Beirut Nightmares Ghada Samman Pdf Reader
The Price of Freedom: A Reading of Ghada al-Samman’s Beirut ’75 “Beirut has ruined me, that’s all!” “That’s not true,” he replied, “You women all accuse Beirut of ruining you when the truth of the matter is that the seeds of corruption were already deep inside you. All Beirut did was to give them a place to thrive and become visible. It’s given them a climate where they can grow.” “She wondered to herselfif they had allowed my body to experience wholesome, sound relationships in Damascus – would I have lost my way to this extent?” A sense of alienation, pessimism, and ultimate nihilism, which stems from al-Samman’s existential viewpoint, envelops the main characters in Beirut ‘75. The protagonists (Yasmeena, Farah, Ta’aan, Abu’l-Malla, and Abu Mustafa) feel trapped, alone, and disconnected from each other and from society. Each character’s personal struggle sheds light on some negative aspect of Lebanese society as seen by al-Samaan in 1975. Each character is exploited in some way, either sexually, politically or economically.
Pdf ghada al samman kawabis beirut maqalat adabiyyah ihyaa al turath al arabi fil mahjar. Beirut nightmares ghada samman pdf reader megazonelocal.
Although these underlying evils of Lebanese society may have existed, al-Samman only shows a unilateral view colored by her own perception of reality. She fails to offer a multidimensional and more realistic view of the society at that time.
In addition, she fails to successfully convey the depth of existential crisis that each of her characters endures, consequently resulting in characters that remain shallow and who do not convince the reader that their tragic demise is warranted. The first chapter of the novel repeatedly foreshadows the characters’ impending doom; nevertheless, the reader is still left with a sense of bewilderment at such an astonishing and violent end to an otherwise ordinary set of characters. Did they really merit such a catastrophic conclusion of events? Several reviews have been very critical of such a sensational conclusion, and some critics, as well as many readers, have been shocked and dismayed. The author loves to admit, though, that she herself was puzzled with this conclusion as she tries to justify it to the public: During the writing of this novel, its characters were simply leading themselves to their tragic deaths.
I was constantly trying to stop them from doing this, but I was unable to. Although I created them on paper, these are live characters, and I do not force them to behave according to the critics’ desires or even my own wishes. It was inevitable that I let them meet their death in the pond of violence in which they swim, the pond that is full of land mines and which is called Beirut the recent events in Beirut proved the clarity (of my vision )hence, the violence the explosion According to al-Samman, her characters were doomed because they were trapped in a “pond of violence,” otherwise known as Beirut. Instead of finding hope and redemption there, they each become entangled in the socio-political issues of Beirut in 1975. From al-Samman’s political and existential view, Beirut is viewed as a “fallen city,” and consequently, not only its citizens but anyone who enters it is doomed to fail.
For al-Samman, Beirut is Dante’s hell, a place for lost souls with no hope of salvation. Throughout the novel, the characters seem pathetic in their limited grasp of reality and in their inability to alter their catastrophic destiny. They seek a childlike and immediate fix to their problems.
They do not grow, mature or ripen with experience. Rather, they succumb to their unyielding desires and destructive instincts. Ochenj smeshnie slova dlya krokodila. Their mad search for an immediate solution to their poverty, coupled with their uncontrollable passion for money and fame, prove to be a sure formula for disaster. But of course, they all blame Beirut!
Take Yasmeena, for example. Coming from a humble origin, she has been a Syrian school teacher in a nun’s convent for the past ten years, and she journeys to Beirut only to escape her miserable life and an oppressive society. For her, Beirut is more a fantasy than a reality. It is Paris, Hollywood or Manhattan. She has already formulated her own simplistic version of how Beirut is and has a rather ideal perspective even on the way love relationships in Beirut should be. A poet at heart and on paper, she entertains a beautiful dream of publishing her poems, but she fails to consider that becoming a poet comes with a dear price and a serious lifetime commitment. She cannot wait to arrive and pluck the fruit of fame and wealth that she imagines awaits her at the gate of the city of dreams.