Trauma and Recovery: A Psychoanalytic Study of Gharbi Mustafa's When Mountains Weep

Abstract

This study investigates traumatic experiences of the main character in Gharbi M. Mustafa’s novel When Mountains Weep, based on Judith Herman’s conceptualization of trauma in her book Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Being on the road, Kurds are either internally displaced, migrating, or oppressed and assimilated politically. The prevention of language, confiscation of land, forced assimilation, and constant armed conflicts have made Kurds develop a traumatic cognitive and emotional response to the meaning of life, anguish, integration, and survival. Therefore, the paper studies the traumatic  consequences on the main characters’ psyches, in particular Hamko, based on three symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder which are hyperarousal, intrusion, and constriction. Threatened by tumultuous circumstances and trapped on mountain peaks, the paper argues that generations of Kurds have lost sense of childhood and innocence growing up either as refugees or living in their own landlocked mountains.