Arabia Archives - A Geography of Reading

Contemplating Zoroaster’s Children by Marius Kociejowski

February 28, 2016 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I’m always excited when I get a package from Canadian publisher Biblioasis. The books they publish (including Alphabet, The Tuner of Silences, and The End of the Story) are intelligent, creative, and well-written and Zoroaster’s Children by Marius Kociejowski is no exception.

To call Kociejowski a travel writer is to do him a grave disservice. Although he writes about cities from Colombo to Toronto, he’s not writing about destinations and sites. He’s exploring these places and cultures through the lens of the individuals he meets. He’s delving into the very roots of what make creativity as he spends the day with a calligrapher in Aleppo. He’s not laying out the most scenic routes; he’s remembering the “people who guided [him] over and beneath surfaces” in Iran. He’s writing about culture and also about the moments and connections that make us human. The book is filled with short essays that made me want to sit… contemplate… digest… understand.

“I did what most people visiting for the first time do, so I will dispense with glowing descriptions of museums and churches.” – Marius Kociejowski, Zoroaster’s Children

The (In)Human

In “The Man on the Train from Galle,” Kociejowski exposes the geopolitics of Sri Lanka through his interaction with one man—a fellow passenger on the train who also happened to be a colonel. They speak (and we learn) of Sinhalese history and culture, of religion, and of war. In the end, the man unburdens the secret of one act he committed in the name of war. It’s a complex situation—one that’s posited as self defense but sounds more like a war crime. Kociejowski poses the man against Conrad’s Mr. Kurtz and then lets us sit with that story, the feeling of having met the man, and the amazing change of life and perspective that can happen in a mere three hours—a mere seven pages.

The Artist

“The Master Calligrapher of Aleppo” can only be read these days with the clamoring background of the war in Syria—a war that has decimated Aleppo along with millions of lives. How strange (and special) it is, then, to sit with Kociejowski as he sits with a calligrapher in a 13th. c. mosque as he writes and rewrites verses from the Koran using the ancient art of calligraphy. “‘You can spend months on a single letter,'” Kociejowski quotes the calligrapher, yet in a few short pages we travel through the history of calligraphy, the nature of art, and the relationship between man and God.

“The calligrapher’s work lies in search of the absolute; his aim is to penetrate the sense of truth in an infinite movement so as to go beyond the existing world and thus achieve union with God.” – Salah al-Ali, Islamic Calligraphy: Sacred and Secular Writings

“History is everywhere here,” Kociejowski writes of Aleppo, and I wondered if that’s indeed true anymore after the massive bombing that continues even now. But then he quotes an 11th c. poet saying, “Take care where you walk, because you walk upon the dead,” and I remember that history is not some textbook on my shelf. It is the layers of life and conflict, of rebuilding and destruction, that we create every day. This is the power of Kociejowski’s writing—to shake the reader out of the complacencies of our everyday lives even as he’s exploring the subtle details of one day in one life.

The Union between Writer and Reader

As good as Kociejowski’s writing is, some of my favorite moments reading this book were as I drifted in and out of consciousness as I napped with my baby in my lap. It wasn’t just the cozy maternal feeling I was enjoying. It was also this incredible series of moments where I was so tired I was mingling Kociejowski’s words with my own on the page. He had given me the gift of opening up my thinking brain and the space to express my writing self in this space between us. I can’t remember any of the words I inserted onto his pages, but I still carry the sense of having touched some divine creative force. The kind of force that can sustain me through a long drought of time for creation.

I could tell you of “The Saddest Book I’ll Never Write” where Kociejowski introduces friend after friend he met in Syria while wondering if any of them still survive. I could also tell you about “‘Moonlight and Vodka'” which is as much about poetry as it is Russia. Or I could tell you about the title essay where we learn about the layers of religion in Iran while conversing with a bookseller who loves most the works of Virginia Woolf.

What I want to tell you, though, is the highest praise I can conjure: This book is open to the world. Open to experience. And Kociejowski is a flaneur of prose. I would follow him on his wanderings anywhere and can’t wait to read another of his books.

To travel with Kociejowski, pick up a copy of Zoroaster’s Children from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Finding Nouf and Peeking Inside the Walls of a Closed Society

October 5, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

If it wasn’t for the semi-annual book swap I attend, I never would have read Finding Nouf by Zoë Ferraris. But someone in that group of fabulously well-traveled and intelligent ladies had read this book and wanted to share it. She’d wrapped it up like a gift and put it in with the other books for selection that night, and my luck was to pick this book from the pile and to keep it despite several rounds of white elephant style takebacksies. Finding Nouf sat on my to-read shelf for only a month or so and even then I picked it up a couple of times every week to see if I was ready to read it. Soon I was and I’m so glad I did.

A Saudi Detective Novel

Finding Nouf is the story of Nouf, a young girl from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia who has run away from her family compound in Jeddah in the days leading up to her wedding. It is also the story of Nayir, a Palestinian man who is so in tune with the desert that everyone assumes he’s Bedouin. He is hired to find Nouf. And it is the story of Katya, a Saudi woman who is engaged to Nouf’s cousin and who also, surprisingly, works with the coroner.

It might sound like this is just a detective novel, and there is a certain amount (though not too much) of a CSI fix in the book. But what makes the book great is the myriad perspectives into a country I would otherwise never know.

Nouf, who is quickly found dead, is firmly entrenched in the female coterie of her household, but that comes with its fair share of silent rebellions. Nayir is an outsider but he is so devoutly Muslim that in many ways he fits better with Nouf’s family, at least the male side, than Nouf does. And Katya is both respectful of the traditions around her and also, because of circumstance and personal preference, reaching to reinvent traditions to suit her life. Together, these voices form a picture in the round of life in Saudi Arabia. The characters are round and human and interesting and even side characters from other classes and cultures help flesh those perspectives more fully.

The Missing Perspective

Because the lifestyle in Saudi Arabia is so very foreign to me, I was very sensitive to getting an unbiased view, which is, of course, impossible from just one source. So while I absolutely loved the cultural details Ferraris wove in (details so fine they could only have been written by someone who had been there) and the fact that the plot was just the right amount of plotted, I was always sensitive to the fact that the book is written by an American. An American who lived in Saudi with her then husband for a time, but an American nonetheless. (And yes, as an American author whose first novel is about Poland, I understand the irony of even making this argument).

Where this becomes really important is that when Nouf or Katya pushed against the limitations put on them because of their gender by driving, going to work, or even flipping up a burqa, I kept wondering why the whole group of women doesn’t overthrow those conventions. So what was missing for me was a deeper insight into the women who want to live their lives that way and whether they are a part of reenforcing the norms westerners consider limiting.

I fully acknowledge that there might be a feeling of powerlessness that would make women who want to rebel unable to do so, but I believe there is also a contingent of women who want to live the way they do. It’s a balance that was better struck in A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea, likely because that author came from within Iran. I really cannot say either way, but the time I spent wondering about the power dynamics in Saudi Arabia did distract me from the book.

I was also grateful for that distraction because it made me look more closely at the world around me. I live near a mosque in Seattle and I’d say that the number of women I see on the bus who either cover their hair or wear a full abaya has increased dramatically in the last decade. I’d often considered that those women were forced by tradition or family to dress that way. But reading this book and wondering so much about Saudi culture (and Muslim culture overall) I realized I was being an idiot and that some women choose to cover themselves in the way that I choose not to wear anything shorter than mid thigh. I knew that, kind of, from the debate about French laws against the hijab, but Finding Nouf opened me up to better understand my own world, too.

My Own Circle of Women

I’m off to book swap again tonight for more book inspiration and to get advice on my trip to India. I have no idea what book I’ll come home with, but I’m certain the books and the company will stretch my thinking and open me up to books and ways of thinking I hadn’t yet considered. It’s an evening full of literature and female wisdom and I can’t wait.

If you want to use literature to catch a glimpse of life inside Saudi Arabia, pick up a copy of Finding Nouf from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Nuance and Culture in A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri

June 8, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

In an age of easy jet travel, very little of the world seems inaccessible anymore. But some places, because of their extreme location (the peak of Mt. Everest) or the political boundaries we’ve set (Tibet), retain their exotic flavor. For me, Iran is one of those places–so remote and inaccessible that I hadn’t, until recently, even explored it through literature. The couple of films I’d seen–Persepolis and Argo left me with very specific impressions–but it wasn’t until reading A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri that the richness of the Iranian culture began to open for me.

Through the story of one girl, Saba, and her twin sister, Mahtab (who may have emigrated to the US), Nayeri unfolds the complexities of post-revolutionary village life in Iran. The book is so gorgeous and thought-provoking that I was still looking for excuses to bring it up in conversation even weeks after turning the final page. This book reminded me of work by Micheline Aharonian Marcom and Diana Abu-Jaber in its layered insights into a foreign culture and I can’t stop thinking about it.

I thought I was reading this book because like my novella, Polska, 1994, it’s about a girl looking for the truth of what happened to her mother. But it was so much more…

Juxtaposing Cultures

Part of the magic of the book is in the relationship between Saba’s reality and the imagined world of her twin as she navigates a new life in America. Because the communication between the two countries is so poor, it remains plausible that Mahtab is living it up in America like Saba’s twin sense intimates. But it’s equally plausible that Mahtab is a vehicle to describe the stifled desires of Saba.

Because we are seeing two worlds at once, we learn more about both of them. Saba buys tapes of American TV shows smuggled into the country and Mahtab lives the life of an American TV show. Clothed in a headscarf, Saba dreams of escaping to a foreign university where she can study anything she wants–a path that may involve marrying and then getting the consent of her husband. Meanwhile Mahtab the free attends Harvard where she Americanizes her name and experiments with dating. Saba’s dreams in many ways seem very small, but in comparison to Mahtab’s life, each tiny detail rings with importance. And Nayeri imbues each small desire with such sweet innocence that it’s easy to crawl inside of Saba’s life and begin to understand the complexity of the world she lives in.

Literature of Exile

“The moral police don’t hate indecency as much as their own urges.” – Dina Nayeri

Of course in many ways the writing of this book must have functioned in reverse. Nayeri, an Iranian exile who emigrated to the US at age ten. So while she is writing of a sister in Iran dreaming of life in America, in reality Nayeri is living an American life and projecting back to what life might have been like if she stayed in Iran. It’s a complicated relationship, particularly because Nayeri easily could have used this book as a chance to either throw potshots at the revolutionary government of Iran or to wax nostalgic about a homeland lost.

What I love and respect about this book is that she does neither. Instead, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is a nuanced and loving look at the people of Iran that deals with the strict Islamic government as thoughtfully as it considers the relationships between village women. Each time I wondered whether the peek into Iran I was getting was politically biased, Nayeri would once again display her love of the underlying culture and I don’t think I could have picked a better book to begin to understand Iran.

But of course when you’re dealing with two countries in political opposition, there is always a slant and I did wonder what an Iranian woman would think of this book. My hunch is that whatever she would think of the politics, the daily life and human experience would ring true.

Resisting Expectations

“Women always do these kinds of jobs–cleansing each other of filth and sin. It is a way of showing the world that it is not by the standards of men that they are judged and found lacking.” – Dina Nayer

Because there is such a tortured political history between the US and Iran (and because my understanding of the situation is so limited), I did come into this book with some baggage. I expected total subjugation of women. I expected tight control and arbitrary regulations. I expected to come out hating the revolutionary government. But Nayeri deals more in human truths than political ones, which is a far better tack, and when given the opportunity to fulfill some cliche or other, she turns the cliche on its head and teaches the reader about thinking beyond the normal expectations.

For example, when Saba consents to a marriage with a man she does not love but who might offer her freedom in the future, I honestly expected (as she expected) for her to be raped on her wedding night. Instead what happens that night and throughout the course of her marriage is infinitely more nuanced, thoughtful, and (at times) heartbreaking. And when Saba’s beautiful but poor (and therefore powerless) friend Ponneh is attacked in the marketplace for revealing too much (or because her beauty is heartbreaking), Nayeri reveals some of the human frailty that goes into terrorizing others. It’s not always a comfortable look, but it’s an important one.

Our Global Village

“Now that she is older… with her own home and family, she considers all the mothers she has been offered, each good for a handful of things: Khanom Basir for household tricks, Khanom Mansoori for mischief, Dr. Zohreh for educated advice, Khanom Omidi for wisdom. Together they have failed to replace her mother, who was good at none of these things.” – Dina Nayeri

One of the highlights of this book is the relationships whether the triangle of love and friendship between Saba, Reza, and Ponneh or the chorus of village women who both enforce and thwart norms in ways that are infinitely interesting. Their relationships are complex and as much as they have their own lives and desires, there is also an underlying level of support and love.

As I was reading this book, I was feeling very lonely. I nearly cried when I read about the women in Saba’s village and how they gathered in her home after her marriage and “showed her how to store her spices, and bone her fish, and every other mundane thing they could think of”. At the same time, my American friend who is an expat in Singapore wrote a blog post about the village of people she’s finally found to support her. And another friend, a Romanian emigrant to America, replied about the instability of an adopted community. I realized that one of the things I was most attracted to in this book was that feeling of connection and community. I grew up in a small town that I yearned to leave, but now as I get older and am thinking about starting a family, I wonder where my support system is. I have a global network of beloved friends who can speak to my soul, but here in Seattle I have only a few people I would burden with requests to help build a deck or babysit our theoretical children.

I could relate to Saba’s pulling away from her home and I also saw in this book the way the women around her were trying to teach her what they had done to survive and to show her that she is part of something greater. By opening up in a comment to my friend’s post, I let myself see what I was missing. I also let others see what I have been missing and I’m realizing that my village here in Seattle is stronger than I thought.

Now that I’ve tasted a bit of Iran, I’m excited to learn more about her people and culture. Maybe I’ll sneak down to Portland for a sumptuously relaxed dinner at Persian House (I have a wicked craving for doogh) or just cuddle up on the couch while streaming The Patience Stone.

If you want to experience this gorgeous look at Iran for yourself, pick up a copy of A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

The Foreign and the Familiar in Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber

February 9, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA 2 Comments

I avoided reading Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber for almost a year. It looked too thick for my purse or the back matter was too fluffy for my mood. When I finally picked up the book, I realized what I’d been missing all this time. And although I lost myself in the story of Sirine and Han so much that I barely annotated the book, it was impossible to ignore how well-crafted this novel is.

The Observer Between Worlds

Abu-Jaber sets up the perfect observer of cultures in Sirine, a half-Iraqi, half-American chef living in California with her Iraq-born uncle. Sirine barely knew her parents when they died and although she used to cook “American” food, she feels herself drawn back into Iraqi side of her heritage. It’s the perfect setup for a reader to explore it with her. Sirine has the natural curiosity because of the allure of tracing one’s ancestry, and even if you were never interested in Arab culture in general, her interest is contagious.

And then Abu-Jaber puts Sirine in the perfect place to observe culture–cooking at an Arab cafe near a university. Some of the characters Sirine sees on a daily basis are people she might have interacted with through her uncle who is also a professor at the university, but putting Sirine in front of them on her own terms makes her form her own relationships with characters like professor Aziz, American Nathan who photographed Iraq years ago, and the brilliant Han who will so haunt Sirine that a love match is inevitable.

“Trying to translate Hemingway into Arabic is like trying to translate a bird into a river.” – Diana Abu-Jaber, Crescent

Although many of the predominant characters in this book are male (besides Sirine), there’s also a wonderful world of rich female characters like Um-Nadia and Rana. They may be less pushy about getting themselves included in the narrative, but the lessons they impart are equally important.

Conflict and Tension

Sirine’s attraction to Han is so strong that it seems inevitable they will get together. And when they do, it is not at all disappointing. But I was so invested in their relationship that as it went on and started to grow (Abu-Jaber does amazing things with anticipation), I remembered that happy relationships don’t make for good fiction. I knew the writing was too good to just dissolve into happy fun times, but I also really wanted Sirine and Han to ride off into the sunset. I won’t spoil what happens. I will say that their relationship is handled very well and nothing in it feels at all arbitrary. I kind of want to go read it again now…

Setting the Stakes

Remember the old adage, “Those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it”? The best novels put that to use by laying out hints of the moral or the pattern that the character will repeat over and over until he or she learns what is necessary to escape that ring of hell and advance. Throw in a little of Chekhov’s gun (everything in the story must be necessary to the telling of it) and you have a gripping story where the reader has all the tools to get deeply rooted in the protagonist’s struggles. All of this makes for damned compelling fiction that’s hard to put down.

Abu-Jaber does a beautiful job setting these stakes for Sirine and laying out the necessary elements of telling the story. I won’t tell you here what main struggles I think Sirine is trying to overcome (for me there were two, maybe three) because part of the joy of a good book is finding the ones you personally identify with–it makes your bond with the character stronger. But I will say that Abu-Jaber doesn’t waste one element in her storytelling and I really appreciated that.

One of the reasons I think my first book was a novella is that I knew I had to be in control of all those elements and I didn’t have the tools yet to do that on a large scale. I only hope I can someday write something that merits 400 pages like Abu-Jaber has done with Crescent.

Food Porn

“There’s time for baklava if they make it together.

She hunts in the big drawer for another apron, shows him where to stand, how to pick up the sheet of filo dough from its edge, the careful, precise unpeeling, the quick movement from the folded sheets to the tray, and finally, the positioning on top of the tray. He watches everything closely, asks no questions, and then aligns the next pastry sheet perfectly. She paints the dough with clarified butter. And while Sirine has never known how to dance, always stiffening and trying to lead while her partner murmurs relax, relax–and while there are very few people who know how to cook and move with her in the kitchen–it seems that she and Han know how to make baklava together.” – Diana Abu-Jaber, Crescent

One of the ways this book dances along the romance or chick lit line is Abu-Jaber’s lush descriptions of making and eating foods. That statement sounds pejorative, but as much as I liked the Sirine and Han storyline, this food porn might be what I remember longest from the book. I actually had to run to my favorite Turkish restaurant in Pioneer Square during the Seahawks’ Super Bowl victory parade (no mean feat in such a crowd) to get a taste of the reality. And when I came home to the lentil stew my husband had lovingly prepared…

Food is sustenance and as such it’s often ignored in books. That’s fine. But I’m finding that there’s this genre of books that helps us understand foreign cultures through their foods (Like Water for Chocolate is an early example). Maybe because eating is so universal that it’s something we can all relate to–it makes a good entry point into a new culture. I know when I was writing Polska, 1994 that food was a very important part of the book for me because I remembered how important the act of making and the act of eating were. Maybe it’s the very fact that as an American in a city I can have anything I want any time I want it (even when surrounded by 700,000 people chanting fans) that makes me crave this elemental look at nourishment. Oh, and some of the scenes where Sirine and Han cook together are pretty hot.

I don’t feel like I know a lot more facts about Iraqi culture than I did before I read Crescent but I do understand more of the nuance and the book made me hungry (on many levels) to explore more. It’s a beautiful book and an easy read. I wish I hadn’t let it sit on the shelf as long as I did.

If this review made you hungry to read Diana Abu-Jaber, pick up a copy of Crescent from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Sailing the World with Guest Boy by Djelloul Marbrook

October 13, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I’ve been writing a lot about the unmoored experience of being a third culture kid lately and Guest Boy by Djelloul Marbrook captures the darker side of that experience with the story of Bo Cavalieri, a sailor adrift in the world.

Born of a German mother and an Arabic father he never knew, Bo isn’t even his name. “Bo” is short for “Bosun” which identifies his role aboard a ship, and the fact that Bo is more comfortable being identified by his title than his name says so much about the depth of his identity crisis. At times, the narrative slips into calling him by his birth name, Amir, and I wondered if in the subsequent books he will begin inhabiting that self. I very much enjoyed following Bo on his quest and how well Marbrook laid out the paths available to him: denial, discovery, integration, and erasure. It’s a struggle I could identify with and one I learned from.

“A people, in order to be proud of their past, they must be acquainted with it.” – Djelloul Marbrook

Deconstructing Geography

Like many of my favorite books, this story defies the arbitrary geographical boundaries I’ve placed on this blog. The narrative traveled from Oman to Somalia and Edinburgh to Algeria and New York. It took me through unfamiliar histories of Arab, Portuguese, and Greek sailors. At times I wanted the book to be full of hyperlinks so I could dig deeper into those histories–to learn more about the kamal, the ancient pearl trade in the Persian Gulf, and the Antikythera computer–but I was glad, too, to stay on the page and inside Bo’s world.

“Each cargo carries with it a disposition towards a particular misfortune.” – Djelloul Marbrook

Bo is never at home anywhere and he holds himself closely as he wanders between groups of people as much as he does places on the map. From the Sultan of Oman to Moira Sayre a woman on one of the many ships he crews (who I’m certain was named in honor of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald), small parts of Bo are revealed as he drifts and draws, drifts and draws. Even when he meets Rose MacQuarrie, the only woman besides his mother who could tell him about the true nature of his father, Bo holds himself closely and instead we learn most about Bo’s mother and father, a Danish count, and Rose herself.

The Language of a Poet and a Seaman

“I stopped and unbuttoned my skirt and swept it off to the side. I had no undies, so I just presented my familiar long-stemmed rusty rose to Count Von Melen in his garden.” – Djelloul Marbrook

Marbrook is also poet which is evident in his fresh imagery, the way he chooses words, and the structure of his sentences. The book is not overly flowery, but there are times that I could feel him crafting the sentence so that I’d have to slow down and pay attention, like when he buries the verb inside a conjunction, “I didn’t need money. I’d not only my father’s…” There’s a softness to this syntax that I loved, even as it made me go back to read and reread the sentence over and over to get the sense of it.

There’s also a looseness to the writing that I wouldn’t believe if it was written by someone else, but Marbrook is so in control of his subject that as he waxes metaphoric about the relationship between chemistry and alchemy, I’m willing to suspend my usual disbelief. And I was willing to trust him implicitly as he described all the parts of a ship and of sailing in what must be a pitch-perfect sailor’s vernacular.

There is not much tension in the novel, but it’s fascinating nonetheless and I was always torn between devouring the book and taking careful notes.

The Role of the Author

“The Sufis say when the student is ready the teacher appears. What blinds us is what we want.” – Djelloul Marbrook

I did wonder at times how closely this story mirrored Marbrook’s own story. He also has an Arabic first name and a European last and his understanding of the subjects at hand was so complete. I’m sure like many authors his fiction does draw in some ways from life, but I found I enjoyed the book most when I allowed myself to let go of my curiosity about the author. It’s something that’s difficult to do in an era where personality seems to triumph and we talk more about Jonathan Franzen’s denigration of Twitter than we do his books, but letting the work speak for itself appeals more to my sensibilities.

It’s the same reason I struggle at times in these reviews. Sharing books comes so naturally. Sharing my struggles with identity and depression does not. But it is in books like this that I seek answers and guidance and I travel my own path to enlightenment and contentment. This book opened a struggle in me but it’s one I cannot yet name. I hope you will accept this review and this writer our their draft states because I wanted to share this book with you before even I fully understood it just as I want to share myself with you even as I learn to understand myself.

On Sequels

This is only the first of three Light Piercing Water books and I’m torn about reading the rest. On one hand, I deeply enjoyed getting to know Bo and learning from his life and his struggles. On another, this story felt complete and I kind of want to float inside of it for awhile before going on to further adventures. I can only hope that the next two installments are as thoughtfully written and meditative as this one is.