The meeting with the Lebanese novelist Hoda Barakat always carries the different and interesting, because she is a special novelist, she specialized in contemporary literature, after she started her life in Beirut, and lived through the conditions of the civil war, and she refined her human experience through teaching, translation and working in the press, before she decided to move To the world of literature, whose career culminated in a number of important and prestigious awards, the last of which was her winning the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2019 for her novel, "The Night Mail".
Hoda Barakat believes that it is difficult to determine the changes that occurred in her creative career, especially that she witnessed the most important events that rocked her country Lebanon since the seventies of the last century until now, saying: “I must have changed due to the accumulation of years, life experiences, and the impact of my stay away from my country, as well. There is a greater clarity of the writing site in my life, and all that readings added to my awareness, because I wrote my first novel (The Stone of Laughter) in a spirit of anxiety and urgency obsessed exactly as I write now, that is, without the influence of external factors such as fame, or taking into account the reasons for publication and spread, etc. », banner« Perhaps with time I became more daring in technology Narrative, ignoring the requirements of (market) ».
The horror of war
The war, with its human horror and psychological setbacks, is not absent from all of its literary works since its first anecdotal collection "Visitors" in 1985, along with six other novels, but it prefers in its description to move away from the term documentation of the suffering of the torturers, saying that what drives it to write remains far from the obligation to provide Document, because the term “documentation” is far from the concerns of writing. On the other hand, the reader or critic can resort to such a description, as “it is an ambiguous feeling similar to the anxious obsession with a voice, or voices that inhabit you and push you to listen, to get to know them and what you want to say or reveal. As happened in (The Night Mail), the writing began with the first message that it is itself the novel, then, perhaps, due to my influence on the scenes of death boats and the tales of immigrants fleeing their homelands, the course of the novel and reality changed. Barakat sees that there is always something from the writer in the folds of his text, but he himself does not realize what this part is, ”admitting that her continuous sense of alienation is what made her this“ sensitivity ”to the fate of strangers that she embodied in her last novel.
Circles of light
And whether the prizes burden the writer and excite the questions of distinction and dread falling into the traps of comparison and criticism, Barakat said: “The prizes give initially self-confidence, and says that what you tried to say in your unit as a writer has reached the ears that I have shared with you in the same loneliness, and this is a beautiful feeling of course and carries Some reassurance, especially if you do not have social activities that accompany your life as a writer so that you do not know anything about the reception of the text by the recipient, and this may be the reality of those who live in exile ”, banner“ Fortunately for me, the estimates came to me early, that is, from school days, so I got used to it In some way. Then I rolled out from the countries to which my novels were translated and strengthened that confidence, but it should also be said that the issue of prizes is a highly arbitrary issue, that is, a committee does not give you a prize, and you may not get this award if it is not the same committee. It is largely coincidence, and the writer should not be affected by it much, especially since there are great texts that did not even reach convincing publishing houses to publish them. Prizes also put writers in the spotlight sometimes over and above, occupy their time and hinder their devotion to writing, or even the purity of their inner world. ”
The language of my heart
Hoda Barakat reckons her insistence on writing in the Arabic language, and her categorical refusal to write in a language other than this that she loved and attached to her more after her long stay in Paris, and her knowledge of the various cultures and civilizations in the French capital, stressing that the ability to see the cultures of the other is not governed by the place of residence I am still in Lebanon, and even during the years of the civil war, it was not a day (local) or was satisfied with what comes out around me, then I also write in the French language when asked to do so, but writing literature and novel especially for the Arabic language without hesitation, Arabic is the language of my heart and my breath, and my attachment to it It is bridle God, and perhaps also because of my westernness, but the unfortunate thing in this field is the lack of interest in our Arab countries and institutions in our language, and I do not understand the reasons for that.
The platform of "Arts"
Barakat sees in the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature "a place to meet Arab and foreign writers, and an opportunity promising to get acquainted closely with the products of these", adding, "An occasion like this makes me feel that I am not always far from the Arab world, besides the high interest and organization of the supervisors of this distinguished festival that opens up horizons." It is wide for writers to interact and learn about each other's experiences. ”
• “I must have changed due to the accumulation of years, life experiences, and the impact of my residency away from my country.”
• “There are great texts that did not even reach convincing publishers to publish them.”
• “There is always something from the writer in the folds of his text, but he himself does not realize what this part is.”