The Novelist Sahar Rashid's Flashback

 

 

By The Critic: Awny Seif

 

This is not the first time that I have touched upon a literary fiction work by the Iraqi and Canadian writer, Sahar Rashid. Before that, I read a beautiful novel entitled "Remains of Conscience", in which she discussed the problem of Canada's indigenous people, that is, the Amerindians. Now I will share with the Arab reader a distinctive literary work, the novel "The Sad Flute", in which the author adopted a flashback style. 

In the novel "The Sad Flute" by the writer Sahar Rashid. She devoted in the flashback style, dividing the novella into twenty-two chapters, half of them in the present time and half in the past.

A method adopted by film directors is the film cutting method. The novel began with a monologue for the hero and then took the reader to the beginning of events in the main character's country . The reader is taken a lot back and forth with the number of chapters of the novel between the past in the Middle East and present in the European Country.

The first issue that preoccupied her mind was illegal immigration, an issue that destroys some families in some Arab countries.

With this immigration, young people risk their lives and their families in order to change their future and not know what the future is hiding.

Other issues that the author discussed through the narrative, including what is national, humanitarian and moral, as we will see later.

The events of the past begin with the protagonist Daniel, a young East Arabian who intended to migrate to the Old Continent illegally to achieve a future and hope in his head, and also to escape national military service, because his country was at war with a neighbouring State at the time, with his friend,whom named "Shamil" and when the smuggler took them to the neighbouring border state, here Sahar al-Rashid painted a very beautiful and perfect narrative painting art of the two places of events, the first place from which they started to escape and the last place which Daniel was camped and the other two friends, Jamil and Jacob.

The writer Sahar made a kind of descriptive parallel in her description of the two places of events, this description served the flashback style a service that restored the reader's mind, and at the last place was the end of the story and the end of Daniel, too.

Reading the events and narrative, we get to Chapter X, where the peak, the escape event. In this chapter, Daniel and Shamil arrived in the country's border area, where the smuggler awaited them, but the appearance of Border Patrol aircraft surprised them. Shamil is hit by a fragment of aircraft and arrested, then executed by firing squad and handed over his dead body to his relatives by the security authorities. Their is an order that parents do not lament the dead and do not make the necessary rituals and prayers before burial; That's because he's a traitor from the State's point of view.

The authorities issued an order to demolish Daniel's house; Because he's a traitor too.

Here, Sahar al-Rashid reviews what was really happening to those who were accused of this charge at the time by the authorities, in that Arab country, the punishment was very harsh. Authorities do not set humanitarian considerations for the rest of the family.

The author addressed the idea of the influence of places and sounds on the human mind, in the two important events and their places, where the escape at the beginning of the narrative and where the camping in which Daniel's death occurred at the end of it.

The events were accompanied by the ebb of owls and the sound of sad flute,  the sound of flute overlapped with the hero's ideas, urging him to think and speak with himself as in the Shakespearian monologue way like in Hamlet and Macbeth.

Sahar Rashid also dealt with psychological and moral distortions in human beings in general through the character of "Daniel," where Daniel, the protagonist, was an opportunistic character, an outsider, who did not think of his wife and children, and he did not think of their future and the way of their living after being accused of treason. Daniel was very opportunistic and selfish even after he arrived in the European country.He  married to an older woman in an opportunistic manner in order to guarantee work, house ,living and money, as well as denying that he was married in his origin country, thereby contravening the wills of his Christian faith, which adopts the one-wife law.

The novelist Sahar Al-Rashid touched on a very complex topic, namely divine justice from the victims' point of view, those who ended a life Daniel, they're "Jamil", who at the end of the story we knew him as a brother to "Shamil", who was hit by a Border Patrol plane and then executed by firing squad earlier, and "Jacob" is the pastor's son, who was killed by Daniel at the country's borders site, while fleeing his homeland.

And the question that the reader may ask, Is it their right to kill Daniel, who is the main cause of killing Shamil and killed the pastor deliberately?

Who is man to judge the death of even the offender, that is the custom of the wildlife, a civilized man must legally recover his rights from the perpetrator.

Conclusion.

Erich Segal began a "love story" with a shocking sentence that was as the end of the story, "What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?"

He then told us through the flashback of the hero's background, the heroine and the love story they had between them. The Flashback was strong and shocking, but lost its beauty after the first line of the story.

S. Rashid began the story of "The Sad Flute" with a monologue by the hero "Daniel" crashing into his mind, in a camping place that resembled a place he had been in for years. The writer returns to the reader in chapter II of the beginning of events and woven with flashback a strong story, chapter after chapter, once about Danny, who lives in Europe once about Daniel, who escapes from his home country. "Daniel and Danny" are the same person, but her use of the short name (nickname) to describe the main character after living in Europe makes the reader imagine how Daniel is taken by life until his name became abbreviated.

The Flashback was a rational charm with ambiguity and magic that captured the mind of the reader and urged him to search for the rest of the events and the end of Daniel came only at the end of the novel and this was an excellent first-class suspense.

This is the second work of the writer Sahar Rashid in which she uses the flashback style after the novel "Truth is Mute" but in this novel "The Sad Flute" Rashid outperformed herself and created us a modern novel of unique style.

 

Bibliography:

1. Segal,Erich. Love Story.1970.

2. Rashid,Sahar.The Sad Flute:Cairo,2023.