How to End a War: Remnants of Hope and Terror in Danny Ramadan’s The Foghorn Echoes
Abstract In the novel, The Foghorn Echoes (2022) by Danny Ramadan, readers are introduced to two young men, Hussam and Wassim, who love each other but whose lives are forever changed by a terrible event. Though this event marks the beginning of their end, they are met with several encounters that continue to separate them, as they grapple with what it means to be queer in Syria and what it means to be refugees elsewhere. Both their stories, told back and forth between the two young men, reveal the cruel optimism that is situated in the relationship between the good life and the queer struggle of romantic life. In other words, their desire for a better life as queer refugees becomes cruel when it becomes an obstacle in and of itself. For Hussam, readers witness this devastating blow as he is haunted by the death of his father and then by his separation from Wassim, as he struggles to build a better life in the nation-state of Canada. Wassim, on the other hand, has become a refugee in his own homeland, in this case, Syria during the Civil War, and he comes to view himself as a problematic object. Through both of their lives, it is revealed that the reality of queer Syrian refugees is inseparable from the complicated and oppressive histories that mark them such as the war and their forbidden love, whether they remain in the homeland or seek to build a good life somewhere else.
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Ramadan, Danny. The Foghorn Echoes. Viking, 2022.
Shire, Warsan. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head: Poems. Penguin, 2022.
van Veen, Erwin, et al. “Tracing the evolution of the Syrian civil war (2011-2020).” Clingendael Institute, 2021. https://www.clingendael.org/pub/2021/eu-relevance-in-the-syrian-and-iraqi-civil-wars/2-tracing-the-evolution-of-the-syrian-civil-war-2011-2020/. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.
—. The Promise of Happiness. Duke UP, 2010.
Akhtar, Nasreen, and Hala Nageen. “The Syrian Conflict: An Inside-Out and Outside-In Approach.” International Journal on World Peace, vol. 36, no. 3, 2019, pp. 7-34. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26884530. Accessed 15 Nov. 2023.
Alrababa, Ala, et al. “The Dynamics of Refugee Return: Syrian Refugees and Their Migration Intentions.” British Journal of Political Science, 2023, pp. 1-24, doi: 10.1017/S0007123422000667.
Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Duke UP, 2011.
—. “Cruel Optimism: On Marx, Loss, and the Senses.” New Formations, vol. 63, 2007, pp. 33-51. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/docview/211571230. Accessed 10 Nov. 2023.
—. “Cruel Optimism: Optimism and Its Objects.” Differences, vol. 17, no. 5, 2006, pp. 20-36, doi: 10.1215/10407391-2006-009.
Bhabha, Homi. “The World and the Home.” Social Text, vol. 31/32, 1992, pp. 141-53, doi: 10.1515/9780822384595-019.
Bhagat, Ali. “Queer Global Displacement: Social Reproduction, Refugee Survival, and Organised Abandonment in Nairobi, Cape Town, and Paris.” Antipode, vol. 5, no. 5, 2023, pp. 1-21, doi: 10.1111/anti.12933.
Coates, Jamie. “The Cruel Optimism of Mobility: Aspiration, Belonging, and the “Good Life” among Transnational Chinese Migrants in Tokyo.” Positions, vol. 27, no. 3, 2019, pp. 469-97, doi: 10.1215/10679847-7539277.
Dawney, Leila, et al. “Introduction: Problems of hope.” Problems of Hope, edited by Leila Dawney, Claire Blencowe, and Patrick Bresnihan, ARN P, 2017, pp. 1-8.
Fassin, Didier. “Policing Borders, Producing Boundaries. The Governmentality of Immigration in Dark Times.” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 40, 2011, pp. 213-26, doi: 10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145847.
Gallegos, Francisco. “Affective injustice and fundamental affective goods.” Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 53, no. 2, 2021, pp. 185-201, doi: 10.1111/josp.12428.
Held, Nina. “‘As queer refugees, we are out of category, we do not belong to one, or the other’: LGBTIQ+ refugees’ experiences in ‘ambivalent’ queer spaces.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 46, no. 9, 2022, pp. 1898-1918, doi: 10.1080/01419870.2022.2032246.
Mishra Tarc, Aparna. “A Child is Dreaming.” The Museum of Dreams, February 2017, https://www.museumofdreams.org/a-child-is-dreaming. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.
Raboin, Thibaut. Discourses on LGBT Asylum in the UK: Constructing a Queer Haven. Manchester UP, 2016.
Ramadan, Danny. The Foghorn Echoes. Viking, 2022.
Shire, Warsan. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head: Poems. Penguin, 2022.
van Veen, Erwin, et al. “Tracing the evolution of the Syrian civil war (2011-2020).” Clingendael Institute, 2021. https://www.clingendael.org/pub/2021/eu-relevance-in-the-syrian-and-iraqi-civil-wars/2-tracing-the-evolution-of-the-syrian-civil-war-2011-2020/. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.
Patel, S. (2024). How to End a War: Remnants of Hope and Terror in Danny Ramadan’s The Foghorn Echoes. Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies, 13, 33–49. https://doi.org/10.14201/candb.v13i33-49
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