A Balcony Over the Fakihani (Emerging Voices) [Paperback]

Liyana Badr (Author), Christopher Tingley (Translator), P. Clark (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1992 | Series: Emerging Voices

The title story of Liyana Badr's remarkable collection of three short novellas interweaves the narratives of three Palestinians, two women and one man, relating their successive uprootings: from Palestine in 1948, from Jordan during Black September in 1970, to their final exile in Beirut.

Badr's intensively evocative contrapuntal style allows the reader to glimpse the joy and despair of these lives rooted in exile and resistance. There is an attention to detail in these stories that brings the grand narrative of Palestinian history alive: a horrified mother spotting a white hair on her baby's head the morning after a mortar attack in Beirut; a woman hiding a Palestinian resistance fighter's gun moments before he is picked up by the Jordanian security police.

The final movement of A Balcony over the Fakihani is a deeply poetic and harrowing account of Israeli air strikes during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, told from the perspective we so rarely encounter: that of the disenfranchised people whose courage and suffering cannot fail to move the readers of this extraordinary book.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Three poignant novellas about life-in-exile from Palestinian writer Badr, born in Jerusalem and now living in Tunisia. The stories, set mainly in Beirut, are preoccupied with exile but with not forgetting homes in Israel, in Jordan, and then in Beirut, from which Palestinians have been driven as conflicts ravage the region. ``A Land of Rock and Thyme'' is told by Ysra, a young woman whose husband, a resistance fighter from the West Bank, has been killed in an Israeli raid into South Lebanon. A disturbing dream about a visit to the Martyrs' Cemetery leads Ysra to recall her father, who was killed by a shell while she was fetching water in the refugee camp, as well as her first meeting with her husband, and their brief, idyllic visit to his native village. Now pregnant and a widow, she is a woman ``dressed in black'' trying to understand that these are the times of bitterness, but that there ``will be times of beauty and light.'' The second piece, the title story, is set in war-torn Beirut--a place where, after a night's bombardment, a mother notices in horror a white hair on her baby's head. A range of voices, the people who frequent Suad's flower- filled balcony in the Fakihani district, tell about the Tunisian- born fighter Umar, Suad's husband, who survived a near-fatal illness, then died in a bomb blast. Last, ``The Canary and the Sea'' is the memoir of a young man whose family was exiled from the West Bank--``the country that was beyond my reach''--only to become a prisoner of war in Israel, exchanged later for an Israeli, and then, compounding the pain of exile once back in Beirut, expelled to Tunisia. Unapologetically partisan, but the writing is good enough to rise above politics and tell moving tales of a troubled people living in an even more troubled place. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Arabic --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Interlink Publishing Group (June 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566561078
• ISBN-13: 978-1566561075
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,753,424 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Elegantly written and well-translated novel, June 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Balcony Over the Fakihani (Emerging Voices) (Paperback)

Liyanah Badr shares the experience of a Palestinian woman who has lived the resistance to Israeli occupation in its earliest stages. She provides insight into a world very few western readers will ever have exposure to, although it defines a critical period in the history and lives of thousands of Palestinians and Arabs. Her writing is lucid and quitely powerful, and her characters will stay with you for a long time.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Palestinians in Beirut . . ., June 1, 2010

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Balcony over the Fakihani (Interlink World Fiction) (Paperback)

Set in war-torn Beirut during 1980-82, this powerful collection of three novellas by Jerusalem-born writer Liyana Badr tells the stories of several displaced Palestinian men and women. With memories still vivid of exile from former homelands and being driven out of Jordan in Black September of 1970, theirs are accounts of attempting to rebuild lives, sometimes unsuccessfully, as unwelcome foreigners in Lebanon. "A Land of Rock and Thyme" describes the brutal relocation of refugees from a camp in a Christian area of Beirut. The brutality is underscored by the shocked and numb response of the narrator, a young widow, whose grief for her dead husband leaves no room for the loss of others in her family.

The title story, "A Balcony Over the Fakihani," is in effect a love story as a young mother, her closest friend, and her husband take turns describing a life that clings to a kind of normalcy even while that life requires continued armed vigilance. "The Canary and the Sea" is convincingly told from the point of view of a Palestinian soldier during the Israeli invasion of Beiruit. The shattered city, held by rival factions, forms the backdrop of a story of near-death and becoming a prisoner of war in the land that had once been his home.

Badr writes as a witness to the "catastrophe" that drove Palestinians into exile. These, she says, are what the West thinks of as "terrorists." And while her stories are graphic in their portrayal of brutality and grief, they are also alive with the joy of living and the refusal to despair. She seems to have special regard and affection for the men who bring warmth and reassurance to the women and families they love. The grief at their loss, described by both wives and comrades, is deep and palpable. We get a glimpse behind their hope and gentle optimism only in the final story, as a man who loves canaries is interrogated as a dangerous "terrorist" by his captors. Well translated, with a helpful introduction.