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THE SEARCH FOR SARAH'S SOUL
Jordan Times
Feb 16 2009
Jordan
In an intimate first person narrative, Iman Humaydan gives voice to a
young girl coming of age amidst the thwarted dreams of her fragmented
family. In telling Sarah's story, the author reveals the impact of
patriarchy and colonialism on everyday lives in the period between
the two world wars.
The setting is 'Ain Tahoon in the Druze Mountains above Beirut,
a village untouched by snow or the sea, where time seems to stand
still. Sarah is searching for herself and for her mother who left home
before the girl was three years old, but she keeps running into walls -
emotional walls, as well as gender, sectarian and class barriers that
separate people from each other and from their own happiness.
There are many secrets but little warmth at home, and no one will
answer her questions about her mother. Her father claims she vanished
into thin air, while her paternal aunt mutters proverbs to the effect
that her mother couldn't live with them because she was too different;
she calls Sarah "the cursed girl" - the constant reminder of her
Christian mother's desertion. Ironically, Sarah's only confident is
her half-brother, whose mother left the household when her husband
married Sarah's mother.
Sarah's father is the shaykh of 'Ayn Tahoon, proprietor of vast lands
and the silk industry that sustains the village and a host of seasonal
workers, but as time goes on, Sarah sees that his outward strength
and arrogance hardly hide the hollowing out of his authority. "Behind
these images lies a weak man who conceals in his heart a reservoir
of misery and the absence of love." (p. 77)
Rumours surrounding his wife's desertion have tarnished the family's
reputation, while he remains impervious to the decline of the silk
industry that spells not only his own devastation but that of the
whole village.
What the shaykh is still good at is manipulating his immediate kin,
but he does so to his own detriment, alienating his son by trying to
totally control his life, and keeping his sister a spinster despite
annual promises that she may marry. As Sarah starts to realise,
"The shaykh puts my aunt's life on hold year after year just as he
puts my brother's life on hold. It is as though time for the shaykh
includes no life but his own." (p. 19) But she also realises that
her aunt is perhaps less afraid of the shaykh than of her own voice,
and that she, Sarah, must not be so fearful.
In contrast to the narrow walls of the house she shares with her
father and aunt, the larger estate is brimming with diversity. There
is the family's Kurdish house cleaner, Maryam; the seamstress Shakeh
from one of the Armenian families relocated to the village after
the World War I; the wives of the seasonal workers; and Muti'a, a
Circassian woman who came to Lebanon from Aleppo with her husband,
after having escaped from an early, forced marriage.
>From the talk of these women as they gather after the day's work, Sarah
learns different ways of coping with life and its problems. Especially
from talking with Muti'a, she begins to understand that women can take
pride and pleasure in their bodies, and take their fate in their own
hands. When Sarah asks why her mother left, Muti'a says, "She went
to search for her soul... We cannot live without our soul... If your
mother had remained here, she would have suffocated." (p. 23)
As Sarah falls in love and goes to study in Beirut; she continues
to search for her mother, but the clues she finds only raise new
questions about her identity. Gradually she is confronted with
the fact that her quest may be a dead end, perhaps also leading to
suffocation. Life is passing her by, and she must carve out her own
identity, an impulse that has been within her all along, from her
childhood dreams of flying.
Humaydan's prose is understated and subtle, but highly sensitive in
recording the small details that make up the whole of life. Her imagery
is sensual and evocative, whether describing the natural beauty of the
Lebanese mountains, the intricacies of silkworm raising or people's
innermost feelings. Her prose aptly reflects Sarah's self-discovery
process, beginning with her first tentative observations, circling
around matters obliquely, and then suddenly arriving at profound
insights. Though the ostensible focus of "Wild Mulberries" is on
the personal level, the novel also stands as a social document of a
certain time and a certain place.
Jordan Times
Feb 16 2009
Jordan
In an intimate first person narrative, Iman Humaydan gives voice to a
young girl coming of age amidst the thwarted dreams of her fragmented
family. In telling Sarah's story, the author reveals the impact of
patriarchy and colonialism on everyday lives in the period between
the two world wars.
The setting is 'Ain Tahoon in the Druze Mountains above Beirut,
a village untouched by snow or the sea, where time seems to stand
still. Sarah is searching for herself and for her mother who left home
before the girl was three years old, but she keeps running into walls -
emotional walls, as well as gender, sectarian and class barriers that
separate people from each other and from their own happiness.
There are many secrets but little warmth at home, and no one will
answer her questions about her mother. Her father claims she vanished
into thin air, while her paternal aunt mutters proverbs to the effect
that her mother couldn't live with them because she was too different;
she calls Sarah "the cursed girl" - the constant reminder of her
Christian mother's desertion. Ironically, Sarah's only confident is
her half-brother, whose mother left the household when her husband
married Sarah's mother.
Sarah's father is the shaykh of 'Ayn Tahoon, proprietor of vast lands
and the silk industry that sustains the village and a host of seasonal
workers, but as time goes on, Sarah sees that his outward strength
and arrogance hardly hide the hollowing out of his authority. "Behind
these images lies a weak man who conceals in his heart a reservoir
of misery and the absence of love." (p. 77)
Rumours surrounding his wife's desertion have tarnished the family's
reputation, while he remains impervious to the decline of the silk
industry that spells not only his own devastation but that of the
whole village.
What the shaykh is still good at is manipulating his immediate kin,
but he does so to his own detriment, alienating his son by trying to
totally control his life, and keeping his sister a spinster despite
annual promises that she may marry. As Sarah starts to realise,
"The shaykh puts my aunt's life on hold year after year just as he
puts my brother's life on hold. It is as though time for the shaykh
includes no life but his own." (p. 19) But she also realises that
her aunt is perhaps less afraid of the shaykh than of her own voice,
and that she, Sarah, must not be so fearful.
In contrast to the narrow walls of the house she shares with her
father and aunt, the larger estate is brimming with diversity. There
is the family's Kurdish house cleaner, Maryam; the seamstress Shakeh
from one of the Armenian families relocated to the village after
the World War I; the wives of the seasonal workers; and Muti'a, a
Circassian woman who came to Lebanon from Aleppo with her husband,
after having escaped from an early, forced marriage.
>From the talk of these women as they gather after the day's work, Sarah
learns different ways of coping with life and its problems. Especially
from talking with Muti'a, she begins to understand that women can take
pride and pleasure in their bodies, and take their fate in their own
hands. When Sarah asks why her mother left, Muti'a says, "She went
to search for her soul... We cannot live without our soul... If your
mother had remained here, she would have suffocated." (p. 23)
As Sarah falls in love and goes to study in Beirut; she continues
to search for her mother, but the clues she finds only raise new
questions about her identity. Gradually she is confronted with
the fact that her quest may be a dead end, perhaps also leading to
suffocation. Life is passing her by, and she must carve out her own
identity, an impulse that has been within her all along, from her
childhood dreams of flying.
Humaydan's prose is understated and subtle, but highly sensitive in
recording the small details that make up the whole of life. Her imagery
is sensual and evocative, whether describing the natural beauty of the
Lebanese mountains, the intricacies of silkworm raising or people's
innermost feelings. Her prose aptly reflects Sarah's self-discovery
process, beginning with her first tentative observations, circling
around matters obliquely, and then suddenly arriving at profound
insights. Though the ostensible focus of "Wild Mulberries" is on
the personal level, the novel also stands as a social document of a
certain time and a certain place.