The Meursault Investigation – A Review

In Albert Camus’ novel The Outsider, the anti-hero Meursault commits a random act of violence. He murders an Arab for no specific reason. The closest hint he gives to the motive behind murder is his utmost physical discomfort on a hot day, the sun shining so close to the beach and the sweat getting in his eyes. The murdered Arab is someone who had a problem with Meursault’s friend Raymond. According to Raymond, the Arab was getting back at him for misbehaving with his sister. Later when Meursault was taken into custody, he was convicted mainly because he lacked a show of compassion when his mother died a few years ago rather than killing the person. His behavior at his mother’s funeral becomes a qualifier of his crime. And facts that he smoked, drank coffee sitting next to her body made a strong case against him.

In The Outsider, the murdered person is conveniently tucked in the background with an ambiguous identity or no identity at all. It is as a rejoinder to Camus’ work, Kamel Daoud wrote The Meursault Investigation. In this book the murdered Arab’s brother Harun is telling his side of the story. One can say that The Meursault Investigation begins where The Outsider ends. The first thing that Kamel Daoud’s book does is give a name, an identity to the unknown Arab who was turned into a footnote in Camus’ book. He is called Musa. Harun then in a monologue retorts in a way to Camus and the crime he committed – of killing a man but mainly of stripping him of his identity. A random act of violence which was insignificant to Meursault threw the lives of Harun and his mother into an endless struggle and misery.

Harun describes in details what Musa’s death did to his family. Not able to locate the dead body, they dug an empty grave. And this left Musa’s mother with an urgency to fill the void left by that grave. Harun had to not only take the place of his dead brother but also let go of his own childhood. Somehow he was never enough for his mother. Their life revolved around gathering information about the incident of Musa’s death, about reconstituting the incident. But as most of the people were impossible to track, Meursault’s details also rarely added up – Harun and his mother were left with their own version of the crime. And when the opportunity of a revenge of a kind presented, they both grabbed it as the only way of salvage. After Algeria got independence, Harun killed a Frenchman hiding in their house. While they could not kill the roumi who murdered Musa, they could kill a roumi at least.

Harun had hoped that the murder would bring some sort of closure to them, it in-fact made him relate closely to the other murder that Meursault committed many years ago. In both cases, the murder victims were pushed to the background. In case of Harun, the officials lamented the time of the murder and said he should have taken part in the war of freedom and killed Frenchmen along with his brothers. The murder in itself was not the problem, it was the mere context.

While Albert Camus did not reflect on the colonial context, Kamel Daoud does address these larger issues in his book. He starts with pointing out the privilege of the colonizer who took the liberty of killing a member of the colonized nation and conveniently denies him the dignity of an identity. While Camus talks of the Arab avenging the molestation of a sister who is subtly hinted to be a prostitute, Harun says Arabs are in fact inclined to avenge the molestation of their country. The nationalist tone however soon gives way to the disillusionment that the crisis in post-colonial countries causes.

The book helps one draw parallels between Meursault and Harun – both deviating from set societal norms, standard religious values and beliefs and this alienates them from their surroundings. While the book written as a monologue surrounding a single incident does drag at some places, it very rightly puts the perspective in place. For settlers, Algeria was an extended home, for the locals it was an exploitative imperial relationship. The author in passing talks about the neo-colonial structure put in place post independence which has further forged an unequal relationship between the ex-colony and the ex-colonizer. Albert Camus’ books cannot be read in isolation and outside this context.