Images of Social Oppression in the Stories of "Dream Fires" by Intisar Abbas

Shattering Family Security

In the story "The Scent of Roses," oppression is represented by the violence that invades a family's life and destroys its stability. The story begins in an intimate domestic atmosphere, where roses, jasmine, and rose syrup are present, and where the father contemplates the relationship between life and death, and joy and pain. However, this familiarity hides a tragedy that is gradually revealed through the appearance of a stranger who resembles the late father.

The man recounts how he and his family were subjected to an attack by bandits on a desert road, who shot at them and robbed them of their money. After a long coma, he was told of the death of his wife and daughter, while a bullet remained lodged in his head, causing him recurring pain and health disorders.

The crime here transcends the moment of its occurrence; violence continues in the survivor's body and memory, depriving him of the certainty of what happened. Returning home becomes an attempt to reclaim a life that was interrupted, while the characters are torn between feelings of nostalgia, doubt, and fear.

The red and white roses perform a symbolic function related to the duality of pain and hope, and their significance reaches its peak at the end, when the man leaves two roses on the window, and "cracks of light" appear between them.

This conclusion opens a space for hope amidst ambiguity, suggesting that violence, no matter how long its effects last, is unable to erase the human need for love and belonging.

Hidden Oppression

In the story "The Wailing of Rings," the ring becomes a center around which memories, desires, and emotional ambiguities gather. The narrator begins by searching for a ring similar to his father's, then buys a ring for his colleague, and the gift raises mutual questions about its significance and the boundaries of their relationship.

The story expands to touch upon economic issues through the employees' discussion about rising prices, rents, and salaries, where the ring becomes a subject of mockery in the context of the talk about high costs.

However, the most prominent social significance is manifested in the difference between the man's and the woman's view of the gift; while the man waits to see the ring on his colleague's finger, she questions his motives and recalls previous rings associated with the names of different men, before the rings multiply in a surreal scene that fills the place.

This multiplication can be read as a symbolic embodiment of the accumulation of relationships, questions, and memories. The story reveals the fragility of human communication and the distance between intentions and interpretations, where the gift turns from a potential sign of affection into a source of anxiety and suspicion.

The Tragedy of Refuge

In the story "Diary of a Refugee," the writer moves from economic oppression to the tragedy of displacement, where a person loses their home, documents, and place in the world.

The narrator begins with an intense confession: "I inhabit the void, I soothe my loneliness by loving the trees of speech, I travel between wandering and wandering, I sit in the forbidden distance, I carry memory and a body ravaged by hunger and ruin, a traveler without luggage." This opening reveals an existential paradox; the person who has lost their homeland finds themselves residing in a void that does not grant them a sense of stability or belonging, suffering from a desolate loneliness, lost in wandering with a burdened memory, screaming hunger, and ruin, empty-handed of any luggage.

Personal documents gain striking significance when the narrator mentions that his birth certificate and passport were buried in his house's courtyard. The two documents that prove his identity and movement in the world remained in the place he was forced to leave, as if his uprooting from his land was accompanied by an uprooting from the official recognition of his existence.

The narrator confirms that those fleeing from killing and destruction are united by the desire to protect their children. But the road to survival ends before a gate that prevents entry and approach, with a rifle pointed at them.

Here, borders are embodied as a tool of oppression, and the refugee turns into a person suspended between the danger left behind and the danger lurking ahead. The tragedy reaches its peak when a bullet pierces the space, and the father sees his daughter's face covered in blood, while her small doll slips from her chest.

The choice of the doll gives the scene its own cruelty; it is the final sign of a childhood that should have lived far from rifles. Thus, the writer moves from collective tragedy to a small detail that summarizes the magnitude of the catastrophe and gives the victim human features that transcend numbers and news.

Childhood and Hunger

The tragedy of deprivation reaches one of its peaks in the story "Hunger," which is distributed over two scenes revealing two faces of economic and social oppression; in the first scene, a hungry man stands in front of the bakery, captivated by the smell of loaves, while his empty pockets prevent him from obtaining bread. The irony intensifies in the transformation of the simplest human needs into an unattainable desire, and when he sees a woman and her child, his memory awakens, and he recalls the image of his mother and his little brother, before the moment ends with a tragic hit-and-run accident.

The writer links hunger to death through the overlapping of the present and memory; the body exhausted by deprivation recalls its family past in a moment when its connection to life is severed. The smell of bread gains a double significance, as it evokes the warmth of home, motherhood, and safety, while the scene ends in the street that swallows the person without concern.

The second scene moves the tragedy to school, where a hungry child is unable to recite the morning assembly anthem, and is subjected to the teacher's scolding and slaps. The writer says: "He did not know that hunger was grinding the little one's tongue, and that his empty stomach had devoured what remained of his memory."

This image exposes the educational institution's inability to understand the child's human conditions, when the inability resulting from hunger is interpreted as negligence deserving of punishment. The scene gains a deeper critical dimension when the children recite the anthem the next day, overcome by fear, and the story ends with the phrase: "And the homeland chanted: Oh, how sad I am!"

The homeland here turns into a conscience witnessing the imbalance of values; the words that are supposed to express belonging come from children whose dignity has been insulted within the institution that is expected to protect them.

From the Individual to Society

In the story "Love in the Time of Corona," the writer evokes the experience of the pandemic and the isolation, restrictions, and fears that accompanied it, and invests in ironic situations to reveal contradictory social behaviors.

One of the tales gains a special human significance when a young man chooses to shave his head instead of prison as a punishment for violating lockdown measures, then reveals that he lost his hair due to chemotherapy, and that his family is unaware of his illness. The judge surprises him with a similar confession about his own experience with the disease.

This confrontation places one human before another, after each was confined to their legal position, and the acknowledgment of shared pain becomes an entry point for empathy, so the intensity of the relationship between authority and the individual softens, and the possibility of the presence of mercy in the application of the law emerges.

This tale points to an important aspect of Intisar Abbas's vision; cruelty does not exhaust the narrative world, as the writer sometimes leaves a window for human understanding, even in the most turbulent circumstances.

Oppression in the Mirror of Narration

The stories vary in their ways of dealing with oppression; some rely on direct realistic scenes, as in the story "Hunger," and some invest in symbolism, association, and strangeness, as in the story "The Wailing of Rings" and the story "The Scent of Roses." As for the story "Diary of a Refugee," it is based on the voice of the speaker, which gives the experience the character of personal testimony.

It is noted that the writer tends to invest in sensory details to intensify the suffering: the smell of bread, the doll, the bullet, the ring, and the rose. Familiar things turn into signs of deprivation, loss, or attachment to life.

However, the ability of the texts to control their emotions varies; when the writer lets the scene speak through its details, as in the image of the hungry child before the teacher, the significance reaches its power without the need for explanation. In other places, sentimental language intervenes to guide the reader's response, approaching the declaration of what could have been deduced from the event.

The Human Before the Story

In conclusion, the stories of "Dream Fires" reveal a clear sensitivity towards the human being when the conditions of a just life abandon them; the hungry person who cannot buy bread, the child who is punished for his hunger, the refugee who is prevented from crossing the border, and the survivor who is haunted by the traces of bullets, are all characters facing different images of deprivation and threat.

The importance of these experiences stems from the writer's ability to transfer general issues into personal details that give them an emotional presence; hunger becomes a child unable to sing, refuge becomes a doll slipping from a child's chest, and violence becomes a bullet that settles in a father's head, and continues with him for many years.

Thus, Intisar Abbas places the reader before a moral question that resonates throughout her collection: What is the value of life when a person loses their right to safety and dignity? Some of her characters, despite the losses, continue to cling to what remains of memories, love, and hope, as if they are trying to save something of their humanity before the fires reach it.