Lebanon

• Ḥalīm Barakāt (1936-, Syria) – Sittat Ayyām (1961, English trans. Six Days, 1990) and ʿAwdat al-Taʾirila al-Bahr (1969, English trans. Days of Dust, 1974).

The first of these two novels (see for description in I: Ideologies and Political Movements: Zionism), is prophetically named for a real war yet to come in 1967 and as such it is a prelude to the latter novel which unfolds the existential drama of the June war (reference).

Awdat al-Ṭāʾir ilā al-Baḥr depicts the speed with which the 1967 defeat overwhelmed the Arabs through the story of Ramzī, a teacher in Beirut, showing the false news accounts of victories, the napalming of civilians on the West Bank as they fled towards Jordan, the resignation of Nasser, and the student riots that demanded he remained (reference). It portrays Beirut “as a complex space that simultaneously liberates its free-spirited intellectuals and reaffirms their despair facing the gravity of political and military defeat” (reference). Barakāt alludes in the opening and closing of his novel to the Genesis story of the six days of the creation of the earth and uses biblical vocabulary such as al-takwīn (Genesis) and al-jalad (the firmament) (also in C: Cities: Lebanon: Beirut and R: Religion and Sectarianism: Christians and Christianity).