XÁMZA (häm'zä)*
XÁMZA has been conceived as both a novel and a book of fine arts photography. The photographs depict actual characters in the story. They are drawn from contemporary photographers and archival sources. They give weight to the reality of North Africa--a land steeped in magic and beauty.
XÁMZA takes place in a distant time when Moslems and Jews lived together in peace. It is a fantasy. It tells the story of Amaris Dahia, who, it is said, traveled between worlds. Between the animal and the human. Between danger and enchantment. Between revelation and delusion. Between the caves of Al-Andaluz and the sands of the Zahara. Between the Chamber of the Beasts and the Kingdom of the Jackal.
XÁMZA illuminates a little-known world of lost desert kingdoms, harems, mystical rituals, and intimate secrets of life, death and the possibility of redemption.
In XÁMZA I wanted to create a work in the spirit of Dostoevsky, who said, “Beauty would save the world.” It may not, but I'd rather err on the side of the angels. Nevertheless, XÁMZA is a fantasy grounded in reality. Here are two examples.
There is a demon at the center of the story (we all love our demons). This one, Louar, the One-Eyed Jackal (one eye sees only in the daylight and one only at night) is named after a very real one-eyed bandit who roamed the Algerian Zahara in a Land Rover. Michal Palin mentions him in his Zaharan travalogue. Louar means, the One-Eyed One. In XÁMZA, Louar is tragic, not an evil.
Then there is Dahia el Kahina. She was a Jewish Berber Warrior Queen known as the Malkat Ifriqiya, the Queen of Africa, who lived in the Aures Mountains of Algeria in the 7th Century. When Arab armies first invaded North Africa, she successfully fought them off for seven years, before being captured and beheaded. Today she is a mythic figure to North Africans, standing as a symbol of anti-colonialism. Kahina means prophetess in Arabic. It is also possible that Kahina derives from Kohen, the ancient priestly class in Jerusalem, descended from the biblical Aaron, brother of Moses.
I have written this to point out how little we in the West know of a world that has thrust itself upon us--whether we like it or not. My hope is that XÁMZA opens a small window of understanding between East and West--while, at the same time, being an exciting work of the imagination.
Albert Louis Greenberg
*Xámza: An amulet common to Arabs, Jews, Berbers and Gypsies. It is used as a protection against the evil eye.
All rights reserved 2008 Albert Louis Greenberg