Modern Arab American Fiction: A Reader's Guide

2. Uses of the Lebanese Civil War in Arab American Fiction: Etel Adnan, Rawi Hage, Patricia Sarrafi an Ward

11 2 Uses of the Lebanese Civil War in Arab American Fiction Etel Adnan, Rawi Hage, Patricia Sarrafian Ward At its most basic level, the Lebanese Civil War pitted Christians against Muslims. (Lebanon has the highest percentage of Christians in the Arab world, followed by Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq. Arab Christians have been a part of the Arab world for more than two thousand years.) The war specifically involved Sunni Muslims and Maronite Christians. Many of the Sunni Muslim combatants were Palestinians, who compose a large underclass in Lebanon, having been expelled from Palestine in 1948 and residing mainly in a series of refugee camps. By the mid-1970s, the Palestinians had formed a powerful, militarized bloc that existed outside the authority of the Lebanese state. This bloc was threatening to the Maronite Christians and cumbersome to a delicate power-sharing arrangement among Lebanon’s seventeen cultural and religious communities. Lebanon is a former French colony, its borders carved delicately in Paris in the 1920s to produce a slight Christian majority, one that would presumably be friendly to France and to Western interests more generally. In subsequent decades, however, heavy Christian emigration and higher Muslim birthrates prevented Christians from remaining Lebanon’s largest religious group. Shiite Muslims , once Lebanon’s third-largest group, soon became its largest. Sunni Muslims remained second. The constitution set up in the 1920s distributed power based on demographics that soon became arcane. In Lebanon, the president must be a Maronite Christian (Orthodox and Protestant Christians are excluded), the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of Parliament a Shiite Muslim. Governing a country and making laws based on demography is always a rickety venture, so it probably surprised few people outside of Paris that Lebanon faced 12 | M o d e r n A r a b A m e r i c a n F i c t i o n civil conflict in 1958 (eventually involving American marines) and again in 1973. What is usually called the “Lebanese Civil War” is the fighting that occurred from 1975 to 1990, although these dates are not accepted universally among scholars and commentators. When a large Palestinian refugee population, mostly Sunni Muslim, entered into Lebanon in 1948–49, it threatened to disrupt Lebanon’s delicate demographic balance even though the vast majority of Palestinians were not granted citizenship (a policy that is still in place). Along with this greater Palestinian presence, there also existed outside interests in Lebanon, including the United States, Syria, Israel, the Soviet Union, and Iran. During the war, however, not everybody’s loyalties followed party or religious lines. Some Christians “crossed over” and worked with Muslims, both Lebanese and Palestinian, a reality that has played a central role in Arab American fiction dealing with the war. The Phalange , the most powerful Maronite Christian militia, often relied on the support of Syrian Muslims. And Muslims themselves dealt with a variety of internecine problems. The Lebanese Civil War was a remarkably complicated affair, and even if we cannot comprehend the extent of its complexity, we should be aware of it. Such awareness prepares us to grasp the complexity of the Arab American literature that explores or takes place during the Lebanese Civil War. Authors who represent the Lebanese Civil War generally explore the sectarian divides in Lebanon, in particular those between Maronite Christians and Palestinian Muslims. This sort of theme is unsurprising. People of Lebanese background make up a substantial portion of the Arab American community, and many Lebanese American writers lived through the war or have parents and other family who did. Representations of the Lebanese Civil War are an integral feature of the Arab American literary tradition. Writers such as Etel Adnan, Rawi Hage, and Patricia Sarrafian Ward have illuminated the nuances of the war for Western audiences. Etel Adnan: Sexuality, Worldliness, and Humanism Etel Adnan is one of the most recognizable writers of Arab origin in the world. Known mainly for her poetry, Adnan has also been successful in the genres of visual art and fiction. Her only novel, Sitt Marie Rose, has generated a significant audience and critical accolades. I focus on that novel here. First published in French by Des Femmes Paris in 1978, Sitt Marie Rose was translated into English Uses of the Lebanese Civil War in Arab American Fiction | 13 in 1982 and issued by the independent Post-Apollo Press, where it...