the feminine art

book review

The feminine art
Weam Namou
Hermiz Publishing 2004


The charming characters of this novel are all, like the author, Chaldean migrants (or at least would-be migrants) from Iraq, i.e. members of the Christian minority in the Middle East. According to the blurb, Namou is “the first […] Chaldean American novelist to portray the descendants of ancient Mesopotamia …,” so the book promises a new take on intercultural experiences.

That promise is kept very nicely in the first part (2/5) of the book, while the characters live their ordinary lives in suburban Michigan, and their very oriental values are shown in sharp contrast to the American way of life. For instance, the thorough preparation and consumption of food seems to pervade people’s thoughts so comprehensively that practically every metaphor used comes from cooking, and every relationship is defined in terms of who cooks what for whom. In a way, this is a celebration of “slow food” and as such preferable to the American culture of junk food, but one can’t help feeling that it also stops people from achieving anything else in their lives, as food and family networking seem to take up 100% of their time. Similarly, the quest for an arranged marriage, which drives the plot of the story, contrasts with the sexual freedom that the potential groom has enjoyed in the US so far.

Not knowing (or caring) much about religions, I got the impression that the value system on display here seems to resemble those of Islamic communities from the Middle East more closely than those of European Christians. I only mention this because it suggests, interestingly, that geography and history may have had a stronger influence in shaping it than the actual religion.

Intriguingly, the characters (and their real life models?) don’t seem to appreciate the value of their heritage languages (Arabic and Aramaic) for their cultural identity, as it is mentioned that they randomly speak English, Arabic, or Aramaic to each other throughout the day, and often it appears to be English with Arabic words thrown in, as it is in the novel. As a former agony aunt in all things bilingualism I believe that if one wants to maintain one’s cultural heritage, the first and most obvious thing to do is to speak the heritage language consistently (and unmixed) whenever it is possible without offending outsiders.

To me, the novel lost interest a little bit after the action moved to Amman, the capital of Jordan, where the groom is to meet his prospective bride from Baghdad, and a wedding is to take place, or maybe not. With the geographical side of the culture clash removed from the equation, only the clash between the mildly Americanised Chaldeans and those fresh from Iraq remains. We are left with a claustrophobic circle of people panicking over wedding arrangements, while the underlying emotional conflicts remain veiled (or maybe one needs the "feminine art" to figure out what’s really going on, but I’m afraid as a man I need to have it explained in plain English). Although the beginning of the novel played the contrast of Michigan vs. Baghdad really well, I got absolutely no sense of place from the parts set in Amman.

Also galling the experience is a complete lack of editing – there are homophones and other spelling errors throughout the book (e.g. people waive for taxis and message their legs!), which has clearly never passed the hands of a competent copy-editor. These moans aside, it has been a very interesting insight into a culture that doesn’t get all that much media attention.

a furious gentleman

When I finished my PhD and packed my bags to move to the UK, my professor gave me a book by watercolour artist David Gentleman as a parting present, called Gentleman's Britain. The pictures are nice, and the comments by the artist equally well observed, but on the whole, as one would expect from watercolour artists, the work is rather inoffensive.

Imagine my surprise then to find out from this feature in the Guardian's review section that Gentleman is also the artist behind the distinctive and furious blood splattered designs of the 2003 protests against Bliar's war in Iraq, and he is even credited with the idea of turning those two letters around, even though somebody would have done that sooner or later I'm sure.

So I've combined two rather contrasting works that I own in one photo:



Oh, and he's also done lots of posters, stamps, murals in London tube stations, etc. So it's Gentleman's Britain in more than one sense!

five years on

Five years of war and mayhem in Iraq, what a depressing anniversary. Around this time in 2003, I ran a preliminary kind of blog (without the proper tools) called "Cassandra's Diary" raging against all this, just as a way of stopping myself from pulling my hair out.

Oh well. let's look at the bright side -- if this invasion had worked, they would have invaded two or three other countries by now. Iraq is bearing the cross to save the world from the neocons, if I am allowed a seasonal metaphor ...


PS in those days, 2001 through to 2003, Seumas Milne was the editor of the comments pages in the Guardian, which more than once were the last island of sanity in a mad world. He's no longer in charge, but he's written a commentary on the anniversary.