Dania Idriss's debut book, Tales of the Mountains and the Sea, opens with a story that is not for the faint-hearted. The Lebanese-Canadian author does not hold back in 'The Brass Bowl,' set in rural Lebanon in 1915 during a famine and mass starvation. It focuses on a young woman who has just given birth out of wedlock, shaming her chronically angry mother. The story is full of violence, dead bodies, and graphic depictions of slaughtered animals. The baby goes missing right after birth, and the new mother entertains horrible thoughts of her fate, blending harsh realities with folklore and jinn mythology.
Unflinching Look at History
'I didn't want to shy away from the horror of what our history looked like,' says Idriss in an interview. 'I think I'm drawn to the darker representation. I don't want to show a sugar-coated view of history to make people more comfortable. That discomfort is really important when you are looking at things like famine, a man-made famine, so we can think about what we can do to never experience this again.'
In one sequence, a man threatens to break the women's legs and rob them, but he gets his comeuppance in a spectacularly violent manner. The haunting final paragraphs of 'The Brass Bowl' are likely to stay with the reader long after the last sentence.
Stories Across Lebanese History
Published by Calgary's Freehand Books, the collection features five imaginative and often harrowing stories set in pivotal moments of Lebanese history: from the 1915 famine to the French occupation in the 1920s, Lebanese independence after the Second World War, the civil war in the late 1970s, and finally 'Our House in the Valley' set in 2010 near the Syrian border. All stories involve supernatural elements, though it is left to the reader to decide if the dark spirits, curses, and jinn are real or imagined. The young female protagonists do not dwell on socio-economic issues, colonial history, or political upheaval, giving the stories a timeless quality.
Female Perspectives
'If you are familiar with the history, you may pick up on some subtleties,' Idriss says. 'The locusts in the first story were a very big part of the famine. People might pick up on the time period if they had known it. There's the opportunity to research if you want to, but it's not like shoving anything down your throat.'
Seeing these time periods through the lens of female characters is rare, as narratives about Lebanon's history tend to be told from men's perspectives. 'I wanted to know what it was like for the women in those stories,' Idriss explains. 'When I hear about stories from back home, I'm hearing it from the point of view of women, like my mom or my grandma. My own personal understanding of these stories is very female-oriented.'
In some ways, the supernatural elements give the women authority and power they otherwise wouldn't have. In 'The Brass Bowl,' the young mother buries 'curses' in the ground to protect herself and get revenge. In 'A Pouch of Hair and Bone,' set after Lebanese Independence, a young girl abandoned by her family and taken in by two caring women undergoes a startling transformation when a man arrives to take her away for her own good.
