ميسلون هادي والدكتور نجم عبدالله كاظم موقع الكاتبة العراقية ميسلون هادي و الدكتور نجم عبدالله كاظم
Dr. Najim A. Kadhim
Notes on
The Fiction of Maysaloon Hadi
In writing about Maysaloon Hadi’s works of fiction, in understanding how a focused writer she is, and in knowing her rich imaginary worlds, one cannot give a sufficient result within a short study. Giving the notes below, we are seeking to present the reader with a panoramic picture that leads to the keys of the writer’s world of fiction.
1) To me and perhaps to any other reader and critic, one of the first important things which were gradually discovered is that the world that Maysaloon deals with springs from reality, which surrounds us. However, it seems that we see only parts of what she sees; and feel only parts of what she feels. More importantly, she does that from the point of view of her unusual inner-emotions, which are full of different and rich feelings and sensations. Naturally, these inner-emotions leave their influential echoes on her and consequently her literary works. For this reason, the fiction of the writer comes mostly in a special and unusual form that of reality and imagination in an unusual mixture.
2) Maysalon Hadi’s language: Besides being a transparent instrument presenting the unique mixture of the writer’s fiction, Hadi uses a very distinctive language that seems an end in itself. This distinctive language can be easily noticed in her highly accurate selection of words and very indicative expressions. Being an end does not prevent any of the stylistic characteristics or effects of that mixture from reaching its target, the reader.Taking this argument and what was previously said into consideration, I think that all critics—no matter what critical or intellectual theories they adopt—should have the writer’s works exclusively as a starting point to form their opinions rather than relying on other resources to examine Hadi’s work.
3) In her ways of writing novels and short stories, and her way of using special themes, Maysaloon creates structures. The main and dominant structure is what critics call “the structure of suspicion and illusion”, bunyat al-shek wal-iham. How has this structure been created? To answer this question, we need to go to the sources of the thoughts, the subjects, and especially the characters in the writer’s works. Maysaloon writes her fiction about people, who are in unusual situation, passing through difficult circumstances, in abnormal moods, or being under unusual and strong pressures. All these parameters may show such people being fictional characters. However, the astonishing fact that we discover when we look closely at those characters- even in their apparently unusual situation- is that they are in fact very normal. They could be living among us; or we might even find ourselves in them. Yet, the writer picks up deep feelings, delicate behaviors, and sensitive moments during which the reader might be dizzy not knowing whether this is happening in the real life, imagined world, or in a dream. This concept brings a mixture of reality and imagination in Maysaloon’s fiction.
4) Connected to binyat al-Shakk wa-Iham the major dominant theme in Maysaloon's fiction appears to be “the feeling of loss,” which the writer's protagonists demonstrate. This theme is an indicative fictional phenomenon, which in fact marks in different ways and levels the whole artistic experience of the writer. The loss as a fact or an event is important and so are the persons or things, which are lost, more important is the feeling of loss and miss. One more thing we must mention is about “the feeling of loss” theme. According to the critical way of understanding and dealing with the literary genres, especially the fictional ones, it is acknowledged that short story and novel are different in terms of point of view. The short story is usually presented by only one point of view, which is mostly the writer’s. The novel is always presented by many viewpoints one of which may or may not be for the writer. Going back to the indicative phenomenon that one may notice in Maysaloon’s fiction, there are obviously female viewpoints, which the reader may think belong to the writer. What does that indicate in term of its connection to Maysaloon Hadi? The answer will be given in the next notice.
5) A question may be raised here about the entity or the kind of heroes, characters, or perhaps even what the writer herself feels about what they lose and consequently miss. I admit here that the modern critical principle says: “in dealing with a literary text, critics must not be concerned but with that text itself.” However, to answer this question, I allow myself to see what Maysaloon herself says and find out what she comments about this matter. "What are you afraid of in your life?" She was once asked. “I am afraid of loss, which took place in the past when I lost my younger brother as a martyr leaving a very deep wound in my life and a deeper impact on my works. That has been represented in stories, such as “Rajul Khalf al-Bab”, “Dharbat Jaras”, “Allathi ‘Ad”, “Al-‘Alam Naqisan Wahid” and so many other works in which I expressed the waiting for an absent person. Today, I find myself facing this loss in so many beautiful things around us and in the going out for much of the desire for the life. That desire gives us the meaning for this life,” Maysaloon answered.
Keeping the first half of the writer’s previous quotation in mind as we go back to her fiction, we can easily find the meaning of loss in her work, especially the early ones represented in the feeling of missing the loved ones or in the feeling of waiting for them. We see the wife waiting for her husband, the sister imagining her brother’s return, and the parents’ hope for their apparently martyred son not to be truly killed. Moving to the second half of the quotation, we find indeed that Maysaloon develops this major theme towards being not only about the loved ones that her heroes lose, miss, or wait for. We begin to find those heroes feel the loss or the miss of things, such as schools, homes, or places of residence. Moreover, we find the feeling of loss and miss of things that cannot be physically touched, such as warm relations, happiness, ideas, and even abstract things such as logic, humanity and time.
6) All the above discussion about the dominant theme does not mean it is the only major theme that accompanies Maysaloon’s name and fiction. As a matter of fact, there are other important major themes some of which are related to the first one; and perhaps consolidate its dominance rather than limit it. In other words, these other themes are concerned in a way or another with the dominant one. They are actually branched out of it, concluded to it, or connected with it. The most important of these themes are those concerned with characters, such as the feel of security, the feel of love, the crisis of the man in the modern age, and the tearing of the human individual between the imposed loneliness and the communication with the others. Certainly, each of these themes is to be a proper topic for an essay or research. Therefore, we are excused not to deal with them in this essay.
7) The writer as well as all the Iraqis, who lived in the eighties and nineties, has been always surrounded by the tragic results of the wars and world sanctions, which the writer lived, suffered, and felt that impacts on the people. Maysaloon very often deepens that native suffering and those tragic impacts by giving them a humane existentialistic dimension represented by what so called “the crisis of life and death.” We believe that in any of the writer's novels and short stories one can easily track her adoption of the Iraqi individual's feelings and sufferings. This concept leads us to a more important fact in the writer's fiction: being full of different feelings and emotions, which never calm down or get extinguished as long as the fictional work is going on. Obviously, two factors lead to this phenomenon: 1) the craftsmanship that Maysaloon has, especially her ability to capture those feelings and emotions in the linguistic mixture we mentioned before; 2) her artistic faithfulness in dealing with themes and subjects to which those feelings and emotions belong. For this reason, her readers feel that what is going on in the literary works is happening to them; and what the characters feel or suffer from in those works is theirs. Accordingly, we may understand the unique phenomenon that is noticed in most of the critiques written about the writer's fiction. Examining Maysaloon’s works, the critics themselves seem to walk on the same track and have the same moods, which make them full of personal or subjective feelings and emotions. To clarify the last note, let us look attentively at the following short quotations that we bring out of a wide reading of the critical essays and researches written on Iraqi fiction in general or on Maysaloon's in specific.
“The writer’s characters and the moments she chooses from their psychological lives represent an image that pictures the feelings of the modern age human being… it pictures the imposed feeling of loss, which cannot be replaced but with the dream and illusion… Therefore, the absence of reality features was normal… no feature was present except what the character sees through a hole in his/her subconsciousness, and chooses to see what is good for the passing by dream or illusion, and what could possibly represent his/her oppressed desires.”Dr. Abdul-Qadir al-Qit
“Maysaloon Hadi’s stories stand out through the condensing ability. Her reader cannot feel the involvement in a wide world… I see the writer as one of the few people of her era who knows the nature of short story, understands it very well, and writes it the way it should be.”Abdul Rahman al-Rubai’i
“With this delicate eye, Maysaloon has boldly—softness goes hand in hand with boldness in the unconscious world—picked her characters amongst millions of human beings to mould complete suffering, an era’s crisis, and the burden of a crushed human being everywhere. She molded his suffering in a marvelous way that supported the sharing factor between us as receivers and her as a creative writer capable of screaming (artistically).”Dr. Hussein S. Hasan
“The writer’s tools definitely enable her to produce that shape, which she obviously prefers. She is the biggest dreamer to her dreaming or dragged-to-the-ultimate-illusion-world heroes. She is a good contemplator to life, people, and thing.”Nazik Al-A’raji
“The writer’s worry goes beyond the direct indication of war to reach humane and philosophical contents about the meaning of war, death, birth, and life. And mainly because the writer was haunted all along her novel with the worry of reflecting that humanitarian pain on the mother and father, her style was leaning toward marvelous transparency, which had intimate expressions charged with pain.”
Nazih abu Nidhal
“The heroes in these stories appear more like ghosts and angels than human beings. They are transparent creatures, or intimate and quite souls that move smoothly… prefers to be quite… talk to themselves more than others… and when they talk, they either nod or are brief.”
Sami Mehdi
“No exaggeration, her novel was one of the greatest works in the history of literature. Being great is not about its simple tale as much as about that holy flame that spreads out from its linguistic mouldings, and its intensive agitated narrating.”
Shawqi Baghdadi
