Times of Death and Roses

Times of Death and Roses Building a Bridge between Death and Life In Times of Death and Roses novelist, Adel Bishtawi, has his hero, Ali, say to his heroine, Rana: The time of death has moved out, but it's still lurking in the horizon. I sometimes hear its calls in the darkness, but I don't want it. I want someone to pull me away from it. The time of roses hasn't arrived yet. I know that its breeze blows close-by. I empty my lungs, lift my nose and prepare myself to receive it. I look for it at night, at dawn, at sea and in all the faces around me, but I haven't found it yet. I want someone to remind of it; push me to it. If this someone couldn't do it immediately, I won't complain because I know that I'm being pulled away from the time of death. Times of Death and Roses is a novel about transition from the time of death to the time of roses as dramatized in 553 pages that are full of internal and external conflicts. This transition is effected in terms of time and place as well as internally - the latter being the most difficult requiring internal cleansing and profound psychological tests. At another level, the transition takes the form of the movement of two persons who are far apart and different in nationality, psychological makeup and religion, but come together in the end by factors of personal will and destiny as if to say that what the time of death separates the time of roses reunite. The time of death in the novel is the closing chapters of the civil war that raged inside and against Lebanon in the second half of the 1970s and all through the 1980s. The hostilities started between some armed factions of the Lebanese militias, mainly Christian, and the Palestinian resistance and ended with a massive Israeli invasion and the subsequent departure of the Palestinian fighters. It was a vicious civil war marked by large-scale killing, indiscriminate bombardment, kidnapping, massacres and booby-traps of deadly cars. The venue of the time of death is some regions in Lebanon. By contrast, the time of roses is the time of love, stability, marriage, work and planning for a happy family life. The venue is the far away Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Between the two combinations of time-venue is a bridge of conflict, hardship and danger. This transition is the main theme of the novel. Ali is hurled into the abyss of despair when his close friend Maher in killed in an Israeli air raid on the base. He decides to commit suicide by attempting to march through the Doomsday Zone, a minefield, thinking that one of the mines would explode and put an end to his bitterness. This does not happen and he travels to Abu Dhabi to join an uncle working there in the hope of finding a new start in life. But what Ali wants to get away from is actually carried inside him. His heart is full of wounds, his memory heavy with defeats and bitterness. In these internal and external factors clash, intersect and interact. Ali, for example, cannot forget his young sister who had been slain in the infamous Sabra and Shatilla massacre which targeted hundreds of Palestinian refugees during the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. The novel deals with its subject at three levels. The first is external and tackles events as well as the actions of the hero and other characters. The second is internal and handles what is stored in the memory and is now released in a chain of past events and actions that invoke and provoke each other. Interestingly, at this level the narrative shuttles between the external and internal. The third level, which is used sparingly, is confined to the imagination and deals with what amounts to daydreams that are mostly concerned with the future. Time and Space The novel breaks through time and space. Ali is alone on the waters a long way off the coast of Abu Dhabi. In the midst of a world of water, his boat's engine fails to start. He loses his sense of direction. The unrelenting waves and loneliness conspire against him. Here again the narrative moves between two spheres. One is external where the narrator, using the third person, records Ali's actions and reactions vis a vis the new situation. The second is internal where Ali is a first-person narrator reviewing his memories and comparing between life on land and life at sea. Both have something in common: in both the big devours the small and everybody fights for survival. In his loneliness, bewilderment and inability to act, a coincidence begins to change his life. As he heads back to town, he sees two girls jumping into the water in suspicious circumstances. He manages to rescue the younger girl while the senior one is left but to take care of herself. Ali finds out that the two girls were not only the daughters of a doctor who happened to be a friend and business associate of his uncle but that one of them, Rana, was a girl he had known in Lebanon. While in Beirut, Rana, a university student born to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother, is kidnapped at a "flying" (impromptu) barricade while Lebanon was still engulfed in war and hostilities. But the kidnapping turns out to be a make-belief and Elie, a person who commands some authority, enacts a faked rescue. Later on, Rana is drawn by a friend into a gang run by Elie and engages in unlawful acts, including kidnapping, assassination, prostitution and drug trafficking. Driven by need to show gratitude for her alleged rescuers and under the pressure of fear, Rana finds herself obliging the gang. One night she is made to drink and while intoxicated she dances topless, unaware that she was being photographed for the purpose of extortion. Indeed, Elie, whom Rana calls the demon, uses the stick and the carrot to get what he wanted from the girl. The cumulative result is a series of painful memories that turn into nightmares. Twice Rana attempts suicide and twice she is rescued by her younger sister. In the second time, however, the rescuer was to be rescued by the sudden but timely appearance of Ali on the waters off Abu Dhabi. Ali and Rana meet halfway but only after each has built inside barriers that prevent him/her from reaching the other. Soon a common friend emerges and starts to undo the barriers and remove the spikes off the bridge that would carry both lovers to the other side - to the time of roses. Multiple Narrators In telling this story, Bishtawi assigns the narrative task to multiple narrators. He uses various modes of exposition that alternate between the internal, the external and the daydreaming. He employs the past, present and future tenses and jumps through time and space while according myth and popular tale an active role in bringing the characters together and deciding their choices. Times of Death and Roses is a long novel in terms of pages but Bishtawi knew how to knit its parts together and tie its events though not at the expense of dramatic tension. And although the narrative played a dominant role, the novelist gave dialogue ample space, allowing it in certain instances to cover whole chapters. With such a story, mode of address and language, Bishtawi has produced a great novel wherein he traced the movements of his hero and heroine, measured their passions and inner thoughts, dug deep into their souls, analysed their characters and attitudes, emerged from the private to the public, and succeeded in recording an entire epoch of history. For all that, he has assumed a distinguished status among Arab novelists and made the Times of Death and Roses a time of enjoyable reading. From a review by Salman Zain-ul-Deen published in Al Hayat Newspaper (London)