The Madman of the Casbah, homage to Himoud Brahimi - Jean-René Huleu

Biography, testimony

A light in Algeria's dark years

"Himoud Brahimi, known as Momo de la Casbah, met on the trail of Isabelle Eberhardt twenty-five years ago, transmitted to me a knowledge and a message that this text would like to share. The one that the people of Algiers know as the poet of the Casbah was in reality a Sufi initiated into the best sources of his time, as inspired as he was ignored by his contemporaries."

Jean-Rene Huleu

On the terrace of the Arab World Institute, on a scorching Sunday, the narrator has a meeting with a man for whom he has great respect: Momo, the esoteric poet of the Casbah of Algiers. He met him there more than a quarter of a century ago. This character he is waiting for is slow to come and the reader learns... that he is dead. However, he himself set this meeting the day before. In recent days, Momo's presence has become insistent. The narrator has resumed reading the texts he bequeathed to him to try to finally approach their meaning, to penetrate their enigmas, the veiled subtlety of the Sufi concepts that disorient and then reveal themselves.

The poet of the Casbah calls himself a "metaphysician" and listens to messages that give him inspiration. He quotes Ibn Arabi, Hallaj and René Guénon. Venerates the Koran and Jesus. Momo's texts and words are evoked in the places that often gave birth to them. From station to station, we sometimes come across improbable characters, in the present of an orientalized Paris. From Saint-Germain to the Casbah of Algiers, Momo's places where the spirit blew refer to each other through the narrator's nostalgia.

This is how the portrait of Momo, Himoud Brahimi, poet of old Algiers, is sketched. "The madman of the Casbah" said those who did not dare to understand him. "Enlightened" or enlightened man, he reveals himself to be a master of wisdom.

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Digital book

ISBN 978-2-313-00370-1
Ebook (PDF, ePub, Mobi) - 178 p. (2012)

Paper book

ISBN 978-2-313-00387-9
Paper book - 146 p. (2012)