EXCERPT
RITA
The shops were empty. The cats had taken over the street. They were happy. They screamed and played in the trash and with one another. They sat on their haunches and rotated their heads to survey the landscape. They trawled beneath my window on quiet nights, upsetting trash cans and leaping from balconies. They didn't have much to eat, and they were skinny but boisterous, as if food had become secondary in their newfound freedom. They yowled and scratched at the metal curtains that covered the shops. They were scary. They multiplied, while we died by the thousands.
We took offense at their happiness. They liked to show off how well they were getting on without us. They had figured out a way around the war, which was to ignore it by pursuing life.
We lacked their quickness. The violence lingered in us, continuing to reverberate long after the guns had gone silent. Our world got smaller. It had the circumference of fear.
I listened to music. The Beatles, Fairuz, Pavarotti. I no longer danced.
On the rare nights when we had electricity, Baba drank tea in front of the television set. He looked terrible, his eyes dark with exhaustion. In the glare of the screen, I saw his chipped toenails and the folds of loose skin where his fat used to be. I tried to remember how happy I was when we used to watch television together before the war. But all I could think about now was which of the two would wreck our little distraction, a power outage or the explosives.
You could hear the war sharpening its teeth on quiet nights. When that happened, everything else fell silent—the cats, the lapping waves, and the street vendors.
During the lulls we lifted a corner of the curtain and watched the cats. They stalked, unafraid in the dark, then looked up at the moon and made loud bleating sounds. A mysterious thrill overtook us as we threw our heads back and stared silently at the moon. The cries of the cats sent shivers up our spines. The howling and mewling rose to the heavens, and we were alive and brave.
But the moment quickly passed. We dropped the curtain and walked away. The spell was gone, and our brief happiness ended. It was too late to undo the damage. We were too filled with our own destruction. Let the cats have at it.
PRAISE
BookLife Editor's Pick Review, Publishers Weekly
"The novel's dual perspective provides a layered and insightful look into how war affects individuals across different generations and social backgrounds, and Chehade's prose is both lyrical and unflinching, painting vivid scenes of beauty and redemption amid the destruction...
Chehade's depiction of the Lebanese Civil War is both intimate and expansive, offering readers a personal lens through which to view the lives upended by the conflict, and her attention to sensory details—and skill in evoking the characters' lived experiences—make the novel immersive and strikingly real. The end result is a challenge to more simplistic narratives about war, as Chehade (author of Loom) provides a nuanced exploration of its complexities—and the often-overlooked personal stories behind the headlines. This is a compelling and thought-provoking work that, much as Hisham strives to do in his teaching, highlights the resilience of the human spirit while seeking to "make beauty out of the sordid world."
Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018
"The writing is beautiful, the characters draw us in, the political detail is interesting and works with the plot rather than functioning as a distraction, and the buildup of pacing and tension is done so assuredly. Chehade masterfully creates the sense of living with a civil war that uses a city as its battleground — how the violence becomes both terrifying and everyday, how life stops and starts, how enmities build, how the ordinary stuff of relationships and jobs continues but with everything coloured by war."
Margot Douaihy, author of Scorched Grace, New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
"We Walked On is a treasure, a riveting testament, a powerful paean to longing and celebrating the tiny details and tendrils of life amidst the rubble and despair of war in Lebanon. Thérèse Soukar Chehade has crafted a mesmerizing tale of family, love, fear, and genuine hope despite the fever of 'animal terror,' where a brief snowfall invites dancing in the street, the vanished return in dreams, and books offer refuge from total annihilation. We Walked On is a novel of rare talent and exquisite intimacy—a crucial, lyrical exploration of survival."
Debra Jo Immergut, author of You Again and The Captives
"With tremulously gorgeous prose and an unsparing yet compassionate gaze,Thérèse Soukar Chehade draws us deep into a dazzling world lost to war. The Beirut of these pages feels both shockingly immediate and achingly distant, and its denizens vibrate with aliveness. I sunk into this intricate novel, into its sumptuous pleasures and deep sorrows, and I was changed by it."
Uzma Aslam Khan, author of The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali, New York Times' pick for "Best Historical Fiction 2022" and winner of the 2023 Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction
"A moving book that details, with tenderness and intimacy, the lives fractured and uprooted by the Lebanese Civil War. Writing intelligently, Thérèse Soukar Chehade maps the "siphoning of the soul" caused by religious and class divides fomented by colonial powers—divides that remain urgently relevant today—and the toll of these ruptures on those who survive. The story has a slow-burn quality that pulls the reader deep into the world of the boisterous, diverse communities of Beirut who grow and separate together, focusing especially on Rita, a Convent student who, even in her youth, begins to yearn for the rebellious, fun-loving teenager that she once was, and Hisham, a teacher devoted to his students and family, who writes in stealth about the war. Perhaps most of all, We Walked On is an ode to those who anchor us in kindness in times of grief and irrecoverable loss: teachers, mentors, friends, and the writers that Hisham reignites in the consciousness of the living, who must now tell their own stories, true and fierce."
Kate Southwood, author of Falling to Earth and Evensong
"With lush, atmospheric prose, Thérèse Soukar Chehade recreates a time of beauty before the civil war and the bewilderment of the subsequent slide into chaos and devastation. Her sensitive and keen eye allows us to enter the scene and feel the simple pleasure of a paper cone of peanuts, the everyday vexations of family tensions, and then with a single deft image––a soldier goes by in an open car and you remember him chasing his little sister on the playground––to feel the impossibility of reconciling the past with the present. We Walked On finds the universal in the individual, gives us the aching beauty of everyday things, and an affecting reminder that a place is not lost that exists in memory."
Carolyn Jack, author of The Changing of Keys
"If the title "Being There" were not already taken, it would have worked admirably for Thérèse Soukar Chehade's harrowing and poignant story of two people trapped in the Lebanese Civil War of the mid-1970s. In recounting the intertwined experiences of a 14-year-old girl named Rita and Hisham, the literature teacher who befriends her, Chehade immerses readers in a culture blown apart by sudden conflict, minutely recreating the surreal stretches of foreboding, violence and tedium that a city-turned-war-zone inflicts on its residents. How she turns words into Sensurround, allowing the rest of us to feel the bewildered horror and rare joys of these two people as if we shared skin and nervous systems with them, can only be called a tour de force of observation and empathy. What Chehade conveys about the pain of not belonging – whether as sensitive misfit or refugee – eliminates the barriers of time and nationality, directly connecting 1975 with today's widespread religious/political turmoil and masses of displaced persons for readers who are likely never to wonder again what the plight of immigrants could possibly have to do with them."
Peter Selgin, author of Duplicity and The Inventors
"'The war engulfs and dwarfs everything,' writes Thérèse Chehade in We Walk On, her novel of two families disrupted by the Lebanese Civil War. In the same novel we read, 'War cannot break the dance of life.' These are the antipodal themes that We Walked On dramatizes so vividly. Essentially a war story, We Walked On forsakes sensational war story tropes in behalf of something more subtle: the quality of life ceaselessly moving forward even as bombs fall and bullets fly. Elsewhere in Chehade's novel we read, 'War was many things: animal terror, loss of control, and obsessive attention to daily details.' We Walk On illustrates, with singular authenticity, how the first two are made endurable by the third."
Morgan Howell, author of The Moon Won't Talk
"With an exceptional pen, Thérèse Soukar Chehade draws a tranquil, richly layered world that is destroyed by war. Chehade's heart-rending, beautiful prose propels the reader through the spectrum of emotion with unforgettable power. A poignant, beautifully written tale of tragedy, loss, and hope."