Enduring Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia (Bayn Al-Nahrayn), Ibtisam Abdallah, Baghdad: Dar Al-Shu'un Al-Thaqafiyya, 2001. pp198
This novel, bearing the Greek name of Iraq, Mesopotamia, followed by its translation, Between Two Rivers, in parentheses, was published two years before the recent invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. The events in the novel foreshadow the horrific violation of Iraq's ancient heritage, though real events have surpassed fiction in horror. Shelley wrote in 1821 with a romantic faith that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world"; more recently in 2003, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak modified this sweeping statement by asserting more realistically that "literature cannot predict, but it may prefigure." Abdallah's novel demonstrates this prefiguration.
The author, Ibtisam Abdallah, is a well-known Iraqi novelist, short-story writer and translator. She has translated the memoirs of Mikis Theodorakis and Angela Davis into Arabic, as well as G M Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians (the latter published by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Culture). She has also served as a competent editor of Al-Thaqafa Al-Ajnabiyya (Foreign Culture), a quarterly magazine entirely devoted to foreign literature and thought, which provided a window upon the world for Iraqis who were isolated culturally because of the sanctions against their country. Unfortunately, this remarkable review, along with other publications, has ceased publication since the arrival of the conquerors. One of Abdallah's short stories, "In the Garden", translated by Denys Johnson- Davies (Al-Ahram Weekly, 12-25 November 1998), presents a scene depicting the consequences of years of economic embargo: the starvation of many and the emergence of fat cat profiteers.
Abdallah's novel, Mesopotamia, takes up again the Iraqi human scene under the sanctions, but it does not deal with extremes of poverty and wealth as did her short story. Instead, the novel revolves around members of the middle class and the changes they undergo, not only in terms of downward economic mobility but also in terms of the psycho-social dynamics of degradation and resilience. The epigraph to the novel is from the first tablet of the epic of Gilgamesh, the earliest extant literary text in the history of humanity. "Mesopotamia" and "Sumer" in the novel are the names of two shops in Baghdad specialising in antiques. While the surface dimension of the narrative relates to the shop "Mesopotamia", its deeper stratum points to the country Mesopotamia. This transformation in the fiction of the homeland into a boutique prefigures the scramble for Iraqi riches and the appropriation of Iraq's cultural legacy by collectors and smugglers.
The novel is written using multiple points of view -- a technique often associated with Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, and later popularised in Arabic fiction in novels such as Naguib Mahfouz's Miramar and Fathi Ghanem's The Man Who Lost His Shadow. Abdallah's use of this narrative technique is cleverly implemented. Since events are told by different characters, the reader gets to see development in the plot from different angles. This technique of multiple points of view is a "democratic" mode of presentation, as it is based on a plurality of perspectives. Like the polyphonic novel -- to use the coinage of Bakhtin -- it does away with the totalitarian control of an omniscient narrator. The dialogical function, so glaringly absent in Iraqi politics, is provocatively embodied in fiction. "Literature," as Spivak says, "is what escapes the system." This type of writing runs against the grain of ideological didacticism and the heavy-handedness of propaganda literature and war novels, which thrived in the 1980s and 1990s.
This writing, furthermore, requires more effort on the part of the reader who has to figure out from the interior monologues and asides who the character narrating is. Each of the 12 chapters of the novel is written by a first-person narrator. The "I" is a shifter; thus, the reader needs mental agility to detect the persona through his/her articulation and to establish the reliability of the discourse. This mode of writing also provides for knowing the characters from the inside and contrasting that knowledge with the view from without.
The chapters are evenly distributed between the male and female characters. The two women protagonists, Mayya and her friend and neighbour Dalia, narrate in six chapters (1, 4, 11 and 2, 6, 10, respectively). One serves as the foil for the other: the withdrawn and dreamy Mayya versus the extrovert and down-to-earth Dalia. But they also have a great deal in common: they are educated, professional women; both hired by the same boss to work in his shops, "Mesopotamia" (Mayya) and "Sumer" (Dalia).
The principal male characters are three: Hani, Ahmad and Rami. Hani is the handicapped brother of Mayya, who has lost the use of his legs because of injuries on the battlefield. He is the narrator in chapters 3 and 4. Ahmad, a second cousin of Mayya and the middle-aged owner of the two antique shops, is the narrator in chapters 5, 8, and 12. Chapter 7 displays the letters Rami wrote to his beloved Mayya when he was working for his doctorate in Engineering in London. Flashbacks recall memories of the characters and resonate with contrasts between the past of not so long ago and the stifling present. As we observe these characters interacting in their daily lives, and as we penetrate into their psyches and uncover their stresses and anxieties, their hopes and dreams, a panoramic mural of everyday life in the Baghdad of the 1990s unrolls in front of our very eyes.
The novel opens with a foggy scene, in itself indicative of the ambiguities of the actual situation. Recollections of striking rockets and "roaring airplanes which came from far off countries" indicate not the Iran-Iraq War, but the Gulf War of 1991. The war is not named or identified; rather, the effect of it on the psyche is underlined: it does not trigger sadness any more, only fear. The economic embargo is equally depicted through its ravages and deprivations. Mayya has no choice but to wear old and faded dresses without even caring about their run colours. She works in "Mesopotamia", run by Ahmad, who studied in Cairo and witnessed the shock of the 1967 defeat. The 27-year Mayya lives with her mother and immobile brother whose hobby is reading history and archaeology books. This expository chapter introduces the main characters through the consciousness of Mayya. The scarcity of goods is indicated through the valued gifts of Dalia, who has just come back from a business trip to Amman bringing the family instant coffee and new clothing.
Slowly the novel unfolds. The business trip of Dalia included delivering two wrapped packages to a friend of Ahmad, her boss. On returning, Dalia wonders what was in the packages and fears the worst -- smuggling forbidden objects. She does eventually confront Ahmad, to whom she is attracted. He, in return, gets angry at her suspicions. We learn eventually, from his interior monologue, that the packages included two paintings by a well-known Iraqi artist and two manuscripts from the private library of a friend. They were sent to the impoverished children of these families, now living in distant countries. Ahmad feels he has neither stolen nor forged anything; he is simply helping people in need without even charging a commission, and thus resents the accusations against him.
While Ahmad has not been tempted by shadowy deals, the world of his business associates reveals rampant corruption and illegal profiteering. Transactions in the two antiques shops show people coming in reluctantly to sell their cherished heirlooms in order to make ends meet, as well as customers coming to buy typically Iraqi objects -- colourful carpets of Samawa and imitations of famous Sumerian statuettes -- to send to their relatives abroad who are pining for Iraq.
While, on the one hand, people have to sell their family memorabilia in order to survive, business sharks are trying to make the most of the situation on the other. Minor characters, like Maz'al Al-Salman and his partner the merry widow Zahira, are examples of the new class that flourished under the sanctions regime. In bits and pieces, in allusive talk and reported rumours, the reader concludes that this business pair are planning to rob items from Iraq's archaeological heritage and ship them abroad. They plan to cut the winged bull of Nineveh up into pieces and then smuggle it out of the country. However, an accident on the road takes place, and one of them dies and the other is hospitalised. Melodramatic and contrived as the accident is, the narrative aesthetics are not compromised as we never know whether this wicked plan was actual or simply rumoured.
The novel's finale is well done: Ahmad, having had a heart attack, is raving. The real is mixed with dreams and hallucinations. Ahmad ponders the meaning of his life as he is threatened by death and asks himself the existential questions raised at limnal moments. His own interior monologue about life and death is interspersed with references to Gilgamesh and his final quest for peace for his native city of Uruk. This frame of reference befits a connoisseur and an Iraqi antiques dealer. A sense of isolation envelops Ahmad and a resignation to wait ends the last chapter of the novel -- a most appropriate ending for this national allegory.
Reviewed by Ferial J Ghazoul
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 19 - 25 June 2003 (Issue No. 643)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/643/bo2.htm