and confronted and critiqued and experienced in all these myriad ways. And as I was reading it, I became more and more intrigued by how you approached a book about friendship. And I’m wondering, what did writing about friendship reveal to you about the bonds that shape us? 

 

Hisham Matar: Yeah, it’s, I mean, like you, it’s a very profound thing in my life, you know? And I wanted to write about friendship, but I wanted specifically to write about male friendship because I know from my women friends that their friendship with women is different than their friendship with men, not in some simplified way, categorized way, but there’s a slightly different kind of intensity and register. And what is exchanged between us is different. I feel my women friends are my sisters. Where I feel that my male friends are my friends, competitors, allies. You know, it’s a different kind of friendship, slightly. I’m exaggerating here, only for effect. But it’s, there is definitely that difference, for me at least. And my reliance on it is so strong. And maybe that’s because I’m, you know, I’ve lived most of my life away from my family. Maybe that’s part of it. But I think the structure itself is so unique and amazing. And the language that we use, the modern language that we use, has, you know, served, at times, serves to devalue it. You know, it’s partly to do with social media that now we’re all friends and, you know, “he’s my friend.” And we use that word casually. We stop using, for example, “acquaintance.” We think that might be felt a bit as an insult, for example, if I call somebody that I know a little bit an “acquaintance.” So we call everybody “friends.” But we also know that, you know, two really close friends. Those two, you know, it’s a lot more involved in that. And one of the things that I find interesting about it as a structure is that it’s quite promiscuous, you know? It’s not clear what kind of friends we’re going to be. In fact, the best way to ruin a friendship is to say, okay, this is the kind of friends we’re going to be, you know?

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Yes, totally.

 

Hisham Matar: So, invested in it, it’s a work in progress. It has a kind of confidence in time. And when it doesn’t work, part of the pain, I think, is that we feel a sort of… we feel lots of things. We feel that that confidence has not been justified. And therefore our confidence in time in general is shaken. And confidence in people is shaken. And we also feel, I think one of the…the specific kind of mourning. If you’ve ever had a very, very close friend with whom, for reasons that aren’t quite clear to you, the friendship has sort of waned or surfaced or become kind of flat or ended altogether. Part of the grief, I think, has got to do with the fact that, with that friend, just like with every friend, you’ve shared a certain facet of yourself. And that facet has now become sort of mute. And so one of the ways to think of friendship is that each friend brings out a certain side of us. And that’s maybe why we sound different with each friend. It’s not that we are being dishonest. But with each friend, there’s a different register. We’re a little bit more adamant with this friend about that particular subject. And then yet with the other friend, we’re sort of almost on the opposite side of the argument, you know? As if we use our friends to calibrate ourselves, you know, to calibrate our emotions, our ideas about the world. And so, yeah, I just find it endlessly fascinating. And I thought it would serve well as the center of a novel that is thinking about human temperament, is thinking about exile and belonging and finding a home, not only in place, but with people. And a novel that is also thinking about history and politics. And so I thought that would be…let’s put that in the middle, rather than, I usually feel this very, very profoundly important subject is usually put on the periphery of things as though we all assume that everybody has friends and all friends are the same. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: It’s like, I completely resonate with that, and in some ways, I’m wondering when you started writing the book, because it feels like the theme of friendship, in some ways, has grown more poignant and needy in the last few years, particularly as we went through COVID and lockdown, in some ways, we were forced to choose a pod. We were forced to choose a group of people with whom we would associate with. And I think there were people who we came to call friends through that.  

 

Hisham Matar: I think they did. You know, I mean, I’ve been thinking about this book for a long time, but most of the writing happened during lockdown. I feel both guilty and vulgar for saying it. But lockdown was very good for me because I just was working on this book and I felt totally…but I also noticed how, for me and many people I know, exactly what you say, that COVID sort of changed or altered our social appetites. You know, I found that there are certain people that I used to see that I maybe don’t desire to see as much, and other people that I didn’t see enough of. So it did something to all of that. But it also, of course, to state the obvious, it also just highlighted to what extent I need and value friendship and the companionship of a friend. And I can remember, you know, in the early days when we were going in and out of these lockdowns, the museums would open and then, of course, they restricted numbers. So you walk into a gallery and you’re standing in front of a painting completely alone. It’s like three meters before there’s another person, you know? Lots of people were saying, isn’t that great? You know, now we have it all to ourselves. And actually, I really missed a complete stranger standing next to me, looking at the same picture. Without any words, we are exchanging something quite profound. Being with people, listening to a complete stranger, I have deep faith in standing in the street and speaking to a complete stranger. That gesture, that “why am I talking to you? I don’t know you,” horrifies me. That thought horrifies me. Because, you know, we’re all connected in some profound way. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: And the paradox of it, Hisham, is that those kinds of prosaic encounters are sometimes met with great suspicion. And I’ve felt, sometimes, even more so because of the bodies that we occupy, you know? As we kind of reach out and have these prosaic conversations with strangers, something in me always says, you know, Abdul-Rehman, be careful. How are you being perceived? And again, comes to this, this beautiful imagery that you’ve given us of being at the edge of boundaries. 

 

Hisham Matar: That’s beautiful. And it brings us back to your initial question about, how do you write from here? That’s partly what I meant by being unobserved. Or being, you know…like, what would Abdul-Rehman say in that situation if he didn’t think that? Of course, it’s an impossible, it’s an impossible expectation to place on yourself in social situations. But I’ve always, I remember, for example, when I was a kid, I had a friend who was blind, who was born blind. He’d never seen. And I really admired the ease with which he carried his body. He just, he dressed in whatever his mom gave him. The clothes never quite fitted properly. They were either a little bit too big or, you know. So he was more comfortable physically than anyone I’ve met. The way he sat and…because he didn’t feel observed. And I remember, as a child, thinking, God, that must be so nice. I was always worried about my hair or about my shoes or whatever it was, you know, am I sitting properly? Am I sitting in a manly way? Am I sitting in a feminine way? And all this rubbish, you know? And this guy had none of it. There’s a wonderful painting by Duccio, who’s a painter that I love, and it’s called “The Healing of the Man Born Blind.” And he paints it almost like an early film, you know, with two versions of the man who’s being healed. And so, Christ heals the blind, he puts his finger on his eye. So that’s the first version of the blind man. Doesn’t see. He’s facing the crowd. He’s feeling quite at ease, or so I imagine. And then there’s the second version of him that now can see, and the version that can see is turned away from the crowd. And is looking upwards almost in a slightly sort of shy, contemplative mode. As though he suddenly realizes, oh, now that I can see. I’m also implicated in the social language of seeing and being seen, you know? It’s a phenomenal painting because it’s all…and then the upper half of it is the landscape, architectural landscape. And all of the buildings have windows that are blank. So Duccio, it’s like a little essay on what it means to see and what it means to be seen and what we think is actually happening here, you know, in this very casual thing that we do every day. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: The other thing that you observe in My Friends is the city. In a way, the framing of the entire novel is this marvelous jaunt, right? This marvelous walk through London. London becomes a character. It is at times melancholic. It is at times joyous. It has portents of dread and, at times, of celebration. What is it about London, I mean cities, perhaps, that is so evocative? What turns them into living, breathing creatures with emotion, pathos, and portent?

 

Hisham Matar: That’s a wonderful question. I mean it’s, cities are, I mean, in some way, cities are an invention of how you might organize human life, right? I mean, of course, each city has its history and how it came to look that way. But I’m always fascinated, for example, that you could get off the train at a different city and you suddenly realize it’s just a different rhythm. The way people walk. It’s ever so slightly, you know? As though to live in a city is to take part in this organism in some way. And also, it’s, for me personally, it’s been a place that has helped me organize my life, my thinking, myself. And one of the things, even though, of course…I think one definition of home is a place where you can find your hiding places. You know? And also, where you can find your pleasure. You have to seek it.. If you haven’t spent enough time looking at a tree, maybe you should go do that, or go see somebody you love or listen to a piece of music. And London, for me, and that’s because I’ve been here a long time and I had to find those things. It wasn’t, I don’t want to give you the impression that it was a natural marriage. You know, it was, you know, for a long time. I know, a very frustrating place for me, a very difficult place, a very lonely place, a very expensive place, a very foreign place. Cold. Weather and temperament, you know. And, you know, it was for a long time, all of that. But I found those things here after a while. 

 

STING

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I’ve often thought of entering this age as entering the last trimester of my life before I’m birthed into eternity. It feels more poignant than at any other time in my life. And also, as you said, more consequential. I feel consequence now more than ever. And as you’re speaking, I feel like you’re giving words to a lot of these feelings that I and the generation of folks around me are having right now, that indeed, it’s like we’re thinking about fate and consequence and the present more than ever. In a way, your memoir, The Return, was almost a statement of that, wasn’t it? Of the desire to connect with the fate and story of your father and those neighborhoods that you grew up in and the places that you came from, knowing that, in a way, it was called The Return, but the return was always incomplete, was always the only, it could only be a kind of a return.

 

Hisham Matar: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, early on in that book, I knew the title right from the start. And I thought I want to be, in part, sort of guided by the title. And it became evident to me, the very simple thing about that word, “return.” That to return is to turn again. To re-turn. And I’ve always thought it was interesting that when Muslims go to pilgrimage, we go to Mecca. So imagine you’ve traveled all this distance. A friend of mine is a long distance cyclist and he cycled from Cairo, he lives in Cairo, and he cycled from Cairo to Mecca. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: That’s incredible.

 

Hisham Matar: Right? And he sent me all these photographs of him on his bicycle going to all these places. And then he sent me a photograph, of course, the ultimate photograph of standing beside Mecca, right? So I just have this image of what, you know, what all Muslims who go to pilgrimage do. They travel a long distance, usually a long distance, arrive there. But then what do you do when you arrive? You don’t arrive and touch it. I mean, you can. But that’s not really the point. The point is that you arrive and you perambulate. And there is something always fascinating to me about that, you, in other words, the center is always nameless. You know, you cannot name it. You cannot, you know. And of course, in this sense, it’s the oneness of God. But I mean, also in experiences. Also, if you’re going to describe to me how you feel about your mother. You can never tell me. You only have to perambulate around. You have to tell me. Oh, you know, she does this and she does this. And you mention some anecdotes. What we all do. Right? So I thought, with that book, really the thing that I am returning to is itself, like my father, absent, or at least hard for me to hold, to find. So I perambulate around it.

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: There’s these constant themes that seem for me to connect your work together, themes of connection, identity, and memory, and journeys. All of them contain journeys, whether it’s the journey of diaspora and dispossession, whether it’s the walk across London, whether it’s the return to understand what happened to your beloved father, all of these things appear again, and again, beautifully. And I wonder, as a writer, I guess, is there a question, not a conclusion, but is there a question that you hope will carry with us when we turn the last page and go to make a coffee or go to see our friends down at the cafe?

 

Hisham Matar: Oh, that’s such a good question. The first thing that comes to mind is how might we live? I mean, in other words, that I think it’s, you know, one of the things that I am, you know, genuinely, I always pause before saying it because I worry about it coming across as naive because I suppose I feel that I exist in a culture that might think of such notions as naive. But maybe I’m underestimating. I’m really struck by this thing, what’s happening, you know, by being a human being. I’m very struck by it. I’m very. It’s just immeasurable. It’s really the most interesting thing that has ever happened to me. You know, it’s just so powerful and so hard to measure. Hard to know that, you know, given that we’re all inheritors of human history. And that I am, you know, nothing, I mean, nothing fills me with more grief and horror than our legacy. And nothing fills me with more pride and joy and consolation, you know? So it’s so complicated! And one of the things that I’m interested in is anything that enlivens that, you know, anything that exposes the range, you know, the breadth of the repertoire of what it is to be a human being. Because it leaves me then with the sort of questions that call on possibilities, not the questions that stifle or, you know, but the questions that are interested in possibilities. And so maybe, maybe something like that, you know? For myself, for my friends, and to ease the passage of time, you know? That’s closer to it for me. In a sense, you do write— it’s almost that intimate. You do write to ease the passage of time and to connect with others in some way. Not to want something in return. You know, not to want somebody to go away and do something or think something in particular.

 

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Abdul-Rehman Malik: Hisham, tell me about a joy or a meanness that came to you recently as an unexpected visitor. 

 

Hisham Matar: Oh, wow. I have the immeasurable delight and pleasure of contact with some fabulous young people, my nephews and nieces, and my former students and children of dear friends. And they weave into my days with such rapidity that it’s just an endless joy. So I would say that. They cheer me up now hugely. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I feel they’re very privileged to have an uncle like you. 

 

Hisham Matar: I’m very lucky to have to have them. And also, I love those you know, I love actually the very basic things. Like the other day, my niece was, came by for breakfast. And she was standing with me in the kitchen and I was making Spanish omelets and I was cutting some avocado. So I wash the avocado, sliced it in half. And then I took the spoon and I spooned it out and it came out in one tidy go, and I could just see her eyes, you know? She’s this 20-year-old and she just looked, in her eyes. She was marveling at this! And she said, no, no, wait! We’re about to take the second half of the avocado. She goes, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait. Show me how you did this. I want to learn how to do this. And we spent the next few minutes showing her how to do that, how to slice the avocado. 

 

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I love it.

 

Hisham Matar: I think that’s where it’s at.

 

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Abdul-Rehman Malik: Hisham Matar. It has been such a joy for me and an incredible pleasure to be able to spend this time with you. And thank you for your incredible generosity of spirit and for exploring your craft and your work with us. This has been really magnificent. 

 

Hisham Matar: Thank you, Abdul-Rehman. And thank you for the attention you’ve given me and my work. But also this joyful and sensitive way of looking at the work. I really take it to heart. Thank you so much. 

 

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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): You can find Hisham Matar’s books at your local bookstore or library. This Being Human is presented by the Aga Khan Museum. Through the arts, the Aga Khan Museum sparks wonder, curiosity, and understanding of Muslim cultures and their connection with other cultures. This Being Human is produced by Antica Productions in partnership with TVO. Our senior producer is Imran Ali Malik. Our associate producer is Emily Morantz. Our executive producers are Laura Regehr and Stuart Coxe. Mixing and sound design by Phil Wilson. Original music by Boombox Sound. Katie O’Connor is TVO’s Managing Editor of Digital Video and Podcasts. Laurie Few is the executive for digital at TVO.

 

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