Very torn about whether to go with three stars or four stars, though I'm going with four in the hopes that GoodReads may start recommending me books that actually sound interesting.

Fadia Faqir (who since this book published has definitely "emerged" onto the literary stage) has written a fascinating book focusing on the lives of two Jordanian women who meet in a mental hospital--though that last is used mostly as a framing device.

There were three shifting perspectives: First the male storyteller who claims to have witnessed most of Maha's story and heard her reciting the rest; then Um Saad, an older woman from Amman who grew up in the city and tells the story of her life; and finally Maha, whose family struggles comprise the largest portion of the book.

The differences are obvious: male and female perspectives, city and rural lives, a liar and two people who the reader trusts to tell the truth. All three tell their stories from the first person, but all of them take a slightly different approach. The storyteller's is very traditional, going so far as to insert elements of folklore, religion, history, and superstition to support the narrative. These aspects are only incidental to Maha and Um Saad's lives, even as they are incredibly prevalent in the background.

I had a bit of trouble trying to figure out when the story was set, even with the help of a timeline of Jordan's occupation at the front. There were radios but no televisions, airplanes and Land Rovers but telephones were unfamiliar, plastic sandals but almost no other outside goods described in the village. I wasn't too bothered by this, though. Still, it's part of the reason I'm not adding this book to the "great world-building" shelf--that and the fact that I think I would have had far less idea what the village might have looked like if I hadn't stayed in a rural village in Morocco (clearly even the images I imagined with that influence could be wildly wrong!).

I also appreciated the realism of Maha and Um Saad's situations. When bad things happened, they sometimes didn't even think of revenge because they were so aware that the consequences would be disastrous. As much as this book is a commentary on the place of women in society, matters of feminism are almost never spoken of directly--in situation rather than in wishing they had the same rights as men. Many aspects of the culture were valued and appreciated, even as many of them were implicitly rejected.

I'm making this sound very detached and scholarly, but the stories really drew me in and made me care about Maha, Um Saad, and the supporting characters. Nasra was an especial delight and Maha's brother Daffash was, frankly, terrifying. The only place I struggled was with the very last chapter from the storyteller, which described an almost apocalyptic future for Maha's village (apparently the Dead Sea is, in fact, on a fault line) and seemed to switch focus entirely from the evil man-hating Maha to a more hopeful future. I'll have to keep thinking about that one.

Quote Roundup

4) I am the storyteller.
My box is full of tales.
Yes, the yarn-spinner.
I spin and spin for days.
Looking at this now, I realize that for all Maha spends so many hours spinning, she never finishes the carpet her mother began. I can't even remember her working on it. A representation of her life, left unfinished when she was shipped off to the mental hospital? A larger statement about Jordan's occupation, which disrupted so much of the region to such an extent that its natural development could never be resumed?

37) My father would stop fighting the French, and then he might leave me and my mother alone. I did not like my father, but I really hated the French who made him restless and dirty.
Don't quite get how having the father around the house is going to make life more peaceful, but this could just be Um Saad relating her childhood thoughts.

44) All the members of the tribe would wait outside the door for proof of my virginity. Young girls, young boys, half-naked children, toothless old men, and horsemen were all thirsty for my blood. My heart started beating fiercely. What would he do? I was about to lose some blood. Was it like an ordinary period?
The juxtaposition between the obsession with "virginity" and the lack of knowledge about what it is astounded me. On a larger note, I really liked this scene. Maha's quick thinking and her new husband's gratitude for her help was my first hint that maybe their marriage was going to be all right, at least for a while.

55) Dew and light, the sisters of the bedouins, gave me a hand and helped me see Hakim with his crooked back, black goat, and long stick. My father had assured me that Hakim, the embodiment of Arabs' anger and resistance, never stopped breathing, would never die, and would always roam the deserts and mountains of Arabia. Many sought his blood, but he managed to survive.
A bittersweet passage considering the ongoing fighting in the MENA region.

58) Maha - "bitter Indian fig" the people of Hamia used to call her - started working with a newly acquired enthusiasm on the farm. She would spend most of her time watering, weeding, ploughing, and even rubbing the oranges until they glowed in the sun. Why do you think? Can any of you tell me why? No, not because she was a hardworking peasant woman. The reason behind what she did was graver than that. The land. Yes, my masters, THE LAND. The source of all greed and every conflict.
-- She started farming vigorously as if the orchard belonged to her, not to her poor brother Daffash. Woman's cunning is great. A treasure, she thought, which she would inherit one of those days. If you divided the greed inside her it would have been enough for all our hearts. Allah's cunning devours the worshippers' cunning.
A perfectly reasonable love of hard-worked family land becomes sinister in the Storyteller's point of view. Nevertheless, that beautiful image of Maha tending each orange makes it through the bile. Not quite sure what to make of that last sentence...

86) Allah created the jinn out of fire, and if they get burnt to mud they become human beings like us. They lose their powers, grow old then die.
A note of interest for my badly languishing Moroccan-inspired story.

119) "He who gives birth is never dead."
My mind immediately started playing with this statement. Frankenstein's creature came to mind quickly, though I was also amused at the idea that almost all men would never have the immortality implicitly granted to most women by this statement. Which is pretty ironic, considering it's said in relation to a father instead of a mother. You have to work at playing with language, ignoring the usual use of the phrase "give birth", if you want to apply this phrase to a man as a "giver" of birth.

131) "Maha, shall I tell you how to plant Iraqui jasmine?"
-- "I am a peasant and I know how to plant the damn jasmine."
I got a much-needed laugh from Maha's snappishness.

150) "Songs became shorter and lighter. When I was young, we used to sing about spring, crops, meadows, and life. By your life, all the songs nowadays are about love. For the younger generation, nothing is important except love and lust. When you cannot get something, you keep thinking of it all the time."
I think Um Saad and I would get along.

155) The pasha turned his head and smiled, "Do you like jasmine?"
-- "Yes."
-- He looked at my face for the first time. Really looked at my face and saw me, saw that I was a woman who loved jasmine flowers. Before, I was sure, I was for him one of the black tents roaming the valley.

172-173) My father loved Mubarak, loved me, and always stroked my hair with his flaky fingers and said, "My daughter, you are better than that scoundrel brother of yours. I wish you were a man because the land must go to its ploughman."
If this book had been written by an American, that would be the technicality that saved the day: Maha's not a man, but since she tends the land, it goes to her. Happily ever after. A very different kind of story.

181) I did not know how to pray so I aped Tamam who kept hissing incomprehensible words, bowing, kneeling, then prostrating.
This interested me because Muslims' prayer sequence is fairly generally known (or at least, I know what it looks like even if I don't know the exact pattern of standing, kneeling, and bowing). Is there a variation of the usual order for this particular occasion? Do styles of prayer vary the way styles of taking communion vary? Or is the emphasis on prayer itself rather than the formula for it, a la the Protestant Reformation? (Sorry I compare Islam to Christianity so much--it's my background.)

191) The shrine dominated the east side [of the town of Hamia] and the mansion the west. Samir Pasha on one side and Imam Rajab on the other. The village was besieged by sounds from the minaret and the noise from the mansion. Allah-u-Akbar. The husky music of the English.
Not exactly subtle, but a powerful image nonetheless.


217) "First of all," Daffash barked at the top of his voice, "I don't talk to women. No brain and no faith." The imam nodded his head approvingly. "Second, what is the use of talking to a crazy woman? ( )

A beautifully written, beautifully rendered, aching story of two women whose suffering binds them into sisterhood. It's one of those novels with storytelling so nuanced and subtle that it seeps into your bones and grabs hold of you somehow. It is moving and heartbreaking all at once. ( )

This is not, I think, the kind of book I usually care for, but I really loved this. The author was able to make real the terrible inequalities in Jordanian society and the limitations in the lives of the women, without slamming it over the reader's head. Neither did I find a particularly anti-male or anti-Islamic message, as there is in a lot of books about women and Islam. There were some very wonderful male characters in this story and you got the impression that those men who were bad, would have been bad no matter what time and place they grew up in.

I only wish the author had written more about Um Saad's life. I loved all the details of Maha's story but felt Um Saad didn't have enough page space. ( )