Miral al-Tahawy's The Tent

 

The Tent / Miral al-Tahawy
trans. from the Arabic by Anthony Calderbank
Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000, c1995.
95 p. 

This is another novella I picked up recently, focusing on Fatima, a young Bedouin girl in the Sinai desert. She and her many sisters live in women's quarters while her wealthy and nomadic father is mostly elsewhere. Her mother suffers severe depression since she can only bear daughters - she has miscarried sons. Fatima's grandmother despises all her granddaughters for not being boys, and she is cruel and foul-mouthed about it all. 

Fatima is the youngest, and seems to have a gift for second sight, although it might just be a trauma response to everything she sees around her. For a brief time she's taken up by a French anthropologist, who seems to see her as another element in her collection of Bedouin items, like all of her horses. Soon enough Fatima's future ends as she is returned to her home, where she ends up unmarried and living in a small hut on the property as she continues to see things differently from everyone else. 

This was fascinating for its look at Fatima and her sisters; they spend time doing each other's hair, embroidering clothing (her sister is renowned for her skill, which seems a little obsessive, perhaps it's her way of dissociating) and seeing their cousins. As her sisters are married off, we also see some of the customs and rituals of marriage, and also some of the outcomes. 

This was interesting but again there was a little too much uncertainty about what was real or what was Fatima's imagination, at least for me. She isn't able to function well in the society she's stuck in, and while that is a theme that is explored here, and shown clearly, as a reader I found the timelines and situations a bit confusing. That could be because I am not familiar enough with the setting or the writer to get the allusions and deeper meanings of some of the symbols or metaphors here. I thought the writing style was overall really strong, and I may try one of her other books to see how I like it. 

Crocodile on the Sandbank

Crocodile on the Sandbank / Elizabeth Peters 
Ashland, OR: Blackstone Audio, 2077, c1975.
Narrated by Susan O'Malley

This is a classic, and it's another reread for me! I thought I'd surely written about this before now but it turns out I haven't. I recently listened to the audiobook and still enjoy this first volume of the lengthy and popular Amelia Peabody series. 

I think it's the best of the series, introducing us to Amelia Peabody, a bluestocking who inherits her father's estate (to her brothers' chagrin) and decides to travel to all the places she's always read about. She heads out to Europe, and in Italy rescues Evelyn, a delicate fellow Englishwoman who she discovers in a faint in a public place. 

Nobody can override Amelia when she makes a decision, and she chooses to engage this unknown woman as her companion for the rest of her travels, specifically on the next leg out to Egypt. And her befriending of Evelyn brings all sorts of complications and intrigue to their trip. Egypt also brings a meeting with the Emerson brothers, archeologists Walter and Radcliffe, who mirror Evelyn and Amelia and the story wraps up neatly with all of their various relationships, ready for the series to continue. 

This was written in 1975 so there are a few parts that wouldn't perhaps be included today. But it's set during the late Victorian period, 1890s, so the English/French/Arabic mix of Egyptology is definitely reflective of the history. Peters is a scholar of Egypt so those elements, of archeological detail, mummies, daily life, landscape etc are all thoroughly described and realistic. 

The storyline, the romance, the banter and the rest are more reminiscent of adventure novels of that late Victorian era. It's quite bonkers, really fun and the romantic elements are sweet at times and hilarious at others. I love Amelia's bullheaded nature that hides a warmer heart, and have enjoyed these Egypt set novels for a long time. There are a ton of books in this series but I find I reread the first five most often, and think those five could stand alone as a sufficient series. This one is a classic. 

 

Shubeik Lubeik

Shubeik Lubeik / Deena Mohamed
trans. from the Arabic by the author
New York : Pantheon Books, 2022.
518 p.

What would you wish for, if you knew your wish would come true? This is the question asked by Deena Mohamed in this imaginative graphic novel, set in an alternative Cairo, where wishes are real, regulated, bottled and licensed.

There are three classes of wish: first class, second class and the banned third class wish (due to their malicious unreliability). Wishes can be tricky and deceptive; the wording has to be just right for optimal results.

The story follows three characters as they each decide to use a First Class wish for different reasons, mainly non-material desires, like forgiveness or health. They each struggle with the ethics of wishing, with discussion of the religious or philosophical elements of a wish. How will it be interpreted, and will it actually give them what they need or want? Their stories cover a wide range of human experience, and bring up many aspects of the meaning of life, in a way that is accessible and sometimes humorous as well.

The artwork is a lively mix of colour and black and white, dependent on context. There are some extra nice touches – for example, when a wish bottle is opened, the Wish appears as a bubble of Arabic calligraphy. The translation (done by the author) has also left as much of the original unchanged as possible, with the book reading from right to left, as it does in Arabic.

With the engaging artistic style, and the deep themes that the storyline explores, this might be a great choice for any thoughtful reader interested in family stories, the Egyptian setting, or just the artwork itself. It might also raise philosophical questions about what we want, or need, out of life -- and what the right way is to achieve our desires.

The Queue

 

The Queue / Basma Abdel Aziz
trans. from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jacquette
NY: Melville House, 2016, c2012.
224 p.

I've been meaning to read this book for a long time, and finally sat down with it this month. It's a story of an Egypt that is run by a centralized authority known as The Gate, and as many centralized authorities are, it's both opaque, intrusive, and completely bureaucratic. 

There has been an uprising only known as the "Disgraceful Events", and people injured during this time are being gaslighted and told that they have no injuries, that nothing happened at all. Yehya is a young man who has a bullet in his abdomen, but isn't allowed to have it removed unless it's at the authorized hospital with all the right papers (all of which is impossible anyhow). The doctor who first treated him, Tarek, is having an existential crisis, not sure whether to defer to the dictates of the Gate, or to defy them and operate anyhow. 

Meanwhile Yehya, his friend Nagy and girlfriend Amani are spending time in the queue, lined up in a crowd literally miles long waiting for the Gate to open so they can get their paperwork for whatever particular need they have. 

The queue is the setting for much of the book -- it's a cross-section of society, different kinds of people in need of different things, but all oppressed under the ever-present surveillance and total lack of care or assistance of the government. There's a religious zealot, a couple of women both drawn to and repelled by him (fearful of everything), an older woman who takes advantage of her position stuck in the queue to open up a little coffee stall and make some money, nurses, teachers, rural residents trying to get land papers, everyone trying to get attestation of their loyalty to the government. 

It's exhausting, ominous, and without any end in sight. Amani, with more self-confidence and initiative than many, tries to bluff her way into the official hospital to retrieve the x-ray that Yehya needs herself, but it doesn't go well -- she is arrested, and her harrowing experience changes her. She becomes as fearful and cowed as everyone else, and starts to believe the government propaganda that says no-one was hurt, that her beloved's injuries, which she herself has been advocating for help for, really don't exist, aren't really as bad as he thinks. It's the most chilling part of the book for me. 

It's a study of authoritarianism -- the control over daily life and the tiniest parts of personal existence, the mind control and propaganda, the lack of care for anyone, even the brainwashed supporters of its authority. Sounds all too familiar over the last few years. 

This book reminded me in some ways of both Vladimir Sorokin's The Queue and Olga Grushin's The Line, both examinations the Soviet life and the blankness of government and access to goods. In this book, the lack of access is to the very proof of life - the forms required to live in a world run by the Gate, and denied by the Gate. The hopelessness is palpable. 

This was a powerful read, and the last few pages need to be read again in order to make your mind up about what happened. The conclusion changes the way I read the book, and I had to think over it again in light of the final pages. Quite a book!