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...issue of a collective remembrance specifically addressing the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) has been constantly addressed by a host of Lebanese and foreign writers, bringing the horrors of this experience to the fore of their literary explorations. Registering the Lebanese war experience, however, is varied, differing in its focus and scope depending on the specific historical moment that is being recorded, due to this war's multiple circumstances and settings. Moreover, the needs instigating writers to tackle the topic of the Lebanese war also vary, and often concomitantly exist with a quest to foment a form of Lebanese identity, whether a personal or collective one, regardless of the writer's nationality.
In a bid to address the horrors of the Lebanese war and to reconstruct its painful reality, writing becomes an elemental tool of survival for three Lebanese women writers: Hoda Barakat, Hanan al-Shaykh, and Mai Ghoussoub. The focus of their work is not limited only to the war period, but is carried over into the post-war era, a time that can be more intellectually threatening due to the prevalence of a collective amnesia plaguing Lebanese society vis-a-vis all civil war referents. Moreover, by choosing a permanent home in exile, these writers occupy an unstable and complicated position toward Lebanon, the memory of which, although inextricably linked to the war, remains a lingering presence in their lives, shaping their outlook and surfacing again and again in their literary output.
Hence, Lebanon becomes, like Salman Rushdie's India, a symbol of "some sense of loss," relentlessly driving various Lebanese writers living abroad "to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt" (Rushdie 10). However, the decision to leave Lebanon, emanating mostly from a choice to physically relinquish the insanity of struggling through a meaningless war, lends these writers the geographical and temporal distance necessary for an adequate assessment of this war's personal and communal implications. Lebanon, and specifically the war experience, becomes a recurring theme directly of indirectly dominating the work of these women writers who have been driven into exile by the war. In his essay "Reflections on Exile," Edward Said states that "[t]he achievements of exile are permanently undermined by the loss of something left behind forever" (173). Hoda Barakat, Hanan al-Shaykh, and Mai Ghoussoub, in order to reconstitute this "loss" referred to by Said and Rushdie, strive in their works, Stone of Laughter (1990), Beirut Blues (1992) and Leaving Beirut (1998) respectively, (1) to reconstruct, and deconstruct, the Lebanese war by turning their scrutinizing gaze upon it.
A marked divide separates Lebanese citizens who remained in Lebanon during the war from those who opted to escape the daily traumas by becoming refugees, expatriates, emigrants and exiles. The decision to remain in Lebanon, whether due to nationalist or economic reasons, dictated the daily lives of citizens. Miriam Cooke, in her extensive research on women and the Lebanese Civil War period extending between 1975 and 1982, outlines a group of women writers "who have shared Beirut as their home and the war as their experience," naming them the Beirut Decentrists (War's Other Voices 3).
Encompassing figures such as Ghada al-Samman, Hanan al-Shaykh, Emily Nasrallah and Etel Adnan, this group is designated by Cooke as being "decentered in a double-sense: physically, they were scattered all over a self-destructing city [Beirut]; intellectually, they moved in separate spheres" (War's Other Voices 3). Moreover, this group's chief contribution has been to create a marginal, though disorganized, voice in the face of the master war narrative (War's Other Voices 11). This move towards decentralization as proposed by Cooke, however, is extended and updated in this essay to include the efforts of Lebanese women writers "scattered" not only across Beirut during and after the war, but also those existing in transnational locations, choosing self-imposed exile over the struggle of a physically dangerous and frustrating existence. These women writers, including some members of the Beirut Decentrists, widen the scope of the margin by extending it beyond Beirut's, or for that matter, Lebanon's, geographic borders at the specific historical period of the civil war. They accomplish such a redefining act by opting to relocate to exilic milieux such as London, Paris, and New York throughout the whole period of the Lebanese war.
Hoda Barakat, Hanan al-Shaykh, and Mai Ghoussoub each left Beirut and settled in Europe, but not before witnessing their share of war in Beirut. From within their newfound locations, these women writers were dedicated to recording the horrors of the Lebanese war. Instead of being disadvantaged by geographic distance and subjective memories, their works become transgressive acts simultaneously inscribing and questioning the morality of the war's events. More importantly, these writers' creative output becomes even more significant after the fighting ended, acting as a regenerative and probing force against the Lebanese people's widespread avoidance of discussions revolving around the war. Instead of being restricted to the role of the Beirut Decentrists who subverted the central war narrative from within the marginal enclaves of Lebanese society, Barakat, al-Shaykh and Ghoussoub become exilic decentrists residing in European cities like Paris and London, addressing and undercutting the master narrative of collective amnesia pervading the Lebanese social consciousness. They accomplish this feat from the vantage point of informed outsiders looking in, and more specifically, looking back.
In a 1995 interview published in...
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