Strange Bedfellows: On Suicide Bombing and Literature

Chapter 5, “Strange Bedfellows,” is the explosive apex of The Suicide Archive. This chapter argues that literature and literary criticism provide alternative interpretive tools for theorizing contemporary violence. This chapter focuses on Mahi Binebine’s novel about the 2003 Casablanca suicide bombings, Les étoiles de Sidi Moumen (2010); its film adaptation, Les chevaux de Dieu (2014); and Binebine’s earlier novel about irregular migration, Cannibales (1999). Binebine’s Étoiles is noteworthy for its unusual narrative form—its narrator is a dead terrorist—and its noticeable “queering” of the suicide bomber. Binebine’s novel contests the idea that suicide bombing exists beyond the pale of comprehension and detouring the masculinist posturing most often associated with representations of suicide terrorism. The chapter concludes with a reading of Binebine’s novel Cannibales, showing how the author portrays suicide bombing and clandestine migration as psychologically extreme but ultimately understandable acts.