The Foghorn Echoes, Danny Ramadan
The Foghorn Echoes follows Hussam and Wassim, childhood sweethearts, haunted by tragedy and torn from one another by a repressive society. Divided between war-torn Damascus, Syria and Vancouver, Canada and haunted by their pasts, this is a novel about the division between self and place, and how the two can become misaligned and misplaced from one another. Hussam flees Syria for the West following his arrest and torture after the 2011 protests, after much struggle and a period of detainment in a refugee camp, he makes it to Canada. Wassim leaves his arranged marriage and newborn child to follow Hussam, but eventually returns to Damascus, living on the fringes of society. The two experience intense displacement, both from country and self. As such, the narrative is about learning to merge two realms of self that have never been allowed to coexist, being Syrian and being gay.
Hussam meets Dawood, a Canadian-born Syrian and drag queen, who helps him to re-ground himself and break his cycle of hedonistic and demeaning hook-ups and excessive drug-taking. It is through Dawood that Hussam is able to regain a sense of his culture and national identity; he remarks, ‘At first I'm protective of my syrianness. Is it okay for a gay man dressed in a wig to do something so Syrian? But it feels impossibly right. [...] She is him, she is a Syrian man, and a gay Canadian, and she timidly dances on that tightrope.’
Wassim inhabits an abandoned home in Damascus with the ghost of Kalila, a syrian woman trapped in an arranged marriage who died in the 1960s. They share their tales with an immense sense of catharsis. From roaming the streets, hungry, Wassim gradually rebuilds his life. He poignantly asks at end of the novel, “Why do I have to abandon my land? Why do I have to go into exile for my life to make sense?”, as he is forced to say goodbye to another lover.
Protest, civil war and refugee politics hum in the novel's background, but they are not its heartbeat. Instead, Ramadan focuses on love, loss and identity amidst the ruins.
Danny Ramadan reading from The Foghorn Echoes
We’ve got a brilliantly evocative book for your listening pleasure on this week’s episode and we’re delighted to be hosting it on nb’s website. The Foghorn Echoes is by Danny Ramadan, an award-winning Canadian-Syrian author and advocate for LGBTQ+ refugees .
This podcast is edited and produced by Megan Bay Dorman, and programmed by Matt Casbourne.
Damian Barr’s Literary Salon is where the freshest debuts and the biggest bestsellers read for the first time from their latest greatest books and share their own personal stories.
Enjoy the Literary Salon podcast's Book of the Week where each bite-sized episode offers an exclusive taster of a new book. World premieres include Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain, Maddie Mortimer's Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies and Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait. You're going to love it.
Hosted by writer and broadcaster, Damian Barr, produced and edited by Megan Bay Dorman and programmed by Matt Casbourne.
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