Aaliya An Unnecessary Woman

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"An Unnecessary Woman" is an allegory about how notions of beauty and civilization can endure in a world that periodically descends into barbarism and how women can persevere in a society that never ceases to devalue them in both war and peace. Aaliya is devoted to Beirut, its gossip and turmoil. She makes the reader want to love her city, too, even while relating what it was like to live through years of fear and violence. “Beirut,” she says, “is the Elizabeth Taylor of cities: insane, beautiful, tacky, falling apart, aging, and forever drama laden. She'll also marry any infatuated suitor who promises to make her life more comfortable, no matter how inappropriate he is.”
Aaliya, who knows only English, French, and Arabic, produces her translations …show more content…

For Aaliya, translating her favorite authors is a spiritual discipline. The pointless process is more important than the product.

“An Unnecessary Woman” takes its title from its narrator's sense that she is de trop, a nonessential speck in the cosmos. She is keenly aware of “how alone I am, how utterly inconsequential my life has become, how sad.” Aaliya embodies the discomfort of the …show more content…

At an early age, Aaliya is married off to an older man. But he's useless, stupid, and impotent, and their marriage is never consummated. After he mercifully divorces her. Aaliya is left with their spacious apartment, much to the chagrin of her own family, who thinks she should hand it over to one of her child-rearing siblings. She refuses, and her family hates her for it. On the one hand, she confides, “It has bothered me all my life that I am not like everyone else”; on the other, “May I admit that being different from normal people was what I desperately sought?” This position on the edge is the natural place for literature, too. Aaliyah is a proud outsider, monastically absorbed in her books, reflections and memories. Her thoughts – about war, marriage, sex, suicide and fiction – collide and provide the dramatic landscape against which walking down the street constitutes a significant

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