When the past repeats itself: narrating refugee children’s stories in Rabih Alameddine’s The Wrong End of the Telescope

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines Lebanese-American novelist Rabih Alameddine’s representations of the hardships and difficulties that refugee children encounter as they flee their homelands, sometimes as unaccompanied minors. Set on the Greek island of Lesbos during the 2015–2016 refugee crisis, Alameddine’s The Wrong End of the Telescope (2021) depicts the sufferings of refugee children, and simultaneously draws on mythological events to underline their miseries and anguishes in contemporary times. By juxtaposing contemporary stories of refugee children with those of children and young people from classical literature, such as Icarus and Arion, Alameddine’s narrative attempts to document these stories and save them from oblivion. As the narrator, Dr Mina Simpson, relates the events she witnesses during her sojourn in Lesbos, she becomes aware of her position as a person who once went through similar experiences of deprivation and dislocation. In this sense, The Wrong End of the Telescope critiques and exposes anti-immigration policies implemented by European countries to curb the influx of immigrants and asylum-seekers from the Middle East. Employing a postcolonial perspective, this paper highlights how Alameddine’s novel links the contemporary refugee crisis to Europe’s colonial past and shows how the Mediterranean has become a cemetery for children and young people who aspire to better living conditions.