literatedyke's Book Journey

I loved reading this book. Though it was published in 2010, it feels like a classic. Alharthi is the first woman Omani writer to be translated into English and I feel like this book bears the weight of that quite well; particularly in its clear-headedness around the political nature of language and whose language/s are deemed standard, worthy, and luxurious.

The main form the story and writing takes is through the pacing of memory; so, it's not linear and doesn't all take place in the present tense. Additionally, there is a carousel-like flow of character POVs and narration; it's not fixed in the first person nor just one character's perspective. While this may make it confusing or hard to follow for others, I really liked it and felt that it made the pacing surprisingly not feel disconnected to me, but actually exciting. I think that may be because the fragmentation is not in a patternless or random way; while the story doesn't have a chronological, beginning-climax-ending form but rather a more exploratory meandering that flows with the patterns of memory, it retains coherent and consistent threads.

Other non-conventional patterns the writing has are a 'lack' of punctuation marks and shifts in font for Abdallah's perspective; the skill and quality is undoubtable in my opinion and it's not in despite of those aspects, but I think in fact through them.

While I'm not Omani, some of the characters reminded me of my family too (especially Zarifa and Abdallah) – I don't mean in the dynamics of slavery, but that there's similarities for me in their grammar, personalities, aspirations, approaches to assimilation, etc. to some of my family members which made my experience of the book bittersweet but nevertheless engaging. This is definitely a character-centric book, not an action-packed plot one, and I enjoyed that; I believe the biggest theme is the way intergenerational relations, realities, traumas, and memories swirl while constantly re-making itself in each next generation and moment.

The aspect I've loved most about this story is how Alharti (and Booth, the translator) do not sugarcoat nor finger-wag at the characters; they bare their humanity, including in their biases and internalized oppressions and traumas, without restraint nor projecting a heavy-handed moral expectation onto them. Oman, its history, and its citizens are not framed from a paternalistic colonial lens nor a glorified one. I appreciated how assimilation is portrayed as a double-edged sword, whether it be assimilation into the heavily patriarchal, slave-owning society they had or the 'modern' and more secular aka Westernized one; Alharthi (and Booth) expressed the multiplicity of the citizens and these societal shifts in Oman not really as clashing against each other like polar opposite forces, but in fact merging together to create a new amalgamation of patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism that is firmly grounded in its context / history.

This portrayed era of Oman moving into 'modernization' and the great cognitive dissonance and generational divergences it stoked between the characters was written so well, including in how the actual line between them is not necessarily one of morality. The commonalities lay in their compromises and the ways they try to assimilate into different forms, be it slavery, the stock market, Canada, Muscat, marriage, car-ownership, medical science, pregnancy, religion, English, village gossip, and so on; they are failed by the attempted assimilation regardless, especially and particularly the women, because their autonomy and humanity is never in mind nor respected – the societal structures they try to assimilate into were never made for them. I love how the characters who are women negotiate their autonomy (definitely in varying degrees) through that context.

Trigger warning wise, this has a lot of heavy themes so please be keep that in mind and be careful if you're considering reading this. I should've made a list for other readers, but off the top of my head, trigger warning for: mention and/or depiction of (human and animal) death, murder, rape, slavery, abuse, so much internalized and externalized misogyny, ableism, classism, colorism, and more.