Title:
The Zahir
Author:
Paulo Coelho
Publisher
& Year: HarperCollins
Publishers
Pages:
342
A
few days after Paulo Coelho’s visit to Cairo, I found myself faced with the
task of reviewing his latest book; The Zahir. I am a fast reader;
nevertheless, 342 medium-sized pages cost me more than two weeks of my time
before it was finally over!
In
the course of a plot focusing on a writer’s relationship with his wife who
mysteriously disappears, The Zahir repetitively suggests loose
definitions for notions of love, freedom, happiness, self, and spirituality, yet
fails to offer anything valuable. This is not only due to the obvious
superficial and one-eyed perspective from which it deals with such profound
notions, but also because of the prevalent confusion and inaccuracy that allows
the writer to nonchalantly use one word—for instance, “love”—both as a
“given” and as a “required to prove” in the very same formula. He claims
to be searching and exploring the true meaning of love, yet casually uses this
“unexplored notion” to describe his affairs, obviously muting his search for
meaning and destroying his claimed exploration process.
The
writer casually, gullibly, and unselfcritically decides that he “loves” or
“loved” this or that woman, despite the very much temporal and whimsical
nature of most of these affairs in his plot, and describes these loves in a way
tantamount to his love for his wife, his lifelong companion.
I
fall in love with a Catalan scientist, with an Argentine woman who makes
jewelry, and with a young woman who sings in the metro.
This
perspective on love makes it extremely hard to explain how the novel’s main
character—who writes about spirituality and continuously speaks about love and
freedom—fails to show even the slightest concern for the world and its
inhabitants’ well-being, especially those who live remote from his little
Parisian, jet setting world.
So,
what’s all this about wanting to write about a war in some godforsaken
part of the world?
He
displays an elitism that destroys the integrity of love, which in its true
essence cannot be selectively withheld or given, for one cannot claim one is in
love with someone while being so apathetic about others’ suffering.
This
elitism is especially highlighted when the writer attempts to diminish its
effect by showing some offhand interest in the world of other people—like
Mikhail, a young man from the Central Asian Steppes, or a group of Parisian
beggars—for his apparent interest is motivated by nothing but selfishness,
suspiciously smacking of the uptowner’s condescending charity and sympathy.
The
word love usually appears when the unnamed writer meets a new woman or merely
sees one from afar; a love that revolves around himself rather than the one who
is “loved.” This self-centered perspective of the world brings to mind the
ancient cosmological theories of man’s planet being the center of the
universe. In this particular case, this geocentric view develops into a serious
homocentric view where “man” does not denote human beings, but rather this
particular man and his private planet.
The
superficiality and lack of integrity is once again evident when freedom is
tackled only through the ability of the characters to do whatever they desire,
regardless of the consequences or the impact of their actions on others. Freedom
becomes synonymous with infidelity, selflessness with condoning the other’s
whims and unfaithfulness, and happiness with quenching materialistic desires
coupled with a total denial of responsibility, to the extent that even the
perception of the Divine becomes hostage to individual whims and moods. This
attitude is manifested in the interchangeable and arbitrary usage of the terms
“God,” “the thing,” and other synonyms employed when Coelho needs to
involve divinity.
In
The Zahir, notions that are sacred, wholesome, and holistic are miserably
fragmented, flattened, and, in the best of cases, reduced to some of their
outward manifestations.
The
main character’s name and country of origin remain unmentioned. Perhaps this
is done intentionally; on the one hand, to encourage the association with Coelho
himself, while on the other to secure a leeway from undesirable implications
that may result from a direct superimposition.
Despite
that, Coelho seems to enjoy standing in his main character’s shoes, especially
when he acts in a “modern” way that is “eccentric” and “crazy” from
his touristy point of view. Acts such as walking on thin ice in a frozen
fountain, ruining his Internet access device, or roaming around with a group of
beggars who are in no need of begging and who sometimes give charity to other
people. Another fashionable eccentricity is indulgence in so-called “Steppes
rituals,” which involve standing naked in the middle of nowhere. Then there is
the offhand way in which the narrator deals with his wife’s pregnancy by
another man because she “loved” him.
It
seems that the narrator tries to add a little spice to his boringly
straight-laced life, empty of any risk or danger, through a superficial attempt
to relive the surrealistic legacy of Parisian artists and bohemians. He fails
miserably in the process.
Coelho’s
plot seems to be formed by marketing studies of what is hip today rather than by
a real urge to share experiences and important questions about life with his
readers. His insistence on endowing the obviously materialistic and selfish life
of his main character with spiritual shades and tones reeks of a flirtation with
the growing New Age tide that is deluding most of the earth’s population. It
is a sad reality that the take-away pseudo-spirituality which is offered in the
Zahir is satisfying enough for so many.
Those
bedazzled by the New Age hints in Coelho’s work will not mind the main
character’s selfishness, infidelity, and apathy as long as he walks a medieval
pilgrimage road to Santiago for 38 days. Unfortunately, this purgatory does not
result in the desired spiritual effect but rather builds up the pilgrim’s ego
and allows him to pat himself on the back in celebration of his spiritual
transcendence while continuing to play around and indulge himself in more
infidelities.
The
marketing-oriented style of writing is reflected in the very title of the book:
the Arabic word zahir. The term is used here to indicate “obsession,”
a translation which bears little resemblance to the original implications of the
term in the Islamic tradition, where it generally indicates the “outward” as
opposed to the esoteric or “inward.” Even if obsession were a correct
reflection of the Arabic zahir, the plot itself does not actually revolve
around what the narrator states as his obsession: his wife. If obsession were to
be the story’s title, then surely it would indicate the narrator’s obsession
with his own self!
Coelho’s
employment of certain terms and concepts—the zahir, the favor bank,
the accommodator, the la movida madrilène and so on—seems
to be a result of his own immature fascination with those terms and concepts and
their fashionable marketing potential rather than the plot’s true need. The
same can be said of some of the places he mentions and the conversations he has
with people he meets, where again, superficial trails of relevance seem to be
intentionally dropped for a global readership. Fleeting cameo appearances by
Arabs, Israelis, Kazakhs, Russians, the religious and the agnostic, along with
traces of the Armenian, Red Indian, American, and Mexican cultures are inserted
for no clear reason or direct function. Such insertions could have created a
humanistic outlook on the world, but the superficial way in which the themes are
dealt with does little more than intensify the commercially and rightfully
earned “international best-seller” designation of the book.
Two
inches deep, The Zahir does not satisfy, but its high sales are no
surprise in a world succumbing to New Age spirituality and trendy wisdom.
**
Waleed Arafa is a freelance writer and professional architect based in Cairo, Egypt. You can reach him at
waleedarafa@gmail.com
