What is war without the shouts of demonstrators, the roar of warplanes, and the screams of detainees in torture rooms? How do beings and actions appear without their sounds? What is the need for a doorbell? What is the sound of food cooked in a pot? How can a deaf child-young person digest such a silent, muffled world?
These are some of the questions raised by the book “The Deaf Aspirant,” which describes the image of the world after deleting its audio file, and tells the diaries of a father who raised his deaf son alone.
Relying on various narrative methods, Reber Youssef sheds light on the complex aspects of the fatherhood-childhood duality, including complex feelings, such as: love, hate, fear, and the desire to be free from the burden of this bond between the two, or to defend and strengthen it. It is a book about a father who voluntarily abandons the sounds of the world if they do not reach his son’s ears, and about a son who rediscovers himself to bury his deafness and fear forever.
He was working in a sales company to support his family, which consisted of a father, mother, and sister. He worked to pay off his father’s debts that had burdened him. He is the “good son” as long as he performs his duty to the fullest extent, and any change in this is accompanied by anger, rejection, and neglect. In his workplace, which he found himself forced to live with, the state of domination and control by the chief of staff on the one hand is clearly evident, while on the other hand, it is matched by a state of subservience and submission on his part.
In fact, he has an unconscious desire to be fired from his job, but he fears for his family. From here arises a state of schizophrenia, as the two models of the cruel father and the boss represent the controlling authoritarian principle, and this is what arouses in him both submission and the spirit of rebellion.
He tried to follow the rules, to be a polite boy, to be rational as his boss described him at work... and between all these honest attempts, we find him completely losing himself, and he began to experience a surprising existential crisis!
Here he wakes up from his nightmares one day to find himself transformed into a disgusting “insect”!!
At first glance, he thought he was still dreaming, and amid the chaos and unreasonableness of the events, he needed conclusive evidence to confirm to him the veracity of the event, and this is what he got when he found his family shocked and terrified by the horror of the event. Then he realized the reality of the event and exclaimed, saying: “No, it is not a dream.” .
