Suja Sawafta (University of Miami) | Re-reading Abdulrahman Munif's Cities of Salt in the Age of Climate Collapse

In the Arab world, it is often said that there are signs that indicate the end of the world, or at least the transition from one world into another: a fire in Yemen so big that it can be seen in Syria, an age where metal will speak, where structures that scrape the edge of the sky are built by barefoot Bedouins, and a reality where one is unable to easily distinguish truth from falsehood. It is no surprise, then, that the native tribes of Arabia feared that it was the end of the world when bulldozers arrived at the coasts of the Arabian Peninsula; their oases compromised, the trees uprooted, and dunes covered in pavement. In Abdulrahman Munif's Cities of Salt, a society is depicted on the brink of change just as fossil capital and its machinery take over the fictional oasis of Wadi al-Ayoun, transforming it into a petroleum refinery site. Munif's epic quintet famously challenges both the foundational narrative of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and depicts a community that resisted this new reality. In this, the series provides its reader with a guidebook that remains ever-relevant in the age of forest fires: It allows us to glean lessons from literature and illuminates the power of impactful social mobilisation, encouraging us to challenge fossil capitalism and its structures, and to turn to community as nature is destroyed.