Praise for Elias Khoury's New York Times Notable Book Gate of the "An imposingly rich and realistic novel, a genuine masterwork."Los Angeles Times Book Review Milia's eyelashes drew apart, her eyes still curtained in drowsiness. She made up her mind to close them again and return to her dream. She saw a small white candle whose wan light trembled and flickered in the fog. . . Milia's response to her new husband Mansour and to the Middle East of 1947 is to close her eyes and drift into parallel worlds where identities shift, where she can converse with the dead and foresee the future. As the novel progresses, Milia's dreams become more navigable than the strange and obstinate "reality" in which she finds herself, and the two worlds grow ever more entangled. Elias Khoury, born in Beirut in 1948, is a novelist, essayist, playwright, and critic. He was awarded the Palestine Prize for Gate of the Sun, which was named a Best Book of the Year by Le Monde Diplomatique, The Christian Science Monitor, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and a Notable Book by The New York Times and The Kansas City Star. Archipelago Books also published Khoury's Yalo in 2008 and his White Masks in 2010.
I do not know how to review this book in a way to convey to you, the reader, how important, beautiful and synchronous I found this novel. The book seeped deeply down into my psyche down into my soul and both replenished and challenged me to find my way back onto my spiritual path.
For the past year, I had grown complacent, lazy and over-indulged in the senses, the material world and let go of my spiritual practices of meditation, prayer and small acts of sacrifice. My spirit had become dulled, lulled and my unease, sense of imbalance increased while my intuition, introspection and practice of lovingkindness decreased. My cynicism, distrust and snarkiness increased and my friends and family noticed my usual sense of serenity and centredness were there less frequently. My partner lamented at times that I appeared a tad distant, preoccupied, over-focused on the material. My love for him was as strong and robust but my ability to communicate and share it was more difficult. There were reasons for this that I will not share here but this book directed me back to my practices of connecting to the divine and my deeper self and for that I am extremely grateful.
This book appeared rather strangely a few months ago on our porch. By whom and why I do not know. I did not approach it for several weeks but the title intrigued me. I got the e-book as I have moved away from physical books but am so glad I have this one and keep it at my bedside.
I began to read at the end of August and I resisted it. Judged the book. Minimized it but it had swirled inside me and I knew it was fear of re-connecting to the larger spiritual world that I was avoiding.
I then plunged in and for a number of weeks lost myself in this novel that is not really about spiritual development per se but about an Arabic family in the 1940's. A young woman named Milia to be exact. On the outside, Milia, appears to be a fairly average woman who is a wonderful cook, loves her baby brother to an immense degree and has her heart broken by a young man in the neighbourhood. But that is just the appearance. You see, Milia is a mystic and conduit and does not know or understand that this is what she is. She is misunderstood, sacrificed and gently used by her family and husband for their own needs and in some cases desires. She finds language difficult and yet her world is richer than most. She does not know about the details of the dangers of being in Palestine and she longs for her home in Lebanon and the sweet kisses of her little brother.
Mr. Khoury is able to lift the veil between the external world and dreams, imaginings, ravings, myths, fevers and visions. Milia experiences all of these to a vivid and profound degree and we do not know for much of the time which state of consciousness we are in. We are reconnected on a deeper level to the Christ story, Arabic history and culture, family tragedies and taboos, love poetry, sensual cooking and lovemaking, domestic beasts, hot nights, warm oceans, unjustified deaths and miracles. Mr. Khoury moves us back and forth through time and we learn over the course of the novel the story of each family member. We have only vague outlines and yet the emotional clarity is profoundly acute.
Is Milia the virgin or the Magdalene or perhaps she is the Christ herself ? Or is it more likely that she is a village woman doing the best to survive in a culture where she is loved but minimized? Why are her emotions less important than her brothers' or mother's? Why is she always sacrificed to keep the functioning of the family going? Why are her visions feared and revered at some times and other times ridiculed and belittled? Why is her body used when her spirit is so pure?
Milia, is one of the most beautiful and profound heroines that i have ever met and I love her. Through her example, through her living, I have found my own pathway back.
This book may not have wide appeal for others but it is a turning point for me and for that I am extremely appreciative.
In 2006, I read Elias Khoury's The Gate of the Sun and was spirited away to the "other side" of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Of all the books I read that year, it stood out as a beacon to understanding the Other and worked on me like a journey through another culture.
As Though She Were Sleeping is a journey of an entirely different order. Milia has just been married to Mansour when the story opens. She and her new husband are traveling by car from her Lebanese home town toward their honeymoon hotel in the mountains. Surrounded by fog and cold snow, Milia huddles in the backseat as Mansour walks ahead with a candle trying to light the way for the driver. Already Milia is sleeping and dreaming. She cries out to the Mother of God and the fog lifts.
It is 1946 when Milia settles with Mansour in Nazareth where she conceives her first child. She spends much of her time sleeping and dreaming while Mansour recites poetry to her. He makes love to her while she sleeps. The story of this couple's first year of marriage is the real time of the novel, but the dream time encompasses the history of Syria, the history of both families, and a biblical history of Arabic Christianity. Dream stories and poetry swirl like the fog in the opening scenes, creating an effect both cinematic and phantasmagoric.
I am trying to put into words the experience of reading Elias Khoury's novel. He is a magician with words; his translator is privy to the magic; I cannot do him justice. How did he take the erotic awakening of a young woman, the Christian faith in all it Eastern Orthodox alchemy of history and myth, as well as the complex trauma of extended families and weave it into such a fine and exotic tapestry? How does he know so intimately the heart and body of a young pregnant woman?
Milia dreams her past, her present, and her future, diffusing and recombining the political and economic tensions of the outside world. It takes half the book for the labor of delivering her baby to pass and truly, for a woman labor seems endless and outside of time. Milia labors just as diligently in her dreams to bring her past into focus and to divine the future of her child.
When I awoke at the end from the dream of the book, I was in a sort of saint-like ecstasy. I only wanted to return to the dream and stay with Milia, Mansour, and their people.
This was a fascinating read on more than one account.
First, it describes the world and life of a woman who is sleepwalking through everything, sometimes to the frustration of people around her. She is always half asleep even when they try to interact with her normally. Since I am struggling with chronic exhaustion at this time in my life - sometimes being a bad friend or family member because of it - this was immensely funny to me.
Second, it's, of course, more complicated than that. The woman, Milia, is a mystic. Her dreams are semi-prophetic and everything happens in a style of convoluted magical realism. Often the book is hard to follow because it really has the feel of unstructured thoughts and images you see in dreams, always shifting and trailing away.
Third - I loved the references to the world of Greek Orthodox Arabs (in the areas of Lebanon and Palestina), of which I didn't know much about. The names of the saints and the legends and stories are fascinating. The extra few references to ancient Arabic poetry didn't hurt, either. All in all, it's a great story to read, if you can be patient with the twisted, dream-like way of delivery.
I don't understand the bad ratings. This is a phenomenal book. It's difficult, and it punches you in the gut. But it reads- literally, like a dream. I'm so in awe of Khoury's prose. I discovered him through a writing on Darwish, and I love the way he talks about poetry at large. I don't think I've ever seen an Anglophone author talk about poetry quite like that. This is also a fantastic translation! I do not know Arabic, but this seems like a difficult text to have translated. But it's brilliantly done work.
While she was sleeping Sherif AzerDaily News Egypt : 12 - 06 - 2008
"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come. -William Shakespeare In his latest novel, "Ka'anaha Nae'ma (As If She Were Sleeping), prominent Lebanese novelist, playwright and critic Elias Khoury takes his readers to a mystifying zone located between dreams and death. The novel is like a dream in itself; a flow of breathtaking images springing from the subconscious of Millia, the main character of this profound, moving and majestic story, which ranks among the most accomplished Arabic novels of 2008. Fans and readers of Khoury can easily trace the Palestinian cause in all his previous works, most prominently in his masterpieces "Gate of the Sun. Khoury, a Lebanese citizen, is known for his beliefs in Arab nationalism and his active role in various Palestinian organizations and movements, such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization. In "Sleeping, the Palestinian cause is heavily featured, but eventually takes a backseat for Khoury's elusive philosophy and mediation on life and death. The novel flows freely through the pages without chaptering, akin in structure to Millia's dreams. It contains no precise, confined setting. One can presume though from the unfolding events, all taking place inside Millia's dreams, that the novel is set between Beirut, where Millia was born and grew up, and Nazareth, where she moved after she got married to her husband Mansour. The novel goes back and forth between early 40s and late 50s, ending in 1948, the year of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe). It's divided into three parts, or three evenings according to the text. The first establishes characters and a number of events, while the second and the third blends Millia's dreams and nightmares with different personal and historical accounts. From the first page of the novel, Khoury's words and images creep deep inside the reader's mind, taking him/her to a world of no boundaries or concrete form. As Khoury delves into Millia's psyche, further confusion ensues. Are these images snapshots of a dream, or glimpses of an afterlife? Is Millia seeing dreams stimulated by actual events or visions from another world? Millia's stream of thoughts entangles with her memories of her mother, the nun Milana who raised her, and the numerous relatives she attempts to explore their origins and relationships. Millia is a daydreamer. Through her dreams, she begins to see the future; she begins to get acquainted with the dead and their dreams. Millia's grandmother tells her "the dreams of the dead shall only be seen by the dead, but Millia disregards her remarks, continues to dream, residing longer in her dream world, more than real life. Millia's world is abundant with mysteries, with things that might not mean anything, yet, at the same time, mean everything. It's a strange compost of our fears, adolescent fantasies, sexual desires and death. By the end of the novel, one gets the impression that all that has been experienced is just a dream - of a dead person. Through Millia's dreams, we learn about her adolescence and her awkward realization of the physiological changes that haunted them. Khoury draws a manifest picture of the fears of a young girl, taking her first steps in a new world where she is no longer a child. Her detailed recollections of the hotels, food, odors and characters of her birthplace initially seem like customary descriptions, but later reflect a deep longing for a place, a time and a life she once led. The subsequent implications of the Nakbah on social and personal lives of the characters act as a subtext to explore the isolation and detachment of Millia. Millia travels afterwards to various worlds, soaring from the realms of politics and history, moving to a world of theology and religion, contemplating sexuality and basic instincts, and finally connects all loose threads to reveal the sole absolute truth Millia ultimately discovers . death. Khoury magnificently weaves all these hazy, non-linear storylines without losing the reader at any point of the novel. Above all, "Sleeping is a story about an Arab woman, living in a conservative world that pigeonholes her under certain categories. She's invisible to her society and she seems to exist only to fill the expectations of others. Only through her dreams she finds an outlet to make sense of her life and the world disintegrating in front of her eyes. This novel, by all means, is a peerless experience that will haunt the reader for weeks with its unforgettable images and the stern truths it unearths. Only "Rocks of Heaven, by Egyptian novelist Edward Kharrat, shares few similarities with Khoury's novel in terms of the flow of events, the post-modern storytelling and the religious and political undertones. "As If She Were Sleeping - which is so far available only in Arabic - was one of several books banned at this year's Cairo International Book Fair, primarily because of its frank and graphic sexual contents. "Ka'anaha Nae'ma is published in Arabic by Dar Al-Arab, Beirut, and is available in major bookstores.
This is a seriously weird magic realist novel. But then if you set a book in Nazareth in 1948, and the main character is a heavily pregnant woman who keeps seeing another woman, dressed in blue giving her a baby, in her dreams, you are obviously and deliberately making a link with the most famous family ever to live in the town. If you add to that mix a nun, who lives in Beirut, approaching saintliness, a wandering monk searching for the cave of Elijah and a husband with a penchant for quoting Arabic poetry and you have a serious mix of three cultures at a time of confusion and conflict that has led directly to the current crisis in the Middle East.
It gives nothing away to tell you that Meelya, the heroine, lives in the Christian community in Beirut and expects to be married to one of her elder brothers' friends, but the man deserts her before the wedding takes place. Then she meets Mansour, who is very much like her beloved younger brother, and she marries him. They go on honeymoon, and this is when Meelya's dreams take on a fantastic aura. And then they move to Nazareth.
At the end of the book you must decide what has happened. Is any of the story true, or is it a hallucination that Meelya has during a particularly difficult labour. I do not know even now, which is why I found the book slightly unsatisfactory. Khoury however tells his story in exquisite prose and I forgive him the lack of clarity because of the stunning beauty of his language.
I'm currently reviewing this for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (USA). Will post my review when I'm finished writing it... But I will say that I prefer Marilyn's translation.
The beauty of Arab poetry. From Lebanese (Marionite) Christians living in Palestine. A land (according to Israel) unoccupied by a people who didn't exist -from before the time of Christ.
Sorry to tell that I m totally disappointed reading this book. Book is totally confusing, and repetition and going forwards n backwards is quite frustrating. In yhis book, its so difficult to differentiate a dream from reality.