This is a beautifully written
novel by Radwa Ashour in 1992, before her fame kicked in with her Granada Trilogy
in 1994. I picked it up and finished it in one day mostly because of how easily
its narration flows. But it is also a very short novel of a 116 pages that reads
fast and is highly recommended.
The story is framed by
a narration from Amna’s point of view. And between the first and last chapters
where we read Amna’s thoughts and worries, we are taken to other character’s
lives beginning with the Sultan and his struggles with the English presence in
the area, Amna’s son Saeed and his travels into Alexandria then towards Yemen
and southeast Africa, old and kind-hearted Ammar whose old love for Amna’s
mother stays with him till the end, mischievous Tawaddud and her early ambition to become a sailor, all of whom become active members in a revolt against the Sultan led by
the Sultan’s slaves, and thwarted by the British troops.
The events take place at
the end of the 19th century around the time of the Ahmed Orabi
revolution in Egypt. Its main characters belong to a small island in the Arabian
Sea that escaped complete British occupation by becoming a protectorate as its
Sultan allowed the British to establish their military base on parts of the
island. While the novel tells of the Sultan’s struggle to ward off the British
influence in the area, it also presents the Sultan as a dictator who shows no
reluctance to punish anyone suspected of treason or revolt. And in a land that
holds more slaves than natives, revolt was bound to happen. Yet the novel
itself is more about Saeed and his growth from a young adventurous boy to a man
risking his life for his land. It is mostly also a story of Amna, the mother,
who begins by telling us she fears the sea and doesn’t understand men’s
attraction to it:
الرجال يخرجون
للبحر، يذهبون ويعودون، يذهبون ثم لا يعودون، فتخرج النسوة للانتظار وقد يبّس
الخوف أكتافهن وحفر أخاديده في وجوههن. شاهدت آمنة كل شيء: لطم الخدود، ساعة يتأكد
الخبر، وشق الثياب والعويل الذي يقطع الفضاء ويشطره كما يشطر سكين السياف رأس الحي
عن الجسد.
And
later when her son shows the desire to follow in his father and grandfather’s
footsteps and take to the sea, she wonders again at men’s attraction to treacherous
sea over abundant land:
في الغد يخرج للصيد
فهل يضمر له البحر ما أضمره لأبيه وجده؟ الرجال يحبون البحر، يذهبون إليه بشوق كالعشاق
فما الذي يحبونه في البحر والأرض بين أيديهم ماؤها عذب زلال؟ الأرض أكرم تودعها
بذرتك فتمنحك نبتتها وثمرتها وتوفي، فلماذا يحب الرجال البحر؟
And
when she finally loses her son, it is indeed the sea that takes him from her,
not his life in the sea, but the English troops who come by means of sea. So
her motherly intuition proves right.
The
novel appears to be that of the struggles of simple people helpless against the
stronger powers of the Sultan and the British armies. But to me it read more as
a novel investigating our relation to sea and land. Saeed, the son of divers,
tries his luck at farming but finds it hardly as appealing as life at sea. His
mother, fearing he sea, presents us with a sea that is cruel and damaging
unlike the land, which she equates with the womb of a woman that
nourishes and cares for its seed.
I
might be reading too much into this. But I’m used to literature by women that
presents water and its fluidity as feminine, or at least feminist, an idea that
is further developed by many theoretical feminist arguments that sees in this fluidity a closer link to woman's identity and her actual womb. Ashour seems to
subvert this, whether intentionally or not, by showing the stability of land
and its productivity as more of a feminine/feminist trait than the illusive,
and here treacherous, sea. The sea/water is Amna’s enemy here, and by extension,
the reader’s enemy.
And
then again, appreciation of what the land provides is another dominant feminist
motif when it is mingled with studies of ecofeminism. Yet Ashour’s separation
between land and sea is one that clearly finds a difference between a nature
that provides us with sustenance because we care for it as farmers, and one
that survives without our interference. Saeed loses his father and grandfather
to sea after all, and it is his mother, Amna, who allows his seed to grow. Amna
is the land/woman that has finally been defeated by the sea. Nature is not one for Aisha. It can harm you just as easily as it can provide you with sustenance. And it seems that a nature that you care for, is, in the end, better for you than one that does not need your care.
