Post-War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction

Abstract

At one point in Syrine Hout's rich analytical work on postwar Anglophone Lebanese literature, she references Elias Khoury on the nature of memory and civil war. Khoury writes, "civil wars can be erased from neither reality nor memory. Instead, they are reborn or reincarnated…if erased from memory, they colonize the subconscious" (151). In many ways, this passage seems to encompass much of what Hout argues in this work-namely that despite the years that have elapsed since the Civil War was officially declared to have ended, Lebanese writers in the diaspora have continued to meditate on the meaning of this event and its profound reshaping of their lives in farflung locations. Put another way, the very fact of its repression or "erasure" in Lebanese society, Hout reminds us, compels artists to construct literary "testimonies" to attest to their experiences of the violence and trauma of the war (202). There is no moving on, at least not yet, for this generation of writers. Hout's work is strong in many regards, though it is terrain that has been covered extensively in other works related to Lebanese literature

The internalized vermin of exile in Montréal: Rawi Hage’s Cockroach

“…Hage expresses concerns that immigration literature may slip into reconfirming the rhetoric of salvation: In a lot of Western literature, and maybe Canadian literature too, you cannot portray an immigrant as somebody that is evil […] But if you create characters who do only good, who are all oppressed, who were the victims of something and then come here and are saved, then you are not presenting them as humans. (Hout, 2012: 163).…”

“…In this sense, the novel does not romanticize immigration. Neither does it portray another story of “the stereotypically eager and grateful immigrant”; in stark contrast, the narrator curses his luck and this northern terrain (Hout, 2012: 160). The novel narrates the anxieties of a young man who has emigrated to Canada as a refugee from the Middle East and has been living in Montréal for several years.…”

“…In this context, the dehumanization suggests a departure from the “human” immigrant who is constructed in popular stories of thankful, saved immigrants who succeed. They only succeed because they have “the necessary financing, education, family connections, chaperoning parents, and/or dual nationalities at their disposal” (Hout, 2012: 160). In Hage’s Cockroach , the unnamed narrator subverts the redeeming image of the immigrant whose restored humanity is contingent on romanticizing the host country.…”

“…It represents all the trodden and the underprivileged who will in the narrator’s mind rise and regain authority. It represents “the life of a trapped human being on the earth’s surface […] the underground life of an agile cockroach, able to acquire items stealthily, and resilient enough” (Hout, 2012: 161). This space of becoming offers him the possibility of mobility and of re-enacting his survival skills, which would enable him to recapture endearing memories and ultimately provide a sense of continuity.…”