Magical Representations of Individual and Collective Trauma in al-Samman’s Beirut Nightmares

Abstract

This article examines Ghāda al-Sammān’s creative fictional depiction of the causes and the atrocities of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) in her novel, Beirut Nightmares (1976). It investigates the author’s perceptive fusion of different artistic tropes in order to achieve a proper articulation of her sociopolitical commentary on the early years of the conflict. It shows how al-Sammān bears witness to the collective war trauma of the Lebanese people through the individual trauma of a female intellectual. Al- Sammān transcends the realistic representation of events in order to magnify the traumatic experience through her employment of gothic elements and magical realism which purposefully disrupt the chronology of the narrative. The apt employment of different tropes enables her to effectively criticize the legacy of colonization as well as the oppression of current totalitarian regimes. It also concludes that al-Sammān’s artistic techniques which bespeak trauma do not contradict with the intellectual’s attempts to heal her own wounds and to overcome her personal frustrations in order to fulfill her communal mission of enlightening people.