New Book Chronicles 50-Year Love Story of French-Moroccan Couple

A mixed marriage immortalized. Marie-Claude Mezouar gave the first name of her only son to the work. François-Samir is composed of a Christian first name and a Muslim first name. The presentation of the book took place on May 18, in Civray. "François-Samir, or the romance of a mixed couple", is the story of a French woman, a blonde country girl of 1.67 m from a wine-growing town on the borders of the Deux-Sèvres and Maine-et-Loire, and a man of 1.87 m from Morocco. The meeting between the two lovers took place at the University of Poitiers in the 1970s.

"This burning relationship was to lead to a mixed marriage between the East and the West, a bridge between two totally opposite worlds... and was to take shape, take root and flourish in the upheavals of the history of the two countries," recounts to La Nouvelle République Marie-Claude Mezouar. This period was marked by certain facts: few Maghrebi students, rare mixed couples, and finding oneself in the university restaurant in the evening, with a baby in a basket, was not ordinary. "The Arabs were arrested in Poitiers, I didn’t dare go any further," assures her husband Noureddine.

"This book is the evocation of a slice of life of a mixed couple (a French woman and a Moroccan man) between 1970 and 1987. It brings to life the founding moments of this couple: the meeting at the University of Poitiers, the ecumenical marriage in Poitiers, the birth of their child, the world of students in the 1970s, the installation in Morocco, the world of French cooperants in Morocco, the large Moroccan family, etc. It is the life story of this mixed couple, of its accommodations, its quests, its reconstructions, its discoveries, immersed in the religious, social, cultural reality of Morocco," can be read in the publisher’s description.

This book also recounts the years of lead marked by violence and repression under the reign of King Hassan II or the arrival of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and the transformation of the popular revolution into an Islamic revolution. "Our life," says Marie-Claude Mezouar, "has been made of travels, I became myself through the world. I say things as I have experienced them, it is a testimony made of encounters and exchanges. This book is intended to be the testimony of a successful enterprise of alliance and human ties".