41 pages • 1 hour read
Hanan al-ShaykhThe Story of Zahra
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Pages 123-171Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “The Torrents of War”
Part 2, Pages 123-150 Summary
Zahra, now in Beirut at the start of the Lebanese Civil War, finds relief in the chaos of the conflict; as the war continues, the pressure to marry and socialize is absent. She is free to sleep, eat, and help her mother in the kitchen, knowing what to expect each day even as her parents worry endlessly and hope for a cease-fire. Promises of a cease-fire come and go, and Zahra worries each time that she will once again have to go out into the world and pretend to be someone she isn’t.
As the war continues and explosions and gunfire ring through the night, the conflict no longer brings Zahra comfort. She wonders how life can go on while the war rages; people return to shopping and eating immediately when there is a cease-fire and then retreat to the safety of their homes once the fighting continues. Ahmad returns home after having been gone for a year; he has combat gear and a rifle. When he visits, he brings them money that Zahra’s father refuses to take.
Soon the war comes to Zahra’s own street. There is a sniper somewhere in her neighborhood, and she notices guards stationed around an apartment building across the street where prisoners are kept. Zahra recognizes the guards and calls to them, as she thinks she recognizes them from school; she asks them to release the imprisoned young men. However, the guards do not remember her, and her parents pull her back into the house, questioning her mental health.
Zahra realizes how little she knew of suffering before the war started. She decides to volunteer at the hospital but only lasts a few days before realizing she cannot tolerate what she sees there. She wonders why the leaders of Lebanon don’t call for an immediate cease-fire, wondering if they even bear witness to the atrocities of this war. As bombs drop on homes, her family hides in the basement. After an explosion that almost strikes their home, they decide to go to the village where Zahra’s grandfather lived. Ahmad agrees to go but never actually does.
In the village, Zahra notices how little the war affects the community. She feels guilt for leaving Ahmad and living as if the violence happening in Beirut weren’t happening, so she decides to return. Once in Beirut, Zahra realizes her brother is taking drugs to deal with the stress of combat. She does not understand how he and his friends can laugh and joke, as if such violence were commonplace.
Zahra dreams of her Qarina one night, feeling the weight of a man’s body upon her and struggling to move. She becomes aroused, trying to reach a climax but feeling shame at being watched by her Qarina. She hears the voices of women and children outside her window all the while. When she finally wakes, she realizes the voices are real and looks out her window to see refugees from East Beirut who have been transported to the west side of the city. She realizes later that she could have offered what little she had to one of the families displaced by the war.
She decides to begin a sexual relationship with the sniper who is stationed on the roof of the building down the street from her. As she approaches the building where she knows he is positioned, she worries she will be shot. When she reaches the top of the stairs, she sees him. He immediately begins to have sex with her. Zahra feels relief once she makes it back to her apartment, carrying a plastic sack she brought to suggest she was merely out running some errands.
Part 2, Pages 150-171 Summary
Zahra continues her relationship with the sniper down the street, visiting him daily. Though she feels no pleasure at first, she begins to feel comfort and safety when they engage in sexual intercourse, only feeling a sense of shame and fear as she approaches and leaves the building. Eventually, Zahra has an orgasm for the first time in her life: She struggles with shame before feeling a release she’s never felt before, pouring all the emotions she repressed out with her cries of pleasure.
Surprised at the turn her life has taken, she reflects on her obsession with the sniper and how their relationship came to be. Once Zahra saw the sniper, she began to keep track of how many people he killed. She planned to report him to the papers but realized she could not contact them. One day, Zahra decided to attract his attention by hanging laundry on the balcony of her aunt’s home while wearing only a towel at her waist. She gathered the courage to speak aloud about a bunch of grapes growing on the balcony, and the sniper responded, asking what she was doing. She covered herself, apologizing, and ran inside. He then threw pebbles at the window to get her attention and asked where she lived. She told him and left, cursing herself for not asking him to stop shooting people.
Zahra reflects on the desperation and denial the war has caused. Her decision to sleep with a sniper is an example, and she wonders whether it makes her evil. However, she thinks things like beauty and class matter little in the face of war’s brutality. She realizes the war has helped her find herself and worries about what might happen, especially between her and the sniper, when it ends. These are questions she never asks him.
When Ahmad returns to the apartment, he smokes hashish and Zahra realizes how far gone he seems. She goes to make coffee, and when she returns, she catches Ahmad masturbating. She wonders how they’ve come to exist like this. He hides his spoils of war in their childhood home and offers conflicting stories about the violence in which he participates, telling Zahra first that he fights for Palestinians and all the oppressed people in Lebanon and then that he is fighting against America and imperialism. At first, Ahmad fabricated stories to explain the many items he brings home, but soon he began to tell Zahra the truth—e.g., about a home he looted where a rich family lived. While the family was gone, Ahmad stole or smashed their belongings, bringing home a mirror decorated with a crystal duck, which he offered to Zahra. She wonders whether she should attempt to return the mirror, and whether this is as appropriate as sleeping with the sniper down the street.
Part 2, Pages 123-171 Analysis
Trauma is political throughout The Story of Zahra, as Zahra’s struggles have their roots in societal systems like patriarchy. However, trauma becomes truly public as the war begins in Beirut. Zahra identifies the parallel between the state in which she has always lived and the current conflict, saying, “I knew that I was at home, just as everyone else was at home and taking refuge, no matter who they were” (125). Zahra’s own trauma responses become normalized amid warfare. The comfort in this notion does not last, however: “Eventually I came to hate my bed, and could no longer sleep in it as deeply as I had at the beginning when the fury of the shooting had only made me feel quiet and sleepy” (128). Although Zahra continues to explore the war as an equalizing force, she is no less impacted by its violence than anyone else.
Ahmad’s character arc particularly exemplifies the war’s destructiveness while developing themes of Loyalty, Identity, and Displacement. When Ahmad reveals he’s joined the fighting, his father disapproves, saying to Fatmé, “Who does he think he is fighting? His brother, his friend, his neighbor! We are all Lebanese […] We are all one family! Lebanon is a small country. The pity of it!” (131). Where characters like Hashem show fierce loyalty to a particular cause, Ibrahim urges loyalty to the country collectively. The metaphor likening all Lebanese people to members of a family is particularly pointed given the strain Ahmad’s actions have placed on his own family, once more highlighting the parallels between the personal and political. When Ahmad loses sight of the reason why he is fighting, it further demonstrates the senselessness of the war. Zahra observes, “There was no way of engaging Ahmad in conversation, no finding out what the role was which he performed in this war” (165). It is unclear whether he fights for the Shi’ites, the Palestinians, or because he doesn’t know who he would be without the war. The latter possibility is implied to underlie some of the most unthinking and therefore destructive loyalty, as characters like Ahmad depend on their cause for their sense of identity.
With the return of Zahra’s Qarina, the novel continues to explore Sexual Repression and Shame. In her dreams, she envisions a man on top of her while her physical body freezes, unable to move and ashamed of being watched by her Qarina. However, she experiences pleasure while this occurs. This visit precedes her affair with the sniper, during which she similarly experiences both pleasure and shame—a consequence of the sexually repressive society in which she was raised as well as of the war’s heightened tensions. The return of Zahra’s Qarina suggests a return to her true self and a willingness to pursue her own wants, even if they might be shameful. Through the war and her affair with Sami, Zahra finally releases some of this tension caused by her own trauma and societal demands. After she experiences an orgasm, she thinks, “Let my father see my legs spread wide in submission. Let every part of me submit, from the dark sex between my thighs, to my breasts with their still dormant nipples, my hands only able to tremble” (161). This consent—to both sex and her own pleasure—is a sharp departure from Zahra’s paralyzing fear of her father when she was raped by Malek. She continues, “[T]he war, which makes one expect the worst at any moment, has led me into accepting this new element in my life. Let it happen, let us witness it, let us open ourselves to accept the unknown, no matter what it may bring, disasters or surprises” (161). Zahra finds a new level of acceptance amid the war, coupled with a pursuit of pleasure she had not known was available to her.
However, Zahra also questions her desire for the sniper and her ability to pursue comfort during the war—particularly with an agent of it. She questions whether the Qarina has taken over her body, wondering, “[H]ad the devil taken human form in me that hot afternoon when the Qarina called my name?” (160). Such questions foreshadow the dark turn her relationship with the sniper takes in the novel’s final pages.
