Posts Tagged ‘Farewell Beirut’
Book review of “Farewell Beirut”
Posted on November 14, 2008
- In: biographies/books | Book Review | Essays | Events/Cultural/Educational/Arts | Lebanon/Middle East/Near East/Levant | political Artical | sex/ love/seduction | short stories/novellas | social articles | women
Farewell Beirut is fundamentally an autobiographical witnessed short stories and is of 220 pages distributed in 15 chapters.
Late Mai Ghoussoub is a writer, sculpture, theater promoter, and a co-founder of the publishing house Dar Al Saki, was 54 when she died of complication from a surgery in London on February 17, 2007.
Mai participated in the Lebanese civil war by caring for the downtrodden Palestinians living in shantytown of refugee camps.
She lost an eye by a rocket that hit her car while aiding in a clinic of Nabaa in East Beirut, and she suffered greatly for three years out of that injury. Mai decided to leave Lebanon in 1979 and lived for a while in Paris and then moved to London.
Mai suggested to her old school friend Andre Caspar, who was hitchhiking in the USA, to join her and open a library that would offer Arabic books and manuscript. The library led to instituting the publishing house Dar Al Saki in 1983. Mai married Hazem Saghieh, a writer and newspaper editor.
During an art exhibition in Shore Ditch London, Mai and her Israeli actress friend Anna Sharbati donned Muslim attires and held tennis rackets to stir any climate of conservatism in London, but nobody noticed them.
Mai recalls that at the age of 12, she was attached to her female French teacher Nomie. To please her teacher she wrote a lengthy fictitious essay that ended with an injunction for revenge on harms done to her. Nomie gave her only 10 out of 20 points because the want for revenge is the basest of emotions… Mai retained that lesson and struggled with it most of her turbulent life, especially during part of the civil war.
First story.
Tiny and sickly Latifa was barely 9 years old when her Syrian father “rented” her for a year to work as maid (house helper). Latifa was to get up before any member of the family and go to bed in a corner of the kitchen after every member was asleep and work non-stop most of the time. Latifa, treated worse than a slave, endured all the miseries and humiliations.
(We had 3 Syrian kids girls from Safita in Syria, ranging from 10 to 12. The father of the kid used to pay us a visit every year to collect upfront the yearly wage of the daughter. The father barely spent any time, much less quality time with his daughter. These girls experienced a heart-wrenched moment when they had to leave us. They got used to us, though we never demanded from them a glass of water. Mother was the boss and we had nothing to do with these hard working helpers. I guess they sensed they will have a harsher life and maybe be married at a young age)
Latifa’s father used to show up drunk once a year to be paid without even bringing his daughter a token of a gift or spending any time with her.
Latifa was raped by the eldest son of the family and she was no longer permitted to leave the apartment. During the civil war in Lebanon, tiny Latifa was to brave the snipers and rockets to bring food to the family.
Latifa joined the militias of the neighborhood and moved with them; she covered her face with a hood (cagoule) so that nobody would recognize her, but her large eyes could not conceal her. Latifa never took revenge on her “masters”, but tried her best to move forward.
Latifa got famous as “Um Ali”, and one of the toughest fighters in Beirut.
She was killed mysteriously and her “masters” had no photo of her to plaster it on the street in remembrance of a “martyr”. Latifa lived incognito and died incognito.
Second story.
Said was the only son of the owner of a small grocery. His family was constantly worried for his upbringing. Said was a short, stocky, jovial and smiling helper; he delivered the groceries to the homes and was liked by the entire neighborhood; he wanted to join the “hospitality” business.
The civil war changed Said: he joined the militias and became a tough fighter. There were plenty of rumors about Said’s deeds during the war; a sniper, a blackmailer, a leader of a group of fighters and anything that warriors are expected to end up doing among scared and humiliated citizens.
Said opened a small hotel after the war. The author was unable to label a definitive judgment opinion on Said as she recalled him when Mai was settled overseas. Can a man be fundamentally good and change to the opposite when circumstances change?
Third story.
Hashem is an Iranian refugee in Beirut, fleeing the new Khomeini Islamic regime.
Hashem is well liked and funny and has strong and definite positions against the Western States and cultures. He immigrated to Denmark during the Lebanese civil war and married the tall, beautiful and blonde Kirsten.
Kersten did her best to assimilate Hashem’s culture and tradition; she befriended his friends, learned to cook Iranian and Lebanese dishes, helped bring Hashem’s family to Denmark and had promised him to wear the veil when they decide to return to Iran or settle in Lebanon.
Hashem fell in love with Maria, a Chilean girl, while attending a Danish language center. Maria didn’t care for Hashem’s friends or even his health; all she cared for was her relationship with Hashem. Kirsten didn’t like the situation; she never reprimanded Hashem verbally: her eyes and silence and posture expressed her displeasure.
Hashem was killed in Denmark in 1989; Kirsten set up an official obituary in her church and in the mosque. She organized the funeral to its minute details and delivered the eulogy; she persisted on keeping Hashem’s memory every year and obliterated Maria from the picture. From now on Hashem solely belongs to Kirsten.
Mai volunteered her aid in the clinic of the Chatila Palestinian camp at the start of the civil war; she cataloged the medicines and shelved them accordingly. A young Palestinian leader visited the camp and saw Mai; he sent one of his sbirs to fetch Mai to his headquarter.
Mai and Abu Firas enjoyed a secret amorous affair for long time until Mai’s brother got injured. Abu Firas made the error of visiting Mai at the hospital; Mai’s family and acquaintances got wind of her marginal affair and she had to leave Lebanon to Paris when her brother recovered.
Mai never carried a weapon or engage in any skirmishes. Mai was comfortably installed in Paris when she received a long distance call from Lebanon; Mai refused to take the call of Abu Firas: instead, she wandered in the streets of Paris to relieve the anxiety of the onslaught of her memory of the civil war.
Mai had questions nagging at her “would she ever be able to convince herself that she didn’t participate in the civil war?”, “would she be able to erase the facts that she met assassins and didn’t oppose their deeds?”
One thing that Mai is convinced of is that she allied to mercenaries on ideological grounds and let her country go to hell.
“Transient insanity”? How about transient “sanity” in this world gone amok?
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 15, 2021
“Farewell Beirut” by late Mai Ghoussoub(book review, part 3)
Posted on December 4, 2008 (and written in Nov,16, 2008)
- In: Book Review | death/ terminally ill/ massacres, genocide | Essays | Events/Cultural/Educational/Arts | Lebanon/Middle East/Near East/Levant | political | social articles | war aftermath | women
Note: Paragraphs in parentheses are my own interjections.
The third part of my review was hard and I delayed it too long because the demons that Mai is battling with are spread throughout the book.
I decided not to try to have a coherent or logical links among the different emotions that were troubling Mai, and I will leave it to the readers to do their own homework and reflections.
There are cases of transient insanity such as degraded human values, mocked tradition, and disobedience of State laws and rules.
For example, why we tend to be more lenient toward the rotten moral values of officials simply because they didn’t show rigidity in the mind?
If we admit that “traitors” are the product of dictatorship and wars, and that this breed of people are present in locations fraught with danger (then most of us might have played the role of traitors under the right conditions).
People have the tendency to be more lenient with deficiency in morality than with extremist positions in ideologies and religious beliefs.
For example, burning witches is related to extreme social and religious dogmatism as a reaction for seeking consensus in an established social order.
Heroes are not necessarily that honorable; take the case of this child who denounced his father, who helped a few Gulag prisoners to escape, to the soviet authorities and in return was awarded a medal of honor and much propaganda.
Take for example the French women who had sexual relationship with German officers during WWII and many of them begot offspring; they had their head shaven since hair is the most representative of female pride.
These head shaven ladies were the scapegoats to releasing the emotions of frustration and rage among the vanquished Parisians. The worst part is that the mothers brought their kids with them to watch this dishonoring ritual. The women watchers are badly dressed, which reflect a bad conscience in being part of the ceremony.
While the German used modern techniques to hide their genocide, the French “victors” adopted medieval means to humiliate and get revenge on the traitors and informers.
John Steinbeck said “We cannot take pictures of war, because war is fundamentally emotions“.
In our back head, we always have fears for the reaction of those we have persecuted.
The French star singer Arlettie reacted furiously and said “What! Are they also meddling in how we use our sex parts?” Many women had to survive under siege and everyone according to his potentials and skills.
The Argentinean navy officer Adolfo Silingo said:
“I was responsible for killing 30 people with my own hands and I do not feel remorse or repentance because I was following orders, and I got used after the initial shock surprise. We knew that we were killing humans but we kept killing them! The civilians were in a semi comatose state from torture and we threw them out of the airplane like puppy dolls.
“Most of the navy contingents participated in these mass killings” Adolfo admitted. He is spending his life drunk on the streets trying to forget the “dirty war” during the dictatorship against his own people.
General Paul Tibits who dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima is not penitent. These kinds of people were once considered heroes: how do you view them now?
Hannah Arendt would like to comprehend “Why these people did choose to stop thinking?”
Brecht screamed in one of his plays “Woo to the nations that count too many heroes!”
Simone Veil didn’t take it personal that she was incarcerated because she was Jew; she was interested to know “how people are propelled into a climate of condemning and defaming others”
This question is pertinent “Is it legitimate to hide truth in order to secure social peace? How can we manage to forget, and yet not take chances, for the recurrence of the same sorts of atrocities?”
It is most difficult to find common denominators among the concepts of justice, moral values, and politics when judging cases of genocides.
Bertolt Brecht said: “Tragedies is about human suffering, expressed in less seriousness than comedies. The perpetrators of genocides are not great criminal politicians, but simple people who allowed horrifying political crimes to pass”
Note: The main theme in “Farewell Beirut” is “revenge” and the associated concepts of honor, genocides, nationalism, heroes, traitors, denouncers, martyrdom, punishment, hate, love and the fundamental human emotions that might be interpreted differently through the ages, and civilizations but where the moral values of wrong and right should not be left to personal matters of point of views.
“Farewell Beirut”, by late Mai Ghoussoub
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 13, 2021
Farewell Beirut (Book review, part 2)
Posted on November 16, 2008
Note: Paragraphs in parentheses are my own interjections. The names and characters in Mai’s manuscript are not fictitious; she personally eye witness the stories.
The main theme in “Farewell Beirut” is “revenge” and the associated concepts of honor, genocides, nationalism, heroes, traitors, martyrdom, hate, love and the fundamental human emotions that might be interpreted differently through the ages, periods and civilizations… but where the moral values of wrong and right should not be personal matters of point of vues.
In part 1, I related the stories of “Um Ali”, “Said”, “Abu Firas”, and “Hashem”.
This part would be more related to fundamental questions that Mai Ghoussoub tried to struggle with and to investigate moral issues.
But first, I present the story of Fadwa.
“Fadwa” was sent overseas in 1916 in order to avoid famine and be married to Salem. In those years parents sent their children by sea, supposedly destined to “America” (USA or Latin America) because they paid high fees.
Instead, and frequently the ship Captains landed them instead in Africa telling them “We reached America, get down” And thus, many Lebanese ended in Africa and kept sending letters to their folks not daring to acknowledge their wrong destinations, and parents resumed sending people to “America”.
The mother of Fadwa reminded her daughter, before sailing, that she is from a much higher social stratum than her future husband Salem and that Fadwa should remind her husband of that difference.
Fadwa landed in Ghana (Africa) and had five boys and one girl and she expected Salem to worship her for giving him so many boys.
Fadwa refrained from mingling with the Lebanese and Syrian families on account that she is of a higher status and had many helpers at home.
When Ghana got its independence Fadwa was sent back to Lebanon with all her children for fear of reprisals.
At the airport, the immigrating ladies made sure that Fadwa overhears their conversations that Salem was cheating on her and that he had married an African girl and has African offspring.
Salem joined Fadwa a month later looking much older and deprived of wealth; but he didn’t expect the hatred and all consuming feeling of revenge that were eating up Fadwa.
The couple slept in separate beds and Fadwa never called her husband by his name or even faced him. Salem was the “He” or the “decrepit old man”.
Salem’s old friends were admonished never to pay him further visits. Salem was homesick to Ghana because he spent most of his life there and the surrounding family was not cheerful. Fadwa never smiled and children were scared of her outbursts and rigidity.
When Salem became handicapped, Fadwa confined him for perpetuity in the house and never cooked his preferred dishes and locked on the sweets and chocolates on grounds that they are forbidden to his health. Salem died miserably.
Fadwa died shortly after Salem, totally frustrated and a very unhappy old lady that could not feel that the fruits of her revenge were satisfactory.
The author Mai returned to visit Lebanon after the civil war. She is repainting her apartment to erase the slogans that militias have painted over the walls; she kept the slogan “Those who teach us lessons in moral values are hypocrite and insolent”.
In the seventies, saying that a person is sure of his opinion was a bad connotation of someone who refuses to detach from traditions. It was a period when moral issues were not absolute: a person had to take into consideration the environment, the period, and all the facet of the story.
Opting for neutral stands were cherished values. That was fine and dandy until you are confronted with these sample accidents: thousands of women raped in Bosnia, racist gangs killing whole families in London, cutting off the sexual parts of a 4-year old girl by its family living in Paris according to customs…
Then you realize that wrong and right are no longer personal opinions. Vaclav Havel said “The concepts of justice, honor and disloyalty are palpable nowadays”
A chapter compared the act of martyrdoms of the young 16 year-old Lebanese girl Nouha Samaan against the Israeli invaders in South Lebanon and Flora in 10th century Andalusia (Spain).
(Between 1983-87, at least 3 young girls committed suicide acts against the Israeli forces of occupations, such as Sanaa Mheidly, before the young males replaced women).
In Flora’s period, Spain was ruled by the “Arabs” and mostly the Muslims from Morocco and it enjoyed a long period of prosperity and cultural development and tolerance for other religions and ethnic immigrants.
The mother of Flora was Catholic and her father a Muslim and they lived in Cordoba.
By the age of 16 Flora became a ferocious, one sided Catholic zealot; she proclaimed in front of the tolerant judge that the Prophet Muhammad is a cheat and the devil.
The judge had the right to execute her but let her go. Flora would not desist. She associated with the bigot preacher Yologious who claimed that the educated Catholics have taken the road to perdition: instead of focusing their readings solely on the Bible “they are reading literary manuscripts, scientific books, learning to write well and composing poems”.
Many young disciples of Yologious were harangued to sacrifice their lives for Catholicism and finally Flora had to be executed.
At that time Europe needed “martyrs” while the Muslims were tolerant. In this century Europe stopped commemorating its “martyrs” while the Muslim World need “martyrs” for their struggle. (To be continued)
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