Amin Maalouf’s Rock of Tanios

While Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf spent most of his time in the Lebanese capital before moving to France, he was most inspired by the small mountainous village in Metn where his family hails from. Recently elected to the pre-eminent class of Institute de France’s French Academy, Maalouf is still strongly attached to the Metn village of Mashraa on which his prize-winning book “The Rock of Tanios” is based. Written in French, “The Rock of Tanios” describes many events and places that are still recognizable in Mashraa. Readers will find scenes reminiscent of Mashraa and the neighboring Ain al-Qabou village, where most of the small populations work in agriculture and many of them, as with the Maalouf family, spend only the summer season there. “The Rock of Tanios” won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in French Literature in 1993, the year it was published, but Maalouf’s latest honor is perhaps his greatest. Elected to the French Academy last year but inducted this month, 63-year-old Maalouf is the first Lebanese to have joined the institute, which has 40 lifelong members. Succeeding French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who died in 2009, Maalouf has become an academy immortal, as such members are known. Established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu of French King Louis XIII, the French Academy plays a strong advisory role in representing the French language. During an official ceremony at the French Institute in Paris, Jean-Christophe Rufin, another member, highlighted the influence of Mashraa in Maalouf’s writings. Residents of the adjacent villages of Mashraa and Ain al-Qabou praised Maalouf’s election into the academy, saying they are proud that Maalouf has brought the villages’ history to readers around the world. Many of the residents live in neighboring houses to Maalouf’s family home, which still stands on the outskirts of Mashraa overlooking a steep hill that Maalouf memorably describes as a place where “no house overshadows another.” Maalouf’s election “is something to be proud of today for me and for my family in Ain al-Qabou,” Toni al-Hajj says. Hajj, who knew Maalouf when they were neighbors, praised the author for embracing the village life in his literature. Since his first book was published in 1983, “The Crusades Through Arab Eyes,” Maalouf has written nine other books that have been translated into multiple languages due to their rich descriptions of the complexities of Middle Eastern societies and of the relationship between the region and the West. “I believe when he wrote ‘The Rock of Tanios,’ he was greatly influenced by the calm and friendly atmosphere of the village,” Hajj says as he picks cherries in his garden next to his house. “Ain al-Qabou and Mashraa are typical Lebanese villages and like most mountainous villages in the country they are pretty much detached from Beirut,” he adds. Today there are only a couple of hundred residents in the village and its church, and the Maalouf School founded by Maalouf’s family, are no longer in use. Despite the low number of inhabitants in the village, Hajj says that Maalouf’s election into the academy will have a positive effect on the area. “Amin Maalouf has introduced to the world the character of the Lebanese people and their history ... Through his ambitions and knowledge he helped spread the Lebanese image to the world,” Hajj says, adding that Ain al-Qabou and Mashraa would become more popular because of the novelist’s works. Another neighbor living meters away from the Maalouf family house says that the writer’s works have introduced these remote villages to urban Lebanese and to the whole world. In a wide-ranging speech at the French Institute, Rufin praised Maalouf’s illustration of the village, saying that Mashraa occupies a unique position in the works of Maalouf. “Mashraa is inscribed deeply within you ... as a child living in the city, you were dreaming about the village, you are happy to still have your family house there and wherever you go you still carry with you the memories of this arid mountain,” Rufin said. Welcoming him into the French Academy, Rufin called on Maalouf to bring his roots and beliefs with him into the academy. “From this moment you become one of us but especially sir, be yourself.” The Daily Star