Haifa El-Arab, Lubna Nuweihid, & Nada Shehade Maawad
ISBN 978-9953-405-42-1
“Eventually, Hope Realised…” is the title of the Esoteric Book, written by three ladies, who endeavoured together to achieve a masterpiece bespeaking of their proficiency. They are: Architect Haifa El Arab, the educationist Lubna Noueihed, also architect Nada Chahadi Mouawad. The book enfolds 304 pages of medium size and is published by Society of Friends of the White Knowledge, Beirut – Lebanon. For the first time in the history of Arabic novel, three ladies have joined efforts against traditional norms to bring forth one unprecedented novel, synchronized in solidarity, collaboration and equipollence, also harmonized in methodology, style, narration, and skilfulness – not to mention suspense and surprises.
The triad of ladies have collectively tailored with eloquent diction a genuine world which only the readers could internalize and vivify… and is offered to their own judgment. Immersed in the suspense of motion, profundity of characters, broadness of scope and meticulous analysis, the book “Eventually, Hope Realised…” embraces a sparkling softness and a transparency of portraying going beyond anticipation… summing up what only a woman can unveil in the nature of woman; being innately acquainted with the feminine inner realms.
The novel depicts a true story from the core of modern life, the importance of which lies on the main human prerequisites for enjoyment: Thought and Affection… These two are intertwined in a daily correlated union, ascending towards the secrets behind the happiness of love and ecstasy as enjoyed by the Creatures of Light… “Eventually, Hope Realised…” reminds us in some of its aspects of the bygone epochs of romance, transforming the surprises of our time into a creative unmatched style affirming itself at all times and locations… It also reminds us of the undying love stories that times have endowed with immortality, but in humane touches which instigate emotions and react therewith to the extent of deep joy at one side, and to the point of suffering that attains pain, and tears at other times. The heroes of the novel are four, of contradictory personalities.
Though they are united in a common goal– to save the woman under their custody, the scene of the story is depicted in the spontaneous behaviour of each of them, reflecting ruse, dodge, deception and suffering to the extent of tragedy… yet the story oozes with tenderness, and finesse to the extent of subtlety. Additionally, the book portrays stringency to the point of cruelty and violence, bleeding at the pace of slow death! No matter how problematic it gets, the human self does not lack intimate moments of lucidity, inspiring trances and introspection, with tickling sensations of beauty that ripple the narration, adding strokes of ingenious thoughts and touches of elegance tempered by emotional eloquence in alighting metaphors that eternalize love, in life and beyond…
To what extent may we consider “Eventually, Hope Realised…” a breakthrough in the world of Arabic contemporary novels?! Its story delves deep into the intricacies of a woman’s self who had messed with love and ethics, thus drowned by her foolishness in severe chaotic conflicts scattered with ignorance, pain and disorientation… till she eventually reverted anew and found love in a fresh beginning. She knew love as a true happiness in the heart of every day’s reality, a happiness that revolves around (acquiring) consciousness… to realize at last that only love fills the gap of incompleteness in the self– the incompleteness of woman in man and the incompleteness of man in woman!
The heroine of the novel discovered the meaning of love and its practical importance in everyone’s life– in accordance with one’s consciousness. Excellence in life cannot be attained without love, on the basis that the “will of love realizes the will of life!”. Along these lines, the heroine of the novel narrates the beginnings of her life, which were but a reckless extravagance and a search for excessive desire which made her lose the woman’s value within. But because of her will for life, love lent her a hand, pulling her out of the abyss of misery. She became then conscious that “there would be no meaning for life if it starts with glory and ends in glory, without the dewing of a single tear of Love!”. This raises the bewildering question, how does a great love grow in a tragic reality?!
First, it is worth mentioning that the denudation of the body may be easy, and the confessions of the heart’s passion probably easier… but to what extent can a woman denude her thoughts in front of her beloved one, and reveal all the secrets that had been kept personal, like intimate rare belongings, inherited from experience, prudence and caution, also from suspicion, doubt and most of all, from the her own intuition and what her dreams reveal to her?! For all that, among other memories, constitute the uttermost privacy of a woman, and all this is cherished in that intimate corner of the memory… maybe to seek refuge in from time to time, or to compare it with the lived reality.
The woman, who wants to receive from life more than others, has to give her beloved one more than others. This equation applies in its particularities to the man as well. Then both shall make out of the constituents of the intellect and emotion a favourable ambience on the path of the unification of their shared lives towards the great love that each young man and woman search for. This great love ascends above predicament, torment, suffering and tears… which makes the intellect and the emotion realise the hope of a happiness beyond any expectation! As such, her beloved one revealed in the spontaneity of honesty: “My happiness is vast beyond measure, for the happiness of he who looks at me in my happiness is immense!!!”. In a unique style and a spontaneous streamlined flow of enjoyable depiction, the book also portrays the story of the quarrel of consciousness against the lack of knowledge of oneself and prerequisites…
This quarrel aims at transforming the darkness of ignorance into the light of understanding, also transforming disorientation into an encounter, and collapse into an experience of challenge that transcends the wracks of a woman from the lowest bottom to the noblest meanings of life a woman could embody next to her beloved one. The heroine murmurs to her beloved, expressing her experience in the following: “I’ve always been searching for true love, but I did not know what it was, and I was not able to define or portray it for myself. I’ve been looking for something I long for without knowing what it is. With you, love grew to be a lucid picture, and in that picture, I understood my self, and became closer to it, after it was like a stranger to me. What you taught me is magnificent and inestimable. You made me discover my self without sophistication and complication, but in simplicity, in streamline flow of honesty”.
The heroine became aware that “life is a fascinating chain of beauty related to love, and love related to greatness, and greatness to creation, and creation to an eternity, and eternity related anew to love”. She became fully aware that the woman who knows how to love, knows how to fuse in whom she loves, in the warmth of a furnace… and diffuse in a union emanating from the utmost within… moulding herself in her entirety in each move she takes, and shaping into a kiss embodying the eloquence of love’s loyalty in a transparent silence. “He, who lacks love, misses the humane aspect residing within”. Based on this axiom, the book addresses every person living in love, or searching for love– even if the details of the experience and its apparent context vary… For the mundane self remains the same in its endurance and suffering, and no wonder that the greatest suffering of the self in our times is the lack of true love… So how will “Eventually, Hope Realised…”?!?!?!
