I remember that during my time as a teacher, I established a literary salon for teachers with some friends at school. My goal, as an Arabic literature teacher, was to encourage my students to read by creating a role model.
For me, it was an attempt to create new bonds between me and those I love, or rather, an attempt to heal a wound or steal a smile…
I suggested to the salon that day that we read the novel “The Patience Stone” by Atiq Rahimi, but the surprise was when this choice caused a commotion and condemnation among some readers, and a discussion took place at that time about the prohibition of circulating such works!
In short, a state of anger and resentment prevailed, and I found myself compelled to speak of self-evident truths that I had never considered open to discussion. I am the daughter of a religious man, and our house contains a large library filled with books on jurisprudence, Sharia, and its principles, alongside novels by Naguib Mahfouz, Abdul Rahman Munif, Tayeb Salih, and Gabriel García Márquez…
That was my first encounter with ceilings, and with fear that stifles and obscures, until reading becomes merely a passive reception process in which we have no critical mind.
I recall this incident whenever I contemplate the cultural scene in Jabal Amel. For more than forty years, or since religious parties took over the banner of resistance, we have been unable to produce a cultural atmosphere worthy of respect.
Creativity was restricted by a series of prohibitions and taboos, which made literature a servant of the mobilization political discourse, rather than a project parallel to the resistance project. This negatively impacted the creative output, so that creative sectors such as poetry, theater, and the novel remained largely marginal, or linked to media mobilization, without a real space for imagination or criticism.
In this regard, it is worth noting that we are not asking the writer to be non-affiliated, or to refrain from adopting visions, ideas, and beliefs, because that is impossible. We are the product of an upbringing, ideas, and history that we cherish. However, the issue lies in the space within which the creator decides to operate, which, incidentally, should be a free space open to all possibilities…
Totalitarian parties have always tried to suppress creative people or push them to express their value system. The Soviet Union did this, pushing art to express the values of communism (Maxim Gorky is an example of this through his novel “Mother”, an icon of literature that glorifies the proletariat).
Returning to the experience of resistance in Jabal Amel, despite the importance of this experience, its human richness, and the greatness of the sacrifices it made, it did not produce creativity that matched its achievements, and if that happened, it would not be free from the crudeness of slogans and their noise, far from human depth.
Most of these texts belong to what is known as committed literature, which appoints itself as the guardian of the recipient, presenting him with lessons, morals, and sermons directly, as if it is constantly afraid of misunderstanding or the stupidity of the recipient that may drag him into unsafe areas of understanding and interpretation!
The Palestinian resistance escaped this constraint when its creators unleashed their imagination and creativity, thus cementing their unique narrative in the collective consciousness. This enriched the Arabic literary scene with novelists, poets, and painters such as Ghassan Kanafani, Emile Habibi, Samih al-Qasim, Mahmoud Darwish, Naji al-Ali, and others, who ensured that the bleeding Palestinian wound remained present, visible, and open for future generations. This influence extended to the Lebanese national resistance, which was a natural extension of the armed Palestinian presence in Lebanon. This small country provided a shared space and a safe haven for expression and revelation, despite the iron, fire, barricades, and the absence of any semblance of security in the conventional sense. In this climate, many names shone, such as Elias Khoury in the novel, Shawqi Bzeih, Abbas Beydoun, Muhammad Ali Shams al-Din, Hassan, Muhammad, and Issam al-Abdullah in poetry, and Ziad Rahbani, whose name became synonymous with the Lebanese Communist Party and the national resistance, particularly in the 1970s and 80s, adopting a discourse in his theater. Once a leftist, and many times a scathing critic of the left’s mistakes…
Therefore, the drought in the creative arena in recent years has been accompanied by an increasing sense of power and control, which has caused those belonging to this line to forget that language remains a stubborn horse, resistant to taming and molding, and it is impossible in any way to seize it by the collar and drag it where we want. As for soft power, the power of creativity and beauty, it is what remains after the demise of the mightiest empires.
Because memories drag on and on like beads of a rosary, I will tell you about my grandmother, and my grandmother is the sky of Jabal Amel before it was enclosed by walls, and its rivers that rebel against the banks. I remember her sitting at the head of the room reading to us verses of poetry by my grandfather, which contained a lot of boldness. My mother’s cheeks would turn red, and she was shy by nature, and she would ask her to read other poems that did not offend modesty, but my grandmother would look at her reproachfully and say: This is poetry, my daughter!
My grandmother’s aesthetic theory, which I adopted and still adhere to, is the only way to save our creativity from being lost. It is capable of breaking down all barriers to create a new cultural atmosphere in our society, one that is open to true creators, introduces them to the public, accepts them, and draws upon their experiences and expertise, thus paving the way and preserving its history and heritage with a generation of free writers…
Until that happens, our own narrative will remain hidden, imprisoned in the minds and thoughts of our creators, for fear of a social authority that has become accustomed to setting itself up as a judge that proves and erases, rules and judges, analyzes and forbids. Until then, the absence of great creative texts will be the most powerful and present text!
If religious and partisan restrictions—as previously mentioned—stifled creativity, the Lebanese state, represented by the Ministries of Education and Culture, was no less negligent. In fact, it contributed to fueling the Shiite community’s sense of marginalization. Anyone who examines the Arabic literature textbook used in schools will notice how it includes the names of prominent poets and writers from specific sects and regions who played a role in shaping Lebanon’s cultural and literary identity, while almost completely ignoring figures from Jabal Amel, such as Muhammad Ali al-Houmani, the poet of independence, and his daughters Balqis and Amira, as well as Musa al-Zayn Sharara and others. It even neglects historians of the stature of Sheikh Ali al-Zayn, Muhammad Jaber Al Safa, and Sheikh Suleiman al-Zahir, who were members of the Arabic Language Academy in Damascus, thus erasing an entire chapter of Jabal Amel’s literary heritage.
This omission did not remain a passing detail, but rather turned into an open wound in the collective memory of the Shiites, who found themselves absent from the national literary and cultural narrative, as if their contributions to building the literature of the Renaissance and independence era and the effects it left on Arab culture did not deserve to be mentioned.
Any attempt to reintegrate the Shia community into the state cannot succeed without restoring its historical significance and rectifying the injustices perpetuated by marginalization in educational curricula and cultural policies. Without this, their sense of belonging will remain incomplete, and their citizenship will remain precarious. Furthermore, the return of the Shia to the fold of the state does not merely entail their political and security protection, but also the recognition of their contributions to shaping Lebanon’s cultural identity. This is a fundamental prerequisite for rebuilding their citizenship and establishing a new social contract that guarantees them justice.