- Laylā Baʿlabakkī’s (1936 – 2023, Lebanon) short story ‘Safīnat Ḥanān ilā al-Qamar’ (‘Ship of Tenderness to the Moon’, 1963) depicts a couple with no children: the female narrator is refusing her husband’s desire to have children. The short story collection with the same title was prosecuted for its ‘pornographic content’ and censored in Lebanon (reference).
- Ihsan Kamal’s (1935-, Egypt) short story ‘The Spider’s Web’, published in the collection Arab Women Writers: an Anthology of Short Stories (2015), depicts an involuntarily childless married couple, whose wife is confronted with questions from their social environment and her own desire to be a mother (reference). Although the husband has accepted the situation, the household is described as fragile as a ‘spider’s web’. The anthology contains several additional short stories on the topics of childbearing and marriage.
- Laylā al-ʿUthmān’s (1943-, Kuwait) short story ‘al-Raḥīl’ (‘The departure’) tells the story of a couple about to leave for an extended stay abroad who come across a doll belonging to their deceased child when going through their belongings. It can be found in the collection al-Raḥīl (‘The departure’, 1979).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Maru Pabón. 2023. “‘We Kindled the Fire and it Enkindled Us:’ Three Poetic Articles by Leila Baalbaki.” Kohl Journal 9(1) accessed on https://kohljournal.press/we-kindled-fire-and-it-enkindled-us (last accessed 24 May 2023)
- Baleid Taha Shamsan and Enas Ameen Ahmed Qaid. 2023. “Negative Representation of Women in Some Selected Arabic Stories.” Global Scientific Journal 11(2): 2900-2912, p. 2905-6