Between Hunger and Desire: A Feminist Reading of Dr. Hakima Djadouni NinarEskila’s "I Will Not Forgive You" and "Narcissism"

  Between Hunger and Desire: A Feminist Reading of Dr. Hakima Djadouni NinarEskila’s "I Will Not Forgive You" and "Narcissism"

By Amany El-Sawy 

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In two searing literary texts—"لن أسامحك" ("I Will Not Forgive You") and "نرجسية" ("Narcissism")—Dr. Hakima Jaadouni Ninaraiskila crafts a powerful feminist critique of patriarchal structures, both political and personal. Though stylistically distinct and thematically divergent on the surface, these works form a compelling dyad: the first a poetic lamentation over collective suffering, the second an intimate deconstruction of romantic domination. Together, they offer a unified vision of how power—masculine, structural, symbolic—manifests across terrains, from the ravaged body politic to the vulnerable interior of a woman’s heart.

"I Will Not Forgive You"is a narrative poem that casts a haunting gaze upon mass suffering—famine, abandonment, and human degradation. The personae, once a ruler or observer of power, is overcome with guilt and disbelief at the collapse of humanity into primal desperation. The gendered subtext here is profound: power is masculinized—“I do not deserve to be the one standing”—while the masses are feminized through their physical vulnerability, their need, their voicelessness. Ninaraiskila’s repeated refrain, "لن أسامحك"—“I will not forgive you”—is less a personal indictment and more a feminist refusal to reconcile with structural violence and complicity. It is a rejection of any system that justifies comfort at the cost of another’s collapse.

In contrast, "Narcissism" pivots from the public stage to the private theater of love. Here, the man is not a ruler of nations but a ruler of narratives. He crafts women not as partners but as projections—“He loves a virginal woman that does not exist.” The relationship is not mutual but instrumental: the woman exists to reflect his identity, not to assert her own. She becomes a bridge, a placeholder, a mold. Despite the difference in scope, both texts portray those in power—be they kings or lovers—as engaging in forms of self-preserving narcissism, consuming the other without recognition of their full humanity.

A striking feature of both works is the portrayal of those who suffer as de-subjectivized—they are flattened, used, and mourned, but rarely engaged as equals. In  "I Will Not Forgive You", the image of masses crawling, bleeding, and collapsing upon one another evokes not just physical devastation but also symbolic erasure. These figures, like the lover in "Narcissism”, are seen only in relation to a dominant gaze. In "Narcissism", the woman is similarly denied her interiority. The man needs her not for who she is, but for what she makes him feel: powerful, desired, central. Feminist theory has long critiqued such dynamics, with thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray unpacking the ways in which the feminine is made to serve as mirror, muse, or myth—never subject in her own right.

The most radical force in both texts is the refusal to participate in systems that demand complicity or silence. In "I Will Not Forgive You", the speaker’s repeated renunciation—"I will not forgive you even if..."—functions as a feminist ethics of resistance. Forgiveness, in this context, would mean acceptance of the violent logic that places some lives above others. Likewise, in "Narcissism", the speaker exposes the inner mechanics of gendered love, refusing to , or the lover's narcissism. Both texts challenge the reader to reject myths that sustain patriarchal equilibrium—be it the myth of the benevolent ruler, or the myth of the romantic hero. They insist that recognition is not enough—accountability is essential. In this, Ninaraiskila aligns herself with a contemporary feminist literary movement that demands the end of symbolic violence, whether enacted in hunger or in desire.

Nonetheless, what binds these two texts most profoundly is the presence of the feminine narrator—observant, incisive, emotionally astute. She does not collapse under the weight of what she sees, nor does she become complicit in its logic. Rather, she becomes the voice of refusal, the rememberer of pain, the discloser of uncomfortable truths. In  "I Will Not Forgive You", her voice is collective, almost prophetic, mourning not only suffering but also its normalization. In "Narcissism", her tone is intimate, conspiratorial—addressed to “my friend,” she lifts the veil from romantic fantasy and reveals the asymmetry beneath. In both, the feminine voice is not a victim's echo but a strategist’s reckoning.

To conclude, "I Will Not Forgive You" and "Narcissism" illuminate two poles of patriarchal impact—the systemic and the symbolic, the external and the intimate. They reveal how power dehumanizes, whether through starvation or seduction, whether in the collapse of a people or the coercion of a partner. Moreover, in both, we are given a roadmap for feminist resistance: through lucidity, through testimony, through the radical act of naming. Naming hunger. Naming narcissism. And above all, refusing to forgive what should never be justified.

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