![]() ![]() As the war intensifies, her parents move to their native village, and Zahra, struggling to survive, falls in love for the first time. The marriage is a disaster: Zahra becomes even more withdrawn, then returns to a Beirut devastated by war. ![]() The homesick uncle is delighted to see her, but Zahra, frightened by the intensity of his attentions, hides out in the bathroom (``the only thing I have loved in Africa'') and in desperation accepts the marriage proposal of a local Lebanese man. She has two abortions and a nervous breakdown before her family sends her off to West Africa, where an uncle once active in Lebanese politics now lives in exile. After a severe beating from her brutal father, who suspects Zahra's role in his wife's deceit, the formerly bright student retreats into herself, obsessively scratches her pimple-laden face, and embarks on a meaningless affair with a married man. The story this time-reflecting the author's feminist sympathies, as well as her preoccupation with the contemporary Arab world-concerns Lebanese Zahra, who as a child had been used as cover for her mother's liaisons with another man. Arab writer al-Shaykh (Women of Sand and Myrrh, 1992) details a cool, almost clinical journey to the heart of a young woman imprisoned within herself by family deceit-and liberated finally amidst the violence of war-torn Beirut. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |