- 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 F: Family Life: Parent and Child: Mother and Child).
- Ulfat ʿUmar al-Idilbī (1912 – 2007, Syria) – Dimashq Yā Baṣmat al-Ḥuzn (1980, English trans. Sabriya: Damascus Bittersweet, 1995). This novel portrays the city of Damascus in the 1920s during the French mandate. It describes the upbringing of its main character Ṣabriyyah through the memoires that she left her young niece. The novel shows how Ṣabriyyah’s journey to define herself is intertwined with national awareness in the context revolt against oppressive French imperial power. While the revolt is crushed by French forces, her personal emancipation is limited by restraining patriarchal values and her dominant brother. She eventually commits suicide as an indictment and triumph of her crass, domineering brothers (reference) (also in C: Cities: Syria: Damascus and 1920: Partitioning of the Arab World into mandates: French mandate in Greater Lebanon Syria and Lebanon 1920-1946).
- Walīd Ikhlāṣī (1935 – 2022, Syria) – Aḥdān al-Sayyodah al-Jamīlah (‘The lap of the beautiful lady’, 1969). Reflects on Syrian intellectuals and centers the past of its main character Ismaʾīl, a philosophy teacher at a girl’s high school, who used to be a member of a political movement against the French mandate (reference). When the movement’s plan is compromised and the members are arrested, Ismaʾīl is the only one who succumbs under torture and interrogation (reference). Under the growing feeling of guilt, Ismaʾīl writes a philosophical book which he believes will bring a revolution. But when this is not the case, he commits suicide (also in 1920: Partitioning of the Arab World into mandates: French mandate in Greater Lebanon Syria and Lebanon 1920-1946).
- Rabīʿa Jābir (1972-, Lebanon) – Rālf Rizqallāh fī al-Mirʾāt (‘Ralf Rizqallah through the Looking Glass’, 1997). This novel, on the feelings of Lebanon’s inhabitants after the Civil War, according to some critics treats the suicide of Ralf Rizqallah as a social and psychological state triggered by a failed collective mourning process of the Civil War (reference). Others see the story as a research on the real-time suicide of one of Lebanon’s famous intellectuals and the eventual description of his suicide as neither an act of protest nor a post-war symptom, but rather caused by personal alienation, physical ailments and a nihilistic perception of the role of the intellectual (reference) (also in 1975 – 1988: Lebanese Civil War: 1988- After the Civil War).
- May Khālid (?, Egypt) – Saḥr al-Turkwāz (2006, English trans. The Magic of Turquoise, 2011). The story of this novel alternates between the perspectives of the young Egyptian Laylā and her aunt Nīrvānā, who is in a coma after a terrible diving accident, or was it an attempt to commit suicide through drowning? The two women explore their memories and secrets to understand themselves and the complexity of their relationship: Laylā, who feels like the outsider of her family, tries to make sense of her aunt’s faith while questioning her own fears and failures, while Nīrvānā internally re-lives her holiday romance with Muḥammad, a man she fell in love with while being engaged to her cousin (also in D: Disabilities and Illness: Illnesses: Coma).
- Samīr Qasīmī (1974-, Algeria) – Yawm Rāʾiʿa lil-Mawt (‘A great day to die’, 2009). This novel depicts the story of an Algerian journalist, Ḥalīm bin Ṣādiq, who, to escape from the chaos and despair of Algeria’s capital city, plans to commit suicide (reference). Among others, he writes himself a letter and mails it to himself so that it arrives a week after his death. Ḥalīm looks at death through suicide as the only way to freedom, by which death/ suicide is described not as something painful and sad, but as liberating and joyful (reference).
- Ṣabāḥ Sanhūrī (1990-, Sudan) – Barādāys (‘Paradise’, 2019). Main character of this novel is Sayyid, who opens an agency called ‘Barādāys’, which helps its clients to commit suicide. The two other employees take care of everything surrounding the death: Salām thinks of the scenario, while Riyāḍ films the last moments of their clients, later editing the suicide scenes.
- Ḥanān al-Shaykh (1945-, Lebanon) – Intiḥār Rajul Mayyit (‘Suicide of a dead man’, 1970). A 14-year-old boy’s love with a 16-year-old girl turns him from being in love, to physically and mentally weak (reference).
- Amīr Tāj al-Sir (1960-, Sudan) – 366 (‘366’, 2013). At a family members wedding, the protagonist of this novel, a physics professor, falls in love with a woman he sees called Ismāʾ. He begins a desperate quest to find her, without having any information other than her first name, and starts to write love letters that form the novel and that detail his life and search (reference). These stories give the reader an impression of life in the Sudanese cities. Failing to find her, though, he announces his death as a preliminary step before committing suicide. Despite the misery and desperation, the novel paints several comic situations (reference).
- Fuʾād al-Tikirlī’s (1927 – 2008, Iraq) short story ‘al-Dummāla’ (‘The Abscess’, 1966), in which a man falls in love with the daughter of his second wife. The young girl’s showing of independence and emancipation strengthens his jealousy and his desire for her. But in his eyes, this is a moral deviation which he feels unable to bear. He eventually drives his car into the cold, suffocating waters of the Tigris and drowns (reference).
Refrences:
- 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)
- Mohja Kahf. 2001. “The Silences of Contemporary Syrian Literature.” World Literature Today 75(2) 224-236, p. 231
- Admer Gouryh. 1984. “The Fictional World of Walid Ikhlasi.” World Literature Today 58(1): 23-27, p. 25
- Dalia Said Mostafa. 2009. “Literary Representations of Trauma, Memory, and Identity in the Novels of Elias Khoury and Rabīʿ Jābir.” JAL 42: 208-236
- Zeina G. Halabi. 2013. “The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: Suicide of the Intellectual in Rabīʿ Jābir’s Rālf Rizqallāh through the Looking Glass.” JAL 44: 53-82
- Jamiyāt Munā. 2017. “Tunāʾiyah al-Mawt wa-al-Ḥayah fī al-Riwāyah al-Jazāʾiriyyah al-Muʿāsirah: Qirāʾah fī Riwāyah ‘Yawm Rāʾʿa lil-Mawt’ li-Samīr Qasīmī.” Majallah Lughah Kalām 6: 253- 261, p. 256, 267
- Marwān Ṭaḥṭaḥ. 2016. “Ḥanān al-Shaykh: Intiḥār Rajul Mayyit.” www.al-akhbar.com April 22, 2016 https://al-akhbar.com/Kalimat/120738 (last accessed 17 November 2021)
- Īnās al-ʿAbāsī. 2014. “366 li-Amīr Tāj: Riwāyah al-ʿIshq wa al-Jarīmah wa al-Lughah al-Salisah.” www.7iber.com, 4 February 2014, https://www.7iber.com/2014/02/366review/ (last accessed 17 February 2023)
- Wiebke Walther. 1995. “Distant Echoes of Love in the Narrative Work of Fuʾād al-Tikrilī” in Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature, eds. Roger Allen, Hilary Kilpatrick, and Ed de Moor. London: Saqi Books, 131-139, p. 136