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ABSTRACT
A large-scale exodus of Syrians to neighbouring states (Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey) has accompanied the bloody events in Syria which began in 2011. A body of research has examined the depiction of Syrian refugees in the societies of these countries by tracking attitudes on social media and in the traditional media and through field studies. Yet there is a lack of research on the image of the Syrian refugee in the literature of neighbouring states, especially in the contemporary novel. The subject of this study, therefore, is the image of the Syrian in novels from the neighbouring states, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, written post-2011. Using the concepts and methodology of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, including the concept of habitus and the dynamics of power in society, this article scrutinises the image of the Syrian, looking to novels’ depiction and presentation to the reader as a representation of the general attitude of the novelist toward the refugee phenomenon. The study demonstrates that the image of the Syrian refugee in these novels differs from the general, more ambivalent perception of Syrians in these societies. The writers appear to be sympathetic towards Syrian refugees as human beings who have experienced oppression. In this way, novelists in the neighbouring states have contributed to humanising the image of the Syrian refugee in their societies.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Demir’s study includes the following Syrian novels: Mariam’s Displacement by Mahmoud al-Jasim; Good Morning, War by Maha Hassan; Intercourse with Death by Fatima Khudur; and The Way to al-Zaatari by Mohammed Miqdad, as well as Yaqut by the Lebanese author Mariam Michtawi and the Turkish Even the Butterflies are Crying.
2 Among the Ottoman novelists who included Syrian characters were Ahmet Mithat Efendi, whose books The Sequel to Hasan Mellah (1875), Hussein the Peasant (1875), Suleiman Musli (1877) and Issues of the Unknown (1898) portray Syrian characters. Writer and intellectual Namık Kemal in his novel Awakening (1876) also created a Syrian character, a rich Arab called Abdullah Effendi. Similarly, Bekir Fahri in his novel The Youngsters (1910) included a number of minor Syrian characters, while writer Ali Kemal, who lived a portion of his life in exile in Aleppo, also portrayed several Syrian characters in his novels The Two Sisters (1898) and Adventure in the Desert (Ahmed, 2012). Fatma Aliye Topuz in her novel The Lute Player (1899) brings to life a Syrian character named Abu Omar al-Jarrah, while Mehmet Celal’s Little Bride (1892) contains two Syrian characters and novelist Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar includes the character of a young woman from Aleppo in his novel The Ghost (Ahmed, 2012). Syrian characters continued to feature in Turkish novels and short stories after the establishment of the Turkish Republic with figures such as novelist and short-story writer Refik Halid Karay, who lived part of his life in Syria and related his experiences in a collection of short stories under the title Stories of Exile (1940) and two novels Yazid’s Daughter (1939) and I (1941). We also find Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil’s story ‘The Torn Handkerchief’ (1990). Muazzez Tahsin Berkand, who worked as a teacher in Damascus before the Ottoman withdrawal, wrote the novel Ladybird (1974), most of whose events take place in Syria in the home of a Syrian family of Turkish origins. She also portrayed a Syrian character in her novel Spring Flower (1935). Another well-known novelist who included Syrian characters in his works is the novelist and dramatist Resat Nuri in Falling Leaves (1935). (Ekşi, Citation1999) It is to be noted that the presence of Syrian characters in these novels was for the most part a marginal one. The main protagonists were Turkish. Perhaps the Syrian presence is most striking in The Two Sisters by Ali Kemal, in which the Syrian characters are all women with generally negative qualities. The two young women Sharifa and Zanoub are prostitutes under the management of their aunt Ruqqaya, who was a prostitute herself in her youth (Elhajhamed, Citation2015).
3 Here we use displacement to mean the flight of people from their cities and villages to safer locations within the country, while migration is to outside the country.
4 Tadmur prison, located in Palmyra in the Syrian desert, is notorious for its association with imprisonment and torture by the Syrian state.
5 In 1982 Syrian government forces launched a month-long armed offensive against the city of Hama on the pretext of combatting terrorism as represented by the Muslim Brotherhood. Hama was attacked with jets, tanks and missiles and large parts of the city, including its religious and historical landmarks, were laid waste. Syrian forces did not leave the city until they had killed an estimated 25,000 or more men, women and children and left behind destruction that the foreign press likened to the devastation of World War II. In addition thousands of its residents were imprisoned (Alayoubi, Citation198Citation4).
6 In the Foreword to his novel, the author points out that its events are based on the reality he saw and heard during his work at Nizip Syrian Refugee Camp.
7 Following the Syrian regime’s withdrawal from Lebanon in the aftermath of the assassination of Lebanese prime minister, Rafic Hariri, in 2005, relations between the two people continued, as did the work of Syrian proxies in Lebanon. However, with the Syrian army gone, feelings that had previously been expressed in secret were now openly stated in the media and online. As Syrians, we perceived such feelings during our repeated visits to Lebanon and our contacts with many Lebanese people, who confirmed the generally negative attitude towards Syrians. As one journalist put it, ‘Lebanese hatred for Syrians is longstanding, going back to the Syrian intervention in Lebanon, and is the result of an accumulation of incidents of murder, rape, looting, theft and abuse perpetrated by the Syrian army over its thirty-year presence in Lebanon during military operations and at security checkpoints’ (Al-Haq, Citation2018). After the outbreak of war between the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the armed opposition in Syria in 2011, refugees quickly began to enter Lebanon in large numbers. This sudden inflow of refugees led to an increase in the number of existing camps and strain on resources. This sudden urgent situation has caused growing tensions between Lebanese citizens and Syrian refugees.
8 Published in 368 pages by the Arab Institute for Research and Publishing in 2012 (Al-Atoom Citation2012), this may be classified in the genre of ‘prison literature’. The novel’s protagonist is a Syrian doctor, Eyyad, who is imprisoned by the Syrian regime during the 1980s and spends 17 years in Tadmur Prison. The work is a witness to the extent of the mistreatment experienced by detainees in the prisons of the Assads, father and son. In both these novels, the main character is Syrian. The multi-part novelistic work The Whirlwind by Ziad Qassim is one of the key works dealing with the Syrian personality and conditions in the Levant between 1880 and 1952. It records the history of events such as the whirlwind, which was the slogan of the Syrian National Party that ended with the execution of its founder, Antoun Saadeh, who continues as a vivid presence through those important events (Al-Shawabkeh, Citation2010).
9 Metafiction is a genre of narrative texts in which there is a systematic self-awareness of literary activity so as to problematise the relationship between fiction and reality.
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Hüseyin Esved
Hüseyin Esved has PhD in Arabic from the University of Damascus in 2010 and has been working as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Islamic studies at Bingol University since 2011. His researches focuses on Arabic rhetoric, ancient criticism, Quranic studies, and modern Arabic literature.
Uqail Shawwakh Mohammed
Uqail Shawwakh Mohammed is a lecturer in Arabic at the Ankara University of Social Sciences, and he has a master’s degree in Arabic rhetoric from the University of Aleppo 2012, on the topic of the rhetorical text and the impact of the discourse on the recipient, and the argumentative methods used by the speaker to influence the interlocutor. He is currently studying for a PhD at Eskisehir Gaziosman University, and his research focuses on graphical texts in the footnotes of Kazerouni.