Today we inaugurate our new series, The Book of the Week, presenting fascinating and crucial historical and contemporary publications in different formats. This series begins with Loulwah Kutbi’s introduction to the ‘Alam bi-la khara’it (A World without Maps) novel.

The novel ‘Alam bi-la khara’it (1989, Beirut) or “A World without Maps” was the collaborative effort of Amman born intellectual and writer of Najdi descent Abdulrahman Al Munif (1933-2007) and the Bethlehem born, Baghdad settled Palestinian intellectual and artist Jabra Ibrahim al Jabra (1919-1993). Although acquainted from a time proceeding the publishing of ‘Alam bi-la khara’it, the two intellectuals stood at parallels in regard to their vision of change in an epoch of Arab history that was marked with a heightened sense of political and cultural activity. Jabra, who found exile in Baghdad post-Nakba in 1948, was already an established poet, critic, and translator. An early pioneer of the Hurufiyya movement, he saw in the potential revival or Nahda of Arabic culture and art, a requiem for future generations. Munif, on the other hand, found blueprints of an alternate reality in politics, being an active member of the Baath party in Baghdad up until the events of 1963, when the party seized Syria and Iraq, reorienting Munif’s initial position of achieving change in organized politics. He thus left Baghdad shortly after and pursued a career as an expert in the petroleum industry only to find in writing a gateway for change that a ministerial office could have never achieved. This consequently paved the way to his own exile and reacquaintance to Jabra. Whether Baghdad or Beirut stood as a symbolic cultural bridge in collecting and promoting their artistic genius remains relative to the fact that Jabra and Munif suffered from exile, Jabra because of apartheid, and Munif for his hope.

Themes of exile and metaphysical displacement resonate loudly in this particular work of fiction. Munif and Jabra defined and conceived the Arabic novel retrospectively, holding two different conceptions that were bound together because of a common desire to re-imagine. In the words of Sonja Attar, “[b]oth Jabra and Munif chose the genre of the novel as a major means of expression, the means of expression, an art practice that offered an outlet for political dissent and an anchor for hopeful dreams at once. Whereas Jabra conceived of the novel as “the meeting point of the creative arts known to man since earliest times” (“On Interpoetics”, 210), Munif described it as giving voice to “the history of those who do not have a history” (Munif, Al-katib wa-l-manfa, 43). Alaam bi-la khara’it is the retelling of the tragedy of a generation of visionaries who were contained under certain responsibly and “national” duties, placed at the heart of the non-existent city of Ammuriya, a name choice that is riddled with irony and is said to be a de facto name given to any city “spoiled by money”. The symbolic absence of any clear characterization of this city operates in its own way as a medium explaining the marginalized realities of Arab cities, whose differences are relative to similar if not unified evils and threats. In an unpublished interview conducted by L’Orient Express in 1999 about the concern of politicizing literature through using it as a means of critique or for expression, Munif replied, defending the integrity of the arts as the primary means of expression saying: “We as a generation can possibly be called a transitional generation; we were burdened with an immense load of dreams and desires for change and at the same time a group of political parties presented themselves as a vehicle to bring about change.”…“It is natural that instead of the novelist being disappointed outside the political party, he will move toward society through a political vision. But with the passage of time and increased experiments, he discovers society to be richer and more diverse than the political discourse”.

Excerpt from “A World without Maps”. Translation: “The authors assume that this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events—Ammuriya in particular—are used in a fictitious manner. They also disclaim that they are not the first, nor the last, novelists to bring into existence cities and villages that they rule independently.”

The novel begins with the backstory of the murder of Najwa and progresses and ends encompassing in scrutinizing detail the illicit love affair of Najwa and the main protagonist and narrator Alaa. Although the novel starts with Najwa’s murder, events unfold giving no clear indication as to why Najwa was murdered and by whom. Alaa, a novelist and lecturer in his late forties, assumes a tone that seems to fluctuate between realistic and mythical, intellectual but idealist as he attempts to find clarity and answers to a murder that seems to be resolved to a perpetual state of ambivalence. The title itself refers to (an) “Absence of any clear vision of the future for the Arab world: there is only a vague desire to change reality”. Desire, being symbolically embodied in a senseless love affair, that might or might have not been the cause of Najwa’s death. The theme of desire is juxtaposed with an array of wider and urging issues that end up consuming a community whose fragmentation heightens due to a series of unfortunate socio-political disasters that “mount like an earthquake” on the consciousness of its subjects. Such events include the 1967 Arab defeat as well as the noticeable retreat in Arab solidarity towards the Palestine cause. By incorporating motifs of political agitation, of love and lust, of cultural resistance, defeatism and nationalistic delusion the novel takes us on a journey into the inner workings of an intellect hoping for a change in a world without maps, without guides, without aim.

The novel’s intent is not merely to act as a record of historical events, but also to contextualize a particular narrative of struggle and resistance that continues to resonate 32 years later on. The authors provide for a historized retelling of the Arab individual’s struggle, and more urgently the struggle enacted on intellects, artists, and political dissidents in a period of Arab history that although coincided with heightened political and cultural awareness, carried the repercussions of said awareness as a duality – Of exile, displacement, and confinement. The novel has been claimed to be “A novel on the art of novel” (Al-Musawi, 1988) and an everlasting testimony to Jabra al Jabra and Abdulrahman al Munif’s lifelong commitments and contributions in defining the role of the intellect, artist, thinker, or seeker in the region. Cities and namesakes become disposable for transcendental homelessness finds no home in home itself. Aalam bi-la khara’it provides its readers with a realistically imaginative narrative of Arab society that is otherwise non-existent in mainstream discourse, a narrative that recorded history and its officiators seem so quick to dismiss and conceal.

References:

Badawi, M.M., 1992. Two Novelists from Iraq: Jabrā and Munīf. Journal of Arabic Literature, pp.140-154.

Habash, I., 2003. Unpublished Munif Interview: Crisis in the Arab World – Oil, Political Islam, and Dictatorship | Al Jadid. [online] Aljadid.com. Available at: <https://www.aljadid.com/content/unpublished-munif-interview-crisis-arab-world-%E2%80%93-oil-political-islam-and-dictatorship> [Accessed 4 February 2021].

Mejcher-Atassi, S., 2015. The Arabic Novel between Aesthetic Concerns and the Causes of Man: Commitment in Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and ʿAbd al-Rahman Munif. commitment and beyond, p.143. and beyond, 143.

Recommended reading:
Munif, Abdelrahman. East of Mediterranean. United Kingdom: Saqi Books, 2007.

Munif, ʿAbd al-Rahman. “Writer and Exile.” Journal of World Literature 3, no. 4 (2018): 497-511.

Jabra, Jabra Ibrahim., Ǧabrā, Ǧabrā Ibrāhīm., Allen, Roger Michael Ashley., Jabrā, Jabrā Ibrāhīm. In Search of Walid Masoud: A Novel. United Kingdom: Syracuse University Press, 2000.

Jabra, Jabra I. “The Palestinian exile as writer.” Journal of Palestine Studies (1979): 77-87.