ABSTRACT
The eldest son of Hajj Khalaf, Mahmoud became mayor of Hawi al-Hawa at the age of sixteen, and is the manager of the family agricultural business. He describes the development of agriculture in the village during the 1950s–1980s, and the eventual division of the land between the family members. He was betrothed to a cousin in his childhood, and married when he was seventeen. Unhappy in his marriage, he took a second wife, Tieba, when he was in his thirties, and established a new home with her in the nearby town of Raqqa. Admired and respected for his entrepreneurial and managerial abilities in the family business, Mahmoud faces some criticism for his individualism. His responsible but, essentially, capitalist approach to business, marriage and family unearths the generalised social tensions and conflicts that modern capitalist development was bringing onto social and economic relations that had been governed on the basis of tribal custom, familialism, tribalism, localism, and villagism. As an individual, al-Mukhtar Mahmoud combines traditional customs in ways to address his contemporary needs. With his carefully daring choices and contradictions he manages to encompass the aspirations and the fears of a new coming of age.
