The Loaf Throbs Like a Heart Imperfect Works 7

Description

“Finally, we could emerge from our burrows and wander like rats after an earthquake over the ruins of our city. Those who wandered Beirut in the past two days of ‘peace’ were stunned by the results of ‘war’ on the face of their city… the marks of fire on the cheeks of buildings… the horrific devastation in entire market districts… the rain trying in vain to wash the soot from the walls… the broken electricity poles, their wires dangling in the wind like the carcasses of extinguished snakes… everything in Beirut is black and gray, except for the colorful piles of garbage that have taken over the sidewalks, hills of revolting smells… and debris is everywhere… shattered glass and doors… shattered houses… shattered memories. Those who went out and wandered in their city were horrified by Beirut’s wound stretching along its streets, open to the wind and rain. But Beirut was not as beautiful before the war as people were getting lost in… its mask was beautiful, and the war burned that mask away, revealing its ills now.” To the eye… its outward adornment was enchantingly colorful, but beneath it lay malignant tumors that could only be cured by cauterization after their progression, and the voices of the wise grew hoarse calling year after year for its rescue…” Ghada al-Samman the writer completely dominated Ghada al-Samman the journalist. The material in this book is imbued with the fierce suffering of events, its brilliance undiminished by the passing of the occasion. With literary and linguistic clarity, Ghada al-Samman wrote about the underbelly of Beirut, about Lebanon, and about its tormented and toiling people, struggling for bread with dignity. It is truly her most beautiful, albeit incomplete, work, for in it she chronicled the agonies of this great, sorrowful, beautiful nation, its energies squandered. Since her first contributions in the 1960s, Ghada al-Samman has consistently expanded the boundaries of her craft and embraced the wounds of the Arab people with responsible words.