Educate Yourself

In light of recent events, and the fact that this received almost no attention, I would like to point everyone again to my review of Scar of David. This is an excellent read that, while fiction, might make Palestinians seem like REAL PEOPLE and encourage some thought and action. I truly believe this is one of the most important modern novels and should be on high-school reading lists and taught in college courses. It is also perfectly accessible to those who are not “formally educated” and should be a priority read for everyone.

Review: The Scar of David

This first novel by Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa is amazing. The Scar of David may actually be one of the most important pieces of contemporary literature. At once a difficult and emotional read, it is also about hope for an abused people. There is so much life contained within its pages, that those who think that the Palestinian people are only about death and martyrdom will be shocked.

True, the author is not the most experienced writer, but her voice is unique and keeps you connected throughout the book. She utilizes many things that are considered to be innappropriate in modern literature, such as switching the point of view frequently and jumping from history to the present and back with little segue, but where some authors may annoy or confuse you by doing this, Abulhawa has elevated it to an artform that seems perfectly appropriate in this story. In a few places, images and phrases are a bit cliched, but more experienced authors have been known to make those mistakes as well.

What sets this book apart from others despite those minor flaws is the story, and how close to reality it is. It is important to remember that this is a novel, i.e. a work of fiction. But as you read it, you don’t remember that. You feel as if you are reading a journal or watching a documentary. It is very real. The author has used historical evidence and commentary from the time effectively to draw you into the truth, even as she fictionalizes it.

The key to the novel is the humanness of it. Rather than seeing the Palestinians just as a group of ragtag people, remorseless suicide bombers and unruly children throwing rocks, Abulhawa gives the people names, faces, families, and the same longings, dreams, and needs as the rest of us. When you read of the horrific rape and murder of Yousef’s pregnant wife and young daughter, you wonder if you could have reacted any differently. When you read of Amal’s inability to openly show affection to her daughter, you understand that this might be how you would also feel if everyone you loved were taken from you.

While the book has been touted as being the story of a Palestinian boy who is raised as a Jew, that is only a small part of the novel. “Getting into the mind of a terrrorist” is also one of the major themes claimed other reviews of the book, but again, that is only part of the story and you don’t feel like Yousef is a terrorist at all. The majority of the story belongs to Amal, a woman that any woman can relate to. But in reality, the story is about the people of Palestine as a whole. Here we have individual narratives that bring out the humanity, foilables and generousities, tempers and depressions, friendships and loves, that all people share. The Palestinian people are people, just like others, just like us. They are not to be dehumanized, thought mindless terrorists, and allowed to be run down like mongrel dogs.

The novel was considered controversial by some Jews who felt that it showed Israel in a bad light. I don’t know what other light Israel could be shown in, history has not absolved them of the truth of their misdeeds. Regardless of what some might say (and you can’t help but wonder if they read the book before offering their opinion), upon reading the book in its entirety, you are not given the impression that it is meant as a manifesto of Jewish hatred. On the contrary, there are compassionate views of some of the Israeli Jews, such as Ari Perlstein’s devotion to the Abulheja family, or the boy soldier who discovers he can no longer killl, but instead helps Amal’s daughter survive when her mother is killed by sniper fire and their refugee camp is demolished.

Much of the feeling evoked in the novel transcends time and place. For myself, I found much of the description of atrocities to hit close to my heart as they were so similar to what my ancestors, the Native American Indian, have suffered at the hands of the U.S. government and its armies. The language is beautiful and the raw emotion is striking. Within the collective memories of all humans must lie a deeper connection to each other, an empathy for anyone who suffers injustice.

The love of the land that Palestinians had cultivated for centuries is clearly portrayed in this book. That love is not diminished by time, famine, or being kept off the land. Nothing but a full admission of the wrongdoings in Israel’s history, an accounting for what has been stolen, and the rightful return of the Palestinians’ dignity, land, and livelihood can begin to make amends.

               I have always found it difficult not to be moved by Jerusalem even when I hated it, and God knows I have - for the sheer human cost of it. But the sight of it, from afar or inside he labyrinth of its walls, softens me. Every inch of it holds the confidence of ancient civilizations, their death and birthmarks pressed deep in the city’s viscera and on the rubble of its edges. The deified and the condemned set their footprints in its sand. It has been conquered, razed, and rebuilt so many times that its stone seems to possess life, bestowed by the audit trail of prayer and blood. Yet, somehow, it exhales humility. It touches an inherent familiarity in my, that doubtless, irrefutable, Palestinian certainty that I belong to this land. It possesses me, no matter who conquers it, b ecause its soil is the keeper of my roots, the bones of my ancestors. Because it knows the private lust that flamed the beds of all my foremothers. Because I am the natural seed of its passionate, tempestuous past. I am a daughter of the the land, and Jerusalem reassures me of this inalienable title, far more than the yellowed property deeds, the Ottoman land registries, iron door keys to our stolen homes, or UN resolutions and decrees of superpowers.

Related Post: Another Book I Have to Read

The Official Blog for The Scar of David

Reviews posted on The Scar of David blog

Review in the Electronic Intifada

Review in the Indypendent

Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

I have just finished reading Khaled Hosseini’s second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. As promised, here is my review.

This is an amazing book, but for anyone who read his first, The Kite Runner, they will not be surprised by this. Hosseini has a wonderful way of making Afghanistan very real. His writing is vivid and descriptive, but well balanced, so that you feel as though you are watching a movie, or are right there seeing what is going on.

Once again, this is a moving and emotional novel that will keep you up and that you will be pondering for weeks, months, maybe even years after reading it. Especially intriguing is how Hosseini has managed to write from the perspective of two women in such an insightful way. As a woman reader, I admit that the depth with which Hosseini understood his two characters, Mariam and Leila, is amazing.

A Thousand Splendid Suns tells the stories of Mariam and Leila, alternating between their points of view. It takes place primarily in Kabul, but with some early presence in Herat and some later presence in Pakistan. At heart, it is a story of Kabul. The story begins in 1964 with a five year-old Mariam, and ends in 2003, spanning over the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the defeat and withdrawl of the Russians that led to the warlords in-fighting, followed by the rise of the Taliban, and ending with the beginning of democratic rule in which the warlords are given legitimate posts in the government.

There is no doubt that the novel is the story of two women from different backgrounds, different points of view, and even different generations, who end up living and working, surviving together. Mariam is the illegitimate country child who is forced into an unwanted marriage with a businessman in Kabul and sent away from her family. Leila is a young privelaged woman who becomes orphaned and pushed into joining Mariam’s household by a terrible secret and Mariam’s manipulative husband.

Both women suffer in ways that we in the West can barely imagine, but that are probably fairly accurate. The only issue that I have with the portrayal is that so much abuse and suffering is packed into two characters, and little is presented to show that their experience is not the only experience of women in Afghanistan, that some may have less eventful and abusive lives. Also, the husband, Rasheed is a fairly one-dimensional character. He is very vivid, real, and frightening, but with seemingly not even one redeeming quality. Yet in every evil person, there is some element of good, and vice versa in every good person. In Rasheed, no good is ever found. The closest he ever comes to goodness is in his doting on his son, but even this is spoiled by the obviously selfish nature of the doting, and how quickly he turns even on the innocent child.

I don’t want to ruin the story by telling details. What I will say is that it is extremely moving, worth the read, and well-worth the price of the book. All of the best elements of fiction are present: love, romance, betrayal, dishonesty, crisis, scandal, the best and worst of human behavior. There is precious little that will make you laugh, mostly you will cry, often you will tense with anger, but in the end, you will see the splendor of what promises to be the sun rising again for the people of Afghanistan.

To read other reviews, check out the links gathered at Seekers Digest.

My Related Posts:

Can’t Wait… to get my hands on this book

Video of Khaled Hosseini discussing his new book

Review: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

I’ve just finished reading Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I decided to read it because Shaykh Farraz Rabbani had posted some reviews on his blog.

The premise of this short novel is the story of a Pakistani young man, named Changez, who attends a prestigious college in the U.S. on a scholarship, obtains a high-paying job in NYC, becomes disillusioned with the U.S. and Americans after 9-11 and returns to his home country. Of course, other reviews of the book have been a tad dishonest in their implication that the character returns to Pakistan to join a terrorist organization, as this turns out to not be the case. I was expecting, based on the title and reviews, that the story told how a young man on the brink of a very secular and hedonistic happiness is forced to rethink his life and religion after 9-11, and ends up on the other side of the spectrum of extremes.

In fact the book is not quite that exciting, though it is an interesting tale. It almost seems as though it was forced into a quick ending, one that excluded any truly telling misbehavior or “fundamentalist” behavior on the part of Changez. In fact, in 184 pages, it is only on page 179 that we find out what supposed-fundamentalist behavior Changez has engaged in since returning to Pakistan, and it is quite a let-down. There is nothing extreme, religious or otherwise, about his miniscul efforts.

And despite all the introspection and supposed change that Changez goes through, he does not actually seem to reevaluate his lifestyle, religion, or anything deeper than a general dislike of Americans and some nationalistic ideals on behalf of Pakistan. His thoughts are not particularly deep, nor do they lead him into any type of spiritual quest. The only significant difference between the Changez of New York and the Changez of Lahore is his financial status.

From the outset, I should clarify for those who are cautious of what they read, this is a Muslim novel, but most definitely not an Islamic novel. While Changez is Muslim and some small reference is made to religion, he is the common “secular Muslim” who drinks to excess, does not appear to pray or in any other way observe the most simple of Islamic practices, and is preoccupied with the possibilities of pre-marital sex. In fact, for those who are cautious, I must warn that there are scenes of nudity and sex, though admittedly not told in a more gratuitous manner than in any common American novel.

I also found that I have mixed feelings about the writing style of the novel. The entire story is told by Changez as he sits in a cafe in Lahore with an American. Granted there is the small suspense offered in that it seems there is a reason that he and the American have been brought together. But there is little dialogue throughout the book of neverending narrative, broken only by occassional questions and unrelated comments made by Changez to the American. As a writer and reader, I found such asides as “What did I think of Princeton?”, “And how broadly do I define self-defense, you ask?” rather annoying. In fact, this type of writing is quite discouraged amongst modern writers and we have agents, editors and teachers constantly telling us that such writing will never be published. Which is why I have mixed feelings about it, because I am almost proud of Hamid that he managed to pull it off, and at the same time annoyed that he should get away with something the rest of us cannot. Having struggled much with attempting to write dialogue that rings true and is not trite, I also am suspicious that those who stick only to narrative may be taking the lazy way out.

In the end, it is an interesting novel that is fairly easy reading. I would recommend it as a lark read. It is best if borrowed from the library or a friend, though one may decide they enjoy it enough to purchase after that.

Essential Reading Part 1 - Poetry

I’ve been meaning for some time to start a small series of posts reviewing some of the books that have been most influential on me. There are 5 categories: Poetry, Islam, Autobiographies, Novels, Books on Writing. My plan was to limit it to the five books of the most significance, but I have to admit that for some of the categories that may be impossible to do. It might have to be 7-10 for some categories. In honor of National Poetry Month, I am going to start with the Poetry category, which does consist of five books.

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It has been said that poetry is the most revealing writing. It is deeply emotional and personal. It can also be the most difficult to comprehend, because it is rarely straightforward. The use of symbolism, metaphor and imagery makes poetry some of the most sublime reading.

The following are the five books of poetry that I have been most moved or touched by. These are the ones I turn to again and again, as a reader when seeking solace or comfort, and as a writer and artist when seeking inspiration. Four of the five authors are also fiction writers whose work I greatly enjoy.

I Ask the Impossible by Ana Castillo - Castillo is a Chicana author from Chicago. She writes in both English and Spanish, and I enjoy her work in both languages. I Ask the Impossible is a collection of her poetry printed in 2000. Castillo writes as a woman astride two cultures, two lives in a way. She is very personal and also very political.

The title poem is a beautiful love poem that speaks to my own quest to be loved and accepted as I am. Another of my favorites is “Recipes for a Welfare Mother” where she writes not only of the food but of the lifestyle, the manual labor, the dirty apartments with insufficient heat and all the things that make us poor mothers feel inadequate as we strive to provide a better life for our children than we have had. In yet another poem, “Women Don’t Riot” she writes against the stereotype that women are docile and submissive and reminds us of the call to action against oppression that many women across the globe have been at the forefront of. In “Anna Mae Aquash” Castillo writes a moving eulogy to one of America’s finest American Indian activists who was brutally murdered by the FBI, and in “For My Child Who Became a Man in His Thirteeth Year” she tells of the day her son became an activist by chasing out the man who dared to hit his mother.

Castillo writes of the experiences of real women, all the heartache and difficulty, but also the solidarity, family, love, and even romance we deal with.

Facing Shadows by Ha Jin (1996) - Ha Jin is a Chinese author who was and active part of the Communist Youth and self-educated. He later was able to attend college and earned a PhD in English after coming to the United States. His poetry is tinged with the disaffection he felt for the Communist Party of China after the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen massacre. Jin writes primarily in English, so things are not translated by another, these are the images and words the author himself has chosen to express himself. And yet you can still “hear” the Chinese voice nestled in his poetry.

My absolute favorite poem by Ha Jin is “A Child’s Nature” in which he tells the story of picking up his six-year-old son from the airport after having not seen him for three years. His son’s understanding of the upheaval in China is different than his own but ultimately the child’s innocence proves his soft heart.

Ha Jin also writes of simple pleasures, like feeding the ducks and watching the sunset. And yet even in these poems, there is a sense of melancholy, perhaps because he misses doing those things in his homeland and knows he will probably never be able to return.

Original Fire by Louise Erdrich (2003) - Louise Erdrich is one of the best-known Native American writers. Original Fire is a collection of previously published poems along with some newer ones. In many of her collections, poems follow the lives of a particular family or set of families, often the same ones she writes about in her novels. Some of the poems were originally published within her novels. This creates an interesting continuity and a feeling of coming home, or familiarity. Through the different books you come to know the members of the family more intimately and are even surprised sometimes to find that the poetry-speech of a character reveals much more than their dialogue had.

Much of Erdrich’s writing focuses on a particular time period between when all Indians were on the reservations and when so many were sent to live in the cities. Many of her descriptions recall the time when the Indians were still rural and struggling to obtain their daily needs.

Love’s Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition as translated by David & Sabrineh Fideler (2006) - I admit to being biased because I know the translators, but what kind of list of essential reading would this be if it didn’t include the great Persian poets? All of the best are present in this collection: Rumi, Attar, Hafiz, Sa’di, Shah Ni’matallah Wali, Al-Ghazzali, Pur Baha Jami, and many more.

Each poem fills only one page - short but powerful verse. This entices you to read and meditate on the meaning of just one at a time. It is certain that you will come away with a different and deeper understanding each time you read them. If you believe in the importance of poetry, this collection is probably some of the very most important poetry ever written.

Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth by Alice Walker (2003) - I am hard-pressed to choose one book of poetry by Alice Walker but I chose this one because I remember how I felt the first time I read it and how much it meant to me. Walker writes on so many topics: love, nature, friendship, introspection.

One of my favorites is “Someone Should Have Taught You This” which always makes me long for my mother-in-law. Another that means alot to me is “When Fidel Comes to Visit Me” which is a slightly irreverent but loving dream of hanging out with Fidel Castro. Yet another deep and important one to me is “If They Come to Shoot You”.