Abstract:
She is desperate and bitter, she believes in superstition, she is an outcast gone mad,
and above all she is dead: Maryam, the narrator of Assad Fouladkar’s 2001 feature
film Lamma Hikyit Maryam, is yet the only source of information available to the
viewers. From her small empty room in the clinic where she has been kept and where
she is receiving her psychiatric treatment, Maryam breaks her silence to tell the story
of her failing marriage and her gradual breakdown, which eventually lead to her
death. Using the Lebanese local dialect as its main language, Lamma Hikyit Maryam
or When Maryam Spoke Out tells the story of the struggle and suffering of Maryam,
a young woman who is rejected by her beloved husband and condemned by the
rest of her society only because she is infertile. Fouladkar’s Lamma Hikyit Maryam
renders justice to the incriminated and silenced Maryam by presenting the woman’s
perspective and by exposing the dilemmas she lived through as she was trying to
adapt to the harsh laws set by contemporary Arab societies.
Citation:
Hodeib-Eido, D. (2009). Confessions of the Mad Wife. Women, Activism, and the Arts, (124), 60.
