Book 168: Bahrain (English) – Yummah (Sarah A. AL SHAFEI)

 

 

Dana was the one who killed me the most. She loved her freedom and liberty and had a very strong personality, very different than her quiet self when she was much younger. She wanted much more than what she had, and her ambition and enthusiasm always got her what she wanted. Even when her father left, she had chosen to look forwards rather to than [sic] think of the loss like the rest of us; “Baba wanted another life and so he went to look for it. I also want a better life and will prove to Baba some day that we were better off without him anyway,” she told me once. And maybe she was right.

 

At first I was a bit disappointed with Yummah. But I came to love it. The plot is not all that exciting – and in any case some spoilsport put effectively all of it into the back page blurb – and the writing is also not thrilling, or literary, which is not to say that there is anything wrong with it at all. But I had no problem keeping reading the story of Khadeeja and her family down through the generations.

As a 12-year-old, she is torn away from her doll and forced into an arranged marriage to a much older man. Her mother dies soon after, leaving her with two unknown brothers and a husband, though she does come to know and love the latter and have a happy life. She then comes to lose both a child and her husband, struggles to raise her huge family without him, and suffers more tragedies before the dénouement.

For me, it was heartbreaking to see her still speaking to her doll even when she has had nine children and two miscarriages, and when she has to sell her hair in order to pay for a hajj.

So, not the greatest novel ever written and I couldn’t help thinking, “not another novel about the unjust and/or hard life of Islamic women”, but well worth reading.

 

Al Shafei, Sarah A., Yummah, London, Athena Press, 2005, ISBN 1 84401 368 5

Book 160: Slovenia (English) – Alamut (Vladimir BARTOL)

            “I come from al-Ghazali, Your Excellency, with this letter.”

            He held the letter out toward the old man, while calmly drawing the sharpened writing instrument out of it. He did this so naturally that none of those present was aware of the action.

            The vizier unsealed the envelope and unfolded the letter.

            ”What is my learned friend up to in Baghdad?” he asked.

            Ibn Tahir suddenly leaned forward and shoved the dagger into his throat beneath the chin. The vizier was so startled that for the first few moments he didn’t feel any pain. He just opened his eyes up wide. Then he scanned the only line of the letter one more time and grasped everything.

My Slovenian novel, which has apparently been a bestseller in many languages (seemingly not in English, though it should be) really has as little as is imaginable to do with Slovenia (which is by the way my favourite country in Europe at the moment). It is totally removed in both time and place, like my preceding Macedonian novel. It is derived from one of the more fascinating tales from Marco Polo’s generally prosaic Travels, that of the Old Man of the Mountain, but the Ismaili stronghold in modern Iran actually existed.

Bartol takes three young friends, sworn to friendship, who each choose different paths in life. One becomes a vizier, one (Omar Khayyam) a poet, and the third, the subject of the story, Hasan, becomes what we would now see as the head of a terrorist organisation. Hasan becomes so cynical that he can not believe in anything at all – his ultimate motto is “Nothing is true, everything is permitted;” he reveals it only to his most trusted confidantes, and basically applies it to no one but himself. Everyone else is treated more or less as a child, as his tool. Hasan (known to his followers as Sayyiduna ‘Our Lord’), sets out to deceive and exploit them, by creating a fairy tale and making it seem real to them. He reproduces in reality at his castle (Alamut) the Muslim paradise, and rewards his most trustworthy followers with a single night there (after drugging them with opium), so that they can be used as assassins (a word which derives from hashishim ‘opium-eaters’) against his enemies. Despite some close calls, as far as we learn from the novel his plan is successful. Yet its eternal vulnerability is obvious, throughout symbolised by the lift he uses, which his trusted eunuchs could easily use to kill him. (As generally with terrorist organisations, the success at murdering enemies was matched by abject failure at conquering them – and Alamut was to fall to the Mongols in 1256). Bartol wrote a long time before the age of Al-Qaida, but his sophisticated insight into the mindset of a terrorist warlord and what are now suicide bombers is more relevant now than ever before. Alamut can be read merely as a popular novel, but there is so much food for thought that its worth is far deeper than that.

Vladimir BARTOL (1903 – 1967), Alamut, translated from Slovenian by Michael Biggins, Berkeley, CA, North Atlantic Books, 2007, ISBN 978-1-55643-681-9

Book 156: Qatar (English) – Love comes Later (Mohanalakshmi RAJAKUMAR)

            “We need to bring up our own teams in advance of the Cup,” someone is saying, echoing Chairman Ahmed, who wags his head up and down with such enthusiasm his ghutra [male head covering] wobbles.

            Abdulla swallows, his breath constricted by his starched collar. He drinks more and more water as the discussion swirls around him. The world’s fattest nation, planning to integrate sports into society? he thinks. Why not get rid of McDonald’s first?

            “You want to say something?”  Uncle Ahmed’s eyebrows draw together, a ripple of creases rising on his forehead.

            In the growing silence, all eyes turn in the direction of the chairman’s gaze. Abdulla raises his shoulders to shrug but the glowing red light at the base of the microphone in front of him makes him realize he has spoken his criticism out loud.

This one was a bit of a slow burn at first but I came to love it! I was thinking, not another Arab novel about the sad lot of women (perhaps more a comment on what Western publishers think Western readers will expect – I’d be surprised if untranslated fiction from that part of the world isn’t much more diverse than what we get to read). Though I have to admit all these Arabic novels I’ve read have been great, and not as same-ish as I would have expected.

Another thing I love about this one is that it’s not so much about the predictable relationship between the Arab and Western worlds, as between the former and the Indian subcontinent, like some of the novels of Amitabh Ghosh (one of my favourite writers). The similarities and (surprisingly few) differences between the lives and marriage customs of Muslim and Indian women were fascinating. It was great to see the Muslim woman’s lot portrayed as not all negative and unbearable as many Westerners think. Quite a few stereotypes get broken. Qatari women wearing sexy clothes under their abayas?

Qatar is obviously one of those stultifying small countries, which will become increasingly common from now on, where everyone knows everyone else and everyone else’s business. Let’s call it the small country effect. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in such a large family. And living in one of the world’s richest countries obviously doesn’t make life a bed of roses for everyone.

The plot was far from predictable (for me at least), with lots of surprising twists and turns – even the title (from which I inferred that an arranged marriage eventually would warm into true love). The symmetrical conclusion I was hoping for doesn’t eventuate – and, on reflection, would have been impossible. And everyone seems to like those they’re not supposed to.

It’s difficult to discuss the plot without giving anything away. Abdulla’s wife Fatima is killed in a car accident driven by his uncle Ahmed. Fatima’s vivacious sister Luluwa is rejected by her parents and goes to live with Abdulla’s family. He doesn’t want to re-marry despite unrelentingly heavy familial pressure. Eventually he has to get engaged to Hind (’India’) despite the reluctance both of them – he takes little persuading to let her go to the UK for a year to finish MA before the marriage. There Hind makes friends with fellow Indian-American student Sangita in London, and spontaneously goes on a secret trip to India with Sangita’s brother Ravi – this can’t end well? The imbroglio takes place against the background of the London Olympics and of Qatar gearing up to host the soccer World Cup.

The author is herself a South Asian American who has lived in Qatar since 2005. For a self-published book, the quality is high, the main slip-up being that sometimes a line of dialogue is joined with the next character’s reaction, along with some indentation problems, which sometimes confused me momentarily. Romance fiction isn’t usually my thing, but if you like it, or just a fascinating insight into two cultures, I can wholeheartedly recommend this intricate, surprising and often funny novel.

Rajakumar, Mohanalakshmi, Love comes Later, 2012, ISBN 978-0-615-91683-5

Book 152: Armenia (English) – Three Apples Fell from Heaven (Micheline Aharonian MARCOM)

Why is it we are unable to mark the moments, except in hindsight, of inauspicious endings? Can you remember the last time you carried your father’s slippers to him? You didn’t know it was the last time, how could it have been in your mind? And so you don’t have the image of your father receiving the brown woolen slippers from your quiet hands. Your guilt composes a song; it pervades the pores of your skin and dips into every cell of your body. It reverberates inside you. You should have known when you took Baba his slippers for the last time. Your should have kneeled and kissed his hand. You should have stopped and made an etching in your mind, not run to check on the simmering fava beans.

It’s dangerous buying books online. This one was my choice for Armenia, but what I was sent was Three Apples Fell from Heaven: a collection of Armenian folk and fairy tales, retold by Mischa Kudian. Mind you, this was also very interesting, and from it I learned why every Armenian book has the same title (or so it seems to me; I’ve just now finished Three Apples Fell from the Sky by Narine Abgaryan, a beautiful novel of rural life; and there is at least one more called Three Apples Fell from Heaven, this one by O. Sheohmelian). Basically, an Armenian storyteller finishes with the lines “and three apples fell from heaven: one for the storyteller, one for the listener, and one for the eavesdropper”. Anyway, I’ve ruled out short stories for present purposes, and the bookseller tried again and sent me Marcom’s novel, so I didn’t need the laws of three.

Marcom’s is a historical novel covering the years 1915-17 when the actions of the Ottoman government, deliberate or otherwise, led to the deaths of more than a million Armenians living in that territory. According to the blurb on the back cover this was the twentieth century’s first genocide, though some may beg to differ (to take one example, the German campaign against the Herero and Namaqua peoples in South West Africa, modern Namibia?) Be that as it may, the outcome was an unmitigated tragedy for the Armenians, whose survivors lost their homes in eastern Turkey, the greater part of their territory (modern independent Armenia is the remainder of a small part that was under the USSR).

Armenia is one of the oldest Christian nations. During the First World War, The Ottoman government expelled its Armenians in forced marches which resulted in their deaths. (And it’s worth noting that a lot of the cruelty was carried out by Kurds attacking the convoys – and saving some – as this novel shows). The Kurds themselves also continue to suffer in their relations with the Turkish government. The Armenian families were told that their menfolk were being sent to labour camps, rather than being murdered. Some of the women were forced to become Muslim wives.

Some of the Turks rescued Armenian children. On the other hand, the government was not above selling stolen goods (there are numerous parallels with the Holocaust…)

We follow the lives of a cast of characters with their differing experiences. It sometimes took a while to catch up with which of the characters was featuring in a particular chapter – I wish Marcom had started each chapter with the character’s name as with some of the other books I’ve read lately.

On the whole though, and despite some confusion on my part, this poetic novel is fantastic. I finished it feeling I really need to read more about what happened to the Armenians during WWI to try to find out the truth (or truths…)

Micheline Aharonian MARCOM (1968 – ), Three Apples Fell from Heaven, NY, Riverhead, 2001, ISBN 1-57322-915-6

The other books mentioned are:

Three Apples Fell from Heaven: a collection of Armenian folk and fairy tales, retold by Mischa KUDIAN, Hart-Davis, 1969, ISBN 9780246639608

Narine ABGARYAN, Three Apples Fell from the Sky, translated from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden, London, Oneworld, 2020, ISBN 978-1-78607-730-1 (originally published in Russian as С неба упали три яблока, 2015)

Book 148: Bosnia-Herzegovina (English) – The Bridge on the Drina = Na Drini Cuprija (Ivo ANDRIĆ)

At and around the kapia [swelling in the centre of the bridge] were the first stirrings of love, the first passing glances, flirtations and whisperings. There too were the first deals and bargains, quarrels and reconciliations, meetings and waitings. There too gathered the beggars, the maimed and the lepers, as well as the young and healthy who wanted to see and be seen, and all those who had something remarkable to show in produce, clothes or weapons. There too the elders of the town often sat to discuss public matters and common troubles, but even more often young men who only knew how to sing and joke. There, on great occasions or times of change, were posted proclamations and public notices (on the raised wall below the marble plaque with the Turkish inscription and above the fountain), but there too, right up to 1878, hung or were exposed on stakes the heads of all those who for whatever reason had been executed, and executions in that frontier town, especially in years of unrest, were frequent and in some years, as we shall see, almost of daily occurrence.

This magnificent novel is the story of a bridge, a town and a country. The Ottoman bridge in Višegrad really exists, in fact the author played on it as a child. I was reading this one on my grand tour of Eastern Europe and would have loved to have made it my penultimate stop on the way to my flight from Belgrade, but I had run out of time and could only visit Sarajevo and Mostar (famous for its own beautiful Turkish bridge barbarously blown up in the Yugoslav war and fairly recently restored).

The story spans centuries from the 11-arch bridge’s construction (it was designed by the famous architect Sinan) until its partial destruction in 1914, so of course a parade of characters (and indeed peoples and religions) are constantly coming and going (but the chief character is always the bridge).

The bridge is of course a symbol of bringing people together. The novel is a passionate plea for understanding and getting along with the ‘other’. It is a fast (and perhaps the best) tour through Balkan history. Andrić seems to maintain a remarkably (especially for this region) unbiased and bird’s-eye view of the happy and sad times. Bosnia is a fascinating mix (as the French would say, exemplifying a neighbouring land, a “macédoine”) of Christians, Jews, Muslims (Turks and natives who were born as such, or voluntarily or involuntarily converted) and Roma. They all lived together (not always, but mostly peacefully) and influenced each other. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire occupied Bosnia from the 1870s, a whole new influx of foreigners entered the area, bringing with them new-fangled nationalism that is to cause the final destruction.

The story inevitably ended with its publication in 1945, but the bridge’s history continued: after more damage in WWII, and atrocity during the Yugoslav War, which ended in hatred and division in Bosnia. (Višegrad ended up in the Serb enclave Republika Srpska, and the town, which before the civil war was 63% Bosniak (i.e. Muslim), is now nearly 90% Serb (according to the Wikipedia article). Andrić (himself a Bosnian Serb) would have been devastated.

This unforgettable book won its author the Nobel Prize for Literature.

ANDRIĆ, Ivo (1892 – 1975), The Bridge on the Drina, translated from Serbo-Croat by Lovett F. Edwards, University of Chicago Press, 1977, ISBN 978-0-226-02045-7

Originally published in Serbo-Croat, Belgrade 1945

Book 146: Mauritania (French) – Yessar: de l’esclavage à la citoyenneté = Yessar: from slavery to citizenship (Ahmed YEDALY)

In the part of Mauritania where I was born and where I grew up, there were several forms of “acquisition” of slaves: inheritance, cession or purchase, in exactly the same way as for camels or sheep.

These three ways of appropriation, in the Moorish society of the time, were “legalised” and treated in very different manners according to the social status and activity of their masters.

Generally, they could claim their freedom, either by their master’s will, which made them Haratines (free men), by desertion, along with the concomitant risks, or, more recently, by the application of State laws forbidding slavery and the exploitation of man by man.

 

[from the author’s Prologue; my translation]

 

I suppose the title says it all; Yessar is on a journey from bondage to freedom, as is his country Mauritania. It is based on the life of a real person known to the author. Mauritania is sadly one of the few countries left where slavery is still an accepted part of society.

From his birth Yessar realises that he’s different to others – he has ‘masters’. However his father has managed to free himself, and Yessar is determined to do the same not only for himself but for his entire family. He studies the Shari’a (Islamic law) and succeeds in making money for his masters by teaching. Eventually he reaches a high position in now independent Mauritania.

Slaves do have rights under the Shari’a. They can work for their freedom, but is it possible to escape 100%? They are still subject to obligations to their former masters, such as from business ties. The latter have difficulty in changing their opinions about ex-slaves (for example, still expecting them to do things for them).

On the whole, this novel was a fascinating look into slavery in an Islamic society, as well as some other issues (social change, gaining independence from colonial [French] rule, the tensions between the Arabic north and the African south of the country, and the war with the much more powerful Morocco. A lot of the functioning of slavery was new and intriguing to someone mainly familiar with its very different operation in the US.

Yessar (and the man he was based on) was an extraordinary man and not typical of the experience of slaves there. The ship of slavery in Mauritania does have holes, but not everyone escapes it, even today.

YEDALY, Ahmed, Yessar: de l’esclavage à la citoyenneté, Roissy-en-Brie France, Editions Cultures Croisées, 2007, ISBN 2-913059-31-7

 

Book 118: Serbia (English) – Dictionary of the Khazars (Milorad PAVIĊ)

I could have pulled the trigger then and there. There wouldn’t be a better moment. There was only one lone witness present in the garden – and he was a child. But that’s not what happened. I reached out and took those exciting sheets of paper, which I enclose in this letter. Taking them instead of firing my gun, I looked at those Saracen figures with their nails like hazelnuts and I thought of the tree Halevi mentions in his book on the Khazars. I thought how each and every one of us is just such a tree: the taller we grow toward the sky, through the wind and rain toward God, the deeper we must sink our roots through the mud and subterranean waters toward hell. With these thoughts in my head, I read the pages given me by the green-eyed Saracen. They shattered me, and in disbelief I asked Dr. Muawia where he had got them.

Still in the Balkans…
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this book, a bestseller at the time, even after having read it.
It purports to be a dictionary, although I would say it’s more like a small encyclopaedia, a collection of biographies and stories. Although it had been languishing on my to-read list since it when it was all the rage, so for an extremely long time, it finally fortuitously was time to read Serbia at about the time the real Khazars were on the go in my other Crazy Project (giving myself a Classical Education including reading through history and literature, so during the Dark Ages in Europe). I have to admit though that this novel wasn’t really helpful in that regard. For a start, we know very little about the Khazars anyway. Not a single line of the Khazar language exists. What’s more, Pavić’s fictional Khazars may not have very much to do with the real Khazars, any more than Nietzsche’s Zarathustra did with the real prophet Zarathustra/Zoroaster. Anyway, they were an intriguing people, and we do know that they were perhaps the only nation to convert en masse to Judaism.
The Khazars were a nomadic people who lived between the Black and Caspian Seas during the European Dark Ages. The Khazar Polemic is supposed to have taken place in the 8th or 9th century CE, when the kaghan (ruler) called together a Jewish rabbi, a Christian monk and a Muslim dervish to argue for the merits of their respective faiths.
The ‘Dictionary’ is divided into three parts, written from the Christian, Muslim and Jewish perspectives, and sometimes looking at the same incidents and characters from all three sides, which certainly is an intriguing way to consider truth, especially religious truth! The readers can choose to read as much or as little as they like, and in any order they like. (I chose to read the entries alphabetically but with the entries which appear in two or three parts I read these consecutively so that I could compare versions).
In Pavić’s version, the downfall of the Khazar Empire followed hard on the heels of its conversion from one unknown religion to another one (Judaism, Christianity – pace Gibbon! or Islam), and each of the three narrators insist that their religion ‘won’. Some of the longest entries are on the authors of the mythical dictionary.
Magical realism was the flavour of the month at the time of its publication, and there are a lot of influences here – the characters seem like a parade of eccentrics, and the phantasmagorical happenings sometimes seem far-fetched. It is also Post-Modern in its self-consciousness.
Uniquely, the ‘Dictionary’ is published in ‘male’ and ‘female’ versions; buying online I wasn’t sure what I would get but it turned out to be the male version. The difference boils down to a single passage (the male version of which I quoted above). To tell the truth I couldn’t see the point, or tell much difference (perhaps the male version emphasises thought and the female feeling), so I wouldn’t feel short-changed whichever version I ended up with.
Given that the book is about a people and a language that no longer exist, isn’t it ironic that it was published in a country that no longer exists (Yugoslavia) and in a language which supposedly no longer exists (Serbo-Croatian)?
I thought that my Belarusian novel’s “Do not read!” stricture was unique (and no author could mean that seriously), but Pavić also warns us: “The author advises the reader not to tackle this book unless he absolutely has to”. Well, I felt I had to for the sake of Serbia, and am glad that I did. On the whole, I found it a unique, intriguing concept.

PAVIĊ, Milorad (1929 – ), Dictionary of the Khazars: a lexicon novel in 100,000 words, translated from the Serbo-Croatian by Cristina Pribićević-Zorić, New York, Vintage, 1989, ISBN 978-0-679-72461-2 (originally published in 1984)
 

Book 107: Palestine (English) – Mornings in Jenin (Susan ABULHAWA)

 

So it was that eight centuries after its founding by a general of Saladin’s army in 1189 A.D., Ein Hod was cleared of its Palestinian children. Yehya tried to calculate the number of generations who had lived and died in that village and he came up with forty… Forty generations of living, now stolen. Forty generations of childbirth and funerals, weddings and dance, prayer and scraped knees. Forty generations of sin and charity, of cooking, toiling, and idling, of friendships and animosities and pacts, of rain and lovemaking. Forty generations with their imprinted memories, secrets, and scandals. All carried away by the notion of entitlement of another people, who would settle in the vacancy and proclaim it all – all that was left in the way of architecture, orchards, wells, flowers, and charm – as the heritage of Jewish foreigners arriving from Europe, Russia, the United States, and other corners of the globe.

This is a novel of bewilderment and betrayal.
In the year of the creation (or recreation) of Israel, 1948 – called here by the Palestinians the ‘year without end’ – the Abulheja family is bombed out of their home and village, and forced to live in the squalid Jenin refugee camp. One of the Israeli soldiers, Moshe, steals their baby Ismael (a name as close as you can get to ‘Israel’) for his infertile wife, renames him David, and they lovingly raise him as a Jew.
His mother goes crazy. As the hopelessness of the Palestinians’ cause drags on, Jenin becomes more permanent with the years. Youssef meets and is abused by the Jewish soldier who is his brother (now David), and his outrage leads him to join the PLO though he later leaves it, cuts himself off from his family and becomes more radical. Will he become a terrorist?
Most of the story is related through the eyes of the third child, Amal, the daughter born in Jenin. She later moves to the US where, although appreciative of the more comfortable and peaceful lifestyle there, can’t help feeling somewhat resentful of those born into a luckier world free from suffering.
Understandably, there is a lot of resentment expressed at the Palestinians’ unfair treatment. Why should they have to pay for the Germans’ sins against the Jews? Why should the latter treat the people living there so cruelly, throw them out and not even let them visit their ancestral homes?
Like in any good novel, the characters measurably change during the story. It’s a sign of hope that real people can change too, for the better.
The novel is interspersed with quite a few quotes from non-fiction sources documenting the history.
I only noticed one typo, but it was a whopper. On page 285 the azan (Muslim call to prayer: I proclaim that there is no god except Allah) is quoted in Arabic, but ‘illa’ (except) is left out which leaves an unintentionally blasphemous remainder!
Despite the roles the characters seem to be forced into by the political situation, there is still hope that they can recover their humanity and empathy. And for me both of these are what is most absent in the region at the moment and the only hope for the future. And thankfully Mornings in Jenin, which is mostly but not entirely seen from the Palestinian side, ends with a glimmer of hope for reconciliation. It is a beautifully written, powerful novel which won’t leave you as a bystander.

Abdulhawa, Susan (1970 – ), Mornings in Jenin, London, Bloomsbury, 2010, ISBN 9781408813553

Book 19: Turkey (English) – Snow = Kar (Orhan PAMUK)

 

The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus-driver. If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called what he felt inside him ‘the silence of snow’.

He’d boarded the bus from Erzurum to Kars with only seconds to spare. He’d just come into the station on a bus from Istanbul – a snowy, stormy, two-day journey – and was rushing up and down the wet, dirty corridors with his bag in tow, looking for his connection, when someone told him that there was a bus for Kars leaving immediately.

 

When the remote eastern town of Kars is snowbound by a blizzard, turning it into a microcosm of Turkey (and, to some extent, the world as a whole), a showdown takes place between the secularists and Islamists who are tugging at Turkey’s soul, culminating in an explosive confrontation between two imperfect worlds. Neither the heavy-handed secular authorities nor the Islamic radicals come off well, but neither are portrayed superficially or without understanding. This novel seems to become more relevant by the day, given the recent election, for this country that is a bridge between East and West, enriched by both but endlessly skewered between the two.

You can read this moving, thought-provoking novel just as a thriller if you like, but there is a variegated landscape under the snow cover and it would be a shame to miss it. This is an important book for everyone.

Incidentally, if you don’t know Turkish you might miss the puns: ‘pamuk’ means ‘cotton’, and ‘kar’ (the title of the book in Turkish) means ‘snow’, so the poet-hero of the book (Ka) should not have been surprised to find the city of Kars in the grip of a snowstorm!

 

PAMUK, Orhan (1952 -), Snow, translated by Maureen Freely, London, Faber and Faber, 2005, ISBN 0-571-21831-8 (originally published in Turkish, 2002)