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Labelled a novel ( riwāya ) on the cover, the text  Marathi al-Ayyam: Thalath Hikayat ʿan al-Mawt  (2001), the author Haydar Haydar tells us in the prologue, or what he calls ‘ ishāra’  (gesture, sign), is a novel that structurally is not a novel. It is also, he writes, not a collection of stories united by the theme of death. This cryptic disavowal by one of Syria’s preeminent authors of short stories and novels is suspicious. This essay takes up the task of suggesting a reasonable classification as a means of understanding Haydar’s intervention in the literary field, one which he was instrumental in constructing. While intertextuality plays a significant role in one of the  ḥikāyāt,  there is also narrative prose, as well as cut and paste selections from historical documents. I argue that the text uses foundational tools of collage, such as juxtaposition, disruption, and a fundamental sense of anti-narrativity, and, as such, chips away at the calcified trajectory of Syrian political-literary discourse. As a foundational medium in radically shifting perceptions, collage questions existing modes of representation. Haydar’s selections, insertions, and placement of particular histories against Syrian narratives pose a corrective lens to the Syrian historical imaginary that has been locked in a determinist trajectory, and, as this essay will demonstrate, frees texts from the responsibility of narrativity to a more aesthetically-charged act of formal innovation.

Recalibrating the historical imaginary: Haydar Haydar’s literary collage