BETWEEN TRIBULATION AND SURVIVAL: WOMEN IN LUTFIYA AL-DULAIMI'S SATURN LADIES
BETWEEN TRIBULATION AND SURVIVAL: WOMEN IN LUTFIYA AL-DULAIMI'S SATURN LADIES

Author : Muhi TAHER MAYSOON
Number of pages : 476-488

Abstract

Lutfiya al-Dulaimi is one of the distinguished Iraqi women writers whose full awareness of the women's crisis has enabled her to diagnose the extrinsic, as well as the intrinsic, circumstances that affect women's character, behaviour and survival. Al-Dulaimi's Saturn Ladies (2009) tells a story of five Iraqi women and a journalist who are living during the War and its aftermath in 2003. The novel shows ostensibly and artistically how violence and loss have impacted these women’s life which is turned into a hell in every sense of the word. The title connects these ladies with planet Saturn which in Arab heritage is described as a planet of misfortune and happiness. Paradoxically, they are the victims of war, yet, basically life in Iraq depends on them. The novel shows how after all the devastating effects of wars that cause despair and death over centuries, most of these women are able to resist war trauma and defeat depressed and darkened life in a continuous war-zone Iraq. These women are portrayed as having profound power of survival, which might be the power of hope, or love or might be the power of their country, Iraq. They are like the mythical phoenix that renews itself from its ashes and emerges to return to life. The current paper will concentrate on the traumatic effects of war and violence in al-Dulaimi's novel Saturn Ladies , concluding that her women's characters are able to survive by sharing the old-new way of surviving, which is 'storytelling' or narrative.

Keywords

Saturn Ladies; trauma; Iraq; narrative; history, survival

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