The writer's heart, in exile

Being forced to reconsider your writing universe in a foreign language is a painful experience. In the former communist Central and Eastern Europe, the outcome is mostly a love-hate relationship with the mother country, an overcriticism against what it is perceived as cultural and economic underdevelopment and political immaturity. Or, they are dreaming about an utopian space, whose traditions were brutally destroyed by the foreign influence - specifically, the Soviet one.

Practically, the pain is the way in which you should reinvent yourself, your words, the new dictionary you should learn - culturally (because otherwise you cannot be took into consideration by any serious edition house) and from the point of view of the language in itself. You should reinvent your style, yourself. And even after the successful integration and the first edition published in the new language, the feeling of being a foreigner remains: in the interviews you are asked to express yourself as belonging to the other world and you are still considered a curiosity, not part of the Western canon.

If in the case of the case already mentioned - of the former communist countries writers - it is possible to find common references - obsessively considered as a proof that Central and Eastern Europe is part of Europe too, for the writers beloning to the Middle East, this link should be reinvented. And, the use of "big" regional categories - as Central and Eastern Europe, or the Middle East - cultural constructions we are using because of our laziness of thinking - is explanatory enough to proove our serious limits of understanding the other.

But our knowledge in itself is quite limited. And all we could do is to try, as much as possible, to improve little by little the confuse shapes of our knowledge, by reading and trying to find out more about other cultures and representatives of those cultures. And you need passion and a lot of perseverance, even you assume for the very beginning you will never be able to learn "all". An incentive and a possible reason to try to coexist with our own ignorance.

Rafik Shami's book - Damaskus im Herzen und Deutschland im Blick - is my first contact with Syria, viewed from a writer. Who was forced to left the country and reconsider himself as a writer. Who is now published in Germany and in other countries, but not in his home country. We are living in a globalized world, where the identities are shaped and reshaped several times during our life-time, according to the influences we are receiving from various environments we choose or we are compelled to chose. But we cannnot refuse ourself the question: who I am, which is the main narrative I am belonging to? A given political context - the dictatorship, in this case - should force a choice, you assume because no other opportunity for intellectual survival. But after this situation is gone - not yet the case in Syria - this choice is to be reconsidered and your identity rewritten. The red-line of the entire writings of a writer in exile: Who I am? Who I dare to be? For how long? How to go beyond the permanent status of a foreigner - in the home-country as in the chosed country?

And how to explain yourself? Using what kind of language? And the context in itself is not very helpful: the "mediators" - foreigners familiar with the language and culture of your home-country - are lacking, or are misleading. Your voice could be without any impact, because your difference don't fit the usual stereotype about your culture - mainly shaped by various political and geopolitical elements. Another added value to your loneliness.

The foreigners, with different cultures, backgrounds, level of education, are a part of the Western societies you cannot neglect. Sometimes it is difficult to understand. A very useful example - with some comic accents - in the book is related to the ways in which patients originary from the Middle Eastern countries are behaving in relation with the doctors and various medical requirements. A translator should be there to explain to both parts about the tabus and cultural limits and how to find a "healthy solution".

If it will be to find a word to resume to whole book, it is dialogue. It is not about strengthening the differences and to fight an enemy - not easy to find, just to have the disponibility. From the tradition of the coffee houses - put under political observance, since the very beginning, the 16th century - to the 1001 Nights, everything is about dialogue, discussion. When the weapons started to talk, it is only under the political influence. How to counterweight the political influence with the intellectual power it is still problematic and, at least for the moment, impossible.