“Sand you think you understand Lebanon is because they explained it to you wrong ». In the 1980s, the country was devastated by civil war and Samir’s parents decided to flee and seek asylum in Germany. It is the story of thousands of refugees and a troubled country from a political crisis that has now become inevitably and tragically economic, one year after the explosion in the port of Beirut, which cost the lives of 214 people. But Where the cedars grow, published by Sem, is also the story of a man and a family, a love letter dedicated to his roots. To write it, in his debut novel, is Pierre Jarawan, a young Lebanese writer, born in Jordan and moved to Germany with his family at the age of three, a country where he still lives with his two children.
Pierre Jarawan. Photo Marvin Ruppert
Pierre Jarawan’s Lebanon, the land of cedars
At the beginning of the novel, the protagonist Samir is stabbed and robbed. “But we are brothers,” he tells his executioners before passing out. “I’m not a stranger, I have roots here”. In the pages of his novel, Lebanon gradually emerges. It starts with the cedars and Fairuz songs and arrives at a more hidden, less stereotyped country. Is it a deliberate choice?
Already with the opening scene I wanted to tell the reader not to trust what he will read about Lebanon in the next two hundred pages. I wanted to put him in a position of advantage over Samir even if he is the one to tell the story. On the following pages, Samir is an eight-year-old boy who is continually told that Lebanon is heaven on earth. Now the reader knows that it can’t be because twenty years later he will be stabbed. Therefore, the meaning of the book is contained in the first page. There is the description of a beautiful Beirut, then interrupted by violence.
The plot revolves around Samir’s father, a sort of Lebanese male Sherazade, who tells his son stories about Lebanon before disappearing. The novel dances between the absence of this man and his Research…
When I started writing, I wanted to tell about the second Lebanese generation, that is, a generation that did not choose to be born and raised in another country. These children often speak the new language better than their parents, go to school and make friends. But at home they are confronted with the origins of the family, which often talks about the past in an idealized way. This leads them to wonder, “Where is home? What place do I belong to. Who or what am I? ”. They are divided between two countries. In Samir’s case, what he is told is not lies. There is a beautiful Lebanon. But this is only half the truth, and when he decides to leave to solve the mystery of his father’s disappearance, he is necessarily forced to deal with the other side of the coin.
Where Pierre Jarawan’s cedars grow, Sem, pp. 448, euro 19
How autobiographical is there in this novel?
A lot, even though my father never went missing and still lives in Germany. But in my family there was not only nostalgia like in Samir’s. There was also anger at politics and corruption. It is a mixture of feelings. Lebanon and the Lebanese are great, but there are a lot of problems. In the fifties and sixties of the last century, Beirut was a luxurious and fashionable city. The Paris of the Middle East they called it. A country where all religious groups could live peacefully side by side. Catholics, Christians, Muslims and so on. But there is also another Lebanon that few know about.
As the protagonist, you will have had to rewind the tape of history for this novel. What research did you do and how did you build the plot?
It took me two and two years of research. I have read books on the war, I have talked to refugees who arrived in Germany in the 1980s, I too, like Samir, have been to Lebanon and I have spoken mainly with young people and students. When I started, I didn’t want to write about politics but it’s impossible to keep that promise when it comes to Lebanon. It is a country that has eighteen different religious groups, all of which participated in the civil war, each with its own militias. And each of them has a different version of history.
Will he still write about Lebanon?
Yes, my second novel, which I hope will be translated into Italian soon, A Song for the Missing, portrays the generation after the civil war, women and men, now between 30 and 40 years old. It is a topic that is very little talked about. It is the generation that saw their illusions of peace shattered in the explosion at the port of Beirut.
In Where the cedars grow one of the characters says that we only go home once because we have only one heart, and only one homeland. Do you plan to come back someday?
No, I don’t want to live in Lebanon because I don’t think it’s possible to have a future in that country now and I want my children to have one. With this political class it is impossible to think of real change. It is only by focusing on the new generations that Lebanon can have hope. On the other hand, I maintain a very strong bond with my origins. But this does not mean going against reason.
Marta Serafini
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