The Perfumed Garden is part of an ongoing novel project, Khan elThawra.
The project will explore the production, maintenance and manifestation of mainstream ideologies in the Arab world. It creates a constant confrontation between the visceral and the acquired notions of being. It disassembles acquired political constructs and puts them in competition with visceral evolutionary life systems.
How sustainable is an enforced construct? How dependent is a people on these constructs, their methodologies and why?
The viewpoint of this project is as broad as the construction of our contemporary arab environments, and as specific as marital fidelity. The paradigm that is being anatomized is the 'Mistress vs. Wife' and the concept of the 'Learned Unethical'. As our focal points have been shifted from the center of our bodies and lent to politically driven ideologies and discourse, life has become exhausting.
It is exhausting to live in an impersonal apartment. The decline of Arab architecture. It is exhausting to speak in acquired dialect. The decline of Arab language. It is exhausting to consume imported produce. The decline of Arab commerce. It is exhausting to not be able to live with whomever you love. The decline of Arab society. It is exhausting to be helpless - to think before calling it Palestine, Occupied Palestine, or Israel. The decline of Arab sovereignty. It is exhausting to be packaged, framed and dubbed Third-world. The decline of Arab identity.
The Perfumed Garden proposes a different mapping of the Arab world, reshuffling it geographically where one can walk from Beirut to Jerusalem, for example. In terms of production, the chapter was written in conjunction with Issue Zero of The Outpost magazine. What was used as external media were the articles in that issue. The topics and characters discussed where the main building blocks of "The Perfumed Garden"'s plot and narrative.
The project will explore the production, maintenance and manifestation of mainstream ideologies in the Arab world. It creates a constant confrontation between the visceral and the acquired notions of being. It disassembles acquired political constructs and puts them in competition with visceral evolutionary life systems.
The Perfumed Garden proposes a different mapping of the Arab world, reshuffling it geographically where one can walk from Beirut to Jerusalem, for example. In terms of production, the chapter was written in conjunction with Issue Zero of The Outpost magazine. What was used as external media were the articles in that issue. The topics and characters discussed where the main building blocks of "The Perfumed Garden"'s plot and narrative.
