Obituary: Abdel-Rahman Mounif (1933-2004) The stateless chronicler Abdel-Rahman Mounif, one of the Arab world's most prominent and prolific novelists, died of a heart attack on Saturday in Damascus, the city in which he had lived since 1986. His funeral took place on Tuesday. Mounif, whose contribution to writing encompasses not only literature but politics, economics and criticism, was 70. Born in Amman, Jordan, to a Saudi Arabian father from Najd and an Iraqi mother, Mounif completed his secondary education in Amman, enrolling at the Faculty of Law in Baghdad in 1952. His university years coincided with one of the most turbulent periods in Iraqi history, and he was involved in left-wing political activity as a student. Following the so-called Baghdad Alliance in 1955, along with many like-minded students, he was deported from Iraq. He resumed his education at Cairo University and in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia, where he arrived in 1958, earning a PhD in economics in 1961. Significantly for the subject matter of his books, Mounif specialised in the economics of oil. Until 1973, and following a year's stint as a political activist -- which Mounif made a conscious decision to end in 1961 -- Mounif worked for a Syrian oil company in Damascus, after which he moved to Beirut to work on the Lebanese newspaper Al-Balagh. By then his Marxist leanings were no secret and he was stripped of the Saudi nationality in 1963. From 1975 to 1981, while living in Baghdad, Mounif edited Al-Naft wal-Tanmiya (Oil and Development) magazine. It was in the 1970s that he began to write novels, producing Al-Ashjar (The Trees) and Ightiyal Marzouq (The Assassination of Marzouq). In 1981, once again, Mounif left Baghdad, this time for France, his mind finally set on becoming a full-time writer. He took to writing with exemplary discipline. Four years later he returned to the Arab world, settling in Damascus till the end of his life. In the late 1970s and 1980s Mounif produced the bulk of his work: Qisat Hub Majousiya (A spiritual love story), Hina Tarakna Al-Jisr (When we left the bridge), Al-Nihayat (Ends), Sibaq Al-Masafat Al-Tawila (Long- distance race), Alam bila Khara'it (A world without maps -- in collaboration with Iraqi writer Jabra Ibrahim Jabra -- and the acclaimed pentateuch, Mudun Al-Milh, a critical, fictionalised document of the birth of Saudi Arabia as a modern state, among many other works of fiction and non-fiction. His last work of fiction was the trilogy Ard Al-Sawad (Black land), a text that displays his essential qualities as a writer -- historical focus, inter-Arab dynamism, expansive narration and dialogue that testifies to familiarity with a variety of Arabic dialects. Mounif's contribution to understanding postcolonial Arab reality includes not only his books -- particularly his meticulously composed and engaging fiction -- but his role in Arab public life. His open letter to the Vienna Human Rights Conference of 1993 is typical: "The nationality of a citizen, any citizen, is a birthright, not a gift that can be handed to or withdrawn from that citizen at will. Nobody, as a consequence, can grant or revoke nationality ... If the withdrawal of [my] passport took place for no obvious reason, my novels have since become its justification..." More specifically, Mounif played a vital role in demarcating the historical and human territory occupied by "modernisation" in the Arab world, particularly in the context of the oil boom. He documented the dissolution of Arab communities, the sense of despair resulting from the Arab position in regional turmoil and the gradual but irrevocable disappearance of simpler and more innocent modes of life. He also commented on the oppression and deprivation to which the Arab citizen has been subject under corrupt and often brutish regimes. Mounif's legacy will live on as something over and above literature -- the struggle of a truly pan- Arab citizen to attain historical lucidity and to retrieve the right to self expression.
