The Lebanese writer Hoda Barakat in conversation

Nobody prevents me from returning home. I drive to Lebanon when I want. I am neither persecuted nor are I one of the Muslim women who have sacrificed the patriarchy. I suffer from my country, but I manage to deal with this pain. And if you ask me if I will want to go back, I say I never went away. I am loved in my country and receive like a queen in all Arab countries. I received the greatest honors and my books are never attacked despite sensitive topics such as homosexuality. How can I say to live in exile?

Then what was the decisive factor for your late departure?

I felt like an exile in Lebanon. I had to defend myself with my conscience. I had arrived at a point where I didn’t belong to any community, no group and no militia. I was against everything, my family, my mountains, my religious belonging.

They grew up as a chestnut Christian.

Yes, but the Christians rejected me because I no longer wanted to show solidarity with them during the civil war. But I defend people, not denominations, against injustices. So I lost relatives, I lost friends. And when I finally left the Lebanon, I left everything behind. I have stayed nothing but the language. And that’s why I started writing: I invented a world to express my pain.

In doing so, they had to learn Arabic. Her first language was French. What is it that you can say better in Arabic than in French?

I can say everything in both languages. I give lectures in French, I even wrote a book and two plays in French. I speak Arabic to my mother or brother. There is a distance between me and the Arabic. For a long time, Arabic and French -speaking Muslims claimed that one cannot write modern and freely in Arabic. They only knew the sacred texts. The Arabic itself is not sacred. I do what I want.

We meet here in Abu Dhabi, where you received the Sheik Zayed Book Award, one of the most respected book prices in the Arab world, for your latest novel “Hind or the most beautiful woman in the world”. Are you closer to Paris or Beirut from here?

For me, everything is still in Beirut. I open my Paris window and am surprised that I don’t see the streets of Beirut. I lack the fragrance and the light from there. But I feel very comfortable in Paris, and France gave me a lot at all. I see many advantages in not listening anywhere and I’m happy to be able to distance them, also to be able to criticize the Lebanon better.

The award -winning novel tells the story of a woman with a disfigured hormonal disease called acromelagy. Nobody, not even her, can perceive them as the one who is in its essence. You can read this as an examination of deceptive ideals of beauty as a allegory for Lebanon. What of both is more important to you?

I only discovered the latter after the book was finished. I had to write to determine that I also speak of Lebanon and from all the big Arab cities that have not remained loyal to their soul. Take a look at what happens in the beautiful city of Cairo. When you get there, you want to cry. I have nothing against modern six-star hotels and the settlement of deserts. But couldn’t it have at least have been different in my Beirut? Beyond the ongoing Israeli bombing in the south, the country has destroyed its beauty all by itself.

Her first novel “Hajar al-Dahk” (the stone of the laughter), an examination of the civil war, which is now considered a contemporary classic, is now 35 years old. Can you still remember how you wrote it?

I wrote this novel again and again because I lost the manuscript several times, but also because I changed myself. The main character was gay, so there was someone between me and the world. In other Arab works, even in the greatest, homosexuality was taboo. I took this perspective because I thought that my protagonist Khalil suffered as much as I did. It was a shock for many readers and critics. In this first novel I also used verses from the Koran and adapted it to the Arabic language. Nobody asked who gives me the right to do so. Because I showed so much respect for my characters, nobody felt attacked by an unbeliever like me until today.

You have worked as information director for the Parisian Radio Orient for many years, but then gave up journalism. What do you miss about your earlier work?

I am still a journalist in my head. I can’t get away from the news. I often take disasters personally, and I quickly despair, precisely because I am not an activist. But I also feel freed from journalism because I was responsible for a large editorial team that didn’t give me time to write.

Do you not feel pushed to take a stand to the tragedy that takes place in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians?

No. I have only written a book about Gaza in the Palestinian areas once and explained why I am not expressed. I have never signed a petition, I have never worn a Palestinian Kufiya. I admire the demonstrators, but my opinion remains complex. I can’t listen to slogans that I do not agree with. Many demonstrate, make selfies and post them on Facebook. This is the simplest solution – and the most shitty. Some have missed almost every opportunity to work for the true humanitarian concerns. There are still people among them today who refuse to greet Jews, even Jews who are on their side.

In addition to writing, you will teach as part of the Middle East study program at the American Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, an Ivy League Institution. In 2023 they were one of the Montgomery Fellows in the footsteps of Toni Morrison, Philip Roth or Salman Rushdie. How did you get there?

In 2011 I was a guest at the Berlin Science College for a year. At the same time, a professor of college called Susannah Heschel had a scholarship, the daughter of a great American rabbi …

… you mean Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Jewish scholar, whose book “The Prophets” is rightly considered a work of the century. The philosopher Omri Boehm is happy to refer to him …

Yes, Susannah very much worships her father, her house is full of memorabilia. She is an activist and honest Jew and was one of the two women at the time who took part in an English reading from my two -person play “Dernier Volet de la Nuit”. I myself have a terrible accent. At first she was much more curious about me than the other way around. She read my books published in English and said to me: I want to get to know her. This has become a friendship over time.

Dartmouth is known for the fact that in teaching and everyday life it is a bridge between Jewish and Palestinian students, Judaistics and Islamic Studies. What did the Judaist Heschel contribute to this

She always wanted to have an Arab Muslim aside at the university. And one day she had invited a Lebanese to an interview, which she told: “I met a fantastic writer who has become my girlfriend and also comes from Lebanon.” Apparently he knew every book I wrote. So she called me and asked: “What do you think of this Tarek el-ariss?” I said, “This is my son, my friend, my brother.” Since then he has been teaching Middle East studies and Judaistics – and also in common seminars.

There is no writer who is said to have a feminist perspective with greater vehemence that she has expanded the Arab literature with a feminist perspective.

If I did this, not because I am a woman, but because I am a good writer. I am not a feminist who would attach this name to itself as a sales -promoting label. In addition, all my novels, with the exception of “Hind”, are written from the perspective of men. You also have to see this as a request for the thought: Where are the women? This is my way of hearing my female voice. When I write, I don’t disguise myself as a man. I write as a woman who recognizes no limits. If I wanted it, I could turn into a tree.

For the current generation, writing plays a much greater role from an unmistakable identity.

When I write, if I want, I am a woman, and if I want, a man. But then I’m not a woman who writes in the language of a man who may speak of a woman who answers him. Several actors are available on the stage to create such complexity. I want to give you an example of how it is in my second novel, which is called “Disciples of Passion” in English. He is about a man who was disturbed in his memory. The woman he loves left him when he didn’t even kill her. He claims that he could forget her, and then again he tells how much he suffers from her absence. His love, for example, seems to me, suddenly rises in me like the milk in the breasts of a breastfeeding mother. Such comparisons are no coincidence. I am just a woman who writes the story of such a man in her female way.