Critics unanimously agree that what makes the myths and literature of prehistoric civilizations alive and immortal to this day is the ability of their authors to simulate our fears and psychological depressions with allegorical stories and superheroes who perform miraculous (supernatural) actions that have a profound impact on our souls, the readers.
The Syrian artist and writer Souad Al-Jundi, in her new collection of stories, “Ms. Rowena and the Chamber of Lost Things”, tends to make her stories and characters like the paintings she creates; Simple, intense in meaning and open to interpretation, thus prompting the reader to participate in the interpretation of meanings on the basis of himself.
The collection, recently issued by Mosaic for Studies and Publishing, extends over 70 pages of medium pieces, and includes 17 short stories in which the writer tells the stories of Mrs. Rowena and her friends and the life encounters and societal challenges they face with a narrative that mixes reality with dreams and takes miraculous scenes as a way to address the during which its readers.
Ladies and their dreams
In the story entitled “Mrs. Rowena and the Chamber of Lost Things”, the writer – residing in Bulgaria – recounts to us the course of a dream that she had. In adolescence and youth, she wished that she might guide and warn that young woman to become a girl other than the one Rowena had become, but “soon a middle-aged woman woke up who would only find what she had lost in dreams.”
And Rowena is not alone in mourning her lost youth. Next to her is her friend Minerva, whom her husband betrayed with another without finding a convincing reason for that betrayal. We see her in another story – following she was divorced and over 40 years old – sitting in a café eagerly awaiting the arrival of a former colleague in After a few minutes had passed since their meeting, which she was very pleased with, and she was very glad to herald him as a precursor to a possible marriage, the man began to eavesdrop on a woman wearing a short dress. Then Mrs. Minerva went quickly following being overwhelmed by disappointment, “Do not twist anything.”
With these two stories and others, the two women (Rowena and Minerva) dreamed of another life following they became too old to live; They dreamed of dreams that Souad Al-Jundi presents to us with their justifications in other stories. She tells regarding women who grew up in a society that finds in the word “defect” the only answer to every desire they desire or action they do, so they submit to the authority of customs that prevent them from choosing, choosing, or achieving their dreams.
Nevertheless, the soldier does not hesitate to criticize the exaggerated manifestations of liberation from these norms, as we see her heroine Rowena in a story entitled “The Chewing Guy” who was astonished by a tomboy girl sitting next to her on the plane and chewing gum in a provocative manner, and when the chewing girl rushed an old man in a blunt manner Slowly landing off the runway, a passenger reprimanded her, and Rowena said to herself, “It’s the first time that I’ve learned the true meaning of the phrase: ‘My boil is cured’.”
Thus, the soldier reviews in her stories the worsening awareness and behavior of some women who have neglected their femininity for one reason or another in exchange for the suffering of others with a society dominated by a patriarchal character. The gentle are often the weak and oppressed half, under religious, societal and traditional pretexts handed down centuries ago.
She adds, “The heroines in my stories suffer the brunt of this oppression, even if they are apparently financially able, beautiful and elegant, married, divorced or mothers, who drive cars and sit in cafes. And they, even if they are unaware that they are subject to the strongest: to old traditions, to men, to money. According to religious interpretations, they feel burdened, and this is evident in their constant search for happiness, stability, self-affirmation, or fulfillment of wishes.
miraculous slaps
Critics unanimously agree that what makes the myths and literature of prehistoric civilizations alive and immortal to this day is the ability of their authors to simulate our fears and psychological depressions with allegorical stories and superheroes who perform miraculous (supernatural) actions that have a profound impact on our souls, the readers.
A style that the writer tries to borrow and adapt its tools to fit the vocabulary and symbols of our modern age, to simulate our emerging fears, especially those that the epidemic pandemic bequeathed us two years ago, and the wars that erupted and still erupt.
In a story entitled “Lady Rowena and the Elephant”, we find Rowena had to deal with a huge elephant that suddenly appeared in the salon of her house and started to wreak havoc on his furniture, so Rowena ran to her husband and told him what was happening in the hall, but he assures her that he did not see anything.
And the elephant in the story is “the being that no one sees except Mrs. Rowena, and no one sees the harm caused by anyone but her. He may want her to scream at him or hit him to crush her under his big feet.” Paradoxically, the elephant at the end of the story managed to destroy the house and kill her husband without being able to Nobody saw it, which prompted the authorities to open an investigation to find out the cause of the destruction, following it was ruled out that it was a fire or an earthquake.
What is a huge elephant at the level of the story is the war that exhausted the writer’s country at the level of reality; A war that suddenly erupted and wreaked havoc without anyone being able to see it or see the horror of its catastrophe and stop it before it destroys the country.
And regarding her reliance on the miraculous narrative and the symbols it contains, the soldier tells Al Jazeera Net, “The miraculous in my stories is a kind of slap that leads to confronting reality, or escaping from it. A kind of rejection of daily monotony, or hope for finding solutions to crises and resorting to an enchanted world every Something regarding it is possible and achievable.”
From the space of masculinity and femininity to the space of the city
Most of the stories in the “Lady Rowena and the Chamber of Lost Things” collection center around men, women, and husbands and their desires, convictions and daily challenges in a society that forces them to commit to what they can’t handle. Even they are shackled with shackles, which they must carry no matter how they move.
But as we approach the end of the group, the events of the stories begin to take another turn, in which the writer moves from the issues of men and women to the issues of the modern city, which has narrowed its residents in the time of the epidemic and the collapse of reason. The soldier says to Al-Jazeera Net, “The males and females have narrowed their cities and minds, and they all want to scream and go.”
With the launch, the last story in the group ends, as Ms. Rowena regains her vitality following the long isolation imposed on her by the pandemic, and goes to a language learning class and decides to travel to Cairo, so that the writer reflects her hope for a bright future in which dreams come true and go freely.
