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 For
two centuries or more, bookshelves have been abound with journals
and novels depicting the Orient, feeding the western fixation for
the mystical taboos and the unknown of the East. But little
attention has been given to the Oriental’s experience in the
West. Now there is trend of new writers from the East, or the
South. This time the Orient visits the Occident.
Leila
Aboulela expounds this phenomenon for us in The Translator.
Aboulela, of Sudanese and Egyptian parentage, was brought up in
Sudan and moved to the UK in her twenties. After attending
creative writing courses in Aberdeen, Aboulela discovered her
talent in writing in a language that is not her mother tongue.
The
Translator is a fictional love story. Set in two contrasting
cities, Aberdeen and Khartoum, we find the hero, Samar, at pains
with the contradictions that exist, not just in location, but also
in religion and culture.
Samar
is a young Sudanese widow in grief who returns to Aberdeen, the
city where her late husband was tragically killed in a car
accident, at the insistence of her mother-in-law in her bid to
prevent her from marrying an elder family friend. She leaves her
young son behind in Khartoum unable to cope as a mother and tries
to retrace her life again. There she works as a translator for the
university and falls in love with Rae, a Scottish academic and
atypical Orientalist. Their mutual feelings of loneliness and
their difficulty in fitting in to society draw them together, but
faith is the obstacle. Despite Samar’s human weaknesses her
Islam remains the dominant force in her choice between earthly and
heavenly pleasures. She returns to Khartoum to be reunited with
her son but she is heartbroken for a second time.
Despite
the events being few, this book is hard to put down. Aboulela has
the skill with her rhythmic prose in seeing beneath facades, and
elucidating contrasts in climate, religion, and human relations.
She identifies the protagonist early in the book. Within the first
two pages the reader knows that she is a foreigner in an alien
climate, Muslim and veiled. “It was hidden from Rae, like her
hair and the skin on her arms, it could only be imagined.”
In
reference to the cities she mentions their environment – the
skies, the rivers, the weather – and their people. Samar, like
many foreigners in the West from hot climates, has an intense fear
of the cold. She describes the profound resolution of the North
Eastern Scots to brave the bitter winter and get on with life (a
characteristic previously expounded in detail by 1930’s novelist
Lewis Grassic Gibbon in the Scot’s Quair), while she hibernates
until the ice thaws.
Although
the Granite City is famous for its Northern Lights, Samar never
mentions them. Instead, we presume she is unable to reflect on
them as she is boxed in an environment unfriendly and unfamiliar
– her “hospital room” as she calls it. She reminisces
sleeping under the stars in Khartoum and being wakened by the
sound of the Fajr adhan. The beauty of her home is accurately
reflected in her pride of the convergence of the Blue Nile and the
White Nile (at Um Dourman) and, of course, its people. She is
never alone in Khartoum.
A
common characteristic between foreigner and native is that many of
the cultural idiosyncrasies of one are taken for granted by the
other. Aboulela makes a good attempt in exploring this. Samar
talks about curfews, rations, power cut, and leaking air
conditioning units in Khartoum as the norm. Although others
complain, she tolerates them almost with pleasure while she
compares her life to the cold and loneliness of short, freezing,
winter days. Tables turned, a Scot in Sudan will be yearning for
the rain and retreating to the warmth of a cozy home.
Samar
is flanked by two strong female characters. Both are volatile,
bitter, dogmatic and carrying a lot baggage or should we say
holding to the ‘them and us’ theory. Her mother-in-law,
Mahassen, is staunchly affected by family tribalism. No one can
surpass her son. After his death, Samar is relegated to mere niece
(she had married her cousin) and mother of her grandson, even
though Samar and Mahassen were previously very close. Four years
after the death of her son, Mahassen bursts out, “ You’re a
liar and you killed my son.”
Yasmine,
on the other hand (Rae’s secretary) is younger than her match
but as intensely frustrated. A second generation Muslim of
Pakistani parents, she has never integrated well enough into
British society. Militant mouthed, she blames every missed chance
or seemingly form of injustice on racial and religious
discrimination. It is Yasmine who blatantly quizzes Samar on her
interest in Rae’s knowledge of Islam, accusing her that she
hopes that he will convert so she can marry him.
Both
women are the nearest Samar gets to female companionship in the
two cities. Always willing to listen, she never seems to reject
their assaults of advice.
But
our hero is not without faults too. We find Samar falling
inadvertently in love with a man much older, twice divorced, and
non-Muslim. She knows from the beginning that she is following a
crooked path, but the climax in her naïveté and meanness is when
she proposes to Rae in the most unromantic fashion: “If you just
say the shahada it would be enough. We could get married. If you
just say the words…” After four years of grief and
self-neglect being a way of life, the protagonist had found
happiness and hope in an unlawful love. In some ways her words
“Just say the shahada” portrays her divergence from God, Who
had been her only lifeline in her early-timed widowhood. In
another way, we find that she will not sell her faith to a man, no
matter how much she loves him, who would prefer to court her
rather than marry her by the guidelines of Islam. Her propensity
to lose herself in love is evident, but somewhat understandable.
Her courage to put her faith first is to be admired.
Throughout
the book we are introduced to the dictates of Islam: some more
direct than others. Simple acts like breaking the fast with a date
and praying the Maghrib prayer are told subtly. The congregational
prayer is an important part of Samar’s life, which she remembers
with fondness in Khartoum, while in Aberdeen she would pray in the
mosque alone. She sits for tasbih after the prayer and lets her
concentration drift at the sound of the door. Even her veiling
with its subsequent rules are touched upon: she would switch off
the light as she looked out at the dark street so not be seen, and
she would not put on the perfume in public that was a gift from
Rae. She merely touched upon these peculiarities without
explanation or reference to their significance in Islamic
doctrines, indirectly elucidating a lifestyle naturally ingrained
in the hero.
But
there are some more direct and indiscreet references to Islam that
tend to instruct the reader, which make us wonder who the target
readership is. If they are Muslims, then is there a need to
discuss the meaning of Hadith Qudsi in detail when most Muslims
are already aware of this? The translation and transliteration of
the rudiments of tasbih is another example. Then there is the
authenticity of the Qur’an and the explanation of shari`ah. If
she is targeting people of other faiths, then this mode of writing
seems more like a direct form of da`wah or propagation of Islam.
If a Christian wrote in the same strain, would non-Christians
consider it to smack of evangelism? Perhaps, a glossary of terms
at the back would be more appropriate.
How
far non-Muslims are able to digest this point will be interesting
to see. But the reviews have been a success to date and maybe this
is one of the issues that Muslims seem to escape in their attempts
to inform others of Islam. It is only when Muslims are classed as
“fundamentalist” or “extremist” that they exceed the
limits. It is clear, however, that Aboulela takes her religion
seriously and with pure moderation.
Despite
these direct da`wah advances, Aboulela’s constant reference to
God can easily be seen as part and parcel of a Muslim’s life.
This is probably the bravest step in her novel, particularly now
that we live in a world where the subject of God seems to be the
only taboo left.
The
Translator is a moving story of a Muslim woman’s struggle for
peace, happiness, and a return to oneself. In the end our hero
finds her true self and we are even inclined to feel that she will
make peace with the Scottish weather.
Leila
Aboulela is considered one of the promising new generation of
Scottish writers and the winner of the African Booker Caine Prize
for “The Museum” in her collection of short stories Coloured
Lights. The Translator is being serialized for radio and to be
broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s “Women’s Hour.” She is
currently working on another book involving a Sudanese woman who
tries to attain spiritual maturity. She lives with her husband in
Indonesia. (Al Hayat, October 18, 2001)
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