Iman Humaydan Younes

"Everything around me seemed radiant, silent and bleak"
By sally tarbox on 24 June 2017
Format: Paperback
In four separate - but interlinked - narratives, the author writes from the point of view of each of four women living in a Beirut apartment block. The Civil War is at its height, but life goes on - though a tormented, fractured, unreal sort of life.
"Life continued its cycle and people went back to their work and their thoughts. But when the sounds got closer, everyone started running in show more all directions, and in a few minutes the street was empty. It returned to its normal state, silent and bleak. It became empty except for their smells, as though the masterful fingers of a magician had passed over their heads and hid them up his sleeves."
As bombing becomes a regular event, the women are overcome variously with depression, madness, plans to flee, a need to live life to the full - or wreak revenge.
It's an evocative book which must give a pretty fair picture of how life was.
I have to say that I found the unremitting awfulness a little wearing by the end - with four separate lives (though they all read rather similarly) perhaps the reader doesn't get into one character enough to feel as deeply as she might.
But certainly brings the era to life show less

I loved this book. In fact, so far, this has been my favorite in the Noir series. I did wonder at times what may have been lost in translation between Arabic and English but that did not deter me from continuing to read nor did it detract from my enjoyment of this book.

I think the editor made excellent choices in the material. It represented sections of the city of Beirut and while war was an important theme, and how could it not be given the sheer number of years that conflict has permeated show more the landscape, it was not the only theme.

One of the fun aspects was understanding the experience of natives who both stayed in the city and those that left and returned after time away, often in former colonial enclaves. It was great to see the influences of all the cultures and religious experiences that have shaped Beirut.

My picks? “The Bastard” by Tarek Abi Samra; “Beirut Apples” by Leila Eid; “Rupture” by Bachir Hilal; and “The Thread of Life” by Hala Kawtharani. My least favorite was originally written in English and is called “Dirty Teeth” by the Amazin' Sardine. Still, the writing was very poetic and I have to say, there were some very beautiful endings to some of the stories.

There is a certain poetry and movement to Arabic writing that once you get into the flow (as in the flow in English) you come to appreciate it. I was also happy to note the role – even tangentially, that Australia played in a few of the stories. Having lived in Australia and made several Lebanese friends, I was able to look at and appreciate things they had shared about being Lebanese and being Australian.

Loved it. Recommend it. Keep and open mind and an open heart while reading it. show less

This is an anthology of stories written by different Lebanese authors. As no surprise, these war stories were, at times, painful to read. However, some stories were poetic. There is the mention of numbers, the soul, dolls and numbers. Beirut is also seen as a "companion of death" and as the "city that dances on its wounds." Although those descriptions made me fall back and regroup, I did not want to add the city of Beirut to my bucket list as a place to see.

I only became excited about the show more city after reading about the lives of the characters. Their lives made me want to look at the photos and bios of the authors at the back of the book. I wondered did their faces in some way match the character in the story? I wanted to read why they had chosen the plot. Was it a true incident they had experienced, or was it one the author had heard from a friend? I did learn that Alawiya Sobh had a deep interest in issues that women faced. Hyam Yared's interest is that no author should face oppression due to what he or she has written. This is his freedom fight.

Hearing about Beirut on the news throughout the years was another reason why I wanted to read these stories. Each author chooses to portray the war in the finest detail. In "Sails On The Sidewalk," by Marie Tawk, the dead father is remembered just by a cough. In this story, I also learned that our personal lives can become entwined very tightly with the war. So tightly that we use the war as the reason for taking a certain action.

I did not expect to care so deeply about the characters. I also thought the war would add a ho-hum background. I am glad to say Beirut Noir edited by Iman Humaydan surprised me. Thank you for the tour of a city.akashicbooks.com/catalog/beirut-noir/ show less

I had a difficult time relating to these stories. Perhaps I am not as well read as I thought I was or perhaps it is because I have never travelled outside my home country yet alone a country surrounded with such chaos and upheaval. Whatever the case because so many of the stories were written about the already departed and not the here and now I found them hard to connect with.
I did however enjoy the writing. I feel as though little could have been lost in the beauty and fluidity of the show more prose. Two of my favorite stories were The Bastard by Tarek Abi Samra & Pizza Delivery by Bana Beydoun. show less