Minaمينا - Betti Sahrana | بتّي سهرانة

Betti Sahrana | Tunisia

It is a tale of unreachable love; the kind of love that pricks the heart with a golden arrow. The story involves commercial convoys crossing Tunisia from the south up to the northwest carrying dates - the central agriculture in the oases of the south. Traders travel north to reach El-Kef where they barter their juicy dates against wheat and barley. At the heart of the story is a woman from El-Kef who falls in love with one of the merchants, but when the latter marries another woman, the disillusioned lover endures protracted pain, precluding the possibility of marrying another man. The heart-sick woman goes so far as to declare a feud against men and displays in an intriguing way her desire to attend her man's wedding so that her singing exteriorises her sorrow and grief.

Once again Mina revisits the symbolism of "the space"; the high mountains of El-Kef, graced with wheat, the space whose name is inspired from Venus, The Goddess of Beauty and Love. At stake is the tale of an unrequited love "properly" buried in the heart of a Kefian woman where it lives forever. For Mina, "Betty Sahrana" is the "Kefian Odyssey" as the latter calls forth a peculiar analogy to the legendary Ulysses who landed on the Tunisian shores in the course of his odyssey to be spellbound by the nymphs' euphoric voices. As for Ulysses's sweetheart, Penelope, it is portrayed in the myth as the absolutely faithful wife who kept her suitors at bay (echoing the Kefian's refusal of marriage), and waited for Odysseus's return from his voyage as if she were singing: "For his sake, men I turn down."

Written by | Haikel hazgui & Terez Sliman
Edited by | Asmaa Azaizeh
Translated to English by | Mohamed Amine Khedhiri