Songs for Darkness

Author: Iman Humaidan

My maternal great-grandmother, Shahira, died asking: What if the locusts returned to devour our provisions and kill our children again? My maternal grandmother, Yasmin, suffered an internal hemorrhage that left her a lifeless body after my mother's birth. My mother, Layla, lived her life in novels then disappeared when I was nineteen, like a grain of salt in the sea. And I, Asmahan, live without my son Kareem. His father snatched him from my arms on his seventh birthday. This is how we are, the women of the Al-Dali family: we leave, or we fall silent, or we go mad, or we simply die prematurely like cherry blossoms. 'We are facing history in its feminist depth, and thus it becomes not only more real but also smoother and more poetic. We are thus faced with another song, with depth itself transformed into an anthem, and time that has found its context and meaning in pain and hope.'