Customer Reviews

Flight Against Time (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation Series)

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Perhaps because I am a Lebanese woman who lived for a few years in North America as a college student and then decided to return to Lebanon, I found this book a bit disappointing. I was expecting to find some unusual insights into the causes and consequences of migration, the difficulty of assimilation, the function of memory, and so forth. Instead what we get is a generically written novel representing some name-brand character hailing us from the south of Lebanon and embarking on a voyage to North America. Everything that can add authenticity to this generic character from a generic Lebanese village is included: the olive trees, the social mannerisms, the spices, the coffee with cardamon, the dancing of the dabke, everything except aspects that would make one Lebanese individual different from another. The main character-Radwan- is so bland that he cannot be described in other than stereotypical qualities associated with the East: generosity, attachment to land, veneration of tradition, belief in myths, religiosity, and sociability. Perhaps the author, through Radwan, is trying to create a symbolic portrait of the Lebanese person in exile. But in doing so, isn't she wiping away the individual experience, the individual story? Doesn't each one of us who left Lebanon during the war have a different story to tell? Is it fair to group us all under the umbrella of Radwan? The great irony of the book is that the deeply religious Radwan- in an attempt by the author to make him representative of all the Lebanese- is stripped of any sectarian identity. It is only through very subtle hints later in the book that we learn that Radman is probably a Christian. But is this a trivial point, to be gleaned or dismissed according to the reader's preference? Isn't the generic 70-year-old Lebanese man at the start of the Lebanese civil war very likely to be one with some sectarian inclinations? Doesn't leaving out this point trivialize some of the main issues of the Lebanese civil war? And, more importantly, wouldn't a Lebanese Christian migrating to (predominantly Christian) North America have very different assimilation experiences from that of a Lebanese Muslim who is more likely to suffer an acute identity crisis? The story of Radwan is as predictable as they come. An old man tries to leave his native land for a short while and finds that he cannot assimilate in the West. The more interesting story would have been that of Radwan's children, of whom we are told very little. We know they are all successful and well-established. We know they have a great respect for their receiving country (Canada) and its laws. Yet, they are the ones who must have really suffered, who must have trained their minds to think only of the future, to erase all memory, and to authenticate the present because the present is all they have.

Aren't their stories worth telling? Or are we, like Radwan, supposed to turn over the last pages of the book with a serene smile on our faces, content in the knowledge that one ultimately gets what one desires.

Emily Nasrallah paints a wonderful picture that I'm sure any Lebanese immigrant can relate to -- what it is like to come from Lebanon and see family and cope with the changes -- grandparents unable to communicate with grandchildren due to language and culture barriers, parents and children, brothers and sisters. I recommend this not just to people of Lebanese background, but to anybody wanting to know what it is like to leave their homeland and come to a whole new culture.