As part of my reading around the world in the company of women, my project to read a book by a woman from every country, I read Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi. Those who expect a linear narrative will find this novel challenging. Several characters move to center stage and give us their view of their life. In the end we have a vision of the people of Oman, the impact of significant changes since the 1920s, and the web holding several women together.
Translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth.
First published in Arabic in Oman in 2010.
Published in English by Catapult Press, 2019.
Winner of the Man Booker International Prize.
Mayya is a young girl, silent and devoted to her sewing machine. Around her swirls the life of her large family, her two younger sisters Asmi, who hoards books recovered from the trash, and Khawla, who fixates on her beauty and the cousin who promised they were to marry; her mother, Salima, and the girls' father, Azzan; the servants and newly freed slaves; and the various relatives and neighbor women who come in and out of the house, visiting, paying condolence or congratulation calls.
Told in the setting of a deeply conservative culture, sprinkled with historical turning points and Arabic poetry, the narration explores the family members, each one getting short chapters of his or her own. The narrators circle around the mysteries of their lives: Mayya, Abdallah her husband, London, their first daughter given an unusual name that elicits distress from others; Asma, Mayya's younger sister, who wants an education but is too old for the early grades; Qamar, a Bedouin woman who has carved out a life of near-total freedom for herself among her people who live camped outside the village and turns her desire on Mayya's father; Zarifa, a slave who was sold and forced to marry, who takes it upon herself to defy her slavery by sheer force of will and who challenges her son who insists now that he is free he can violate all the traditions if he wants to, but she knows secrets; Masouda, a wife locked into a room, cared for by her daughter, who may or may not be mad; Khawla, who is determined to remain true to her childhood sweetheart; Salima, the girls' mother, who grew up neither slave nor daughter of the house; Ankabuta, a slave woman and Zarifa's mother; Khalid, Asma's husband; Fatima, Abdallah's mother; Marwan the Pure, who isn't; Sulayman, a young merchant who founds a long family line with his wealth from the slave trade beginning in the 1890s.
The author only hints at linearity in the narration, and yet the stories hold together, the lives intersect, and mysteries are answered.
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