The Poetics of Water in The Forgotten Between Two Waters by Leila Al-Mutawa by Ibrahim rasool
سردية الماء في رواية ” المنسيون بين ماءين” للكاتبة ليلى المطوّع
لتعبريه, عليك أن تقربي وجه الماء, فلن تعبري البحر إلَّا إذا عرفتيه._ الرواية: 22), والمعرفةُ هنا شاملة واسعة, لا تقف عند ممارسة فعل السباحة, بلْ لا بُدَّ من معرفة عالم البحر, فالنجاةُ بالمعرفةِ, وهنا تقف الكاتبة موقفها العقلانيّ, الذي قولبته في قالب الأدب, لكيْ يستمر بالتجددِ, وتقول أيضًا: أنا الطائر الحزين, كلما قلّ الماء, بان الحزن على وجهي.( الرواية: 429), قلة الماء تعني في وجهٍ منها, قلة المعرفة والعلم بالشيءِ, هذا ما حصل في الرواية, نلحظ هذا في الشخصيتينِ المُهمتينِ؛ ناديا وسليمة زوجة صفوان, لهذا تبدو عملية تصنيف الرواية صعبة, حيثُ أنَّها تضمُ مواضيعَ جغرافيّة وتاريخيّة وثقافيّة, فهي كونٌ روائيٌ واسعٌ.
The Poetics of Water in The Forgotten Between Two Waters by Leila Al-Mutawa
Between memory and water lie countless meanings, which we attempt to evoke and uncover in their quiet depth as we accompany her through this voyage of revelation and beauty. It is as if the more ancient a thing is, the greater its worth. By placing her characters between two waters, the author encloses the forgotten, granting them a form of restoration — an act of remembrance that also becomes a critique of the present. And critique, in its truest sense, is a means of repair, renewal, and purification.
Al-Mutawa’s novel is a vast and capacious world of imagination that also draws from the real — a bridge toward another shore. Her narrative does not confine itself to one form; instead, she links reality to the past through the threads of her creative vision, employing a deliberate architectural technique to construct her own universe — a universe that carries us into both dream and lived experience.
This mode of writing succeeds among authors who possess broad knowledge: those who understand not only what they write, but how to summon and employ what they know. Within its pages, we read an imagined history and a symbolised reality; we read a novel that compels us to detach from our surroundings and embark upon its long, demanding, and exhilarating journey.
This cultural voyage is not meant solely for pleasure. It demands a pause — a lingering contemplation. The novel is expansive enough to claim time and patience; one either abandons it for lighter fare, or devotes oneself entirely, reading with care and reflection. For this is a novel of the elite, one that requires a discerning reader — the kind who cannot progress without keeping a notebook at hand, jotting down names, traits, and key events to connect the intricate web of its storytelling. It is a complex, interwoven world that allows no respite until its final page, and only then does the reader breathe — returning to the notes taken, retracing the narrative’s paths, discovering that the novel has entered both taste and intellect in the most rewarding way.
To receive such literature, one must be a reader of depth — one who does not stop at the surface of the text, but dives into its hidden realms, playing the delicate game of immersion in its inner worlds. The novel harbours a kind of mystery — yet it is not the obscurity of confusion, but rather the mystery of delight, the aesthetic veil that draws writer and reader together in the shared act of discovery.
The Title: The Threshold of the Text
As Roland Barthes once said, the title is the chandelier of the text — its luminous threshold. It is, in Al-Mutawa’s case, the water of her creative act: the current that precedes and sustains the narrative. By choosing The Forgotten Between Two Waters, she gives us a phrase that holds many meanings.
Water, by nature, is fluid, renewable, and open — it represents dispersal and instability, a state of perpetual motion and uncertainty. The title, therefore, alludes to the human condition itself: the inner struggle between opposing forces, the turbulence of identity and transformation. Its openness and liquidity invite multiple interpretations; it is a title that refuses closure, mirroring a world in flux.
Within the novel, forgetfulness and water together symbolise fragmentation, loss, and the unsettled, dual identity — a landscape of conflict, dissolution, and unease. The ground beneath is soft, unstable. Yet between the forgotten and the waters, Al-Mutawa reclaims history, rewriting it through the lens of her awareness and memory — through the imagination that reshapes what lies submerged in the collective past.
She writes:
“To cross it, you must draw your face close to the water; you will never cross the sea unless you have come to know it.” (p. 22)
Here, knowledge is vast and encompassing; it is not merely the act of swimming, but the wisdom of the sea itself. Salvation lies in understanding — a rational stance that she moulds through art, allowing knowledge to remain ever-renewing.
And she writes elsewhere:
“I am the sorrowful bird; whenever the water wanes, sadness appears upon my face.” (p. 429)
The diminishing of water thus becomes, metaphorically, the diminishing of knowledge — a theme embodied in the two central figures, Nadia and Salima, the wife of Safwan.
For this reason, the novel resists easy classification. It encompasses geography, history, and culture — forming a vast fictional cosmos, fluid and alive as the waters it evokes.
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