The True Story of Naive Raja (and His Mother) by Rabie Alameddine – The Splendor of the Clouds in War-Torn Beirut | imaginary

MEit Raja, narrator of Rabih Alameddine’s new novel. A 63-year-old gay philosophy teacher and entertainer, he is a stickler for rules and boundaries, living in a small Beirut apartment with his octogenarian mother, the curious and unrestrained Zalfa. Invited to a writing residency in the United States, Raja will use the occasion to recount his life – that is, if you don’t mind taking the scenic route. “A story has many tails and many heads, especially if it is true,” Raja tells us. “It is like life, a river with many branches, streams, streams and branches.”

Winner of the 2025 U.S. National Book Award, Alameddine’s seventh novel begins and concludes in 2023, but the bulk of its events take place earlier: encompassing the lead-up to and aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), the Covid pandemic, the banking crisis in Lebanon of 2019, and the Beirut port explosion of 2020. If this timeline makes the book feel like a punishing tour of Lebanese history, I promise you Not so. More than just a war story or a patriotic spectacle, it is a queer coming-of-age story, an exploration of the bond between mother and son, and a meditation on storytelling, memory, survival, and what it means to be truly free. This rule-breaking story of a shock plot is told in a voice that’s as irresistibly booming as it is unapologetically camp, and one that still retains its poignancy in the face of factual material. Poignant but never cynical, often dark but never cruel, wise without being showy and always eager to make a joke, this is a novel that insists that the pain of the past need not overshadow the present nor narrative, nor identity nor character. With Sartre as his guide, and his own magnificence, Raja shows us how it happens.

Both the banking collapse and the Covid pandemic are played as comedy. The first sees an angry Zulfa taking to the streets as a symbol of protest: braving tear gas, waving homemade signs (“This Granny Wants All Your Whore Brothers in Jail”), and achieving fame among his students, much to Raja’s consternation.

When the pandemic arrives, Zalfa finds herself at home, bored, and worse, banned from appearing as a guest in Raja’s Zoom classes. Zalfa needs people; It needs stories; She needs to be heard. Who better as a friend then than Madame Tawil, the neighborhood mafia boss and an endless source of gossip? The two become inseparable best friends, bonding over everything from make-up to low-budget films starring Raja in drag, while Madame Tall’s armed henchmen politely stand guard outside.

Of course, Raja, being Raja, does not tell the story of their friendship directly, opening it with a long, loosely connected anecdote of his own from 40 years ago, about a secret lover he had during the war: “Mansur was handsome, hairy, and hung—very well hung. I used to ride that beast whenever I could.”

The pre-civil war section replaces farce with a measured account of Raja’s childhood, as in a series of scenes – some funny, others heartbreaking – we see him fail to live up to familial expectations of masculinity. The home of a Japanese neighbor provides refuge from Raja’s chaos and hostility, and opens a window onto a culture he grows to cherish for its order and simplicity.

The novel’s gritty centerpiece returns to a memory that Raja has long repressed: his captivity during the war by Budi, a militiaman only a year older than him. At that time, Raja is fifteen years old and witnesses a kidnapping that ends in bloodshed. Boody takes him with him to save his life. Over the course of two months, Raja later described the ordeal as both “horrific” and “exhilarating,” his feelings of danger and safety, of helplessness and power, of terror and desire, completely overpowering. Boodie plays the role of care and coercion, violence and tenderness, and the sex they have elicits in Raja a conflicting mixture of shame and joy. The narrative refuses to resolve these contradictions, presenting the episode almost as a quirky domestic drama with slapstick notes.

In the penultimate pages of the novel, Raja refuses to name the trauma (“I felt free in that situation. Maybe even happy”), while also refusing the closure of forgiveness. He says it’s not that he can’t forgive Buddy, but he chooses not to. “I wasn’t hurt because he held me hostage. I was hurt because I realized I couldn’t participate in a system that sought to destroy people like us.” Bodhi chose to participate in a murderous regime: “From the beginning he chose war.” What was painful was Raja’s return to a world unable to accept him: when he finally managed to escape, he did so, unfortunately, wearing a dress. So everyone turned away from him except Zilfa.

Sartre saw, indisputably, that we are condemned to be free: that even the worst setbacks and threats we face gain significance only through our “project,” the way we commit to being in the world. Raja seems to take this as his motto. The true story of naive Raja (and his mother) conveys one compelling message, a simple but radical one: You can’t change what happened. But maybe, just maybe, you can decide what that means.