In the Belly of the Queen by Karosh Taha

In the Belly of the Queen by Karosh Taha

German Fiction

Original title -Im Bauch der Königin

Translator Grashina Gabelmann

Source – Review copy

I was sent this unusual book from V&Q by the Kurdish-German writer Karosh Taha; she came to Germany with her parents when she was just ten. Her family settled in Duisburg, which isn’t to far from the part of Germany in Kleve in the Ruhr area. She had trained as an English teacher and worked teaching English initially as her writing career took off. This is her second novel. Both are set and deal with close-knit Kurdish communities living in Germany in high-rise buildings. This book tells the same story from two different angles and can be read in two ways female first, then a male story or the opposite. Way around. The book uses a fight Amal has with her young classmate Younes and the book is told from her perspective and Younes’s best friend Rafiq’s perspective.

I tell Younes my father never wore jeans, and he nods, he knows that, and he smokes like my father did. Younes remembers my father better than his own. For Younes, his father means waiting and enduring, enduring the wait.
I tell Younes he only ever wore black trousers with his shirt loosely tucked in, he was lanky, that’s why the shirt fluttered around the sides of his torso – his clothes seemed too large for his body, yet just right. His only accessory was nonchalance, and I wonder how he dresses now, whether he still wears clothes from his time as a student.

Amal remembering her father and the way he was.

As I said, the book is really two novellas that follow the same events over the same time frame from Amal the young female and the main character of the book. As she hits the young Younes, her father jumps to protect his daughter, but he abruptly leaves her, and she ends up. Living with the boy she hit and his mother, as they like her, have been pushed outside. Her father defended her, but at what cost to himself and what knock-on effect does this have on her life after this, even in this close-knit community as Younes is an outsider due to his mother Shahira, a free spirit, a woman that lives by her own rule. This world of Younes. We see through the eyes of his best friend Rafiq, a young boy initially drawn to his mate’s mum but then repulsed by her free spirit as he sees his Kurdish culture come through. But he ends up in a relationship with the equally free-spirited Aal. What does he want thou, Rafiq? This is the sound of the two cultures clashing the tight-knit and relatively similar to their homeland Kurdish community. They live in the high rise tight-knit choking on its way, or can they escape to live as Germans? All these floats around the three youngsters as they grow up. This book has layers to it it follows the aftermath of one event and the tug of war growing up in this situation. This is maybe closer to English books like Brick Lane or the early books from Hanif Kureishi than most German books.

I want Shahira  to lick her spoon; I want to see her tongue wan. But she never does, and she’s always pleased to see me tion. burn in, Raffig: She saunters barefoot into the kitchen She’s wearing leggings like the girls in our year, with her shir just covering her butt. Every curve’s still visible. When she’s nor wearing heels, she’s the same height as Amal, and I could easily put my arm around her. Her dark hair falls in waves over her breasts and shoulders. Sometimes she puts her hair up – then you can see her neck, which is browner than the rest of her body.I don’t know what her belly looks like or the folds underneath her arse. Amal’s are white because she goes to the tanning studio.Shahira sometimes tans in the afternoon sun, but not often – it gives you ugly wrinkles and spots, she says. She used to sit on her balcony wearing a summer dress and let the sun shine on herglistening legs for half an hour

Rafiq sexual awakening are muddled here

This is another book that reminds me of my time in Germany. I worked alongside a number of refugees some from Iraq and others from Former Yugoslavia. Some people in this book could have quickly been working in the Jugendwerkstatt I worked at. The wonder of this story is how it shows the gender divide in the community she grew up in and how people can view one event and the aftermath differently over time. It follows a girl that goes on to be a very strong woman in Amal. But it also shows the outfall of war and having to move on children when thrust into a different society with different rules. As I said, this book is maybe nearer to some books like Bribk Lane or A book like Interpreter of Maldives, both books that follow second-generation immigrants, those kids growing up on that divide between family past and the present and the country they live in. I loved the use of two narrations for the same event it is like what Durrel did with Alexandra Quartet as the same timeframe is told two ways the unreliable nature of the youngster’s narrative comes to the fore, and also how swayed they can be by gender and their own culture. Have you read this unusual book ?

Winston’s score – A – This is a look at growing up in two cultures in this case in Germany but it is a universal story of two cultures clashing