Constructing narrative, achieving catharsis 61

As Luckhurst notes, there appears to be a contradiction between ‘cultural theory that regards narrative as betraying traumatic singularity’ and the discourses that consider narrative to essentially be a working-through of trauma, to borrow Freud’s terminology (82). Although trauma narratives are formally reflective of the disruptive nature of trauma, both in its immediate experience and in its ostensibly quintessential belatedness, trauma narratives also demand being told. Hence Luckhurst argues that while theorists such as Jaques Derrida, Caruth and Paul de Man read ‘trauma as an aporia of representation’, others see the ‘crisis in representation’ as narrative ‘possibility just as much as impossibility’ (83). Among the latter is Paul Ricoeur, who argues that narrative is ‘the privileged means by which we re-configure

our confused, unformed and at the limit mute temporal experience’ (1984: xi). In this sense, trauma may be initially anti-narrative, but narrative is more importantly the means through which trauma takes form, is remembered and eventually overcome.

In Salt Houses, the content and the narrative strategies that reflect repression and suppression are contrasted by the means through which the novel finally addresses the trauma and reaches a sense of catharsis. The perhaps most obvious change is Atef’s narrative, which moves from only vaguely mentioning the events of the Six-Day War, to giving a full account in the chapter dated ‘Amman June 2011’. As I have discussed in relation to the anti-narrative qualities of trauma, what Atef endured in 1967 is repressed, stored away in the subconscious, and is, for a long time, ‘stuck’ there. Atef has never told the truth to any of the other

characters. Here, the narrative form is indeed repression’s best friend: the holding back of information is aided by what Genette calls internal focalisation, that is the fact that the narrator knows only as much as its focal character. Hence when Atef represses his past, so does the narrative. Atef’s narrative does, however, eventually relate the truth of what happened: that actually, Mustafa packed his suitcase and wanted to flee rather than stay and fight. Had it not been for Atef calling him a coward and thereby convincing him to stay, they would, Atef believes, have survived. Instead, they are soon arrested and, as the reader is already well aware, only Atef survives.

Interestingly, the narration of the actual events is accompanied by an alternative truth to which Atef has escaped for years:

Atef shakes with the desire to rewrite everything that happened. For years, that was his fiction. Here is Palestine, he would think. Here are the streets we’d walk in Nablus, the neighbourhood we grew up in. Here is everything we loved. … With a mental brushstroke he re-creates it, everything … Punch me, he wants to yell at Mustafa. Tell me to fuck off, hit me in the face. Pick up that goddamn suitcase, walk down the

driveway. I would’ve followed you … You can save yourself. We can both live (271, emphasis in original).

In this interior dialogue, it becomes clear that Atef has, desperately, re-written the story of what happened to Mustafa. Although this is, on the one hand, another level of dissociation and escape from trauma, it is, on the other, demonstrative of the relieving effect of fiction. Paul Ricoeur writes that ‘Fiction gives eyes to the horrified narrator … [and] permits

historiography to live up to the task of memory’ (1988: 88-89). Fiction, he continues, speaks for ‘victims whose suffering cries less for vengeance than for narration’ (ibid.). Creating a fictional truth, one in which Mustafa and Atef escapes Nablus and survived, is a means through which Atef is able to escape from the pain of remembering what actually happened. Yet, in the same chapter as Atef admits to this alternative narrative, he also relates what actually occurred, and this suggests that Atef is finally admitting to himself that he has to let go of the fictional escape, and accept that which happened. This acceptance is brought on by the realisation that Alia has Alzheimer’s Disease: ‘It began with her forgetting the word pomegranate’ (250). Now, Atef ‘has to remember for the both of them’ (273). He tries to tell Alia that she will increasingly forget, but she is already too far gone to comprehend this. Suddenly, forgetting is no longer voluntary – memories are not suppressed or repressed, nor are they stored away for later recall, and thus Alia’s condition epitomises the importance of remembering.

In addition to Alia’s diagnosis, the recalling of 1967 is also initiated by the realisation that Atef’s grandchildren have read his letters. Initially, the letters were a means through which Atef could express himself when he arrived in Kuwait after the Six-Day war, and was clearly suffering from PTSD. The letters are first mentioned in the chapter dated ‘Kuwait City, May 1977’. In this chapter, which I have discussed previously in relation to Atef’s dream, the ‘scene’ of Atef’s narrative is the celebration of his daughter Riham’s birthday, but

throughout the day, Atef’s thoughts return to letters that he has written throughout the years, addressed to Mustafa, which he started on his doctor’s recommendation: ‘It’s a way to organize your thoughts, explain what you’ve been through’ (82). Atef is asked to construct a narrative, or simply record his feelings, not necessarily of what is true, but of whatever he feels the need to write. When nothing else helps decrease his nightmares and melancholia, the letters, on the other hand, help him work through and overcome his disruptive memories and behaviour. The fact that Atef writes letters rather than, for example, a diary, implies that he is sending his thoughts away, and thereby metaphorically distancing himself from what he has written. Atef writes about everything in his letters, from his difficulties with Alia and his worries for his children, to his memories of the war. Decades later, these letters end up in the hands of Zain and Linah, Atef’s grandchildren, who are rummaging around a storage room during the war in Lebanon in 2006, and the two children share the letters with their cousins. In 2011, Atef overhears his grandchildren discussing the letters:

“He loves her,” …

“She’s right.” Zain pauses. “It’s what he always wrote about.”

Atef shoots upright, his ears burning. He cranes forward to hear his grandson’s sentence.

“… He has to remember for the both of them now.” (268)

Concerned for their grandfather, the conversation between Zain, Linah, Manar and Abdullah concretises much of what is running through Atef’s mind: how will he cope with losing Alia, on whom he has depended all these years, and how he now must remember for the both of them. Surprisingly, Atef realises that ‘he didn’t mind’ that his grandchildren have read his letters (269). In fact, he is glad that now, ‘they know him’, and it feels like ‘dropping the weight of a planet. Like finally stepping back’ (ibid.). This suggests that it was important for

somebody else to read the letters, for Atef to finally stop repressing the traumatic memories, which he reveals and addresses in the same chapter.