- Najwā Binshatwān’s (1970-, Libya) short story collection Katālūj Ḥayah Khāṣṣah (2018, English trans. Catalogue of a Private Life, 2021) describes how living under a dictatorship affects everyday life in Libya and includes tales of symbolic resistance, hunger, religious fanatism, and a human’s need to forget. The stories are set in the past, now, and future, and take place in Libyan villages as well as cities (reference).
- Ismāʿīl Fahd Ismāʿīl ’s (1940 – 2018, Kuwait) tetralogy Kānat al-Samāʾ Zarqāʾ (‘The sky was blue’, 1970), al-Mustanqaʿāt al-Ḍawʾiyyah (‘Light swamps’, 1971), al-Ḥabl (‘The rope’, 1972), and al-Ḍifāf al-Ukhrā (‘The other banks’, 1973) depicts life in Iraq before the fall of ʿAbd al-Karīm Qāsim and the atmosphere of political repression and terror and its destructive effects on the mental state of the protagonists (reference) (see for more information 1963: Fall of ʿAbd al-Karīm Qāsim’s Regime in Iraq).
- ʿIṣṣām Maḥfūẓ’s theatre trilogy (1939 – 2006, Lebanon) al-Zinzalakht (‘The chinaberry tree’, 1968), al-Diktātūr (‘The dictator’, 1972) and Saʿdūn Malikan (‘Saʿdun the king’, -).
Written in colloquial Arabic, al-Zinzalakht centres Saʿdūn, who lives in a Kafkaesque nightmare of despotism and autocracy. He is the defendant in an investigation on a woman’s murder, although it is unclear if the murder really happened (reference). The play won the Said Akl Award in 1968 and has been published in English as The China Tree in ‘Modern Arabic Drama: An Anthology’ (1995, Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Roger Allen).
In the second play, Al-Diktatūr, Saʿdūn is the assistant of the Dictator, a tyrant who rules in the believe he is humanity’s savior and is organizing a coup against the King. The play takes place in one room, where the Dictator is planning his coup. The English translation can be found as The Dictator in ‘Modern and Contemporary Political Theatre from the Levant’ (Robert Myers and Nada Saab, 2018).
In Saʿdūn Malikan, which was never published, Saʿdūn is trapped in a room with two doors, one door he voluntarily locked to stop the knocking from outside, and the other, through which he planned to escape, was locked from outside (reference).
- Hisham Matar (1970-, Libya) – In a Country of Men (2006) and The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between (2017). This first novel is set in 1979 in Tripoli, Libya, and narrated by the 9-year-old Suleiman who describes the political terror of the Qaddafi regime. The novel shows the harrowing effects living under a dictatorial regime have on a young child (see for more information in F: Children and Family Life: Children and Adolescents: War and devastation through children’s eyes and 1969 Libyan revolution – Muammar Qaddafi seizes power). The memoir The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between memoir portrays the author’s return to Libya in 2012, together with his mother and wife, where his father went missing twenty-two years before (see for more information in M: Movement: (E)Migration, Refugees and Return: Return and F: Children and Family Life: Parent and Child: Father and Child).
- Rachid Mimouni (1945 – 1955, Algeria) – Une Peine à vivre (‘A pain to live’, 1991). This novel delves into the mind of a dictator to understand the motivating force behind his ruthless actions (reference). Hero of the novel is an orphan who, driven by revenge, opts for a military career. Through blackmailing and cheating, he climbs up to the highest ranks of the military, and eventually acquires complete power through a coup d’état. He is however, never relieved from his childhood trauma, not as he rules the country, and not as he falls in love. Eventually the nameless hero meets his destiny facing a firing peloton and disappears as he has made so many others disappear (also in D: Disabilities, Illness, and Disorders: Psychological Disorders: Trauma).
- ʿAlī al-Muqrī (1966-, Yemen) – Ḥurma (2012, English trans. Hurma, 2015). Set in Yemen, this novel deals with the effect of Sharia law and fatwas on Yemeni’s oppressed and invisible women. It does so while not shying away from describing women’s sexual desire as well as the existing religious extremism and violence against women.
- Amjad Nāṣir (1955 – 2019, Jordan / Palestine) – Hunā al-Wardah (‘Here is the rose’, 2016). Don-Quixote like hero of this novel, Yūnus al-Khaṭṭat, a journalism student who descends from a long pedigree of calligraphers (hence his family name), navigates between his rebellious and poetic sides. He is a member of a secret organisation for which he carries messages hidden in his shoes between the fictional cities of Ḥāmiyyah and Sinbād. The message is about an assassination mission of ‘the Grandchild’, leader of the Ḥāmiyyah. But the mission fails, and Yūnus flees into exile. The narrator returns to Ḥāmiyyah in Amjad Nāṣṣir’s Ḥaythu la Tasquṭ al-Amṭār (2010, English trans. Land of no Rain, 2014, see in M: Movement: (E) migration, Refugees and Return: Return) (also in O: Occupations, Professions and Hobbies: Arts).
- Muʾnis al-Razzāz (1951 – 2002, Jordan) – Iʿtirāfāt Kātim Ṣawt (‘Confessions of a gun silencer’, 1986). The doctor Murād is put under house arrest with his wife and daughter without a clear reason. Their son Aḥmad is the family’s only contact to the outside world until he is suddenly murdered by Yūsuf, an ex-member of the same political party as that of the doctor, with a silenced revolver. The goal of the murder is seemingly only to “extracting a tear from the unflinching father” (reference). The novel provides the daily memoirs of the three family members, as they are constantly under observation by cameras and guards.
- Samīḥ al-Qāsim’s (1939 – 2014, Palestine) play Qarshāsh (‘Qarshash’, 1970) represents oppression throughout different centuries, from the slave drivers of ancient Greece and Egypt to modern dictators and mass murderers. It refers to the historical figure Bahāʾ al-Dīn Qarshāsh, a despotic statesman under the rule of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, but also the Turkish word meaning ‘black bird’. Despite the acts of murder, mutilation and treason portrayed in the play, emphasis is also but on the people’s power to overcome all misery and emerge victorious (reference).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Manal Shakir. 2022. “‘Catalogue of a Private Life’: Eight ordinary stories with extraordinary insight.” www.arabnews.com, 22 March 2022, https://www.arabnews.com/node/2047661/lifestyle (last accessed 6 March 2023)
- EAL, p. 398
- Nada Saab and Robert Myers. 2018. Modern and Contemporary Political Theatre from the Levant: A Critical Anthology. Brill: Leiden, p. 37
- EAL. p. 252
- Fahd A. A. Salameh. 1998. The Jordanian Novel (1980-1990): A Study and an Assessment (doctoral dissertation, University of London, England) Retrieved from https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/161528623.pdf p. 122 (last accessed 20 December 2020)
- Ali al-Raʿi. 1992. “Arabic Drama since the thirties.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 358-404, p. 366