ALIA Mamdouh’s novel ‘Al-Mahbubat‘ released in 2003, received the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2004. It has just been published in English by The American University in Cairo Press. Its title, “The Loved Ones,” refers to the wonderful friends who stay with Suhaila, the heroine, while she is in a coma.
Like Alia Mamdouh, the author, the novel’s main character, Suhaila is an Iraqi woman living in Paris; they share a strong love for their native country. This novel is not easy to read. Its dense and complicated narrative echoes the suffering of Iraqi immigrants struggling to build a new life in the West; it also highlights the difficulties created by exile — estrangement from one’s family, lack of financial security, the frantic search for a home and a job and the lingering sense of loss and despair.
This confused jumble is literally stitched into the story; it forms a jagged web, constantly shaken by abrupt transitions from past to present and future. The reader is often in doubt as to who is talking. But one is almost immediately drawn into the tale and swept along by the forceful current of disjointed events. One wonders, at first, if Suhaila will come out of her coma. That question, however, gradually loses its importance as we get to know Suhaila’s extraordinary friends whom she calls “her little diamond nuggets.”
Suhaila’s friends rush to her bedside as soon as they hear of her illness. Over forty days, they take turns and never leave her alone. Their unfaltering love not only helps Suhaila improve but also transforms her only son, Nader. Their extraordinary and loyal friendship for his mother moves him profoundly. He rediscovers his estranged mother, reconnects with his country and his past and, most of all, finds a new purpose in his life.
Nader pictures his mother’s friends as “female soldiers fully equipped and perfectly capable of vanquishing the enemy: Suhaila’s illness and my helplessness in front of it. My morale rose as I looked at them... How is it that those women are so able to draw on their imagination to invent whatever it is they are able to do in order to guarantee that Suhaila will emerge once again, from whatever place she is in, on any day and at any moment, and in the company of any one of them? Life appeared at my side: strong, vigorous.”
Even when Suhaila emerges from her coma she can only express herself with her eyes and yet we know everything about her. The writer’s tour de force is to bring her alive on every page and the novel’s open end leaves us longing for more details about her life and character.
This novel written by a woman about women is first an ode to friendship. But it is also a reflection of enforced behavior and thought and an attempt for women to interpret their personal experiences and improve their lives.
Alia Mamdouh is part of a growing number of women writers who have appeared on the literary scene since the 1980s. Before the middle of the nineteenth century, there were no known published writings by Arab women except for a lively oral tradition. Arab women were part of what has been called the “nahda” or cultural renaissance, a movement which began in Egypt. Toward the end of the 19th century, women began to create their own journals and began writing articles.
In their introduction to “Opening the Gates, A Century of Feminist Writing,” Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke wrote: Novels, poetry and short stories were the preferred genres after article writing. Fiction and poetry retain the screen of apparent non-accountability. Intimate and critical reflection can be safely expressed in a form that appears to draw attention to itself rather than to the author and her message. These can be powerful vehicles for feminist thought, especially when invisibility is needed or sought.”
Long after the last lines of “The Loved Ones” have been read, one is left with a radiant picture of the heroine: her generous character, her love of dancing, poetry, food “the language of sympathy,” and above all, her love of Iraq. Her son Nader acknowledges that “she always tows Baghdad into whatever places we have lived, to be able to endure things, to stay alive and not die.”
And my last thoughts had me wondering if my friends would come and visit me if I fell ill? And would they remain day and night at my bedside? Would they do my hair, recite my favorite poetry and talk to me until I emerged from the coma? Suhaila was the first to believe “Friendship doesn’t come down from the sky. It is rooted in the earth and it is up to us to make it come up and to tend it so that it will persist and flower.” Her life story is living proof that true friendship is first and foremost the constant act of giving.
