Anorexia under the eagle's wing

Author's name: Latifa Al-Hajj

Recently, Arab narratives have been replete with tales of illness and physical and psychological suffering as a testimony to an experience and a record of reality, so that they are, on a certain level of narrative representation, a pictorial response to the state of metaphorical death that resides within the ailing body while it is still alive. This is also what the novel "Anaroxia: Under the Eagle's Wings" leads to from the first threshold of the title, which the writer Latifa Al-Hajj evokes as a title on the one hand, and a directly dominant theme throughout the text, on the other hand, by which she means the theme of illness. "Anorexia" is anorexia nervosa and an eating disorder that some individuals suffer from without those around them being aware of its causes. It is the disease with which "Salama," the heroine of this novel, was diagnosed. She dreamed of becoming a biologist like her professor at the university. This was before the disease took her dream away from her and she found herself in a hospital specializing in anorexia, surrounded by nurses and therapists on all sides, while she continued to struggle with the disease with others like her. Each patient had her own story with anorexia, which Salama would tell, along with many dreams and hopes for a tomorrow free of illness and disease.