This memoir tells the tale of an unusual tour for a specific purpose, to follow the path of Mennonites who left Europe to escape conscription into the army since the Mennonites are pacifists. The author’s own life is unusual. Her mother was a Swiss Mennonite missionary to Somalia. Her Muslim Somali father taught the Mennonite missionaries Swahili. The two met and married. Samatar grew up and lives as a Mennonite. She teaches African and Arabic literature at James Madison Un. She is most famous for her fantasy novels and short stories which is how I discovered her writing.
In the late 19th century a group of German speaking Mennonites left Russia for Central Asia where their leader believed Christ would return. They suffered many hardships, rejection, abuse, but finally found a place that welcomed them in the Muslim Khanate of Khiva in what is now Uzbekistan. There they built a white church which the locals called Ak Metchet, the White Mosque. Their village lasted 50 years.
If you go online, you can find tours today that follow the route of these Mennonite travelers, trace their route. This book details Samatar’s experiences on the tour, the tour guides, the food, the architecture, the culture and the history: a 15th century astronomer king, the first Uzbek photographer, Mennonite martyrs. She also discusses her own unique upbringing, local beliefs and culture, how people develop their own personal identity, and the surprising interconnections people sometimes discover.
Shafak is a popular Turkish writer. One of my all time favorite books is her novel about the life of Rumi.
“Three Daughters of Eve” takes place one evening in Istanbul in 2016. Peri, one of the daughters from the title, is on her way to a fancy party when a thief snatches her purse out of the back seat of her car which is stalled in traffic. She parks the car and chases him through back alleys. As she fights him for her purse, an old photo falls to the ground. It portrays three young women and their university professor. This photo jars her mind, takes her back to her time at Oxford University when she was a student there in 2000-2002, her childhood in Istanbul in the 1980s and 90s, and her life. She thinks back to her life with her two friends, Shirin, an adventurous Iranian young woman, and Mona, a devout Egyptian Muslim who word a headscarf out of choice. And then there is the famous professor Azur, whose class on God either makes students hate or love him and the scandal that caused Peri to return to Istanbul.
Until her daughter, who was in the car and eventually chases her mother down in the alley, sees the photo, no one, except her husband, seems to have known Peri even went to Oxford. Her daughter mentions it at the party while everyone is arguing about East and West and politics and who has the most money and how they acquired it. Peri tries to deflect questions, changes the subject, and keeps remembering her past: her parents, a father quite irreligious, her mother a devout Muslim, their endless arguments and hostility, her brothers, her childhood and her stint at Oxford.
Through the story of Peri’s life, this novel explores personal identity, East-West history and politics, the meaning of marriage and friendship.
Translated from Japanese, this short novel tells the story of a 19 year old young woman, Yayoi, who lives with a loving family–her mother, father, and brother. Yet she has a premonition that she has missed something from her childhood, forgotten something. She decides to move in with her aunt, Yukino, a gifted eccentric who sometimes awakens Yayoi in the middle of the night to eat and drink, who watches “Friday the 13th” over and over, who just throws unwanted stuff in the back yard and leaves it there among the weeds. While living in the midst of Yukino’s disordered life, Yayoi’s memories begin to resurface. When her aunt disappears, Yayoi and her brother go in search of her and learn mysteries of Yukino’s life. Later, while still searching for Yukino, Yayoi discovers the truth of her own life.
This novel was a best seller in Japan when it was first published there in 1988. It was not translated into English until 2023. Eleven other novels by this author were already available in English.
This book contains 20 fantastical and dystopian short stories. I found them fascinating with topics ranging from selkies to ogres to ghouls to jinns to witches (in this case positive ones). The settings range from US to Africa to a settlement in outer space (the story “Fallow”). Divided into two sections, Tender Bodies, Tender Landscapes, these stories address human frailty, anger, greed, extreme religions and how humans treat each other (both good and bad) and what might occur in the future if people do not behave better. “Fallow” is a sort of handmaid’s tale where instead of being on Earth–which has been basically destroyed–a group of extreme religious folks have made a place for themselves on another planet after escaping Earth. If anyone from Earth accidentally shows up, they are in big trouble unless they become just like the people already there. Otherwise, they do not kill them–that is wrong–but just sort of let them slowly die. These stories, both brutal and lovely, display an incredible imagination.
While a lot of the world is focused on Ukraine and Israel/Gaza, since April 2023, two groups, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, have been fighting for control of Sudan. 11.1 million people are displaced and more than 17,000 killed, mostly civilians including children. Currently, for the second time since 2003, famine lurks at the door of Darfur state. Although I wrote the poem thinking about Sudan, a lot of the same conditions apply to Congo.
Amidst the denuded trees along a wide
boulevard walked a tall, dark-haired girl
carrying a large basket filled with a few
deep red pomegranates, two brown
eggs and three delicate pastries
filled with pineapple, cinnamon, and
guava, her favorite. She felt lucky.
Her mother sent her to the market, her mother
ill with ague, shivering, fevered,
jaundiced, too young to be dying, her father
killed in the endless wars which had
leveled so many cities and villages.
Men filled with the desire for revenge, for power,
never thinking how forgiveness and love could
overcome the endless devastation.
People plagued by angry men, men so
quick to condemn all not their tribe, their own,
retribution driving them week after week.
Some lay dying on the streets or dead as
the girl walked around their bodies
under the relentless, tropical sun.
Void of relief, fearful but determined, she
walked on toward the remains of her home.
Xenophobia once again stalked the streets,
young men brandishing assault rifles. Animals in the
I waited for more than a year to get this book via the library. It stayed on the best seller lists for months and months and has been translated into more than twenty languages. It is the saga of one family from 1900 to 1977. The setting is the Kerala area of India (I have been to India but not this area). It is unique compared to much of India in that Christians, Muslims, and Hindus live in relative peace with each other. Unlike the more arid parts of India, this is a place dominated by water which is a major theme in the book. Several of the main characters in the book suffer from an inherited Condition, as they refer to it. In every generation, at least one person dies from drowning.
The book begins with a 12 year old girl being married off to a 40 some year old widower. She has to travel far from her family via water. He is kind and patient but unlike her, who loves the water, he will travel many extra miles to avoid even traveling by water. He is terrified of water because he has the Condition. Eventually, she becomes the family matriarch, Big Ammachi. This is her story and the story of her descendants, the Christian community in Kerala, and the fate of one British man who remained in India after independence. It is also the story of the progress of medicine (Big Ammachi’s granddaughter is determined to become a doctor and find what causes the Condition) and how one family experiences many hardships to further future generations.
The author, Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at Stanford, details this fictional family’s history for several generations in 715 pages. It sounds daunting but I kept reading because I wanted to know what happens to all the people. At the same time, I found this to be one of the saddest books I have ever read. Due to the Condition and leprosy, for which there was no cure at the time, many people’s lives are horrendously affected. I did learn a lot about medicine and medical advances, how leprosy destroyed lives, Kerala and, much to my amazement, that many Christians in Kerala continued to follow the Hindu caste system.
A tale based on a Bengali legend about a merchant called the Gun Merchant, Bonduki Sadagar, this novel not only takes place in the mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans but also in Venice. It has nothing to do with guns but demonstrates how differences in language use among languages and translations can lead to total mistranslation. The narrator is an older, male, Bengali, rare book dealer who grew up in Kolkata but now lives in Brooklyn most of the year and goes back “home” occasionally. When he meets a distant relative by chance at a party, he finds himself enmeshed in the Gun Merchant tale and finds himself in search of a remote shrine where a king cobra lives. His adventure leads him to meet two young men and reconnect with an old friend, an Italian woman who is a famous historian.
What fascinated me most about this novel was learning all about the immense number of historical connections between the Bengali part of India and Venice especially related to trade and persons of Jewish descent. It is also filled with lessons in relationships among languages and history. For example, I learned the origin of the word ghetto. During the 17th century a part of Venice, Getto, was where their large and prosperous Jewish population was forced to live, Venice being one of few European cities where Jews were safe. Thus the word designating a part of the city became the word ghetto.
It is also a story about the risks and dangers of immigrants trying to get to Europe. I learned many Bengalis, mostly from Bangladesh, live in Venice and the numerous historical connections between the Bengali speaking areas of the world and Venice.
While I found her first book, “The Tiger’s Wife” fascinating, I remain uncertain regarding this one. First it is long, 374 pages (I do read long books); second, it tells two different stories which do not interconnect at all until the end of the book. I kept wondering, asking myself, “What?” For me at least, the story picked up about half way through and my interest greatly increased.
One storyline is the life of one homesteading family in rural Arizona in the 1850s told mostly from the viewpoint of the wife. Her husband tends to wander off for long periods of time leaving her on her own with their children. His latest adventure is not only their homestead but also owning and running the local newspaper in the nearest town. The reader also meets some rather powerful but unsavory characters who want to own all the cattle and all the land.
The second storyline deals with the men who were hired by the government to bring camels to the West and manage them, one of whose story–a real historical person–is told. His name was Ali, a Syrian cameleer, who died in 1902. He was called Hi Jolly because people in US seemed unable or unwilling to pronounce his real name correctly. This part is told from the viewpoint of another cameleer, Hi Jolly’s friend, who has a criminal history and is trying to elude the law. Camels were brought to the US by the United States Camel Corps in the 1850s. At that time few roads existed in the Southwest, water was scarce, and camels were known to be able to go long periods without water. The experiment failed so camels were left either in the hands of the individuals who rode and cared for them or left to roam wild. Some of the men, including Hi Jolly, were able to open businesses transporting goods to remote areas via camel. This book details part of that history.
In both storylines one recurring theme is the lack of water. At one point the homesteading family have no water at all. In the other storyline people hire the cameleers to take them to places not realizing that even camels need water occasionally. I find it telling that 175 years later we continue to struggle with water issues in exactly the same part of the country.
Several weeks ago, I spent a day wandering around the ancient sites where native peoples gathered over a thousand years ago.
This explains the extensive influence this place, located in the northwestern New Mexico desert, held for people from as far away as Central America. To reach this park, you have to drive on a dirt/gravel, rough road for more than 25 miles north of Crownpoint, NM. It is definitely worth the effort. However, it is impassable in rainy or snowy weather. The rangers who care for the park live there.
One of the first things you see as you get closer to the park is this rock tower, Fajada Butte.
Archeologists climbed to the top and discovered petroglyphs, “Sun Daggers”. Created between rock slabs, they align with each solstice and equinox and at these events the light projects to other sites, e.g. Pueblo Bonito. Other petroglyphs on a section of the canyon wall represent a supernova that occurred in 1054 CE.
The following depicts an overview of the site as it would have been in the past. In the 1940s part of the wall of rock behind the site collapsed onto it and destroyed some of the buildings.
Here is how it looks today. Many of the doors and windows align with astronomical events, e.g. solstices, the two equinox, and astronomical events that occur only every 17 years.
All sites here contain many kivas, many of which are very large. It is speculated that these were used for various sorts of ceremonies, including religious events.
In this view you can see how the rocks that fell from the cliff have destroyed parts of the structures.
Many of the buildings were several stories high. In their heyday, they did not look like this. They were covered with something like stucco and painted white. What an impressive site they must have been–large white structures in the middle of the brown desert. Archeologists think few people lived here. It was a place for gathering, for ceremonies, for trade, for people from long distances to meet.
Across from Pueblo Bonito is the largest kiva found in the area.
Behind the bars on the far side of the photo is an area that was used for ceremonial dancers to don their costumes. At the bottom you can see a depression with a small door. Before centuries of sand filled it in, this place would have be large enough for the ceremonial dancers to enter through it.
If you follow a trail along the cliff from Pueblo Bonito, you will find another area built at different times hundreds of years ago.
Another large kiva and many smaller ones are located at this site, including this famous long wall built at two different times.
The following shows where at some point the wall stopped, then later it was continued using somewhat different building material and techniques.
The top photo is considered the newer part of the wall.
The wood used for tops of windows and doors was brought from forests hundreds of miles away. The desert air has enable it to be preserved.
When you walk the trails, you see wild flowers and native plants. This is desert rhubarb and it is edible.
While these are photos of the more impressive structures at Chaco Canyon, more than two hundred ceremonial and meeting sites can be found in this area of NM and AZ.
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