On the Relations of the Circle

In the Beirut of Elias Khoury’s first novel, children converse with sparrows, walk with pine trees, and embrace their branches like old companions. A young orphan named Mansour is trying to locate his beginnings. Twelve toes (no ten), a family name, and a father. “Every evening, we retell the story. The story has no ending.” And so his tale takes shape again. Mansour exchanges candied almonds with a saint and speaks to a woman who would like to trade her eyebrows for his, captured by their beauty. He watches fava beans leap from a bowl and climb up his arm. With each curve of Mansour’s dreams, Elias Khoury sets the coordinates for the questions and concerns that will radiate throughout his exquisite body of fiction. On the Relations of the Circle was published in 1975, the year the Lebanese Civil War began. Khoury’s visions of the past, present, and future follow paths as unpredictable as the sun’s rays. They beam and bend, his tales expand and contract, as if anticipating the outbreak of war. Mansour resists the fractures and erasures of war. He buys pens and notebooks, sketching a map of his city as he sees and feels it. “Mansour decides that life is beautiful, that the earth deserves the swaying of trees.” Elias Khoury’s recursive stories, glimpses, and dreams hold fast to Mansour’s decision, offering a story of beauty and humanity just before it vanishes.

Elias Khoury