Customer Reviews

My Grandfather's Tale (Fiction Series)

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This is a modest, simply styled page-turner of a novel, in which the Syrian author lets a grandmother play Sheherazade to her imagined audience, always halting each "evening's story" on the brink of a compelling narrative develop-ment. The tale the grandmother tells is that of her own grandfather, Salih, who, as a boy in the early 19th century, had come from rugged Daghestan in the Caucasus to live with his father in Ottoman Damascus. When Salih's father takes him to Makkah for the pilgrimage, he reveals to Salih the bittersweet reason why Salih's mother will never join them in Damascus. Salih spends the remainder of the book in his quest to see her again, and thereby reconnect with his Daghestani roots. For the non-Muslim, this story freshly illuminates both 19th-century Islamic life and the experience of identity in a little-known part of the Islamic world.

The storytelling method of Sheherazade (of 1,001 Nights fame) is here employed by a Syrian of Dagestani descent to tell the story of her grandfather and how he came from Dagestan to Damascus in the early 19th century. As its translator notes, the simply told novella is more of an Islamic story than it is a Syrian, or certainly Arab, story. The grandfather, Salih, is brought to live in Damascus by his father, a highly-respected elderly Dagestani mufti. There, he raised never to forget his homeland-a territory in the Caucuses adjacent to Chechnya and resisting invasion by the powerful Russian empire at the time. Salih grows up in Damascus and accorded the privilege of going on the pilgrimage to Mecca with with his father. On the trip, he learns the reason behind their exile in Damascus, and vows to return to his homeland one day to see his mother. He grows older, builds a family, and rises to prominence in Damascus, and eventually he fulfills his vow to travel to Dagestan and reunite with his mother. The book is a quick read suitable for children and is a good introduction to the little known history of Dagestan and its resistance to Russian rule. Those interested in further reading are directed to Yo'av Karny's Highlanders, an excellent book on the people and history of the Caucuses, which spends 125 pages on Dagestan. The book also provides many examples of the centrality of faith in many Muslims' lives.

As long as Ramzan Kadyrov's iron fist holds Chechnya in (relative) check, terrorism experts concerned with the Caucasus have shifted their attention to Dagestan. This book is not on their shelf, yet it deserves to be. Originally published in Syria and appearing to be a Syrian book, it reveals little about Syria. Instead it is a memoir of Dagestan.

In the nineteenth century Dagestan was in need of assistance from the Ottoman Empire if its rebellion against Russia was to succeed. An elderly mufti led a delegation to the Sublime Porte. In Istanbul they achieved everything they hoped for. The Caliph gave his blessing and a promissory letter for funds, arms, equipment and the beasts to carry it up into the mountains. For practical reasons the very generous support was to be delivered to the delegation by the Ottoman vali at the frontier nearest Dagestan. This happy outcome immediately went very wrong. The whole Dagestan delegation was arrested and banished to different corners of the Empire, widely separated from each other. So began the mufti's family life in Damascus, Syria in 1825.

The mufti's son longed for his young mother who remained behind in their Dagestan village, soon to be divorced by writ of the mufti. Not until long after his father's death, when he had become a successful Damascus merchant did he return to Dagestan and finally reunite with his mother. The descriptions of early and mid-nineteenth century village life, interaction with Russian doctors as well as soldiers and anecdotes about Shaikh Shamil preserved by the Daghestani diaspora in Syria are valuable to any scholar of the Caucasus.

An unfortunately pedestrian and plodding little novel . Most events are summarized or told about :"I was sad." "I was shocked"...no real sense of character. Some effective evocations of the hajj and of daily life, but very diasappointing overall. Yes, it's told "in the manner of 1001 Nights",sort of, but why ? The story-telling mother is completely absent as a person.