I love a dark story, I think because I’m always trying to understand the worst of what humans can do so I can think about what to do about it. The danger for me in a dark story, though, is that too few writers are writing from a place I can learn from. Some are putting forth unprocessed material (okay if you want to be there to process it with them) and some are titillated by the dark events (not my bag either). Enter Somia Sadiq and her novel Gajarah, which has become my textbook on how to write about the darkest parts of human behavior with humanity, respect, and foresight.
Honoring Our Stories
The novel centers on Emahn, a Punjabi girl being raised in the U.A.E. with her family who has deep roots in Lahore. Most of the book is in Emahn’s delightful and precocious first-person voice. Poems and myths are also woven in, and from all of this we get a full, rich, and loving picture of Emahn’s family’s life in both countries. This makes us care for her and for them. In life, I also hope that raising a child with this much love builds resilience.
Emahn needs resilience too young, as she is attacked by a stranger one evening very close to her home. We see the before and the after, but Sadiq does not force us to walk through the during. This artistic choice puts a very important focus on Emahn’s experience of the aftermath. Her family reacts in a variety of believable (and sometimes humanly imperfect) ways, but we never doubt their love for her. It’s a family I’d wish for everyone.
There is more to come in Emahn’s life, the trigger warning at the beginning of the book includes rape, sexual abuse, domestic violence, racism, and more. But the book is never about victimhood. It’s about life and love and survival.
“Pain is pain…The how and what is not important. It’s what we do with it that is more important.” – Emahn’s Naano jahn in Gajarah by Somia Sadiq
When not writing, Sadiq is a peace negotiator and conflict readiness strategist and I’m certain that’s where the holistic look at experience and healing in this book comes from. There are many characters who experience tragedy and pain, but each is presented as a whole human and their story is honored. They are also portrayed as more than the things that happened to them and we are reminded to keep our hearts open.
“The strongest way to fight back is to be.
To be in our languages, in our customs, our ways of being. To be comfortable in our own skin. To know inherently in every cell of our bodies that we deserve to be treated with kindness, compassion, fairness, equality.” – Gajarah by Somia Sadiq
Ceremonies of Life
One of the other things I loved about Gajarah was the focus on daily rituals and life in Lahore and in Canada among the Anishinaabeg community. Moments as simple as making burfi on a rooftop and brushing fingers over cedar become meaningful when the proper attention is paid, just as with the rest of life, and I found myself wanting to slow down and look while reading this book (and now, again, just thinking about it). Such is the attention to details that the advance copy of this book that I received came beautifully packaged in materials that recall some of the gorgeous text.
My only regret was that I spent a lot of time wondering whether the words presented in the text were Punjabi or Urdu (such is my imperfect understanding of the region) and I let this curiosity (read: obsession with linguistics) take me out of the sumptuous text sometimes.
Make no mistake, Gajarah deals with some heavy subjects, but I don’t know that I’ve ever read something that felt so alive. I’d tell you more, but I want you to experience it for yourself.
For a gorgeously written book that will make you think more deeply about the beauty of the world and how we survive it, pick up copy of Gajarah. If you use that link, I earn a commission.
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