الرواسي تصير هباءً: المفارقة والتضادّ في صميم "مرافئ الوهم" لليلى الأطرش

Abstract

Harbors of Illusion by the novelist Laila al-Atrash, in our opinion, invites a different approach because of its unique structure that essentially features contradictory duals and paradoxes that shaken the usual linear reading, contrary to those who consider that this novel gave up on the experimental attempts in the forms and turned towards a writing on topics of emotional relation that the Arabic novel kept delving into. On the basis of our proposed approach, the meaning in Harbors of Illusion cannot be inferred through the contents that appear on the surface of the novel, but rather through the modernistic form that dwells in the structure of this literary work, through paradox and systems of contradictory duals.
The universal metaphor of the text informs that nothing in this world is certain. All anchors become dust. The time is not the time of human love and whatever seems a safe harbor in actual fact turns to be a mere illusion. The Palestinian reality after the Oslo Accords hides behind this moral: illusionary assuredness, deceitful quietness, deceptive peace, and vanishing illusions.
The first thing to notice in these ironies and contradictory duals in this elusive modernistic form is that the title in which contradictoriness lies in the combination of the two contradictory terms, considering the title the parallel text that surrounds the general meaning. It also draws the attention to the alternations that accompany the reader through the process of reading evolving the main story and its heroism. The moral of the novel also confuses the reader in choosing the place. At first sight, it seems to the reader that the choice of London as the stage of events has a purpose and a moral and suddenly it turns out that his or her expectation is a mere illusion, since it does not matter whether London is the place where events take place or any other city.
As for the disintegration of the organic manifested through main characters each having his own world is concerned, it cannot be but a deception and illusion for someone who is used to traditional linear reading, since the organic in this novel is realized by a reading that investigates the possibilities of the text and is actualized through an exploration of technicalities of symmetry and parallelism which are absent in the fragmentation.
However, the most significant element of the paradox and contradictoriness elements is that the novel is written in a delicate artistic sense and a dense poetic modernistic language rich with metaphors and non-literal senses, in contrast to the shell of the traditional reality that appears in the content.
If this elusive and anxious structure were to have any moral, it would be uncertainty and the absence of love and safe harbors, which reflects the current reality that inspires this high piece of literary work. 239-256