A Work in Progress

Teaser Tuesday: Hend and the Soldiers

If yesterday I was wondering how accurate the portrayal of life in contemporary Saudi Arabia was in Zoe Ferraris's Finding Nouf, today I am reading a book (gotten via ILL and serendipitously it arrived just in time to start when I finished the mystery) written by a Saudi Arabian novelist.  Badriah Albeshr is an established writer, journalist and academic who has written several novels, Hend and the Soldiers is her first to be translated from Arabic into English.  It is part of the Modern Middle East Literatures in Translation Series that is published by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.  I am curious to see how much the stories in the novels overlap, rather how much the portrayal of contemporary life as lived by Saudi women overlaps.   I was thrilled when I came across it as there does not seem to be a lot of literature readily available in English by authors from this country.

"The novel appeared at a time [it was originally published in Beirut in 2006] when Saudi writers had recently started to speak openly about social issues their predecessors usually preferred to leave alone out of fear of retribution or reverence for social values.  Not surprisingly, it was admired by all those who embraced its frankness, its liberal views, and light humorous tone; but it was equally attacked by religious groups and those who frowned upon seeing old traditions scoffed at  or challenged."

The introduction is written by the novel's translator, Sanna Dhahir, and she notes the themes of the passages that caused a stir, which include references to God "in terms perceived as unprecented in a Saudi novel" as well depictions of female sexuality as well as unflattering references to religious police.  However, it was never banned in Saudi Arabia.  This book is apparently the most popular of her published works.  Albeshr was born in Riyadh and has published newspaper columns, books of short stories, nonfiction as well as three novels.  She has taught at university but now is a full time author, and hopefully more of her work will be translated into English.

I was interested in what the translator had to say about why the book was chosen for translation as well as the challenges it presented.  As there is a dearth of books by Saudi writers . . . "It spans several decades of Saudi history and culture, all vividly portrayed through the eyes of a passionate insider.  It would dispel a number of fixed judgments about a people and many aspects of their lives in a place imperfectly understood by other cultures."  It's not just outside perceptions of women's lives that she writes about but of men as well.

As for the actual translation, English and Arabic have vastly different structures and as she says the languages represent very different cultures.  How can a translator make it all come together to convey the sense of the story and storyteller accurately to a very different audience?

"To render a readable and interesting target text, I set out to domesticate the translation in all parts that required idiomatic, clear English.  At the same time, I strived to preserve the source text's local color, as in passages with religious sayings, salutations, and specific mannerisms."

Happily she has used footnotes to further explain cultural or linguistic references that may not be obvious to the reader.  I get the sense that Arabic is a very difficult language to learn, but it must be quite beautiful and lyrical if this translation is anything to go by, which you will see in my teaser below!

"The histories of this household's women are tales woven around coffee.  Each woman has a story living in the heart of her cup.  If not given to her by fate, the woman herself creates a story to sweeten the acrid taste of life, and she relishes her own narrative over the bitter coffee.  Each woman's tale emerges from the womb of a long cardamom pod, where her story had been growing."

That passage really struck me when I read it, it seems so evocative and lovely.  I like the idea of every woman having her own narrative hidden away.

Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris

Although I shudder at the thought, I have a fascination with a place that is so hot that a woman's shoe literally melds into the concrete surface as she is walking across a parking lot.  This is what happens at one point in the novel Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris, which is set mostly in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.  Saudi Arabia is a place I have a curiosity about, but it seems a place filled with exoticism and contradictions.  I have ideas of what it might be like, but I am not sure how accurate they are (some probably true others stereotypes).  I have this idea that it is not a place I would like to live as a woman, but I still want to read more about.  It's not a place that, I think, it is easy for Westerners to travel to (and I am not sure I would even want to), but I found the mystery Finding Nouf by turns maddening, intriguing, and very gripping.   

The author is American and lived in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War with her husband at the time who was a Saudi-Palestinian Bedouin and who no doubt inspired the character (and sleuth) Nayir al-Sharqi.  The author now lives in the US and has written a further two more mysteries set in Saudi Arabia and featuring Nayir and Miss Katya Hijazi, a pairing which gives a peek at the lives of both women and a man who is more akin with the Arabian deserts than the pampered lifestyles of the elite.  It is a relationship that begins with mistrust and misunderstandings, comes with lots of assumptions (and not always true ones), but over time turns into a friendship and perhaps in the other books maybe even something more.  The set up of the story is certainly a good way to show a bit of Saudi society to western eyes.

Nouf is one of several daughters of large, wealthy Saudi family who is found dead in the desert outside of Jeddah.  Her brother Othman has asked Nayir, who is a family friend, to look into her disappearance and later her death as there are many unanswered questions surrounding Nouf.  Nayir knows the desert, it is in his blood and he has served as a guide to the Shrawi family in the past.  When they find Nouf, it is not the outcome they had hoped for.  It appears she drowned from a sudden flash flood, but more questions are raised.  Why was she out there alone?  Why would a young woman, just sixteen and soon to be wed, be without her guide in such an inhospitable place? 

Othman's fiancé, Katya Hijazi, is somewhat of an anomaly.  She works at a lab in the coroner's office.  She is lucky in her relationship with Othman as she is almost a spinster by Saudi standards--the ripe age of twenty-eight.  She has been known to bare her face in public and she relishes her work.  She studied hard to get her education and has worked against the wishes at times of her father (her mother having passed away).  She is not really Othman's equal, not being of a wealthy class, yet he seems a good man and they have intentions to marry.  Despite his position in society, and perhaps because he was adopted into the Shrawi family himself, he seems open to Katya's more progressive/open ideas.  Of course that is not to say that Katya breaks all of society's rules, she just knows how to live within them and bend them slightly in order to work outside the home.  There are times in the story when she seems exhausted and it's easy to see why.

Both Katya and Nayir inevitably get involved in the search for answers to Nouf's death, which looks less and less like a simple accident.  What is most intriguing about this story, and I have to admit at times utterly exasperating is how Nayir looks at Katya, how little they understand each other yet must try and work together, interact and communicate.  Nayir is especially pious, and as a single man with little family and no sisters he finds Katya's behavior at times inappropriate.  He refuses to look at her face and will barely make eye contact with her even when she's veiled.  It's not just Nayir's reaction to Katya, but the restrictions that are placed on her movements and the difficulties she has working. 

It seems such a fine line she walks between living a life as a working woman where everything--her dress, her attitudes, her movements are scrutinized in ways that men's are not.  And then Nayir's assumptions on top of that.  Of course, that said, sometimes Katya had assumptions of her own that were not correct.  Maybe not surprising there is often little understanding and less sympathy for others when there is so little interaction between men and women in a culture like this. 

I could happily have tipped Nayir over the side of his boat (he lives alone in a houseboat) on more than one occasion, but I will admit by the story's end he had come around somewhat in how he interacts with Katya and his understanding of what women's lives are like.  Why someone like Nouf, who seemingly had everything she could possibly ever want still ended up alone in the desert and ultimately paid for her "crimes".  I've got Ferraris's other two mysteries set in Saudi Arabia and look forward to picking up the next one soon. 

There doesn't seem to be a lot of contemporary literature that comes out of Saudi Arabia (certainly compared to other countries in the region like Egypt or Turkey), and even less by women.  I am waiting in line for a library copy of Manal al-Sharif's Daring to Drive: A Saudi Women's Awakening (she now lives in Australia).  Several years back I read a novel by a young Saudi woman, Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea, but I have never seen another book by her released.  I am always interested in books by women from this part of the world, so any suggestions are always welcome. 

As hot as it is here right now (this week might well see actual temperatures breaking 100F for several days running), it sounds much hotter in Saudi Arabia.  I am traveling somewhere cold now, literally and figuratively, as my mystery read is set in Cold War era East Berlin, David Young's Stasi Child, which is last year's CWA Endeavor Historical Dagger winner.

Teaser Tuesday: In Search of Fatima

I bought Ghada Karmi's memoir, In Search of Fatima: A Palestine Story, several years back when a Goodreads group I follow was planning on reading it together. Unfortunately I have let my GR membership lapse somewhat and I have not checked in with that reading group in ages, but it was the first inspiration for me and the jumping off place to begin investigating books about the Middle East or by authors from the region.  Then I took a couple of Israeli Literature classes and I was well and truly hooked.  It was just a matter of time before I began reading about the region in earnest, and I hope this is the start of a new reading 'love affair' for me.

Ghada Karmi's memoir was originally published in 2002, but the events she writes about ended some ten years before this particular edition.  She is an excellent writer and it is easy to get caught up in her memories.  She was born in Palestine but emigrated to England with her family in 1948 after the start of the (what you call it depends on which perspective--) War of Independence/1948 Palestine War.  At the end of the British Mandate the United Nations settled on a partition of lands, but the ensuing war redefined the territories leaving Israel with more land than initially they were given (and sorry if this is a terribly simplistic description--it's all very complicated to me).

I've only just started reading the first section titled "Palestine" about her life (she was born in 1939) living in the Qatamon neighborhood of Jerusalem.  The memoir, I think, will perhaps be about the politics of the region, but more so about the personal.  Karmi is writing from her own vantage point and if she has an agenda, it has less to do with right or wrong, but everything to do with giving a voice to the people who lost everything in 1948.  So far, when she writes, she talks about her family, her beloved Fatima who was a village woman who helped care for the house and children against the backdrop of life in Palestine.  The memoir will eventually move on to England, but for now it is very interesting to get a taste for what life was like there.

I have been especially struck by Karmi's memories of the embroidered clothes that Fatima wore. 

"At the time of my childhood in Jerusalem, no woman who was not a peasant would have been seen dead in such a caftan [Fatima wore the traditional dress--a caftan with panels of embroidery], however beautifully embroidered.  Middle-class women like my mother were keen on the latest fashions coming from Europe, as portrayed in Egyptian films."

***

"No one then could have known that after the loss of Palestine in 1948 this despised peasant costume would become a symbol of the homeland, worn with pride by the very same women who had previously spurned it.  In exile, it became obligatory for each Palestinian woman to have her own caftan and to show it off at public functions."

It is the cultural and social aspects I find the most intriguing, though all the historical and political bits are added to whatever details I have gleaned from my other reading.  As always with nonfiction, there is so much information that I am not sure how much I will take with me, but certainly all the personal stories will linger long in my mind I hope.

So, the first of what I hope will be many (many more in 2017) books about the Middle East I am looking forward to reading.  Eventually I will share a list of books I have acquired and have on hand (and likely a few more on my wishlist).  I am happy to start with a memoir, though, as it is always good to get the personal perspective and hopefully over time I will get many different vantage points, too.