Too Desolate for Words: Reading Haidar Haidar's Desolate Time

Cover of the third edition of, al-Zaman al-Muhish or The Desolate Time (first published in 1973), by Dar Amwaj (1991)

This is part of the #100ArabNovels project, where I try to revisit the Arab Writers'Association's list of 100 most significant novels, as part of trying to understand the Arab imaginary post-2011  

Haidar Haidar (b. 1936)'s second novel, al-Zaman al-Muhish or The Desolate Time, runs through 312 pages, divided into five chapters and three appendices (extracts from the Book of Lamentations, prose poems and postscript diary of the enigmatic female protagonist Mona) and features an ensemble of characters, who are equally facing different version of the same moral and mental breakdown, all navigating the treacherous city of Damascus at the end of the 1960s. In a way, Haidar's novel really functions as a city lament, very much in line with the Book of Lamentations that he cites at the very end of his novel (I think this quotation should have been in the foreword). Haidar takes very little pity on his beloved Damascus, characterizing her, as a faithless whore, whose mercantile ingenuity doesn't recognize the value of anything beyond the notions of profit and pleasure. A typical passage from the novel could be broken like this: "Damascus is untrue as most women are', 'why can't I sleep with all women that I want?', 'we are a defeated generation, one of many'. Interspersed with dizzying geographical metaphors of one's inner consciousness: seas, mountains, valleys, trees, birds, deserts, Haidar's inner landscape replaces the actual landscape of Damascus in an odd shift that highlights this excessive and frightfully melodramatic interiority.

I am reminded by Brecht's reception of Benjamin's writing, 'its all mysticism, mysticism, its ghastly'. And one has this impression reading Haidar's vertiginous writing, that constantly swirls around the edges, morphing into incomprehensible, overwrought erotic nonsense. Never was the allegory of heterosexual erotic fixation as a replacement of 'homeland' so blatantly milked to the very last drop as with Haidar's endless monologues of men screaming, whining, groaning at how unfair life is not to give them absolute and unrestricted access to women and the time (yes Haidar throws in the male obsession with immortality in the mix) to sleep with all of them, when they are not lamenting the loss of said homeland, of course. God forbid that women ever act more than a temporary distraction.

Haidar's novel is premised around his lost and delirious poet, Shebly, and his relentless chase of Mona, another aspiring poet, who posses the integrity and vision to see beyond all the Arab Nationalist inanity and spurns Shebly's advances, in a post-defeat moment of truth (this is post-1967, after the embarrassing defeat of Nasser and Syria at the hands of Israel), pointing to the deep moral hypocrisy of the Arab intelligentsia. Mona is perhaps the only female character that retains a sense of self that is not understood in direct connection to all the endless erotic pursuits, but still she is partly maligned by the protagonist for her insistence that any relationship, sexual or romantic, in the context of what is happening in the Arab world, is absurd and meaningless. And for that she is described as frigid, traumatized and unfeeling.

There is something profoundly queasy about Haidar's novel, in the way it depicts women. The petulant, persistent howling of men, stomping their feet, crying, singing, and slipping into semi-conscious states of confession about their insatiable sexual appetites and how there is nothing else in the world worth pursuing than chasing women (specifically damascene women) and at the same time how utterly wretched are women and men to be swept by these very same desires. Its not just the objectification of women, but the embarrassing degree of accepting and embracing violence against women. There are several instances of rape, sexual assault and physical assault against women, that the protagonist is "slightly" disturbed by, but doesn't seem to be much concerned about. It is taken for granted that certain men are violent, and act out their violence against women. There is even hints that some men kill women for pleasure. This is a novel that was definitely not written with women readers in mind.

Not surprisingly, the novel remains untranslated. I doubt though this is due to its disturbing misogyny and sexism. The real reason is the maligning of the Israeli government and the Israeli occupation of Palestine and Arab territories. Haidar quotes the militant Menachem Begin's many inflammatory comments against the Arabs and the war rhetoric that only saw the possibility of Israel's existence in the wiping out and occupation of the Arabs and their lands. It is easy of course to read criticism of the government of Israel as anti-Semitism, but one wonders when will the term expand to include other Semitics, namely the Arabs this time, as well.  I doubt also that translators would have the easiest time translating Haidar's novel. It is slightly more difficult than many of its contemporaries (Haidar Haidar who was an Arabic teacher for a part of his life, seems to relish using idioms that are not so common in the Standard Fusaha) and wandering structure would not make for a smooth translation.

Haidar's impressionistic, episodic bursts, function very little in the way of a form. We are not sure how the narrative is organised beyond the protagonist's deeply subjective conception of the events. A conception rooted in the protagonist's idiosyncratic affective state. The narrative is organised around these affective states, around what moves the affect rather than what coalesces and coheres around an event (one is reminded by Tawfik al-Hakim's description of autobiography as a document of the affect-- definitely this extends to the majority of modern Arabic fiction), rather it coheres around a specific realization: futility. And here lies the biggest challenge in reading Haidar's novel, its a long, extremely indulgent account of defeat, practically and personally. Interrupted by erotic distractions and fantasies that culminate in the death of both the men and the women involved. Haidar kills off quarter of his characters (in non-war related circumstances) in under forty pages towards the end. A sloppy ending to say the least.

Yet it is astonishing that the ever present, ever absent political misery that seeps through the entire narrative is only revealed or remotely mentioned halfway through the novel. One senses a deep disaffection with Damascus, the Ba'ath dominance, and the hypocrisy of the intelligentsia (Haidar outlines the three taboos that afflict all Arabs, religion, sex and politics). And yet takes it Haidar 160 pages to finally reveal anything about the humdrum of bureaucracy or work, and a dozen of more pages to introduce anything remotely intelligible about the complexity of Syrian politics at the end of the 1960s.

When not maligning the covetousness of Damascus and its inhabitants and when not adoring the virility and erotic savagery of other men (a lot can be written about the suppressed fetishization of male virility and the muted homoerotic current that infuses all of Haidar's description of his male characters, at one point the warrior/poet bites the shoulder of protagonist, saying, 'I love you, you accursed thing!'), Haidar predicts the fall of Damascus with uncanny foresight, very much like Biblical prophets and very much for the same reason: the city's weakness before powerful men, who promise stability in exchange for complete control. Haidar never uses the word autonomy or even agency, but there is  a sense of the political in what he tries to point to. Ba'athism would never work without a truly emancipated citizenry and the old semi liberal-oligarchic order would never work without a fair and just society. It is in recognizing the limits of both and the limits of the project of the modern state in Syria that Haidar seems to be on to something. Unfortunately he is completely overshadowed with more than 200 pages of badly written sex scenes and pitiful interior monologues.

In ranking with other contemporaries and other Arab writers, Haidar does not differ in any significant way. There is nothing uniquely revolutionary about his writing or his choice of form (semi-autobiographical musings). He's unapologetic sexuality works against him, rather than for him because it never sees the desires and bodies of others (men or women) outside of the cliché and the stereotypical. And its hardly radical or interesting, this mystification of sex as a substitute or embodiment of enlightenment or human purpose (an attempt to reclaim bodies and fight the religious taboo on sex). But it is revealing on how Arab writing confuses authorial  voice with narcissism, sex with intimacy and desire for autonomy with violence. It is a great lesson on what not to write during a desolate time.