Review – Dreams of Water by Nada Awar Jarrar
An Attempt to Put a Human Angle on Lebanon's suffering
For a small, slender volume Nada Awar Jarrar’s Dreams of Water has a lot of baggage.
Lebanon's Civil War and its Impact
It is ostensibly the story of Aneesa a Lebanese woman whose brother Bassam was killed during Lebanon’s long and fractious civil war and how that impacts the family for many years. Story rather overdoes it as that would imply a linear structure with beginning, middle and end. No such chance of that here.
Reincarnated as a Young Boy.
Aneesa goes into exile (sort of) meets Salah who is just a friend and returns to Beirut when her mother believes she has found Bassam reincarnated as a young boy in an orphanage. Realism, magical or not is just not a part of this book.
“How should I read between the words of this story’” Aneesa writes at one point. (Save yourself the effort sweetheart is probably the best advice.) But no she continues “How can I see, in the birth an eight-year-old boy, the soul of a man killed at that very moment, moving from one body to another, skin to new skin, time suspended in that movement, transmigration, layers of memory embedded in a young heart and love transported too, as by magic, burning, passionate and never-ending?”
If only this book was that last phrase. Instead the reader gets the descriptions and vignettes of what their life was like as a family, Aneesa’s life in London, Aneesa’s life back in Beirut, Aneesa’s friend Salah’s lifestory, Salah’s son Samir and his lengthy self-analysis, his return and so-on.
Mood Pieces Could Have Been a Significant Story
To make matters worse these all intercut with each other and what is left is a collection of mood pieces all of the similar somber, self-referenced type written lyrically sometimes too much so that all only allude to what could have been a significant story.
Ostensibly about Lebanon its much more about exile and absence (particularly of plot) and the self struggling to deal with these.
Paris of the Near-East
Even Lebanon and Beirut fare badly. The Paris of the near-East, one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the Med comes over as a cold, grey place of empty houses and inescapable memories.
Where it sparks into life is the brief part where Bassam’s story and his disappearance is told. But in a way this also explains another limitation of the book.
Bassam involved with a political faction is kidnapped from his home one morning. But there is never any explanation as to which faction, why he got involved and who he was kidnapped by and why? Let alone what actually happened to him.
Aneesa goes to see his best friend but its all so inconclusive so slight. Its also a fitting symbol of this book and of what could have been.
Dreams of Water by Nada Awar Jarrar. Published by Harper ISBN-10 0 00 722196 7
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