Analysis Of Rabah Alameddine's The Hawakti
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In a more elegant manner, Rabih Alameddine wove his novel The Hawakti with rich and diverse background of the whole Middle East. The Hakawati is a novel which illustrates the diverse past of Arabs in the Middle East. This novel speaks back to the dehumanizing approach initiated by Americans, particularly after 9/11. By proposing to tell us a story, Alameddine deconstructs the reader’s expectations, and it is in this manner he/she is made aware of the plurality of interpretations that a single storytelling may offer. Stories usually evoke memories which have no borderlines. Also, using “listen” and “beyond imagining” in the first few words in the novel remind us that there can be no final answers or conclusions. Rabih Alameddine begins his novel
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Osama is an Arab American who returns back to Lebanon to see his dying father. It is there in Lebanon that we know something about the history of the al-Kharrat family and how they were the best storytellers in the whole region. One thing that the novel emphasizes is that Kharats (liars in English) considered storytelling a profession. As professional storytellers, Kharats fabricated stories out of their imagination just to sell them to the audience listening. What Alameddine tries to point out throughout the book is that stories in the medieval Arabic literature, and even The Arabian Nights, were created for fun merely to amuse the emirs and kings of that time. Just like poets of the princely court and corridors whose main concern was to praise and extol, Kharats are also similar in their attitudes. Alameddine, in this sense, employs a deconstructive approach. Confirming it in the acknowledgement page, Rabih Alameddine states: “By nature a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across — each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip — is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a pinch of salt, boiled thrice with sugar and served as a piping-hot
Osama is an Arab American who returns back to Lebanon to see his dying father. It is there in Lebanon that we know something about the history of the al-Kharrat family and how they were the best storytellers in the whole region. One thing that the novel emphasizes is that Kharats (liars in English) considered storytelling a profession. As professional storytellers, Kharats fabricated stories out of their imagination just to sell them to the audience listening. What Alameddine tries to point out throughout the book is that stories in the medieval Arabic literature, and even The Arabian Nights, were created for fun merely to amuse the emirs and kings of that time. Just like poets of the princely court and corridors whose main concern was to praise and extol, Kharats are also similar in their attitudes. Alameddine, in this sense, employs a deconstructive approach. Confirming it in the acknowledgement page, Rabih Alameddine states: “By nature a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across — each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip — is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a pinch of salt, boiled thrice with sugar and served as a piping-hot