International Journal of Research Publication and Reviews, Vol 3, no 2, pp 17-20, February 2022 International Journal of Research Publication and Reviews Journal homepage: www.ijrpr.com ISSN 2582-7421 Tales of Turmoil in Nada Awar Jarrar’s Somewhere, Home Dr Waqar Yonus Butt 1 , Dr Rakesh Kumar 2 1 Lecturer, Dept. of English, Bhaderwah Campus, University of Jammu, J&K India. (butt.yunis0@gmail.com) 2 Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, Bhaderwah Campus, University of Jammu, J&K, India. (rakeshbcju@gmail.com) ABSTRACT: Nada Awar Jarrar‟s Somewhere, Home (2003) is a fascinating account about the lives of three Lebanese women who witness devastation, plunder and escalating carnage in their country. They are driven out of their homes as a result of the civil war and subsequently witness turmoil, decadence and turbulence in their lives. Their abandonment of their city shatters their convictions about home as they undergo crisis and confront sordid repercussions amidst chaos, lawlessness and belligerence. The paper explores Jarrar‟s endeavours in reconstructing identities through her own discourse. The paper emanates the disillusionment that people encounter in their lives due to socio-political disruption and the way they endure the separation from their homes, families and society. The paper also explores the way Jawar‟s novel emerges as a symbol of feminine resistance. Keywords: Home, Alienation, Lebanese Civil War, Subjectivity, Affinity Discussion: The concept of „Home‟ in academia, discourse and literature has been approached from many standpoints making it a topic of mu ch attention, scrutiny and prominence. In the twenty-first century, the idea of home has seen many connotations and has been an issue of debate in the academia, media and philosophy. The escalation of turbulence, precarity and contention in the present times has led to the forced expulsion of innumerable people throughout the world especially in the Middle-East. Terkenli and Mallet are among the many scholars who emanated the concept of home as intricately complex and underscore contradictions in the promulgations of many critics. Terkenli puts forth that the formation of a home at a particular place necessitates investment and time. He asserts that the image of home portents, “recurrent, regular investment of meaning in a context with which people personalize and identify through some measure of control” (325). The events shared in its formation are then communicated to the descendants or inheritors who relish on the memories in narrative sharing norms and customs of their descendants. Di Stefano avers that home does not constitute some random physical space but also comprises familiarity with one‟s surroundings which amplifies during t he passage of time. He avers, “home is not necessarily a fixed notion . . . more than a physical space, home might be understood as a familiarity and regularity of activities and structures of time” (38). Mallet‟s formulation is based on the conviction of home as a phenomenon which is private and subjective. She proclaims that it encompasses discrete factors comprising history, affiliation to physical locales as well as dislocation from place. Nada Awar Jarrar‟s Somewhere, Home takes into consideration every aspect of home by accentuating in tender and delicate voices stories of three Lebanese women thriving in Lebanon at different times. Differing from the other postwar fiction that encompass details of war and rampant destruction or abhorrable confrontations for large scale tragedy in the form of civil war, Jarrar‟s fiction minimally portrays misdea meaours and more focuses on the lassitude of individuals caught in the conflict. Even her third protagonist who happens to be an old Lebanese woman makes no mention of the disastrous civil war. In the beginning, her first protagonist Maysa slightly insinuates about tragedy caused by civil war and her escape to the remote mountains from “Beirut that smoulders in a war against itself” ( Somewhere, Home, 4). In her novel, Jarrar‟s kempt silence on the issue of war allows the readers to comprehend the topical issues of displacement and psychological turbulence by overlooking force and violence. Born in 1958 and brought up in Lebanon, Jarrar has lived in at least four countries such as Australia, France, the US and the UK before returning to Lebanon along with her husband in 1997. In the summers of 2006 when Lebanon‟s conflict with Israel intensified and resulted in thirty -three day long war she sought refuge in distant mountains to escape from the tumult, anxiety and military warfare. Her novel is an ardent expression to the odyssey of three Lebanese women who struggle to reach a home amidst annihilation, incessant carnage and destruction. Their pursuit encompasses seeking recognition and creation of socio-cultural identity. All the three women find themselves entangled in homeland searching for a place to render meaning to their otherwise distorted lives. The place where they appear arbitrarily comprises an old village house in Lebanon from where they begin their escape and later return to claim it again as their final goal “from which there is no further to go” (1 45). Symbolically, Home accentuates an idea of stability, protection and identity and in the novel, the women try to reconcile the past with the present to gain meaning and understanding of their lives. They reminisce about their childhood, lament their displacement, suffer from identity crisis and long for affection, compassion and love of their loved ones. In their venture to their homeland for seeking meaning to their lives, they reflect on the subject of home. In her novel, Jarrar indicates that home comprises any personalised space and that home could include any abode or dwelling place. She evinces: I have returned to the mountain to collect memories of the lives that wandered through this house as though my own depended on