Thread of the moon by Dominique Eddé, Dar Onboz, 2022, 64 p.
We are immersed in magic by discovering Le Fil de la lune. With this bilingual tale for all ages, the writer Dominique Eddé takes us on a flying carpet, towards a space full of light above a country plunged into darkness.
Inspired by her work with embroiderers in the Khayt el-Zaman workshop, the author puts us in the presence of a woman who embroiders a moon on a piece of white fabric, by the light of a lantern. Her son Rami, squatting next to her, is afraid. Traumatized by the memory of the explosion of August 4, 2020, when he was five years old, he is even angry. He grabs a broom to fight the unknown enemy he imagines in the dark part of the play. The dialogue that begins between him and his mother is a journey to the land of feelings that range from dread to the love that will be discovered, just followingwards, at the end of the story. Thus peace will be t she a long white path printed on a double page.The atmosphere is magical, the subject cruel.
The book is illustrated with watercolors by the author, as well as embroideries by Imane Salameh and Randa Slimani. On the cover, a magnificent photo by Sarah Moon, of a full moon in a black sky with bluish reflections.
The Arabic, calligraphed by Samir el-Sayegh, is in itself a work of art within this intense book, as dense as it is stripped down. The translation from French into Arabic is provided by Nadine Touma who runs the publishing house Dar Onboz.
Since the embroiderers had trouble reproducing “anger”, and one of them even felt that she would collapse if she did, it was the artist Anouk Grinberg who did. loaded within the framework of a correspondence, between Paris and Beirut, maintained with threads and needles, in the absence of a common language.
There is innovation in this work which harmoniously combines several visual tools. An alliance of artistic techniques that makes the eye go back and forth from one language to another, from one landscape to another, with a double effect of softness and power. The dynamic generates a cosmic dimension. The intimate thus becomes universal, and the universal of the order of the intimate.
” You see ? says Imane to her son who discovers on his mother’s lap the moon she has just finished, there is always a way to do something even when you have almost nothing left. »
It is around this sentence that the story is articulated and that the perspectives open up. “And what will this moon be used for? asks the child. “We are going to sell it, replies her mother, she will bring us food for three days. The book reminds us with simplicity, to what point, any person, as long as they believe in it, is capable of overcoming hardships, however hard they may be. Able to transform his experience. We have here an example of a paradoxical phenomenon in our country, that of individual courage which miraculously resists the ravages of impunity, a scourge which has been raging for several decades.
This message, inhabited by poetry, has a philosophical significance: when the horizon is blocked, love, dialogue, perseverance are the best means of maintaining the light. Message might not be more luminous, at a time when the collapse of Lebanon continues inexorably.
Yes, we are indeed, as Fayrouz sings, the neighbors of the moon which, through interstices, lights up our nights.
Le Fil de la lune by Dominique Eddé, Dar Onboz, 2022, 64 p. We are immersed in the magic of discovering Le Fil de la lune. With this bilingual tale for all ages, the writer Dominique Eddé takes us on a flying carpet, towards a space full of light above a country plunged into darkness. Inspired by her work with the embroiderers in the Khayt el-Zaman workshop,…
