Lion Women of Tehran is a story of friendship between two unlikely friends: a poor but vivacious communist from "the bottom of the city" and a spoiledLion Women of Tehran is a story of friendship between two unlikely friends: a poor but vivacious communist from "the bottom of the city" and a spoiled girl from Iran's privileged classes. The former, Homa, is hardworking and courageous, outraged by the ways that women are kept down and mistreated, while Ellie is shallow, often excusing the social and gender inequities that Homa identifies. Even when she sees these, Ellie tends to excuse or avoid them. Nonetheless, Homa and Ellie are the best of friends, held together not by common bonds but by something deeper and longer lasting.
Lion Women was largely told from Ellie's point of view, which can be frustrating, as Ellie is the shallower, less courageous, more apolitical of the two. If the book were primarily told from Homa's perspective, however, it would be less interesting. Marjan Kamali inverts her story: Homa is a DC character who falls into a Marvel storyline, her story told from the sidekick's often limited point of view.
In the real world, Homa deserved a better friend than Ellie, but we don't choose friends based on whether they are perfect. Most of us are more like Ellie than Homa: thoughtless, sometimes in ways that have significant and hurtful ramifications. Homa attempts to jump high buildings in a single bound (and would do so in a more pro-democratic, pro-woman society); Ellie would happily get a new gown or her eyebrows threaded. Perhaps focusing on the (privileged) sidekick rather than the (impoverished) hero is what makes this story work. Many of us share Ellie's envy; we would like to have Homa's moral courage. ...more
To doubt the possibility of reconciliation is to limit God’s power, the possibility of miracle—especially in this land. The Torah commands me, “Seek pTo doubt the possibility of reconciliation is to limit God’s power, the possibility of miracle—especially in this land. The Torah commands me, “Seek peace and pursue it”—even when peace appears impossible, perhaps especially then. (p. 19).
My family has lived in the US for fewer than 125 years, yet Ireland (where most of my father's family comes from) and Germany (my mother's family) barely touch me. My grandfather, whose older sisters were born in Germany, spoke only a wee bit of German around us, and we never ate German foods. I never saw "Ireland" from my other grandparents, only a vague, half-serious yearning to see Ireland. I saw it more in their love of words, their emotional cut-offs when angry.
In Yossi Klein Halevi's Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor there is a much greater sense of history than my family has, than most of us in the US have. Here, an old house is 100 years old. 9/11 touches us, but not the Depression. We talk about veterans of wars, but not the wars and their impact on our country. Halevi talks of the Holocaust, but also wars and decisions throughout the 20th century – and yearnings over the last two or three millennia. His language is often passionate and poetic as he talks about the past, which is alive and tightly intertwined with the present.
In that context, Halevi can see the conflict between Jew and Arab and understand it. Both Israelis, at least Jewish Israelis, and Palestinians feel that they have the high ground. Halevi instead looks for the common ground. He suggests that we need to separate the abstract justness of the entire claim [for Israel, for Palestine] from the practical injustice of its fulfillment (p. 123).
I have great sympathy for Israel, but when I read about the politics of Israel and Palestine – General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine or My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, I end up flipping back and forth between Israel and the Palestinians. There are no devils and heroes here, just men and women making poor decisions in the name of righteousness (and good decisions, too).
Pushed into a corner, we don’t respond with flexibility or contrition; we move into survival mode. The war against Israel’s legitimacy reinforces our obtuseness. If the anti-Israel criticism is so shrill, then we absolve ourselves of the need to take any criticism seriously. For a people that prides itself on its millennia-old ethical code, that believes in penitence and self-examination, this is a spiritual crisis. (p. 186)
It's hard to read these books (and Muslim writers, too) without wanting to sit both parties across the table from each other, to engage in some family therapy and get past the mess both sides are enmeshed in. Both sides have valid points that get lost in their arguments.
One of the main obstacles to peace is an inability to hear the other side’s story. Halevi wants to have this story heard and is offering Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor in Arabic translation for free downloading. I hope it is downloaded and read thousands of times. I hope that both Arabs and Jews listen to his words and take them seriously.
Merged review:
To doubt the possibility of reconciliation is to limit God’s power, the possibility of miracle—especially in this land. The Torah commands me, “Seek peace and pursue it”—even when peace appears impossible, perhaps especially then. (p. 19).
My family has lived in the US for fewer than 125 years, yet Ireland (where most of my father's family comes from) and Germany (my mother's family) barely touch me. My grandfather, whose older sisters were born in Germany, spoke only a wee bit of German around us, and we never ate German foods. I never saw "Ireland" from my other grandparents, only a vague, half-serious yearning to see Ireland. I saw it more in their love of words, their emotional cut-offs when angry.
In Yossi Klein Halevi's Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor there is a much greater sense of history than my family has, than most of us in the US have. Here, an old house is 100 years old. 9/11 touches us, but not the Depression. We talk about veterans of wars, but not the wars and their impact on our country. Halevi talks of the Holocaust, but also wars and decisions throughout the 20th century – and yearnings over the last two or three millennia. His language is often passionate and poetic as he talks about the past, which is alive and tightly intertwined with the present.
In that context, Halevi can see the conflict between Jew and Arab and understand it. Both Israelis, at least Jewish Israelis, and Palestinians feel that they have the high ground. Halevi instead looks for the common ground. He suggests that we need to separate the abstract justness of the entire claim [for Israel, for Palestine] from the practical injustice of its fulfillment (p. 123).
I have great sympathy for Israel, but when I read about the politics of Israel and Palestine – General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine or My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, I end up flipping back and forth between Israel and the Palestinians. There are no devils and heroes here, just men and women making poor decisions in the name of righteousness (and good decisions, too).
Pushed into a corner, we don’t respond with flexibility or contrition; we move into survival mode. The war against Israel’s legitimacy reinforces our obtuseness. If the anti-Israel criticism is so shrill, then we absolve ourselves of the need to take any criticism seriously. For a people that prides itself on its millennia-old ethical code, that believes in penitence and self-examination, this is a spiritual crisis. (p. 186)
It's hard to read these books (and Muslim writers, too) without wanting to sit both parties across the table from each other, to engage in some family therapy and get past the mess both sides are enmeshed in. Both sides have valid points that get lost in their arguments.
One of the main obstacles to peace is an inability to hear the other side’s story. Halevi wants to have this story heard and is offering Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor in Arabic translation for free downloading. I hope it is downloaded and read thousands of times. I hope that both Arabs and Jews listen to his words and take them seriously....more
I recently finished reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which got me thinking about and exploring the art and storytelling in graphicI recently finished reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which got me thinking about and exploring the art and storytelling in graphic novels and memoirs. Shubeik Lubeik (translated from the Arabic to "Your wish is my command") was a superb follow-up to Kavalier and Clay, as the story had interesting and surprising twists and fascinating use of space and shadow. And the djinnis!
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Strong graphic novels are more than the sum of their parts. They aren't just illustrated stories; instead, illustrations expand the narrative and take the readers further and deeper. Deena Mohamed's djinnis aren't just pretty, but each powerful, embodying their culture – and unique. Space changes, as Mohamed alternately moves in for close-ups and steps back for the larger picture. We see the depth of Nour's depression.
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Similarly, Mohamed's story isn't a mere framework for her illustrations but explores the nature of wishes. In this parallel Egypt, the rich have greater access to wishes than the poor, and the government attempts to controls its people and their use of wishes. Wishes can backfire in unexpected ways and are not the source of all happiness, instead, the source of much unhappiness. Because Shubeik Lubeik centers on three specific "first class" wishes, Mohamed can explore three very different stories and outcomes, linked together by the man who sells these wishes from his kiosk. He struggles with his own religious prohibitions about using wishes.
Shubeik Lubeik's translation from the Arabic maintains several interesting features: it read from "back" to "front" and then top right to bottom left on a page. Arabic phrases and storefront signs are often translated at the bottom of the page; at one point, Mohamed admonishes her English readers that "it's about time [we] learned how to greet someone in Arabic": Assalamo alaykum, that is, Peace be unto you (p. 233).
In the 12th century, Siqilliya (Sicily) was a kingdom ruled by an Islam-leaning, Nazarene (Christian) ruler, in the shadow of Rome and its bishops. ThIn the 12th century, Siqilliya (Sicily) was a kingdom ruled by an Islam-leaning, Nazarene (Christian) ruler, in the shadow of Rome and its bishops. Their actions in the Sultan of Palermo make me despise my Catholic roots.
The Siqilliyans Tariq Ali described were often wise, with Idrisi, Sultan of Palermo’s central character, a widely-read and traveled consultant to the sultan, who wrote widely on geography and medicine. With the sultan’s death, however, Believers were either massacred or forced underground and into hiding.
Like Ali's first three books, sex plays a major role in the story. There are several extramarital affairs, children fathered by one man and knowingly raised by another, many farting jokes, and many, many double entendres. I wondered, though, whether I would have enjoyed Sultan of Palermo more if I were Muslim or more historically knowledgeable. I was probably appalled in the right places (e.g., some bloody killings and massacres that took place, mostly off-stage).
"Extremely annoyed by what the Pope had done, he responded in the time-honoured tradition of the Siqilliyan side of his family. He farted." (Kindle 16691)...more
Three women walked into a room: a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian – more specifically a Reformed Jew and nonbeliever; a member of the Palestinian diaspThree women walked into a room: a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian – more specifically a Reformed Jew and nonbeliever; a member of the Palestinian diaspora, whose parents were forced from their home in 1948; and an Episcopalian, raised Catholic. The Faith Club is their story of their work to understand their differences, religion, and each other, and to communicate this to others, especially children confused by 9/11..
I approached The Faith Club skeptically, as I expected it to be a sappy view of religion and interfaith dialogue and, at points it was overly glib or drew an overly strong point on various ideas; yet, I often found it moving and envied the three of them their conversations, even though I am a nonbeliever. We live in a world where truth is often written with a capital T; it was nice to see each woman question her faith and, ultimately, develop what she saw as a truer, more committed faith.
I have been reading about Israel and Palestine over the last several months, and their conversations about Israel and Palestine, separating religion from politics (e.g., all our stereotypes about Muslims stem from politics), and the differences between faith and ritual, the latter being helpful in supporting the former. Ultimately, each woman saw many similarities among their faiths that were often obscured by these rituals.
I listened to The Faith Club, as no ebook was available on Libby. I suspect I would have liked it more in print and often had difficult keeping the three voices separate.
This poem, written by Merrit Malloy is one my mother has asked to be part of her end of life celebration after reading it in The Faith Club:
When I die Give what’s left of me away To children And old men that wait to die.
And if you need to cry, Cry for your brother Walking the street beside you And when you need me, Put your arms Around anyone And give to them What you need to give to me.
I want to leave you something, Something better Than words Or sounds.
Look for me In the people I’ve known Or loved, And if you cannot give me away, At least let me live in your eyes And not on your mind.
You can love me most By letting Hands touch hands By letting Bodies touch bodies And by letting go Of children That need to be free.
Love doesn’t die, People do. So, when all that’s left of me Is love, Give me away.
My mother read The Faith Club as part of her new book club and encouraged me to read it....more
Salt Houses is told in the alternating voices of eight family members from four generations, as they move across seven countries (i.e., Palestine, JorSalt Houses is told in the alternating voices of eight family members from four generations, as they move across seven countries (i.e., Palestine, Jordan, Kuwait, Beirut, Paris, Lebanon, and the United States) over a period of almost 50 years starting in 1967. As one GR reviewer said, it is "plotless," but it both is and isn't. We see a Palestinian family respond to an cope with war and displacement – and all of the other things that families experience over the course of their lives.
Most memoirs and books from this part of the world focus on refugees (e.g., The Last Girl). That is an important perspective, but Salt Houses describes an upper middle class family who are touched by war (view spoiler)[– one is murdered, another treats refugees, and the family must listen to frequent bombings and wonder what a loss of electricity means this time – (hide spoiler)], but even when they are not hungry, politics and unrest weaves its way throughout their lives. Will their building be the next one bombed? They can leave their apartment, city, country, and yet are not immune to the effects of war. This is a different view of Palestinians and war: the Yacoub family is not displaced, not starving, but often deeply traumatized.
And yet, they also get married, have babies, get divorced, redecorate their apartments, and die. They love deeply and are irritated by each other, just as you and I are.
I'm reminded of an international student who lived with us when I was in high school. His family worried about him coming to Chicago – we lived in a suburb – because of all the killings. Our stereotypes can be deeply wrong.
Hala Alyan talks about salt and homes a lot throughout the book. Salt can season and provide flavor, but it can also make a place inhabitable. Salt houses are temporary: "They glitter whitely in his mind, like structures made of salt, before a tidal wave comes and sweeps them away" (p. 273). This left the family often questioning who they were and where they belonged.
And Linah felt confused, was speechless, wanting to say something about how no one ever really talked about being Palestinian in her house, the same way no one talked about being Iraqi, that when either set of grandparents came over, they spoke of things like villages and bombings with a sort of mournful resignation, as though the places in question had vanished into thin air. She wanted to say something about how she’d never been to Iraq or Palestine, that she knew only Boston and Beirut, that this was her home in the summers, and Marie must be wrong, because whoever it was that killed her uncle, it wasn’t Linah’s people, whatever that meant. (p. 230)
Jezebel wanted to be king like her father, known and remembered. She vowed that she would not suffer her mother's fate: nameless and lost to history. Jezebel wanted to be king like her father, known and remembered. She vowed that she would not suffer her mother's fate: nameless and lost to history.
Jezebel was married off to Ahab, who became king of Israel after his father's death (ruling c. 874–853 BCE). Ahab "had no chance of becoming nameless. He did not have to fight to make his mark on the land. From the moment of his birth until the day of his death he would be remembered. His name would be recorded in the book of kings even if he was a drunkard king who did nothing but sleep with his concubines and throw dice.” In fact, Ahab was less well-suited to ruling than Jezebel – or than Jezebel would have been if she had been endowed as her brothers had been. Instead, her name has come to be associated with sexually promiscuous and controlling women. She was accused of misleading Elijah and the people of Israel into idolatry and sexual immorality. The make-up she wore on several occasions came to be associated with vice and harlotry.
In this retelling of Jezebel's story, Megan Barnard recognized the queen's successes (e.g,, building schools) and acknowledged her mistakes (e.g., killing a man she thought was a demon during a period of postpartum psychosis), yet also suggested her problems were at least partially due to being born female in a patriarchal society and living in a culture that failed to accept hers – while she failed to correctly read Israel's values, beliefs, and norms. Here, Yahweh was portrayed as a vengeful and jealous god, relative to her Tyrean gods, especially Astarte.
"History is written by the victor," perhaps first said by Winston Churchill (although this seems unlikely). If Jezebel had won this war, she would have told a story more like this one: attempting to lead the Israelis to prosperity, honoring her own gods, and making mistakes along the way.
I appreciate being reminded that there's more than one story to be told....more
My daughters fought a fair amount as children. My older "poked" my younger, who then acted out. Who was the instigator? Who was wrong? (Most people blMy daughters fought a fair amount as children. My older "poked" my younger, who then acted out. Who was the instigator? Who was wrong? (Most people blamed the younger).
In some ways, that is what has happened in Palestine (including Israel, whose boundaries have changed throughout the 20th century). During six months in 1948, "more than half of Palestine’s native population, close to 800,000 people, had been uprooted, 531 villages had been destroyed, and eleven urban neighbourhoods emptied of their inhabitants," not because the Palestinians had been attacking Jews, but because Israel wanted the land and wanted to be the majority group in Palestine (p. 17).
Israeli leadership claimed that Palestinians left of their own accord, and any backlash was labeled a second Holocaust, even when Jewish mortality was lower than that of Palestinians (Muslims and Christians). Ilan Pappe concluded that portraying Palestinians as Nazis was "was a deliberate public relations ploy to ensure that, three years after the Holocaust, Jewish soldiers would not lose heart when ordered to cleanse, kill and destroy other human beings" (p. 126). Ruins from this period were largely removed after 1967 – or reattributed – partly for financial gain, but also ideological memoricide (as when Palestinian sites are renamed with Hebrew ones).
The UN's Council for Human Rights (UNCHR) defined ethnic cleansing as "'separation of men from women, detention of men, explosion of houses’ and subsequently repopulating the remaining houses with another ethnic group" (p. 27). This is what happened in Palestine (which included Israel, whose boundaries changed throughout the 20th century), where "more than half of Palestine’s native population, close to 800,000 people, had been uprooted, 531 villages had been destroyed, and eleven urban neighbourhoods emptied of their inhabitants" (p. 17). Palestinian houses were looted, damaged, destroyed, or seized. Their fields were confiscated; farmers returning to harvest their crops were killed. Palestinian men (from 10-50 in age) were imprisoned or executed. Their holy places were desecrated. Israel violated basic rights including freedom of movement and expression, and of equality before the law.
We were murderous, but it was not malice for the sake of malice. We acted out of a sense of being exposed to an existential threat. And there were objective reasons for this feeling. We were convinced that without Jewish territorial continuity, especially along [the aqueduct that runs from the Lake of Galilee to the south of the coutry], the Arabs would poison the water. – Arnon Soffer, quoted on p. 333
As Zionists saw it, "Palestine was occupied by ‘strangers’ and had to be repossessed. ‘Strangers’ here meant everyone not Jewish who had been living in Palestine since the Roman period" (p. 39). For many Zionists, Palestine was not even an ‘occupied’ land when they first arrived in 1882, but rather an ‘empty’ one. This memoricide and occupation has gone so far as in replacing native species with European ones; only 11% of species in Israeli forests are indigenous.
The US and UN have supported such actions, describing most Israeli actions as "concessions," "reasonable, and "flexible." Palestinians have been portrayed as unreasonable, their actions unprovoked. The US has a long history of supporting international actions that are consistent with US needs or policy.
Ilan Pappe is an Israeli Jew of German extraction, currently living and working in England. He identifies as a New Historian, a group of historians challenging the standard narrative describing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. I am neither Jewish nor Palestinian, although most of my closest friends have been Jewish. Before reading Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, I tended to view each group as engaged in a vicious, but equal cycle.
King Abdullah II of Jordan wrote:
[L]et’s start with some basic reality. The fact is that the thousands of victims across Israel, Gaza and the West Bank have been overwhelmingly civilians. In the name of our common humanity, how can such brutal acts and murders be accepted?....
If the status quo continues, the days ahead will be driven by an ongoing war of narratives over who is entitled to hate more and kill more. Sinister political agendas and ideologies will attempt to exploit religion. Extremism, vengeance and persecution will deepen not only in the region but also around the world….
It is up to responsible leaders to deliver results, starting now. (Abdullah II, 2023, para. 2, 13, 15)
And, while I disagree with much of President Biden's Israel-leaning op-ed, which does not sufficiently separate Hamas' actions from those of Palestinians, I do agree with this:
Our goal should not be simply to stop the war for today — it should be to end the war forever, break the cycle of unceasing violence, and build something stronger in Gaza and across the Middle East so that history does not keep repeating itself. (Biden, 2023, para. 16)
Tom Friedman's (2023) article in the New York Times is hopeful: "I devoted a lot of time on my trip to Israel and the West Bank this month observing and probing the actual day-to-day interactions among Israeli Arabs and Jews. These are always complex, sometimes surprising, occasionally depressing — and, more often than you might expect, uplifting — experiences. Because they reveal enough seeds of coexistence scattered around that one can still dream the impossible dream — that we might one day have a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River" (para. 5)....more
A Palestinian man and Israeli Jew meet and fall in love. This is going to work out well, right?
If you're the one watching it (think Romeo and JulietA Palestinian man and Israeli Jew meet and fall in love. This is going to work out well, right?
If you're the one watching it (think Romeo and Juliet or West Side Story), definitely, but if you are living it, experiencing the prejudice and the range of barriers, frustrations, and fears that this couple did…
Certainly All the Rivers is a modern day Romeo and Juliet (with more drama), but it also may be an allegory of Israeli/Palestinian relations. Liat fears the prejudices of friends, family, and strangers, so often does things that rightly enrage Hilmi (e.g., refusing to introduce him to family). She is similarly outraged when he doesn't stand up for her, when he doesn't understand her perspective – as both were like to do. To love someone that your culture rejects takes courage: "The truth was that I didn’t have the guts for it. I didn’t have the courage to live this kind of life—a heroic, inconvenient, defiant life" (p. 102).
And, yet, it also takes courage to be able to break free of cultural expectations:
Some sort of demon possessed me whenever we started talking politics. I hated it. I hated the pigheadedness, the sanctimonious fury that came over me, the hostility that made me so hotheaded. I hated the taste of losing at the end, and the frustration and bitterness that followed. The endless circular claims, the paradox that stood between us, immortal and invincible, as mocking as a force of nature. (p. 146)
All the Rivers won the Bernstein Prize in 2015 – it's awarded to young Israeli writers – and was banned by Israel's Ministry of Education from the high school curriculum (to much ado). It was recommended by an Israeli member of my mother's book club – and pleasantly surprised me. ...more
Sonia, a British actress of the Palestinian diaspora, traveled to Israel to visit her sister, and was talked into playing Gertrude in an Arab languageSonia, a British actress of the Palestinian diaspora, traveled to Israel to visit her sister, and was talked into playing Gertrude in an Arab language version of Hamlet in the West Bank. The cast was spied on, refused space and funding, and delayed at stop points any time they left the West Bank. Their sets were damaged, their play interrupted by Israeli gunfire. They attended a service outside a mosque that broken up by tear gas and rubber bullets. "‘We haunt them. They want to kill us but we will not die. Even now we’ve lost nearly everything.’ His laugh deepened. ‘Zombie apocalypse’" (p. 240).
Dark humor and emigration are natural responses to cultural oppression, but so is hopelessness and more extreme responses: "You know, when we hunger strike it’s because we have nothing to bargain with. Our bodies are our only battleground" (p. 85).
In 1987, I went to the Soviet Union and, during my time in Minsk, Belarus, we were invited to a 100th birthday celebration for Marc Chagall. The demonstration was peaceful, but several members of the police watched us. It felt rather surreal. “Nothing is more flattering to an artist than the illusion that he is a secret revolutionary” (p. 167).
[image] Marc Chagall’s The Revolution (1937)
Some of Chagall’s work is clearly political but some less clearly (and also clearly).
[image] Marc Chagall’s Solitude (1933)
And Hamlet, the play at the heart of Enter Ghost? Not a political play – or is it?
WAEL: If Hamlet is a martyr . . . (Leaves off.)
MARIAM: You mean Hamlet is a martyr like a Palestinian martyr.
WAEL: (Shrugging.) Yeah.
MARIAM: Okay. Let’s discuss that a bit.
WAEL: I’m just saying that because Ibrahim—
MARIAM: Nothing you said was wrong, I think it’s actually very interesting.
IBRAHIM: It’s not a very optimistic vision of national liberation, if everyone dies in the end.
AMIN: True. (p. 97)
Most rehearsals in Enter Ghost were presented as scripts. The language and ideas were as lively in this form as more typical dialogue. And then there are the kinds of language and observations that make any novel interesting: "'The time for fighting with guns is over.’ // ‘Right. It’s the time for acting.’ // ‘Acting, yes,’ he said. ‘In English it is a nice play on words’" (p. 187). Or, "And I noted, listening to her read, how often English-language sources leaned on passive verbs for Arab fatalities, as though fearful of pointing the finger" (p. 315).
I read this with my mother, whose friends lent a copy and encouraged her to read it....more
Ardent Swarm takes place in an unnamed northern African country, shortly after the Arab Spring. It was written by a Tunisian writer and translated froArdent Swarm takes place in an unnamed northern African country, shortly after the Arab Spring. It was written by a Tunisian writer and translated from the original French.
It is a political allegory with two threads: Sidi’s care and nurturance of his bee hives, who are under attack by murder hornets, and the political unrest in the region following the country’s first elections. Not surprisingly, nothing changes for the poor except that life gets harder. Ardent Swarm is a call to arms against both apathy and fanaticism, and raises environmental, theological, and moral questions (view spoiler)[including whether Sidi should kill a huge nest of murder hornets (hide spoiler)]. What god were they worshiping? Who was really godly? Where can we find the wisdom to answer the difficult questions life offers us?
In placing these two stories side by side, Yamen Manai asks us to consider how we want to live in the world and “nurture” our communities. Should we, as the gentle Sidi does? He does not even need his beekeeper’s suit and mask. Would he choose to let his enemies suffocate? Or with Kalashnikovs, as the radical kashiba did? “God blesses the man of good deeds, and men bless the man of many sheep!” (p. 58). (view spoiler)[Manai suggests that we come together in an “ardent swarm.” When we work together, attackers cannot survive the “heat.” (hide spoiler)]
Bees have been approached in several ways in novels, but they are a compelling image: a gynocentric collective, making something lovely and for the greater good....more
Dancing in the Mosque is the book that I wanted when I read The Broken Circle. Both books were set in Afghanistan toward the end of the 20th centuDancing in the Mosque is the book that I wanted when I read The Broken Circle. Both books were set in Afghanistan toward the end of the 20th century, with both authors young girls at the beginning of the Russian invasion and Afghani civil war.
Enjeelah Ahmadi-Miller, however, was a privileged girl from Kabul. Her family had money and connections, so her trip to New Delhi, while an ordeal, was possible. They had friends in high places who made their poverty temporary. The young Ahmadi-Miller focused on fabrics, clothing, and chandeliers, things that seem unnecessary and trivial during an invasion.
Homeira Qaderi was a middle-class girl from Herat, four years younger than Ahmadi-Miller. Her family, too, loved books and poetry, but they were not insulated from the war or the civil unrest. While Ahmadi-Miller was living in India by the time that the Taliban came to power, Qaderi was attempting to school refugee children in Herat, when doing so put her and her family at significant risk. Ahmadi-Miller mostly focused on her family, although occasionally sex slaves and refugees; Qaderi was a feminist writer, who had to make her life at the fringes and who lost her son when she refused to be only a 1st wife (of at least two). Qaderi had friends who immolated themselves rather than be stoned to death.
Ahmadi-Miller's story is an interesting one and she was a courageous child, but The Broken Circle encourages the reader to believe that Ahmadi-Miller's success was her doing, rather than that of the people who helped them, the large amounts of money they carried with them. Qaderi had support from friends and family, some of whom encouraged her – her father dug up his books even though they put the family at risk, her mother supported her dreams – and some who admonished her to keep quiet and follow her husband.
It is dangerous to believe too much in bootstraps and that anyone can do anything all by themselves....more
Concealed starts with an epigraph from William Faulkner: The past is never dead. It’s not even past. This is very apt for this memoir by hyper-hyphenConcealed starts with an epigraph from William Faulkner: The past is never dead. It’s not even past. This is very apt for this memoir by hyper-hyphenated Esther Amini, "an Iranian-Mashhadi-American-Jewish-educated-divorced female" (p. 241).
Concealed explores a woman's intersectionality, which is interesting by itself, but also considers how we can make sense of a past with confused messages about Self and Other, especially a past where pretense and hiding have been essential. Amini's parents grew up in Mashhad, Iran, before moving to the US, and had to hide their Jewishness under Muslim clothing and ritual. Amini was descended from ancestors who juggled aboveground and underground lives, posing as one thing while being another, be it Jews passing as Muslims, women concealed behind chadors, or, as in my case, daughters secretly reading beneath the sheets (p. 253).
Amini explored the costs of such concealment: staying quiet, avoiding feelings, pretending to be something one was not – but she also considered the advantages of living in such a society: I learned to listen for the subconscious—its concealed voice—and shine a light, illuminating the disguised and buried (p. 248). Although she considered art history as a career – even going to college scandalized her father – Amini ultimately became a psychoanalyst, where such skills in listening for the "concealed voice" were advantageous.
I read Concealed with my mother and likely would have set it aside except for her urging. We both enjoy memoirs, although she enjoyed this one more than I did. Much of Concealed is written at a loud volume, especially at the book's beginning. This is an interesting perception, as Amini appears to have been mute or semi-mute throughout much of her childhood. I am uncomfortable with such a volume (as was Amini's father), although Amini's mother reveled in the freedom and lack of visible constraints she experienced in the US:
[When angry, my mother] impersonated him, mimicked him, and publicly satirized his comatose penis. When my father could no longer restrain himself, he erupted in earthquaking curses. She, the instigator, retaliated, slicing him with a serrated tongue. (p. 171)
So, Concealed has me considering cultural views of emotional expression. These musings came at the same time as a friend talked with her students about equanimity (yoga dampens both positive and negative reactivity), which they were unimpressed by. I like the ideas of nonattachment and equanimity, although also wonder about how my personal and cultural perspectives lead me to valuing some approaches rather than others.
How much more confusing these cultural values are when you are hyper-hyphenated? ...more
The Secret Chord tells the life of King David, from bullied younger brother and shepherd to elderly and dying monarch. Although his life was well-docuThe Secret Chord tells the life of King David, from bullied younger brother and shepherd to elderly and dying monarch. Although his life was well-documented in the Bible – at least for that period – there is little external validation of life events. He is believed to have lived from about 1000 BCE.
Wikipedia observed that King David has been honored in the prophetic literature as an "ideal king" and an ancestor of Jesus, which would make this a good choice for my mother. I loved The Secret Chord, but I am not going to push that my mother read it. Brooks clearly describes King David's beauty, charm, sense of justice, emotional intelligence (most of the time), musical brilliance, and political and military skills, but she also described a man who could hold a grudge, responded with violence when slighted, and was blind to his sons' deep flaws. Also, my mother probably would have difficulty with his eight wives (not consecutive), the marital rape and incest described, and his long-standing homosexual relationship with Yonaton, the brother of David's first wife, Mikhal. This is not the whitewashed story that I heard as a child.
But this is the story of a great – and flawed – man. We should hear more complex stories of great men and women – although I'm glad I didn't read this when I was 10. Brooks' story is largely consistent with the story's outline I remember – and the description in Wikipedia. (Yes, I had planned on going back to read this part of the Bible, but there are only so many hours in my day.) Brooks colored within the lines of that story using what she knew of the times' politics, culture, and military strategy, describing him as flawed by 21st century standards but also by those of his own time. The book's narrator, the prophet Natan, described him as:
Because of my work, [David] will live. And not just as a legend lives, a safe tale for the fireside, fit for the ears of the young. Nothing about him ever was safe. Because of me, he will live in death as he did in life: a man who dwelt in the searing glance of the divine, but who sweated and stank, rutted without restraint, butchered the innocent, betrayed those most loyal to him. Who loved hugely, and was kind; who listened to brutal truth and honored the truth teller; who flayed himself for his wrongdoing; who built a nation, made music that pleased heaven and left poems in our mouths that will be spoken by people yet unborn. (pp. 2-3)
Brooks' language is as compelling as King David's story, although it is quiet and thoughtful, as an introverted prophet might tell it, rather than with the highs and lows that David's generals would use around the campfire. In fact, Natan dials back the Goliath story from the superhuman feat usually told.
The prophet Natan is as compelling in his own way as King David. Natan is also flawed, but like King David, he was guided by a greater power, the voice of the Name (later referred to as Yah). His visions of the future were powerful but difficult to interpret, especially during his earliest visions. Sometimes he was prevented from sharing the visions he had, much to his own chagrin and that of David.
When I was 10ish, learning about King David taught me about courage and hope, the underdog's power, and repentance. Those stories still stand (and can be found here), but there's a place for both kinds of stories – the simple allegory and complex descriptions of a man's humanity....more
I was born without a voice, one cold, overcast day in Brooklyn, New York. No one ever spoke of my condition. I did not know I was mute until years la I was born without a voice, one cold, overcast day in Brooklyn, New York. No one ever spoke of my condition. I did not know I was mute until years later, when I’d opened my mouth to ask for what I wanted and realized no one could hear me. Where I come from, voicelessness is the condition of my gender, as normal as the bosoms on a woman’s chest, as necessary as the next generation growing inside her belly.... Where I come from, we’ve learned to conceal our condition. We’ve been taught to silence ourselves, that our silence will save us. (p. 1)
I liked A Woman Is No Man less than many people have. I thought its characters were wooden and two-dimensional. We can become two-dimensional when we're depressed, as at least one character was, but the story's two-dimensionality was retained despite there being three narrators – grandmother, mother, and daughter – alternately telling this story. The narrators grew somewhat over the course of the book, but so tentatively that their journey wasn't rewarding. Further, this is a story that should have had me wracked and on my knees in tears. I read it dry-eyed.
Etaf Rum worried about telling this story when there are few other stories about Arab Americans: How do you know when it’s right to stand up for people who are voiceless and oppressed in some way? And how do you know if you’re reinforcing stereotypes? (p. 348). I would dismiss these concerns if her characters were more three-dimensional. Her characters are trapped in an intergenerational story of jinn possession, gender oppression, and domestic violence, but that story is so narrow that her central characters could not move. Other characters, too, got sucked into the undertow. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche said in her TED talk (and Rum repeats in the author materials at the end of the book), “The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
If you want to draw a more realistic story of Arab Americans, depression, or domestic violence, give your characters enough freedom to be themselves. I am reading The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls, which also deals with dark themes, but its author, Anissa Gray, trusts her characters and allows them greater three-dimensionality. I care about her characters and their stories, where I never invested (much) in the ones in A Woman Is No Man.
Nonetheless, this book wasn't written for me, but for Arab American women in abusive relationships. Maybe a heavy-handed approach is appropriate when writing for people who believe that domestic violence is an integral part of marriage. Maybe the language and characterizations were somewhat wooden, as English might be a second language for some readers from its intended audience. If so, I'm glad that A Woman Is No Man is available for them.
I read A Woman Is No Man with my mother and her friend Mary. ...more
Life is unsafe: brutal critiques of writing, school bullies, rape (both gang and date), lost jobs, assault, suicide, suicide bombings, genocide, poverLife is unsafe: brutal critiques of writing, school bullies, rape (both gang and date), lost jobs, assault, suicide, suicide bombings, genocide, poverty, abandonment, dark secrets, and more. The world is difficult for men, impossible for women, and worse for ethnic or religious minorities. Our 17-year-old narrator responds to the violence by climbing a tree and staying there.
The unnamed narrator – until the end – speaks/thinks in a stream of consciousness, hopping around in time, and mixing past and present. She combines pop and high culture, Western and Turkish literature, insight and cliché. And, to make things more difficult, she is simultaneously an authentic and unreliable narrator. When you were 17, were you able to be brutally honest with yourself, especially when your action/inaction led to a loved one's death or downfall? I would have had difficulty with that. Don’t expect too much of me. If I were stronger, I wouldn’t be the girl in the tree. I would be down there, among you (p. 20).
With most of the characters brutalized and traumatized, this sounds like a Debbie Downer of a book, yet our narrator's voice is engaging: I found myself in the treetops because I was stuck with my memories. Because I longed to forget. Because I couldn’t forget (p. 108). She loves her extended family – and we them – even as they are often very flawed.
She falls in love with a gentle and kind boy who also falls in love with her. Will she return to Earth? Will he join her? Does love conquer all? Does she work things out so she can return? (Read and find out.)
Originally written in Turkish, this is the first of Şebnem İşigüzel's novels to be translated into English – a beautiful and clear translation that maintains the directness of the narrator's strong voice. This was a lovely, playful, and thoughtful gift from Amazon for World Book Day. ...more
I loved the first two books in Tariq Ali's Islam Quartet, Stone Woman not so much. The first two books of the Islam Quartet were about the Crusades anI loved the first two books in Tariq Ali's Islam Quartet, Stone Woman not so much. The first two books of the Islam Quartet were about the Crusades and Saladin, things I know something about (enough to know that everyone dies), while Stone Woman is set in Turkey, in 1899, at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Each of these books tells significant stories in the Muslim/Christian conflict, but from a Muslim perspective.
The family tells stories of their travels to China, France, Germany, and the US ¬– but because I know less about the decline of the Ottoman Empire and its attempts to find a place in the larger world – I didn't find this story as compelling as his previous, more familiar previous stories. Nonetheless, the openness, tolerance, and resilience of this family and society are engaging, and Ali's depictions of the political and philosophical divisions among Islamic groups and beliefs are compelling.
“Nilofer, there are rich and poor in this world. The poor are many and the rich are few. Their interests have never coincided. Both rich and poor need to get rid of the Sultan, but what will happen after they succeed? Will we find another Sultan whom we will call a President, but who will wear a uniform? Or will we found a party as they have in Germany and France which fights for the poor?” (Kindle 11633)
Like the first two books, sex is a major player. There are many extramarital and premarital affairs, gay characters, and much talk about sex (and farts and shit). We also have five deaths (two murders, one suicide, one execution, and one natural death), one wedding, one circumcision, whirling dervishes, and one stroke, all in the course of one short summer.
The secrets the Pasha family told the Stone Woman, a rock formation outside their home are interesting, but they didn't hang together well enough for me. Unlike Ali's previous books, I didn't care about these characters. In Ali's first novel, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, I held my breath throughout. Ali made me love those characters and I hung in, even though I knew that the book would end badly. I believed in the characters and sided with them against the pompous, self-righteous, and wrong-headed Crusaders, who slaughtered the village at the center of this story.
I did like Nilofer, the 28-year-old narrator, although I had difficulty buying that she was a 19th rather than a 21st century woman or that her father and brothers would so readily respect her sexual decisions and intellectual opinions to the degree that they did. Again, perhaps this was a failure in imagination on my part.
Perhaps if I were Turkish or Muslim, my reaction to Stone Woman would have been different: I would have known the background better. Or, if discussions of the decline of the Ottoman Empire were more common in the US, I would have more clearly seen how Ali was shifting the context and meaning in this story....more
On August 3, 2014, over 600 Yazidi men of Kocho, Iraq, were taken from their homes by ISIS and killed. Boys too young to have body hair were given oveOn August 3, 2014, over 600 Yazidi men of Kocho, Iraq, were taken from their homes by ISIS and killed. Boys too young to have body hair were given over to ISIS as soldiers. About 80 older women were killed. Young women and girls were sold as sabaya (sex slaves), forced to convert to Islam, beaten, and raped.
Nadia Murad was one such woman. After three months, she managed to escape. Her mother, six brothers, one half-brother, three sister-in-laws, two nephews, and two nieces were killed. Since her escape, she emigrated to Germany, became active with Yazda, and shared the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize with Denis Mukwege for "their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict."
You may, like me, be unfamiliar with the Yazidi religion. Yazidism is a monotheistic religion, but not an Abrahamaic one, which is one way that ISIS justified their attacks on the Yazidis. Nonetheless, many of the ways that the Yazidis chose to live and celebrate their religion would be familiar to Jews, Christians, and Muslims:
God doesn’t judge Yazidis based on how often we pray or go on pilgrimages. We don’t have to build elaborate cathedrals or attend years of religious schooling in order to be a good Yazidi. Rituals, like baptism, are performed only when the family has enough money or time to make the trip.
Our faith is in our actions. We welcome strangers into our homes, give money and food to those who have none, and sit with the body of a loved one before burial. Even being a good student, or kind to your spouse, is an act equal to prayer. Things that keep us alive and allow poor people to help others, like simple bread, are holy (p. 115).
What allows otherwise good people to commit genocide and rape? Buying, selling, and raping sabaya were an attempt to control Yazidi women (and men).
With these “marriages” ISIS continued their slow murder of Yazidi girls. First, they took us from our homes and killed our men. Then they separated us from our mothers and sisters. Wherever we were, they reminded us that we were just property, there to be touched and abused, the way Abu Batat squeezed my breast as if he wanted to break it or Nafah put cigarettes out on my body. All of those violations were steps in the execution of our souls.
Taking our religion from us was the cruelest (p. 151).
Rape is about power, not sex. As Hajji Salman, the first man to buy Nadia as sabiyya, said, “Yazidis are infidels, you know... God wants us to convert you, and if we can’t, then we can do what we like to you” (p. 146). To do this, you need to think about Yazidi women as mere property – at best ¬and a fair tactic in the game of war.
If everyone stood up and said No, genocide would become impossible. Fear ties our hands and shuts our mouths and is as damaging as the active betrayals. I would like to think that I would behave differently, but I don't know.
Our Sunni neighbors could have come to us and tried to help. If they knew what was going to happen to the women, they could have dressed us all in black and taken us with them. They could have just come and told us, matter-of-factly, “This is what will happen to you,” so we could stop fantasizing about being rescued. But they didn’t. They made the decision to do nothing, and their betrayals were like bullets before the real bullets came. (p. 69)
Violence, sexual or otherwise, changes everyone in the family and community. That's its purpose, to say, "This is mine, and I can take it," "You're unsafe," or "You're just property." Saeed lived in the nightmare of the day he survived and became obsessed with fighting. Saoud passed his days in the monotony of the refugee camp, trying to cope with his survivor’s guilt. Malik, poor Malik, who was just a young boy when the genocide started, had become a terrorist, sacrificing his whole life and even his love for his mother to ISIS. (p. 267)
Still, some people – Nadia and Hezni in particular – looked for something positive from what they had done: “I don’t know why God spared me,” [Hezni] said. “But I know I need to use my life for good” (p. 275). When Nadia was named a Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking, she said,
I told them I wasn’t raised to give speeches. I told them that every Yazidi wants ISIS prosecuted for genocide, and that it was in their power to help protect vulnerable people all over the world. I told them that I wanted to look the men who raped me in the eye and see them brought to justice. More than anything else, I said, I want to be the last girl in the world with a story like mine. (p. 306)
...everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives, because we can’t help it.
We are all migrants through time. (pp. 209-210)
Exi
...everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives, because we can’t help it.
We are all migrants through time. (pp. 209-210)
Exit West may be my favorite book this year, but I may not be able to tell you what it's about. Surely it's about migration, but also feeling at home. It's about relationships both being in one and leaving, about being in one with someone in the present and someone who has left.
Doors play a central role in Exit West. For Nadia and Saeed, doors often provide escapes to other places – from their home country, which was at war, to the Greek Island of Mykonos, then London, and finally Marin (across the Golden Gate Bridge to the north of San Francisco). These doors are, to some degree, the doors that the cat in Heinlein's Door into Summer searched for and never found. These doors are both real passages to somewhere else, but also a hoped for change.
All their doors remained simple doors, on/off switches in the flow between two adjacent places, binarily either open or closed, but each of their doors, regarded thus with a twinge of irrational possibility, became partially animate as well, an object with a subtle power to mock, to mock the desires of those who desired to go far away, whispering silently from its door frame that such dreams were the dreams of fools. (p. 73)
Exit West sounds like science fiction – walking through doors to another place. But their experience is so well drawn that the doors don't feel like science fiction, but a portal to somewhere else: drawing close she was struck by its darkness, its opacity, the way that it did not reveal what was on the other side, and also did not reflect what was on this side, and so felt equally like a beginning and an end (p. 103).
I loved Exit West because I liked Hamid's descriptions of migration and relationships (often simultaneously):
Soon a rhythm was established, and it was thereafter rare that more than a few waking hours would pass without contact between them, and they found themselves in those early days of their romance growing hungry, touching each other, but without bodily adjacency, without release. They had begun, each of them, to be penetrated, but they had not yet kissed. (pp. 40-41)
I also liked Exit West for Hamid's language: long, languid sentences, often pointing to this and that, its presence and absence (penetrating without having yet kissed).
Or, as in this "short" sentence, where Nadia, Saeed, and his father each live in a different time – while living together in a single time (at least for those of us who are objectivists rather than subjectivists).
Saeed’s father encountered each day objects that had belonged to his wife and so would sweep his consciousness out of the current others referred to as the present, a photograph or an earring or a particular shawl worn on a particular occasion, and Nadia encountered each day objects that took her into Saeed’s past, a book or a music collection or a sticker on the inside of a drawer, and evoked emotions from her own childhood, and jagged musings on the fate of her parents and her sister, and Saeed, for his part, was inhabiting a chamber that had been his only briefly, years ago, when relatives from afar or abroad used to come to visit, and being billeted here again conjured up for him echoes of a better era, and so in these several ways these three people sharing this one apartment splashed and intersected with each other across varied and multiple streams of time. (p. 81)
Hamid makes room for multiple perspectives, as in Exit West's first sentence: In a city swollen by refugees but still mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war, a young man met a young woman in a classroom and did not speak to her (p. 2). He also dared to empathize with "the nativists"
Saeed wondered aloud once again if the natives would really kill them, and Nadia said once again that the natives were so frightened that they could do anything.
“I can understand it,” she said. “Imagine if you lived here. And millions of people from all over the world suddenly arrived.”
“Millions arrived in our country,” Saeed replied. “When there were wars nearby.”
“That was different. Our country was poor. We didn’t feel we had as much to lose.” (pp. 163-164)
That empathy is part of remaining human under difficult conditions, as many nativists and refugees had difficulty doing, as Nadia and Saeed struggled to do as they drifted apart. Nadia continued to attempt to be true to herself – under her "virtually all-concealing black robe", which she wore for protection:
What she was doing, what she had just done, was for her not about frivolity, it was about the essential, about being human, living as a human being, reminding oneself of what one was, and so it mattered, and if necessary was worth a fight. (p. 126)
Exit West is about change and changing, about staying and moving on, about loving and leaving. It's about language and and all of life, not only being a refugee.
Although all other lands are named, Nadia and Saeed's homeland is not. Exit West is both about a particular couple and place and also all peoples and countries.
...but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind. (p. 98)...more
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