Bjorn
Reader
Our nameless narrator, growing up in a small village in southern Egypt, is 12 when he's told that he's a man now, and so his life must be different from his sisters'. While they are taught to obey, work hard without complaining and grow up to be somebody's faithful wife, he's taught that he's special. He's supposed to carry on the family name, after all.
As is the son of the local bey, born to our narrator's young aunt Safiyya - 18 when she marries the 60-year-old chieftain, to everyone's surprise, honour and disappointment since everyone thought she would marry the local poet. That sort of stuff never ends well, does it? Somebody has to die, somebody has to protect their honour, somebody has to pay in blood. But perhaps Safiyya sees something the others don't, sees a chance for her to make her own decisions, call her own shots in a world where in a world women are possessions.
And then there's the local coptic monastery, traditionally respected even in a country that's been muslim for 1300 years, and the bandit gangs, and the oncoming storm of fundamentalism and secularism and war. There are huge religious and societal conflicts in the background, barely outlined from our young narrator's point of view; the role of a woman in a male-dominated society, the transformation of Egypt into a modern nation, the climax of the novel set following the Six-Day War, all of it only flashing by on the outside of a bloody family feud that seems to be fueled by nothing but the idea that that's the way it's supposed to be, whatchagonnado, no matter how the good people of the world - that is, most of them - try to prevent it.
Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery is short, 120 pages of pregnant prose. I find myself humming "Ode To Billie Joe" set to a north African drone, the story untold, where nobody talks out loud about why or acknowledges the heartbreak of the one truly affected by it but just continue in their old tracks while mumbling that it's a shame, anyhow. The shaggy dog story where everyone shrugs, lives, dies, and nobody really learns anything, and the true heroes remain a mystery. Except the heartbreaking bit is that they do learn, they do see - there's just not really much they manage to do with that knowledge; when the world changes, the last thing that changes is how people react to it. ****0
As is the son of the local bey, born to our narrator's young aunt Safiyya - 18 when she marries the 60-year-old chieftain, to everyone's surprise, honour and disappointment since everyone thought she would marry the local poet. That sort of stuff never ends well, does it? Somebody has to die, somebody has to protect their honour, somebody has to pay in blood. But perhaps Safiyya sees something the others don't, sees a chance for her to make her own decisions, call her own shots in a world where in a world women are possessions.
And then there's the local coptic monastery, traditionally respected even in a country that's been muslim for 1300 years, and the bandit gangs, and the oncoming storm of fundamentalism and secularism and war. There are huge religious and societal conflicts in the background, barely outlined from our young narrator's point of view; the role of a woman in a male-dominated society, the transformation of Egypt into a modern nation, the climax of the novel set following the Six-Day War, all of it only flashing by on the outside of a bloody family feud that seems to be fueled by nothing but the idea that that's the way it's supposed to be, whatchagonnado, no matter how the good people of the world - that is, most of them - try to prevent it.
Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery is short, 120 pages of pregnant prose. I find myself humming "Ode To Billie Joe" set to a north African drone, the story untold, where nobody talks out loud about why or acknowledges the heartbreak of the one truly affected by it but just continue in their old tracks while mumbling that it's a shame, anyhow. The shaggy dog story where everyone shrugs, lives, dies, and nobody really learns anything, and the true heroes remain a mystery. Except the heartbreaking bit is that they do learn, they do see - there's just not really much they manage to do with that knowledge; when the world changes, the last thing that changes is how people react to it. ****0
