On Thursday, April 16, Vassar Senior Lecturer in Arabic Mootacem Mhiri led a discussion panel with Lebanese novelist, writer and researcher, Iman Humaydan and translator Michelle Hartman to talk about the writing process and translation of Humaydan’s novel “Songs for Darkness.” This meeting was part of a larger tour promoting the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, an award that celebrates creative Arab literature and encourages people to read the works of Arab authors.
Mhiri first introduced Humaydan, who was a creative writing professor at the Paris 8 University in Saint-Denis, France until 2023. Humaydan studied sociology and anthropology at the American University of Beirut and later led research studying the “families of the disappeared” during the Lebanese Civil War. Her first book, “B as in Beirut,” was published in 1997 and translated into English 10 years later. Many of Humaydan’s novels received international recognition and Mhiri shared that several have been translated into a variety of different languages, such as French, Italian, Dutch, German, Armenian and Georgian.
The second guest, Hartman, is a Professor of Arabic Literature at McGill University and a professional literary translator who has translated over a dozen novels from Arabic to English. She has worked with Humaydan for 20 years on the translation of many of her novels, and the two have continued their relationship through their work on this most recent novel.
The talk began with a discussion of Humaydan’s most recent work, “Songs for Darkness.” “It’s a novel that captures a collective pain of migration through the stories of four Lebanese women. Iman recalls the voices of four generations of women,” Mhiri described. Following the introduction, Humaydan herself shared the first chapter of her new novel. The chapter titled “The Letter” depicts the harsh reality of having to migrate and the feeling of never fully leaving behind a place one previously felt attached to. After the reading, Humaydan opened the floor to questions from both Mhiri and the audience, much of which included students who had been assigned the book for Mhiri’s AFRS 205: “Arab Women Writers” class.
Hartman then explained the uniqueness and strength of her collaboration with Humaydan. “I know how she writes. So it’s not my own writing, but it’s like, almost, right? Because we know each other really well,” she said. Within the book itself, Humaydan began discussing why she chose to follow four characters. “I was interested in the history of Lebanon, actually not the history with a capital ‘H.’ It was the history of women. So I needed to have more than one character,” she explained. Starting in 1908, the book follows the path of four generations of Lebanese women, depicting their experiences through World Wars I and II, Lebanese independence, the Lebanese Civil War and the 1982 Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon.
Both Humaydan and Hartman established their shared view of how one should interpret history as more circular than linear. Hartman explained, “The text itself has this circular nature in it and a lot of the stories are also told in a circular way. And definitely when I work even as a translator, I am not someone who starts at the beginning and goes straight to the end. And I know that Iman doesn’t write like that either. So we are mirroring that circular quality in our own work, and the text is mirroring it, and the history is mirroring it.”
When asked about a specific passage in her reading, Humaydan shared a story about the lasting permanence of home and the sense of eternal attachment it creates. “[An author’s father] was dying and they asked him after 70 years of living in the U.S.A., what do you want before you die? He said, ‘I want grapes from Smyrna.’ Smyrna is a city in Türkiye. And to ask for something you love after 70 years, you never really left.”
After the discussion, Miscellany News reporters asked Mhiri why he assigned “Songs for Darkness” to his students. “My main goal is nurturing my students’ curiosity about Arab culture and demystifying it for them. The books we read, the movies we watch, and the guests we bring to campus all contribute to humanizing the culture and the people behind the news,” he explained.
One of Mhiri’s students, Hadi Ali ’29, shared his thoughts on the talk, and why he found it meaningful. “I’m interested in learning more about the Arabic language and how it’s used, especially in literature, so this talk provided a good chance for that. Also, the author is Lebanese, and I am too, so that was interesting and very relatable.”
Julian Balsley ’28 [Disclaimer: Balsley is a News Editor for The Miscellany News], a student in Mhiri’s class, shared his thoughts on the relevance of the novel and its connection to current events. “This book is especially potent right now, when Israel—using US weapons—is occupying southern Lebanon, despite a current 10-day ceasefire. Since March 2, according to Al Jazeera, Israel has killed more than 1,400 Lebanese people, including 126 children, and displaced over 1.2 million,” Balsley wrote in an email to the Miscellany. “And this is only the latest act of terror Israel, and its allies the United States and France, has visited upon the Lebanese people. Humaydan’s book brings to life the daily suffering these powers have inflicted on Lebanon since before World War I.”