Planet of Clay

By Samar Yazbek

• FINALIST FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE

• Samar Yazbek’s work has previously been published in the US. She is mainly known for her non-fiction work. Her non-fiction title A Woman In the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution is a rare early chronicle of the Syrian revolution from inside, and sold around 1,500 copies through BookScan. Her work has been reviewed in the NYT, the Guardian, and the Washington Post, among others.
• Yazbek is one of Syria’s most prominent journalists and writers. She has previously been profiled in the NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/world/middleeast/samar-yazbek-branded-betrayer-for-embracing-syria-rebels.html for her anti-government activism.
• Breaking taboos in her work, much of her writing is banned in her home country. Her life threatened, she fled Syria to Paris in 2011. In 2012 Yazbek was given the PEN/Pinter International Writer of Courage award.
• Planet of Clay is the story of Rima, a girl from Damascus born with a strange mania: she cannot stop walking, and therefore grows up tied to her mother’s wrist, or a piece of furniture, by a thick rope.
• Rima is mostly silent, the sound of her voice is only heard on very specific occasions: when she chants the Koran, reads aloud The Little Prince, or when she screams or moans because she is hurt or afraid.
• Rima’s restricted speech and movement mirror the oppression of Syrian women.
• When her mother is killed in front of her by a soldier, Rima, wounded, is taken to a military hospital before her brother leads her to the besieged area of Ghouta—where, between bombings, she writes her story.
• Trapped in Rima’s head, the reader gets a first-hand sensory and emotional take on the Syrian war. Yet the horrors of war don’t alter the lightness and freshness of this woman-child who, like the Little Prince, collects refuge-planets: books, writing and drawing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: World Editions
• Release date: Sep 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781642860979

Book preview

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An ode to fantasy and beauty in the midst of war-torn Damascus

Rima, a young girl from Damascus, longs to walk, to be free to follow the will of her feet, but instead is perpetually constrained. She finds refuge in a fantasy world full of colored crayons, secret planets, and The Little Prince, reciting passages of the Qur’an like a mantra as everything and everyone around her is blown to bits. Since Rima hardly ever speaks, people think she’s crazy, but she is no fool—the madness is in the battered city around her. One day while taking a bus through Damascus, a soldier opens fire and her mother is killed. Rima, wounded, is taken to a military hospital before her brother leads her to the besieged area of Ghouta—where, between bombings, she writes her story. In Planet of Clay, Samar Yazbek offers a surreal depiction of the horrors taking place in Syria, in vivid and poetic language and with a sharp eye for detail and beauty.

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Praise for Samar Yazbek

One of Syria’s most gifted novelists.

CNN

Yazbek’s is the urgent task of showing the world what is happening. Thanks to her, we can read about the appalling things that go on in secret, underground places.

The Guardian

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Praise for Planet of Clay

"The Syrian writer Samar Yazbek evokes the horror of civil war with gripping lucidity in her novel Planet of Clay."

Le Monde

With the brazenness typical of her recent work, Samar Yazbek immerses us in the horror of the Syrian conflict, and the way it resonates in the flesh and minds of those who are living it. It is through the women the author has met on the ground throughout this war that she describes the capacity for resistance in the face of atrocity.

Libération

An ingenious character and a literary approach on the verge of the unimaginable. Samar Yazbek’s novel is brave on many levels.

Göteborgs-Posten

"Planet of Clay is a deeply original, almost surreal fantasia, written in a simple, clear style. But the evil and the suffering surrounding Rima are so very real. A novel like Planet of Clay filters through all our conscious and unconscious blinkers."

Arbetarbladet

We others can only read—and cry.

Kristeligt Dagblad

The book left this reader very touched, beyond the cruel reality it describes, because of Yazbek’s sense for detail.

Weekendavisen

An invaluable voice from Syria.

Dagens Nyheter

The text is true—literally true, that is. How can you truly describe rational chemical warfare? By letting the process supporting the meaning of the text break down. A radical and visionary move made by Samar Yazbek.

Sveriges Radio

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Praise for A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution

Amid the horrific news about Syrian dissidents, mass killings, and government claims of terrorists, this unique document, written in the first months of the uprising, is a chronicle both of objective events and the visceral and psychic responses of an impassioned activist and artist. The book weaves journalistic reporting into intimate, poetic musings on an appalling reality.

Publishers Weekly

An essential eyewitness account, and with luck an inaugural document in a Syrian literature that is uncensored and unchained.

Kirkus Reviews

A feverish, nightmarish, immediate account.

The Guardian

An impassioned and harrowing memoir of the early revolt.

New York Review of Books

"In her book, Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution, Yazbek shows the reality of what’s happening there and brings us stories of many people who risk their lives in the struggle for freedom. The insight that she offers into the complex and bloody conflict is both incredibly valuable and inspiring."

PEN Transmissions

The best account of the revolution’s early months.

The National

Arresting, novelistic prose. Uncompromising reportage from a doomed capital.

The Spectator

The heartbreaking diary of a woman who risked her life to document the regime’s brutal attacks on peaceful demonstrators.

The Inquirer

A remarkable, devastating account of the three increasingly dangerous trips that Yazbek made to northern Syria in 2012 and 2013, sneaking over the Turkish border each time.

The Nation

Poetic prose and gritty reportage successfully combine to create a terrifying picture of a woman whose body and soul are tortured by her experience of the uprising.

Syrian Observer

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Praise for Cinnamon

There’s a pulsing vitality to the lives of the characters, despite their brutal circumstances, in this compelling novel by PEN Pinter Prize-winning Syrian author Yazbek.

Publishers Weekly

Yazbek’s prowess is her ability to demonstrate the freeing qualities of love between two women, but also her strong and realistic grasp of Syrian society. She positions these relations in a complex web of constellations built on discretion, racial hierarchies, financial interests, and abuse.

Asymptote Journal

This is a book that is deserving of careful attention, by an author who bears following.

Critics At Large

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Praise for The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria

"A powerful and moving account of her devastated homeland. It bears comparison with George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia as a work of literature. Yazbek is a superb narrator. One of the first political classics of the twenty-first century."

The Guardian

Extraordinarily powerful, poignant and affecting. I was greatly moved.

MICHAEL PALIN

Brave, rebellious and passionate. Yazbek is no ordinary Syrian dissident.

Financial Times

An eloquent, gripping and harrowing account of the country’s decline into barbarism by an incredibly brave Syrian.

Irish Times

Gripping. Does the important job of putting faces to the numbing numbers of Syria’s crisis.

The Economist

Samar Yazbek’s searing new book about her Syrian homeland is a testament to the indomitable spirit of her countrymen in their struggle against the Assad regime. Shocking, searing, and beautiful.

Daily Beast

Gripping.

Washington Post

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SAMAR YAZBEK is a Syrian writer, novelist, and journalist. She was born in Jableh in 1970 and studied literature before beginning her career as a journalist and a scriptwriter for Syrian television and film. Her novels include Cinnamon and Planet of Clay. Her accounts of the Syrian conflict include A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution and The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria. Yazbek’s work has been translated into multiple languages and has been recognized with numerous awards—notably, the French Best Foreign Book Award and the PEN-Oxfam Novib, PEN Tucholsky, and PEN Pinter awards.

LERI PRICE is an award-winning literary translator of contemporary Arabic fiction. Price’s translation of Khaled Khalifa’s Death Is Hard Work was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature (US) and winner of the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. Her translation of Khaled Khalifa’s No Knives in the Kitchens of This City was shortlisted for the ALTA National Translation Award. Price’s other recent translations include Sarab by award-winning writer Raja Alem.

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AUTHOR

Rima embodies a number of themes close to my heart, such as women’s freedom, the relationship between writing and violence, and the new language we might construct in the midst of the terrible events we are living through. Rima is a woman-child who tells of the war through her initial shock, which is what people feel in the face of such violence. I have chosen to remain in the realm of wonder to outstrip the violence of the story.

TRANSLATOR

I wouldn’t normally recommend translating a book about a girl trapped in a cellar while a global lockdown kept us all trapped in different ways, but it must be said that Rima was consistently an enjoyable companion throughout a difficult time, both artless and perceptive. It was a joy to carve out this narrator’s unique voice and I hope readers everywhere will respond as I did to her boundless curiosity, her sharp eye, and her soaring, striving, limitless imagination. I remain steadfast in my hopes for the Planet of Clay.

PUBLISHER

"Samar Yazbek is an author I highly admire for both her work as a writer and for her commitment to women’s rights in Syria. This devastatingly beautiful novel of hers touched me tremendously. It is an uncanny, poetic depiction of the horrors taking place in Syria: the madness of war as seen through the eyes of the unforgettable Rima, a genuine defender of life. With this book Yazbek does in writing what Waad Al-Kateab did in her documentary, For Sama. She shows us what it means to be surrounded by war, and what makes life worth living in spite of everything."

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Samar Yazbek

Planet of Clay

Translated from the Arabic

by Leri Price

WORLD EDITIONS

New York, London, Amsterdam

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Published in the USA in 2021 by World Editions LLC, New York

Published in the UK in 2021 by World Editions Ltd., London

World Editions

New York / London / Amsterdam

Copyright © Samar Yazbek, 2017

English translation copyright © Leri Price, 2021

Author portrait © Muhsin Akgun, Raya Agency

Cover image © Tessa van der Waals

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed therein are those of the characters and should not be confused with those of the author.

This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN’s PEN Translates programme, supported by Arts Council England. English PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers’ freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly co-operation of writers and the free exchange of ideas. www.englishpen.org

The two Qur’an verses are Surah Yusuf 11–12, translated into English by Muhammad Asad, first published in 1980 by Dar Al-Andalus.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available

ISBN Trade paperback 978-1-64286-101-3

ISBN E-book 978-1-64286-097-9

First published as Al Macha’a in 2017 by Dar al-Adab in Lebanon.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Book Club Discussion Guides are available on our website.

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I DON’T KNOW if you care how the paper feels, or whether you are like me and run your fingers over its surface, and it is no use adding anything else about my fingers and how I trace them over the lines my hands have written.

I am thinking something now, and it is that if every sheet of paper piled up in these cardboard boxes were laid out flat, they could make a paper aeroplane the size of the plane circling over my head. But don’t think that my worries might mean much to anyone but me. Everything I’m writing to you could vanish, and it will be a strange fluke if you have the chance to read it, like the fluke that made me so different from other people.

I was born, and I can’t stop walking. I stand up and I set off and I keep walking and walking. I see the road, and it has no end. My feet take over and I walk—I just follow them. I don’t understand why it happened, and I’m not expecting you to understand either. This enchantment of mine doesn’t care what people might understand.

If you want a good way to get rid of the aeroplane’s roar, you can try this. Take a blank piece of paper—do it gently, don’t let the pile collapse, take it out like it’s an artery. Then put it on a hard surface. Personally, I turn over the coffee tray and make it into a desk, then I pick up the blue pen which I found among the stacks of paper, and I begin. You must not set off before the sound has started. Don’t stop unless you are faint from exhaustion, but it must be exhaustion and not fear. If all this isn’t done properly, I mean using the blue pen to play with words on a blank page, then my instructions will fail, the blank page won’t like you, and the roar of the aeroplanes won’t disappear.

Don’t think I’m afraid. I don’t know who you are, or even whether anyone will read these words. Maybe all this doesn’t mean much to you right now, because you don’t know me yet. Please don’t get annoyed at all my digressions, I didn’t study in school like most children do, but I read every book that came my way, even if I learned it by heart without understanding it. There were many books I didn’t understand, and Sitt Souad used to burst out laughing when she saw me opening the huge leather-bound books and squeezing my way into them, especially the books on art history.

I think I am one of the many mistakes I’ve seen God overlook from time to time, or perhaps there is some cruel wisdom of His behind it. I’ve already mentioned it, but maybe I should remind you, my brain is in my feet and there isn’t a thing I can do about this curse. When I was younger, I used to have a dream that they would let me walk and walk until I passed out. I just wanted to try it, so I would know where my feet would lead me.

My mother told me that they discovered it early on. I’d hardly stood upright before I rushed forward. It’s so strange! But you have to believe me. They thought I had some sort of mental problem, but the doctors confirmed that my brain was fine. My mother refused to put me in a mental hospital. Everyone called it the hospital for crazies. They were afraid of me but I didn’t care, I hated dealing with the outside world, and I found no use in moving the heavy muscle inside my mouth called a tongue.

I knew that I couldn’t stop walking, but I’m not sure when it was that I realised. I don’t remember when I first recognised colours either, or the moment when I found out I had a nose, or two lips like a pistachio nut, my mother used to say. I’m also not sure when I was first tied. Whenever we went out, my mother would place my right hand into hers and tie the two hands together with a rough cord or a rope. But when she was working, she would tie me in a different way. She would cry while she did this. But she never stopped doing it, until the day she disappeared. I will tell you how she used to tie me.

I can remember the moment they found out that my head is in my feet. At the time I was four years old and I used to go with my mother to the school where she worked. I would be tied in the cleaners’ room. My mother was responsible for cleaning the toilets and the classrooms and she prepared coffee and tea for the staffroom and the headmistress’s office. The school was in the middle of Damascus. We needed to take two buses to reach it from our house, which was at the end of Jaramana Camp in southern Damascus. I am happy for you if you haven’t heard of it.

The day she realised I couldn’t stop walking, my mother had locked the cupboard drawers in the cleaners’ room, untied the cord, and reached out to tie my hand to her wrist, when she gasped and turned away as if she had forgotten something. Adjusting her head covering, she disappeared outside. She was only gone for a few moments, but in that time my feet began to walk forward quickly. What was it I did outside the iron school gate? I don’t know, but my mother had hardly unfastened the rope when I felt wings sprouting between my toes, and I turned towards the street. In a few minutes I was part of another world. I wasn’t tempted to cry, I followed my feet very happily. You have to understand that I was walking on the road and the pavement in a straight line, and I didn’t take any notice of my surroundings until a group of people formed a circle around me, and took hold of me. My legs didn’t stop moving, and I didn’t scream. They asked me my name and what my family was called, and at that moment I lost the power to speak—or so I believed, because I couldn’t remember my voice, and I couldn’t remember anything except how to chant, to recite the Qur’an using tartil. I was looking at their mouths circling me, like little holes in a wall. I couldn’t tell how much time passed before I suddenly found my mother standing there, wailing and crying, and she lifted me up into her arms. I was so skinny that the people thought I was hardly three years old. She hugged me and rushed me away. She never spoke about what had happened or tried to persuade me to speak, but after that we spent four years going from doctor to doctor as she tried to understand my condition. Since then, I lost my voice altogether and I only hear it when I am reciting the Qur’an. And that is another story I will tell you.

Don’t think that what you are reading is a novel. What I’m writing is the truth, and I am doing it to try and understand what happened.

Our life went back to normal, and I kept going out attached to my mother, but after that day when she realised