Tag: middle east

Women without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur

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Women without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur

Iranian fiction

Original title – زنان بدون مردان (داستانک)

Translator – Faridoun Farrokh

Source – Personal copy

I decided to head to the Middle East for my next stop on this year’s Women’s in Translation Month. This has been in my TBR for a good while. It was banned in Iran and is considered a modern classic from that country, even though it is forbidden. This is a writer who has spent time in prison. She spent nearly five years locked up; she has written about those years in another book. She has been a voice for the way females are treated in her country. This book is an example of her writing about the female experience in Iran, and in this book, she has captured a breadth of female voices. She has spent many years living in Exile after she left Iran.

AFTER SEVERAL DAYS OF DOUBT and hesitation Fa’iza made up her mind at four in the afternoon on August 5,

1953. Silence was no longer feasible. If she waited any longer everything would collapse. She’d better stand up in her own defense. Even so, despite the fact that she felt empowered by the decision, it took her well over an hour to get dressed. Slowly and deliberately she put on her stockings, a blouse, and a lightweight cotton skirt. During the process she paused to think, what if Amir Khan is there. The thought sent a rush of heat through her body.

With him around, she wouldn’t be able to say what she wanted, or say anything at all. She would have to hold back and endlessly revise what she was going to say.

Faiza had a choice to make Amir crops up in other stories !

 

The book has a framing device of a garden, and there is a sense that this garden floats between the real world and a safe haven for each of the women within the book. The tales of the five women in the book are told in intertwining vignettes. From A worrying schoolteacher that is trying to escape society Mahdokht.Then Munis, who is killed by her brother after she disobeyed him. Farrokhlaga, from the upper class of Iran, is mistreated by her men, even in her own world. She is pushed by her husband to kill her husband. This shows even someone like her can break when pushed then at the other side of the coin is Zarrinkolah a prostitute Abused and used by Men she isn’;’t seen as a person by them and this pushes her to take her own life but then she reappears in the garden after that the garden and the male gardener are an oassis a different place to the world thaey all know the fifth woman to me Faizeh is maybe the youngest of all these woman is trying to cling to being a girl but also on the cusop of woman hood and looking for love. This is a tale that has it all, lots of commentary about Iran and being a female in Iran, but also on class, religion and life and death.

AT FIRST MUNIS WAS DEAD. Or at least she thought she was. For the longest time she lay on the pavement, her eyes wide open. Gradually the blue of the sky darkened and tears began to flow down her face. She pressed on her eyes with her right hand and slowly rose to her feet. Her body felt sore and very weak.

Farther down the alley a man had fallen into a ditch with his legs sticking out. Uncontrollably Munis moved in his direction. The man’s face was also turned skyward, his eyes open.

“Are you all right?” Munis asked.

“I’m dead,” the man answered

“Can I help you in any way?”

Is Munis dead or has she come back this is part of the magic realism in the book

I think this is a book that should be better known. It’s short, but in these five women, the author captures so much of life for a female at the time the book was written in Iran, a very patriarchal society. From class, how even the highest and lowest women in this country struggle. Family and how the woman in the family has to obey their family or else !. To be a prostitute, a woman is viewed as a piece of meat, really, and how that broke her and drove her to kill herself, it holds no punches in this book. The garden as a framing device worked as their paths cross but also as a sort of safe haven, almost a mythical place. The book has some magical realist touches. Women are practically given a second chance in the garden, a way to escape their world, but also a sort of utopia for those women, or maybe not to repeat mistakes. Have you read any other female writers from Iran?

The book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem

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The book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem

Paslenstenian  fiction

Original title -سفر الاختفاء

Translator Sinan Antoon

Source – Subscription edition

The translator of this book was a finalist for the old IFFP prize many years ago, before it became the Booker International Prize. I think we all want some novels that capture why events are happening in Palestine and Israel. This book, in some way, captures that by doing something so out of the blue, it leaves a void. What happens when the whole country, all of Palestine’s citizens, just aren’t there one morning? How will the Israelis react? That is the premise of the book. It is set in the Jaffa region. As I said in the last post, I’m drawn to speculative fiction, and this concept, as a way to describe the whole situation, grabbed me.

He went out barefoot and ran down to the third floor.

He rang the bell, confident that Alaa would open the door in no time, if he wasn’t at work. Taking time to open the door doesn’t mean anything necessarily. Alaa’s usually late.

Ariel rang the bell several times and then started banging on the door and calling out, “Alaa, Alaa, ata bu?”

When he went back up Zohar was getting ready to leave.

“He’s not answering.”

“You mean he disappeared with the others.”

“I don’t want to get into an argument, but I don’t think he’s disappeared. Maybe he’s wiped out and wasn’t able to go to work. We drank a bottle of wine last night and he was tired.

His phone is off and he only turns it off when he’s asleep.”

“You still don’t get what’s happening. Listen to your voicemail. Listen to the news. This is the nonchalant attitude that ruined our relationship. I’m going.”

He thinks his friend will still be there but isn’t

So what we see is the tale of what happened just before and then after, when all the Palestinians went through two friends on either side of the divide. Alaa is Palestinian. She is haunted by the events many years before, which were recounted to her by her grandmother about when she was thrown out of Jaffa and forcibly moved by the Israelis. Where our neighbour is now, Ariel, is a liberal Zionist. So when he wakes up the very next day, Alaa and all the Palestinians have gone, with no clue where or even how they just disappeared. Night. Add to this, we get Alaa’s notebooks that recount the event her grandmother had told her. The more significant part of the book focuses on how the authorities and Ariel react to the disappearance, and how their reactions are explained, which is at the centre of the whole book. This is one of those ‘what-if’ moments imagined.

Press offices have refused to give any special entry permits during the coming forty-eight hours. Going there would be of no use anyway, he thought as he took a sip of the coffee, which scorched his tongue. He called the IDF press office and the Tel Aviv municipality to check if it was necessary to get a special permit to go to Jaffa, or any other Arab area. He got the same answer. No permits are being given and he should call the following day.

How the goverment scrambles to cope twith what has happened!

As I said, I like certain speculative fiction, and this is one of those books that appealed to me before the prize. I think we all want to know a little bit more about this whole situation in Israel and Palestine. One must remember we have a massive part in the past history of this conflict, as we were at the heart of the discussions and plans to start Israel. The other thing about this book I’m talking about is that it was written over a decade ago, and maybe that’s why it could have been written at any time in the last few decades, which is a scary thought. I was reminded of what Dasa Drndic said about the tear-away section in her book, in Italy, with all the names of the dead Italian Jews. When they are taken out of the book, the book and the country fall apart in a way. What happens when your enemy disappears? This is what fuels the book, the questions of how, why, the aftermath and what happens with that void? But also it in someway for me as a reader left a few unanswered questions, I m not sure if I am dsoemtimes a read that likes to have everything tied up at times and in a way this book isn’t abkiut that it is about that void and the questions it gives those who are left but also how people react to that happening. It’s an interesting perspective on the whole situation and a fresh take on it. I wonder if they had read books by Saramago or something like ‘The Day of the Triffids, ‘ which deals with a sudden change. This is something like what Wyndham might have written about this situation.I like the idea of this book in part, it works, but for. Me there was a part that was missing at times if that makes sense a sort ofwhy and how to the events but maybe they were left vague for a reason!

 

Winston’s books hello again

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Well this week has seen arrival of two book by writers I have written about before but also from different sides of the middle east .

Hilltop by Assaf Gavron

First to arrive this week was this Novel from Israeli , the fourth book to be translated to english from this writer whom I first reviewed here on the blog with his book Almost dead , this seems to a more mature work from a writer whom , I like first time round .this book has been called the Great Israeli novel and follows the goings , comings and politics of one hilltop in modern Israeli .

The broken mirror / sinalcol by Elias Khoury

Then today dropped through from Elias Khoury ,another writer I have reviewed before on the blog two books by him  Yalo  and As though she were sleeping .Considered by many to be one of the finest voice from Arabic literature this is his latest offering and follows one man’s journey back to Beirut from the safety of France to find the mythical ghost of a man the hero of the civil war Sinalcol .

So two writers from different sides of the middle east both at the height of the career be interesting to see which I enjoy most this time round .

Have you had anything interesting arrive this week ?