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Tadmor’s Ghosts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

miriam cooke
miriam cooke*
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Extract

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“You shall not escape us even while you sleep. Your victims’ vengeance will pursue you for blood… Even if you muzzle their complaints they will haunt you even as ghosts… You have poisoned the life of the people, wounded their souls… Wisdom at all times Is to destroy the jail Not to cut off the hand of the jailor. We have completed our little duty From now on we shall begin our great duty: This tyranny shall never recur” (Mamduh Adwan, The Ghoul 1995)

Mamduh Adwan (1941-2005) was right eighteen years ago. The people whose lives Hafiz al-Assad had poisoned and whose souls he had wounded would pursue his son for blood. Decades of living with walls that are—not have—ears have produced rage and a demand for vengeance and justice: “From now on we shall begin our great duty: This tyranny shall never recur.” These lines call for revolution. It is not enough to cut off the hand of the jailor. The jail must be destroyed.

Type
Special Section: Cultural Production in the Arab Spring Part I
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , Summer 2013 , pp. 28 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 2013

References

Works Cited

cooke, miriam. 2007. Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. 1966 [1961]. The Wretched of the Earth: A Negro Psychoanalyst’s Study of the Problems of Racism and Colonialism in the World Today. Translated by Constance Farrington. 6th edition. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
Yazbek, Samar. 2012. A Woman in theCrossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution. Translated by Weiss, Max. London: Haus Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar