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I was immediately drawn into this book by the first section of 42 pages, when Rafi, the narrator, meets Azza Tawfiq in 2010's Paris. Azza is a professional scientist, so it is somewhat surprising when she claims that she had lived in the Syrian village of Sarmada in a previous life. Furthermore, she had been murdered by her five brothers for eloping with a young man from Nothern Africa. Rafi is persuaded to return to Sarmada, the village of his childhood, to verify these claims. What he finds astounds him.
Rafi then continues to investigate the history of Sarmada through the stories of two more of its female inhabitants, Farida and Buthanya. Unfortunately it was at this point that the narrative seemed to lose its purpose and we meandered aimlessly around the village, gathering stories from various sources, none of which formed a cohesive whole. The writing took on a sort of unbelievable mystical realism, but without direction. None of the storylines were satisfactorily concluded.
There was also a lot of sex in the narrative, most of which I could manage to accept within the book's context, but one particular scene, between Bathanya and a four year old boy, apalled me to the extent that my rating dropped from three to two stars. This scene was so gratuitous that I felt quite nauseated. There is a time and place for porn, but for me, that time and place is not within my regular reads.
This book was discussed at our intercultural book group, some readers reading it in English and some in the original Arabic. The response was pretty much unanimous - a great start, followed by a disapointing decline. None of the readers were particularly happy with the sex scenes.
Unfortunately none of our members were Syrian so we couldn't get direct feedback, but I am surprised that an author would be happy to paint his country in such a negative, sex starved way. However, I did enjoy the picture of three religions, Muslim, Druze and Christianity, all living together in harmony.
A quick word is deserved for the magnificent translation by Adam Talib, his interpretation made the book much more accessible than it might otherwise have been and lacked the clunkiness of many translations.… (meer)