A section from
a PhD dissertation on literary criticism …
The Aesthetic Consciousness
of ‘the ugly’ Phenomenon in the Syrian Feminist Narration
Translated into
English by: Ahmed Khalis Shalan
· The metamorphoses
In
the Syrian feminine novel, the metamorphosis has been classified within ‘the
ugly’ phenomenon. Man is considered as the noblest and most perfect
creature on Earth, because God created him in the finest image, perfection, and
outward appearance. Therefore, when men undergo metamorphosis and falls into
distortion, they would certainly be away from beauty and perfection bestowed on
them by God. In the recently studied novels, within the feminine narration
phenomenon, so many active characters undergo metamorphosis; the transform from
creatures, who are the nearest to perfection and akin to the aesthetic ideal,
into mean, distorted, and weak creatures; exactly opposite to the aesthetic
ideal. In fact, a change like this would make of such creatures an example of
ugliness in the narrator’s consciousness, which may, in its turn, transfers to
the reader’s consciousness; pondering over the circumstances that caused such
distorting change and at the same time contemplating the forcing social
circumstances behind it. On the other hand, the metamorphosed person may
sometimes appear, in the novel, as a notion given by the narrator, i.e., he/she
only announcing it, in order to reveal the huge range of ugliness around the
character. As for the type of person who undergoes metamorphosis, it is said
that it involves males as well as females, though it strikes males more than they
do with females.
·
Metamorphosing
into Serpent
Concerning
metamorphosis in the feminine narration, men and women are brought together to
suffer from changing to serpents. It is well known that the serpent is ‘the
hardest enemy to man’ and the most dangerous one. This has been happening since
the story of Adam and Eve in Paradise, where the serpent
at first served as a retainer of Adam, but later then it sold him out, when it
enabled Satan to enter Paradise. It is worth mentioning that all the
animals, but the serpent, refused to help Satan to come in Paradise. It is said
that the serpent used its mouth as a shroud in order to let Him in.
Successfully entering Paradise, Lucifer took the fruit from the tree
which God prohibited Adam and Eve to reach. At the beginning, Lucifer tempted
Eve to eat the meant tree’s fruit, and she did. Then, He tempted Adam to eat,
and he also did. Accordingly, this was the reason which made God getting angry
on them; dismissed them from Paradise, and brought them down to Earth. Since
then, the serpent has been cursed, because it became the most aggressive enemy
to man, and it is for this reason we are ordered to kill it.
The
idea of evil, manifested in the serpent is as an old notion as the antiquity of
Adam and Eve creation tale. As for the feminine narration, this notion seems to
be deeply-rooted in the narrator’s covert consciousness, while the overt
consciousness tilts to relate the serpent’s evil with a set of events and
incidents which reflect ugliness in living, the community’s relations
complexity, and the human relations’ distortion and awfulness.
In “The
Wild Mints’ as a text, the woman is metamorphosed into serpent on the
strength of Salwa’s character, who is at the same time Ali’s workmate in
a newspaper and his neighbor in residence. Salaw always endeavors to seduce
Ali, but he always resists, because he loves Ulaiya so much. As seen before in
the novel, ‘Ulaiya stands for the aesthetic ideal; for she represents purity
and beauty which she looks forward to reach. In the novel, Ali promises Ulaiya
not to cheat her and to stay honest with her. But, seduced by a very pretty
woman like Salwa, Ali feels weakness against her temptations. So, in the novel,
the personality of Salwa symbolizes allurement, evil, and sin. Hence, Ali finds
himself struggling against his desires; resisting her charm and fascination,
supported by Uncle Salih, his late wife’s father, whose voice echoed from time
to time in the ears of Ali. His father-in-law appears in the novel coming to
him as a dream, and his voice alternately keeps coming to Ali until eventually awakens him and
shields him from committing wrong or doing a sin; protecting him from getting
disloyal which if at last happens, it means cheating the world of morals,
ideals, and beauty. In the protagonist consciousness, the personality of Salwa
is presented as a symbol of evil, allure, and sin. He fears that she may
attract him by her overwhelming femininity, and so he brings her in as a
serpent “…. her perfume, the smell of this serpent can catch the attention of
everything ….. He does not know how his fingers went to rest on her warm thigh;
a full-grown woman snakes between his arms like a serpent.” Hence, in her presence, he feels as a
sinning, defeated, and a sorrowful person. He weeps and shrinks in front of her
as though he is a turtle drawing its head to its shield; asks her to cover her
naked body, and begs her to leave. Thus, she appears as a symbol of evil for
being too far away from the realm of beauty and ideals.
However,
the phenomenon of metamorphosing from human-being into a serpent is not
restricted only to a physical being changing to a serpent, but also it could be
an idea breeding in the awareness of the narrator exposed when he/she see a
real snake. In the text, the huge, wide-headed, yellowish dust-colored skin
serpent appears in Ulaiyaa’s town-house as the most dangerous and poisonous,
though snakes are not used to appear in modern cities’ dwellings. But, this
snake dwelt with Ulaiyaa since long, without knowing, until a dutiful old man
tells her about a snake dwelling in her house. Satisfying her curiosity, Ulaiyaa
starts searching about the snake, in order to get rid of it, but she fails. Then,
an old man comes to her; claiming that he could smell the scent of the snake in
the human-being clothes and talk to it in order to let it show itself in Ulaiyaa’s
dwelling. At last, making an effort, the old man finds the snake, orders it to
appear in order to speak to it; addressing it “Oh, blessed snake, how old are
you?” It replays saying that its age is more than a thousand year; accompanying
Ulaiyaa since long, moving with her from an age to another; the snake takes off
its skin in the course of ages, while Ulaiyaa leaves behind generation after
another. The old man continues speaking
to Ulaiyaa; necessitating getting-rid of the snake, because it is dangerous and
expressing his fears that the snake could hurt Ulaiyaa. Accordingly, the old
man ultimately pats the balk of the snake, couches it, puts it in a box, and
locks on it. Then, he speechlessly walks to the door to halt there; lifting his
arm saying, “Oh, God! . . . Oh Adam’s folk! . . . Oh descendants of Adam! You
are sinners. . . A man would come in the extreme of misery, in the extreme of
hunger, and he would be followed by God-fearing people . . . then a one-eyed
man would come burning to rage, then the ONE who holds the justice power will
be like that firebrand who holds a an ember; he is coming to kill you one after
another except those people who are protected by mercy bestowed on them by God
. . . He is coming to take your women as odalisques and plunder your
subsistence . . . Oh God! . . . Oh God! . . . Oh Ulaiyaa! . . . What do the
coming days have in store for us?”
This
episode indicates that the huge and strongly-poisonous snake occurs in the
novel as a symbol of ugliness and evil surrounding Ulaiyaa, the protagonist,
who appears as a character resembling an aesthetic ideal. So, the snake becomes
the evilness that hinders ‘the good’ and ‘the beautiful’, and let
alone effacing them. Hence, the snake seems to be perpetually-residing creature
in Ulaiyaa’s residence, moves with her, accompanies her everywhere and every
time. In the words, murmured by the old man, there is a plain and sharp sign of
the human status deterioration; the ordeal and corruption which dominate the
human souls, and let alone the disappointment of the whole humanity.
In
this sense, the snake reoccurs in the same text, but as a resident in the tomb
of Shihaab, Ali’s grandfather. Ali recites the tale of his grandfather, the
Bashaa who were a pious-man, and when he departed, his tomb was transformed to
shrine and “the town commissioner did not accept but building a golden dome
over his tomb, collecting his clothes, swords, and poems, which he had bought
them from an unknown poet and ascribed them to himself. They put all these
everlasting things in a copper cage to be inherited from a generation to
another.” But, the paradox here is that when they opened the tomb they found
only a worn-out and decayed Shihaab resided by a snake. The snake here is the
devilish spirit which carried on trade in innocent-peoples’ blood. So, the
reaction of Ali against the snake came as a mixed feeling of ugliness and repulsion
against his grandfather. That is, because, for long years they kept lying to him;
telling him that his grandfather were their Lord and Master, in particular when
they claimed that he was a pious-man, because pious-men bodies do not wear-out
or decay; they stay disobedient to dust, while the Bashaa’s corpus were not
only worn-out, but also decayed and resided by a snake. Thus, the Bashaa’s
corpus had metamorphosed into a snake, just because of his bad deeds.
The
Bashaa, as Ali surely narrates in the text, hanged medals and badges of honor
on his gown; for he did not carry on trade only in innocent-people’s blood, but
also he carried on trade even in his folk’s blood for his own interest. He had
sold ‘his own child-girl Hadaba to a very indecent man. He sold her to buy
social titles, and he sold his other child-girl to a European Prince. It is the
times of personal utilities which bring respect and honor to people who do not
deserve honor and respect.
As for
the man who was metamorphosed into serpent, he appears within a two-floor feminine
text, wherein the narrator’s overt consciousness relates between evil and
ugliness, symbolized in a snake once, and in a man and his behavior in another.
Here, the text lays bare the masculine community as false educated-people;
dealing (the text) especially with the dilemma of the educated-female, who has
to do a swap, giving her body as a price for the publication of her own novel.
Thus, in the text the swap becomes to be so plain and outspoken, “grant me your
body, I publish to you”. Here, the publisher’s monstrous desires become so prominent
for the female, and as a result, he is metamorphosed into a predatory beast
preying on her femininity. Then, the feminine narration metamorphoses her into
a serpent; recalling in the readers’ minds all that devilish bearings of the
snake as a symbol. The text uncovers the man’s erotic and animalistic desires
for the female. Here, ugliness is manifested in the protagonist’s consciousness
through actions connected to man and through the man metamorphosed into serpent.
This happens, when the snaked-man stretches its hand towards her, trying to
disarm her from her honor; catching her breast, squeezing it, poisoning it, and
thus, eventually polluting her femininity. The protagonist attempts to run away
from the snake, from its silent erotic hissing, which fills the room with
teasing pressures, which make the room air is if saturated with mercury.
The
snake, as a symbol, reoccurs in the same novel, but with another publisher,
because all the men in this novel are metamorphosed into serpents. Here, the
publisher shows as though the devilish serpent is dressed in human form, who
whispers evil to her; bestowing her body for publishing her novel. This seducing
whispering, ugliness, and evil, which is materialized in a man metamorphosed
into a serpent; all makes the protagonist live in a whirlpool and struggle.
Thus, she splits into two divisions; expressed as two stratums in
the novel’s title. The Idea of dividing the world into an upper world
and an underground world, in fact, is an old one as an innate feature in
the human aesthetic consciousness. If the upper world is imagined as one exists
in Heaven’s Paradise where bliss and comfort could be found, and the cruel and
evil world as one exists underground where hell, pain, and suffering could be
found, then, earth would be the in-between room. Accordingly, every
move, whether upward or downward would be a supernatural one, which provides
the novel’s protagonist with a new experience. Hence, the upper stratum becomes
the sphere of ideals, higher values, and principles, which in turn manifests
the realm of beauty in the eye of the narrator, the novel’s protagonist,
whereas the underground world becomes the stratum of the soul desires and
lusts, whereto the protagonist is attracted by the serpent-man; tempting her to
publish her novel and make her wishes come true for gifting her body as a
giveaway price. Thus, the struggle continues to the end of the novel through
many disappointments until the woman of the upper stratum pulls off victory.
·
Metamorphosing
into Animal or Monster
Metamorphosis and metempsychosis play a great role in the novel ‘The
Wild Mints’. They mainly consist of the essential novel’s core, moreover,
that the novel’s protagonist herself believes in metempsychosis as a
transformation of souls, and
acknowledges in more than one place throughout the novel that she is a
changeable woman who transforms to take many forms, and transfers from a
historical era to another to narrate her tale and experiences throughout all
such transformations and transferences. Thus, the metamorphoses rebreed and the
transformations multiplied which strike the other human characters throughout
the novel. Among those characters the character of ‘Abu Buqaah’, the
tail-impaired cake-seller-man. This character comes across the novel’s
protagonist, the female-narrator’s consciousness as a monster who eats human
flesh and scoops blood. Each character is metamorphosed according to the wrong
it commits. The cake-seller’s metamorphosis was due to his devilish deed when
he had abused Khairiyah, the 14-year speechless lass. Here, Ulaiyaa
recalls to her memory her school’s play-yard and says that the cake-seller’s
voice fills her memory with the killed eagles and owls. He is a cut-off hands
man with the cake between his arms which seem as burned sticks catching the speechless
lass crying in his hands and seems like a piece of cake fragmenting into
pieces, and whom the community rejected for her pregnancy as a result of being
open to Abu Buqaah’s sexual abuse, and whose hands appear greased with dirt.
Ulaiyaa asserts that while looking at him, she has seen a monster eating a
human flesh. “The human monster ran away, while the human flesh accused of
impurity.” There, on the school basketball-yard’s ground the speechless lass fell
bloodstained. Here, she was dismissed from the 8th March celebration
for she did not put a new pair of shoes on. They did the same with Ulaiyaa for
the same reason, because the Leader’s daughters refused to see the speechless
lass and Ulaiyaa sharing them the celebration party. Ulaiyaa’s father replied
saying that revolution came for the poor peasants not to those who are dressed
in expensively-imported dresses, and as Ulaiyaa is the revolution’s daughter
she has priority over the Leader’s daughters right to partake in the party.
But, at the end she and her schoolmates were rejected. “Khairiyah was not to
hurt anybody; she was only accused just because her body is stretching between
the two Arabic linguistic particles of femininity, (t and n)”.[1] Meanwhile,
the cake-seller appears to be an intimate monster, a disabled and impaired man,
although in reality he was not absolutely like that. This monster lives in the
soggy darkness, descending upon the small peaceful pigeons. Monsters are
sometimes dressed in human outlooks. Those are the enemies of humanity, because
they tend to ruin it. Thus, the tale of the speechless lass comes to an end
with losing her right; no one is to chase the guilty-perpetrator, justified by
keeping the reputation of the victim. Therefore, women, in the masculine
community, have to hide the rape cases as well as the cases of humiliation and
suppression. As for the cake-seller, he disappeared for a long time, then, it
was said that his other hand was cut-off while using the dynamite fishing.
In
this novel, the particular is mixed with the universal in the
female-narrator’s mind. The narrator deals with the particular concern
and put it on the table to be discussed within the universal. Thus, the particular
concern unites (represented by Khairiyah, the raped girl whose unique guilt was
that she is a female with unprotected body and open to the masculine community)
with the universal concern of the whole community. That is, because the
cake-seller, and the like, are the enemies of humanity. Those humanity’s
enemies together with the leading-strongmen dominate everything and steal
everything; including the weak-people and peasants rights. If Khairiyah were a
daughter of a general, or a daughter of a principal, or a daughter of a dealer
or a big tradesman, her right would never have been lost nor the cake-seller
dared to rape her.
In
the feminine narration, the metamorphoses are generated for men in particular.
Sometimes the narration suffices to metamorphosing him into animal without
showing the type of animalism he is metamorphosed into. As this happens in the
text of ‘The Abassian Cellar’; the man is seen, in the narrator’s
consciousness of animalism, through his beastly and erotic desires. Thus, the
narrator is found to metamorphosing the human essence, which is created by God
in the most perfect image, in the most perfect manifestation, and perfect outward
appearance. As a matter of fact, the feminine narration, thus, lets the human essence
fall down, from a higher rank nearing an aesthetic highly-ranked ideal to a
lower rank which is so far from beauty and ideal, which ultimately devaluate
its respect and status. Here, the text shows the erotic and beastly disposition
which is deeply-rooted in the man’s essence as one who pants after his desires
and sexual needs. He, for instance, is ready to threat his family’s entity;
leaving it when carelessly deciding to get married to another woman in order
only to meet his sexual desires.
Ugliness,
which is manifested in man, makes him, in the narrator’s consciousness, metamorphosed
into animal. Hence, the relationship between the man and the animal becomes
clear in the narrator’s consciousness, when the mother addressed her daughter Khilood
saying: “Daddy is not a daddy, he is a beast, a beast; do you understand that?
Daddy is a beast; he left us and got married to another woman.” Since then, the
father’s ugly deed started to demonstrate huge gap negatively reflected in the
mind of Khilood, the protagonist, who appears in the novel as a character in a
real plight; her only purpose in life is to lead a life of sexual playfulness,
just like the men whom she wants to revenge for herself on them. This
metamorphosis of man is accompanied by a substitution of the word ‘daddy’ for
‘beast’, because “his name has not anymore been ‘daddy’, because the word
‘beast’ becomes sounding in her ears whenever she hears the word ‘daddy’.” “…the
beast is accompanying his whore, and here he is waiting in the street under my
window!” Such transforming and metamorphosing of a man might come under the aesthetic-title
of ‘the ugly’ and separating from the aesthetically-idealized-image of
the father, who is supposed to be a builder of the family, not a destroyer.
Thus and accordingly, the family members’ rank falls from the rank of human
creatures, who God bestowed perfection on them, to metamorphosed creatures unmasking
their beastly nature, and stripping off their human essence as well. The
episode comes to an end with giving the man, metamorphosed into a beast, a harsh
punishment going along with his beastliness and with his metamorphosed
personality, i.e., punishing him by disabling his manhood, the source of his
beastly instincts; striking him with impotency. Moreover, significantly, his
new wife leaves him behind, and so, he has to return to his family disappointed
and defeated.
The
man, in the feminine narration, may also metamorphoses to a monster, especially
when the text stripes the man off his mind, i.e., making him a slave of his
desires and lustfulness. As it happened in ‘The Lotus Flower’, the novel
wherein Kamal Bek is depicted as a so monstrous character that he
asks his wife to behave as a prostitute. That is, in order only to satisfy his
desires. In this case, the man is seen in the text as a selfish character,
i.e., considering only his selfishness and beastly dispositions, even if on the
expense of other people. It is worth mentioning here that the feminine
narration not only misshapes the masculine image for his beastly desires, but
also the narration goes further to uncover that what happened to the misshaped
and metamorphosed man into a beast was due to his inner corruption. Kamal Bek
was well-known for his under-suspensions attributes and relationships which are
built on dirty intentions. This inner corruption of the essence comes to light
when he is transformed him into a fearful and ugly monster standing against our
world, i.e., a person who carries out trade on the human lives, and is ready to
do anything, in order only to get whatever he wants. Hence, in order to reflect
the man’s image through misshaping him, the narration presents him in a
monstrous fearful outlook versus the world of purity and beauty, i.e., the world
which stays pure and fine; a world not yet ruined by suspicious intentions, and
which is represented in the novel by the wife’s character.
The
metamorphosis into a monster includes the woman’s character, as in the novel ‘The
broken Face’. In this text, the novel tilts to break the stereotype images
of the mother, whom is well-known, in our Arabic traditions, as a symbol of
sacrifice and giving, especially when it concerns her children. But, in this
novel, a great daring could be found about breaking the mother’s stereotype
image. In this novel we come across the protagonist, who presents her mother as
a selfish person who carelessly abandons her family; leaving her husband and
her sole daughter. She does this, because all she cares about is to sustain her
outward elegant outlook. She is so obsessed with her elegancy that she insists
to keep it even when she is struck by hemiplegia, the disease which catches her
from being elegant; she hired a woman to help her staying elegant. She does so,
in order to keep her look in front of her neighbors and guests as it was
before; keeping her nails polished, her lips glossed, while in her hair a rose
which is of the same color of her dress and shoes. The suffering of the
protagonist from her mother covers so many pages of the novel, and it leaves a
negative effect, pain, and sorrow, which could be seen on the narrator’s
character; the protagonist of the novel, from cover to cover. The
female-narrator describes her mother saying: “… my mother is a stone-hearted,
selfish, and trivial woman; a showy person spends her time caring for her
make-up, while the village’s other woman work since sun-rise to sun-set,
producing food for themselves, family, and other people . . . . my mother is
used to sit with her friends for long hours to sip coffee, smoke the water-pipe,
accompanied with their chatting and gossiping through sounding laughs, while
the village’s women chat when at farm-work, or at the spring-water, or at baking-furnace,
or when gathering fire-wood from the wood-land.” All such pain and suffering
caused by motherhood is manifested in the eyes of the narrator, the novel’s
protagonist, as an example of ‘the ugly’; metamorphosing the character,
misshaping her image, transforming her, once into a fearful monster with red,
sharp, and blood-stained claws; the blood of her victims is dropping from their
sharp ends, another transforming her into a fearful he and dominant ghoul with
nails and lips that never seen void of victims’ blood-color.
As a
matter of fact, the woman, whether a mother-woman, or the grandmother-woman,
or even the sister-woman, all these expressions seem to be strongly
planting deep roots and high lightening statuses in the humanity’s memory, where
they leave a great universal impact. ‘Grandmother’, as an expression,
can stimulate the memory to recall beautiful impressions inside the human-being.
On the other hand, some of the female-writers penetrate so deep into the social
traditions, beliefs, and taboos. But, the narrator sometimes penetrates even
into the memory’s beautiful heritage which is manifested in the mother and
grandmother’s images. However, in this novel, the mother and the grandmother’s
images appear as part of the lifeless things and ugly phenomena around the
protagonist. Thus, the narrator, the protagonist, tends to charge the mother
and grandmother’s images as whole with ugly memories and impacts. The ‘mother’,
as we have seen, is seen as a selfish and tyrant person, and metamorphosed into
a fearful monster with traces of her victims’ blood; meantime, the narrator
shows the grandmother’s image striped off all the beautiful senses, tenderness,
and caring. Hence, we find that whenever Ni’mmah opens her grandmother’s
box, she sees afreets leaping from it to surround her dignity and make her feel
lonely, strange, and filled with fear, while such a box should rather be the
opposite, i.e., a source of warm, tenderness, and beautiful memories, which our
memory usually keeps about the typical grandmothers and their impressive tales.
The protagonist even remembers that her grandmother’s ill-will towards the
innocent child and her mother makes the grandmother change the child’s name
from ‘Ni’mmah’ to ‘La’nnah’[2].
The critics argue that even the penetration of the stereotypes and images of deep-rooted
taboos in our human heritage and memory, which insistently energies the writer
to surpass the usually and the justifiably accepted opinions can be classified within
the frame of the modernistic text and modernistic style, i.e.,
the endeavor of the female writer Ibtsaam Shakoosh who boldly break and
demolish the deeply-rooted images in the Arabic human heritage and memory, or
in the Arab collective unconsciousness, can be classified within the frame of
the Arabic modernist novel.
·
The
Transforming Character
The
character may transform from a human-being creature into a tool or instrument
lacking the sense of life and hope. This, in fact, may cause trouble to the
novel characters’ attitudes towards the ideals, again as in ‘Toledo’,
or may depict the ugly surroundings of the community as in ‘The
Broken Face’. Such awareness of ‘the ugly’ could be transferred from
the novel’s inner characters to the outer reader, who may then feel bitterly
and sorrowfully, especially when we know that the two above-mentioned novels
are narrated by the ‘first person narrator’ technique, i.e., the
narrator is the protagonist herself, telling the story and reciting the events,
as though everything is happening in front of us at the moment. Thus, the
recipient reader may feel as bitterly and painfully as the novel’s protagonist
may do.
In ‘The
Broken face, the above-mentioned novel, the narrator depicts more and more
details about Ni’mmah, the poor young-lady; left behind by her mother since it
was a little child to be under the care of her grandmother. The narration here
is accomplished by the ‘first person technique’, and the narrator is the
protagonist herself. Thus, the recipient-reader can feel that the event is of
the moment; going on directly within his sight. In the novel, Ni’mmah
transforms, under the effect of the surrounding life’s ugliness and misery,
into a “robot walks by metal steps to do only what it is instructed to do, and
stops wherever it finishes the job, i.e., waiting to receive any new orders
from a board with buttons conducted by expert and well-trained hands to
torture.” These well-trained hands are of the mother. Hence, because of the
pain and torment which Ni’mmah is living, beside the community’s rejection,
Ni’mmah transforms into an instrument, i.e., she is so void of feeling the sense
of beautiful things, life, and beauty that she would never be affected by her
mother departure. It is as Ni’mmah says: “She did not depart, but only after
she had emptied my essence from all senses, murdered my tears, and constrained
my feelings. She died after she killed in my soul all the eagerness to live;
she made me feel as if I am not more than a stone in the life-road’s platform;
as though I came to life, only to endure the heaviness of other people feet and
their boots pressure.” In this novel, the aspects of nature are presented in
order to be an expansion of a voice of the narrator, the protagonist, and as an
expansion of her feeling of pain, ugliness, and humiliation. “…after a hot day
while the trees owing towards east, the incline-headed sheep return to their pen
under the power of the shepherd stick …. The wind pushes the trees as though it
is pulling them out of ground, but the trees, whose roots have deeply gone down
in the ground, might bow to the wind, but in the morning earnestly implore to
the sun coming from the east to help them keep standing . . . the sun eludes;
promising but tantalizing, pushing to the trees to make wishes, advising the
trees to be patient until they get ready to defeat the wind . . . thus the
trees are trained to be bowing obedient . . . neither the wind calms down nor
the sun change it route!” Hence, everything surrounding the protagonist is seen
bowing and humiliated, and the protagonist herself is similarly seen, just like
those trees; bowing obedient, patient and waiting for hope. The ugly living of
the protagonist is also reflected on the surroundings. In the heart of the crowded people moves,
going and coming . . . there, Ni’mmah stops near the bridge, and from their
bodies she sees nothing but their lower halves, as though all the human-being
are metamorphosed into half-beings, i.e., just their lower parts; elegant black
trousers hurriedly walking, followed by a short green skirt showing underneath
two beautiful legs . . . the skirt stops and the trousers retreat to stop in
order to walk together.” This dramatic scene, narrated by the novel’s
protagonist, puts forward only one thing; the community as whole sinks into
lustiness, suspicious intentions, and pleasures, and thus, it seems so far from
the realm of ideals and values. Hence, the narrator’s vision is confined to see
only the lower parts of the human-beings, to figure out their involvement in
lustiness, which at the same time indicates the dominion of ugliness and its
priority over beauty.
Once
more, ‘Toleedo’ is found to have something in common with this novel, in
respect of the protagonist transformation into an instrument, absolutely
striped from life-feelings, because the character’s feelings, under the
pressure of alienation, transform entirely from happiness to ugliness, painfulness,
and misery. In this novel, the argument of ‘the ugly’ is read through the
episodic alienation, and the bitterness feeling it leaves in the protagonist’s
essence. The feeling of alienation is manifested in the narrator’s consciousness
represented by ‘the ugly’ versus ‘the aesthetic ideal’ as a representative of
Al-Lathiqiyah as a home-land town. Thus, the narration recalls Al-Lathiqiyah as
an aesthetic example, which starts a struggle against Toleedo and the American
society; showing the American society’s ugliness, which is figured out as cold
in feeling, filled with sorrowfulness, and pain surrounding the narrator, the
novel’s protagonist who is in the core of narration the female-narration makes
here a comparative relationship between Toleedo and Al-Lathiqiyah. Once the
narrator expresses her feelings and talks about Toleedo stealing her life-time,
another she is found under the effect of very beautiful feelings coming from
her memories about Al-Lathiqiyah: “… life in this country is stealing from me
my life-time; it takes my years, indulging me in its movement . . . in the core
of the movement, Al-Lathiqiya awakens as a delicate dream, stretching in my
essence, and thus I realize that her bright eyes reside in my depths in
tranquility, coming across Toleedo’s certain dreams. Once the narrator speaks
about Tooledo, another about Al-Lathiqiyah; this alternating of discourse
reflects the struggle inside the protagonist and her shaking life, and let
alone the puzzling-life of her towards her aesthetic ideal. On part of
Al-Lathiqiyah, it stands in the character’s consciousness for beauty, longing,
and memories of the beautiful past-times, while on part of Toleedo, it stands
in her consciousness for routine, alienation feeling, and pain, and let alone
the reason of being the work-place and the existence of the family, the
daughter, and the relatives nearby. The narrator has done a very good job when
depicting the episode using the verb ‘awake’, as though the self is yielding to
the deep sleep of the alienation’s ugliness, which split her off her sense of
life. Hence, the narrator suddenly recalls Al-Lathiqiyah and the beautiful
memories to pump life in the self-essence, in order to rescue it, though the
minimum, from pain.
In
this novel, under the effect of the alienation’s ugliness, the protagonist
transforms into a systematically-programmed instrument; to a set of notions and
missions connected to time and timing. So, if anything urgent happens to the
system, would lead to lost. This is, for, the self-confident Toleedo know how
to obsess things, how to own the physical body, and how to transform the soul
to a e an orderly and perfectly programed tool. It splits everything beautiful
off the heroine, even the return to Al-Lathiqiya. As a result, the heroine’s
feeling of the aesthetic ideal deceases, and her sense of life retreats against
alienation as a representative of ugliness. Thus, beauty withdraws and
retreats; opening the way to ‘the ugly to overcome everything, and
consequently, life difficulties follow without interruption to face the
protagonist; starting with her divorce, passing through the opposition of her
family and relatives to her second marriage, death of her nearest friend
Lastus, her quarrel with the American, and to end with her entering the
hospital. All these tragedies transform the heroine to a senseless instrument:
“… missing the meaning of existence and the wisdom of continuing, I move, sit,
and turn around … everything exists there accept me … my things are far away
from my being … who am I? …. Why am I here? ... The dreams fall down and get
lost in the lost . . . a phantom of a strong enduring woman comes to me, a type
of woman can face the impossible … a woman getting old … a woman I were someday
ago … it does not touch my depths … but remote of me … she were she or she were
I … how and why? … What that thing which
shattered the world around me and made out of me a fossilized point, and
against my will I find myself rootless … a lonely woman in a strange world …
alienation breeds alienation.” Revealed by the protagonist, this soliloquy
reflects the life’s ugliness and bitterness, when one is far away from
homeland. Thus, the questions continue to breed, the comparisons come one after
another, and the heroine’s lost status so enlarges that she could neither find
a solution to her matter nor receives even a single answer to her questions,
until the protagonist narrator recalls a talk of her grandmother about a plant
which is uprooted off its soil to be planted in another, but it get sorrowed,
withered, and died. The narration’s recalling of the grandmother’s talk could
summarize all the answers, and at the same time it paves the way to the
aesthetic ideal to make victory, withdrawal of ugliness in front of beauty,
i.e., it sign out and pave the way to the heroine to return back to homeland at
the end of the novel.
·
Wolves
and Rats
Metamorphoses
generate and increase in the novel The Wild Mints to speak out on the
ugliness state of the societies and the corrupted relationships controlling
them. Ulaiyaa faces corruption in the university when she refuses to be
obedient to the authority of Za’roor Bashaa and the university’s
administration, or her refusal to draw her complaint against Suzan Za;roor’s
daughter who cheats in the examination. As for Randah, her old friend, who
absolutely knows nothing in Arabic language, but becomes, thanks to her husband
Mansoor Bashaa, as a caretaker and supervisor of literature and culture in her
town, and Sahaar with the Mercedes who prepares, thanks to her husband Bahjat
bashaa, to apply for the Doctoral Degree. Thus the fall-down of the educated
continues in a society ruled by corruption and ugliness. Hassan, a poet, and
‘Adnaan, another poet sell their verses to high-ranked officials, just in order
to get work-promotion and higher posts. The same done by Ali, who disappoints
Ulaiyaa when writing a verse collection dedicated to the Sultan, and let alone
the bargains and dealings made by big-brothers for which small-brothers and the
poor people go as victims. All this corruption is reflected by the writer in
her novel through the episode of Ali and Ulaiyaa, making use of the theories of
metempsychosis and metamorphosis as indicative tools to uncover the misshaping
of human-being essences and human relationships corruption. Semantically, mice
and rates has negative bearings, for they are mean creeping animals, which are
usually connected to the fearful and the ugly. Because they hate light, they
energizes in the dark, far away of the sun-light. So, they preferably live in
holes in the ground of dark abandoned corners of dirty places. Despite its
advantages they offer for the natural environmental balance, its relation to
man has negative effects because they are the carriers of the plague disease.
Therefore, the depiction of mice and rats in the contemporary novel carries an
inner awareness of these creatures’
ugliness. The metamorphosing and transforming into rat in ‘The Wild Mints’
is not more than a notion existing in the narrator’s head, Ulaiyaa, who
announces it when she sees black sacks covering the town. Hence, the
protagonist attempts to translate her feeling to the reader about the town’s
misshaping; misshaping of its parts, and misshaping of its times as well,
moreover, she imagines the garbage’s black-sacks as birds flying over the town
as an omen of coming evil to occupy it as the rats do.” … Do you know? … It is
the times of the black plastic … when I see it piled there in my kitchen I feel
sad . . . afraid … I do not know what happens to me … I only feel I want to run
away.” Thus, Ulaiyaa continues her talk saying: “… these plastic sacks are huge
rats patrolling everywhere … they came from a remote hole, a hole coverd with
cruelty … time is a monster chasing me.”
The
town’s awfulness and dirty-living in there is manifested in the awareness of
Ulaiyaa, the narrator as black rats nibbling on our clean life to spread
plague. This sight of rats seems to give forth fear, terror, and repulsiveness
inside the Ideal, which is Ulaiyaa. This is, for the rats’ world stands as a
prominent huge danger to the realm of noble values. So, it seems that the
woman’s feeling of the time’s burden has melted inside her as a feeling of dirt
awfulness polluting her town. Thus, the heroine’s feeling towards ‘the time’
and her fear of it transfers from the particular concern to the universal
concern. For, if the sense of ‘dirt’ comes together with the sense
of ‘time’; time of dishonest interests and life’s dirt, may
transforms into a predatory monster that chase the noble values to devour.
Ugliness
is not only a character of a town, but also it would also touch even the
village, especially when the village is sinking in hunger, poverty and
nescience. Here, Ali returns to his childhood memories; recalling the days of
the French Mandate of Syria, and the visit paid by de Gaulle to the Syrian
Coast. Ali explains the reason of the town’s poverty saying: “de Gaulle himself
ate from our village’s chickens, and his wife drank from the water of Siyano …
she did not surprise, for she knew that she would meet human-being whom are
different … kings and slaves … this is the regime of our kingdom, my lady! … we
only know how to conspire … at that time, Ba’il who lived up there got angry …
and so He wreaked His curse wrath upon the whole Coast, therefore it continued
to suffer from wretched poverty.” The village is still suffering from poverty
and hanger till the present day; its people do not taste the favor of meat but
in Al’eed opportunity. As for those people who sold then selves to the
strongmen-leaders, like the poet Sarhan, they might get sick from eating too
much meat, because his uncle, the General sends to him a sheep every day;
telling him to feed whomever he likes, and leaving some to hungry rats.
Rats
are considers examples of defeatism, for they are well-known for fearfulness
and fleeing for the sake of life sustenance. Here, it is worth mentioning that
rats are the creatures which have in common, in their genesis, with the
human-being more than any other creatures. It is for this reason they are
preferably used in the medical laboratory’s experiments, when a new medicine is
to be applied on the human-beings. On the other hand, depicting the humans as
rats may suggest directly to the reader to connect with the experiment field
but reversed; the human-being are who to be transformed into rats to acquire
their defeatism character. The view of hungry rats may carry to the reader the
a suggestible view of the defeatist, negative, coward, and spineless attitude
of the village’s people towards what happening. As an example of this weak
attitude, the narrator recalls the story of poor woman Fatimmah, who was
advised by the village people to keep in line with the strong-man leader, in order
to supply her with gifts and shoes for her children, due to the rule “the hand
you couldn’t break give it a kiss, but pray for it broken.” Just for record, the strong-msn leader it was
he who stole her money after her father’s departure, and was behind her
brother’s migration to Beirut.
Back
to the town, we may find out that the sense of misshaping, which is by itself
dirt does not only cover the town’s details and time, but also includes the
humans and their relationships. Under the influence of this misshaping, the
human-being are metamorphosed into wild wolves. Thus, Ali wishes if only Mandel
has searched about the common causation of hybridization between man and
animal. That is, “… when a red rose is hybridized with a white rose, the result
would be a blush-pink rose, but when a human-being is hybridized with a beast,
the result would be a screaming-child-girl and wolves spreading in the place.”
Hence, Ali argues that the modern hybridization theories all agree with the theory
of Ulaiyaa and support it. “ … didn’t you say that out off the man a wolf might
come sometimes? And the modern theories of hybridization all support your
theory, and the opposite is also true.” Ali asserts that in the town there
humans and also there are wolves. These wolves patrol among us without being
seen. Then Ali recites on the tongue of Mohammed Alberhoom that there are so
many wolves living among us, but we have to use our wise sense, in order to
coexist with tem without getting to be hurt. Ebn Abu Aadil is one of the
instances of such wolves, because he was the hero of so many battles with
women; he never let a village woman run away only after he strips her off her
clothes in his imagination. He striped all the village woman off their dressing
… he deserved to be cursed by Al-Shaiykh Dhahir Shrine, and so metamorphosed
into a wolf. He said to Abu Adil: “… my-wolf-sun is cursed on this mortal
world, and there is no way to put his curse out of action … he is eating the
chickens of Mohammed Barhoom’s wife as revenge, because he tempted her, but she
refused and rejected him.” The village folk say: “God metamorphosed him into a
dog, others say he was metamorphosed into wolf … but I say there are wolves
which by metempsychosis transform into humans and walk in the street like a
punch of parsley.” The village’s strong-man leader also is metamorphosed into
wolf, who feeds on the human flesh; moreover he slaughtered the hens of Um
Al-‘Abed, and steals the sheep of Uncle Salih, the good and God-fearing man,
and let alone taking Fatimah’s money after her father’s death.
Dr.
Fawziyah Al-Duraie presents a book about the beastly man. In her book, she
argues that the nature and social behavior of men have so many things in common
with the animals’. Therefore, the writer talks about men’s world and isolated
them out of the human species, moreover, she classifies them as different
animal species, and explains their feature in details. Regardless we agree or disagree
with her view, her book include abuses against men, because the writer
addresses just men as beasts, and excluding women. Still, regardless of our
view about her book, it provides us with keys which help us to read and analyze
the metamorphosis of the character into a wolf. In her book, the writer
mentions the characters of the wolf-man. In the character’s analysis, she argue
that he is the man with bad desires; a man who believes in the principle of
‘the purpose justifies the mean’, and thus, every mean becomes possible, even
if the mean may cause hurt and crash to other people. Such a man is surely be
exploitative one; when he wishes for a post, and to make such a wish become
true, he inclines to use tricks, accusations’ fabrication, and conspirators. If
he gained such a post, he may kill or slaughter anyone in order to keep the
post he gained, even the dearest people to him. In sex lustfulness, this man is
able to mask himself in the appropriate romantic appearance, in order to pull
the legs of women to get of them whatever he desire, and then dismisses them in
a way full of humiliation and insulting.
Hence,
this flagging world; the world of ugliness is found represented by
disappointments and corruption of the community, resulting from the change in
the human nature and the misshaping of the human propagation. Due to the given
facts and variables, human-being have been transformed into wolves eating each
other. This ugliness is manifested as whole in the consciousness of the male-narrator,
the novels hero, and the consciousness of the female-narrator, the novels
heroine, using the technique of metamorphosis and transformation, which are so
far from the aesthetic ideal. The surrounding ugliness creates inside Ali the
feelings of fear and alienation, and hence, just like Ulaiya, he wishes if only
he was metamorphosed into a bird, in order to be able to rush into the mist of
coldness and fly through. He wished to out of Adam’s shell to birds’ shell,
where he may find salvation from the physical body prison. It is worth
mentioning that Ulauya is the only character in the novel who transforms into a
bird. According to their mythical origins, birds express the sense of freedom
and liberation from the earthly chains, because of their ability to travel to
the realm of beauty and noble values. Joseph Campbell argues that:
“The flight is in the imagination as the release from earth, the
bird is symbolic of the release of the spirit from bondage to the earth, just
as the serpent is symbolic of the bondage to the earth.”
Furthermore,
generally, sparrows in our human life are seen as nice, mocking, and peaceful
creatures, which fear the humans, and run away from them. Men are used to their
existence in their life, take care of them, and coexist with them. Hence, we
can argue that birds are aesthetic objects; they are closer to beauty than to
ugliness. So, the transformation of Ulaiyaa, the unique character from among
the other characters of the novel, into a bird asserts and proves the notion we
said before about Ulaiyaa as a symbol of the aesthetic ideal and the noble
values. It is for this reason the narrator makes her transform into a bird,
while the other characters transform into wolves and rats as a result of their
ugliness of their devilish essence.
This
is, significantly emphasized by the narration itself, when Ali acknowledges to
himself after he was defeated in front of himself. Ali is defeated when he decided to enter the
world of oblivion; giving himself sold to the strong-men leaders, who give him
a new name with a palace, a new memory, and a different history. Thus, he
becomes at the same time, a new pair of shoes, putting him on and taking him
off wherever they like. But, as Ali believes that when ‘the true word’ is dead
he becomes dead, he recalls Shahraraad who got help from ‘the word’ in order
not let death takes her. It is for this reason, when memory is vanished, we get
metamorphosed, and thus, Ali confesses that because of his personal defeat,
when abandoning his memory, he has been misshaped and metamorphosed. But, he is
not like Ulaiyaa who transformed into a bird flying in heaven, because he has
been metamorphosed, and thus, his destiny is to sty stuck to the ugly earthly
world. So, he makes self-confession saying that the single stem has so many
branches, as for me I am not more than an ancient branch sinking in the
underneath world. Meantime, Layla, Hadaba, and Ulaiya are branches with roots
connected to the heavenly world, and simply, there is a great difference
between a lower earthy world and a higher heavenly world.
To
summarize, from the novel reader’s point of view, the metamorphosis technique
used in the novel enables the writer to express the state of ugliness and
corruption existing in the masculine community in means of metamorphosing the
human characters and transforming them from superior being into inferior being
getting far from the aesthetic ideal, beauty, and perfection bestowed
exclusively on them by God.
·
Reference
-
[1]
The writer is speaking metaphorically, for the Arabic ‘t’ as a letter and a sound comes sometimes
as a verb suffix to feminize the verb, while the Arabic ‘n” as a letter and
sound comes sometimes as verb suffix to together feminize and pluralize the
verb.
[2]
Ni’mmah ‘ as a name in Arabic means ‘bliss’, while ‘La’nnah’ means ‘curse’
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