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ALAWIYA SOBH are what have brought us to the mess we’re in now. The killing and forced migration that have afflicted moderate Muslims, Christians and Yazidis fall on the shoulders of all these fundamentalists, Sunni and Shia alike. Practices and attitudes that violate women’s bodies, their lives and their mere existence – treating them as public property – not to mention the fatwas that support these practices and attitudes, are bound to make a person angry. I am personally infuriated by both men and women who go along with the fundamentalist way of thinking that’s landed us where we are now. Bodily pain is a mirror of the pain being experienced by this sick society and its systems. My critique of our current reality is woven into the fabric of the novel. Furthermore, it is a critique of all political associations, from the Syrian Baath to the Iraqi Baath to Communism; similarly, it is directed against fundamentalism, despotic regimes, militant religious systems, Shia Islamic courts and sheikhs whose fatwas shackle Arab people as a whole, and women in particular. The sick body in my novel is simply the outcome of all the heinous acts committed by these despotic regimes and these parties, whose leaders’ only aim has been to profiteer from this cause or that. I’ve tried not to neglect any of the factors that have contributed to the ruin of Arab people’s lives on the physical, emotional and mental planes alike. All of us are sick, oppressors and oppressed, slayers and slain. We’re a sick society that suffers from serious disabilities and dysfunctions, and the lives of individuals have to be seen in relation to the political, religious and social systems and patriarchal values that surround them. This novel isn’t some ideological manifesto, but a cry of rage released through the creation of an angry novelistic world. Of course, my country has made me ill, and I say this emphatically. How could I not fall ill when I see Arab society collapsing around me in worn-torn countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq,Yemen and Libya? We live in a state of madness unparalleled in history as Christians,Yazidis, neutral Muslims and others are raped and murdered.Whatever makes Syria, Iraq, Lebanon or any other Arab country ill, makes me ill too. KT:We’re accustomed to seeing you take up women’s concerns and issues in 72 BANIPAL 70 – SPRING 2021
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ALAWIYA SOBH your writing. In this novel, by contrast, you burden your characters with worries relating to issues of politics, party and religion as well.Why this new direction? AS: In all my novels there’s an obsession with giving courageous voice to taboos: religious taboos, bodily taboos, and political taboos. I don’t believe there can be any creativity without freedom, and writing is freedom. A novel has to address human concerns. It conveys a vision. It makes a statement. It holds space for preoccupations, fears and worries. Unfortunately, however, most of the novels I encounter read like news reports. In this novel, I’ve spoken of all the things that cause me pain. However, I don’t feel I’ve weighed my characters down with the things I’ve given them to carry. The political voice in my novel isn’t rhetorical or moralistic. Rather, it’s woven into the fabric of a narrative whose characters are flawed and incomplete. A political preoccupation may be more evident in this novel than it has been in my other works. If so, I see this as a reflection of the political and social experiences of those living in the Arab world, and as a way of criticizing laws, systems and popular beliefs that impact Arabs and the course of their lives. My novels are banned in most Arab countries. But I can’t write if I try to restrict myself to what the censors would allow past their desks. I don’t even know how to censor myself. My anger in the novel is directed against all systems, especially those that hinder the woman’s freedom, contribute to her enslavement, or disregard the violence and tyranny she endures. KT:Throughout the narrative, readers encounter the horrific violence going on in Arab countries.There is such cruelty and bloodlust that you even liken the Arabs in one place to prisoners, saying:“At that moment I felt as though we were all trapped in a giant prison whose doors were impossible to open, as though one of the prison guards had thrown the key to the bottom of the sea. And here we are, imprisoned, as though we were dying” (p. 288).Why this narrative violence? AS: Of course there’s cruelty in the novel. However, it’s a cruelty mitigated by irony and poetic language. This is precisely what I put to use in my previous novels, including, for example, Maryam al-Hakaya (Maryam: Keeper of Stories), or Dunya. BANIPAL 70 – SPRING 2021 73

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ALAWIYA SOBH

are what have brought us to the mess we’re in now. The killing and forced migration that have afflicted moderate Muslims, Christians and Yazidis fall on the shoulders of all these fundamentalists, Sunni and Shia alike. Practices and attitudes that violate women’s bodies, their lives and their mere existence – treating them as public property – not to mention the fatwas that support these practices and attitudes, are bound to make a person angry. I am personally infuriated by both men and women who go along with the fundamentalist way of thinking that’s landed us where we are now.

Bodily pain is a mirror of the pain being experienced by this sick society and its systems. My critique of our current reality is woven into the fabric of the novel. Furthermore, it is a critique of all political associations, from the Syrian Baath to the Iraqi Baath to Communism; similarly, it is directed against fundamentalism, despotic regimes, militant religious systems, Shia Islamic courts and sheikhs whose fatwas shackle Arab people as a whole, and women in particular.

The sick body in my novel is simply the outcome of all the heinous acts committed by these despotic regimes and these parties, whose leaders’ only aim has been to profiteer from this cause or that. I’ve tried not to neglect any of the factors that have contributed to the ruin of Arab people’s lives on the physical, emotional and mental planes alike. All of us are sick, oppressors and oppressed, slayers and slain. We’re a sick society that suffers from serious disabilities and dysfunctions, and the lives of individuals have to be seen in relation to the political, religious and social systems and patriarchal values that surround them.

This novel isn’t some ideological manifesto, but a cry of rage released through the creation of an angry novelistic world. Of course, my country has made me ill, and I say this emphatically. How could I not fall ill when I see Arab society collapsing around me in worn-torn countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq,Yemen and Libya? We live in a state of madness unparalleled in history as Christians,Yazidis, neutral Muslims and others are raped and murdered.Whatever makes Syria, Iraq, Lebanon or any other Arab country ill, makes me ill too. KT:We’re accustomed to seeing you take up women’s concerns and issues in

72 BANIPAL 70 – SPRING 2021

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