False heroes: a study of Abd al-Rahman Majid al-Rubay'i's novel 'Al-Washm' (The Tattoo).

• Author: Kadhim, Hussein
• Position: Modern Iraqi Literature in English Translation

The post world war II history of Iraq has been characterized by continual strife. In 1958 the British-installed monarchy was toppled and was replaced by a republican regime headed by Colonel Abdul Karim Qasim. The new regime lifted some of the restrictions on individual liberties and introduced extensive social reforms designed to improve the conditions of the poorest sections of society. To many in the south of Iraq, the Qasim era represented a time of high hope, of high expectations. These were soon dashed, however, when Qasim's regime was overthrown in February 1963 by a faction of the Baath Party which rules Iraq at present. During their bloody seizure of power, the Baathists discontinued many of the reforms introduced by Qasim, clamped down on individual liberties, and carried out massive reprisals against opponents and perceived opponents. As a result of these events, the earlier sense of hope and confidence gave way to widespread despair and defeatism and led to a preoccupation with self-interest and individual survival. A number of writers have striven to portray that era. In the forefront of these writers is Abd al-Rahman Majid al-Rubay'i

Al-Washm, al-Rubay'i's first novel, appeared in 1972. Since its appearance, it has received a good deal of critical interest throughout the Arab World. This interest is due to the nature of the subject the work broaches and also to the innovative techniques the author employs in it. This essay will be confined to a thematic analysis of al-Washm, and will attempt to show that the work can be viewed as an exposition and ultimately an implicit indictment of defeatism and self-centeredness.

Al-Rubay'i, one of Iraq's best-known writers, started publishing his works in the Iraqi press in 1962.(1) Following the overthrow in 1963 of the Qasim regime, he was imprisoned for his leftist writings. He credits his imprisonment with inspiring him to later write the novel under review.

The protagonist's name, Karim al-Nasiri, is indicative of the background to the novel. Al-Nasiri refers to someone who hails from al-Nasiriyah, a town on the Euphrates in southern Iraq. The inhabitants of al-Nasiriyah, like the majority of the inhabitants of southern Iraq, are predominantly Shiites most of whom trace their ancestry to hut-dwelling farmers who had migrated from the countryside to escape poverty and the virtual servitude to which they had been subjected by feudal landowners. The narrator sums up the genesis of the town thus:

Al-Nasiriyah, our small quiet town to which our fathers one day headed, having cast aside their sickles and axes in search of a new type of work that would throw in the hungry mouths of their children a morsel of food which the land no longer provided.(2)

The theme of betrayal by the land, of being uprooted from homes and land, forced into internal exile in towns and cities, and of facing an uncertain future is a thread that runs through much of the fiction written in Iraq in this century. This forced internal exile is not an isolated case confined to the particular region the novel is set in but is in fact a broader phenomenon that has affected much of the country especially the south where poverty and social deprivation are especially rampant. The grievance of the inhabitants of al-Nasiriyah is reiterated in the novel:

If you look at the inhabitants of our town, you will find that they were bare-footed farmers who made al-Nasiriyah their abode after they had been betrayed by the land. None amongst them could afford not even one meal a day.... (23)

Such reiteration of the inhabitant's grievances serves to underline their deeply-felt sense of injustice. The sense of oppression is intensified by the graphic depiction of the conditions of the farmers: "bare-footed," and "not even one meal a day."

On another level, the land itself is metaphorically culpable for their condition. For there exists between farmer and land a kind of a pact whereby each sustains and nurtures the other. The land's withholding its bounty - it no longer provided the morsel of food - amounts to a breach of faith, a breach of the pact, indeed, as the narrator states, a betrayal. The farmers did not opt to migrate to the town, they did so only after "they had been betrayed by the land." Thus where they expected faithfulness, they were met with betrayal; where they expected plenitude, they endured barrenness. As will be seen later, images of barrenness permeate the entire novel. Moreover, allusions to betrayal by that with whom they had entered into a pact of loyalty foreshadow further betrayal and disillusionment.

However, the sought-after better life in towns and cities continued to elude these transplanted farmers through lack of opportunities and through their own lack of skills necessary to enable them to wrest a living in increasingly competitive environments. Most earned meager livelihoods as manual laborers. Predictably, their situation made them acutely conscious of the social injustices that were rampant in their midst, and of the disparity between the rich and the poor. In the passage quoted above, the protagonist states the origin of his involvement in politics thus:

If you look at the inhabitants of our town, you will find that they were bare-footed farmers who made al-Nasiriyah their abode after they had been betrayed by the land. None amongst them could afford not even one meal a day. Thus I believe that our zeal started from here, from our class consciousness of this situation.... (emphasis added)

This disparity between the rich and the poor, and this social inequality gave rise to an all-pervasive sense of discontent that found expression in the many insurrections that, since the turn of the Twentieth Century, have taken place in the south and have earned that region a reputation for being a hotbed of revolt. These insurrections were directed at successive regimes starting with the British colonial authorities, then the British-installed monarchy, and finally the Sunni-dominated regimes that have replaced the monarchy including the Baathist regime which has ruled Iraq since 1968. Especially susceptible to revolutionary ideas are the young, particularly students, a fact utilized by political organizations which focus their recruiting efforts on them.

Yet however compelling the evidence is for a social-inequality-spawning-discontent-and-resistance explanation, Karim's zeal, his involvement in the cause of his people is, at a deeper level, attributable to more than just his "class consciousness" and his sense of moral indignation at the oppression of his people. Conversing with a prison inmate, Karim recalls: "I was suffering and constantly searching, I was reading books, participating in demonstrations and [joining] organizations, drinking alcohol, frequenting brothels. I wanted to be in fervent touch with life and to undergo renewal with it.... "(24) From this passage it becomes clear that Karim's involvement in the cause of his people is but a veil for his quest for an identity and for individual fulfillment. In other words, his championing the cause of his people is ultimately self-serving, a means among other means (drinking, frequenting brothels) to an end; that of self-fulfillment. It is telling that he should mention his involvement in the cause of his people in the same breath as (and gives it no higher status than) his drinking habit and his frequenting of brothels. Thus when Karim is thrown in jail for his political activities and his commitment to the cause of his people and to his principles is tested, the outcome of that test should come as no surprise to the reader.

Much of the novel is taken up by a graphic depiction of Karim's seven-month imprisonment in one of the jails of his hometown al-Nasiriyah. It should be pointed out that imprisonment as a means of suppressing dissent and thwarting any threat to the regime's hold on power is not uncommon in Iraq. Successive regimes have resorted to imprisonment or the threat of imprisonment of their political opponents with varying degrees of success. In fact, a number of detention centers notorious for their abysmal conditions and for the brutal methods used in them against detainees have been set aside for political prisoners by successive regimes. It is as he leaves one such prison that we meet the protagonist.

The protagonist's state of mind is best delineated by the third-person narrator as the novel begins:

Karim al-Nasiri breathed the street's air after total suffocation. Seven oppressive (ja'irah) months besieged him with their minutes and their horror, and pounded his blood, bones, and nerves.(7)

The traumatic effect of imprisonment is brought out through the use of the contrast between breathing the fresh air of the street, i.e. freedom, and total suffocation. Freedom, "the street's air," is resuscitating, nurturing and life-saving as opposed to lack of freedom, imprisonment, which is suffocating, life-threatening, and even deadly, taking a heavy toll not just on the body but on the mind as well. The use of the adjective ja'irah to characterize the seven months he spends in prison serves to define the protagonist's status as victim of jawr (tyranny, oppression, injustice) and places him within a broader category of subjects who are on the receiving end of jawr. This category includes those farmers who fell victim to the jawr of landowners and the regime that bolsters...