On Beyond Paradise

Ahmed Khalifa

Book Review: Beyond Paradise وراء الفردوس by Mansoura Ez Eldin:

After establishing herself as one of Egypt's finest writers with her previous novel, Maryam's Maze, Mansoura Ez Eldin decides to do something daring with her second novel. Shift gears and try something different and more difficult to pull off. Well, does she succeed? The novel, titled Beyond Paradise, at first seems to be her attempt at a grand Gothic novel a la some of the works of Joyce Carol Oates; a novel high on melodrama and with a large cast of eccentric characters. But to expect conventionalism from Ez Eldin wouldn't be smart, and after the stunningly gripping (and Gothic) opening, the novel shifts gears and becomes a sprawling psychological study of several characters as told through the eyes of an unreliable narrator: a young woman seemingly grieving for her just deceased father. 

Ez Eldin takes us on a compelling journey through the lives and psyches of the characters, and every now and then shows us their worst fears and nightmares with her assured style and penchant for nightmarish imagery. It's an intriguing piece of work, occasionally fascinating, and, above all, daring and stylish. And to me, the last sentence of the novel is sheer brilliance and manages to end the novel on an effectively chilling note.

Via: arabic-lit.blogspot

Maryam and the Minotaur

Last week at the headquarters of her new Cairo publishers, Dar Al-Ain, Mansoura Ez-Eldin read from and signed copies of her second novel, Wara' Al-Firdaws (Beyond Paradise), a sort of psychological thriller and Bildungsroman rolled into one. Comparing the new book to Maryam's Maze, her 2004 novel, translated by Paul Starkey, Youssef Rakha spoke to Ez Eldin about her work, her life and the overlap between the two.

Youssef Rakha

Though she published only three books in nearly a decade, Mansoura Ez-Eldin (b. 22 March 1976) has maintained a high profile on the literary scene since she graduated from Cairo University in 1998. She is the books editor at the most popular cultural weekly in the country, Akhbar Al-Adab, where she got a job in the same year. By 2001, though already married to a fellow young writer whom she also met there, her first book, a collection of short stories titled Daw' Muhtazz (Trembling Light), was published to acclaim from a battalion of former teachers, mentors and admirers, including well-known figures like critic Mohammad Badawi, novelist Gamal El-Ghitani (the editor of Akhbar Al-Adab ), even the late philosopher Mahmoud Amin El-Alim. In the next two years Ez Eldin would go through both pregnancy-birth and the death and dying of her mother, experiences she would lugubriously internalize and eventually, from 2002 to 2009, transform. Working every day, however little the time left her after both job and small family are paid their dues, she draws up character sketches, composes dream studies, and occasionally develops a text into a short story -- which she might subsequently use as a chapter in a novel.

Correspondences are frequent and at least once, in the course of writing Maryam's Maze, Ez-Eldin had all but given up on resolving one particular complication when she realized that one of her early short stories provided her with exactly the narrative development she needed; she simply had to insert that short story unaltered for the novel, apparently unrelated, to flow exactly as she had envisaged it. Correspondences could also occur between literature and life, in equally unexpected ways. Ez-Eldin recounts that, during her mother's last days at the hospital, the woman "to whom I owe absolutely everything" often asked about her writing. "The idea of me writing pleased her," and so, despite the mayhem that consciously prevented her from doing it, at the hospital she would take out her old notes and exercises and pretend to be working on those texts that had made her mother proud of her when they appeared in well-known newspapers and magazines. "After a while I realized that these short stories were actually developing into Maryam." The slim volume, which makes up in intensity for what it lacks in extent, concerns a young woman, her close friend or double, and the large house of a provincial patriarch which, following the young woman's move to Cairo, appears to her as a Labyrinth, its large and deeply intermingled cast of occupants -- ghosts, dream figures, real people? -- constituting a sort of Minotaur of the mind. And so there seems to be yet a third level of correspondence: paradoxically, while she consciously rejected myth, justifying Maryam's visions with recourse to psychology, Ez-Eldin was in fact producing a grassroots version of one of the world's best celebrated myths, and feminizing its hero.

Whatever else you say about it -- and Wara' Al-Firdaws could conceivably make you say something different – Ez Eldin's writing emerges out of a place both mysterious and dark. For seven years now, while advancing her journalistic career and creating a home life sufficiently different from her family background for her to be at peace with, Ez Eldin has also been working through "existential questions, anxiety, discomfort, fear" -- personality traits, she says, that have been with her at least since the unexpected, seemingly absurd death of her father when she was aged nine (which also explains her reading Camus and other adult books at an extremely early age). "They are basically to do with the idea of death," these questions, "the idea of dissolution, breakdown. Not breakdown in the psychological sense, but the idea of this human constitution being on the verge of ceasing, at any moment. Termination," she muses. "The whole thing coming to an abrupt end. A somewhat strange imagination," she interrupts herself to chuckle. And it is at this point, no matter how much I object that her imagination is actually in no way strange, that Ez-Eldin and her work finally come together for me. I have known her for many years and she has never struck me as capable of anything more disturbing than a whimper. Of all the fiction writers and poets who emerged in the 1990s, she comes across as perhaps the most psychologically balanced -- quiet, hardworking, focused. There is a kind of no- nonsense conservatism about her, a kind of respectability. This might explain the fact that, from an early age until eight years ago, she wore hijab -- a fact she seldom mentions, and then only to say that it was an outward shift to do with her pilgrim's progress from the countryside to the city, not with the substance of her relationship to God.

This, on the one hand; and on the other hand, her work: Never mind that the very premise of the Maze is a dream in which the protagonist seems to be knifed to death by her Doppelganger: a weird rite in which the latter dies equally graphically. In Wara' Al-Firdaws a similar duo, Salma and Gamila, play out a puzzling relationship implying anything from schizophrenia in one or both of them to lesbianism; frighteningly rather than bafflingly, the precise nature of their connection is never stated. Aside from the two of them, however, there is at least one gory death, a series of encounters with the ghost of the dead man (notably sexual encounters with his as yet young attractive wife), and beatings. Despite her attempt to depict a whole world, her conscious marginalization of Salma and Gamila, the sense of mystery, of the paranormal, of unaccountable powers interfering with irrational drives, is still there. Ez-Eldin tells me that Badawi, whose lectures she attended at the time, coined a term for her earliest short stories: "writing the secret" ( kitabat al-sirr ). Each text seems to be a secret, a clockwork mini information system that, however multifarious, remains self-contained. Ez-Eldin mentions, in this context, her debt to the horror film and her interest in the therapeutic effect of writing (Salma, who edits short stories for publication in a newspaper, starts writing a novel on the advice of her psychiatrist); she identifies imagination with fear. This is not every day, realistic fear, which -- in line with the impression Ez-Eldin gives of herself -- seems to be well under control. The fear that is at odds with Ez-Eldin's poise, which nonetheless comes through with amazing intensity in her books, is something far more primal. In her mind, she explains, fear of the dark (the childhood experience par excellence) takes on the deepest metaphysical dimensions. "You'd be surprised," she says, "how basic my fears are."

Set against the backdrop of the shifting fortunes of the brick making industry in the Delta in the mid-1980s -- perhaps the first mention in contemporary Arabic literature of the otherwise oft-cited phenomenon of tagrif, which eroded agricultural land before the shift to concrete -- Wara' Al-Firdaws draws a much sharper distinction between the two settings informing Ez-Eldin's experience. First, there is the tiny village where, in the absence of basic public amenities, Ez-Eldin enjoyed a nonetheless unusually prosperous upbringing as the spoilt but remarkably successful school child at the heart of an extended family so large and close knit, so conservative and so rich that her husband, on first being introduced to it, could not help comparing it to the mob in The Godfather. Secondly, there is Cairo, the infinitely larger place to which Ez-Eldin's passage -- a hitherto unthinkable breach of tradition facilitated by her mother -- gradually allows for a clear perspective on "just how strange and unusual this experience of the countryside really was". The book began as an account of her mother's life, a fictionalized biography not unlike Hanan Al-Shaykh's Hikayati Sharh Yatoul (My Life, A Long Story) -- whose publication in 2005 discouraged Ez-Eldin from doing the same thing again -- so she quickly gave up on this side of what she was already envisaging as a larger, intergenerational variation on Maryam, one that replaced the paranormal with "the mythology of the setting" and in which the central (dual) character had less of a role to play. "As always," Ez-Eldin says with conviction, "the work imposed its own logic."

Partly because it contains more comedy and juxtaposes a greater number of stylistic registers, partly because it has a more definite social-historical reference point, Wara' Al-Firdaws has already been hailed as more accessible than Maryam. Aside from widening the scope of her work without making concessions to the market, however, Ez-Eldin had no intention of compromising her notion of what writing actually involves: a process of imagining, primarily out of that primal fear of sudden dissolution, people and places that resemble the world rather than referring to it per se. Here as in Maryam, consequently, almost every character in the book is imagined. "If people back in the village read Wara' Al-Firdaws," she insists, "no one would recognize anyone." The process seems integral to Ez-Eldin's way of dealing with a suffocating environment, which has been very different from straightforward rebellion or insurgency, and reflects her view of herself not as woman writer but as a writer who happens to be a woman. She behaves like a virus, she says, working from the inside; she instills herself in the host -- "the mafia" of her extended family -- precisely in order to transcend it. And though outwardly her own life has been more or less conservative, she is careful to point out that she instituted a nuclear family ( usrah ), not an extended family or tribe ( 'a'ilah ). Like few writers of her generation, rebellion and transcendence have been matters of the mind; and she still dislikes any predetermined idea, however positive, being imposed on what she does: the Woman, the Body, the Provinces are all candidates; she rejects them all. At the most obvious level it is madness that she is really interested in, (in)sanity, "but it is not as if I studied psychology or apply it in any systematic way". Even the Novel does not bind Ez-Eldin.

It is something of a cliché by now to speak, borrowing critic Gaber Asfour's expression, of the Age of the Novel, which has driven many an excellent short story writer and poet to switch genres. Having published Wara' Al-Firdaws, Ez-Eldin is -- by contrast -- in the process of putting together a new collection of short stories. It is a form she loves, she says, a form both difficult and rewarding, and never separate from or in contradiction to the literary project her two novels have pursued. She has no doubt that her readership will engage with her stories just as enthusiastically, and though she would be hard pressed to identify this the constituency of that readership, unlike many contemporary young writers, she distances herself totally from the discourses and debates of sales, popularity and what makes for a successful book. "People accuse serious writers of obscurity," she says, "of looking down on readers. But who is to say that readers are less intelligent or less complicated than the writers? Who is to say that it is making assumptions about how much readers can understand that means looking down on them?”

July 2009

Al-Ahram Weekly

The current situation is untenable

Qantara/ 10-4-2014

For the renowned Egyptian journalist and writer Mansoura Ez-Eldin, the revolution of 2011 provided literary fodder for essays, short stories and now a new novel. Arian Fariborz spoke with her in Cairo.

Your novella "Gothic Night", recently published in English translation, reads like dark fiction in the Orwellian vein. Some readers see the story as an allegory of being unable to escape the clutches of a dictatorship and draw parallels to the political situation in Egypt on the eve of the revolution. Do you agree with this interpretation?

Mansoura Ez-Eldin: In this short story, there is not only one way of seeing things but multiple viewpoints and possible interpretations. In "Gothic Night", I wanted to show how people lose control of their destiny. The novella also reveals the break-off of communication between two people. The inspiration for this story came to me in a nightmare I had a few years ago in which I encountered a big black giant in a cloak running around the streets and pointing at people, who then disappeared. When I awoke with a start, I had the feeling that the dream reflected our lives, that we can simply vanish or die from one moment to the next. It revealed human vulnerability to me.

The story is about two cities. In one of them lives a giant who is blind and who takes away people's ability to see. The other city is on a mountain rising above a stormy sea, and the people there have to continually struggle not to fall into the water. It's all about the constant fight for survival and the omnipresence of death.

Of course, "Gothic Night" can be read as an allegory of dictatorship: I had in mind a society suffering under tyranny and gradually threatening to suffocate. I wrote the story two weeks before the revolution in Egypt, and at that time I indeed had the feeling of slowly suffocating. I had no hope left for the future of our country. My new novel, "Emerald Mountain", which came out in Arabic two months ago, takes up part of this novella, albeit in a different context.

In the early days of the 2011 revolution in Egypt, Mansoura Ez-Eldin was convinced that "we as individuals and as a people could take our destiny into our own hands and change our country and the world". Three years on, the author feels that the current situation is untenable "because all the problems and injustices that already existed before the revolution exist again today"

The Egyptian revolution and the overthrow of the Mubarak system wrested you away from your desk. You went to Tahrir Square in Cairo almost daily to demonstrate with millions of other Egyptians for freedom and democracy. What was your personal experience of the upheaval?

Ez-Eldin: Before the beginning of the revolution, I was in a state of despair. I no longer seriously believed that real change could happen in view of all the repression and the torture scandals such as the case of the activist Khaled Said in 2010. I had the feeling that we were living in a slaughterhouse and not in a state that respects the law and personal rights. But then there were finally some signs that things were changing.

Before 25 January 2011 I was not very politically active, as I generally had no interest in politics. I thought it was all a farce: there was no real opposition and Orwellian conditions prevailed. Everything was a sham, and even the politicians' declarations of their intent had absolutely no truth to them. The revolution therefore seemed like a miracle to me. On the evening of 25 January, I found myself in tears. When I then finally took part in the demonstrations, I suddenly felt very strong as an individual. I was convinced that we as individuals and as a people could take our destiny into our own hands and change our country and the world. I naturally got involved in the revolution mainly because of my daughter, who was eight years old at the time, because I wanted her to live in a better country than I had up until then.

The turning point for me was 28 January 2011, the "Day of Rage". Some friends and I had taken part in a demonstration against Mubarak that began in the Amr Ibn al-Aas mosque. It was a peaceful protest, but the police responded from the very first minute with all-out brutality and violence. Tear gas and rubber bullets were fired at the protesters. It was a very violent day, and I noticed how that affected me very profoundly and enraged me. I felt an almost personal enmity against the regime and this oppression rise up in me.

Was the January revolution the initial spark for a new literary boom in Egypt, or had the trend already begun at the end of the "leaden days" of the Mubarak era?

Ez-Eldin: The literature boom already started under Mubarak, manifesting itself mainly in blogs by young writers, who regularly published posts. The revolution was the legacy of this multifaceted development in the media and on the literary scene. Many of the bloggers later became politically active. There was of course the same rigid censorship and media control back then that there is now, although censorship has social as well as political roots.

Graffiti depicting representatives of the nationalist Urabi movement in Egypt. According to Mansoura Ez-Eldin, literature in Egypt began changing before the 2011 revolution: "Many writers had long since left the old idols and traditional values behind them and gotten over their grief at the demise of the old nationalism. A new generation of writers and bloggers came of age who saw themselves as 'children of the world'," says Mansoura Ez-Eldin

Despite the censorship, however, the younger generation of writers in particular demonstrated a great deal of courage, breaking many taboos. Publishers such as Mohamad Hashem were very committed in this respect and deliberately encouraged these developments. This then served to inspire further writers.

But the new Egyptian literature had already been undergoing a transformation prior to the revolution. Many writers had long since left the old idols and traditional values behind them and gotten over their grief at the demise of the old nationalism. A new generation of writers and bloggers came of age who saw themselves as "children of the world". And they were the ones who from the outset determined and shaped the rhetoric of the revolution. After the revolution as well, though, new media such as Facebook ushered in a major turning point. Today, there are authors who write completely differently to the generation before the revolution. These are young people who have experienced a great deal in two years. They have been through a social and political earthquake and have freed themselves from many constraints that were formerly taken to be God-given.

The spring of blossoming freedom for Egypt's literary and media talents proved to be short-lived. Today, the familiar old red lines are in place again for independent authors and journalists who are critical of the regime. How did this happen?

Ez-Eldin: When Mohamed Morsi took office, I had the feeling for the first time that freedoms were being restricted. He initially had no control over the media. In December 2012, however, there were many protests, deaths and cases of torture. Media freedom was then gradually restricted step by step after the end of Morsi's rule on 30 June 2013. Since then,there has only been a single voice in the media landscape, and the other mass media are left merely to sing along in harmony. Other shades of meaning are not tolerated.

You once said that the revolution is an ongoing process, so that setbacks for democratic development in Egypt are understandable. Do you think the liberal and secular forces in the country will be able to change course again and steer the country in the direction of democracy?

Ez-Eldin: Today, when I look back at what I wrote in my articles in 2011, my former optimism is almost embarrassing to me. I think that the current situation is untenable – because all the problems and injustices that already existed before the revolution exist again today. I'm afraid that the next wave of the revolution will be more violent, more than we can bear – a confrontation that sweeps away and extinguishes everything in its path. It is like a fight between a player and a madman, where no one knows who the enemy is.

Interview conducted by Arian Fariborz

© Qantara.de 2014

Translated from the German by Jennifer Taylor

Editor: Aingeal Flanagan/Qantara.de

Mansoura Ez-Eldin, born in 1976 in Egypt's Nile Delta, studied journalism at the University of Cairo and worked at "Akhbar al-Adab", one of the foremost literary magazines in Egypt, until August 2011. Her novels have been translated into several languages. In 2010, she was named one of the best Arabic-speaking authors under 40. That same year, she was the only woman nominated for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. She published her first collection of short stories, "Flickering Light", in 2001. This was followed by three novels, "Maryam's Maze" (2004), "Beyond Paradise" (2009) and "Emerald Mountain" (2014).

 

 

The Rumpus interview with Mansoura Ez Eldin

By: Pauls Toutonghi

T-shirts, hats, mugs, flags, wristbands, posters, stickers, mock license plates: When I was in Cairo in March, almost every street corner seemed to offer a vendor selling January 25 Revolution souvenirs. And this commercialization was endemic. Located on Tahrir Square, the Ramses Hilton was, for much of early 2011, offering (at an elevated price) rooms with a “demonstration view.”

But is commercialization the enemy of deep remembrance? How does Egypt preserve and consecrate the memory of its revolution—the single biggest peaceful revolution of this young century—in a vital and living way?

The answer is—in large part—through words.

In today’s Arab world, novelists and intellectuals of all kinds have been at the forefront of the preservation of public memory. Suddenly there’s a huge appetite, worldwide, for Egyptian writing—writing which was neglected for much of the latter half of the twentieth century. Organizations like The Hay Festival and Shubbak (the Mayor of London’s Arab Culture Festival) have structured their programming around the voices of young Arab writers, artists and bloggers. Al-Jazeera is routinely interviewing novelists and essayists and poets to get their opinions on political questions—interviews which only sometimes touch on the artist’s work, itself. The age of the Middle Eastern writer as international public figure has roared into being.

Mansoura Ez Eldin is one of the most respected individuals in this environment. Her first novel, Maryam’s Maze, was intimately concerned with questions of genealogy, history, public memory, and madness. The book was widely-reviewed and almost universally praised. It was published, in translation, by American University of Cairo Press in 2004.

Maryam’s Maze concerns a central character, Maryam, and her attempt to negotiate an urban landscape that has suddenly lost all sense. It reads like a prescient and deeply wise document, seven years after its publication in English. The writing, which is spare and evocative, seems to suggest—through metaphor—any number of contemporary political conditions. “It’s a life of glass,” the narrative voice asserts, “a brittle life that can be smashed at any moment…” And the uprisings of early 2011 throughout the Middle East spring immediately to mind.

Ez Eldin’s second novel, Beyond Paradise, was shortlisted for the 2010 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF). Her work is forthcoming in Granta’s much-anticipated The Granta Book of the African Short Story. She replied to these questions from Cairo—even as the city was shaken by ongoing unrest and political violence.

The Rumpus: In Maryam’s Maze, you open with a scene wherein the protagonist, Maryam, seems to split into two beings: both herself and a ghost. Why did you choose a ghost?

Mansoura Ez Eldin: Is Maryam dead? Is she dreaming? Or just losing her mind? I don’t like to explain my work—or to suggest a singular interpretation for it. In the writing process, I try to leave some clues that might help the reader draw his own conclusions. Some readers believed that Maryam was a ghost, others thought that she was schizophrenic—or perhaps on the verge of insanity.

I was happy with this ambiguity because I sincerely wanted my readers to make up their own minds; I wanted to avoid a more obvious and imposed meaning. I love to take risks, to play with the reader and provoke him.

The novel was inspired by the Muslim notion of the ‘double’ or the Pharaonic ‘ka/ba’ concept of being. In Islamic culture, the ‘double’ is known as ‘Al Qarin’ or ‘the spirit companion.’ There’s a strong belief that everyone has a double, or Qarin, who is invisible.

In Islamic culture, the Qarin is supposed to be a bad spirit—but you can’t find more information about him. For example, you can’t know what happens to him after death. Or [whether] there [are] male and female Qarins or not. So, I tried to imagine the Qarin in a different way—as Maryam’s double who wants to steal her life—to steal her body and her memories. But I didn’t mention the word “Qarin” in the novel to let the reader think freely and imagine whatever he wants, according to his own culture.

The Qarin concept can be a sort of metaphysical interpretation of schizophrenia. Let’s say that the metaphysical sides of religions—and the rich oral Islamic and Egyptian heritage—are a main source of inspiration to me.

The real challenge is, I think, in finding ways to understand that wonderful heritage, to use it to interpret the world we live in. How do we tie—meaningfully—that heritage into the real life problems from which we suffer while awake?

That is what I am trying to do.

In Maryam’s Maze, for example, there is a strong tie with the techniques and the world of The Arabian Nights, but the protagonist is a young woman moving through Cairo in the beginning of the third millennium.

Rumpus: When the novel was released, you said, in an interview: “Arab readers aren’t used to this style from an Arab writer– especially from a woman. I felt like I’d committed a crime.” Can you elaborate on that idea a little?

Ez Eldin: In the writing process I didn’t think of the reader at all—so I wrote freely and without any burdens. But after finishing the novel I was uncomfortable and anxious, because I felt that the novel might come across as an enigmatic and mysterious book—and readers may consider it a real labyrinth.

Egyptian writers with few exceptions are quite loyal to realism, and don’t appreciate fantasy or horror or detective novels, as much. And, as a woman writer, readers expect you to write about specific themes in a direct way.

They don’t expect an avant-garde or an experimental Gothic piece from you—or at least this was what I thought then. So, I was prepared for indifference, but much to my surprise the novel was extremely well received by readers and critics.

Rumpus: Your second novel, Beyond Paradise, was shortlisted for the 2010 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Over the past few years, the IPAF has quickly become the most prestigious award given to fiction written in Arabic. And yet—work on the IPAF short list is still slow to make the leap into English, especially in America. I was wondering what the status was of the translation of your second novel. Will it be issued in English soon? Why do you think that Arab writers are not as widely read, across the Atlantic?

Ez Eldin: The IPAF is the only Arabic prize that increases readership. Beyond Paradise became a bestseller in many Arab countries after being shortlisted for the IPAF. The German edition will be out next week by UnionsVerlag, the Italian edition is supposed to be out next August by Piemme Mondadori, and the Dutch edition will be out next February by MM Boeken. As for the English language, my agent will begin submitting the novel to American publishers next October.

I can’t tell why Arab writers are not widely read in America. The American publishing market seems to be really tough—especially for foreign literature. On the other hand, most of the Arab writers don’t have agents and Arabic publishers in general are not professional enough, and don’t work on promoting their publications outside the Arab world. Also, there are no official organizations that support the translation of Arabic Literature.

Part of the problem is that the translated Arabic works are not necessarily the best of the Arabic literature. Sometimes western publishers and readers search for specific themes from Arab writers—as if our literature was just a social or a political text, and not art.

Rumpus: The corollary to that question, then, is this one: Books take years to write. They take even more years to copy-edit, assemble cover art, print, publicize, etc. How can they have relevance in our contemporary world—where everything seems to happen so quickly?

Ez Eldin: Believe it or not, I’m always thinking about the contrast between books and the quickness of our modern world. I reckon this contrast is the reason behind the importance of books in our life.

In a highly rapid world we need to take a breath through reading. Reading in this case becomes a sort of meditation or yoga. However, when I associate books with slowness, I don’t only mean the long time we need to produce a book—I particularly mean that books, especially novels, look like a slower version of our real world.

Writing is a sort of capturing of a special moment or period of time and then, that moment’s deconstruction. Then, the moment is restructured, rebuilt—in the search for more understanding. By writing and reading we praise slowness and creativity.

Rumpus: In The New York Times, on January 30, 2011, you wrote an op-ed piece that concluded: “Silence is a crime. Even if the regime continues to bombard us with bullets and tear gas, continues to block Internet access and cut off our mobile phones, we will find ways to get our voices across to the world, to demand freedom and justice.” This was obviously written two weeks—roughly—before Mubarak’s resignation. The regime fell—but has the progress been as extensive as you would have hoped? Have the demands for freedom and justice been met, in your opinion?

Ez Eldin: Our revolution is still unfinished!

Obliging Mubarak to resign was the first and the easiest part of the revolution! Our demands for freedom and justice have not been met yet.

Two days ago (Tuesday 28 June) there were clashes in Tahrir Square between the families of the martyrs and the brutal police force—there was tear gas and rubber bullets as if Mubarak’s regime didn’t fall.

This is a sad thing for sure, but at least, we’ll resume our revolution and will be back to Tahrir Square and other squares.

I’m full of hope that we can face all this violence in a peaceful and civilized manner, as we did before. Too much has happened beginning from 25 January until now. There is no way back to the past. The spirit of the revolution cannot be conjured back into the bottle.

As a friend of mine put it: Now we have a treasure, we have the memory of a unique and victorious revolution—which will keep up the people’s courage. Against all odds, I’m pretty optimistic concerning the future of Egypt.

Rumpus: In America, fiction writers struggle for relevance. There is no substantial fear of persecution—based on the things you publish. How much does this impact the work of a fiction writer—the fear that the work could be ammunition for some kind of campaign against you?

Ez Eldin: In countries in which a writer can pay dearly—maybe with his own life—because of his thoughts, words acquire an additional importance, and writing, as an idea and a practice, resembles walking blindfolded in a mine field.

The best thing you can do in this case while writing is to ignore everything outside your work. As a writer you should practice killing your internal censor—practice forgetting about potential readers.

As a matter of fact, the censorship issue in Egypt is really complicated. On one hand, there’s no pre-publishing censorship in Egypt. But on the other hand, there are many sorts of more dangerous, covert censorship. That is, there are many gate keepers who function as covert censors.

The daring independent and small publishers—like Merit Publishing House—were the lungs that helped Egyptian literature to stay alive, vital, and daring. The works of new Egyptian writers are really daring on all levels.

Rumpus: What are you working on, now?

Ez Eldin: I’ve just finished a new collection of short stories entitled, The Path to Madness, that will be out in Arabic within two months.

A story of this collection will be included in The Granta Book of the African Short Story, edited by the Nigerian writer Helon Habila.

I’m also in the middle of writing a new novel entitled, The Mountain of Life.

The interview was published in the Rumpus Website.. July 12th, 2011.

Beyond Paradise

by Mansoura Ez Eldin

Excerpt translated by Paul Starkey

Salma Rashid went down the eight steps of their house like a raging tiger, followed by a servant staggering under the weight of the huge wooden trunk he was carrying. She stopped in a bare area in the rear courtyard of the house, which had lost most of its charm, and waved her hand. The servant put his load down on the ground, and wiped the sweat and grime from his face. She seemed to be unconcerned about the scorching heat of the August noontide, and paid no attention to the black snake that poked its head out from the pile of straw nearby, before disappearing inside it once again, nor to the fat grey rat that quickly scampered from the site that Salma now occupied. Nearby, a quarrelsome gerbil disappeared between the leaves of a vine whose branches hung proudly from the orange-painted trellis, whose colour had faded over time.

She was like someone driven by a power within her, stirring her anger for an unknown purpose. She opened the trunk with difficulty, took out the papers inside it, looked at them for a short time then put them back. She poured a little kerosene over the trunk and without a moment’s hesitation set it alight.

With her frizzed hair tied back, her steely gaze, and her lips pursed in deadly anger, she looked as though she were performing some obscure pagan rite, especially as she had begun to move her hands closer to the fire – so close that anyone seeing her might think that she was about to grill them. Soraya, who was secretly watching her from behind the window, did not understand what on earth her daughter was doing, but she seemed happy that she had finally emerged from the room where she had shut herself up ever since coming back home.

As the fire began to singe her, Salma quickly withdrew her hands, and sat down on the enormous trunk of the willow tree that Rashid had cut down a few years ago. Its trunk had remained there, like an oddly shaped seat, like a message to unknown visitors of the existence of a tree here one day in the past, and a life crammed with incidents and small details that had disappeared, never to return.

She had watched the trunk being eaten away as if her life depended on its death and decay. In front of her, Rashid, Samih, Jabir, Rahma, Soraya, Jamila, Hisham and Lola were being eaten away and consumed by fire. She herself would burn with them, to begin anew with a youthful spirit and less painful memories.

The thick black snake emerged again from the pile of straw and headed for a crack under the wall opposite, leaving a cylindrical trail etched in the soft soil. Salma didn’t see it this time either, and even if she had seen it, she probably wouldn’t have lifted a finger, so absorbed was she in watching the flames and the thick smoke rising from them.

After a little she got up sluggishly, shook some imagined dirt from her clothes, and walked slowly and distractedly around the garden before turning back to the front steps of the house and hurried up them.

Ever since her childhood, she had believed the steps had to be taken at a run, and despite being two years into her thirties she still unconsciously retained this belief.

She pulled back a bamboo chair and sat down beside her aunt Nazla, who was studiously reciting the Qur’an in a quiet voice. She looked around at the wide veranda – in a corner of the roof a spider had woven its web. She took a deep breath and sighed. This was the first time she had left her room even though she had been at home for a month.

Her eyes were more sunken than usual, and crisscrossed by several tiny capillaries; she was lost in thought in a different place, somewhere older and more lively. In the middle of this place was a young girl, crying, with the eyes of a startled cow.

* * *

Salma went back to her father’s house, driven on by a dream.

Her dream was only a bit like her. It was violent, but its violence wasn’t of the hidden sort that only reveals itself in impatience, extreme boredom and unjustified anger. On the contrary, this was real violence embellished with murder, blood, and burial rites.

She was overcome by a frightening feeling of guilt. She was living through what criminals suffer when their lives have moved on to the point when they feel they are cursed forever and when there is absolutely no hope of wiping away that curse. The feeling that sometimes drives them to the point of wanting to die, and to be reborn with an innocent, unsullied spirit.

She was convinced that she had killed someone, buried him with her bare hands, and got away with it. She was standing cold-bloodedly watching his blood ooze out, then congeal. She dismembered his corpse, then gathered the parts together, threw them in the earth and buried them, levelling the ground with her feet. Then she sat down on the damp soil without noticing that her elegant clothes were dirty.

“It’s Jamila I’ve killed,” she said to herself.

As if she were summoning back a scene from the distant past, the events of the dream came back to her, and she was overcome by a deep feeling of guilt. It wasn’t the feeling of a criminal whose deed has been exposed, and who is now subjected to looks of condemnation and contempt from other people because of his hideous crime. Such looks may give him the power and courage to challenge the others, to spit indifferently in their faces in order to conceal from them the waves of repentance he is beginning to feel. But for her, rather, it was the feeling of a killer who has skillfully committed a hideous crime without anyone knowing about it ­– of a man who thought himself so strong that he would never feel a twinge of conscience, but then his strength failed him and his subconscious turned into his bitter enemy.

She felt that she had ruined her whole life by that crime of murder, and despite the fact that no one had seen her, she was thinking of a way to make amends and wash her hands of the blood.

At a certain moment she became detached from her dream. She emerged from it and stood contemplating it, scared by her sense that she was a murderer who had hidden her crime for decades, and that now her strength had deserted her she had to confess to it.

The moment of detachment from her dream was usually a crossing point to the land of reality. A few seconds later she would wake up, though she could not completely throw off the effect of her dreams. The details of her real life would remain confused in her mind for some time, her dreams mingled with reality, and her nightmares with her inner feelings.

Eyes closed, she remained for a time sifting through the events of her life. She could not discover any crime worth mentioning, and thanked God that her bitter feelings of guilt would not have a basis in real life, even though she did not stop feeling intense pressure and confusion. Several times her dreams had taken control of her real life, making her detached from it, and then she was so immersed in the madness and confusions of the dream that that fantasy and reality became completely intermingled.

She was deluding herself if she imagined she could escape from this feeling of guilt. It was true that it was considerably less oppressive than in the dream. But she could not get rid of it completely; it stayed clinging to her, and she tried to find some explanation for it.

She thought that the point of this dream lay in the secret nature of the crime she had committed; no one knew about it, and so she had received no punishment for it. Secrecy, then, was the key to it all. What was the secret she was harbouring, do you suppose, the secret that pursued her in her dreams? She wondered about this without arriving at a satisfying answer.

The next night she had another dream, which was like an extension of her first one. In this dream, the details appeared more clearly and were more disturbing.

With Jamila’s body lying peacefully on the bed that she had with difficulty moved her on to, Salma straightened her clothing in front of the bathroom mirror. She put on fresh lipstick and painted a long line of kohl on her upper eyelids. The rosy colour of her cheeks made her forget to add any other make-up.

Jamila’s hoarse, rattling voice as she uttered her last words almost made her stop, but Salma had already reached the point of no return, so she continued her powerful thrusts into her chest. Jamila’s bright red blood gushed out warm, and Salma began to tremble, her eyes fixed on the face from which the life was draining forever. She thought it would be stupid to bother cleaning things up. She looked at the pink sleeveless jacket and short black skirt she was wearing to check they were clean. Fortunately the jacket had not been touched by blood, although her left arm had a long red smudge on it; it looked just like a red gladiolus, with a long stem and some four blooms pressed together one above the other. She was pleased by this comparison and gave a laugh, the echoes of which resounded in the locked flat. She had forgotten the person sleeping inside, for nothing about her showed any sign of life.

She sat on the sofa and put her large black bag on the floor between her feet. She took out her pack of cigarettes and started smoking calmly. She felt she had finally detached herself from her former life with all its clamour and frustrations. She was no longer the young woman she had been a few days ago, nor the girl she had been in the past. She had no feeling of regret; on the contrary, she felt a secret pleasure that stunned her, even though she did not attempt to deny it. A captivating feeling that she had not previously experienced had her in its grip.

Completely numbed, she started to smoke another cigarette. When she had finished it she picked up her bag and went into the bedroom where the body of her childhood friend was lying. She seemed to be taller than she really had been. She looked at her still, blue face but didn’t dare touch it. She was struck by the resemblance between it and her own face.

She went back to the bathroom, turned on the tap and washed her arm more than ten times. This time she noticed in the mirror the blue rings around her eyes. She also, for a moment, imagined she saw her father’s face in the mirror, but when she looked again more carefully his face had completely disappeared.

She left the flat quietly and shut the door behind her. The staircase was quite dark, and she took longer than usual to reach the almost deserted street. She walked along slowly. She could find nothing to think about, so she occupied herself with counting her footsteps, but whenever she reached the tenth step she lost count and had to start counting again. When she tired of this game she made for a nearby cafe and sat down in an out-of-the-way corner. The effort she had expended had exhausted her as well as creasing her clothes, giving her an overwhelming feeling of being dirty, which she tried to ignore as far as possible. She lit a fresh cigarette and took a sip from the cup of coffee the waiter put in front of her. The waiter quickly retired, and she drank the coffee with pleasure, then turned the cup upside down on the saucer. Immediately she held it up to see what the dark pattern inside it most resembled. Jamila’s face was in front of her, with all the pallor and terror that had gripped it in her final moments. She couldn’t control the shaking that suddenly took hold of her. Jamila’s face would be imprinted on her mind, clinging to her as she had clung to the knife, whose stabs had brought them closer together than ever before.

She remembered her fondly as she had tried to grab at anything, as great volumes of her blood gushed out. She wished she had been able to freeze that moment for ever, for she had never been as close to anyone as she had been to Jamila at that moment. She was so close to her that she dreamed of eternity, an eternity that Jamila had deprived her of.

She looked at her arm. The bloody gladiolus flower was once again etched on it. She tried to rub it off, but it would not disappear, spreading itself out like a lazy wild animal. She ran out of the cafe. She ran a long way without noticing how far, and when she felt tired she stopped and leaned against a lamp post in a crowded street. The flower was still spreading, and the eyes of a woman just like her were fixed on it. She walked on with sluggish steps, repeating: one, two, three . . .

She thought that she ought to have a final look at Jamila. She wondered how she had managed to leave her behind so quickly. She started to feel like someone who had been stripped of her name and her identity, or at least of a large part of it. The name “Salma Rashid” no longer meant the same to her as it had a few moments ago. It had become distant from her, and she had become equally distant from it, with neither of the names signifying the other any longer.

As for Jamila, her presence seemed as though it would redouble itself as a result of her absence; as though it would take hold of her and distance her from herself. Jamila Sabir was the curse that would inhabit her forever, her alter ego that had detached itself from her and severed its relationship with her without a second’s hesitation!

Salma woke up from her sleep feeling extremely annoyed. This time she felt that what she had seen had not been a dream, but rather a reality she had experienced, and which had left a bloodstained mark on her soul. Usually her dreams were just unconnected fragments, lacking any logical sequence of this sort.

She stayed in her bed for some time wondering why Jamila had suddenly been drawn into her life again, even if only through dreams. She left her bed and went barefoot into the bathroom, washed her face, then went to the kitchen and made a cup of Nescafé, which she took with her to the study of her small flat.

She sat in front of the computer that she had forgotten to shut down before she slept. There were no emails for her. As usual, Zia had not answered her numerous emails to him. She shut down the computer, and took a light breakfast. She got her clothes bag ready, and put the sheets of the “novel” she was writing into her handbag. Then she left for her father’s house in the village, the house that had been deserted ever since her father’s death, except for her mother and her ageing aunt and occasionally her sister Hiyam, who stayed with them from time to time.

About a month later, Salma was racing down the eight steps of their house like a raging tiger, followed by the servant with the enormous wooden trunk. She stood in the empty part of the rear courtyard of the house, unconcerned by the blazing heat. She took no notice either of the black snake slithering quietly from the pile of straw to the hole at the bottom of the wall.

Her eyes were more sunken than usual and crisscrossed with several capillaries. Her mind was elsewhere, wandering in an ancient place, in the middle of which was a young girl with the eyes of a startled cow.

Outside, the peach trees were in blossom, children were racing each other to buy halva, and peasant women were sitting in front of their doorsteps chattering with each other.  The women of the house had gone to visit the graves early in the morning and had come back with a young girl. Hikmat had found her crying on the way there. They brought her back while the men and children took their breakfast at a low, round table on the house’s wide veranda, accompanied by the servant Sabir, his wife Bushra, and his daughter Jamila.

The girl stood crying in the middle of the veranda. She was wearing a short, green-coloured georgette chiffon frock. Her short, reddish brown, hair was cropped like a boy’s, and her eyes were as wide as those of a calf.

She was about the same age as Jamila and Salma. The two young girls looked at her with a curiosity mingled with envy. This made the girl launch into another round of crying, even more noisily than before, as if she felt that her existence had become threatened by these inquisitive eyes staring at her.

Soraya went up to her and patted her gently on the shoulder as she wiped away her tears, then drew her aside to sit on the Ottoman couch, which was covered in a coarse white cotton cloth. She asked her name, and the girl replied in a trembling voice: “Samah!” Between her tears, she added: “Samah Ahmad ‘Abd al-Hadi.”

El-Ain Publishing, Cairo, 2009

من يعرف سر الفردوس

يوسف رخا

“ترجل أربعة رجال من العربة مرتدين عباءات سوداء فوق جلابيبهم الكشمير، وفتحوا الباب الخلفي. أخرجوا منه جسداً مغطى بملاءة بيضاء، وحملوه صاعدين السلالم.”

بتماسك يستحضر المشاهد الأقوى من ثلاثية “الأب الروحي” لفرانسيس فورد كوبولا، استثمرت منصورة عز الدين – منذ “متاهة مريم” (2004) – تراثها العائلي في إعادة اختراع العالم: فجرت علاقة بنت الريف بالمدينة بعيداً عن أي فرضيات مستهلكة حول “الأقاليم” أو “المرأة”. وبإلغاز لا يستتبع ضعفاً في التركيز، عرّت كل شيء – الجنون، الموت، الأنوثة – دون أن تكشف سراً واحداً من أسرار نصوص أشبه “باللاڤا لامپ”، ذلك الفانوس البيضاوي الذي يسخر الكهرباء، لا للإنارة، بل للتلاعب بالضوء الملون.

هذه هي “كتابة السر”، كما سماها الناقد محمد بدوي إثر قراءة قصص كتابها الأول، “ضوء مهتز”.

واليوم، على خلفية الأقدار المتقلبة لصناعة الطوب وما استتبعته من تجريف الأرض الزراعية في دلتا الثمانينيات، يتسع مجال التداعي من منامات قاهرية مستجدة إلى ذاكرة كاتبة محبطة لطفولتها في العزبة والبندر، من جرائم القتل الحلمية إلى الفجيعة الواقعة وفقدان البراءة وعفاريت الأحباب الغائبين: في “وراء الفردوس” تتبلور قدرة منصورة عز الدين على بناء شخصيات حية ورسم الخطوط العريضة لمجتمع متمايز، مقترحة معاني غير تنويرية للوعي التاريخي وأسطورة القرين.

وبرغم المبالغة في الانضباط الأسلوبي (على حساب خصوصية صوت الراوية، أحياناً)، برغم التعدد المربك (أحياناً أيضاً) للشخصيات والحواديت، وبرغم أن تجاوُر مختلف المآرب الأدبية لا يبلغ دائماً غاية الامتزاج العضوي، تنتج منصورة عز الدين كتابة محبوكة، عميقة، سائغة، خالية ليس فقط من شوائب الذات (النسوية) وإنما كذلك من تهويمات المحيط (الريفي). بلا تعقيد مجهد أو ادعاءات “علمية”، تتجاوز “وراء الفردوس” القرية “الإدريسية” وإنسان “الأيام السبعة”، “حكاية” حنان الشيخ ومثلية صبا الحرز.

تتجاوز حتى الهوية الوطنية والجنسية، وتهمش بطلتيها حاملتي تلك الهوية، لتجوب فضاءات – مثل كاتبتها – تكشف دون أن تبوح.

نُشِرت المقالة في جريدة الأخبار.

أساطير العائلة تعيد الابنة إلى الريف

 ناظم السيد

بيروت- 'القدس العربي':

 بعكس الحيّز المكاني الذي جرت وتجري فيه الرواية الحديثة في غالبية نماذجها، فإنَّ منصورة عز الدين ذهبت بروايتها إلى الريف مباشرة. لم ترصد الروائية هجرات الريفيين إلى المدن، تلك الهجرات التي شغلت الرواية والسينما في مصر منذ 'ثورة يوليو' إلى اليوم، بل ذهبت إلى الريف لرصد حياة الناس قبل خروجهم من هذا الريف، قبل احتكاكهم أصلاً بالمدينة. حتى الأبناء الذين ذهبوا للعيش في القاهرة أو طنطا، والذين يشكلون شخصيات محورية في هذه الرواية، لا يتم رصد حياتهم في هذه المدن. تكتفي الروائية من حياة هؤلاء بذلك الجانب الذي يوقظه الريف، أي رصد حياة الطفولة لهؤلاء أو حركاتهم حين يزورون الأهل في مسقط الرأس والمكان الأول للاصطدام بالعالم.

لكن الريف كمكان تجري فيه أحداث الرواية، لا يجعل من هذه الرواية رواية ريفية، لا يضعها ضمن الأدب الذي اشتغل على الريف كقيمة في طريقها إلى الزوال كما في النماذج اللبنانية من مارون عبود إلى ميخائيل نعيمة إلى أنيس فريحة وإميلي نصر الله (أعطي نماذج لبنانية لأن اطلاعي عليها أوسع من التجارب المصرية أو غيرها من التجارب العربية، ولأن الرواية الريفية اللبنانية تشكل مفصلاً اساسياً في الرواية العربية تماماً كالشعر اللبناني الذي استلهم الريف كنوع من الحنين كما لدى شعراء الهجر، وصولاً إلى نتاج الأخوين منصور وعاصي الرحباني على صعيدي الغناء والمسرح). لا، الريف هنا مجرّد ذريعة للسرد، حجة لقول حكاية وتأليف حبكة.

إنه وسيلة القص وليس غايته كما سبقت الإشارة في الأعمال التي جعلت من الريف أيقونة وفردوساً مفقوداً وفكرة عذراء. ما يدلل على أن الريف هنا مجرّد مكان للقص هو أن الحدث الروائي ليس الريف وقيمه الجمالية والطبيعية والأخلاقية والحياتية عموماً، وإنما العائلة التي يجري رصد مصائرها فرداً فرداً من الآباء إلى البنين. العائلة بوصفها حدث الرواية تخرج هذا العمل من تصنيف الرواية على أنها ريفية ولا سيما أن السرد غالباً ما تركز على هذه العائلة وأفرادها كأن السرد يجري في الداخل من غير أن يقيم شأناً كبيراً للبيئة المحيطة إلا ما لزم أو صعب تجاهله (انتحار لولا مثلاً خالة البطلة سلمى بسبب حملها من دون زواج).

سلالة ومصائر

إذاً، تعيد منصورة عز الدين في 'وراء الفردوس' تأليف حياة عائلية تفرقت بالزواج والإنجاب ومشاغل الحياة والعمل وتبديل أماكن العيش وتراكم الزمن. من السهل القول إنها سيرة ذاتية تعيد فيها المؤلفة سرد حياة عائلتها. لكن سهولة كهذه يجب ألا تغري الناقد أو القارئ في ظل غياب معطيات حياتية عن المؤلفة. لهذا من الأسلم تناول الرواية على أنها عمل متخيل مستقل عن حياة الكاتبة حتى لو تقاطعت أحداث معينة مع حياة الكاتبة، غير غافلين عن عبارة فلوبير الشهيرة 'مدام بوفاري هي أنا'، مقابلينها بشغل رولان بارت على الشخصية الروائية، معتبراً أن 'الكائن في الرواية هو كائن نصي'. والحال، فإن عز الدين تسرد سيرة عائلة من خلال سلمى ابنة رشيد التي تزور بيت أهلها لتبدأ عملية مراجعة لتاريخ العائلة، من العم جابر الذي بنى مع والدها مصنعاً للطوب الأحمر، قبل أن تقرر الحكومة إغلاق مثل هذه المصانع، فأبدله بمصنع للطوب الطفلي، والعم سميح المشكوك في نسبه إلى أبيه بحسب ما توحي الرواية، وهو الأقل ثروة بين أشقائه، والعمة نظلة التي تزوجت ولم تفقد بكارتها فعادت إلى بيت أهلها لتمضي بقية حياتها في بيت شقيقها رشيد عاشق الشرب والنساء والإسراف واللهو، والخالة لولا التي حبلت من شخص مجهول وانتحرت بالزرنيخ، وصولاً إلى حكمت طليقة العم جابر الذي تزوج بدلاً منها بشرى زوجة خادمه صابر الذي قضى في معمل الطوب (إضافة إلى الجدة رحمة، والخالة أنوار، والخال مصطفى الذي تزوج من امرأة ثرية تدعى نهاد تخجل من حياة الريفيين، وظيا زوج البطلة سلمى وطليقها لاحقاً وهو بريطاني من أصل باكستاني). ثم هناك الجيل الثاني من العائلة أي هيام أخت سلمى التي تزوجت رجلاً يعمل في قطر ولبست العباءة، وخالد شقيق سلمى الذي راح يميل للتدين كرد فعل على سلوك والده، وأنوار الشقيقة التي تحضر في الرواية بلا أي صفة أو حياة، وهشام ابن العم جابر والذي نام مع جميلة صديقة سلمى منذ الطفولة وقرينتها إذا صحَّ الوصف، والتي تشكل مع سلمى بطلتي الرواية، سلمى التي تلعب دور حافظة الأحداث وراويتها ومؤولتها وحاملتها على معانيها المتعددة، وجميلة ابنة الخادمة بشرى (زوجة العم جابر لاحقاً) والخادم صابر الذي تمزق لحمه في مصنع الطوب. تلعب جميلة دور البطلة الظل. إنها ضمير سلمى وصوتها الباطني وهاجسها ومطاردتها ومحتلة الجزء العميق من لاوعيها.

تقصّي الأحلام

توظف سلمى في 'وراء الفردوس' الأحلام كمادة روائية أساسية. نحن أمام شخصيات تحلم وتعيش أحلامها ثم تحلم بما عاشته حقيقة. الحلم هنا مادة السرد وذخيرته. لهذا يتوسّع عالم الحلم في الرواية ليشمل الخرافات والأساطير الريفية من أرواح وجن، كما يشمل أغاني شعبية يرددها الصغار عادة، من غير إهمال علم النفس الذي يحضر من خلال جلسات العلاج التي خضعت لها سلمى لدى طبيبة مختصة. سنكتشف مع توالي السرد أننا أمام عالم يختلط فيه الواقع بالحلم. سيظلُّ هذا الاختلاط يتنامى ليبلغ أخيراً ذروته: هل فعلاً ما جرى كان يجري حقيقة أم أنه مجرّد تهويمات تحدث في رأس البطلة سلمى. إن استخدام الحلم والأساطير والحكايات وعلم النفس في الرواية شكلت أقنعة وأدوات أتاحت للروائية التأليف والإنشاء بدل الأرشفة والتوثيق. أتاحت لها إجراء هذه المسافة عن الواقع.

قد تكون 'وراء الفردوس' من الأعمال الروائية القليلة التي تنتجها امرأة من غير أن تخضع لهذا الشرط. ليس في الرواية تلك الأنا النسوية التي تشكل عادة بؤرة السرد ووسيلته وغايته. ليس هناك أيديولوجيا نسوية تتصدّر العمل الأدبي وتعميه أحياناً. لا يعني هذا أن المرأة ليست حاضرة كقيمة اجتماعية أو إنسانية. بالعكس. لكن حضوراً كهذا لا يختلف كثيراً عن حضور الرجل. مثلاً، انتحار الخالة لولا لا يختلف كثيراً عن موت الخادم صابر، وتديّن الشقيقة هيام لا يختلف عن تديّن الشقيق خالد، وتخلي هشام لا يختلف عن تخلي جميلة. هكذا فإن الحياة تقسّم حوادثها على الذكور والإناث بالتساوي، بعيداً عن موقع الرجل وموقع المرأة في مجتمع شرقي وريفي أيضاً.

كذلك تلفت لغة صاحبة 'ضوء مهتز' و'متاهة مريم' في هذه الرواية. إنها لغة سردية في المقام الأول، بعيدة عن البلاغات الشعرية والجمــاليات الإنشائية.

لغة بسيطة، سهلة، مباشرة، يأخذ فيها الحكي (من حكاية) مساحة واسعة، مثلما يشكل الحوار فيها ميزة المتكلمـــين وطبقاتهم وصفاتهم وثقافتهم. إنها لغة منضبطة عاطفياً: دراما بلا تراجيديا، وألم بلا تفجّع.

نُشِرَت المقالة في جريدة "القدس العربي" في سبتمبر 2009.