Reéalisme et fantastique dans le roman Ḣârith al-miyâh de Hodâ Barakaât

Abstract

Hodâ Barakât's novel Ḣârith al-miyâh (translated into English by Marilyn Booth, The Tiller of Waters , Cairo, AUC Press, 2001) reflects a new dimension of the writer's poetic vision and narrative technique. This article tries to analyse its blend of the real and the fantastic, and the poetic function of this narrative form. One part deals with the structure of the real in the fictional, while the second part shows how the fantastic is anchored in the real. The realism appears at the level of space, with the representation of the city centre of Beirut, being completed by the geographical evocation of the renowned shops in 1975. Historical points of reference about the city and its population are also evoked. The political and military events that followed since 1975 emphasize the realistic background of the fiction. The finely detailed description gives a concrete appearance to this universe. It is in this setting, completely deserted by human beings, that the principal character, Nicolas Mitri, evolves. His voluntary settling into his father's clothes shop in the city centre adds an element of improbability. Several disruptions come to disturb his tranquillity and to bewilder him. The confrontation of the principal character with the strange events that occur in his solitary life lead to his disintegration. The persistent dualism in the novel of the real and the imaginary, of illusion and reality, expresses the distress of a generation that witnesses, helplessly, the disintegration of a capital city and the contradictions of an elusive city that has always been an enigma.