Much like Kurdish music, which is
dominated by the Bayat maqam—a blend of sorrow and joy—the first chapter of
Maha Hassan’s latest novel, Maqam Kurd, is infused with longing, love,
and a touch of reproach for the unjust world.
Kurds
live through music and love, the novel declares, echoing the voice of its
author. Here, Maha Hassan works to create an interactive experience by
embedding references to Kurdish songs, encouraging us to listen to them as we
read, just as she listened while writing. Personally, I regard both writing and
reading as sacred acts best performed in the solitude of silence, undisturbed
by any other activity, even if—like listening to music—it is equally sacred.
While I later listened to three of the songs, the auditory element wasn’t
strictly necessary, although I understood Maha’s desires and aims in adding it.
The
novel is fragmented and complex, layered like the identity of a Kurd. Yet, when
you surrender yourself to it and open up to the Kurdish identity, you enter a
beautifully crafted world, rich with a culture that we Arabs scarcely know.
The
novel delves into the identity conflicts of Kurds, and it begins with the
protagonist Valentina’s nightmare-like dreams, which reflect the Kafkaesque
bureaucratic decisions in France that base residency papers on one’s mother
tongue rather than length of stay. Valentina, a naturalized French citizen,
finds herself at risk of statelessness due to her unclassifiable identity. She
does not speak Kurdish, so the Kurds reject her. The Arabs do not accept her
either, despite her fluency in Arabic, while the French eye her with suspicion
due to her accent and detachment from their culture.
The
novel’s characters are numerous, and their fates intersect, such that they seem
to represent parts of a single individual. In this, it seems Maha Hassan
herself has fragmented her identity, distributing pieces of herself among her
characters, who, when united, form a complete individual—the author. Both
Valentina and the character who is her shadow, Delshan, were born on the same
day and love the same man; they appear like two faces of a single, multifaceted
identity.
It
seems both that Maha Hassan wrote her novel in celebration of the Kurdish
identity and as an apology for being forced to abandon it. In her suicide note,
Delshan—who lives in a fictional world, separated from reality—writes: “Forgive
me, Jowan, perhaps I loved writing more than you. Forgive me.” She lived
separated from her Kurdish identity, adopting a French identity due to the
shock of losing her adoptive mother, Clemence, the wife of the French
ambassador to Iraq, who aborted her daughter on the same day that Valentina,
Jowan, and Delshan were born.
Valentina,
on the other hand, was forced to forget Kurdish when her uncle took her at the
age of seven from their village in Aleppo to live with him in Damascus, after
her Kurdish activist father was arrested and her mother committed suicide two
months later. Her uncle, unable to be a hero like his brother, assimilated into
the Ba’ath Party and Arab culture to protect himself and his niece. The child,
knowing no Arabic, entered a strange, frightening world. Years later, she found
herself in France, in yet another alien world. Even though she knew its
language, she felt alone and withdrawn.
Between
chapters One and Two, set in the two pillars of the novel—Aleppo and Paris—we
journey to Erbil with Nalin’s story, set to the Maqam Kurd that “makes the body
shiver, in all times and places.” We explore the world of ancestors and Nalin’s
research on Kurdish music, her thesis on the relationship between music and
genetics, and how it influences the collective unconscious.
The
novel suggests that Kurds have a collective memory tied to music—a genetic
trait that connects those who might otherwise be alienated from the Kurdish
community. Through the titular “Maqam Kurd,” the author connects with ancestors
and identity, celebrating and lamenting the forced distance from it, much as
Valentina does. Finally, as opposed to the real world, where happy endings are
very rare, Maha gives the novel a happy ending and embraces the power of music,
Kurdish music, to connect destinies. It gives Valentina a chance to reconcile
with herself and her identity and restores Jowan’s ability to love again.
Maha
Hassan has created a poignant Kurdish novel in Arabic that shines a light on
the fragmented Kurdish identity, evoking deep emotion, much like the Maqam Kurd
itself.
Mohammed Said Hjiouij, a writer from Morocco, has published five
novels: Kafka
in Tangier (first edition: December 2019, second edition:
May 2024), translated into English and Greek, with excerpts in Hebrew and
Italian; The Puzzle of Edmond Amran El Maleh (Beirut, 2020),
shortlisted for the Ghassan Kanafani Award for Arabic Novel (2022) and
published in Hebrew (Jerusalem, 2023); Tangier By Night (Cairo,
2022), with the manuscript winning the Ismail Fahd Ismail Award for Short Novel
(2019); Labyrinth of Illusions (Beirut, 2023); and
finally, The Cave of Tablets (Beirut, 2024).
