A review by Mari Oka, for Nikkei newspaper, published on the 27th of July 2024
In August 2013, the Syrian Assad regime dropped chemical weapons on the Eastern Ghouta region near Damascus, massacring hundreds of its own civilians. How can we put into words the height of violence that surpasses humanity and therefore surpasses human language? How can we imprint on the world the memory of these people who died an unhuman death? This book is a literary response to these questions by a Syrian author who was forced into exile as an anti-government intellectual.
The work is full of literary devices. One such device is the setting in which the protagonist cannot stop walking once she starts. When she goes out, she is tied to her mother by a string, and when she grows up, she is confined to the house. Contrary to the title, this book is the story of a girl who cannot walk.
The title comes from Aristotle’s disciples, known as the “Peripatetic School,” who meditated while walking. The protagonist, who is tied to a rope, constantly watched and imprisoned, is a reflection of the Syrian people, who are banned from free thought under a dictatorial regime.
It is not only politics that suppresses free human thought and values. The protagonist, who has reached puberty, is imprisoned because of Syrian society’s values regarding female sexuality. The feminist writer asserts that women who fell victim to the poison gas attack were being killed not only by the regime, but also by these outdated social values.
The story is told in the form of a recollection by the protagonist, who survived the massacre, while confined alone in her room. The narration is fragmented and moves back and forth. Having grown up without any formal education, the protagonist has lived in an imaginary world mediated by books from all over the world, past and present. The way she makes sense of the absurd real world into which she was suddenly thrown one day is through her own unique story world, such as “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Little Prince,” and each event is remembered with its own unique “color.”
This is an understanding that is on a completely different level from how we understand the incident through news programs. But now, 11 years later, how many people remember the tragedy of Ghouta? Even if it is reported objectively, the human tragedy is not remembered as the human tragedy it is, and ends up being consumed as information. But the readers of this book will never forget the orange color that the protagonist saw wetting the mouths of the children lying distortedly on the floor.