Maath Alousi
20/9/2025

Betool Khedairi is an important Iraqi writer. I am a fan of her books, she surprised the world in 1999 with her first book in English and Arabic, “A Sky So Close” and when I congratulated her on it - at that time it was the talk of many world universities - she answered me, “ My teacher told me that the writer is not considered a writer with one book so I wrote the second “Absent” ”. That’s what sparked my critique.

Recently, she told me that “Absent” is on its way to the English theatre. With my knowledge of avant-garde British drama, that was my happy moment. It seems that the time of truth has arrived where “Absent” will thrive on stage.

Yes, even her early book “A Sky So Close” in its English and Arabic versions, with its rebellious style, found a significant reception by many universities around the world and international book fairs. Bold and transparent, it is full of details describing the city; while there was still a city that had presence.

In 2004, I wrote the following:

Dear Betool,
I read “Absent” or rather I lived it, and suffered with its people, but at the same time I enjoyed reading it so much that I found myself forced to record some thoughts and impressions which doubled my enjoyment of the book.

My reading was on two levels; emotional parallel to abstract-analytical, and these levels often cross paths making me stop to recover myself and my breath - a time interrupted - where I am unable to isolate myself from tragedies and tribulations of people who may be my family or acquaintances, people who have no power and no liability except that they are in their inherited place, cradling the richest of human civilizations. These people happen to exist at the worst moments in time becoming witness, as we were, to the demolition of all components of the homeland, starting with the human being and family, ending with stones and history.

I allowed myself to elaborate, without limiting myself in what I wanted to say, using your words Betool, because I found in “Absent” the genuineness of us Baghdadis, in all our elements from language to suffering, in place and time, which is a particularity that is not understood nor clear to other non-Arabic speakers who cannot comprehend these elements, surprised as they are and wondering what was happening to Iraq and its people.

I would like to thank you with appreciation for giving me the opportunity to explore the depths of “Absent” and enjoying reading it.

Maath Alousi - Limassol - March 2004.

Starting with the title “Absent”, the name for Iraqis is a clear and direct indicator carrying a kind of heartbreak; the absence of a dear one and the anticipation of his presence is a never ending suffering. Since the absence of Imam Mahdi, Iraqis call married men and women after their children and most likely the male. Ali is Abu Hussein, Mohamed Abu Jassim, Omar Abu Khattab, and Qais Abu Layla. And he, who was not lucky enough to have children, is Abu Ghayeb “Father of Absent”; the eternal absent one, although they do not admit this.

Why was the title not “Father of Absent”? Or "Mother of Absent"? since they are the focus of attention in the novel. Here comes the symbolic meaning of the title; everything in the novel is either absent or made absent. All the members of the building have a certain absent someone or something. Dalal, from the age of weaning is orphaned. Her friend Ilham is looking for her French mother who left her in the care of her father before his death. Sami is looking for missing friendship and health. Security and peace are lacking due to bombings and persecutions by the authorities. And even human conscience is absent from some of them; by choice with Adel, and by force with Saad the hairdresser who tries to live an alternative contemporary lifestyle, keeping up with globalization by insisting on calling his profession, “coiffeur.”

The only thing that is present with power and determination is war and its calamities; present not through military operations (except for the rocket falling on the building and its surroundings, in preparation for an event much more important than its fall, which is erecting the tent of terror), but through the devastation in the details.

In the context of the novel, war underlines the daily suffering of humans, starting with the lack of essentials such as medicine, food and pencils (in the country of writing and colors). It follows with the absence of services due to the continuous power outage, and the flooding of sewage water drains in the building. The list ends with Iraqis facing hardship at the border checkpoint in Jordan's Al-Ruwaishid, the only legitimate passage for going out to the world in their forced migration, towards a new kind of suffering.

“Absent” is not literature of war, but literature of the time of war; a hidden protest through detailed narration of the harm it caused Iraqis. Their torments can be listed, referenced and archived under the pains of war and besiegement. And with this, Betool takes a clear position about her opinion of wars, without criticizing the causes, or accusing the offenders, or burdening them with the aftermath. The results are the same; suffering of humans, and worse, the loss of elements of the homeland. Recording this position is far from straightforward, hence raising the bar of the protest. This led to elevating the narration into a climax of creating images of incidents, in spite of their darkness, which are comical, expressing a complementary powerful self-criticism.

At this point, I am reminded of the literature of “Group 47” of German writers that was founded to rectify the damage that hit German culture during the Nazi reign before the Second World War. Especially in "Tin Drum" by Gunter Grass (Oscar sneaks under the table to watch sexual harassment( and also Dalal eavesdrops from the kitchen whenever her aunt Um Ghayeb and husband Abu Ghayeb practice their marital rituals.

“Absent” is special in its Baghdadi dialect and events, in place and time, written in beautiful Iraqi Arabic that flows with eloquence, distinguished by mixing seriousness with fun and sarcasm, a language that helps Iraqis deal with their daily life and pains. It is rebellious and critical and goes beyond comedy.

I found out lately, due to the recent wars, that Arab intellectuals are not aware of the particularities of Iraq, to the extent that a professor at the American University in Beirut asked Dr. Abdul Rahman Munif, when we visited him weeks before his death, “Do Iraq and Iraqis have a specific identity?”. Abu Yasir's answer was, “Even the city smell in Baghdad has its own uniqueness, it varies from the eastern side of the river to the western side. It is a collection of diverse particularities that make up the identity”.

This higlights the particularities in “Absent”. The characters are colored with different backgrounds, inclinations and whims, all melting in one pot; the building of Um Mazin in Paradise Square, which used to be the Square of the Unknown Soldier. This was demolished and replaced by the statue of the president, who himself became absent forever. In “Absent” we see mixes of juxtapositions; seriousness with fun, sarcasm, science, culture with ignorance and reality, (where everyone is infected with some type of plight such as psoriasis, cancer, facial disfigurment, gases in the digestive system, mixing innocence with meanness and betrayal, and love with hatred - according to Saad's description of the relationship between the aunt Um Ghayeb and her husband Abu Ghayeb).

The narrative in “Absent” is very exciting, as the event reaches us in installments, its end could be at the beginning, where the recipient is allowed to re-construct the composition tailor-made to his personalized vision and desires. This adds another dimension of imagination similar to enjoying a work of art. From the beginning and from the second page, as we start by sweeping the shells, we wonder which shells? Eggshells or orange peel? Until we get to the end of this part of the narrative, we discover that they are skin crusts of the chronic psoriasis that plagues Abu Ghayeb.

This intriguing style of narration is dominant throughout the novel, which makes the element of suspense continuously present, confirmed by the grim sarcasm of the narrator Dalal, an ongoing mockery even in the darkest situations, as when she describes the closing of a cancerous breast extraction sewn with embroidery thread.

The novel itself is a narration of events recording the country's condition in a certain time, intertwined with stories of different eras built on the specific formation of the Iraqi society. This is synchronized with oral history through stories handed down from generation to generation.

The gradual narrative construct provided the possibility of cutting without touching the essence of the novel. This cutting technique is similar to the French cinema movement "noir et blanc" and the English "kitchen sink drama" and films by director Peter Greenaway, specifically in his film "Prospero's Books". The cutting in this work includes cutting one frame of the screenshot into a one time lapse. This process of “deconstruction” (as Jacques Derrida calls it) adds to the novel a contemporary literary quality.

This process is not strange to classic and modern Arabic literature since the cutting and cascading of images is common in poetry. This is where local meets global, elevating the literary work, carving a position in the archive of contemporary humanitarian literature, similar to the modern literature of Latin America.