In Havre-Saint-Pierre, the Lebanese-Quebec writer Abla Farhoud wanted to mark the end of her work by evoking questions that were dear to her – belonging, attachment to language and what she calls “ the enigma of departure”, this mysterious impulse which pushes certain people to uproot themselves in order to emigrate. But she also wanted to write about her father in this moving story which takes us from Lebanon to the North Shore, and which saw the light of day thanks to the contribution of her daughter, Alecka Farhoud.
When Abla Farhoud died on December 1, 2021, her novel was in the hands of her publisher, Alain-Nicolas Renaud. Knowing that the end was approaching, the writer asked him to make the final corrections so that it could be published. Without telling his daughter. “She would never have asked me that,” she said. It’s way too heavy. Then my mother passes away and the whole month of December passes. »
Alecka Farhoud suddenly realizes that she could not sit idly by. “I wrote to Alain-Nicolas and I told him: “It’s stronger than me, I can’t let you do this alone, I have to do it with you. I want to be my mother’s watchdog, I want to be her voice.’”
Since her mother’s first novel, Happiness Has a Slippery Tail (published in 1998), Alecka Farhoud has always been her privileged reader. “I was 17 when she started making me read her first drafts. She had confidence in my artistic sense and that gave me strength,” she recalls.
Mother and daughter even wrote an album together, Alecka, produced in 2011 by her brother Mathieu, aka Chafiik, from the group Loco Locass.
“We worked together, I know how she writes, I know her rhythm,” says Alecka Farhoud.
The editor therefore sends her the latest version of the text so that she can make final corrections.
Between laughter and tears, Alecka Farhoud realizes that she has finally spared her mother this part of the work that she abhorred – the corrections. “I lived with my mother a lot; I left, I came back, even with my daughter, and I saw him in his face all the time when it was correction time. She hated it! Deep down, she was glad she didn’t have to do it,” she says with a laugh.
Now that the book has finally been published, Alecka Farhoud feels proud. “Filled with fullness. »
“I made sure my mother could get her book out. If a mother who builds houses dies and her house is missing windows, are we going to leave the house like that? ”, she asks.
She remembers how this mother who never lost her capacity to wonder, and who she misses so much, “fell into depression” after each novel. “I had to cheer her up because she thought she wouldn’t be able to write anymore… A real artist! »
Through the story of two brothers who travel from Montreal to Havre-Saint-Pierre, on the North Shore, to pay their respects at the grave of their sister who died half a century earlier, Abla Farhoud wanted to tell the story of the story of his father, who remained in Lebanon while his entire family emigrated to Quebec. “Before, the Lebanese would leave and leave the oldest child in the village to look after the land. My mother had been trying to write this novel about her father for about 10 years, but she couldn’t find the right idea. She would start it, then leave it to write another one. Before she passed away, she ended up writing it; his first novel was the story of his mother, and his last, that of his father. »
Finally, it was with the – fictional – story of this sister who died in Havre-Saint-Pierre that she found the way to tell the heartbreak experienced by her father, her relationship with this brother she had lost sight of and this mother who had abandoned him. On the other hand, Alecka Farhoud does indeed have great-grandparents who lived on the North Shore at the turn of the 20th century, since that is where the boats leaving from Beirut before reaching Montreal docked. “My great-great-grandfather arrived in Havre-Saint-Pierre in July with his son and he found it beautiful; he settled down and opened a business, but he didn’t know there was November, December, January, February,” she says with a laugh.
This story of immigration and wanderings of identity, Alecka Farhoud nevertheless put the real end to it, in the end, by writing the last paragraph of the novel. Her eyes veiled by tears, she remembers how she lit her mother’s lantern and began to write without thinking. “When I reread what I had written, I said: it’s good. Then the lantern went out. It was my mother who said: the book is finished. »
