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Mother and Child

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  • Rīnīh al-Ḥāyik (1959-, Lebanon) – Shitāʾ Mahjūr (‘Forsaken winter’, 1996) and Ṣalāh min Ajl al-ʿĀʾilah (‘Prayers to the family’, 2007).

Shitāʾ Mahjūr tells the story of Mūna, a 40-something mother who is left to her loneliness during a cold winter, after her daughter marries and moves out (reference).

 

The narrator of Ṣalāh min Ajl al-ʿĀʾilah moves to Cleveland, the USA, with her husband where she gains new perspectives on her relationship with her conservative mother as she explores her own role as a women, mother, and wife. She returns to Beirut to for her mother’s last days, putting her contemplations on their relationship in connection with her own and her mother’s past (reference).

  • Fādiya al-Faqīr (1956-, Jordan / England) – My Name is Salma (2007). When the Jordanian Salma becomes pregnant out of wedlock, she is imprisoned for her own safety and gives birth inside the prison (reference). Her baby daughter is snatched away, and after the mother is freed, she is ‘shipped away’ first to a covenant in Lebanon, and then Cyprus and England to avoid her killing by the tribe (reference). There, she starts a new life and changes her name to Sally. But her heart still aches for her daughter, so she eventually returns to look for her. The novel portrays Salmā’s adapting to and switching between different environments while missing her daughter and the surroundings of her hometown (reference).
  • Hudā Ḥamd (1981-, Oman) – Asāmīnā (‘Our names’, 2019). This novel starts with the suicide of Mīnā, a woman in her forties who jumps into a well. From there, the story looks back at her childhood, adolescence, and the days before the suicide. She describes the difficult relationship with her mother, who ‘defeated’ her by favoring her twin-brother and the absence of a sympathetic understanding society that could have helped her in dealing with her psychological troubles (reference) (also in D: Death: Suicide).
  • Najīb Maḥfūẓ (1911 – 2006, Egypt) – al-Sarāb (1948, English trans. The Mirage, 2009). This novel portrays Kamīl, who grows up developing a Freudian mother-fixation to his pampering mother whom he even sleeps in the same bed with until he is 25. This fixation prevents him from developing a normal marital relationship: when he marries a teacher, he discovers he is impotent. He begins a sexual relationship with a prostitute, a relationship which outlasts his mother and his wife. The novel is one of the first attempts at treating the theme of sexual frustration without sensationalism (reference) (also in D: Disabilities, Illness, and Disorders: Physical Disabilities: Impotence and Castration).
  • Yamina Méchakra (1949 – 2013, Algeria) – La grotte éclatée (‘The exploded cave’, 1979). Set in a cave which functions as a shelter and a hospital for the revolutionaries, the events of Algeria’s liberation war are narrated by an anonymous female fighter for the National Liberation Front (FLN). Like all combatants, the narrator strives for an independence that will allow her, as much as her fellow men, to enjoy freedom (reference). The novel links the glorification of the liberation war to exploring issues of motherhood when the narrator becomes a single mother, including a criticism of the post-independence nationalist affiliation that negatively effected the position of women (reference) (also in Ideologies and Political Movements: Feminism and Nationalism and 1954 – 1962 French Algerian War and Algerian Independence).
 
  • Alīfah Rifaʿat’s (1930 – 1996, Egypt) short story ‘ʿUyūn Bahiyyah’ (‘Bahiyya’s eyes’). The elderly Bahiyyah tells her daughter about her loss of sight. While her doctor says her loss is due to natural causes, Bahiyyah is convinced that it is because of the suffering she saw in her life and recounts her story. Among others, she reflects on patriarchal society and how ascribed gender role differences between men and women has affected her course of life (reference). Through this dialogue between mother and daughter, this former gives advice to the later, whose future is still before her (reference). The story was published in the magazine Hilāl in October 1990 (also in D: Disabilities, Illness, and Disorders: Physical Disorders: Blindness).
  • Nawāl al-Saʿadāwī (1931 – 2021, Egypt) – al-Ghāʾib (1968, English trans. Searching, 1991). This novel describes the long painful journey of the heroine, Fuʾādah, into her inner self and the limitations family and society places upon women who “want to rise above the pettiness, the hypocrisy, and the walls surrounding their lives” (reference). The novel also describes the relationship between Fuʾādah, who is a trained research chemist, and her mother, who, herself having given up education to marry, lives vicariously through her daughter. Though the mother encourages Fuʾādah to continue her career, she remains a largely negative character because she projects her frustrations on her daughter, which causes the daughter to doubt herself and resent her mother (reference).
  • Leïla Sebbar (1941-, Algeria) – Parle mon fils, parle à ta mère (‘Speak my son, speak to your mother’, 1984) shows the solitude of aging Maghrebi woman, while they are waiting for their children (reference). It centers a mother, whose son has unexpectedly returned from his native home in France, but who does not speak her language (reference). The story portrays her speaking alone in the kitchen while preparing food for her son, recounting stories of her life, children, and her reflections on his life.
  • Amal Shaṭā (?, Saudi Arabia) – Ghadan Ansā (‘Tomorrow I shall forget’, 1980). The wealthy Saudi ʿAbd al-Majīd falls in love with the daughter of a poor family he meets in Java, Indonesia, on one of his trips. They marry, but he leaves her behind while she is pregnant, only to return two years later to take his daughter, Islām, to Saudi Arabia (reference). His daughter grows up alone with him. Fifteen years later, her mother travels to Mecca after going through lengths to reunite with her daughter. And although Islām initially doesn’t believe her mother’s claims, she is convinced when her father acknowledges the truth and asks the mother to look after him while his health deteriorates (reference) (also in W: Outside the Arab World: Asia).
  • Ḥanān al-Shaykh (1945-, Lebanon) – Ḥikāyatī Sharḥun Yaṭūl (2005, English trans. The Locust and the Bird: My Mother’s Story, 2010), in which al-Shaykh writers the story of her mother, Kāmilah. After Ḥanān’s mother left her as a child to pursue a relationship with a man, the story shows her reconciliation with her mother as an adult. Ariel Sheetrit argues that the story shows how the estranged mother’s and daughter’s words, identities, and selves are woven together so tightly that they cannot be separated (reference). Michelle Hartman argues that the English translation changes the meaning to the novel to be about diaspora and fulfilling the American Dream (reference).
  • Mays al-ʿUthmān (?, Kuwait) – Thʾulūl (‘Solutions’, 2015). This novel tells the story of the 13-year-old Salwā, who comes to represent Kuwait during the seven months invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. When Salwā becomes pregnant following rape by an Iraqi soldier, her family forces her to stay in the house for the duration of the occupation (reference). After, she flees to Egypt to give birth to a son, who is called by her family during her pregnancy Ibn al-Gharīb (‘son of a stranger’), though Salwā calls him Jābir. The family decides to raise the child as Salwā’s brother and the novel proceeds to describe the development of their relationship, Salwā secretly going to the psychiatrist for mentally struggling with her feelings of being a mother and a sister, and the continued influence of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (reference) (also in 1990 Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War: The Kuwaiti side).
  • ʿĀliyyah Mamdūḥ (1944-, Iraq) – al-Maḥbūbāt (2003, English trans. The Loved Ones, 2007). When he learns that his mother is in a coma, Nādir, a man of Iraqi descent living in Canada, travels to Paris to sit beside her hospital bed. During visits of her friends and well-wishers, Nādir is forced to confront his difficult relationship with his mother. The novel tells of live-in exile in Canada and Paris, but also focuses on wartime in Iraq. This novel won the 2004 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Arabic Literature (also in D: Disabilities, Illness, and Disorders: Illnesses: Coma and W: Outside the Arab World: Canada).
  • Imām Marsāl (1966-, Egypt) – Kayfa Taltaʾim: ʿan al-Ummawāt wa Ashbāḥiha (2017, English trans. How to Mend: On Motherhood and its Ghosts, 2018). This work of ‘mother-memoir’ prose by the celebrated Egyptian poet describes her experiences with motherhood, which is not afraid to move away from the traditional Arabic and Egyptian idea of the perfection of motherhood, but also displays the mother as a person who makes mistakes, is sometimes selfish and feels guilty (reference). Marsāl looks at motherhood through different contexts: both in her home country, in exile and when moving between places. The work can be downloaded for free on the Kayfa Ta website.
  • Istilā Qāytānū (?, Stella Gitano, Sudan) – Arwāḥ Iddū (‘Souls of Edo’, 2019 ). This novel is about pregnancy and early motherhood in the 1970s and 1980s, a time of conflict and duress in Sudan, until Omar al-Bashir seizes power in 1989.
  • Kamāl Ruḥayyim (1947-, Egypt) wrote a trilogy discussing the Jewish identity in the Arab world. The titles of the trilogy are: Qulūb Munhikah (2004, English trans. Diary of a Muslim Jew, 2014), Ayām al-Shatāt (2008, English trans. Days of the Diaspora, 2012) and Aḥlām al- ʿAwdah (2012, English trans. Menorahs and Minarets, 2017). The trilogy is centered on Jalāl, whose mother is Jewish, and father is Muslim. In the first novel he is still a baby and after the death of his father in the Suez War of 1956 he is raised by his mother to be a Muslim. During the three novels Jalāl develops a conflicted relationship with his mother, not in the least because of his stigmatization as the son of a Jew. They move to Paris together and eventually back to Cairo in the third novel, Aḥlām al-ʿAwdah, where the mother passes away and leaves Jalāl questioning if he has been an ungrateful, unjust son (reference) (also in R: Religion and Sectarianism: Judaism and Arab-Jew relationships).

Refrences:

In order of appearance

  1. Youmna al-ʿId. 2008. “Lebanon.” in Arab Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide 1873-1999, eds Radwa Ashour, Ferial J. Ghazoul, Hasna Reda-Mekdashi, translated by Mandy McClure. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 13-60. p. 35
  2. al-ʿAlī, Nawāl. 2008. “Rīnīh Ḥāyik: Riḥlah fī Dhākirat al-Unūthah al-Muʿadhabah.” www.al-akhbar.com, 18 April 2008, https://al-akhbar.com/Culture_People/168449 (last asccessed 26 October 2021)
  3. Nayera El Miniawi. 2015. “Cross cultural communication in my name is Salma, ‘My name is Salma – By Fadia Faqir’.” Global Journal of Art and Social Science Education 3(1): 61-63, p. 61
  4. Eman K. Mukattash. 2022. “Transnationalizing Ecocritical Studies in Arab Diasporic Fiction: A Case Study of Fadia Faqir’s ‘My Mane is Salma’.” American, British and Canadian Studies 38(1): 179-200, p. 185, 191
  5. Kātiyyah al-Ṭawīl. 2019. “Al-Riwāʾiyyah Hudā Ḥamd Tastarjaʿ Khafāyā al-Mukhīla al-ʿUmāniyyah al-Shaʿabiyyah.” www.independentarabia.com, 15 August 2019 https://www.independentarabia.com/node/48781/%D8%AB%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%81%D8%A9/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%87%D8%AF%D9%89-%D8%AD%D9%85%D8%AF-%D8%AA%D8%B3%D8%AA%D8%B1%D8%AC%D8%B9-%D8%AE%D9%81%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A7-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AE%D9%8A%D9%84%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B9%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%A9 (last accessed 27 October 2021
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  14. Ariel M. Sheetrit. 2011. “Two Lives Enmeshed: Disentangling Genref and Identity in Hanan al-Shaykh’s Hikayati Sharhun Yatul / My Life: An Extended Commentary.” Contemporary Women’s Writing 5, p. 158
  15. Michelle Hartman. 2015. “‘My Tale Is Too Long to Tell’, The Locust and the Bird between South Lebanon and New York City.” JAL 46: 168-192
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  18. Marcia Lynx Qualey, 2017. “Book review: Kamal Ruhayyim’s ‘Menorahs and Minarets’, the unchangeable past.” www.qantara.de, 5 April 2017, https://en.qantara.de/node/27304 (last accessed 4 January 2018)
 

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