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ALAWIYA SOBH character par excellence. He is a painter who, in a dramatic shift, joins Hezbollah. However, given that he is, in fact, a true artist, he must of necessity return to his art.When I describe Youssef’s perception of the bedbugs in his house, this is a symbolic way of saying that a fanatical, closed society (a society of darkness) exudes “bedbugs” and stinking corruption. After his decision to join Hezbollah,Youssef continues to feel alienated from this decision, and love for life still lives inside of him. As a consequence, his final painting turns out more beautiful than anything he has painted before. However, it remains without a signature.Youssef’s end is a symbolic one.Youssef’s involvement with Hezbollah and the way of thinking associated with it is bound to be temporary, its flame bound to be extinguished. This is why I view this work as my most powerful novel in terms of symbolic meanings, imagination, and the issues it addresses. KT:Why do we never learn anything about the man addressed in the novel – the “you” to whom Basma speaks throughout the book? Who is this unnamed man, this reader concealed behind the second person pronoun ‘you’? AS: Basma is in need of a neutral, anonymous figure; someone to whom she can reveal everything, pour out her story. What draws her to this person is the fact that he is a producer and a playwright who treats people with art, and because she needs to talk, to be healed. Narration is necessary for her recovery, in order for her body to heal and retrieve its memory. Consequently, I wanted the person being addressed to be present yet absent: a mere reader, a listener. I wanted him to be a new hope, an open horizon that wouldn’t interfere in events. Expressing things inevitably frees us from those things, draws us closer to ourselves, makes us stronger and more transparent. I didn’t want this novel of mine to be just a personal cry. I wanted to put a finger on the pain experienced by Arabs as individuals, and specifically, the women among them. I wanted to strip bare the regimes of tyranny and the ‘ISISes’, both Shia and Sunni, of anything with a connection to extremist, tyrannical organizations, religious and political alike, within a narrative framework. And the result was this character. This unnamed listener becomes Basma’s physician, her book, 76 BANIPAL 70 – SPRING 2021
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ALAWIYA SOBH her healing. Basma is transformed into a Shahrazad who treats her pain by telling her own story, just as Shahrazad treated her beloved Shahriyar by telling him other people’s stories. Nevertheless, Basma doesn’t meet her listener in the novel.Will she meet him? We don’t know. The answer to this question would require another novel. As Basma says at the end of the book: “Love holds many possibilities.” KT: Every one of your novels is a hymn to love, an expression of longing for love and a call to embrace it.Tell us a bit about the title ‘An Ta'ashaq al-Hayah’ – ‘To Love Life’.What’s the secret behind it? AS: ‘To Love Life’ means being implicated in life, glowing with life, letting life fill you. It means feeling the tremendous power of joy, resisting illness, riding out the bumps in life’s road. Passion for life gives us all this beauty, and a sense of pride in our existence. It makes us feel alive. Nobody with a passion for life can be a religious fundamentalist. But it’s a passion that’s quite costly in our societies. To love life means to pay a price. If Basma didn’t love life with a passion, she wouldn’t be able to triumph over her illness. Her passion for life is what seals her victory. Likewise, my own passion for life is what has enabled me to write, to recover my memory and my body. On the personal level, I’m someone who believes in love, and I’m filled with love for all things beautiful. Life has no meaning without love, whether in the sense of romantic passion or of simple platonic goodwill. I believe in love’s ability to heal not just this or that illness, but all of humanity. In this respect, I believe heartily in the expressions of Christianity that focus on the concept of love in the humanitarian sense. My own experience in life has taught me that anyone who lacks love is incomplete. Love really does heal many conditions. It heals bitterness, hatred, despair, envy, fanaticism and all things ugly. Love changes the details of both the person who loves with a passion, and the object of that love. Love changes everything. In the words of my protagonist, Basma: “I’m a passionate lover of life, a passionate lover of art.” Translated by Nancy Roberts BANIPAL 70 – SPRING 2021 77

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ALAWIYA SOBH

character par excellence. He is a painter who, in a dramatic shift, joins Hezbollah. However, given that he is, in fact, a true artist, he must of necessity return to his art.When I describe Youssef’s perception of the bedbugs in his house, this is a symbolic way of saying that a fanatical, closed society (a society of darkness) exudes “bedbugs” and stinking corruption. After his decision to join Hezbollah,Youssef continues to feel alienated from this decision, and love for life still lives inside of him. As a consequence, his final painting turns out more beautiful than anything he has painted before. However, it remains without a signature.Youssef’s end is a symbolic one.Youssef’s involvement with Hezbollah and the way of thinking associated with it is bound to be temporary, its flame bound to be extinguished. This is why I view this work as my most powerful novel in terms of symbolic meanings, imagination, and the issues it addresses. KT:Why do we never learn anything about the man addressed in the novel – the “you” to whom Basma speaks throughout the book? Who is this unnamed man, this reader concealed behind the second person pronoun ‘you’?

AS: Basma is in need of a neutral, anonymous figure; someone to whom she can reveal everything, pour out her story. What draws her to this person is the fact that he is a producer and a playwright who treats people with art, and because she needs to talk, to be healed. Narration is necessary for her recovery, in order for her body to heal and retrieve its memory.

Consequently, I wanted the person being addressed to be present yet absent: a mere reader, a listener. I wanted him to be a new hope, an open horizon that wouldn’t interfere in events. Expressing things inevitably frees us from those things, draws us closer to ourselves, makes us stronger and more transparent. I didn’t want this novel of mine to be just a personal cry. I wanted to put a finger on the pain experienced by Arabs as individuals, and specifically, the women among them. I wanted to strip bare the regimes of tyranny and the ‘ISISes’, both Shia and Sunni, of anything with a connection to extremist, tyrannical organizations, religious and political alike, within a narrative framework. And the result was this character.

This unnamed listener becomes Basma’s physician, her book,

76 BANIPAL 70 – SPRING 2021

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