Enaam Kachaji.. A Narrative of Nostalgia and Alienation!

2023-08-07 21:02:19

Abdullah Abu Deif (Cairo)

Inaam Kachaji, a journalist and novelist, was born in 1952 in Baghdad. When she published her first novel, “Drivers of Hearts,” the hero was overwhelmed with homesickness, and this is also what we find in her novel “Tashari,” in which she deals with the problem of some forcibly displaced people, and “The American Granddaughter.” In which she dealt with events and diaries related to the American occupation of her country.
Thus, the theme of homesickness represented a solid body in her narrative experience, and she lived for a long time outside her homeland, and in such a situation, “no wound heals a wound, but a plug there can relieve a bitter darkness here,” as she said in one of her works. It is an expression that can be applied to the wound of her alienation from her homeland for more than 40 years, as she reaps in alienation the wound of longing for the palm trees, the Tigris and the Euphrates, the two historical arms of Iraq. Her homeland gave her a light that eases the darkness when he raised a banner with her name on Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, and he also honored her and raised the value of her literary experience, as well as her arrival to the short list of the Booker Literary Prize three times.
The Iraqi writer uses the first person pronoun in her work, especially in her important collection, “The Land of the Takh Takh.” In an interview with Al-Ittihad, she said that her stories are almost like realistic testimonies presented by different personalities, about an entire society that has gone through many experiences that deserve to be told, hence the use of The pronoun of the speaker, which gives the impression to the reader that the event is real, as if the narrator speaks with his tongue from the reality of his experience, and this helps his imagination flood and harmony with the character. And you see that all this brings the speaker and the reader closer and jumps over the shoulders of the knowledgeable narrator.
And Inaam Kachaji, despite the beginning of her novel experience late, as it began almost after the American invasion of Iraq, her abundant readings of literature made her one of its pioneers. In this regard, she indicated that she reads all the books that reach her hand in biography and notes, and poetry did not stray from her taste, as she tries to follow everything that is published on social media, which has become a major publishing house with time for different talents in the world, specifically our Arab world. .
The writer says that the movement to publish the art of the novel is abundant, and then she tries to follow what is issued from it every day, and despite that, she can hardly read two novels a month, and she also likes to read and follow political and artistic notes written in the French language, as she has been living in France for many years.
The Iraqi writer blames herself for her emigration from her homeland that resides in her heart and soul, her fictional world and the characters of her creativity, and in one of her works she even compares Iraq, her motherland, and France, her residence.. “Baghdad has an opera? – It has everything – What’s more in it than Paris? Tigris, a million palm trees and my mother!
In the story “The Fears”, one of Kachaji’s creations, the story of seven sisters revolves around a narration between the real and the mythical. In her speech, in response to whether the new feminist movement contributed to improving the status of women in the Arab world, she indicates that Arab women are under social pressure. And cultural, as well as the impact of conflicts and wars in many of our countries, which negatively affect the path of normal and stable human life.
Inaam Kachaji is now working on a novel that she considers herself late in issuing due to the lack of sufficient time, wishing to provide suitable isolation with freedom from journalistic and family duties, to finish it, revealing that her future dream is to write her memoirs after all these years, saying: “I think that in it Surprises that compete with novels.
Researcher Moatasem Bassem chose the works of the Iraqi writer Inaam Kachaji as a signifier of the ancient poetic heritage recalled in her fictional works, which contributed to her nomination for most Arab awards and even the nomination of her name for the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he received so far from our Arab world Naguib Mahfouz.
The study dealt with the ancient poetic heritage summoned in the novels of Inaam Kachaji, because there is a clear presence of this legacy in her fictional texts, and the researcher investigated the places of summoning, explaining its mechanism and reasons in each home.