Victim and Victimizer: Silenced Narratives in Abdul Razaq Al-Rubai’s A Strange Bird on Our Roof (2013) (Ala Satehuna Ta’er Gherib)

Document Type : Original Article

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Department of English, Faculty of Al-Alsun (Languages), Ain Shams University, Egypt.

Abstract

Iraqi war narrative depicts the devastation caused by war and three decades of persecution. Writing about the Iraqis’ traumatic experience is a critical step toward allowing their wounds to speak for themselves and determining the root cause of social and cultural illnesses. This paper analyzes Abdul Razaq Al-Rubai’s A Strange Bird on Our Roof (2013) as a theatrical performance that studies the relationship between the victim and the victimizer. The methodological framework of this paper draws on the theory of war trauma and the concept of real places and unreal spaces to clarify the relationship between the victim and the victimizer, show how they might exchange places, and demonstrate how space might be used as a signifier of trauma. The study highlights that victimization and offending behaviour are intimately linked, that victim and offender populations overlap, and that the same individual – whether the Iraqis or the American Troops - can play multiple roles sequentially or even simultaneously. Through trauma narratives, the analysis displays spaces that exhibit dual meanings that contrast with real places - spaces actually lived and socially created spatiality, concrete and abstract simultaneously.

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