SOURCE: Somekh, Sasson. “Structure of Silence: A Reading in Yûsuf Idrîs's ‘Bayt min Lahm’ (‘House of Flesh’).” Writer, Culture, Text: Studies in Modern Arabic Literature (1993): 56-61.

In the following essay, Somekh explores how silence plays a key structural role in “House of Flesh.”

I

In an article published previously,¹ I attempted to demonstrate some of the ways in which rhythm and sound (such as onomatopoeia) are functionally employed in the short stories of the Egyptian writer Yûsuf Idrîs (1927-1992).² My contention was that these elements, besides representing voices, human or otherwise, serve as distinct structural devices in many of his stories. The present paper further elaborates on some of these “acoustic” devices, although in this case the absence of sound rather than sound itself is discussed. One of Idrîs's stories in particular illustrates how words and phrases denoting “silence” play a major structural...