Fragments of Memories: A Story of a Syrian Family (Interlink World Fiction)

ugh.

Fragments of Memory tells the autobiographical story of a poverty stricken Syrian family forced to live as migrants workers after the Great War. Told from a young son's point of view, the novel details the plight of a flawed father, devoted mother and two sisters forced into servitude. The family struggles to remain together despite forces that threaten to tear them apart at every turn: poverty, alcoholism, economic downturns, locusts, homelessness, bandits and the ever present greed of the landed gentry. It is a snapshot of a time when the agraian life of the region was on the verge of collapse as families became disposessed of their land and livelihood.

Fragments of Memory is a socio-historical novel that illustrates the characteristics of rural life in Syria at the time of the French Mandate. This biographical novel is particularly effective in illustrating issues related to the exercise of power and the role of the state. There will also be an analysis of the expectations of family life and the respective roles of men, women and children and the role of religion in daily life. The Novel offers considerable insight into relations of power and the role of the state in rural society. The vicissitudes of the author's family in al-Suwaydiya and the village of al-Akbar clearly show that the landowner and the village headman - mukhtar - held all the power, especially when the landowner was also the mukhtar as was the case in al-Suwaydiya. The first chapters of the novel describe the family's move from the administrative capital Latakiya to the coastal village of al-Suwaydiya. There the family virtually submits to a sharecropping arrangement with the mukhtar, Mr. Elias, who owns the land, which entitled it to earn a quarter of the income accruing from the cultivation of mulberry trees while the rest went to the mukhtar (p.19). The paramount characteristic of this arrangement, however, is the relationship of dependency that the family develops upon the assistance of the mukhtar that borders on slavery.

It's a good read, in terms of being contextualised at the time of the fall of the ottoman empire and colonialism with the British/French. We see what it's like in Syria for families with economic troubles. They flee time and time again with poor quality of life. It represents domestic reality caused by the history of Syria- the troubles that colonialism caused on a local scale.The text gets slightly repetitive and is somewhat slow moving but overall a great read!