Studies in human psyche and human behavior under political and social pressure: the recent literary works of Fu'ad al-Takarli.

• Author: Walther, Wiebke
• Position: Modern Iraqi Literature in English Translation

Fu'ad al-Takarli was born in Baghdad in 1927, in the same year as Gha'ib Tu'ma Farman and, like him, is one of the most outstanding fiction writers of the rather young modern Iraqi literature. After his study of law in Baghdad, he worked for many years as a judge in the small town of Ba'quba and later in Baghdad. In the beginning of the Eighties, during the First Gulf War, he left Iraq for France, and after some years he went to Tunis, where he still lives writing and publishing. In the beginning months of the First Gulf War, as one of the outstanding writers of the country, he was appointed a member of the jury for the Musabaqat ahsan qissa fi Qadisiyyat Saddam ("The Competition for the Best Short Story about Saddam Hussein's Battle of Qadisiyya").1 As matters stood, it is likely that he could not refuse this position.(2)

Fu'ad al-Takarli began writing in the early Fifties and his first short story, "Uyn khudr" ("Green Eyes"), published in 1952 in the magazine Al-Usbu (The Week), both shocked and attracted Iraqi readers. It is about a character well-known in French and Russian romanticism, but, at that time, quite new for Iraqi society, the virtuous or loving prostitute. It becomes increasingly clear in this and in his other short stories, as in his novels, that he is interested in psychological problems, even to the point of psychological deviations. These are manifested in a sexual behavior that is not approved by society, but, nonetheless, is conditioned by special social and political circumstances. He often depicts characters who identify with French existentialism portrayed in works of authors like Camus and Sartre, works which, as far as I know, were translated into Arabic from the Fifties onwards. Or perhaps the author was also able to read them in French.

I have spoken and written about some of al-Takarli's works, amongst them his great novel Al-Raj'a al-Ba'id ("The Far Return" 1980),(3) during a conference on the subject "Love, Marriage and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature," organized near Nijmegen in the Netherlands in April 1992. My paper, "Distant Echoes of Love in the Narrative Work of Fu'ad al-Tikirli" was published in the conference volume entitled Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature (London 1995).(4) In my article "Recent Developments of Modern Arabic Narrative and Dramatic Literature," published in the Supplemental Volume of the Grundriss der arabischen Philologie ("Outline of Arabic Philology") in 1992,(5) I gave my original understanding of the title as "The Distant Return" without knowing at that time the allusion to the Qur'an, Surat al-Qaf (50:3), which a Muslim perhaps already realizes: Wa idha mitna wa kunna turaban dhalika raj'un ba'id, "When we are dead and have become dust (shall we be brought back again)? That would be a far return!" This was a hint given to me by the author himself in a letter about two years ago.

This hidden symbolic meaning of the title makes the contents of the novel more lucid. It characterizes the events and moods of behavior depicted in it and the aims of the author and places them into the context of symbols included in this verse and the following verses of Surat al-Qaf. So certainly one has to understand that conditions of life and human relations like those depicted in this voluminous novel in a brilliant, many-layered and sensitive way should, if ever, return only in the very distant future. Fadil Thamir characterized this novel in a profound analysis as a "polyphonic novel of the highest artistic quality."(6) And when, after many complicated conflicts and events near the end of the novel, its female protagonist, Munira, utters in deep agony and resignation to 'Abd al-Karim, her cousin who loves her, "You're not weak, you're like me and everybody else here: you're sick, a mutilated person!" (anta mu insan 'ajiz, anta mithli wa mithlu kull nas huna: anta marid, insan mushawwah). This clearly connects with the title of the novel and the verses following verse 3 of Surat al-Qaf, verses about the beauty of God's creation and men's destruction of it. It reminds the reader of becoming dust after death, mentioned in the first half of the verse. Although al-Takarli is not a religious writer, he is, of course, molded by Islam and its linguistic symbols. The novel concludes that outdated social standards in connection with intolerable political conditions (the plot of the novel is situated in Baghdad during the last months of Qassem's regime in 1962/63) can destroy the individual. As long as a society is unable to free itself from its obsolete social traditions, it will be unable to organize a life of political freedom.(7)

Published first in Beirut in 1980 by Dar Ibn Rushd, The novel was again published in 1993 in Beirut by Dar al-Adab with slight revisions of the dialogues. They are written in Baghdadi dialect in the first edition and are somewhat approximated to the literary language in the second, understandably so because the author had lived outside Iraq for nearly thirteen years and was addressing a different "implied reader."

In the meantime the author has published two small volumes of Hiwariyyat, ("Dialogue-Plays"), or Masrahiyyat, ("Plays"). The first entitled Al-Sakhra ("The Rock"), 1986 in Baghdad, contains six Hiwariyyat; the second entitled Al-Kaff (literally "The Palm of the Hand"), in Tunis in 1995, contains five very short Masrahiyyat, or one-act-plays. These Masrahiyyat are very similar formally to the Hiwariyyat, but perhaps characterized as Masrahiyyat because they are published by the Dar Sihr li al-Nashr in its series Sihr al-Masrah. His rather small novel Khatam al-Raml (literally "The Ring of Sand"), which, in fact, must have the meaning of "Being Bound to a Deceased," appeared in Beirut in 1995.

While his short novel Al-Wajh Al-Akhar ("The Other Face") was republished in Tunis in 1993, his short stories were republished under the title of one of its stories, Mau 'id al-Nar ("An Appointment near the Fire"), in Tunis in 1991.(8) In comparison to his first collection, which was published under the title Al-Wajh Al-Akhar and contained both, "Al-Wajh Al-Akhar" and the short stories, this volume contains only the stories, but it is extended by three further stories, written in the Eighties in France. Two rather new short stories by the author were published in the literary journal Al-Adab, in Beirut in 1994, and in the London newspaper Al-Hayat in September 1996, the first entitled "Tatimma" ("Completion"), the second "Qashshat al-Hayat" ("Straw of Life").

The three new stories published in Mau'id al-Nar seem to be influenced by the author's living in a quite new environment, in exile. They, too, however, reveal his interest in unusual psychic conditions, but none of them deals with "the investigation of the dark side of sexuality," which Sabry Hafiz defines as the author's "main theme."(9) I would prefer here to speak of the ambiguity and tensions in gender relations.

The first one, entitled "Al-Azhar" ("The Flowers"),(10) finished in Paris in April 1984, is a narration of a nasty brawl between a man and his wife, which has a terrible end. The narrator is the husband and it becomes clear from the accusations of his wife that he married her because of her money. They have no children and she accuses him of being impotent and having destroyed the years of her youth, and is now playing the role of a casanova. The husband is the narrator in the first person singular, but when he speaks about his preparation to remove his wife, the author has him slip suddenly into the third person singular as if speaking about another person, like a man with a split personality. As they are on their way home, already quarrelling heavily, he enters a restaurant. Pretending to have to buy cigarettes, he asks some people to come to his flat. A little bit later, two big men knock at the door. The husband opens it and falsely warns them that his wife is concealing a knife under her clothes. As they attempt to forcibly take her out of the flat, she realizes her situation and sarcastically utters to her husband, "And I thought you would order me flowers!" In trying to free herself, her head is flung against the wall. The two men continue to push her violently toward the door, and leave the address of a hospital with the husband. It becomes apparent that the husband, who is the guilty one, has ordered his wife to be taken to a psychiatric hospital. In the third person singular, he confirms for himself that nobody would blame him because he had no choice except to let others die.

The symbolism in the second story, entitled "M. A. R. S.,"(11) finished in the same year, resembles some of his short plays, which I will discuss later. A man, who is the narrator, is driving his blue Toyota into the center of Baghdad, not far from his house, to buy for his little daughter a doll which she was said to have seen in the shop window. But when he comes to a certain square, from which eight streets go into different quarters and directions of the town, he is somewhat bewildered to see a street that he does not remember having seen before. He chooses the street he feels certain must be the one with the shop his daughter had mentioned. As a man who is born in the years after the Iraqi revolution in 1958 and who has experienced several terrible developments and happenings in the country, he is astonished that the street is dark and has no people. When he decides to turn his car, he is unable to do so. He finds himself in a dim mist and it seems to him as if his car is sinking slowly into a stifling gloom. But suddenly it stops in a totally dark place. He hears what seems to him to be a male voice speaking, but it doesn't seem to be a hostile creature. The man speaks mechanically, slowly and disjointedly, with an iron and scratchy voice. It becomes clear then that he has suddenly entered a strange, unknown world. After some investigation of this person and...