Writing Beirut Mappings of the City in the Modern Arabic Novel

Writing Beirut Mappings of the City in the Modern Arabic Novel Samira Aghacy Affectionately dedicated to the memory of Khalil Afif Husni © Samira Aghacy, 2015 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11/15 Adobe Garamond by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 9624 6 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 9625 3 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 0346 7 (epub) The right of Samira Aghacy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Series Editor’s Foreword vi Acknowledgments ix Note on Transliteration x Introduction 1 1 The Rural–Urban Divide: Subverted Boundaries 31 2 The Rhetoric of Walking: Cartographic versus Nomadic Itineraries 60 3 Sexualizing the City: The Yoking of Flesh and Stone 93 4 Traffic between the Factual and the Imagined: Beirut Deferred 126 5 Excavating the City: Exterior and Interior Relics 161 Inconclusive Conclusion 202 Bibliography 207 Index 223 Series Editor’s Foreword he Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature is a new and unique Tseries which will, it is hoped, fill in a glaring gap in scholarship in the field of modern Arabic literature. Its dedication to Arabic literature in the modern period, that is, from the nineteenth century onwards, is what makes it unique among series undertaken by academic publishers in the English- speaking world. Individual books on modern Arabic literature in general or aspects of it have been and continue to be published sporadically. Series on Islamic studies and Arab/Islamic thought and civilization are not in short supply either in the academic world, but these are far removed from the study of Arabic literature qua literature, that is, imaginative, creative literature as we understand the term when, for instance, we speak of English literature or French literature, etc. Even series labeled “Arabic/Middle Eastern Literature” make no period distinction, extending their purview from the sixth century to the present, and often including non-Arabic literatures of the region. This series aims to redress the situation by focusing on the Arabic literature and criticism of today, stretching its interest to the earliest beginnings of Arab modernity in the nineteenth century. The need for such a dedicated series, and generally for the redoubling of scholarly endeavor in researching and introducing modern Arabic literature to the Western reader has never been stronger. The significant growth in the last decades of the translation of contemporary Arab authors from all genres, especially fiction, into English; the higher profile of Arabic literature internationally since the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Naguib Mahfouz in 1988; the growing number of Arab authors living in the Western diaspora and writing both in English and Arabic; the adoption of such authors and others by mainstream, high-circulation publishers, as vi series editor’s foreword | vii opposed to the academic publishers of the past; the establishment of pres- tigious prizes, such as the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the Arabic Booker), run by the Man Booker Foundation, which brings huge publicity to the shortlist and winner every year, as well as translation contracts into English and other languages—all this and very recently the events of the Arab Spring have heightened public, let alone academic, interest in all things Arab, and not least Arabic literature. It is therefore part of the ambition of this series that it will increasingly address a wider reading public beyond its natural territory of students and researchers in Arabic and world literature. Nor indeed is the academic readership of the series expected to be confined to specialists in literature in the light of the growing trend for interdisci- plinarity, which increasingly sees scholars crossing field boundaries in their research tools and coming up with findings that equally cross discipline borders in their appeal. Among Arab cities, few can match the fame of Beirut in modern times. A cosmopolitan city par excellence since the nineteenth century, it has enjoyed a unique cultural, ethnic and religious diversity. Situated on the eastern Mediterranean coast, it was open to European cultural and intellectual cur- rents from early on and has consequently served as a major gateway to modernity in the entire Arab region. It was a major catalyst in the Arab nahda or renaissance of the nineteenth century and has produced many of the Arabic language’s best writers over generations, often exporting to the rest of the region the latest trends in writing. But Beirut’s history was not all sweet- ness and light; her very diversity and geographically strategic location that endowed her with her strength was also her weakness. Great powers, both international and regional, vied for influence over her and fought their proxy battles on its soil and Lebanon’s as a whole, culminating in the fifteen-year civil war of 1975 to 1990, whose wounds have yet to heal. But the city never lost its vitality or let go of her hold on the imagination of writers, both of her own children and the many other Arab intellectuals drawn by her unwaning magnetism over the decades. A city with such geography and history, such diversity and vibrancy, and such power of attraction over writers had to be “written” and “rewrit- ten” time and again by generations of authors, only to re-emerge from each viii | writing beirut capture in words liberated and ready to be written again through another pair of beguiled eyes. Fiction where Beirut dominates as locale, where it serves as the back- ground against which the fates of men and women are ordained and the human condition explored, are in abundance. Nor are studies that explore such fiction in short supply. But they are studies of author, oeuvre, theme, period and so forth; none of them makes Beirut the vantage point and focus. This is where it is hoped the current title will fill in a gap. Samira Aghacy’s approach to the city as a multiple construct—urban, rural, religious, secular- ist, liberal, conservative, Lebanese, Arab, Eastern, Western, male, female and so on—according to the identity lying behind the representation—is unique in bringing together a wide spectrum of sixteen important novels (written over the last fifty or sixty years by a varied constellation of Lebanese and other Arab writers) to explore the multifaceted, multilayered, at once real and imaginary, space known as Beirut. Readers with particular interest in Lebanese fiction may also find an earlier volume of this series relevant to their pursuits: Syrine Hout’s Post-War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction. Rasheed El-Enany Emeritus Professor, University of Exeter Acknowledgments would like to thank the Lebanese American University (LAU) for provid- I ing the academic atmosphere and support services for research and academic development. I wish to extend special thanks to the staff of the Riyad Nassar Library in Beirut and Byblos whose assistance was unbounded. I wish to thank Mrs Cinderella Habre, Aida Hajjar, Sawsan Habre and Saeed Kreidiyyeh for all assistance rendered. I am deeply indebted to Dr Maya Aghasi for reading the manuscript and for her constructive criticism and insightful comments and suggestions that have enriched this project on all fronts. I would like to thank my colleagues at the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World (IWSAW), for their patience and understanding. In particular, I would like to thank Carol Khater for her invaluable assistance in copyediting the manuscript. I am particularly indebted to Professor Rasheed al-Enany for his astute remarks and for helping me understand transliteration in more depth. Finally, I wish to thank Dr Joseph Jabbra, the president of the LAU, for his untiring support for research at the university. ix Note on Transliteration few features of the work need explanation. I have used transliteration A in accordance with the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) guidelines. I have only transliterated the names of characters and places in the novels that have not been translated into English. As for the others, I have used the same spelling as in the translations; however, with the exception of Hoda Barakat’s novel where the quotations I have used correspond literally to the Arabic text, all other translations are mine. I have opted for a more literal translation of the Arabic in order to better convey the cartographic elements of the narratives. I have included some Arabic translations in the notes to help the reader establish the full meaning of the terms. Finally, I have used full transliteration in the Bibliography. x Introduction [N]one of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993: 7) [T]he present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. We are at a moment, I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life develop- ing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein. Foucault, “Of Other Spaces” (1986: 22) Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages: the city says every- thing you must think, makes you repeat her discourse. Calvino, Invisible Cities (1974: 14) Beirut.

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