Beirut 75
| Author | Ghada Al-Samman |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | |
| Language | Arabic |
Publication date | 1975 |
| Pages | 108 |
Beirut 75 (Arabic: بيروت 75) is a symbolic novel for adults by Ghada Al-Samman published in 1975, and the story has been published in six editions to this day. The book Beirut 75 talks about life in Beirut reality from the inside away from what people living in the villages of Damascus used to imagine about it being the Paris of the Middle East. She shows us how this city can crush those who come to it seeking fame and money if they do not adhere to its rules and prohibitions, and this is what happens with the heroes of the story. We see them ending one after the other after their pursuit of money, fame, and the pleasures of life in Beirut. The story is characterized by a mysterious tragic character, like all the stories and novels of the writer Ghada al-Saman and consists of 108 pages. The story has been translated into several languages such as Romanian, French, Italian, and English, which won the University of Texas Translated Book Award, and the Spanish version won the Andalusia award for the best-translated book. Ghada Al-Samman said about writing the story of Beirut 75 “. What I did before I wrote "Beirut 75", I went to all Lebanese regions, where there is poverty and suffering... She also went to insane asylums and prisons and lived with the tormentors of our society, rode boats with fishermen at night, and lived through their tragedies, and after all that came the prophecy of my divination in the novel" Beirut 75". I can't deny that she surprised and scared me as I was writing it... There is no prophecy without feeling the faces of the sufferers as a blind man feels a braille book... And the moment she wrote the prophecy of divination, When I screamed in horror, " I see a lot of blood," and months later the Lebanese war began."[1]
Summary
The plot of the novel
The story begins at the passenger transport station from Damascus to Beirut, where we get to know the heroes Farah, a young villager with a beautiful voice who is fleeing from poverty to Beirut in order to search for fame and money, and Yasmina, a Damascene girl who suffered from the pressure of suffocating Customs and traditions in the village, went to Beirut in search of money, freedom and beautiful life. The two heroes get into one taxi with three black-clad women riding in the back, wailing tragically and disembarking at the Beirut border as if they were driving Farah and Yasmin to death in Beirut and as they warn them of bad omens. Then other characters board the car, the first of which is Abu Mustafa, a fisherman who is pursuing a dream to find the magic lamp in his fishing nets, and Abu Al-Mulla is a poor Museum keeper who came to Beirut to save his family from poverty and humiliation, And Taan, who fled from the village to escape the revenge that pursues him, to take his life without guilt. The story ends with the death of all the heroes except the hero Farah, who completely loses his mind, which means that he died but in another way. [2][3]
Characters of the story
Main characters
- Farah: Farah, a young villager with a beautiful voice and a gorgeous Manly look, goes to Beirut to get help from his relative Nishan to lift him out of poverty and make a star out of him. Nishan exploits Farah's need for money and his burning desire to reach fame, so he sexually exploits him to satisfy his homosexual desires in exchange for helping him achieve his dreams. So, Farah turns from a full-fledged village man into a gay man suffering from a psychological condition that prevents him from having a full-fledged relationship with women. He turns into an impotent man and ends up going crazy.
- Yasmina: a Damascene girl who suffered from depression and emotional deprivation, goes to Beirut, where her brother works. But she goes and lives with Nimr, a beautiful rich man, the son of an important man who exploits her love for money and has an affair with her, so she loved him, and talks to him about getting married to surprise her with his rejection of the idea. Since he cannot marry a girl who turned herself into him and goes to marry another girl to cultivate his father's material interests with the bride father. Yasmina ends up returning to her brother's house, who knew about her relationship with Nimr and kept quiet about it because she was giving him the money that Nimr gives her, When he learns of the end of the relationship between Nimr and his sister, he revolts against Yasmina and cuts off her head and goes to the police station with a bucket containing his sister's head and tells the officer that he has killed her in an honor crime. In fact, he mentions the name of Nimr, the son of the important man, so Nimr comes and threatens to let Yasmina's brother kneels in front of Nimr's threats to kill him and in front of tempting him to work with him after he gets out of prison, so he kept silent and retracts from mentioning Nimr's name in the record.
Secondary characters
- Taan, the young fugitive from Revenge, was accused just because he got a scientific degree, so the Avenger or the dead man had a scientific degree, and since the tribe that wants revenge appreciates the value of science, they decided to kill the first one with a scientific degree from the killer's family to take revenge, and the first one to carry a certificate was Taan. He was involved in a murder in which he killed a foreign tourist who wanted to ask him about the directions of the place, thinking that the man was from the family that wanted to take revenge on him.
- Abu Al-Mulla, a poor museum guard who sends his daughters to work in people's palaces to secure his livelihood, suffers from a struggle with his conscience over the theft of one of the neglected statues in the corner of his guardhouse, ending up dead of cardiac arrest from pain and torment of conscience before he could even steal the statue.
- Abu Mustafa is a fisherman who dreams of catching the magic lamp to make his dreams come true and ends up dying after he tries dynamite fishing, and the dynamite explodes in him.
Novel writing
Ghada al-Saman started writing it on October 29, 1974, and worked on it until she developed and modified it grammatically and finished writing it on November 22, 1974, but published it in 1975.
Book cover
It carried a picture of a girl with her head inside a box as if it was cut off, indicating the head of Yasmina, whose role ends with an honor crime killed by her brother, in which her head is cut off from her body.
Publishing and printing
The novel was published by Ghada al-Saman publishing company in 1975 and has been published in six editions.
Criticism
Critic Ghali Shoukry said about the novel "Beirut 75" and Ghada al-Samman's style in it, he sees "it is a novel that is making its own course within the Great Arab current. It does not beg for the achievements of the" avant-garde “novel in the West, and it does not copy one or more of the Arab Pioneers. Rather, it relies on its entire modern heritage and reaches the sky of the era, planting its feet in the mud of its land, and then breathing, smelling, hearing, tasting and touching with all the senses of its authentic self."[4] The negative criticism that existed in the novel centered on Ghada al-Saman's use of sex in her novels as usual and the tragic style. Some also believe that the volume of the novel (Beirut 75, 108 pages), does not fit such a large number of characters, five main characters, including two heroes, one of whom is main, and many other secondary characters, which makes the plot narrow and loses its cohesion.[5]
References
- ↑ "«بيروت 75» لغادة السمان - ديوان العرب". www.diwanalarab.com. Retrieved 2022-06-10.
- ↑ بوك, FoulaBook-مكتبة فولة. تحميل كتاب بيروت 75 تأليف غادة السمان pdf (in العربية). Search this book on
- ↑ Saad, Basma (2015-06-11). "مراجعة لرواية "بيروت 75" لغادة السمان". الصحة النفسية (in العربية). Retrieved 2022-06-10.
- ↑ "«بيروت 75» لغادة السمان - ديوان العرب". www.diwanalarab.com. Retrieved 2022-06-10.
- ↑ "«بيروت 75» لغادة السمان - ديوان العرب". www.diwanalarab.com. Retrieved 2022-06-10.
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