By Mohammed Khaled
 

The fact that the Gardens of Despair did not hit the shelves of bookstores for almost two years after publication may explain the very limited space it occupied in Arabic press but having talked to the novelist, who lives now in Malta, feel the answer is not that simple. Bishtawi told me he was a bit unnerved when a well known Lebanese literary critic told him she couldn't finish reading the novel because what she read up to the point where she decided to stop made her almost ill. The experience of the heroine, Rasha, was very similar to her own, and the ending was too disturbing to contemplate on a personal level.

With close to one in 10 women in the Arab World suffering from a variety of causes that stand between them and motherhood, the novelist believes it is understandable that some women who are victims of these causes may find the novel somewhat traumatising. It's my understanding that an early sounding of the novel involving some 50 women produced a similar reaction.

It may be because of this, and no doubt other reasons, that the novelist touched on Gardens of Despair during several interviews very briefly. The impression given is that he would prefer the novel to find its way to readers "quietly" but he admits that sales have not been as "decent" as with the other two novels although they are sold in book fairs as a trilogy. It is also said, but not confirmed by the novelist, that a well-known literary critic told him he wants to write about the novel but he was requested "to wait a bit".

It is possible that Bishtawi wants to "fall back" on this novel when his third history/political book is published next May (2007) with a new edition. Whatever happens in the next year or so I have no doubt that in time Gardens of Despair will be recognised as rare as the other two novels.

In Traces of a Tattoo, the theme centres around a journey from death (Hisham's wife), to life (Wissam and Aroob). If this interpretation is correct, then Gardens of Despair takes the opposite direction and moves slowly but surely from life to death. Still, those who hold this view, may not have sufficiently realised that death was not offered by the novelist as a means by itself but rather as a means to life i.e. the determination of the heroine (Rasha) to have a child despite warnings that it may cost her life.

But first things first.

After a somewhat turbulent relationship, Rasha, the daughter of an advertising executive, falls in love with Omar, a newspaper deputy editor. Brought up in a traditional family, she was expected to become pregnant right away after her marriage. However, years pass in hope, prayer and medical consultations without a positive result. Pushed by society, but more so by herself, to renew life, she becomes obsessed with pregnancy. The problem persists. After countless failed attempts, she becomes pregnant. Her joy is short-lived. The pregnancy was ectopic and she wouldn't agree to an urgent operation to remove embryo. Her husband does and her life is shattered again. Soon she succumbs to new fears and deep depression that made her suicidal.

Omar, her husband, was content to have Rasha for himself for a while, and he was in no hurry to have children. Rasha had tried successfully at the beginning to conceal her worries but as her obsession to become pregnant intensified, her behaviour changed, and with it her feelings towards him. This is when she tells him: "I want to create life and I can't think of anything else. Nothing is more important, including you." (P 79)

 Even without uttering a word about pregnancy and motherhood, she began to feel his mere presence was a constant reminder of her failure to become a mother. If she was going to be destroyed by her failure, this must happen in secret without him being around to see her suffering. For that to happen, her marriage must be destroyed first, and her husband must be out of her life. One afternoon he returns home and is shocked at what he saw. Rasha was no where to be seen:

"He moved his eyes from one door to the other and headed for the bedroom. He stopped next to the bed and looked around. There was nothing unusual. He turned and made to go out but he suddenly felt a mysterious apprehension that sent a tremor down his neck and rumbled violently as it travelled faster down his spine. He looked around again. He stepped forward to open the wardrobe thinking Rasha may be hiding there as she did in jest once, but something moved above him. He panicked and looked up. She was there sitting silently above the wardrobe with her hands on her knees. Keeping her body still, she moved her eyes and looked at him briefly, then returned to her previous position. She neither smiled nor uttered a word. He left her. He sat down and tried to convince himself everything is all right. He couldn't, not for long, not with the deep apprehension whipping his mind. He held his breath and listened. The silence was complete. The apprehension turned to fear. He thought of something he can say to haul her out of her silence. Most suggestions were inappropriate. He went back and asked her how did she manage to climb on the wardrobe.

"Climbing is easy," she said with a gentle laugh as if thanking him for interrupting her loneliness, "but getting down is a BIG PROBLEM."

He helped down then asked her what she was thinking about.

"Everything," she said.

"Shopping, pupils, your mum, your-"

"All this and others."

He wanted to ask her if she was thinking of death but the word flipped itself before being uttered and came out "life".

"Life...and other things."

She was positive that he was going to ask her if she was thinking about death. Puzzled, she asked: "Where do souls go when people die?"

He laughed. He forced himself and laughed. "I'm not dead yet so I don't know."

"If we don't know while alive, maybe we'll know when we're dead." (P 69)

For Rasha the only option she was willing to think of is getting pregnant. As time passed she began to think the main obstacle in achieving her dream was Omar. By now Omar was at the receiving end of her torment and frustration. As far as he was concerned, the options left to contemplate were all catastrophic. She may kill herself, lose her sanity, have another life-threatening ectpic pregnancy or leave him. In one scene they were about to make love when he discovered by accident that she wasn't taking contraceptives:

 "If you want to kill yourself, then do it but without my help. I won't touch you again unless you take these pills."

He threw the strip pf pills on the bed-side table and went round the bed to leave but she picked the strip and jumped out of bed. Suddenly she was confronting him. "You take them," she screamed, and threw the strip at him. "What is this? I am killing myself to get pregnant and you want me to take contraceptives to kill my chance of having a baby? What irony is this? What catastrophe? What life?" (P80).

The only hope left to them was to go to England to try for a baby. The new set of financial, emotional, social and medical problems they faced were confronted and dealt with successfully, and following a third in vitro attempt, she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a healthy boy. But just when her English consultant begins to think she's likely to survive the birth of her son, complications arise and she suffers a massive internal bleeding that ends her life.

In what is probably one of the saddest scene in Arabic fiction, Omar is ushered into the emergency section in a central London hospital to give his dead wife a final farewell:

"She bid him farewell, stopped and returned to him and bid him farewell a second time. She bid their days together farewell and left to fate the days when she won't be with him, nor him with her. Now, she wants to be alone. He could take her but she doesn't want to go and she'll beg him somehow not to take her away. She enjoyed his company in her brief moments of consciousness and filled her eyes with him. What remained is memory and she wants this memory to remain beautiful until the end of time-no waiting, no sadness, no tears and no despair. She was tired of life and she wants to rest somewhere outside the time she lived in during her life. That's all. "For as along as my body is warm, stay with me" she would have said if she could. "For as long as the redness of my cheeks remain, stay with me. For as long as the tears flow, yours and mine, stay with me. Stay with me, then tell me you love me and go. Like Amru, I too feel that the sky is compacting the earth and I'm breathing through the eye of a needle. I can stay no longer. Love, you stay and live the life I couldn't live. I'll pray to God always to lighten your pain; I'll cry with you and cry for you as much and as long as I can, and I'll wait. I'll wait for you, always. Now, my love, I'll leave you to the world so do tell me when we meet again how you found it."

"Again and again she would tell him that she loved him but only as long as she can whisper. Later, she would want to rest her head, turn her face to the wall and repeat the words she's expected to utter when they come to her so she may say them confidently and without hesitation: "I'm coming back to You so let Heavens open and let the Earth heave. I'm coming back so open your arms and take your child. I tremble with longing not of fear so open your arms for me and take me back for now I'm coming to you." Chapter 24 (PP 256-267)

Thus ends the story of Rasha's journey from life to death but not the novel itself. In a way, Rasha didn't die alone. Omar also died with her in all but body. The remaining 90 pages of the novel is the story of Omar stumbling along the road to life again. To succeed, he needed help. Rasha wasn't there but her son, Sami, was. Omar, however, blames little Sami for the death of his mum. He rejects him and leaves him in the care of Rasha's mother and sister. Their efforts to exhort him into accepting Sami fail until Omar realises that the only way for Rasha to be with them again in spirit is through her son:

 "Do you know what happened afterwards," Omar whispered to his son. "The little one couldn't speak. He blinked repeatedly and tried to catch the chain again. His father lowered his neck so he might hold it but Sami couldn't. He placed it in his little hand. He played with it for a few seconds but he was tired. He closed his eyes but opened them wide suddenly and looked above. It wasn't an introduction look. They were already introduced. It was to ask him for a favour. It was a look immersed in a unique love unlike any other. A look by someone who wants to sleep but wouldn't unless he's promised that when he opens his eyes again, the face looking at him now will be looking at him then."

"Sleep," Omar whispered. "I'll always be with you so don't be afraid from now on."  He told him that he'll be waiting for him when he wakes up; that he'll go nowhere because in him he'll be also waiting for her.