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A Novel of Emotional Programming and
Meeting
of East and West
Reviewed by Ahmed Zainuddin
A modern novel would lose its glitter if it were to be stripped down
to its narrative trunk and have its branches and leaves cut and
trimmed. Based on a reading strategy and a memory mechanism prune to
the act of subtraction and deduction as well as the assumption that
a narrative's significance and demonstrative lie, in the final
analysis, in its narrative and nucleus, this habit of cutting and
trimming amounts to a passive treatment of a novel which would
otherwise build its aesthetical structure and effectiveness on what
is beyond the basics, adopts several forms of narration and
expression, steers in different, symbolism-rich directions, cruises
through the barriers separating the real from the imaginary and
breaks the monotony of places and time.
If we were to read Adel Bishtawi`s latest novel, Traces of a Tattoo
for what its narrative has to offer, we would find it a simple story
of a man and a woman reunited by a sheer act of destiny after a
quarter of a century of separation only to have their old love
revisited on his son and her daughter. But treating Traces of a
Tattoo from such a narrow perspective --without looking into the
author's narrative techniques, the way he builds and moulds its
structure and forms of fictional visualisation and his ability to
create its unmistakable internal rhythm and shape its events, its
realistic dialogues and reminiscences - is as good as denying it its
raisons d'être, intensity and distinctiveness.
Mr. Bishtawi`s Traces of a Tattoo does not exhaust its energies on a
narrative that is all too familiar. Instead, it embraces, in its
elaborate narrative structure, numerous issues of civilisation
foremost of which the Female Question. Arab novelists have
previously dealt with this issue by a zoom in on the intricate
relationship that is likely to surface when an Arab boy and a
Western girl come together. But in Traces of a Tattoo, the issue is
tackled in reverse as their relationships dealt with here are those
between second or third-generation Arab immigrants soaked in Western
traditions, behaviour and technologies on the one hand, and, on the
other, Arab women who are cultured and educated but still shackled
by the norms and traditions of their society.
In what might point to a personal experience, the author chooses
London as a point of transit for two women: Aroub and her mother,
who are on their way to the United States to celebrate the wedding
of Aroub's uncle on her mother's side. But London, by coincidence or
by the will of the author, turns into a case of test of civilisation
that is both testing and exhaustive. The time span for the test is a
period of three or four days that the two travellers had to spend at
the house of their Arab hosts after having their passports stolen
while shopping in a public place. In the process, the psychological
make-up of the two women is changed while the men, Hisham, the old
lover of Aroub's mom, and his son, Wissam, the soon-to-be lover of
Aroub, had their lives turned upside down.
During this short span of temporary cohabitation, the author weaves
a knot of interlocked relationships among his main characters and,
by resorting to a time-compression technique, turned the few days of
real time into a fictional eternity that spread over the length of
300 pages or more and transformed dispositions, thoughts and
destinies. But unless note is taken of this time-condensing and
symbolist technique, the author's lengthy narrative would only seem
digressive and superfluous. In fact, Mr. Bishtawi has a passion to
manoeuvring around the human soul, digging deeper and deeper into
the corridors of emotions and uncovering the hidden and the buried
of the psyche.
The London experience
The London experience had the main characters cover an enormous
civilisational distance, fictionally condensed into a few days, and
see their emotions, thoughts and relationships swept by changes.
Fresh from home, Aroub and her mother brought eastern warmth and
passion into a house frozen by the western robotic way of life. In
return, they were awaken by the two men who pulled them out of their
concave and forced them to listen to their heart beats and the cries
within themselves.
By the same token, the short transit between two countries and two
airports turned into an adventure through time, an experience that
is as much an issue of civilisation as it is personal. To begin
with, it uncovered how deep is the gap between the Arab woman and
her western counterpart, how different are their respective
attitudes towards the relationship between man and woman. Especially
revealing is the dialogue that takes place between Arlene, Wissam's
British girl friend, and Aroub, who claimed to be carrying Wissam's
baby. The exchange between the competing girls uncovered two
contrasting ways of thinking and practice: one, as represented by
Aroub (rather, the Arab woman whom Aroub boasts of representing), is
an attitude based on the idea of commandeering the male by
child-bearing and dedication to the house and children; while the
other, championed by Arlene, believes only in a free and equal
relationship between man and woman.
Mr. Bishtawi juxtaposed the two contrasting attitudes by bringing
the two women face to face while contesting the man each wanted. But
even when Aroub appears to have won the contest, she is in reality
deprived of freedom, tied by invisible shackles. As such, she is
like her mother: Though highly educated, both are suffering and
helpless like two miserable ringlets in a chain pulled away by a
subconscious load of oppression. In a daughter constantly tortured
by a suspicious father who suspects her, the mother sees a former
image of herself- tearful and helpless. "She looks at her daughter
looking northwards (where she left her lover Wissam) and she sees
herself. She hears her stifled cry so her father wouldn't hear her
and she hears herself in her. Is that possible?" "Wissam," she heard
her crying out at the darkness, "Listen to me wherever you are! If
my love would bring you back, my tears will."
Again, while sitting on the stairs of Wissam's house in London,
Aroub is gripped by a gust of pleasure and starts folding suppressed
desires, but she dares not show her desire nor finds herself able to
express them. Not even the simplest of gestures is revealed for fear
of scandal and shame. By contrast, Arlene is free, completely free,
and treats herself and her male partner as equals: She does not shy
away from revealing her desires in public. In his lengthy focus on
Aroub's attempt to subdue her fantasies and crawl back into her
shell in the presence of Wissam, the author reveals the deepest
layers of suppression and fear of the forbidden within the Arab
woman.
Usurped femininity
But having exposed her shortcomings, the author prepares Aroub for a
major transformation The London trip with all its experiences pushes
Aroub into a psychological labour during which she realises the
extent of her frustration as a woman. Consequently, she returns home
determined to set in motion a process of self fulfilment and the
restoration of her long usurped femininity, even if the cost was to
bear the torturous treatment of a suspicious father who, suspecting
her of having lost her virginity and suspecting her mother of having
been unfaithful, rampaged through their personal effects and
clothes. "He searched thoroughly and was joined by his fears mind,
heart and jealousy." He even insisted on keeping his suspicions
despite ample refutations. Jealousy, as described by Wissam, is like
a virus that needs a suitable environment to thrive and multiply,
and there is no environment better than our eastern paternal
environment for this virus to survive and multiply.
Like Aroub, Wissam too is transformed. He has lived in a western
society, pursued his education at the best of universities and took
the most up-to-date training of digital film production. In Aroub he
finds the girl he was looking for. Following a misunderstanding
arising from their divergent perspectives, he decides to put himself
at risk in order to save her from the chronic clutches of parental
oppression.
With Aroub back in her house and country and Wissam waiting in
London, it is amusing to see the novel using such modern gadgets as
the computer and the Internet to help the young lovers keep in
contact. In the process, help save the girl. The Internet provides
the two lovers with a modern tool to work out a strategy and program
their emotions. The computer replaces detectives by locating the
lost passports through a mathematical formula worked out by Wissam.
We may assume that the author drew on his own experience to explain
that the computer technology is capable of liberating and serving
mankind, creating, on top of the known civilisations, a new global
generation capable of building bridges as never before. "Wissam
looked at his watch. Time has not crept so slowly for a so long -
not since the days of St. Stephen's Hospital (where his mother
died). Aroub is still asleep so he will wait further and think
another time. But why should he think again? What is important in
the nature of things that attract this person to that and that to
the other? It is not at all important any more. A global gate is
opened and it is no longer important who marries whom. What is
important in the place they originally came from or their colour,
age and civilisation? Theirs is a global generation forming on the
known civilisations and extending bridges that were never extended
before."
The first to benefit would be the Arab girl who would use the new
technology to plot out a new personality unfettered by oppression
and subjugation. If what we have assumed is legitimate, we,
nevertheless, do not know how could mathematical formulae replace
mythological symbols, how could science supersede ideology in our
minds so smoothly that it would not upset our beliefs and all that
we take for granted, and how could the computer programs control our
norms and traditions?
Fluid movement
To Sum up, Traces of a Tattoo unravels in quasi-chronological
progression but with varying levels of narration and a fluid
movement that is tense at times but mostly marked by a fascination
with words that keep coming in the form of dialogues, descriptions
and monologues. In this narrative context, the certain is interwoven
with the probable, the factual with the fanciful, the narrator's
voice with those of his characters. The novel reaches a high point
when the author invokes the story of Shehrazade, the heroine of the
One Thousand and One Nights. In doing so, the he directs the
reader's attention to the greater demonstration of the injustice
inflicted upon Arab and eastern woman, the historic and mythological
demonstration that is buried in the common subconscious of the Arab
male as represented in this work of heritage which still receives
the renewed and repeated queries of the novelists.
What gives Traces of a Tattoo its uniqueness and distinctiveness is
that, while tackling a familiar topic, it opens up to a wide host of
sensory details, reminiscences, mythological visualisations, poetry
and innate actions that, combined, bring the novel back to its
indirect signals and the questions about existence, life and death
that resonate in the subconscious of the main character, the
bereaved Hisham (whose British wife had died.)
Traces of a Tattoo earns one of its distinguished qualities from its
scrupulous monitoring of its characters in their silence, speech and
movements: in its scrutiny of their reactions, their deep and
ambiguous fears, their sense of guilt and anxiety; and captures the
tribulations of emotions and records the sound of pleasure as it
crawls over, spreading numbness in both body and soul. In total, the
novel becomes a spectrum that reflects the colours of life and
existence as well as that pivotal conflict - the female conflict and
all that it entails: east versus west, technology versus
backwardness, all the dualities, the gamut of antitheses that is
ever present in the Arab author's mind.
Translated by Muhammad Khaled from the original review published
by Al Hayat Newspaper on 7 May 1998.
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