Songs for Times of Darkness by Lebanese writer Iman Hmeidan is a poignant story of pain and how personal and collective anguish can be intertwined. The novel explores the fictional lives of four women in different eras, starting in the spring of 1908 and culminating in December 1982.
Asmahan
It begins and ends with its narrator, Asmahan, a granddaughter, who writes to her childhood and teenage friend, Wida. Through her letter, we learn that Asmahan fled to New York amid a personal and family crisis. From there, she relays her sense of alienation in Beirut, having left a city that, like her, was “devastated, humiliated, sorrowful, robbed of its spirit, its people, and its youth.”
She also reflects on how her family did not protect her from a “patriarchy upheld by religious law and guarded by civil law.” This is a recurring theme in the narrative, depicted through the autocratic behaviours of husbands and male characters, including Asmahan’s own husband Mazen, who takes her son and prevents her daughter from trying to reunite with her.
Asmahan embodies the collective agony of mothers. The character’s letters unravel painful memories, a central theme of the book: “My body ached whenever I sat down to write to the point that I sometimes felt my heart would stop beating. Many words will remain lost here. I cannot write them; I preserve my memory to avoid more pain.”
Shahira
The narrator begins by recounting the story of her great-grandmother, Shahira, who had a talent for singing. At 14, she was married off to her deceased sister’s husband to raise the children left behind, reflecting the customs of a Lebanese family from a fictional village named Kasura at the turn of the 20th century.
The book also evokes other customs of the time, including how the female body was perceived and relations between men and women, which were governed by social norms requiring reputations to be maintained in the village community. She was disappointed with her first night with her husband, Nayef, who let her down by not sitting down with her and listening to her story. She was also married off without a dowry.
Unable to marry her first love, Yazeed, Shahira falls into a depression but later rediscovers her passion for singing. This gives her the confidence to challenge her husband, and Shahira insists that her children attend school to get an education. She goes on to confront many challenges—from paying school fees to enduring poverty in a large family— which grow with the addition of three more children to Nayef's two from his previous marriage.
The numerous trials Shahira goes through in her life are shaped by her relationship with her husband, which reflects wider society and the environment of the time. She recalls the arrival of locusts in the spring of 1915, less than a year after the outbreak of World War I. Approaching a century of life, she ponders, "What if the war returns? What if the locusts come back, devouring our supplies and food, taking our children?"
Yasmin
Her grandmother Yasmin—who Asmahan describes as "destroyed by early marriage and helplessness”—was married to her cousin to preserve family bloodlines and inheritance. Yasmin's education was cut short because there were no schools for girls beyond the elementary level. Consequently, she learned and practised tailoring after her marriage.
Amid family conflict, Yasmin questions whether achieving a better life is too ambitious. She dreams of joining her husband Ghassan, who went to Haifa in Palestine, to work for the railway company, but her aspirations remain unfulfilled. She dies shortly after giving birth to their daughter Leila.
