Amman — Writer Arwa Zaidan Al-Lala uses the "inner garden" as a symbolic space to explore the depths of human experience and the journey to find one's self, in her book Jaffa and the Chrysanthemum Flower: A Journey of Consciousness from Symbol to Life, published by Dar Al-Khaleej for Publishing and Distribution. In it, storytelling meets philosophical reflection and psychological analysis, in an attempt to understand a person's relationship with their emotions, memory, fears, and search for meaning.
اضافة اعلان
The book presents the character "Jaffa" as a model of the person who, amid the noise and burdens of life, gradually finds herself disconnected from her own self. The garden becomes a space for reflection and reclaiming inner presence, and through it begins a journey of awareness that moves from confronting and understanding one's feelings to discovering direction and purpose.
Al-Lala builds this journey around three primary symbols: chrysanthemum, lavender, and sunflower. The first represents presence and the ability to live in the current moment, the second embodies inner calm and emotional regulation, while the third symbolizes direction and purpose. Through the interplay of these symbols, the book discusses the idea that consciousness isn't complete merely through self-knowledge, but becomes an internal practice that helps a person deal with pain, ambiguity, and fear without becoming captive to them.
Jaffa and the Chrysanthemum Flower doesn't present the garden as a permanent refuge from reality, but as a temporary stop on the path to maturity; the symbols, in the author's vision, fulfill their role when they shift from external elements into stable inner meanings and capacities within the person.
From here, leaving the garden becomes part of the journey, not its end, as Jaffa emerges more capable of facing her life, understanding her emotions, and choosing her own direction, away from fear, habit, and others' expectations.
In the book's introduction, Al-Lala notes that "inner gardens" symbolically express a person's need to understand themselves and the world around them; unlike things that simply exist in the world without questioning their existence, a human being doesn't settle for mere living, but continuously seeks to give what they experience meaning.
A person doesn't receive reality directly, but filters it through memory, fear, hope, imagination, and symbols, so that reality, within their consciousness, turns into images, interpretations, and stories. From here, symbol becomes an essential means of understanding experiences that are difficult to express in direct language.
From this standpoint, the "inner garden" arises, according to the author, as a psychological space that doesn't represent an escape from reality or a rejection of it, but a refuge a person turns to when external life becomes harsh or noisy, or unable to explain what they feel. When pain has no language, it becomes crueler, and when loss has no meaning, it can turn into a frightening inner void.
That's why a person creates their own symbols: a memory, an image, a legend, a prayer, an idea, or an imagined place, making their experience more understandable and bearable. A symbol, at its start, is not a mask hiding the truth, but a bridge connecting a person to what they cannot confront directly.
Through this idea, the character "Jaffa" emerges, whom Al-Lala presents not merely as a woman with an individual story, but as a symbol of human consciousness when it begins its journey of self-discovery.
Jaffa enters the garden after being worn down by external noise, the fast pace of life, and the feeling of playing many roles without truly being present in her own life. She suffers what could be called "an exhaustion of meaning"; the days continue, duties are fulfilled, relationships proceed, but a growing distance forms between her and herself.
The garden becomes an attempt to return to the self, a place where Jaffa doesn't need to pretend to be strong, successful, or composed, but can simply be as she is. Here, the text clarifies that a person may grow exhausted not only from the pain they experience, but also from the constant need to hide that pain and perform a certain image before others. The garden gives them a space to remove these masks and reclaim their relationship with themselves.
The garden doesn't appear suddenly, fully formed, but takes shape gradually through three primary symbols: chrysanthemum, lavender, and sunflower. These flowers aren't merely aesthetic elements, but represent fundamental functions in building consciousness.
Chrysanthemum represents presence; it teaches Jaffa to return to the present moment, and not to remain a prisoner of the past or future. A person often lives in regret or anxiety, losing their capacity for genuine presence in the moment they're living.
Presence doesn't mean erasing memory or eliminating fear, but the ability to see them without letting them fully control the person. When Jaffa grieves, she shouldn't become entirely sadness, and when she's afraid, she shouldn't become fear itself. Here emerges the importance of distinguishing between feeling and identity; a person can feel fear without being fear, and carry a memory without living inside it.
Lavender, meanwhile, represents inner calm and emotional regulation. Calm, in the text, doesn't mean the absence of sadness, fear, or anger, nor the suppression of feelings, but the ability to accompany them without falling captive to them. Feelings aren't a person's enemy, but signals that help them understand their relationship with what's happening around them.
The problem begins, according to the book, when fear turns into a ruler, sadness into an identity, or anger into a permanent way of seeing the world. That's why lavender teaches Jaffa to feel without collapsing, and to suffer without losing her capacity to think.
Sunflower symbolizes direction and purpose. A person doesn't just need to be present and calm, but also needs to know where they're heading and why they're moving. A person may stay very busy and achieve many accomplishments, yet remain without genuine direction. From here, the sunflower becomes an image of a person's need for a purpose or meaning that organizes their choices and gives their movement value.
Al-Lala affirms that these three symbols are interconnected: presence, then calm, then direction. A person cannot regulate their feelings if they're absent from themselves, and cannot choose their path if they're drowning in inner chaos. Yet knowing these principles theoretically isn't enough; consciousness requires practice and training for knowledge to become a genuine inner capacity.
The author believes that leaving the garden represents an essential part of maturity; maturity doesn't mean discarding symbols or scorning the past, but understanding the limits of each stage. Chrysanthemum should teach Jaffa presence until she becomes capable of presence without needing it, lavender should teach her calm until that calm becomes an inner capacity independent of an external symbol, while sunflower should teach her direction until she can continue on her path even when the light isn't clear.
This means that a true symbol fulfills its function once a person becomes able to move beyond it; it shouldn't turn into a permanent authority, but into a lesson that settles within one's character. So the garden doesn't die when Jaffa leaves it, but its nature changes; it shifts from a place she retreats to, into an inner trace that shows in how she views life and handles pain and ambiguity.
The book brings together literature, philosophy, and psychological analysis, so the story doesn't read as merely a tale about a woman and a garden, but as an attempt to understand the mechanisms of human consciousness. The garden represents a psychological map: chrysanthemum for attention and presence, lavender for emotional regulation, and sunflower for purpose and direction.
Through these symbols, the book invites the reader to question themselves: Where does my attention go missing? How do I deal with my feelings? And what direction have I actually chosen? Is it my own, or does it come from fear, habit, and others' expectations? Al-Lala shows that inner freedom begins with self-understanding; a person may have many external choices, yet remain a captive to a fear, a pattern, or an attachment they don't recognize. The more they're able to distinguish between their genuine needs and their fears, between their feelings and their identity, and between the meaning that helps them and the meaning that confines them, the more capable they become of making free decisions.
The author concludes that Jaffa's journey doesn't offer a final salvation or complete answers; she doesn't defeat ambiguity, doesn't rid herself of pain, and doesn't become a fully complete person, but learns how to live despite ambiguity, how to face her own fragility without fleeing from it, and how to use symbols without becoming their prisoner.
Resource: Al-Ghad. Reporting: Aziza Ali
