Hussam is trying to erase himself and his past by losing himself in the queer nightlife of Vancouver. The Next Chapter 19:11 Danny Ramadan on The Foghorn Echoes Danny Ramadan talks to Shelagh Rogers about his novel, The Foghorn Echoes. They may not know it, but they are both struggling with similar trauma responses as they punish themselves for mistakes they cannot fully face. Though their lives are now very different, Hussam and Wassim's shared tragedies are like a tether that holds them to one another. Forced into his marriage by his father, he didn't want to hurt his wife and child, but the lie he was living as a straight family man weighed heavily on him eventually, he felt it would be better for them if he fled. Wassim, on the other hand, has thrown away his formerly charmed life as a well-off husband and father and is now living as a vagrant in an abandoned home in Syria. He finally has the sort of life he could only dream of … with two important, increasingly impossible caveats: he must be Ray's silent, agreeable arm candy, and he must not discuss the trauma of his past, which is too much of a bummer for his boyfriend and his new friends to hear about. Hussam has managed to get to Canada after romancing Ray - a wealthy, well-connected man who helped pull strings to get Hussam there as a sponsored refugee - on Facebook. A series of impulsive decisions ends with Hussam's father accidentally falling to his death in the Damascus streets below.įrom here, the narrative jumps ahead to each man's life as an adult, with their past mistakes and continued relationship slowly being revealed as the novel unfolds. Just as their lips touched, Hussam's father came up to get them for dinner - and saw what they were doing. The first and perhaps most formative involved the boys' first kiss, atop of a precarious bird cage on the roof of Wassim's family home. What does it truly mean to hold ourselves accountable - and to forgive?Īs young men in Syria, Hussam and Wassim are best friends and secret lovers who continuously come together and fall apart amidst a series of personal tragedies.
It's a metaphor that can be extended further to encapsulate all self-destructive patterns, asking: what diseased places have these impulses come from, and what must be done to heal those places and stop those patterns? Can we confront our mistakes without vanquishing in varying forms of self-harm forever? Guilt, shame, fear and trauma have turned them from humans into foghorns, enacting behaviour that screams at other people to keep their distance or be doomed.
This titular metaphor opens up how we see the two protagonists - Hussam and Wassim - in the novel. Shelfies Who does power truly belong to? This book digs into the layers of an abusive relationship to find out
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