Celebrating the achievementsof Syrian women writers

In fact, one should not forget the voice of pioneer women writers who paved the way for others to exist and establish their place in the literary tradition. One of the most prominent female writers in Syria is Ulfat Idlibi (who passed away in 2007) and whose works have been translated into more than ten languages. Born and educated in Damascus, the city became the setting of all of her novels, like Qessas Shamiyah (Damascene Stories), Wada’an Ya Dimashq (Good-bye Damascus), and Dimashq Ya Bas-mat Al-Hozn, which was translated and published in English as Sabriya: Damascus Bitter-Sweet. The novel tells the story of a young girl who grows up in the 1920s. Suppressed by the

The second generation of Syrian women writers had one of the most difficult positions in the Arab region. Their works reveal the ten-sion between tradition and modernism.

French mandate and her family, the girl hangs herself in the courtyard of the family house, leaving a diary that forms the bulk of the novel. Sabryia, the central character says: “My countrymen demand freedom, but cannot even give it to one another. Half the nation remains bound by chains imposed on you by men.”

Similarly, Colette Khoury who was also born in Damascus expresses the dilemma of female national conscious-ness. Her deep feelings for Damascus are portrayed in her collection of short stories Demashq Bayti Al-Kabeer (Damascus, My Big House) Wa Marra Sayf (A Summer Passed), and Ayyam Maa’ Al-Ayyam (Days with the Days). Furthermore, Nadia Khost, another Damascene, is known for her relent-less activity to preserve the old city of Damascus. Her literary works include: Ohib Al-Cham (I Love Damascus, short stories) Hub i Bilaad Al-Cham (Love in the Levant, novel) and Mamlakat Al-Samt (The Kingdom of Silence, short stories). These two writers, Idilbi and Khoury, seemed to be concerned with rewriting the socio-political history of Syria from their own perspectives.

It is important to reveal that the second generation of Syrian women writers had one of the most difficult positions in the Arab region. Their works reveal the tension between tradition and modernism. Most of them could not find the distinction and recognition they aspired for in their homeland, so they had to immigrate to the Western world to satisfy their intellectual passion and literary ambitions. Such a forced migration put them in a perplexing situation, for they were torn between their home-sickness and their desire for self-assertion. In a collection of poems en-titled «Nostalgic Letters to Jasmine», Ghada al Samman, the Syrian novelist and poetess expresses her inner feelings of homesickness and yearning to return to Damascus, the city of Jas-mine. «When, I was at home, I used to yearn for departure into the Diaspora world; now, I cry because I have fulfilled my dreams”. Similarly, Samar Attar’s novel, which appeared in English as The House on Arnus Square, elaborates the influence of her actual return to her childhood home after an absence of 20 years. While confront-ing the changes that took place around her in the private sphere, she reflects the political and sociological changes that have gradually taken place in her country. Many writers should be kept in memory, such as Ikram Anatki who is currently noted as a Mexican writer of Syrian origin. After studying in France, she decided to travel to “the end of the earth,” choosing Mexico as the most distant possible place. She published many books in Spanish, French and Arabic, and she had un-conventional views about the family and school. Likewise, Widad Sakakini, the short-story writer skillfully man-aged to create new meanings for traditional themes in her texts. In some of her writings, she refused the repetition of the religious interpretations that come from unreliable sources. As for Salma al-Haffar al-Kuzbari, she de-voted much of her energy to do justice to the Palestinian writer May Ziyadah by editing her works. She was also concerned with politics. In her 1989 work, Bitter Oranges, she examines the tragic effect of the long-lasting conflict on young Palestinian women. She received several international awards and medals from the Spanish government for her Arab and Andalusian studies.

In Mohja Kahf’s poetry, there is a desire on the part of this young Syrian-American writer to be recognized in the West as a Muslim woman writer. With an impressive knowledge of European literature, she traces in one of her books the Western representations of Muslim women from the medieval period to the mid-nineteenth century. She revives conveniently forgotten images of Muslim women. In her novel The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, Mohja Khaf tells new things about Muslims in America. By borrowing details from her own life, she narrates the story of Khadra, a Syrian girl transplanted to the American Midwest in the 1970s. Her feelings of estrangement and alienation are ex-posed when she says, “You don’t realize when you’re in a minority culture that people look at you as if you’re this alien thing, you really don’t”.

In her novel A Woman of This Modern Age, Haifa Bitar focuses on the effect of ‘sexual liberation’ on women. After an encounter with cancer, two husbands and five relationships, the heroine reaches the conclusion that man is not a natural component of her identity, and that the woman is the pioneer of making any change. There-fore, she finds her cause in the sick women whose lives have been destroyed by men. Her reaction against the “Eastern” man who is seen as in-capable of development even if he lives in a Western environment makes her choose to live without a man and without sex. In Anisa Abboud’s novel, The Heap of Time: The Heap of a Woman, the writer delves into the superstitions that surround the female body in some places. Several issues are brought to light, such as polygamy, women’s pregnancy at an early age, and the treatment of women as sexual objects for men’s desires.

A Syrian women writer, who printed her name in the Collection on Women in Islam & Islamic Societies, is Bouthaina Shaaban in Both Right and Left Handed: Arab Women Talk about their Lives. In her work, she tries to uncover the hidden history of Arab women, by narrating her personal struggle and the struggle of Arab women against their socio-political oppression. What is notable is that some Syrian women writers were capable of asserting their poetic talents in English, such as Lina Tibi, who is a prominent Syrian poet living in London. Her poetry is included in the contemporary Anthology of the Poetry of Arab Women. She has published several collections of poetry, including A Sun in the Closet, Self-Portrait, and Here She Lives. Another example is Susie Gharib who exposes in one of her collections of poems in English, My Love in Red, the ‘plight of the Middle-Eastern woman’ in the family.

All the above examples show that the Syrian literary scene is rich with many female voices and aspiring women writers who are waiting for the chance to be recognized here and elsewhere. One cannot ignore the achievements of Lina Keilani who is a well-established writer of children’s literature, and whose latest book Influenza ya Faiza recently won a prize in Egypt. Indeed, there are many Syrian women writers that are worth studying in depth, but this brief article is just a way of polishing the collective memory of the Syrians. Despite the multiplicity of Syrian women writers and their views, they all contributed and still contribute in different ways to the making of the Syrian literary tradition in the Arab and global world. This is a tribute on my behalf to the pioneer women writers, who suffered to break the silence imposed on their voices. Nevertheless, the literary scene is still in need of other emerging voices to break taboos, and to assert various definitions of life, love, sexuality, identity, desire, body, nature, and culture.