The author who gave a voice to the tragedy of civil war and separation
It was the early 1980s and Lebanon was racked by civil war. Culturally, people in Beirut were looking to feted activist, journalist and novelist Emily Nasrallah for guidance – her 1962 debut Birds of September had won her immediate acclaim and awards for its depiction of Lebanese village life. Her reputation for sharp insights into the role of women and social issues, too, made her a fascinating voice across the Arab world.
So it says everything about Nasrallah that her response was an incredibly moving novel about the perils of emigration, set in Lebanon and Canada, and a children’s book about the civil war written from the perspective of a tomcat. Nasrallah was that kind of writer; courageous, innovative and constantly shifting her gaze.
That Flight Against Time (her only novel to be translated into English) and What Happened to Zeeko – also available in English – covered such disparate ground but still managed to convey both a specific and universal sense of what it is to belong is why Nasrallah is rightly considered one of the Arab world’s most adaptable, thoughtful and vital writers.
And although Birds of September is considered her masterwork, developing the deep sadness she felt about her siblings’ emigration into a story of what happens to small communities when people leave for the bright lights of the city, the context of Flight Against Time makes it a useful introduction to her oeuvre. Here, the civil war is, admittedly, only a backdrop – but through it Nasrallah eloquently refracted her wider concerns about a disintegrating Lebanese society. She writes about the “contagion of emigration” and the deep ache that comes from children never being able to return to “the nursery that embraced the seedlings for a while”. Just in these two excerpts, you can see how, 20 years on from Birds of September and with her own children growing up, Nasrallah was able to capture so beautifully the torment of parents separated from their offspring.
As she told the Heinrich Boll Foundation website before receiving the Goethe-Institut Medal last year, awarded to “people who have performed outstanding service for international cultural dialogue”: “I wrote a lot of novels all against emigration. This is the land that does not hold its people.”
There would be further novels, autobiographical works and short stories. A House Not Her Own, her collection of short stories about the civil war, was also translated into English and in its introduction gave a fascinating insight into Nasrallah’s mindset: she was hopeful that her writing could make a difference but modest enough not to expect that it would.
“As a writer who has lived through the tragedies of her people and her country, and who sees similar tragedies unfolding with similar peoples around the world, I have to ask what effect this writing has,” she wrote. “I must ask if the word still possesses the power to champion right: does it still possess the strength to carry the cries of the destitute and oppressed? And I must ask if there are still, in a world filled with the clamour of war machinery, ears that can hear the moans of the weak and the cries of the desperate.”
Emily Nasrallah was one of those rare writers whose words could make a difference. And simply because she was so adept at framing her local concerns in wider, more universal, timeless contexts, hers will be a lasting legacy. Perhaps that might mean some more English translations, and it’s telling that her own website does mourn that Birds Of September “is still to appear in English”.
Not that Nasrallah needed that kind of validation. She will remain a significant voice, regardless of age, nationality or language.