The Rising Tides of
21st Century Middle Eastern and Arabic Literary Voices
By Daphne Muse
Growing up in a home where my father passionately followed
the politics of the Middle East and Arab worlds, I became intrigued by the
cultures and peoples whose lives pointed towards Mecca, Mount Arafat, the
Mediterranean Sea, and Gulf of Aden. But it wasn’t until I began my studies at
Fisk University in 1962, that I read any literature written by a Middle Eastern
author. At Fisk, out of my adoration and
respect for a circle of intellectually dynamic poets including Barbara Mahone,
Ebon Dooley and Nikki Giovanni, I was introduced to The Prophet: a book of
poetic essays by Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran.
In the late 60s, I gifted my mother with a copy of The Prophet. It remains a point of spiritual and emotional
reference for various rites of passage in both our lives.
In 1970, my literary horizons were expanded exponentially,
when in an act of solidarity Drum and Spear Press, Inc. published Enemy
of the Sun: An Anthology of Palestinian
Poetry edited by Naseer Aruri and Edmund Ghareeb. Included were the piercing, magnificent and
emerging voices of twelve Palestinian poets living in the Diaspora and
Israel. Mostly written during and after
the 1967 Six Day War, the poems reflect the angst and awe of Palestinian life
and culture emerging at the time. One of
the poets featured in the anthology is Naomi Shihab Nye went on to become an
award-winning voice resonating powerfully across the landscapes of Middle
Eastern, US and global poetry.
As waves wash ashore from the Gulf of Aden to the Mediterranean
Sea, the landscape of Middle Eastern and
Arabic literature are filled with a growing number of lush, clarifying and
insistent voices including Moroccan/North African novelist Mohammed Achaari;
Kuwaiti short story writer Mai Al –Nakib; and Saudi Arabian novelist Abdo Khal.
While their works are not seminal treatises on Middle Eastern
and Arab life and culture, they provide compelling lenses through which readers
can learn how people press forward to normalize lives all too often torn
asunder by the strife of repression, shifts in cultural rites of passage and
the evolution of practices and behaviors around gender. Winner of the 2011 International Prize for
Arabic fiction, Achaari’s The Arch and The Butterfly is set
just outside the magic and mysticism of the legendary and seemingly timeless
Moroccan city of Marrakech. But none of
that magic or mysticism prevails in Achaari’s novel. Instead the complexities and intersections of
21st century identity, culture, extremism and generational change
turn the novel on the axis of a life shattered by abandonment, crime and the
death of a secularly raised son thought to be studying architecture in Paris,
but killed in Afghanistan fighting with the Islamist resistance.
Right out of today’s headlines Al-Nakib’s The
Hidden Light of Objects is a collection of short stories that reflects the
dissonance and wretched earth policies created by all too many contemporary
politics. A young girl named Amerika
becomes a barometer of hostility towards the West; a Palestinian teenager
entrapped into a botched suicide bombing by two belligerent classmates; the
abiding forgiveness of a wife for her dying husband’s "dickly
dalliances;" and the return of a Kuwaiti woman to her family, after being
held captive in Iraq for a decade. These stories reflect dimensions of the all
too often overlooked lives about which we here in the West remain bunkered in
our stereotypes, Islamaphobia and overall dire dearth of knowledge about Middle
Eastern and Arabic life and culture. I
long for the voice of former Senior White House Reporter Helen Thomas to
provide her astute historical and political insights on this region of the
world.
In Khal’s Throwing Sparks, Tariq dreams his
way out of a life of petty crime and poverty into the reality of becoming a
slave to a master from whom he finds it nearly impossible to liberate himself. In the thick of torment, palace politics and
the moody, powerful and capricious men by whom he is surrounded, he finds
himself in love with the master’s mistress.
Every word, especially the most brutal, ferociously embeds itself like
smoldering embers in a burned out forest, on your spirit. Kahl’s narrative harnesses the embers and
casts them back out into the Universe as the energy of eternals stars.
“Those with a
particularly sensitive disposition suffer a life-time of torment because a star
continues to burn brightly despite the ashes and smoke of its dying
embers. Stars are like that: they continue to burn even after they
collapse.
Tahani would be my eternal star.
The night I stole her virginity, the ogre
stole my life. It wrenched her life
away, and mine with hers.”
Publications
like the always compelling World
Literature Today (http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org) and these offerings by Bloomsbury Qatar
Foundation Publishing are creating greater access to works by Middle Eastern
and Arabic writers. This year marks the fifth anniversary of Bloomsbury Qatar
Foundation Publishing. Established in
2008 and based in Doha BQFP aims to publish books of excellence and originality
in English and Arabic; promote the love and reading and writing and establish a
vibrant literary culture in the Middle East; and cultivate new literary talent.
I’m eager to read more from Achaari, Al-Nakib and Khal and
the ever growing list of Middle Eastern and Arabic authors. Upon reading each of their works, I realize I
need a deeper historical grasp and much more insight into the complexities of contemporary
Middle Eastern cultures and politics. Beyond
the haze of the seemingly endless embers, their works are turning me towards
the Sun.
Daphne Muse is a
writer, social commentator and poet. Her
work appears in This Week in Palestine,
The Atlantic and has aired on NPR. Go
to www.daphnemuse.blogspot.com
to
read her blog.
©Daphne Muse, Oakland,
California 2015
