Syrian novel expresses distrust of storytelling
Al-Rawiyat
Maha Hassan
Dar Al-Tanweer, 192 pages
Beirut, 2014
London,
Asharq Al-Awsat—
In her most recent novel,
Al-Rawiyat
(Female Narrators), published last year, Syrian novelist Maha Hassan
explores the esoteric realms of oral and written storytelling through a
set of female characters, who are not necessarily connected, but are all
obsessed with the art of narration.
From the book’s dedication to the unpublished “female raconteurs
[who] . . . lived and died in darkness” to the last sentence
highlighting the “emancipatory” powers of writing, a celebratory, almost
naive tone dominates the novel.
The first narrator, Abbadon, says she lives two lives: A superficial,
“typical” one concerned with the satisfaction of mundane day-to-day
needs, and a “rich and dense” one centering on fiction writing. “[I
was] born to tell tales,” she says, echoing the title of Gabriel Garcia
Marquez’s memoir.
“Telling tales is the only entertainment and pastime she has to pass
the days in peace,” the narrator says. Even when someone steals the
manuscript of her debut novel and publishes it under their name, she
does not seem too bothered.
“What’s the harm? What is important is that my characters have a
chance to come out to the world, that tales come out for people to read.
What is important is the novel not the novelist.”
Rama, the last of the narrators, lives in a parallel, imaginary
world, overflowing with fictional characters. Concerned about Rama’s
sanity, her mother tries to “suppress” her imagination by exhausting her
with all sorts of physical activities. Rama, who was born in India,
inherited from her grandmother “the magical ability to tell stories.”
Compared to her peers who find in bedtime stories a passageway to sleep,
Rama waits for her grandmother to end the story so that she can
deconstruct and reconstruct it from scratch. When she grows up, her
relationship with her husband reaches a dead-end when she confesses to
him that “the only moment I feel ecstasy that resembles orgasm is when I
tell tales.”
There are many similarities between these two narrators: both derive
sexual pleasure out of storytelling. Abbadon says: “A sexual energy is
generated inside me when I write.” But it would be a mistake to think
that this is what
Al-Rawiyat is all about, that the female protagonists are the 21st century version of Scheherazade, who tamed Shahryar after
One Thousand and One Nights of storytelling.
Al-Rawiyat
is deeper than just a cry against patriarchy, or a manifesto calling
for a feminist revolution. Beneath the bluntly “revolutionary” surface
of the novel, there is a complex narrative structure threatening to
subvert it.
Each of the book’s stories culminates with a twist in the plot that
contradicts the narrator’s expectations and thus raises questions about
their credibility and familiarity with the stories they tell. While
Abbadon finds in Sabato the man of her dreams who does everything in his
power to help her write her first novel, we discover at the end of
their story that he has been using her for purely utilitarian purposes.
The same is also true of Rama, who realises—albeit too late—that
Aravind, the musician whom she thought would liberate her repressed
soul, is nothing but “an idiot who lacks imagination.”
“To tell a story is to claim a certain authority, which listeners grant,” writes American critic Jonathan D. Culler in his
Literary Theory.
Faced with the narrators’ celebratory tone about the ability of
storytelling to undermine patriarchy, readers have no choice but to take
what they say at face value, and thus submit to their narrative
authority.
However, following the disappointments the characters/narrators
face, we start to doubt that they are worthy of our trust. The dramatic
twists in the novel implicitly raise questions about the credibility of
the narration and whether or not the narrator deserves the authority
that the reader grants. Unlike
One Thousand and One Nights, which highlights Scheherazade’s mastery of the art of storytelling,
Al-Rawiyat
sheds light on the narrators’ failure to have control over the stories
they tell. The novel does exactly the opposite of what it preaches.
Hassan’s female narrators give a fake impression of Scheherazade.
In what seems to be a diversion from the plot, Alice—a PhD candidate
in “philosophy and its relation to art,”—visits Cairo, having been
“possessed with the spirit of Pharaohs.” The chapter overflows with
references to the success of the Arab Spring in Egypt. Alice says she
“has trust in the Egyptian people. Those who toppled Mubarak are capable
of toppling the Muslim Brotherhood, and will not accept a new
dictatorship.”
For all the failure that the Arab Spring has proved to be, such
remarks—which we now find as either cynical or naïve—are said by Alice
with the utmost seriousness. Based on what has been written about
Al-Rawiyat
in the Arab press, there seems to be a consensus about the chapter’s
irrelevance to the rest of the novel. In fact, the chapter is highly
significant in that it underlines the discrepancy between reality and
narration.
Alice, the narrator, is merely offering her “narrative” of the Arab Spring, which stands in stark contrast to reality.
We all heard about the events in Tahrir Square on television, or in
newspapers and magazines. In other words, what we know about the
Egyptian Spring is nothing more than “narratives” that express the views
of their authors. We are surrounded by narratives. Take newspapers,
magazines, TV channels, YouTube and social media; they are all platforms
for multiple voices and narratives. But do all of them reflect reality?
Al-Rawiyat answers in the negative.
The structure of the novel is confusingly divergent, with the frame
narrative resembling a Matryoshka doll that encases four stories. The
multiple and overlapping narrative voices mean readers never stop
asking: “Who is speaking?” and “What are they talking about?”
Added to this confusion is Hassan’s tendency to give several names to
each of her characters. Abbadon is both Miriam and Maha, while Sabato
can be Ernesto or Franco. “Our names have no significance . . . We are
mere virtual creatures.”
A similar uncertainty surrounds the place in which the novel is set.
It is “that big city which resembles Cairo, New York, Tokyo, Paris,
London or Beirut.”
Al-Rawiyat is a well-crafted work whose turbulent form gives it the uncertainty and ambiguity of great works, such as
Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih and
Ulysses by James Joyce, novels that raised more questions than they offered answers.
Al-Rawiyat
Maha Hassan
Dar Al-Tanweer, 192 pages
Beirut, 2014
London,
Asharq Al-Awsat—
In her most recent novel,
Al-Rawiyat
(Female Narrators), published last year, Syrian novelist Maha Hassan
explores the esoteric realms of oral and written storytelling through a
set of female characters, who are not necessarily connected, but are all
obsessed with the art of narration.
From the book’s dedication to the unpublished “female raconteurs
[who] . . . lived and died in darkness” to the last sentence
highlighting the “emancipatory” powers of writing, a celebratory, almost
naive tone dominates the novel.
The first narrator, Abbadon, says she lives two lives: A superficial,
“typical” one concerned with the satisfaction of mundane day-to-day
needs, and a “rich and dense” one centering on fiction writing. “[I
was] born to tell tales,” she says, echoing the title of Gabriel Garcia
Marquez’s memoir.
“Telling tales is the only entertainment and pastime she has to pass
the days in peace,” the narrator says. Even when someone steals the
manuscript of her debut novel and publishes it under their name, she
does not seem too bothered.
“What’s the harm? What is important is that my characters have a
chance to come out to the world, that tales come out for people to read.
What is important is the novel not the novelist.”
Rama, the last of the narrators, lives in a parallel, imaginary
world, overflowing with fictional characters. Concerned about Rama’s
sanity, her mother tries to “suppress” her imagination by exhausting her
with all sorts of physical activities. Rama, who was born in India,
inherited from her grandmother “the magical ability to tell stories.”
Compared to her peers who find in bedtime stories a passageway to sleep,
Rama waits for her grandmother to end the story so that she can
deconstruct and reconstruct it from scratch. When she grows up, her
relationship with her husband reaches a dead-end when she confesses to
him that “the only moment I feel ecstasy that resembles orgasm is when I
tell tales.”
There are many similarities between these two narrators: both derive
sexual pleasure out of storytelling. Abbadon says: “A sexual energy is
generated inside me when I write.” But it would be a mistake to think
that this is what
Al-Rawiyat is all about, that the female protagonists are the 21st century version of Scheherazade, who tamed Shahryar after
One Thousand and One Nights of storytelling.
Al-Rawiyat
is deeper than just a cry against patriarchy, or a manifesto calling
for a feminist revolution. Beneath the bluntly “revolutionary” surface
of the novel, there is a complex narrative structure threatening to
subvert it.
Each of the book’s stories culminates with a twist in the plot that
contradicts the narrator’s expectations and thus raises questions about
their credibility and familiarity with the stories they tell. While
Abbadon finds in Sabato the man of her dreams who does everything in his
power to help her write her first novel, we discover at the end of
their story that he has been using her for purely utilitarian purposes.
The same is also true of Rama, who realises—albeit too late—that
Aravind, the musician whom she thought would liberate her repressed
soul, is nothing but “an idiot who lacks imagination.”
“To tell a story is to claim a certain authority, which listeners grant,” writes American critic Jonathan D. Culler in his
Literary Theory.
Faced with the narrators’ celebratory tone about the ability of
storytelling to undermine patriarchy, readers have no choice but to take
what they say at face value, and thus submit to their narrative
authority.
However, following the disappointments the characters/narrators
face, we start to doubt that they are worthy of our trust. The dramatic
twists in the novel implicitly raise questions about the credibility of
the narration and whether or not the narrator deserves the authority
that the reader grants. Unlike
One Thousand and One Nights, which highlights Scheherazade’s mastery of the art of storytelling,
Al-Rawiyat
sheds light on the narrators’ failure to have control over the stories
they tell. The novel does exactly the opposite of what it preaches.
Hassan’s female narrators give a fake impression of Scheherazade.
In what seems to be a diversion from the plot, Alice—a PhD candidate
in “philosophy and its relation to art,”—visits Cairo, having been
“possessed with the spirit of Pharaohs.” The chapter overflows with
references to the success of the Arab Spring in Egypt. Alice says she
“has trust in the Egyptian people. Those who toppled Mubarak are capable
of toppling the Muslim Brotherhood, and will not accept a new
dictatorship.”
For all the failure that the Arab Spring has proved to be, such
remarks—which we now find as either cynical or naïve—are said by Alice
with the utmost seriousness. Based on what has been written about
Al-Rawiyat
in the Arab press, there seems to be a consensus about the chapter’s
irrelevance to the rest of the novel. In fact, the chapter is highly
significant in that it underlines the discrepancy between reality and
narration.
Alice, the narrator, is merely offering her “narrative” of the Arab Spring, which stands in stark contrast to reality.
We all heard about the events in Tahrir Square on television, or in
newspapers and magazines. In other words, what we know about the
Egyptian Spring is nothing more than “narratives” that express the views
of their authors. We are surrounded by narratives. Take newspapers,
magazines, TV channels, YouTube and social media; they are all platforms
for multiple voices and narratives. But do all of them reflect reality?
Al-Rawiyat answers in the negative.
The structure of the novel is confusingly divergent, with the frame
narrative resembling a Matryoshka doll that encases four stories. The
multiple and overlapping narrative voices mean readers never stop
asking: “Who is speaking?” and “What are they talking about?”
Added to this confusion is Hassan’s tendency to give several names to
each of her characters. Abbadon is both Miriam and Maha, while Sabato
can be Ernesto or Franco. “Our names have no significance . . . We are
mere virtual creatures.”
A similar uncertainty surrounds the place in which the novel is set.
It is “that big city which resembles Cairo, New York, Tokyo, Paris,
London or Beirut.”
Al-Rawiyat is a well-crafted work whose turbulent form gives it the uncertainty and ambiguity of great works, such as
Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih and
Ulysses by James Joyce, novels that raised more questions than they offered answers.
