Hikayat Read online

  HIKAYAT

  SHORT STORIES BY LEBANESE WOMEN

  Edited by

  Roseanne Saad Khalaf

  TELEGRAM

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Glossary

  Layla Baalbaki, A Spaceship of Tenderness to the Moon

  Rima Alamuddin, The Cellist

  Emily Nasrallah, The Green Bird

  Hoda Barakat, Chat

  Nazik Saba Yared, Improvisations on a Missing String

  Najwa Barakat, The Language of the Secret

  Hanan al-Shaykh, The Hot Seat

  Etel Adnan, The Power of Death

  Alawiya Sobh, Stories by Mariam

  Iman Humaydan Younes, The Story of Warda

  Mishka Moujabbar Mourani, The Fragrant Garden

  Renée Hayek, The Phone Call

  Merriam Haffar, Pieces of a Past Life

  Jana Faour, Not Today

  Mai Ghoussoub, Red Lips

  Nadine Rachid Laure Touma, Red Car

  Zeina B Ghandour, Omega: Definitions

  Houda Karim, A Slice of Beach

  May Menassa, A Pomegranate Notebook

  Jocelyn Awad, Khamsin

  Zalfa Feghali, Wild Child

  Nada Ramadan, Trapped

  Evelyn Shakir, Name-calling

  Patricia Sarrafian Ward, Voice

  Hala Alyan, Painted Reflections

  Lina Mounzer, The One-eyed Man

  Biographical Notes

  Acknowledgments

  ‘Chat’ is from The Stranger’s Letters; ‘Improvisations on a Missing String’ is from the novel of the same name; ‘The Language of the Secret’ is from the novel of the same name; ‘The Story of Warda’ is from the novel B for a House Named Beirut; ‘A Slice of Beach’ is from the novel of the same name; ‘A Pomegranate Notebook’ is from the novel of the same name; and ‘Khamsin’ is from the novel of the same name.

  Special thanks are due to translators Catherine Cobham and Denys Johnson-Davies, who graciously provided translations for this collection.

  Introduction

  The selections presented in this anthology bring together contemporary stories and prose pieces by established Lebanese women authors as well as promising young writers. They highlight the diversity, startling originality and compelling richness of women’s voices and experiences in a dynamic, fast-changing cosmopolitan society. Collectively, the narratives span three distinct but overlapping eras: the pre-war period, often considered the golden age in Lebanon; the two decades of protracted civil strife; followed by the postwar phase of reconstruction and reconciliation.

  During the late 1950s, a group of talented women writers appeared on the Lebanese literary scene. Before this time, the contributions of women were few and the Lebanese canon, such as it was, consisted almost exclusively of works written by men. In an unexpected move, and in contrast to the dynamic of previous generations, these authors expertly relocated their prose to a more central position. Now, for the first time, women writers were competing with men in literary and commercial arenas. Together they mapped an entirely different landscape, writing in ways that radically redefined traditional literary expectations. To a large 10 extent, their emerging influence is attributed to innovative themes and styles, coupled with an unthreatening approach. In a bid to address relevant issues, they wrote gender-informed narratives about identity and desire, defying the conventions imposed on women by a restrictive society. Female protagonists were boldly empowered to voice their own needs and expectations in hitherto unheard of ways, adamantly rejecting previously acceptable themes that reduced them to nothing more than objects of the male gaze. Interestingly, their narratives correspond to the last two phases of Elaine Showalter’s three-stage Gynocriticism theory of female literary evolution in the Western novel (1977): the feminist stage of protest against traditional standards (1880–1920) and the female stage of searching for a new identity (1920 onwards).1

  By choosing a reflexive approach, women novelists could now rely almost entirely on topics drawn from personal experience. More importantly, however, their stance, whether intentional or accidental, served an immediate purpose: it ensured quick entry into the canon from which they had previously been excluded. Perhaps in writing differently they posed no direct threat to the male literary establishment, but whatever the reasons the results, so soon realised, had immediate and far-reaching consequences. Apart from their creativity often exceeding and overshadowing works written by men,2 their texts successfully moved female fiction out of the margins and into the mainstream. For the first time, prose that voiced gendered rebellion was redefining the way women wrote and having a decisive impact in shaping the imaginative work that followed. Their fiction stood in stark contrast with that of the previous generation of women authors who had so readily imitated established male literary traditions and who fit easily into Showalter’s first phase, the imitation of the dominant literary tradition (1840–80).

  Layla Baalbaki, Rima Alamuddin and Emily Nasrallah are three compelling examples of writers who became distinguished for their remarkable literary activity during the pre-war period. All came from radically different backgrounds and confessional groups but together they created means of self-expression that dramatically altered the way Lebanese woman crafted their prose. Layla Baalbaki gained instant notoriety for her outspokenness, especially against sexual segregation in Arab society. In fact, the publication of her collection in 1964, Safinat Hanan ila al-Qamar (Spaceship of Tenderness to the Moon), led to her being unsuccessfully persecuted by the Lebanese authorities who deemed her writing too sexually explicit and therefore capable of corrupting public morality, particularly among the young.

  In seeking to transform the lives of women, her candid prose boldly and critically challenges the prejudiced values and accepted attitudes so deeply ingrained in a rigid patriarchal system. Her defiance of gender inequalities scrutinises the sacred institutions of marriage and motherhood, forcing even the male characters in her texts to rethink and question blind conformity. Clearly, her considerable impact was not limited to Lebanon. Zeidan claims that Baalbaki was much admired in literary circles throughout the Arab world and credits her with ‘bringing the discourse of a female point of view into the mainstream of Arab writing’.3 Until then, literature, emblematic of a patriarchal culture, was written from distinctly male points of view. Moreover, Baalbaki was the first Arab woman writer to employ first-person narration in fiction, using the pronoun ‘I’ to stress the identity and individuality of the female protagonist.4 With her novel Ana Ahya (I Survive, 1958), she ushered in a whole new era in women’s fiction, highlighting issues of personal freedom, autonomy and self-fulfilment that influenced the ‘agenda’ of later novels.5 Undoubtedly, Baalbaki’s accomplishments paved the way for writers in the generations to come.

  In 1960, at the age of nineteen, Rima Alamuddin wrote her first novel, Spring to Summer, and after graduating from the American University of Beirut she studied English Literature at Girton College, Cambridge. ‘The Cellist’ which appeared in her collection, The Sun is Silent, was published in 1964, a year after her untimely death. It reveals the fiercely independent mind of a professional woman whose identity and self-worth exist entirely outside the male gaze.

  Emily Nasrallah’s first novel, Tuyur Aylul (Birds of September, 1962), explored what later became a common theme in her work: the alienation of the younger generation from the restrictive and stifling conventions of village life and their determination to break away in search of more promising opportunities. Many moved to cities, thereby compounding the expansion of urbanisation, whereas even larger numbers emigrated, thus exacerbating the country’s proverbial ‘brain drain’. In subsequent years, with the onset of the Lebane
se civil war, the tragedy and devastation it inflicted on the country and its people became a backdrop to many of her most poignant stories. ‘The Green Bird’, taken from her collection A House Not Her Own: Stories From Beirut (1992), tells of a grief-stricken man’s obsessive belief in the power of miracles to reverse his pain and ease the shock of his son’s violent death. In relating this heart-rending tale, the narrator stoically gains strength to endure the incomprehensible horrors of war.

  With the outbreak of the Lebanese War in 1975, which spanned nearly two decades, came a surge of literary creativity. While the previous generation was essentially concerned with matters of personal identity and the desire for individual freedom and self-expression, the focus now shifted, primarily during the first half of the war (up to the 1982 Israeli invasion) to confront a much darker reality. During this time, as women writers became increasingly consumed by Lebanon’s tragedy, they shifted their narrative gaze away from the brutal fighting to concentrate instead on the traumas resulting from protracted and random violence. While it is easy to attribute their stance to lack of military knowledge, it was more likely an attempt to gain distance from the atrocities of warfare in order to explore deeper concerns.

  Regardless of the reasons, their prose provided graphic glimpses into the tragic human consequences of violence by delving into the terrain of pain, fear and despair that paralysed the daily lives of an entire civilian population and transformed the war-torn nation into a living hell. As their fiction demonstrates, opposition to the war, alongside the exploration of alternatives to violence as a means of resolving conflict, became recurring and increasingly dominant themes. The effect was startling. Silent, marginal voices capable of destabilizing and challenging the master war narrative could now be heard in the wider public sphere.

  The women who wrote during the war, or the ‘Beirut Decentrists’ as Cooke names them, ‘shared Beirut as their home and war as their experience’.6 They were able to transcend confessional and political loyalties in order to concentrate almost entirely on the omitted stories of pain and suffering. Hence they carved out a discursive space of particular significance, one that contributed a crucial and hitherto overlooked dimension to the Lebanese literary canon.

  At the same time, in their war-telling, literary figures such as Etel Adnan, Hanan al-Shaykh, Emily Nasrallah, Hoda Barakat and Nazik Saba Yared moved beyond simply exposing or recording daily atrocities to produce oppositional discourses and alternative visions that redefined nationalism. Their humane approach, encouraging non-violent means of bringing the war to an end, created a narrative of peace politics.7

  Cooke’s views have not gone unchallenged. Some scholars8 have contested her designation of the Beirut Decentrists by drawing a clear division between women writers who emigrated, thus becoming Francophone or Anglophone expatriates, emigrants or exiles, and those who remained ‘under the bombs in Beirut’.9 Indeed, Hoda Barakat, Najwa Barakat, Hanan al-Shaykh, Mai Ghoussoub and Etel Adnan are among those who settled abroad, becoming exiled decentrists residing in Western cities. Distance enabled them to write ‘from the vantage point of informed outsiders looking in, and more specifically, looking back’.10 Consequently, they reclaimed the war experience with ‘the geographical and temporal distance necessary for an adequate assessment of the war’s personal and communal implications.’ In the case of Etel Adnan, movement between numerous worlds (Beirut, London and California) and multiple cultures creates a new ethos for understanding subjectivity. As a ‘trans-national writer’, her awareness takes her ‘to a space beyond the dogma of nationalism and other codified aspects of subjectivity as gender and race.’11

  Among the writers represented in this collection, Etel Adnan and Hanan al-Shaykh are, arguably, two of the most prominent and widely read. Adnan’s richly detailed story, ‘The Power of Death’ is a mesmerising tale of friendship that depicts an embittered man whose life has gone horribly wrong. Throughout, he is haunted by an irreversible decision taken in his youth. Hanan al-Shayk is perhaps best known for her novel, Hikayat Zahra (The Story of Zahra, 1980), a skilfully wrought work that offers a scathing feminist commentary on life during the Lebanese war. In contrast, ‘The Hot Seat’, a compact and blunt tale, exists completely outside the war experience. Seemingly innocent daydreams quickly end in an abrupt and startling reversal. In the excerpt from Nazik Saba Yared’s novel, Improvisations on a Missing String, Saada is saddened by her sister’s decision to leave Lebanon, while the selection from Alawiya Sobh’s novel, Stories by Mariam, depicts a young woman’s earnest account of thwarted romantic love and disappointment across the religious and social divide. It raises disturbing questions about the moral dilemmas of liberated women living in a society with rigidly defined rules. Finally, the extract from B for a House Named Beirut by Iman Humaydan Younes tells the story of Warda’s desperate attempt to locate her daughter whom she imagines has been kidnapped.

  With the Taif Accord in 1990, the Lebanese war was officially brought to a close, yet the lingering horrors along with the need to reconstruct and address the inevitable consequences, continue to inform women’s prose. In fact, much of the fiction produced in the postwar period is concerned with sorting out the past, which may inevitably be a way of clearing ground for the literature of the future. Writers revisit a landscape haunted by pain, cruelty and retribution, challenging the conspiracy of silence or collective amnesia that characterises the attitude of many Lebanese. The past in their narratives is intricately linked to the present, often rendering stories more unsettling than enjoyable.

  Mishka Moujabbar Mourani’s ‘The Fragrant Garden’ exposes the seemingly tolerant façade of Lebanese postwar society. Ironically, the husband fondly remembers what in hindsight he describes as idyllic war routines while candidly admitting his resentment of the returnees who are invading his space. ‘The Phone Call’ from Renée Hayek’s collection Portraits of Forgetfulness (1994) is the story of a dysfunctional woman whose empty life is a result of the numbing experience of war. Throughout, the protagonist is trapped in the heavy stillness of Hayek’s prose. In Merriam Haffar’s ‘Pieces of a Past Life’ Soumaya’s genuine grief and concern for her disturbed father, another war victim, is as tender as it is distressing. Haffar, who is herself too young to remember the war, writes to imagine and reconstruct a traumatic moment in the history of her country and to expose the war’s debilitating consequences on the life of a family. In Jana Faour’s story, ‘Not Today’ a young woman looks back on a simple but disillusioning childhood episode that strengthens her resolve to transcend the pervasive hostility and ignorance resulting from religious difference.

  What differentiates the next group of postwar women writers is the ability to produce storylines that repeatedly decentre romantic as well as rebellious narratives. An unsentimental and deterministic outlook calls for re-imagining and reshuffling themes as well as applying jarring techniques that disturb the rhythm and flow of the prose. In addition, the loosening or dissolution of human bonds, sexual relationships and emotional dilemmas is clearly evident. All these authors craft narratives with liberating and transforming possibilities, each writing against the grain, using innovative wordplay to experiment with form and content.

  Mai Ghoussoub’s ‘Red Lips’ and Nadine Touma’s ‘Red Car’ are startlingly original, with vividly rendered settings. In order to reshape mainstream notions of sex, intimacy and love, the stories challenge what normally passes for acceptable behaviour. The language is dark, luxurious, dazzling, with themes that focus on the odd, the edgy, the risky and the peculiar. The prose runs freely, breaking down barriers, conjuring up playful but dangerous fantasy worlds of desire. Moreover, within these surreal arenas, shamelessly uninhibited characters engage in forbidden sexual acts in the most sacred of places: a convent and a mosque. Ghoussoub shakes up the normal flow of the linear text as she juxtaposes and experiments with assertions and insertions. Touma’s images, on the other hand, travel through the tale in rapid succession with new meanings att
aching to them on the way. Both texts are tightly wrought and dramatically compelling in their desire to transform. They suggest daring possibilities capable of reshaping and radically altering inflexible and essentialist views. ‘Omega: Definitions’ by Zeina B Ghandour, is relentless in its abrasive immediacy. Direct, snappy and defiant in tone, its power lies in the potential to provoke. The excerpt from Huda Karim’s candid novel, Tranche de plage (‘A Slice of Beach’), transports the reader to the intimacy of two male lovers living in the midst of an unwelcoming culture. Whereas in the selection from Najwa Barakat’s gripping thriller, The Language of the Secret, the reader is witness to Khaldoun’s wild and fanciful secret religious mission.

  Stories that break the silence by focusing on what remains unsaid or purposefully ignored offer the possibility of actualizing or realizing change. May Menassa, Jocelyn Awad, Zalfa Feghali, Nada Ramadan, Evelyn Shakir and Patricia Sarrafian Ward all portray female protagonists who defy their domestic and familial situations in varying degrees and with entirely different outcomes. Selections from Menassa’s The Pomegranate Notebook and Awad’s Khamsin describe dramatic events: a birth and a marriage, prompting the reader to view the patterns of families over generations. But the real purpose is to expose the rough customs and abuse that rural women are often subjected to. Zalfa Feghali’s story, ‘Wild Child’ is a chilling account of living with the bitter pain of exclusion, drug addiction and, ultimately, madness. From the outset, it is powerfully imagined, heavy with irony and emotionally charged as Nour, the isolated, rebellious protagonist, ‘others’ the hostile relatives who have so insensitively marginalized her. Nada Ramadan’s vignette ‘Chores’ possesses an air of immediacy while employing a flauntingly feminine style that voices the protagonist’s protests along with her desire to be liberated from tedious, confining domestic routines. Because the prose never gives way to emotionalism, the story succeeds in being more than just a vehicle for the dramatisation of wronged womanhood. Hoda Barakat is the acclaimed author of an intensely evocative novel, The Stone of Laughter (1990). ‘Chat’, taken from her recent collection of reflective essays, deplores the callous attitude of Lebanese youth living abroad to the Arabic language.