This article examines the dialectics of memory and oblivion in two Arabic novels deeply imbricated in the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) and its aftermath: Ghādah al-Sammān’s (b. 1942) wartime novel Kawābīs Bayrūt (Beirut Nightmares), first published in 1976; and Ilyās Khūrī’s (b. 1948) postwar novel Yālū (Yalo), first published in 2002. Characters in both novels sift through fragments of their wartime memories, selectively forgetting some and remembering others in order to craft particular textual narratives for themselves that impede, enable, critique, and/or complicate the possibility of their belonging to the postwar Lebanese nation. Ruins are strewn throughout the novels. Instead of embracing ruins as nostalgic markers as did the classical bards of Pre-Islamic Arabia, the narrator of Kawābīs Bayrūt conjures up their innovators, such as al-Mutanabbī and Abū Tammām, to whose introspective meditations on ruins al-Sammān adds her own textured rereading of ruination atop their visceral rejection of all things nostalgia-infused. As the protagonists are continually entangled in (and are produced by) the violence of the war machine, they persistently struggle to integrate into their respective realities, revealing the contradiction at the heart of so-called ‘national belonging.’

中文翻译：

---

记忆犹存：黎巴嫩（战后）小说中的家所困扰

本文探讨了两部深深卷入黎巴嫩内战（1975-1990 年）及其后果的阿拉伯小说中记忆和遗忘的辩证法：Ghādah al-Sammān（生于 1942 年）战时小说 Kawābīs Bayrūt（贝鲁特噩梦），首次发表于1976 年；和 Ilyās Khūrī (b. 1948) 的战后小说 Yālū (Yalo)，于 2002 年首次出版。 两部小说中的人物都会筛选他们战时记忆的碎片，有选择地忘记一些并记住其他一些，以便为自己制作特定的文本叙述，从而阻碍，启用、批评和/或使他们属于战后黎巴嫩国家的可能性复杂化。小说中到处都是废墟。Kawābīs Bayrūt 的叙述者并没有像前伊斯兰阿拉伯的古典吟游诗人那样将废墟视为怀旧的标志，而是唤起了他们的创新者，例如 al-Mutanabbī 和 Abū Tammām，在他们对废墟的内省沉思中，al-Sammān 在他们内心拒绝所有怀旧注入的事物的基础上，添加了她自己对废墟的有质感的重读。主角们不断被战争机器的暴力纠缠（并被其产生），他们坚持不懈地努力融入各自的现实，揭示了所谓“民族归属感”的核心矛盾。