I hate writing about books I've read when they're not close at hand, but as I had to return Divorce Islamic Style by Amara Lakhous to the library yesterday (they have this funny rule about returning books after a set period of time), let me see what I can pull from my memory. I've gotten a little lazy about taking notes as I read, which is too bad in this case as there were some wonderfully quotable lines I would have liked to share. Lakhous was born in Algiers but now lives in Italy and he reminds me a bit of his main character, Christian (a.k.a. Issa).
Divorce Islamic Style (Divorzio all'islamica a viale marconi, translated by Ann Goldstein) is a little gem of a novel. Lakhous touches upon so many interesting and topical subjects, many of them could easily fall into the realm of the controversial, but he writes with such a lightness of touch that anything heavy is balanced out with humor and subtlety. Not exactly laugh out loud humor but a levity that makes the story a delight to read even while the story makes you think (as well as be entertained).
Contemporary Rome is a melting pot of peoples of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. Christian, or Issa as he's known, knows this is a sign of the future. Sicilian by birth, but of Tunisian heritage, he can speak flawless Arabic. This talent combined with an appearance that allows him to pass as a recent immigrant attracts the attention of the Italian secret service who talk him into going undercover in a neighborhood of Rome knows as Little Cairo. There's talk of a possible terrorist plot and Christian is the perfect candidate to infiltrate the community and suss out the probable perpetrators.
So Christian becomes Issa, a newly arrived immigrant from Tunisia who is looking for a place to live, as well as a job but without the benefit of papers to do it legally. Little Cairo is a neighborhood of mostly, but not exclusively, Egyptian immigrants. Terrorists in their midst? Perhaps, but mostly Issa finds hardworking immigrants just trying to survive and with not much to show for their efforts. He spends much of his time in a local cafe on the viale Marconi where he makes endless phone calls to a fictional family in Tunisia and tries to make friends with the locals. He seems to spend at least as much time making friends and trying to help those in the immigrant community as trying to find out who the terrorists are, which puts him at odds with his role there.
Issa's path crosses with that of a young, married woman from Egypt known as Sofia, though really her name is Safia. It seems no one in her adopted country can get her proper name right, so Sofia it is. She had dreamed of a better life in Italy, a place she could remove her veil and live in a more western fashion, but her dream was smashed by her conservative husband, Felice. At home Felice was trained as an architect, but in Italy he can only find work as a pizza chef. He's adamant about Sofia staying at home to raise their daughter, but Sofia runs a clandestine hair cutting business, work at which she is very talented and had hoped to practice out in the open.
Both Issa and Sofia tell the story in first person in alternating chapters. They each tell their own story, but their stories are really part of a greater immigrant story. It's fascinating but also a little heartbreaking. Surely it's a story told over and over again through time however varied. Here there is the added perspective of it being a story told about immigrants who are mostly followers of Islam in a world where a woman in a veil is viewed by Italians as practically a terrorist herself. Little matter to them that she'd prefer not to wear the veil at all and while respectful of her culture is also critical of it, too.
Lakhous does a great job of characterizing the life of an immigrant--showing their desire to create a better life but dealing with prejudices and road blocks thrown in their paths not only by government officials but by others inside and outside their own community. And for the immigrant there is the added pressure of maintaining an appearance to their families back home of success, having arrived in the land of their dreams but really only living a borderline sort of life. Lakhous also plays with the idea of identity, each character having more than one persona--who he or she really is but also how he or she is actually perceived and who he or she presents to the world. There are lots of interesting juxtapositions playing off each other.
I make this sound much more melancholy than it is. It's all really very clever and very well done. I liked it so much I immediately ordered his first novel, Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, which I am looking forward to reading. Divorce Islamic Style, by the way, is published by Europa Editions, one of my favorite small presses. They consistently put out fresh new (and unusual) international fiction. I can't think of a book they've published that I've read and didn't like. I've amassed a pile of their titles and perhaps it's time to pull another one from the stack to read now.