- Leila Aboulela (1964-, Sudan) – Lyrics Alley (2010). This novel is inspired by the life of Sudanese poet Hassan Awad Aboulela and tells the story of a promising student named Nur Abuzeid. The novel is set from the 1950s onwards, after Sudan gained its independence but faced socio-economic and political challenges. The developments and identity of Sudan, including vis-a-vis neighbouring Egypt, are reflected in Nur’s life story: a talented young man who becomes paralyzed after an accident (reference). After his accident he rediscovers reading and starts to write poems again using a mix of the Sudanese dialect and classical Arabic and thereby developing his own identity (also in 1956 Independence Sudan).
- ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Bahīr (1953-, Morocco) – Jabal Mūsa (‘Moses’ Mountain’, 2016). The young teacher Marwān moves to a small village where he meets and befriends the mute and paralysed son of his elderly widow tenant, a man named Muḥammad. When the mother dies, Muḥammad requests Marwān to carry him up the mountain Musa. When they arrive after an extremely trying journey for Marwān, Muḥammad reveals that he is not at all mute or paralyzed but acted that way because he was afraid to reveal to his mother that his father/ her husband had secretly married a younger woman who had been his girlfriend and was pregnant with his child (reference).
- Rashīd al-Ḍaʿīf (1945-, Lebanon) – Hirrah Sīkīrīdah (‘Sikirida’s Cat’, 2014). Set during the Lebanese Civil War (see 1975 – 1988 Lebanese Civil War) this novel tells the out-of-wedlock love story between the paralyzed Amal and the person who shuttles her to school, the mixed Lebanese Ethiopian Radwān, which eventually leads to Amal’s pregnancy. Amal refuses to adhere to the social norms constraining her, and the novel portrays her as a confident woman initiating the physical relationship with Radwān, and using her newly discovered erotic and maternal body as a source of empowerment (reference). The novel also describes the difficulties Sīkīrīdah, Radwān’s Ethiopian mother, faces while working as a maid (also in M: Movement: (E) migration Refugees, and Return: (E)Migration: Non-Arab Migrants in Arab Countries).
- Raymūn Jabārah’s (1935 – 2015, Lebanon) play Man Qaṭaf Zahrat al-Kharīf? (‘Who plucked the autumn bloom?’, 1992). Written in the Lebanese dialect, this play tells the story of two Lebanese, a musician and a hemiplegic actor, who, having no family in their home country, migrate to Paris to live in a shared room with two beds, a table, and two chairs (reference). The play reflects on the two men and their position, particularly as artists, towards both Lebanese and French society and each other, as their relationship is based on mutual dependence (see also West and the Arab world: Arabs in Europe: France and L: Language and Dialects: Dialect: Lebanese dialect).
- Nabīl al-Milḥim (1953-, Syria) – Khamārat Jabrā (‘Jabra’s bar’, 2016). The novel centers on a young Syrian man by the name of Jād al-Ḥaqq Jād Allah whose mother died giving birth to him. He is raised by Zumurruda in the countryside of Damascus. In the capital city Zumurruda finds work with the help of ʿEzraʾ, a Jewish man whose daughter Jād falls in love with. When ʿEzraʾ and his daughter emigrate to Israel, Zumurruda finds new work in prostitution and Jād marries Jasmīna, an orphan, but also takes on a mistress Jūrjītt, an important person in the upcoming Baʿth party which controls Syrian political and social life. However, Jād becomes paralyzed and is forced to stay in a hospital bed where Jasmīnas sits beside him loyally and where he watches Damascene life pass by through the hospital window (also in 1960 – 1970 1963 Baʿath Party Syria)
- Saʿad al-Dīn Wahbah’s (1925 – 1997, Egypt) play Bīr al-Sullim (‘The Stairwell’, 1966), in which the head of the wealthy al-Shibrāwī family suffers from paralysis and lies helpless on a matrass under the staircase. Only his loving daughter ʿAzīzah believes he might recover; other family members go their own selfish ways. However, when his head begins to move again, the family reunites (reference). The play, in which the father never appears, reflects on the relationship between reality and belief.
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Yousef Awad. 2016. “Football in Arabic literature in diaspora: Global influences and local manifestations.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 51(8): 1005-21, p. 1008-9
- al-Kabīr al-Dādīsī. 2018. Masārāt al-riwāyah al-ʿarabiyyah al-muʿāṣirah, Muʾassah al-raḥāb al-ḥadīthah: Bayrūt, p. 55
- Nadine Sinno. 2017. “Crushing the Bones of the Other: Disability, Ethnicity, and Homosexuality in Rashid al-Daif’s ‘Sikirida’s Cat’ and Alexandra Chreiteh’s ‘Ali and his Russian Mother’.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 58(3): 258-275, p. 263
- Najla Nakhlé-Cerruti. 2016. “Du théâtre philosophique: les multiples voix du théâtre de Raymond Ğbrāra, ou l’affirmation du genre endialecte” in La Littérature Arabe Dialectale: Un Partimoine Vivant, eds. Sobhi Boustani and Marie-Aimée Germanos, Karthala: Paris, pp. 91-111, p. 95, 97
- Ali al-Raʿi. 1992. “Arabic Drama since the thirties.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Badawī. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 358-404, p. 390-1