Unwilling participants in war

January 24, 1996
Issue 

Beirut Blues
By Hanan al-Shaykh
Allen and Unwin, 1995
279 pp., $19.95 (pb)
Reviewed by Jennifer Thompson This well-written book, published originally in Arabic in 1992, is an insightful novel about the war that engulfed Lebanon between 1975 and its official end in 1990. Set in the late 1980s and written from the perspective of a young woman, Asmahan, living in west Beirut, it conveys a sense of the tragedy of the war. Asmahan, who is trying to make some sense of the war and the changes it has wrought on the country and her life, writes a series of letters in her head to friends in exile, her grandmother, lovers, the land, the war and her beloved city of Beirut, which she is forced to flee. The result is a stream of feelings and observations of a life dominated and a country changed beyond recognition by war. It is interwoven with the story of her experiences in her village, in which social relations have been turned upside down. Asmahan describes friendships with those now in a miserable exile, the feelings among those remaining of betrayal by their friends who fled and the exiles' guilt and alienation in the new country. She links the foreign hostages taken by the warring factions in west Beirut with her feeling of being a hostage in her own country. Asmahan writes to Naser, a Palestinian refugee from Jerusalem and her former lover. Lebanon, Beirut especially, has become a second home to the dispossessed Palestinians, and they are an important part of the country. She describes the devastation of Naser's hopes over the war as Israel enters and lays siege to Beirut, forcing the departure of the PLO to save the city from complete destruction. In her letter to the land, Asmahan resumes the story of her escape to her family's land, now occupied by young people from the village. The war meant that what counted was hard cash and weapons, not land and traditional respect. She tells of the checkpoints: "They seemed to open my eyes to the plain truth that Lebanon had been divided into state-lets and zones, that there were people working to specific agendas and that the present situation had not been ‘anticipated in advance by the fighters". Asmahan's letters to blues singer Billie Holiday, who reminds her of a friend Ruhiyya, and her adored grandmother, are moving chapters about the strong women in her life and the changes she sees in the village. When Ruhiyya's cousin, Jawad, arrives from France, where he now lives, her letter to him is of her regret at the things the war has made difficult — a career and a lasting relationship. She feels the distance between those who have left the country and now visit it and those who have stayed. The war touches even the visitor as he witnesses how some have done well from the fighting through the extensive black economy. Asmahan sees through Jawad's eyes the destruction, rubbish and ruins. The chance through him of love and a new life in France means she must decide finally whether to go. Asmahan describes the frustration born of a war that drags on for so long and her reconciliation to simply existing, adjusting to a Beirut "changing hands time after time and gradually fragmenting into smaller and smaller pieces". Al-Shaykh's writing is very human, showing the war through the eyes of an unwilling participant — a hostage and at the same time someone who has grown so used to it that it is hard to contemplate an end to it. It undercuts the indifference and stereotypes that many in the West have of the war in Lebanon. She also portrays the women characters very sympathetically — as strong and independent — unlike the images peddled in the West.

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