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A World I Loved

Wadad Makdisi Cortas

Reviewed by

The story Makdisi Cortas wants to tell us begins in 1917, when although still a child, she was well aware of the entry of war into her otherwise rather idyllic life in Beirut. Memories of Turkmen assaults were followed by an armistice; the region (not yet defined as Palestine, Lebanon, Syria) came under British and French rule. The author recalls the peace that fell around her and her family with the news that Jerusalem was a liberated city.

But that image quickly dissolves when her father and his friends uneasily noted the arrival of European Jews and the accompanying flight of Palestinians. Not only did many Palestinian refugees arrive among her wards in Beirut; Makdisi’s family visits to the area were directed well clear of what they knew were the new Jewish enclaves. Even by 1937, she notes how certain areas were ‘off limits’ to Arabs, local and visiting.

Even the most secure families of Lebanon were affected by the not-so-distant upheavals in the Palestinian territories in the 30s and 40s. All this and more, up to the civil war that left her heartbroken, is recorded in this new memoir of a Lebanese Arab woman’s life.

The author is Widad Mikdisi Cortas. She eventually would have several accomplished children, among them, her daughter Miriam who became Miriam Said, partner of the renowned Edward Said.

Although completed in the late 1970s, this memoir stood as a manuscript for almost 30 years. Thanks to Miriam Said and Nation Books editors, it is now available in English to the public.

As we know from erstwhile, often obscure ‘jottings’ by women across the world and over centuries, women’s accounts of their lives offer details and insights that military and political histories lack. Makdisi observes the life of ordinary people around her, her students and staff. This helps fill in the social and economic picture of Lebanon before the 1980s civil war.

She also records details from her childhood, with accounts of cultural idioms, and a collection of epitaphs she noted inscribed above doors of places she visited as a girl.

A World I Loved, we have more than a record of the haunting encroachment of Zionism early in the 20^th century from the point of view of a bystander—although no Arab is a bystander in this story. We read details of a middle class life in a primarily secular society, and within that, the daily concerns of a professional woman—a school director.

Another feature of this rather sad record of the decline of a country is how Arab peoples clung to the expectation that an outside “just” European power would rescue them from Zionist military occupation, land encroachments and civil injustices. If the editors selected these incidents in order to focus on that misguided view of the world, we do not know. But it is an important part of that history. The misplaced heroic view of the West eventually led to Palestinians taking up arms to liberate themselves. This should not be overlooked.

At least in the coming decades, women will continue to be an essential source of our history. They provide us with details, an intimacy and an honesty that is otherwise hard to come by.

Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood

Ibtisam Barakat

Reviewed by

This well written memoir of one child, the author, touches so many universals that it could be the memoir of any child. No, not any child. Any exiled child and within that any and perhaps every Palestinian child.

It is the story of a small family living with modest means and dreams on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah. They exist and give each other comfort in simple everyday episodes and exchanges of love that we all can recognize. Yet, even this humble life is intruded and cut short by the June 1967 war when Israeli bombs and bullets terrorize them.

Along with thousands of other, the family flees on foot, and makes its way to Jordan-- a few months here, a few months there, their poverty and insecurity always ameliorated by the each others’ love, by a neighbor, until, eventually, they are permitted to return home. They find their house undamaged and settle in. Before long they are again forced to abandon this home when Israeli troops set up a military training camp nearby. The family must move and, now in need of aid, they adopt a plan that splits them; the two boys are sent to orphanages, the girls with their mother stay at a school in Jerusalem. After a year they resolve to return home, whatever the difficulties. Their resourcefulness, their mutual love prevail.

Thus dislocations and adjustments become a pattern. Throughout, the narrator’s father is the beacon; it is his confidence, his love, his hard work and steadfast hope that keeps the family together. The author takes us into the innocence daily concerns, fear, discoveries of little children. Through their routine preoccupations and fears, we feel they are normal children, protected, somehow. But the world outside is not normal. It encroaches, relentlessly, sometimes silently. We find the increased frequency of United Nations programs on the margins of their lives as their poverty increases. What is overarching is the silent encroachment of Israelis into the land and livelihoods of the family. They do not terrorize and batter the house down in this story, as happens in reality. But their ubiquitous, presence is itself part of the harassment and intimidation which nevertheless puts an end to the family’s sovereignty, and peace. They must move-- temporarily, they think.

The child narrator early in her story, has a companion—it’s the letter l, alef, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. She discovers this on her first school encounter and treasures her piece of chalk, with which she creates Alef who is always with her. This symbolizes literacy, the love of learning, and the history which is hers to write. It seems to represent the resolve of Palestinians to use their learning to keep Palestine alive, to recount their history, and thus to ensure the survival of their homeland.

We all understand that one’s documented history is the proof, and an assurance of retribution. It is especially so in the case of an overwhelming colonial occupation whose very aim is to erase every trace of the real owners of the land they stole.

 

The Story of My Experiments with Truth

Mohandas K. Gandhi

Reviewed by BN Aziz

Mahatma Gandhi’s name may be recalled during tributes to Martin Luther King Jr. today. Yet few are familiar with what spawned Gandhi’s leadership qualities and what were his early influences.

India continues to produce formidable leaders. Vedanta Shiva and Arundati Roy, both Indian women, lead global opposition to western domination. But why the obscurity of their noble ancestor, Mr. Gandhi?

Living in India in the 1970s, I was introduced to his remarkable autobiography. A few months ago, browsing in a London bookstore, I found a 1982 Penguin Books edition of the book and was reminded why I had been moved by these writings years earlier.

167 essays constitute this sequence of ‘experiments’: they cover Gandhi’s child marriage, his uneventful student days in England, his dependence on his brother, his strained marriage, nursing his ill son, discrimination in South Africa, his collaborations and friendships with Indian Muslims, Parsis, Christians and Hindus.

Gandhi’s humility and the many failures he experienced are hard to comprehend given his accomplishments. In his early years, he was aimless. He was unfamiliar and uninterested in Hindu doctrine. He experimented in fasting (which he forced on his family). Perhaps it was his condescending attitude to Kasturba and her hardships as his wife that explain his unpopularity in some circles.

The discipline stemming from Gandhi’s lifelong dietary experiments led to his struggle towards the principle of ahimsa, non-violence.

The essays were serialized in India between 1927 and 1929 in a Gujarati periodical, then translated for the weekly, Indian Opinion. Gandhi actually wrote a great deal. He published influential pamphlets regarding Indian rights; he co-founded a paper where he published his legal arguments on civil liberties and his emerging social theories. This set of writings are truly a record of social ‘experiments’, and as such it has few parallels.

Given the state of the world today, with neo-colonialism re-established across the world, where peaceful co-existence seems so elusive, this is a good time to reread the early life of Gandhi.

Santa Claus in Baghdad

Elsa Marston

Reviewed by BN Aziz

University ‘experts’ provide a plethora of advanced studies on the Middle East and its peoples. Meanwhile our schoolteachers find themselves with few resources to introduce to American young people, the real daily concerns of the millions of people who actually inhabit the area—the people with whom we might find commonalities.

One can count on one hand the few English-language authors who write essential introductory stories and other resources so essential to our early education. Notably, most of these authors appear to be women married to Arab men, or women whose mother is of European heritage while her father is Arab. I am thinking of the award-winning children’s writer Naomi Shihab Nye, Yvonne Dennis Wakin, and Audrey Shabbas, the founder of AWAIR—Arab World and Islamic Resources. (AWAIR has long been engaged in training elementary and high school teachers.)

Contrary to what one might logically conclude, overwhelming number of ‘expert’ studies on the Middle East pouring off the presses seem to produce only more experts and furnish more newspapers and TV programs with subjects of discussion. They hardly educate.

Real education, we all know, begins in primary school. And our early grade teachers are critical agents for our first impressions of the world and its peoples. Finding themselves with nothing in their curricula to address ‘current events’, teachers clip grossly inadequate newspaper articles to help them through their classes. We know how inept and downright misleading those can be like.

Well-meaning teachers and caring parents will tell you about the troubling absence of appropriate grade school resources on the Middle East.

So few Arab sources at these levels are available. Even if translations existed, books for children are not a genre in the Arabic language where the oral tradition still prevails and where the line between children and adult stories are rather blurred and far from contemporary. (I am thinking of Arab Folktales, an excellent collection by Inea Bushnaq.)

Enter Elsa Marston with her latest book, Santa Claus in Baghdad—a collection of eight short stories for 12-13 year old children.

I had thought this might be a condescending ‘christian’ lesson. It is not. “Santa Claus” only symbolizes ‘gift’. And these stories are tales of children in several Arab countries being rewarded for their own determination, charity and daily triumphs.

In the title story, “Santa Claus in Baghdad”, a class of children collect funds for a departing teacher, a man who is forced to leave his country because of the lack of work. “The Hand of Fatima” is the story of a servant girl in Beirut whose honesty and hard work give her the courage to make her own choices in life.

In each story we learn of hardships many children face due to wars or poverty, but we also understand their basic needs, kindness, joys and dreams. Religion, migration, class differences, domestic tensions, and children's rivalry all come in to play. While there is no glossing over difficulties, we enter into life crises and small victories we all share.

Books like Santa Claus in Baghdad can also serve to inspire many others to attempt to fill the huge void in this area of books for young people and teachers.

(Ms. Marston Harik has been writing for young people for many years. Although her early degrees were in International Affairs and Art Education. She traveled to the Middle East to study, then married to a Lebanese man and though they settled in the US, she remained bound to the Arab peoples throughout her career.)

The Secret History of Al-Qaeda

Abdel Bari Atwan

Reviewed by BN Aziz

Al-Qaeda and its founder have generated a great many seemingly commanding books in recent years. This one, by the experienced, articulate Arab editor of a major Arabic-language paper is by far the best, standing way above the others in its approach, research and arguments.

Unlike other authors who try to exploit an 'insider' knowledge of Osama bin Laden to clothe themselves with authority, Abdul Bari Atwan simply employs a vast understanding of international politics and the rising Islamic militancy against US and Israel, to give us a truly deep understanding of the movement, from its roots in the US-instigated holy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, to the present.

I have rarely read a 250 page non-fiction book in two sittings. Atwan is a consice thinker, a good writer and a skilled analyst.

Although the author invokes his two day visit with the world's notorious leader to open the book, by far the most valuable chapters are those that follow. Step by step they offer the historical and political context of the rise of the anti-US movement. The first chapter focuses on the "historical inevitability of bin Laden". This is followed by two excellent presentations laying out the history, ideology and logic of "the holy warrior and the concept of martyrdom". Nothing I have read in all the expert descriptions flooding us with this subject comes near to Atwan's understanding. These discussions are followed by the chapter "Cyber-jihad" which goes a long way to helping us understand just how guerrilla war, often seen as a poor man's low tech response to occupation, in this case linked up with high technology to make this a truly global phenomenon.

The author rightly devotes considerable time on Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia where it originated and which remains a primary focus of the anti-American and anti-imperialist militant movement. We learn the historical roots of imbalances in Saudi policy and Saudi society as well as its dangerous liaison of this nation with the USA. In the final chapters, Atwan turns to Iraq and the expansion of the anti-imperial guerrilla war there. While I am not convinced that it is really an al-Qaeda war, at least the author shows how the insurgency may have taken some of its tactics and organization from bin Laden's organization. By viewing the legacy in Iraq, we are given a frightening picture of capacity of this now headless sprawling organization. One wonders how it will ever end.

Throughout his book, the author offers an intelligent perspective on the logic of the anti-American Islamic movement, including its use of seemingly heartless destructive practices. Atwan expresses no sympathy, neither for Al-Qaeda practices nor for its ideology. But nowhere does he lower himself to the emotional, hysterical presentations that most western 'authorities' engage in. This is particularly important because through Atwan's excellent portrait, the movement can be seen in terms of its own logic, rather than a frightening, emotionally driven extremism. When western policy makers can adopt this perspective, only then can they find an effective counter.

If anything, Atwan demonstrates that there is little secret about it. If anything, this book seems to remove a great deal of mystery surrounding the growth of the movement and its leadership.

Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits

Laila Lalami

Reviewed by BN Aziz

Those of us in touch with conditions in the ‘belad’, or with the world economy, know about the risks our people take to escape poverty and despair at home. They flee in search of often meager economic gains. Most of our American ancestors came here a century ago, impelled by similar conditions. Let’s face it. It’s not about escaping political tyranny, although that is a fair reason.

Dangers of illegal migration are subjects of films—Algerian-French films, Africa Diaspora films, Latin American films.

Yet few Arab writers in English have addressed this theme in their fiction. Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is the first novel in a long time to tell a bold, un-nostalgic migration story. And she does it well.

I read through this book in a few hours, gripped by the story itself and my identification with Murad, Aziz, Halima, and Faten, the four individuals whose tales she narrates. In the first pages of the novel, Lalami won my compassion for these women and men.

The first chapter in Hope… is a sea voyage of African Moroccan immigrants left a few hundred meters from the Spanish coast to swim ashore to an unknown fate. The following eight chapters are divided into two parts: a) flashbacks to the lives of four women and men before their voyage. b) seeing them after their failure, repatriated to Morocco and the misery they had tried to leave behind them, or at least to alleviate with hoped for remittance from overseas.

The ‘dangerous pursuits’ of these four Moroccans is the main story, and a compelling one. But Lalami is also using these lives to take us more deeply into this Arab culture, whether it’s a cynical view of the Paul Bowles’ mythology, family solidarity, or hypocrisy concerning women’s head cover. For more dynamism and scope from this promising, young author, see her web page, www.moorishgirl.com

Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005

The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini

Reviewed by BN Aziz

Two boys; two fathers; no mothers. It is the early 1970s. The story opens in a comfortable and seemingly secure home in Afghanistan before the arrival of Russian troops.
The narrator's family --a lad, Amir, and his father--is a well-off household where father and son live in comfort. Yet there is little affection between man and boy. In the other household Hassan, Amir's age, lives with his father Ali, a dedicated servant. They are poor but content, and the two families seem to have an established, agreeable equilibrium.
 Rahim Khan is a close friend of Amir's father. Recognizing that Amir does not enjoy much parental affection, Khan tries to make up for this loss; he is like an uncle to young Amir. Nothing however can change Amir's feeling that his own father prefers Hassan to himself. He cannot control his jealousy for Hassan and even though the two boys are playmates, Amir is unable to give his companion his complete loyalty. On his side however, Hassan demonstrates total trust in the family scion and declares his readiness to do anything for him.
 The boys team up to become a formidable pair in kite-fighting, a popular sport. Hassan is the 'runner', the team member who chases the kites that his team cuts down. Their victory in a local competition is short-lived when Hassan finds himself in trouble, cornered by thugs. Amir remains frozen, unable to go to his partner's aid. (His betrayal so troubles him that he conjures a way to rid the house of Hassen.)
 Following the incident, Amir precipitates a crisis and the servant family, Hassan and his father, departs. We never meet them again.
Not long after, the country is occupied by Russian troops, and Amir and his father are forced to flee the country altogether. They reach Pakistan and eventually arrive in the US. They settle in California amid a growing community of Afghan refugees. Here, the boy and father are finally able to build a close bond, and Amir becomes especially proud of the father whose depth of character and humanity prevail time and time again. Amir falls in love, marries and becomes a successful writer.
By this time, the Russian troops have been driven out and the notorious Taliban are in power.
Amir never thinks about returning to Afghanistan. Until one day, his 'uncle' Rahim Khan summons him to Pakistan. Thinking he will be away a short time, he departs only to find that he must undertake a dangerous mission into his homeland. He cannot deny Khan's request. It is a mission that will reveal the true identity of his old childhood friend. Finally, Amir is able to come to terms with his betrayal of Hassan.
 The story is simple. But in the hands of this master storyteller, this is extraordinary experience for the reader.
Throughout the book, the author dwells on underlying emotional relations among all the men in the story--Amir and his father, his father and the servant, and the two boys themselves. One does not often see male relationships explored and exposed as deftly and movingly as Khaled Hosseini has in this book.
The place and culture of Afghanistan itself are not central to the story. Nor are they particular to the relationships the author explores among his characters. Because of a war, the families are displaced and scattered. There is a gratuitous chapter graphically detailing the evils of the Taliban. But that has little to do with the main plot and the character of the protagonist.
The Kite Runner is a quintessentially a story of a man returning to his past and in the course of this journey, coming to terms with himself over his early betrayal of a childhood friend. I have rarely read emotions among men told so powerfully, and aware that the author is an Asian and of Muslim heritage, it is even more edifying.

Jihad for Love

Parvez Sharma

Reviewed by

If any single story could cover the range of human feeling about homosexuality, it is surely the film “Jihad for Love”.

Love for mother, ambiguities about heterosexual marriage, coming out, or not coming out, seeking and finding emotional support, delight in the feminine, solidarity, fear, determination, defiance, risk, learning about one’s true self, divine love, arguments with orthodoxy. We witness all this and more following the lives of some 12 men and women in “Jihad for Love”. We also learn about love within Islam from Muslims themselves.

Few subjects elicit such emotions and reactions as single-sex love. Director Parvez Sharma seems to have found and shared them all in the exploration of Muslims’ homosexual relations in his remarkable film. Same sex love among Muslims is not a new subject; there have been books and reports before. But most have focused on the ill treatment of gays and lesbians in the Arab world. Jihad for Love includes some of the barriers people encounter. Yet it goes far beyond that.

This beautifully woven portrayal of young Muslims by director Sharma is a story of two kinds of love. Yes, sometimes a Muslim (like any other homosexual) must live in secret and flee their society. Sometimes they live in danger and anxiety. But the main message of “Jihad for Love’ lies elsewhere. 

What almost all the subjects of Sharma’s film share besides love for one of the same sex is their love of God-- Allah. All are Muslims who seek to affirm their social identity within the context of Islam, without  banishment and without themselves abandoning their faith. This is clearly Sharma’s main message of the film, a message one hopes audiences will remember-- remember above the dangers and difficulties. Because Sharma’s message explores Islam with new eyes.

As Sharma himself believes, Islam and Allah are great enough—they embody a capacity—to accept their children who are lesbian and gay. Almost all the women and men he interviews are believing Muslims, and each seeks the acceptance of God’s love as much as they seek social acceptance. Perhaps they seek the love of Allah more.

To me this is the most inspiring and valuable aspect of the film-- a portrayal of individual men and women whose love in a worldly partner cannot be disassociated from their love of God. Through their portrayals, we are reminded of the sufi interpretations of the Qur’an and teachings of Prophet Muhammed.

As Parvez Sharma explains, this is a story of “people of faith who are taking back Islam”. He and many of the people he portrays believe they have a right to be Muslims, like others”. The struggle for this right is itself a ‘jihad’. “We are taking back the word ‘jihad’, a word associated by others with holy war. We are taking the concept of the greater jihad as the ‘inner struggle”.

In this argument, Sharma and his film represent a major step in the struggle of a people to overcome both inner and outer injustice. Speaking for oneself is a major argument in this director’s work. Too often, he argues, others are in control of who we are. “We cannot allow our lives to be mediated anymore; we have to pick up the cameras and we have to tell our own stories. We are presenting the voices of Islam, without being mediated by the West.”

In this Sharma is a real leader and a fine example of what can be achieved. He has chosen a vulnerable subject to make this point, but perhaps this forcefully illustrates the great courage involved. He therefore represents a major success and a worthy beacon for other Muslims.

Gods and Soldiers

editor Bob Spillman

Reviewed by B Nimri Aziz

Gods and Soldiers is an anthology of 30 selections of contemporary African writing edited by Rob Spillman, published by Penguin in 2009.

Six of the pieces here are non-fiction and the remaining 24 are short fiction or excerpts from longer works. The authors represent most counties of the African continent, from the francophone north to the south. Some are highly acclaimed, award winning writers such as Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Adichie, Nadine Gordimer and Nawal Saadawi while others are less well known and still other contributors are emerging writers.

Together the entries in the Gods and Soldiers anthology represent the wide range of styles and themes in the African literary world. It is to start, a sample of an enormous body of work now reaching the world through translations and volumes such as this. (Ten of the 30 selections were penned in another language and translated into English for this collection).

Three of the important non-fiction essays herein deal with problems writers face writing in the colonial language of their education. In their discussions, each author reminds us of deep effect of colonialism on every aspect of indigenous African culture, problems which are both the subject of many of the fictional pieces in the collection, and the issues all literary efforts find themselves confronting. One of these essays is “Languages We Don’t Know We Know”. Here Mia Couto, Mozambique’s outstanding novelist, describes how the homogenization of global languages imperils mystery and storytelling.

Today ethnic literature is an increasingly large part of comparative literary courses. And I suppose African literature falls into this category. But one would hope that there is not the only place where people who want to educate themselves and their students would come across Gods and Soldiers. This book could well furnish provocative materials students of history and political science can benefit from.

Moreover this collection need not be limited to university students. It can be quite accessible to high school students as a compliment in their history and geography lessons. Having said all this, I am uncomfortable with the title since it hardly describes the contents of this important collection. If anything, ‘gods’ and ‘soldiers’ may dangerously reduce Africa to two simplistic stereotypes. So do not be put off by this title.

Arabic language instruction

Reviewed by Ginan Rauf

for beginners---

Sing and Learn, A Language Series: Arabic (The Egyptian dialect) book and cassettes by Sohair Soukarry.

The Arabic Alphabet: How to Read & Write it.... Nicholas Awde

alif baa: Introduction to Arabic Sounds and Letters - Georgetown University Press- includes DVD; quite thorough

Easy Arabic Script---

Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar have produced several user friendly books for beginners that include:

Your First Hundred Words in Arabic

Read & Speak Arabic for Beginners

Arabic Verbs & Essentials for Grammar

Easy Arabic Grammar

 

Standard text for college level---

 Al-Kitaab fii Ta allum al-Arabiyya with DVDs; beginner, Part 1 and Part2.

Georgetown University Press.

Koranic and Classical Arabic - see Wheeler Thackston

The Islamist

Ed Husain

Reviewed by BN Aziz

I picked up this book without intending to reading it; the paperback cover is very unappealing, and the name “Ed” alienated me. (‘Ed’ took the last 2 letters of his name, Mohammed). The book’s subtitle “Why I Became an Islamic Fundamentalist, What I Saw Inside, and Why I Left” suggested this was a confessions-genre story, perhaps a fictionalized memoir. But because of the quality of the writing I kept reading. Then, only two pages into the first chapter ‘Made in England’, I began to feel this was written by a real person...although I remain suspicious about the real identity of the author. This book was surely the dream CIA handbook for identifying terrorists.

I contacted the publisher, Penguin, to learn if  Mr. Husain who resides in the UK, is due in the USA. I wanted to line up an interview with him and satisfy myself he was genuine.Meanwhile I continued reading.

One reason I want to speak to the author directly, is to be assured that he is really the young British Muslim (the son of South Asian immigrants) who, although he began to learn Islam at the feet of his father’s teacher, was drawn as a student into what are called radical Islamist organizations in London

Mr. Husain begins his story in the mid 1990s in London when he was a high school student, barely 16 year old, after a gentle introduction to his parent's religion with his father’s teacher. Then Ed becomes excited in school by a more active Islamic agenda. Disturbed by racist remarks from white schoolmates and the massacres of Bosnian Muslims, he is drawn increasingly deeper into the British Muslim groups –he calls them Islamists, exemplified by what is now considered the radical Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Their members are disenchanted youth angry seeking a response to discrimination, discrimination to themselves at school, but the anti-Muslim bias in western government policies that allowed or supported the terror against Bosnians, Chechens and Palestinians. They seek revenge, claiming a moral superiority at the same time that they advocate an eventual establishment of a worldwide caliphate or Islamic state and the overthrow 'western infidels' and colonialists.

In what is perhaps the most revealing part of his story, Husain takes us into the local organizations.He becomes a worker; he shares with us the logic and the street actions that attracted young people like him.

While many of us are aware of the politicizing that goes on in local mosques and student clubs, here we have an insider’s day-to-day account of their activities, along with his reflections. He accepted what he eventually came to understand was a perverted logic—using the British democratic base to develop a global anti-British/anti-Christian movement. His account demonstrates how bright young people can and are drawn into radical movements, how putative religious leaders work with the young and how they can rationalize almost any beliefs.

Husain emerged as an Islamist during the 1990s when the British government not only did not view with suspicion the political organizing underway on campuses and mosques, but actively offered safe haven to many Muslims, often radical and vengeful people, unhappy with their own Arab governments. It allowed them to operate freely and openly proselytize militant programs. Young “Ed” sacrificed the intimacy of his family, his studies and his earlier understanding of Islam in order to carry out his new Islamist agenda. All this before September 11, 2001.

Eventually, fortuitously perhaps, the young activist came in contact with sufi teachers. They impressed him by a spirituality his political Islam lacked, and he began to re-examine basic principles of Islam and the Prophet’s teachings. He also met a women he loved. And while we do not learn enough about her, she accompanies him on his quest to the end of his story, a quest that distances him increasingly from the political agenda he has once embraced.

After they marry, they travel to Syria to study Arabic, where they teach English, then to Saudi Arabia, again to teach. In the course of these visits, ‘Ed’ is able to ponder on Islam, not only in a wider cultural context, but with more theological breadth. His self-reflection and visits to holy sites, and encounters with many believers, provide the reader with a new guide to Islam. By the time the young British couple reach Saudi Arabia where they spend 7 months, the author has grasped the dangers and mechanics of the Wahabist movement that defines a Saudi society.He finds it repulsive. He reacts negatively not only to Wahabi doctrine but to the Saudi government role in funding their particular view of Islam worldwide.

In later chapters the author attributes to the Saudi Wahabis, the prostelisation programs he was drawn into a decade earlier and which still operate across the world.

Husain devotes the final chapters to an assessment and a warning. He comments on the British government’s policy towards its Muslim population, and compares the situation in Britain with regards to the unchecked growth of certain Muslim institutions and movements. Finally, still a believer, but a strong critic of radical Islam, he offers advice to policy makers re future prospects—he still sees disenchantment of the young as a major threat.

Husain may be genuine, but in the warnings with which he ends the book, it seems that he has become a featured advisor to US Homeland Security and other law enforcement offices. Indeed he frequently refers to his presentations to US government officials. Fine. Yet at no time throughout the book, does he suggest the western governments might correct their policies that have so angered young Muslims, especially their alliances with the Wahabi government of Saudi Arabia. Nor does he reprimand or in any way hold responsible either US or British authorities for their discriminatory treatment of detainees they have rounded up, the families they have threatened and the intrusions on the civil liberties of immigrants and mosque communities.

Brick Lane

Monica Ali

Reviewed by

The boundaries of inventiveness are continually being challenged and breached in literature. How glorious. The latest such outbreak is in the writing of Monica Ali. Brick Lane, Ali’s first novel, is a complex and satisfying piece of writing. Only recently, 5 years after its publication, I sat down to read this young woman’s work. What a thrill.

I knew that since the appearance of Brick Lane, Ali achieved wide recognition. But this book still astonished me; it is more than the work of a good storyteller. It is a multi-layered story with a new kind of heroine, a British immigrant, a woman, a Muslim. (Ali’s characters in this novel are only excelled by those of Hanif Kuraishi.)

Brick Lane invites us to taste immigrant experience in full splendor. This novel blends fantasy, family conflict, letters from a sister in Bangladesh, and the ever so slow maturity of our heroine Nazneen. Nazneen had an inauspicious birth in the homeland, and was taught to ‘endure’… everything (at times infuriating for the reader.)  When swept into a marriage that lands her in London, she clings to that philosophy. Nazneen tolerates a failed husband Chanu who, although clumsy and pompous, clutches a commendable philosophy. While this does not bring him success in England, he speaks some truths.

Following the downturn of Chanu’s fortune and the emerging independence of Nazneen, we meet a host of believable, refreshing characters in the London council estate where Nazneen resides. Each one, whether a forlorn family doctor and his wild wife, neighborhood women who range from the naïve to the cunning to the dreamy, her own truculent daughter, her hapless lover, fills in the British immigrant landscape.

Perhaps in an attempt at political reality Ali has Nazneen stumble into an organizing meeting of local Muslims. One the surface they represent hope... and danger. This may be Monica Ali’s attempt to acknowledge real threats faced by disillusioned British Muslims. The eventual collapse of the group may be the author’s way of ridiculing immigrant Muslim leadership. Or it may serve to send our heroine elsewhere.

The heartwarming letters to Nazneen from her sister Hasina in Bangladesh may be another message from the author. Hasina’s compassion tells us that humanity survives there, even though it may be missing from the lives of Bangladeshi in the UK. If Hasina can overcome what has befallen her at home, surely there is redemption for Nazeem.

          Our Muslim author also skillfully weaves the reality of migrated Islam. The people of Brick Lane are not pious Muslims (not at this point in the story), but their prayers and practices are ever present, in fragments, in a vague memory of home, in terms of habit, constantly interrupted by unimportant daily preoccupations. All religion-related episodes in the story tell us that everything in this arena of their lives is unsettled and unreliable. Nevertheless, our heroine can and does finde meaning.

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"Angels"
Abdal Hayy Moore reads from 'Ramadan Sonnets'

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Book review

Monica Ali's
Brick Lane
reviewed by .

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Tahrir Team

Tamara Issak

Read about Tamara Issak in the team page.

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