Losing Face by George Haddad
Losing Face (2022) by emerging author George Haddad is a powerful contemporary tale that frames the Lebanese-Australian immigrant experience and its trickle-down effects on later generations. With Haddad’s gripping storytelling and nuanced insight into the workings of masculinity in the shadows of intergenerational trauma, Losing Face reveals not only the complexity, but also the juxtaposition of these thought-provoking themes. What does it mean to be a man? Even more importantly, what does it mean to be yourself – regardless of your gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or age?
Losing Face is both contemporary and mythical. Beginning with a prologue “long before factories, churches, cars,” the book opens with a scene set in a desert terrorised by a djinn that conspires to steal the manhood of every boy of an Arabic clan. This djinn returns time and time again throughout the story, through mythical manifestations in pokies machines and the actions of various characters, giving the tale an allegorical edge.
Its main protagonists, however, are just as much a product of their ancestry as of the modern world with all its temptation and corruption. The story of Losing Face emerges from two narrative lines, those of Joey and his grandmother Elaine.
Joey is a young and indifferent man, adrift and confused in his home of Western Sydney. His life is made up of constant polarity. Being half Lebanese and half Australian, he’s regularly pulled between two worlds: his family and his friends, his past and his future, his destiny and his aspirations, men and women. He’s watched over by his proud Lebanese tayta Elaine and his preoccupied mother Amal, all while trying to figure out what generations of young people try to figure out every day: just what on earth to do with his life.
“He panicked. Why wasn’t he off at uni studying something that would make him something, dating someone, driving a nice car? The answer burnt clear as day – because he was an idiot. Because he was a weakling.”
Amidst the chaos that is young adulthood, a myriad of expectations, and matters of friendship, lust, and love rearing their sometimes-ugly heads, Joey’s passivity leads him into a compromising, violent crime and life-changing consequences.
Joey’s grandmother Elaine, on the other hand, already has much of her life behind her, and she battles very different djinns to her ancestors – gambling. Guided by the spirit of her heritage, a deep love and worry for her people, and her own dark secrets, Elaine attempts to deal with the consequences of Joey’s actions the best way she can, all the while avoiding drowning in her own personal problems.
The novel splits in two time and time again: men and women, young and old, and past and future collide as a story evolves from which we cannot look away. In the wake of these collisions, we’re left with more questions than answers – yet the very end goal of Losing Face is not to judge, preach, stereotype or absolve, but to provide a space in which the reader questions their own preconceptions, personal narratives and intergenerational baggage.
Losing Face is primal in its story-telling, but its characters don’t necessarily enjoy the clear distinction between right and wrong that is the trademark of most moral stories. When it comes to issues of consent, abuse and other hard-hitting topics, the characters and their own preconceived ideas clash and spill messily in a puddle of emotions and injustices. Love is weighed against justice more than once – and it is often the women who are left to bear the burden of cleaning it up.
“She walked towards the garden and kicked with her slippers at a weed growing from a crack in the concrete until it dislodged. ‘And this is why that shit happen to the young girl in the car park with you and them kleb.’ She sounded like she was swallowing her tears. She bent over, picked up the weed and flung it into the garden. ‘And this is why, all around the world, men always doing shit to women in car parks.’”
Haddad’s rigorous yet moving writing poses some difficult but nonetheless important questions around family, heritage, mothers and sons, and men, as complex as they are. While there are no clear-cut answers, no perfect models as to how we can be good people, there are clues. And while the ending certainly isn’t happy, it isn’t sad either – just like in life, it is up to us to distil meaning and morals, and to use the compasses Losing Face passes on to make better decisions. Every day.
Fruzsina Gál is an aspiring writer, born in Hungary but living in Australia. She has been a reader all her life, and her first short story, 'The Turul' was published in Griffith University's 2018 anthology, Talent Implied. Her writing is often focussed on identity and the effects of immigration on the self. You can find her online at www.fruzsinagal.com or @thenovelconversation.