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Refugees in Arab Countries

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  • Sūzān Abū al-Hawā (1970-, Palestine) – The Scar of David (2006), translated to Arabic as Baynamā Yanām al-ʿĀlim, (2012) and retranslated to English from the French as Mornings in Jenin (2010), follows the story of a Palestinian family, Abū al-Hījā, who were forced to leave their small village east of Haifa to a refugee camp following the 1948 Nakbah (see 1948 al-Nakbah) (reference). As the mother of the family carries her twin babies, one of them, Ismāʾīl, is snatched by an Israeli soldier, and continues to grow up to become Dāvīd. The main protagonist of the novel, however, is the family’s daughter, Amal, who embodies the trauma of a complete generation. The author herself wrote the novel after visiting the Jenin refugee camp following the Battle of Jenin in 2002 (reference).
  • Laylā al-Balūshī ʿAbd Allah (1982-, Oman) – Dafātir Fārhū (‘Fahu’s notebooks’, 2018). Fārhū, a descendent from a Muslim Somali father and a Christian Ethiopian mother, tells his story to Kāril, a European journalist, from a prison cell (reference). He describes how his family fled from Sudan to Yemen, to eventually end up in one of the Gulf countries where Fārhū joined a gang that deals in body parts to collect his mother’s bail, but is arrested and imprisoned.
  • Huzāmah Ḥabāyb (1965-, Palestine) – Mukhmal (2016, English trans. Velvet, 2019). This novel tells the stories of several Palestinian women living in the Baqʿa refugee camp in Jordan (reference). Velvet is the favorite fabric of one of the characters, Qamār, a widowed tailoress who becomes the protégé of the novel’s heroine: Hawāʾ. Through tailoring and their shared love for that soft and smooth velvet fabric, the two find a way to deal with the ultraconservative and patriarchic system they live in. The novel won the 2017 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature (also in O: Occupations, Professions and Hobbies: Fabrics).
  • Shatila stories is a book written by nine Syrian and Palestinian refugees who have been forced to life together in the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut following the 2011 violence outburst in Syria. Each of the nine writers contributed their story on making a new life in the camp whose inhabitants are thousands (also in 2011 Syrian Uprisings and Civil War: Displacement).
  • Rūzā Yāsīn Ḥassan (1974-, Syria) – Ḥurrās al-Hawāʾ (‘The guards of the air’, 2009). This novel treats the socio-political environment of 1990s Syria and the effects on the families, particularly women, ‘left on the outside’ of Syrian prisons. More specifically, it tells the story of the pregnant ʿAnāt, who works as interpreter in the Canadian embassy, where she is constant witness to the horrors that those applying for asylum, mostly from African countries, describe, and her fiancé, who is imprisoned for spreading leftist pamphlets (reference) (also in G: Dysfunctional Governance: Prison Literature and Torture: Effects of Prison and Torture).
  • Ghassān Kanafānī (1936 – 1972, Palestine / Israel) – Rijāl fī al-Shams (1963, English trans. Men Under the Sun, 1978). This novel is a portrayal of Arab attitudes towards Palestinians in the period before the 1967 defeat (see 1967 al-Naksah) and the bleak Palestinian reality following the 1948 Nakbah (see 1948 al-Nakbah). It tells the story of three Palestinian refugees of different generations who travel to Kuwait in a water-tank in search of work (reference). When their smuggler, Abū Khayzarān, is held up in a pointless discussion at the border control, the three men are stuck in the tank under the beating sun, and when he finally rushes back, he finds them dead. Unloading the bodies, he first plans to give them a respected burial, but ends up dumping them at the municipal garbage dump wondering why the passengers didn’t beat on the side of the tank (also in D: Disabilities, Illness, and Disorders: Physical Disabilities: Impotence and Castration).
Image of Rijāl fī al-Shams generated through DALL·E by Desiree Custers
  • Ilyās Khūrī (1948-, Lebanon) – Bāb al-Shams (1998, English trans. Gate of the Sun, 2007). This novel portrays the Palestinians’ experience of displacement and ‘imprisonment’ through narratives of the 1948 al-Nakbah (reference) (also in 1948 al-Nakbah). The novel is based on extensive conversations the author had with Palestinian refugees and depicts the way they are oppressed by both the Israeli occupation, as well as repressive Arab regimes. The story of Yūnis al-Asadī, who narrates the pain and torment of Palestinians in Lebanese prisons, tries to incite a collective return to Palestinian villages and cities, and plans violent attacks from the South of Lebanon, is intertwined with that of Dr Khalīl, who works in in a makeshift hospital of the Shatila refugee camp (reference).
  • Ibrāhīm al-Kūnī (1948-, Libya) – al-Majūs (English trans. The Fetishists, 2018). This epic novel centers a group of refugees coming from Timbuktu and setting to work to build up an ideal, paradise-like town in the middle of the desert (reference). The novel describes the expanding Sufi influences in the Sahara and reflects on existential questions posed through references to great thinkers such as Ibn Khaldūn and Ibn Ṭufayl. In the novel, human characters are just as important as the plants and animals that make up the desert landscape (also in R: Religion and Sectarianism: Islam: Sufism).
  • Razān Naʿīm al-Maghribī (1961-, Libya) – Al-Hijrah ʿAlā Madār al-Ḥamal (‘Migration over the course of pregnancy’, 2004). Zīnah, heroine of this novel, takes the reader to Tripoli, Libya, and Damascus, Syria, as she narrates the story of her grandfather who fled Libya to Damascus after Italy invaded it in 1931. The narrator continues to describe her life in Syria, including the political changes the country and region goes through such as the creation of the United Arab Republic in 1958, Nasserist nationalism, the 1967 and 1973 wars, up until the 2003 Iraq invasion (reference).
  • Maḥmūd al-Rīmāwī (1948-, Palestine) – Man Yuʾnis al-Sayyidah? (‘Who will cheer up the lady?’, 2009). Set in a context similar to the aftermath of the Nakbah (see 1948 al-Nakbah), this novel centres the elderly Palestinian widow and refugee Umm Yūsif, and her neighbour Umm ʿAwnī. One day, Umm Yūsif finds a tortoise on the street and keeps it as a pet. Slowness takes on a central place in the novel, as both Umm Yūsif and the tortoise move through life together at a similar pace and enjoy the simple things around them (reference).
  • Amīr Tāj al-Sir (1960-, Sudan) – Muntij al-Sāḥirāt (‘The witches resort’, 2015). This novel centers the beautiful young Eritrean girl Abābā Tisfāy, who arrives as a refugee in Sudan. It portrays the duress refugees are exposed to in the remote Sudanese border villages, which become an intersection of travel, trade, and crime, where their presence is often perceived as a threat (reference). Abābā ends up working in the lawless ‘the witches resort’, where tea is served and transport to other cities leaves from, and where she falls under the ‘authority’ of ʿAbd al-Quyūm, the mainstay of the place (reference) (also in W: Outside the Arab World: Sub-Sahara and West Africa: Eritrea).

Refrences:

In order of appearance

  1. Sima Miri. 2021. “Representation of Trauma in Susan Abulhawa ‘Mornings in Jenin’.” International Journal of English and Studies 3(12): 96-103, p. 97Mamdūḥ Farrāj al- Nābī. 2018. “‘Dafātir Fārhū’ lil-ʿUmāniyah Laylā ʿAbdallah: Tamthīlāt Sirdiyyah li-Māʾsī Aṭfāl al-ʿĀlim” www.alarab.co.uk, 16 December 2018 https://alarab.co.uk/%D8%AF%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%AA%D8%B1-%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%87%D9%88-%D9%84%D9%84%D8%B9%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%D9%87-%D8%AA%D9%85%D8%AB%D9%8A%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%84%D9%85%D8%A2%D8%B3%D9%8A-%D8%A3%D8%B7%D9%81%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85 (last accessed November 14, 2021)
  2. Sāmī Khalīfah. 2019. “‘Mukhamal’ li-Ḥuzāmah Ḥabāyb: Riwāyah Balad Aqnʿah min Mukhayyim Filasṭīnī bi al-Urdun.” www.elaph.com, 30 November 2019, https://elaph.com/Web/book-review/2019/11/1273462.html (last accessed 9 February 2024)
  3. Muḥammad al-Masʿūdī. 2020. “al-Wāqiʿa al-Siyāsiyyah/ al-Ijtimāʿī: Ḥudūd al-Mʾasāh wa al-Mulhāh fī ‘Ḥurrās al-Hawāʾ’ li-Rūzā Yāsīn Ḥassan.” Afkar 372 www.afkar.jo/View_ArticleAr.aspx?type=2&ID=3056 (last accessed 22 March 2023)
  4. Roger Allen. 1992. “The Mature Arabic Novel Outside Egypt.” in Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 193-223, p. 198
  5. Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Abū Ḥanīsh. 2006. “al-Filasṭīnī wa al-Sijn fī Riwāyat ‘Bāb al-Shams’ li-Ilyās Khurī.” www.diwanalarab.com, 13 September 2006, https://www.diwanalarab.com/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%B7%D9%8A%D9%86%D9%8A-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%AC%D9%86 (last accessed 12 February 2024)

  6. Maya Jaggi. 2005. “The Arab’s Arabs. Myths and heroism inform a history of Palestine in Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun, says Maya Jaggi.” www.theguardian.com, 12 November 2005, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/nov/12/featuresreviews.guardianreview16 (last accessed 12 February 2024)

  7. Hartmut Fähndrich. 2016. “Chapter 6: Losing Home. Out of the Coziness into the Cold: Glimpses of the Idea of Home in a Few Novels of Modern Arabic Literature,” in Representations and Visions of Homeland in Modern Arabic Literature, eds. Sebastian Günter and Stephan Milich. Georg Olms Verlag: Hildesheim, Zürich, New York. pp. 103-115, p. 111
  8. Yūnis Shaʿbān al-Fanādī. 2016. “‘al-Ḥijrah ʿAlā Madār al-Ḥamal’.. Hā Qad Ḥān Watiha.” www.libya-al-mostakbal.org, 16 October 2015 http://www.libya-al-mostakbal.org/95/8258/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%87%D8%AC%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D9%85%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D9%85%D9%84-%D9%87%D8%A7-%D9%82%D8%AF-%D8%AD%D8%A7%D9%86-%D9%88%D9%82%D8%AA%D9%87%D8%A7.html (last accessed 11 April 2021)
  9. Muḥammad Muʿataṣim. 2010. “‘Man Yuʾnis al-Sayyida?’ lil-Kātib Muḥammad al-Rīmāwī: min al-Aḥdāth al-Kabīrah wa al-Afʿāl al-Ṣākhibah ilā al-Ashyāʾ al-Basīṭah.” www.alquds.co.uk, 2 September 2010 https://www.alquds.co.uk/%D9%85%D9%86-%D9%8A%D8%A4%D9%86%D8%B3-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A9%D8%9F-%D9%84%D9%84%D9%83%D8%A7%D8%AA%D8%A8-%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%85%D9%88%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%88/  (last accessed 1 November 2020)
  10. Kamāl al-Riyyāḥī. 2016. “‘Muntij al-Sāḥirāt’ … Kitābat al-Hāmish wa ʿUnf al-Mutakhayyil.” www.aljazeera.net, 27 March 2016, https://www.aljazeera.net/culture/2016/3/27/%D9%85%D9%86%D8%AA%D8%AC%D8%B9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%AD%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D9%83%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%B4-%D9%88%D8%B9%D9%86%D9%81 (last accessed 13 January 2024)
  11. Hāshim Shafīq. 2016. “Fī Riwāyah ‘Muntij al-Sāḥirāt’ al-Amīr Tāj al-Sir: al-Qāʿa al-Sūdāniyyah wa ʿAlimihi al-Muḥbaṭ.” www.alquds.co.uk, 16 July 2016, https://www.alquds.co.uk/%EF%BB%BF%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%85%D9%86%D8%AA%D8%AC%D8%B9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%91%D8%A7%D8%AD%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%AC/ (last accessed 13 January 2024)

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