Il est des livres qui, parfois, nous plaisent car leurs personnages nous rappellent des connaissances, ou des événement que nous avons tous plus ou moins un jour vécu. Tel est le cas de Bouvard et Pécuchet, dernier roman, inachevé, de Gustave Flaubert. Non pas que nos deux médiocres gratte-papiers parisiens soient en eux-mêmes des exemples flagrants de réalités, mais on ne peut s’empêcher, en les voyant aller de déconvenue en déconvenue de se rappeler certaines de nos expériences personnelles, et d’en sourire avec tendresse.

Flaubert a voulu ici critiquer le pédantisme et la recherche du savoir a tout prix, en ce centrant sur les personnages de Bouvard et de Pécuchet, sautant allégrement de la chimie à l’archéologie, en passant par la philosophie et le jardinage, le tout dans une soif insatiable de savoir encyclopédique, qui invariablement se termine dans de joyeuses catastrophes, mettant en émoi tout le village dans lequel les deux demi-lettrés ont élu domicile. La critique sociale de l’auteur s’allie bien entendu avec le plaisir du roman, en mettant en lumière des petits détails tel que l’histoire d’amour d’un de nos deux héros, les relations entre religion et politique, et la peinture d’un petit village de campagne du 19ème siècle. Flaubert reste lui-même jusqu’au bout, en incluant une dimension sociale à ce roman, qui finalement et un roman de mœurs « intellectuelles », condamnant une certaine société bourgeoise se voulant éduquée, mais n’atteignant en aucun point les standards de savoir dont elle se réclame.

Pourtant, la critique flaubertienne de cette bourgeoisie tombe à plat, pour la simple bonne raison, outre le fait que nous soyons des lecteurs du 21ème siècle, éloignés de ces mœurs ; que les deux savants idiots mis en scène par l’auteur sont extrêmement attachants dans leurs malheurs. On ne peut s’empêcher, en voyant leurs déboires, de se remémorer nos propres apprentissages, et nos échecs scolaires, certes moins gargantuesques que ceux de Bouvard et de son collègue plumitif, mais néanmoins ancrés dans nos mémoires comme de bons souvenir d’une époque révolue de nos vie. Et qui plus est, qui ne prendrait pas en pitié nos deux héros en lisant les récits de leurs innombrables chutes et blessures accompagnées de maladies auto infligées, en ayant instinctivement mal nous-même devant ces deux grands enfants qui chutent en apprenant à marcher ?

Flaubert a réussi a nous présenter l’histoire merveilleuse de deux clowns tristes, hilarants de par leur bêtise et leur maladresse, mais larmoyants de par la souffrance que l’impossibilité d’atteindre leurs idéaux sous-entend. Un grand dernier roman, dont la fin, d’après le brouillon fragmentaire restant allait être triste, mais dont l’incomplétion rend nos héros magnifiques, car finalement, il ne sont qu’un miroir de notre propre éducation et de notre propre intelligence.

يسعدني أن أشارك في هذه المدونة بنتيجة قراءتي كتاب “آخر الهنود الحمر” للسيدة مهى ياسمين نعمه و أن أدوّن بكل صراحة وموضوعية وتجرد ما لفتني واستوقفني من نقاط يقتضي التوقف عندها وهي :

- السرد التاريخي المعمّق مستقاة وقائعه من مراجع موثوقة مشهود لها بالدقة والواقعية والشفافية المجرّدة .
- التطرق للتحولات الاجتماعية والسياسية والدينية ولا سيما وضع الاقليات خلال حقبة هامة من التاريخ الحديث .
- التسلسل الأدبي والفكري والتاريخي المشوّق والممتع، بلاغة معمّقة ، سهل ممتنع ، وتقنية فريدة في اختيار الكلمات كأنّها نبع جارف يروي ظمأك من حيث لا تدري
- صدق الدلالة على المحطات التاريخية بصراحة ودقة غير معهودة وغنى الثقافة الادبية والنضوج الفكري ، ونقل الحدث بتجرد وموضوعية ، وابداء الرأي بجرأة وصراحة متناهية ، عكست قناعات شخصية لا هوادة فيها ، وتوجهات لا تخلو من النقد البناء المفيد .
- دقة التوقعات والتطلعات المطروحة والتخوّف من انعكاسات وتأثير الحضارات التي لعبت دورا” هاما” وبارزا” في تكوين وتطوير المجتمعات العربية ، والنتائج غير المشجعة ، في خضم بروز اصوليات متطرفة قد تطيح بجميع القيم الانسانية ، ولا تدعو الى الارتياح والاطمئنان ، لأجيال تشربت الحقد والخوف والقلق على المصير، التي بات مهددا” وأخذ منحى” الهروب من هذا الوضع الميؤوس منه الذي يبشر بفتنة مذهبية لا يحمد عقباها .
- التنبّه الى انهيار المجتمعات الديمقراطية اذا صحّ التعبير، من جراء التصلّب العرقي ورفض الآخر وعدم المساواة وتكافؤ الفرص وصراع الحضارات التي لا تجمع فيما بينها الا الحقد والضغينة والاصطفاف المذهبي المبني على رفض الأخر والتفرد بالسلطة والغلبة على مختلف المستويات .
- التنبّه الى رفض التعددية في مجتمع طغى عليه التعصّب المذهبي الاعمى وحكم الشريعة لدى الطائفة الاسلامية .
- التركيز على العدد والرقم والاطاحة بالنخب والارساليات الغربية المبنية على الاخوة والمشاركة والمواطنة الصحيحة تحت سقف القانون والحقوق والواجبات .
- سرد المعلومات والحقائق التاريخية المذكورة والمستقاة من المراجع الموثوقة والدامغة المشهود لها والمطروحة صراحة ، فكانت حافزا” مقنعا” لروّاد الفكر والمعرفة والمثقفين لتصفح هذا الكتاب الموسوعة .

كل من يطّلع على هذا الكتاب يتبيّن له أنّه في حضرة قصّة أو مجموعة قصص صغيرة تترابط فيما بينها . وانّ سرد الاحداث المتعاقبة المذكورة أتت نتيجة عوامل مجتمعة أدّت الى ما أدّت اليه من انهيار فكري وتسلّط عرقي أعمى وهيمنة مصنّعة ستؤدي ولا شك الى انهيار اجتماعي وحكم استبدادي يطيح بالحريات العامة التي كرستها شرعة حقوق الانسان . طرح معاناة الاقليات جاء واضحا” لا تشوبه شائبة بل جاء ليعبّر عن واقع سائد في يومنا هذا فرضته العنصرية الدينية والجهل والاستئثار بالسلطة .

انّ الاقلام الجريئة المجرّدة والهادفة الى الحرية والديمقراطية وحقوق الانسان واجبها أن تستمر في نضالها المشروع ، وقلمها الحرّ يجب أن لا ينضب لأنّه أمضى من السيف القاطع .

الكتاب متوفر باللغة الفرنسية تحت عنوان : Chrétiens du Liban et des pays arabes

The main plot is centered around a man who is suffering from a mental breakdown. He imagines himself lost at sea and is described by the hospital staff as delirious. But Lessing takes us into the mind of this university professor. It is a long spiritual journey of self-discovery, but also an intense psychosocial critic on the understanding of the self with relation to society, and ultimately the universe. The book is a heavy read, and Lessing uses a very counter-intuitive method to remove the presuppositions that are most closely held by the average person, ideas of family, identity, and personal and social roles. Lessing touches upon the various treatments used on severe mental cases, and their repercussions. But, I think, the most valuable asset that Lessing introduces in her novel is the idea of relativity of perception when identifying reality. She places the most important scale of this relativity on the personal adequacy of an experience, rather than diluting it down into everyday experience, and presents it raw and powerful and beautiful. Personally, this book gave me great insight into many aspects of social interaction, and the subsequent effect of this interaction on the self.

An inspiring and eye-opening experience, I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a bit more insight into the personal deconstruction of the world and one’s role in it.

La figure de Caïn a toujours été un thème clef de la littérature, mais personne n’a jamais pensé à lui donner le bon rôle dans un roman. José Samarago a réparé cette erreur non seulement en plaçant Caïn au centre de son texte, mais aussi en en faisant le narrateur de sa propre histoire, ce qui permet enfin à ce fratricide de donner son point de vue sur le meurtre de son frère et les évènements qui ont suivis.

De page en page, nous suivons Caïn lors de la destruction de la tour de Babel, ou du sacrifice d’Isaac, nous le voyons en tant que témoin des souffrances de Job, nous le suivons même auprès de Noé lors du déluge, qui est justement le point culminant du roman. Le texte est léger et très agréable à lire ; et le fait que Samarago soit un conteur hors pair, et nous présente un point de vue différent des évènements bibliques tient le lecteur en haleine jusqu’à la catastrophe final (Abel devait être vengé sept fois, mais Caïn ne l’a pas entendu de la sorte…).

L’auteur offre ici le point de vue d’un révolté qui, en lien régulier avec Dieu, fait passer ce dernier pour un être encore plus mauvais que le Diable (si Dieu est amour, pourquoi donc laisse-t’il souffrir Job de cette façon, ou massacre t’il autant de ses créatures), et qui devient extrêmement sympathique pour le lecteur, car il sent Caïn opprimé, et se demande si, dans le fond, ce dernier n’aurait pas raison ? Caïn ne serait-il pas un être profondément juste et bon, victime d’un dieu cruel dont on ne doit pas déranger les plans ? Le lecteur se place ici instinctivement du côté de l’opprimé, d’une part de par ce que le personnage est en train de subir : mais aussi parce qu’il éclaire les actes divin d’une nouvelle lumière; et surtout parce qu’il s’oppose à son créateur, allant jusqu’au tour de force qui consiste à contrecarrer ses plans ! La fin du roman laissant certes entrevoir une vision de l’histoire de l’humanité bien différente que celle contée dans les Ecrits, mais combien plus jouissive, car bien plus juste !

José Samarago ne tombe pas dans son roman dans le piège de la réflexion religio-philosophique, ou dans l’utilisation « lambda » du personne de Caïn comme simple symbole de rébellion ; ici il n’est point question de dissertation, mais d’action. Le roman n’est pas un texte philosophique, mais un roman d’aventure prenant, racontant la révolte du narrateur et ses actions pour contrer Dieu, ce qui rend l’œuvre extrêmement intéressante. Caïn est ici un vrai personnage, éminemment sympathique, qui ne réfléchit pas sur le bien et la mal avant d’agir, il agit simplement ; et c’est ce qui rend le roman justement si prenant. Et de toute façon, ici point de philosophie, Caïn est humain et il agit en humain, pour le bien de l’humanité, allant certes à l’encontre de la doxa biblique, mais allant en direction de l’être humain dans toute sa beauté !

As anyone following the Middle East will tell you, the sad truth is that wars or conflicts so tense that put us on the verge of war, are never too far away.  Nothing less could be said of Lebanon, having seen its fair share of wars and such conflicts in its contemporary history. And while much will happen regardless of people’s good will and hopes for peace, the least we could do is learn from them and stop the blood and tears from going in vain. But even this exercise may have become too complicated for Lebanese to handle.

In War Diary: Lebanon 2006, AUB professor and author of the Land and People blog Rami Zurayk provides a day-to-day account of the 2006 July War and Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon and its civilians. Zurayk’s personal account is filled with the same hopelessness and despair shared by many at the time, struggling through yet another conflict and hoping to make it through. His slightly dark humor and unrelenting sarcasm are mechanisms that many have used and continue to use through trying times to maintain some degree of sanity. But by no means does he remain indifferent to the underlying politics of the war. Zurayk is a leftist, Arabist, anti-colonialist and anti-Zionist at heart, whose atheism does not prevent him from supporting Hizballah during the war, in so far as his support is based on the latter’s “opposition to Israel and its commitment to armed struggle.”

Reading it almost seven years since the war, the book reminds us how brutal of a southern neighbor we have, with its utter contempt towards civilians, the 2006 Qana Massacre being one of many such examples, proud to bomb a nation back to the “stone ages”, and acting with an unimaginable degree of impunity with little to answer to the rest of the world. But equally as important, it reminds us how Lebanon became so polarized during the war, as parts of the country seemed completely detached from the chaos and destruction only kilometers away. Under the bombs and daily threats, Zurayk ponders on essential questions about Lebanon, its people and what, if anything, keeps Lebanon together. One does not have to agree with Zurayk’s politics or the sides he takes during the war to agree that we have developed little as a single and united nation. And this will remain so long as we learn not to settle scores in times when faced with foreign threats (instead of dealing with our problems once the dust of gun powder settles), accept that Lebanon isn’t made only of those who share our own ideas (whether political, social or religious) and the need for all sides to accept this diversity if we care to live together.

34 days after the first shots were fired, and “as if someone had suddenly switched the war off”, hostilities came to an end. For Zurayk, the war was a victory for Lebanon, though victory must be hard to quantify in the face of so much death and destruction. Perhaps a better means to quantify victory could be what good the Lebanese as people managed to take out of the conflict, which doesn’t seem to be much. Growing political and sectarian tensions since the conflict need only attest to this fact. Yet Zurayk believes that the war was won, but “we know there is no hope to change the world in our life time”. One cannot but agree that changing the world now seems farther than ever, but that’s a lesson I have chosen to contradict, no matter how small the change may be, starting with Lebanon…

This fifth book in the series of “A Song of Ice & Fire” by George R.R. Martin is breathtaking.
The action never stops and as the pages turn, surprises augment and leave you with an ending that make you want to fast-forward time to book 6!
Great series for any fantasy books fan.

Review by Samah El Hakim.

This review was originally posted on LSEs Middle East Center blog.

“What I felt was bayt, and it led me to make a promise to myself, a commitment that I still cannot believe I honored after all these years. You see, I have not always been a man who kept his promises, and I have never been the type to stay home.”

When Anthony Shadid revisited his ancestral village of Jedeidat Marjayoun, South Lebanon, in August 2007 he had found bayt, Arabic for house. Yet it meant more than the four walls and red-tiled roof that he meticulously set himself to restore in a year; the bayt he found was the home he had lost with the end of his tumultuous first marriage. At the same time, the bayt he found was also the community and sense of belonging that he had never felt before, no matter where his travels took him. And this, he also found in Marjayoun.

In retrospect, it would be easy to say that Shadid must have felt an unexplainable urgency to rebuild his ancestral home, as it was just three years later that he succumbed to an asthma attack while covering the early stages of the Syrian uprising in 2011.  Yet at the time when the U.S-born New York Times correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner revisited Marjayoun, the urgency made perfect sense.

In “House of Stone,” Shadid recounts as he embarks on restoring his maternal grandmother’s family home, a process that turns into a way of restoring his very own spirit, damaged by years of war-reporting.  With constant flashbacks throughout the text, reminiscent of Amin Maalouf’s “Origins,” Shadid traces the history of both sides of his family and how a region in constant turmoil led them to immigrate to Oklahoma, in the early 20^th century. The Samaras and Shadids embodied what the majority of Lebanese immigrants faced at the time, when immigration didn’t immediately translate into wealth and prosperity. Indeed, one of the first achievements was to arrive safe and sound to the New World. Economic hardship and the need to assimilate to local culture put further strains on the move. “Fortunes were accumulated, not found,” Shadid notes, after which families slowly found the better life that led them to leave their homeland in the first place.

The house’s restoration turns out to be an adventure in and of itself. Those Shadid employs to get the job done, from the color blind painter Toama to Abu Jean the foreman, seem to have come out of a classic Samuel Beckett script, unintentionally managing to bring Shadid to the brink. This, even though it was apparently common knowledge in the village that the Shadids’ were eccentric themselves. “People in Jdeidat don’t think you’re crazy, Anthony. They think you should be in an insane asylum,” partly for embarking on what most of the village thought a futile rebuilding exercise, not understanding the extent this almost obsessive labor of love meant to this “crazy” American.

With endless wit and humor, whether picking the perfect tiles for the foyer or delicately harvesting the olives from his great-grandfather’s olive trees, Shadid weaves into the narrative the fast-changing history of the Levant through the eyes of his dying village. It isn’t only because of his ancestry, so much as his close relationship with the region through his career – from talking to top leaders to the average citizen – that enables Shadid to truly understand Lebanon in its continual struggle to find its way and chart its future in an always tumultuous region. “Nothing ever seemed to be resolved here. Lebanon’s dramas, I thought, were simply too big for its small stage,” he notes. But this frustration with the course of Lebanon’s history never stops him from cherishing the country in his own special way, because for him, Lebanon was more about his town and his ancestors and the people he met along the way, which made his experience so worthwhile.  “You have your Lebanon and its dilemma.  I have my Lebanon and its beauty,” Lebanese philosopher Khalil Gibran once noted, “you have your Lebanon and I have my Lebanon.” Still, Shadid manages to exude some hope for Lebanon and the region’s future, if only its people use what resolve and faith has kept the region together all these years.

With Shadid’s loss however, Lebanon and the Middle East losses a sympathetic, understanding, yet professional voice, considered more objective than many others, in highlighting the region’s developments and challenges. In the face of the unfolding revolutionary changes, the absence of Anthony Shadid’s voice will also mean that someone else will be needed to fill this crucial void, as the world tries to better understand the repercussions of the current developments and the best way to respond to what lies ahead.

The author starts off with Groupon’s alleged talks with internet giants Yahoo and Google for buy-outs valued at respectively almost 3 billion and 6 billion dollars. The latter would have made internet history as the all-time most exuberant buy-out; only to be turned down.

Book cover

You will visit the milestones that made Groupon what it is today, with an astounding cast of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and investors superstars. You will go through the bumpy ride through a heartfelt narrative, that often lead me to Google the people in question, just to get a better picture of what they looked like.

I personally loved the book, and here’s why you will love it too:

• The CEO goes from a simple employee with an idea, to getting 1 million dollars in financing… from his own boss. A thrilling story of a man shifting from the bottom to the upper ladder.
• The idea that ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’ gets proven correct by an advertising campaign gone wrong, resulting in massive new subscribers.
• The concept that even accounting can be part of marketing is also proven correct; as Groupon explores an unorthodox method of accounting that beautifies its numbers: eliminating online marketing from the expenses equation, and considering money simply ‘passing through’ to the merchants as sales. (Yes, it does eventually get them in trouble though.)
• The fact that a firm, continuously generating losses, can be valued at 16.7 billion dollars!

Book available on Amazon.

This is the Book II from the Stone Trilogy and here I am reviewing it exactly one year after I published a review of the first book: A Distant Shore… What a coincidence!

The second book focuses on the aftermath of the shooting. Naomi is still facing her demons and feels she is useless because she can no longer have another baby. Her husband Jon, the famous rock star tries everything to reassure her but Naomi is still fragile. At times, I felt pity for her and at others, I felt like shaking her and scream: “Wake up, woman!” at her face.

The relationship between Naomi, her son and her father will take another dimension and her struggles will become an issue for Jon who is trying to do his best at all times. It’s like whatever he does, it’s not good enough for her.

The last thing she expected was to get abducted by a stalker…

Mariam Kobras puts all her heart in her writing. I found myself reading the book with curiosity. Events take place one after the other smoothly. It’s an easy read, a page-turner, call it whatever you want but the characters are so realistic and credible, I felt like I was reading a real life story.

I can’t wait to see which direction Mariam Kobras will give to her third and last book of this Trilogy and what the end will be like.

If you wish to know more about Kobras, you can:

• Follow her on Twitter
• Check her Facebook profile
• Check her Facebook Page
• Check her website
• Read her blog

Oublier Alep, Editions Tamyras

“Dans les rues poussiéreuses d’une Alep au bord de la révolution, Noha et Shirine s’observent à distance, perdues dans leur douleur et dans leurs souvenirs, sous le regard nostalgique d’Abou Nouwâs, noyé sous le poids de la perte de son amour et de sa terre. Entre ces deux femmes va naître une relation atypique, faite de conflits, de solidarité et d’espoir. De la Palestine à la Syrie en passant par le Liban, leurs histoires se mêlent à celles de ces peuples épris de liberté.”

Un roman doux, élégant, émouvant. Pour tous les amoureux de Beyrouth, Alep, Palestine, Fayrouz et Ziad Rahbani. Pour tous ceux qui détestent la guerre. Une centaine de pages à avaler d’une seule traite.

BIOGRAPHIE

Paola Salwan Daher est née en France de parents libanais. Après des études en droit international à Genève, elle entame sa vie professionnelle dans différentes ONG et devient membre du collectif féministe libanais Nasawiya. Elle est juriste en droit international et chercheuse dans le domaine des droits de l’Homme, et plus particulièrement dans les droits de la femme. Elle tient régulièrement deux blogs, Café Thawra et Myrrh and Mint.
Twitter: @DaherPaolaCIHRS  Facebook: Paola Salwan – Lebanese Author