Laila Lalami

It was a quiet weekend at Dar Moorishgirl. We saw Batman, which Alex loved, but which I found slightly hard to get engaged in. I’d watch Christian Bale in anything, and I love Christopher Nolan’s work, but the whole set up was just too middle-of-the-road for my taste. I’ve started reading Admiring Silence by Abdulrazzak Gurnah, and spent some time with family and out-of-town visitors. I didn’t get a lick of writing done, and I’m OK with that. I’m still working out things in my mind even when I’m not typing three pages a day. I guess I’m not as paranoid these days as I used to be.

That’s it for Moorishgirl this week. The one and only Randa Jarrar guest-blogs here tomorrow and every Friday. Have a great weekend!

Ibarionex Perello, a very fine writer and good friend, has a wonderful story in the spring issue of the Boston Review, about a young boy witnessing his father’s return to his hometown because of a serious illness in the family.

It was the first time I had heard the name of one of Papi’s sisters, though I knew I had grandparents and two aunts. Papi didn’t speak about them, and, though I was curious, I was never brave enough to ask.

“Pablo is not here,” Mami said. She leaned against the door for support. Her leg had been bothering her more and more. She hadn’t had another stroke since the one she had suffered giving birth to me, but its damage-her weak leg and arm and the frozen side of her face-became more pronounced with each passing year. “I don’t know where he is, but I’ll let him know when he comes home.”

Mami offered the man something to eat. He declined at first but accepted when she insisted. She gave him some pastelitos, which he ate standing at the counter. He ate them quickly.

“What’s wrong with him?” Mami asked

“The old man, he’s dying.” The crumbs from the pastry fell onto his shirt.

“That’s sad news.”

“It’s never good, senora.”

Read it here.

Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk has won the German Book Trade Peace Award, given by the German booksellers’ association, for work in which “Europe and Islamic Turkey find a place for one another.” The prize will be given out at the next Frankfurt Book Fair in October.

Here’s something you won’t often read on this blog: I agree with Time magazine. They’ve displayed good taste by selecting the Complete Review as one of the 50 coolest websites around. The Complete Review’s blog, the Literary Saloon, is one of my must-reads every day.

Over at the NY Times, Alan Riding dissects the subject of literary awards reserved for women, such as the Orange Prize. The reasoning behind the prize has been discussed ad nauseam in the press, so no need to revisit it here. The article does have some baffling quotes, though, like this one:

“We found that books written by men were significantly less intimate than those written by women,” Debbie Taylor, editor of Mslexia (www.mslexia.co.uk), said of a study by the magazine. She added: “Men’s texts referred typically to sex, exteriors, violence, work and tools. Women’s texts referred typically to relationships, interiors, clothing, children. Women inside. Men outside.”

She sounds just like my grandmother.

I do wish there were some hard facts in the article, though. For instance, starting with the NY Times, how many titles reviewed so far this year are by men and how many by women? I’d love to see Sam Tanenhaus tackle that one.

Robert Gray reminds those of us who get panicky every time they look at their TBR pile to just read slowly. He also provides a couple of lovely quotes from books, including this one:

She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awakening from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.

I never used to worry about how long it took me to read a book until they started showing up at my doorstep.

Patricia Storm’s latest cartoon on the publishing industry pokes fun at awards, judges, and…the LBC.

Link via Bookdwarf.

Moorishgirl reader David F. of London writes in to say that “after the Arab Woman Writer Who Writes About Sex, here comes the Arab Woman Writer Who Is Really A Man” and he sends us this link to the Guardian profile of Yasmina Khadra (a.k.a. Mohammed Moulessehoul).

“There were many misunderstandings because people found it hard to understand a writer who was a soldier,” says Moulessehoul (formerly Commandant Moulessehoul), who settled in France to pursue his writing career in 2001 after quitting the Algerian army. “I had to really fight against those who did not appreciate my work because they pigeonholed me as some sort of brute who was responsible for military massacres. In the eight years I led the fight against terrorism, there were no massacres. Let me tell you, it was a hard battle – there is no honesty or integrity among the pseudo-intellectuals I had to take on. There’s much more honesty and integrity among soldiers, trust me.”

Yeah, just ask the civilians. Later on, Moulessehoul explains that it was the Algerian army (of which he was a member for nearly 30 years) who sought to censor all his manuscripts. They feared for his integrity, I’m sure.

Under the Persimmon Tree
Suzanne Fisher Staples
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005
270 pages

Under the Persimmon Tree has an irresistible premise for readers curious about Afghanis struggling to have a “normal” life under the Taliban. It tells the story of Najmah and her search for her family on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border in the months after 9/11. The twist is provided by the dual plotline, that of an American woman, Nusrat, who teaches refugee children in Peshawar while she awaits news of her Afghani husband who has crossed the border to work in a field hospital. A desperate Najmah ultimately ends up in Nusrat’s classroom, “under the persimmon tree” and the two find comfort in each other’s company as they wait for word on their loved ones and cope with the dangers and uncertainties of war.

One of the most striking things about Under the Persimmon Tree is the way in which Najmah’s world is easily and effectively destroyed within only a few pages. Author Suzanne Fisher Staple was a UPI correspondent for ten years and lived in both Afghanistan and Pakistan; clearly the Afghanistan Civil War is a subject she knows about. By approaching this story from the perspective of a young girl she gives readers a chance to view their own childhoods in a completely different way. What would it be like for any of us if we came home one day to see our father and brother dragged away, if we lost our mother in an instant, if we had no one to trust? What would we do if finding our family bordered on the impossible, and ever reclaiming our home again seemed like a dream? If you were Najmah what would you want for the rest of your life and what would you hope for your future?

Because the author is American the answers to Najmah’s questions might seem obvious, but Staple has a lot of surprises in this book. The character of Nusrat in particular is a revelation, an American who has chosen Islam for its beauty and complexity, and explains her choice in a manner that makes it both understandable and compelling. There is no glorification of one religion over another in this book, simply questions of math and science and faith that help one woman decide where her place should be in the world. For the girl Najmah there is the definition of home, and what it means to her even if the people she loves are no longer part of that familiar landscape. In many ways Under the Persimmon Tree is about who you are and where you belong, and what you will do to discover the answers to those questions.

The thing I loved best about this book, though, the part that still resonates with me, is Najmah’s response to Nusrat’s offer to return with her to New York City and pursue a new life there. Nusrat knows that Najmah has better chances to obtain an education in New York; that in many ways her future would be without limits in the U.S. She thinks this would be the best thing for the young girl. Najmah’s immediate response is heartfelt and deeply honest:

For hundreds of years my people have lived a good and simple life in hills that are more beautiful than anywhere on Earth,” I say at last, for this is the truth. “I think always of the wind on my face and the smell of grass, the gentle sounds of the animals. I cannot imagine living anywhere else.

When tomorrow’s casualty numbers blink across my television screen, it is these words, from a fictional Afghani girl, that I will think of. What if she does live in the most beautiful place on earth? Shouldn’t we be doing something to save that beauty? Reading about Afghanistan is the smallest thing we can do, the first thing. Learning about the land that lives under the same sky and stars as America is a beginning, no matter what age of reader; it is a place to begin.