“Race for the town hall”, long-distance love… With “The desert in sharing”, his new novel, Mohed Altrad returns to his native lands

Mohed Altrad sort un nouveau roman chez Actes Sud : Le désert en partage.

Il est présenté comme "une suite" de Badawi, son premier opus publié en 2002. Sauf qu’il a mis 12 ans à finaliser sa nouvelle œuvre littéraire.

Well, we don't need to introduce Mohed Altrad. The founder, over 30 years ago, of the eponymous group, specializing in industrial services, present in over a hundred countries, has left his mark on the Montpellier landscape in recent decades.

Economy, sport, politics: we've seen him on all fronts. But there is one that doesn't necessarily leave its mark when it comes to the Montpellier boss, and that's literature. Mohed Altrad likes to write. “I don't sleep much at night, so I write in peace”, he says. And he has already written a few novels.

At the beginning was Badawi

Actes Sud, his favorite Arlesian publisher, has published three. There was Badawi in 2022, in which he told his unique story, between the Syrian desert and his arrival in France. Then, L’Hypothèse de Dieu in 2006, followed by a very nice La Promesse d’Annah in 2012.

The Montpellier boss is now signing a fourth, in bookstores since February 1, entitled Le désert en partage. A novel that took a long time to see the light of day, since he started the first pages in 2012. “My publisher was very demanding, I had to rewrite it several times”, he justifies.

The Syrian desert as a backdrop

Mohed Altrad confides it to Midi Libre: “The shared desert is a sort of sequel, in a way, to Badawi. Not a historical, linear sequel, but a round trip between the past and the present”. And for good reason: we find once again, in the background, the Syria of his origins.

The love story between Nour, a Syrian nurse, and Rihad, a successful, world-renowned entrepreneur who emigrated to France, is the plot of the new opus. With many flashbacks to the latter's childhood. Where we find (inevitably) the invasive and burning weight of the Syrian desert, this inhospitable land where the author was born.

“I made bad alliances”

Of course, we can't help but see, at times in this fiction, or rather imagine facts that we assume really existed, a piece of Mohed Altrad's life. His private life. But also public, as on page 271, when Pierre-Marie, a friend of Rihad, wonders about the reasons that pushed the business leader into a “race for mayor” that he had launched into “a few years ago”. In the novel, we are in February 2012.

Le désert en partage, le nouveau roman signe Mohed Altrad

We cannot help but see a parallel with the experience of Mohed Altrad, candidate in the municipal elections of June 2020 in Montpellier. With this response from Rihad to his friend Pierre-Marie: “I made mistakes, I thought I would succeed. I was presumptuous in wanting to force fate. I made bad alliances.” Close the ban.

A meeting in Dubai

That said, the novel of course reflects a completely different story than this political episode. It associates romantic feelings with the pitfalls of distance: she in Syria, he in France. Lacking a visa, they end up in Dubai (where they met) or in Antalya, Turkey. She is leading an orphanage project in the middle of the Syrian civil war, looking for generous donors. He is professionally accomplished, materially comfortable. He is this generous donor.

There is the difficulty in giving a common denominator to this long-distance love story, namely a life together, Nour already being married to a greedy and dishonest man. The story of a man and a woman like so many others. Except that under the pen of Mohed Altrad, a unique character, not always difficult to decipher, everything takes on another dimension.

Le désert en partage, Mohed Altrad, 301 pages, at Actes Sud. 22 euros. I subscribe to read the rest