In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Balconies: A Mediterranean Memoir
  • Megan Khairallah
Balconies: A Mediterranean Memoir Mishka Mojabber Mourani. Beirut: Dar An-Nahar, 2009. 101 pages. ISBN 978-9953-74-257-1.

Part memoir, part photo album, and part varied collage of poetry, reportage, and correspondence, Mishka Mojabber Mourani’s autobiographical work Balconies: A Mediterranean Memoir cannot be confined to a specific genre. This is appropriate, as the multilingual Levantine persona that emerges from this short but multifaceted work moves, shifts, and changes within the various political climates and urban landscapes she has observed and experienced.

Mourani uses the balcony as a metaphor to represent a space that is neither “inside” nor “outside.” It is a space that provides both the security of the living room and a connection to the different social and political realities of the streets below. The balcony is a constant physical feature in the landscape of her life as she moves throughout the Levant because of war, political upheaval, or familial decisions.

The balcony is both living space and observation point: On the balcony [End Page 126] the older generation tells stories, shares family recipes, shops, and communes with the street below. It serves as the family vantage point. But from this vantage point one also observes the changing course of history and politics, the comings and goings of occupying armies, the traumatic events that will cause the constant uprooting, disruption, and migration of these families.

The balcony then, is an extension of the “inside” family. Writing in English, Mourani recounts the family stories shared in Greek, Arabic, English, and French—indicative of this multicultural, multinational Levantine phenomenon—that paradoxically represent the only stability and the focal point of her childhood: the tapestry of her composite identity.

From the balcony facing out, Mourani mostly tells with a mixture of anger and nostalgia the stories of the many wars she has witnessed. She observes changes in weather that reflect the marches, processions, bombing, and shelling in the streets below. Having been forced to leave her childhood Egypt because of political turbulence, she lived through most of the war in Lebanon. She has witnessed much violence and destruction and recounts these “war stories,” not only as tales that must be told, but as “histories” that must be remembered.

Among these is the story of Nabil, an adolescent boy tempted by an apple offered to him by the invading Israeli soldier. Both writer and reader sit at the edge of their seats wondering whether Nabil will succumb to the temptation. When he finally takes the apple, we still feel, despite our disappointment, that Nabil has always been in control of the situation. As the reader sits on the balcony with the narrator watching Nabil, she becomes part of the story and hence a witness to the history of the war.

Though this text does deal with war and displacement, these stories are all parts of a larger search for an identity that is constantly being redefined within the different politically charged landscapes. As a blond, blue-eyed child and adolescent growing up in the Levant, Mourani is constantly asked to define who she is and where she comes from—in short, where she belongs. As she aptly phrases it, she was forced to “transact with [her] ‘otherness’.” Her Greek family, Arab heritage, and native English place her as neither a “local” nor a “foreigner.” When Mourani is asked to hide her “Lebaneseness” in order to blend into her Australian school, the reader can feel her adolescent self struggling to [End Page 127] define her identity in defiance of labels. Her family finally decides to remain in Lebanon despite living through the seventeen-year-long civil war, and the war becomes another part of her multifaceted identity.

Mourani observes, remembers, and recounts parts of her life in this emotionally written work. Though the text is a sensitive exploration of the creation of identity, it also serves as a cultural documentation of the inevitable trajectory of a political individual raised in the Levant. In Balconies we hear many voices and the sounds of many lives. It is about war, exile, and the meaning of identity and plurality. It is a work that explores memories...

pdf

Share