Dove's Eye View: Reading The Hakawati

June 02, 2008

Reading The Hakawati

I'm reading Rabih Alameddine's new novel, The Hakawati. Wow. A tour de force.

Alameddine tells multiple tales, in the "Chinese box" form often found in Arab and other story collections. There is a frame story of a 40-something narrator returned to Lebanon after 25 years away to attend to his dying father. Then there are family stories, mythic stories, tall tales and even the Hagar/Abraham/Sarah triangle from the Bible and the Koran. I enjoy the nested tales and don't mind the jumping around - many contemporary authors use this form, especially those with Middle Eastern roots, but of course there's John Barth as well. So we've been trained as readers to deal with the fractured, tale-stuffed narrative.

One tale that moved me today was a variation on the old descent of Inanna. Fatima, one of two characters named Fatima in this novel, is a semi-mythic slave girl who goes on a quest that takes her into the underworld. Each gate to the underworld is guarded by an imp who tells her what she must give up to go forward. She has to give up her left hand. She gives up her clothes, her possessions, her expectations. I gulped.

Alameddine's Fatima tale reminds me of my cancer journey. I had to give up my left tit, my hair, my eyebrows, my estrogen production, my young-looking skin, my strength, my fingernails, my idea that I was invincible, my belief that I would live to be ninety-six, my work, my hope that Western medicine could cure me.

And like Inanna (and Fatima) I feel I am restored in many ways, that in losing so much I also reclaim and gain much.

The novel I'm writing has a scene that echoes the descent of Inanna; I know I looked at the myth again in the last year, but I need to get out my copy of it and read it closely. The image that resonates with me appears in Hakawati: Inanna hanging naked on the meat hook in the underworld, flayed. It is when we have descended into the abyss and feel ourselves utterly broken that we begin the path to rebirth.

I'm only at page 180 in a 500 page book, so this is not a review - this is a reading response based on the riches of the first five or six chapters.

If you like Salman Rushdie, John Barth, the Arabian Nights, or Diana Abu-Jaber, you will love The Hakawati. If you want a delicious book to while away slow hours on summer vacation, or long winter nights, or a cross-the-world journey, then get The Hakawati and read it.

First chapter online here.

June 02, 2008 in Books, Lebanon, My America, Writing and Literature | Permalink