Ahlam Mosteghanemi - The Art of Forgetting: A Guide for Broken-Hearted Women

AHLEM MOSTEGHANEMI

Translated by RAPHAEL COHEN

Islamic religious ruling.

Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani.

Lines from the lyrics of Egyptian singer Abdel Halim Hafezs Risala min Taht al Ma (A Message from Under Water) written by Nizar Qabbani.

A reference to the story of the woman in Medina who was boiling water to feed her starving children when Caliph Omar Ibn al-Khattab visited during his regular nocturnal rounds.

Lebanese salad based on bulgar wheat, tomatoes and parsley.

A square stone building in the centre of the Great Mosque in Mecca.

Laylat al-Qadr is the anniversary of the night in which the Quran is said to have been revealed.

The authors official website is nessyane.com.

First published in Arabic as Nessyane.com in 2009 by
Dar al-Adab, Beirut

First published in English in 2011 by
Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing

This electronic edition published in 2012 by
Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing
Qatar Foundation
Villa 3, Education City
PO Box 5825
Doha, Qatar
www.bqfp.qa

Copyright 2009 Ahlem Mosteghanemi
Translation copyright 2011 Raphael Cohen
The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN 978 9 9921 9451 5

All rights reserved

You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.

Visit www.bloomsbury.com to find out more about our authors and their books. You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can sign up for newsletters to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers.

Love him as no woman has loved
and forget him like a man forgets

I dedicate this book first to those who pirate my works. I know of no one who anticipates a new publication of mine as much as they do.

I owe them my popularity. If it werent for them, the bookshops wouldnt be piled high with thousands of copies of my books with the same cover as the original.

It gladdens me that all should find their means to a livelihood in this book: God makes me a forest and the people my hewers of wood.

Glory to thieves, all of them. This is the age of the light-fingered, not the inky-fingered.

In addition, to that friend of mine
to her nobility in disdain, I offer up this book
to the women who have hitched themselves to waiting
and to the men among men whose arrival changes destinies.

Fellow-thinkers that wish to join a new party that has no memory, no record of bank fraud, no blood-stained history, and no activist or fundamentalist slogans can sign up at www.nessyane.com.

Our only agenda is to confront the imperialism of memory and the pasts emotional hostility towards us.

We cannot promise any ministerial portfolios. All we promise is to ease the burden of your disappointments.

We do not expect material support from anyone. Only your benevolent prayers will make us richer. People, wise up! Your only salvation, I swear, is forgetting. Let memory be your misery no more. Break away from your parties, your confessions, your nationalities and your livelihoods and join a party where all of us are equal before loss.

Readers of this book, please pass on the news.

O men among men we shall implore God at length to once again fill this world with your species, and to help us forget the others!

This is not a feminist manifesto.

It is a womens inventory against masculinity and in defence of man, that captivator to whose charms we are proud to fall victim, because without him we would be neither feminine nor women.

Who says we give a fig about the virility on sale in pharmacies; or to the preening machismo that leaves its shirt open to expose chunky gold chains in the undergrowth and that adorns its fingers with flashy bejewelled rings? The manhood of expensive watches and luxury cigars that flaunts its elegance and its perfume, the model of its car and its brand of mobile phone, in order to hint at former conquests and seduce us to add our names to its list of victims.

What we desire from men is not for sale. Neither China nor Thailand can manufacture it and then flood the market with mens goods intended to fulfil the needs of Arab women.

Gallantry, pride, chivalry, the splendour of composure and nobility of character. The allure of piety, valour, and being true to one woman. The refusal to harm, and honouring the emotional pledge when romantic generosity has a price. The willingness to defend the honour of the beloved, to the very last breath, continuing to stand by her even after separation. All these characteristics, I swear, are not commodities for sale. Simply listing them here prompts a smile and makes us conscious of how crippling our losses and how negligible what remains.

Where have men gone? This is the question on everybodys lips.

The disappearance of manhood has not only damaged womens dreams and futures, but the very order of Creation including the law of attraction between bodies.

Climate change is nothing but the Earths protest that no men treasure her femininity. They have surrendered her, as they surrendered us to the invaders, and left us, and her, to destruction and wickedness.

Let women learn from Mother Earth. No one has been able to silence her or reach a truce with her. And she has not ceased to respond to their impertinence with hurricanes, whirlwinds, wild fires and floods. She knows with whom to be giving and against whom to overturn the table of Creation.

Let them convene all the conferences they wish against desertification, pollution, the ozone hole and climate change. The Earth is not concerned with what they say. She knows that true manhood does not say much. Its mere existence is enough to restore the order of Creation.

True manhood believes with an absolute and unshakeable conviction that it exists in this world to give, to build and to love, not to cause harm.

True manhoods most beautiful definition is epitomised by a French writer: A real man is not one who seduces more than one woman, but who seduces the same woman more than once. Manhood has faith that suffering should not be the fate of those who love, that destruction is not the ultimate destination of every love, that not every woman can be replaced by another and that the struggles to win a womans heart and to keep it for life are mans most significant and beautiful causes. And to this let those aspire, who have aspirations [Quran 26:83].

This book allows those men who steal into its pages to learn from the mistakes of other males on the basis of acquiring manners from the bad-mannered.

They have to learn love from those with little love; to draw an example from the fates of liars, cheats, wise guys and ego-maniacs. Let them know that women have woken up from their age-old slumber.

To the real men, I apologise. I love their wicked intelligence. I am sure they will succeed in wooing women with their manly means, whose charms no woman will resist.