37. Les Désorientés

Name : Les Désorientés
Writer : Amin Maalouf
Publishing year :  2012
Language : French
Type : Recommended, Novel
Recommended by : Soukaina Mkh'
Main themes : Friendship, Difference and Tolerance, Religion, Death, Love, Nationalism, Alienation ..
Recommended for : Anyone who doesn't mind an open-minded text
The book in a few words : A bunch of friends, separated by war, reunited by Death.
The synopsis : Adam receives a call telling him his ex-best friend is on his deathbed, urging him to consider visiting his homeland for the first time in twenty years. Things develop, and now he has to reunite with the ghosts of his past..


The Rating : Excellent 9.25/10

The Review :
I love this book.
(and this review is very superficial, it's more about my impression on the book than it's about its content, and that's because I was too immersed in its universe I didn't write down any notes for my late review .. next time I'll do better, promise).

First of all, shout-out to the awesome wordplay in the title.
To be honest, once I got a feel from the first pages of what this is going to be about (friendship!), I was predisposed to like it. "Novels about Friendship" is still on my search history.. I know, too cheesy! But I happen to be one of those people who believe that friendship is one of the most relatable and universal themes there is, and maybe it deserves its own genre.. Friendship is just underrated.
Then, comes this book to pay homage to this theme/feeling, and it does it handsomely.
Unlike many friendship-related works of fiction that use the birth of a friendship -the pure, warm, exhilarating moment of its coming to existence and its taking shape-, Maalouf chooses to present the story of this little band of people in a non-linear fashion, starting, unlikely, at the death of a friendship. No background, no context, just a long cold internal monologue of one character who decided for some reason that his once-best-friend deserved his friendship no more.
From the get-go, the protagonist, Adam, seems to be a very rational man. With a trailing habit of writing down his thoughts and impressions, we get to read through his reasoning and his judgement, apparently sound and justified, never unfair, never premature. But in all his labored neutrality, his undeniable self refuses to be entrapped in the borders of the logical and the calibrated, and soon it starts to show up, sometimes furious, sometimes uncertain, sometimes judgmental. We only get to know him through his friends and how he thinks of them.
This death was the spark that rekindled many a forsaken friendship. We get to know that the narrator Adam, his late friend Mourad and his widow were all members of clique that was humorously called the Byzantines, obviously for their never-ending discussions of everything and anything. They are the proverbial band of misfits that were joined by their .. "misfitting".
In an effort of regrouping the group, Adam goes through a series of faithful re-encounters with his old friends after more than two decades of their last meeting under the roof of Mourad.

The characters are generally a vehicle of the plot, but the better writers do spend time in writing excellent, well-thought ones. This plot is pretty much a vehicle for the characters. I love those "character stories" because I love to imagine characters as real people, not some plot devices who are either conveniently helpful or unjustifiably villainous. This book hits all the right marks in character analysis (although not as much is character development, more on that later).
Instead of dissecting and labeling every character, the author gives this dirty job to Adam, who takes the liberty in choosing the adjectives he sees better fit the character in question. The use of letters and dialog segments adds a realistic layer to the characters who are otherwise only the product of Adam's imagination and vocabulary.
It goes without saying that a "character story" is as good as its characters. And here, Maalouf delivers.
The friends of young Adam are a merry bouquet of human specimen. Different scents, different colors, different origins but you don't need to be a flower arranger to know that a diverse, multicolored bouquet is more interesting. The book is, of course, more than a display of colorful characters, it's cry for a change. The beautiful selection is far from random, it's symbolic.
The author chose a sample from the human specter that reflects the background of its chosen context : a post-war levantine country. We have the warrior and the pacifist, the thinker and actor, the heir and the exiled, the subtle and the brute, the dreamer and the crushed .. enlaced only by a mere coincidence and the goodness in their hearts .. and this is a beautiful thought in itself.
I can write lengthy paragraphs to praise the character construction and analysis (done generally by Adam, but it's better that way). They were meant to represent real, breathing sections of the society the book is set to represent, reproach and hopefully remedy. We get to meet a couple muslims, a couple jews, a couple christians, a couple atheists, all shot in very different lights. The author may have voiced his own belief through Adam (who is agnostic, but intrigued to the idea of faith), but he kept away for judgements, exploring every faith with a parental fairness, and emphasizing that religion is but one stroke in those human portrait.
The story find its best when it clashes those characters to explore its many themes : from sensuality with Semiramis to sexuality with Albert, the characters work through their differences and authenticity to find an understanding. Their bond is strong and idealistic, but the author succeeds in making it genuine and believable.
The novel doesn't spare any effort to denounce war. War divided the group, sent some to the exile, made some kill and got the others killed, it fouled the lands and the minds and made the gaps between civilizations wider. War didn't only destroy the region, but it destroyed its potential of ever getting on its feet again.
War killed hope. And no character tried to deny it.
I need a second read to recapture the transient wisdoms sprinkled generously throughout the book (I couldn't even write down my favorite quotes, and there were many), but I can say this : we need more books in this vein, and more people reading them. The whole story is a meditation about war and how it helped invigorating every poison spreading in the region (ignorance, extremism, exodus, corruption, abuse of power, fear, hatred, racism ..), and the author suggests that an understanding and a look at the bigger picture is a solution, but he's also convinced that this solution isn't realistic.
The young actors aren't enthusiastic to rebuild the country, and Adam says he has the name of the birth of Humanity, and yet he belongs to its death.
I have only two complaints on an otherwise perfect book is the ending. It was only unexpected or surprising, it was just .. sad. I get some of its vague symbolism, but I still think the plot deserved a better ending (maybe another eclipse to the future?). For me, it was weak and unnecessary, unlike anything else in the book.
My other complaint is the character development, because of the 20+ years eclipse we only get to see a "before/after" shot of each character, and nothing of the transition. I was so into the characters I wanted to know more about them, much more than the book offered anyway. Most of them got cameos rather than lead roles, and that saddened me, even more when we got to have Adam's full background and we got to know why he is the honest, thoughtful, quirky little man he's become (thus making him feel much more real). An equal treatment to the other great characters who were so well written would have made this lovely novel an undeniable masterpiece, but hey, it is still very close.

Favorite Character : 
I don't think I have one, whenever one of them was the focus of the story he became my favorite (and no she, females were underused if you ask me).
If I really had to pick, it would be either Ramez, Albert or Adam.
I might be biased, but I had most fun reading Ramez's arc (dude is funny !). I was deeply moved by extent of his friendship with Ramzi (and when his wife spoke about his friend with all that zeal I couldn't help imagining him talking about him non-stop. It was pretty feelsy man).
Albert was very well contrasted (pre and post his decision). The author called him "subtle" and still gave him two of the most hard hitting moments in the novel. His transformation thanks to the "adoptive parents" was also such a touch, and the fact that his sexuality was  not exploited in his character definition and existence was thoughtful. I also loved his final monologue about the trees and the forests.
Adam was the only character to really grow (and not transform). He's analytical, just and knows how to deal with people (becoming thus pretty much everyone's best friend). He is the character I related to most, but his tendency to disown things he used to care about didn't go together well with the rest of his attributes. The story couldn't have worked without him putting the beautiful, colored pieces together.

Favorite Quotes :
Again, I regret not taking the time to write down my favorite quotes as I usually do, but there will be a reread I promise.
Until then, here are some of the ones I found online that I especially liked :

"On parle souvent de l'enchantement des livres. On ne dit pas assez qu'il est double. Il y a l'enchantement, et il y a celui d'en parler."

"Tout ce qui est soumis au contact de la force est avili, quel que soit le contact. Frapper ou être frappé, c’est une seule et même souillure.
"

"De la disparition du passé, on se console facilement ; c’est de la disparition de l’avenir qu’on ne se remet pas. Le pays dont l’absence m’attriste et m’obsède, ce n’est pas celui que j’ai connu dans ma jeunesse, c’est celui dont j’ai rêvé, et qui n’a jamais pu voir le jour."

"Ce serait simple si, sur les chemins de la vie, on devait juste choisir entre la trahison et la fidélité. Bien souvent on se trouve contraint de choisir plutôt entre deux fidélités inconciliables ; ou, ce qui revient au même, entre deux trahisons."

"Mieux vaut se tromper dans l'espoir qu'avoir raison dans le désespoir."

“Si tu arrives à le convaincre, je t’offre un avion comme celui-ci.”

“Mon meilleur ami parmi les musulmans, c’était Ramez ; mon meilleur ami parmi les juifs, c’était Naïm ; et mon meilleur ami parmi les chrétiens, c’était Adam. Bien entendu, tous les chrétiens n’étaient pas comme Adam, ni tous les musulmans comme Ramez, ni tous les juifs comme Naïm. Mais moi, je voyais d’abord mes amis. Ils étaient mes œillères, ou, si tu préfères, ils étaient les arbres qui me cachaient la forêt.”
“Et pour toi, c’était une bonne chose ?”
“Oui, c’était une excellente chose. Il faut cacher la forêt. Et il faut porter des œillères.”
“C’est à ça que servent les amis ?”

“Oui, je le crois. Tes amis servent à te préserver tes illusions le plus longtemps possible.”
“Mais tu finis quand même par les perdre, tes illusions.”
“Bien sûr, avec le temps, tu finis par les perdre. Mais il vaut mieux que ça n’arrive pas trop tôt. Sinon, tu perds aussi le courage de vivre.”