9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The locust devours. The bird sings in the rosebush., August 14, 2009
This review is from: The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story (Hardcover)
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Kamila grew up in incredible poverty in Southern Lebanon, in the years before World War II. The book begins with Kamila and her brother Kamil chasing after her (now-remarried) father in the marketplace, where everyone knew everyone else -- for money for food. Alas, he had none (to give them) and they returned home to their mother, with nothing to eat. The incredible deprivation that she and her mother and brother were forced to endure was astonishing -- forced to steal food, or go into the now-harvested wheat fields to pick fallen wheat from the ground (while watching out for snakes), eating a breakfast of figs plucked off the tree outside the window, rolled up into the bread their mother had baked from the wheat -- their resourcefulness enabled them to survive yet another day. And thanks to the close-knit (extended and otherwise) family members in Beirut who would sometimes take them in (Kamila sleeping in a hallway of one of the houses), Kamila and her family no longer had to hunt for food. Yet although the Locust of poverty was devouring them day by day, the bird that sang in the rosebush in Kamila's heart and soul told a different story, even in the middle of terrible deprivation.
Yet, although "even the pigeons in Beirut go to school", Kamila could not. Instead, she was the beast of burden for her family (ruefully noticing that when the REAL donkeys brayed from hunger they got their share of barley-- she got...nothing).
And then.... there was the movie theatre - and for Kamila, that was the bright spot in her world -- a place to yearn for, a way of living to wish for, and a dream that bouyed her up in her worst days. She lived for the movies while she went about her painfully busy chores every day, to support the now-large and extended family.
And then.. there was the forced vow -- witnessing for her own marriage at the age of 15, without realizing what she had been duped into.
A baby having babies -- but a SHREWD woman older than her real age, Kamila did everything she could to express her displeasure at her lot in life, yet fiercely adoring her two daughters.
A young girl in love, secretly meeting with her Muhammed....while doing all she could to upset the apple cart of her forced marriage.
Kamila never learns to read or write -- yet she achieves her goals by whatever means possible, and shows a wisdom and craftiness above and beyond her years, and beyond her peers. A wicked sense of humor AND a real sense of altruism to all (including the town's beggars, who return her kindness when tragedy strikes) round out the multifacted personality of this incredible woman.
Although she is still in a heartless marriage, Kamila reaches out to the women in her neighborhood with her Coffee Club -- she takes her shy women friends to the movies and they laugh and squeal like gleeful little girls.
She divorces her first husband (and in the process of doing so loses her Coffee Club friends and many of her other friends, while drawing down much familial wrath upon her head -- does she care? Yes, a little) and marries the man she REALLY loves, leaving her little girls behind (and this tears her heart to pieces, even though she is so very happy with her Muhammed).
Widowed too soon, and now with a large family to support, and unable to sign her name on official papers, Kamila declares her official signature to be a rose and a bird, and THAT is THAT. Living on the edge, not knowing how to budget, giving her widow's inheritance money for "safekeeping" to friends who turn out to be squanderers..... Kamila STILL survives, now creating a Widow's club -- and in the process of doing so, is beginning to empower the women of her village and imbue them with some of her own survival instincts and love of beauty (including the movies!) and poetry.
Kamila survives, persists and manages to stay on her financial feet, with derring-do, humor and her wiles, even making friends of some of the bill-collectors -- wish we all had that ability today.
And through all of these trials and tribulations, the family (extended, huge and omnipresent) is always there, to support, or cause pain and vilify, to run from or run to, to comfort or give comfort to. This exacts a price on Kamila, who then finds comfort in her tranqulizing pills --- but even that shows us another side of this woman's viewpoint on life --- Kamila's philiosphy on the people who made these pills and the qualities the impart to these tranquilizers is wry and innocently beautiful.
Kamila's survival instincts bring her to do things that are in some instances censurious -- but this is survival and perhaps the reader can understand and possibly excuse some of the more drastic things Kamila did to get what she wanted. But there is a shining star that rises above all -- all through her life, Kamila's love for all the members of her family never wavers -- despite what was done to her. I am very glad that Kamila persisted in asking to have her life-story written, and that her daughter Hanan wrote such a touching and beautiful tribute to her indomitable mother.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I read it in one sitting, August 18, 2009
This review is from: The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story (Hardcover)
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This is a very emotional and engaging story about a woman who grew up with almost no control over her own life in 1920's to 50's Lebanon. While she struggles with her place as a woman in a traditional society, and in a very traditional family, she never loses her spirit, her sense of adventure or her sense of self. Importantly, this book does not seeks to denigrate the traditional culture but rather takes a sharp eye towards it.
This book is written as a first person account, but is actually the work of her own daughter struggling to come to grips with her mother's difficult story even as it becomes her own later on.
I read this book cover to cover one Saturday. In Hanan Al-Shaykh's writing, the story of a woman's everyday life, love and struggles are compelling. We understand her mother's motives completely and the story moves from that of a young girl to an old woman.
Magic.
Other books that are similar in their cultural detail, historical expanse, and work on inter-generational decisions and issues are "My Mother and the Turk" and "Middlesex".
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15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Highs and Lows, August 19, 2009
This review is from: The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story (Hardcover)
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I wish I could say that I liked this book, I really do.
Part of my problem is that Kamila spends a large chunk of the book as a terribly, terribly unsympathetic person. She's petty, selfish and cruel. Though she purports to be funny, much of her humor seems to come from sheer meanness. There's no sense of growth as a person until she's in her mid- to late-20s, at which point I'd already put the book down four or five times and struggled to pick it up again. Thankfully, she does eventually evolve beyond the little girl persona to which she clung so hard, though it takes some dramatic events to realize it. By the time of the formation of the Widows' Club, I found myself grudgingly interested in her life again.
Another problem I had, which is probably more personal than anything, is a lack of a sense of the passage of time. When reading, I like to have a definite timeline in my head, and there just wasn't one to be found. Huge swathes of time would pass without any reference; it wasn't until the ages of Kamila's two eldest daughters came up that I realized that she was in her mid-20s, rather than the late-teens that I'd been assuming. Next thing I knew, she was in her 30s, then her 50s, again established by fleeting references to the ages of other people or, once, the year in a chapter title. Perhaps most people wouldn't care, but it certainly bothers me.
On a technical level, I have to say that I loved the writing itself. Whether it's the author's original style or the translation style, I couldn't say, but I found it very easy and lovely to read. The chapters are short and more or less self-contained. There are a few footnotes to explain pertinent cultural references, but they're generally short and concise, if not necessarily always useful.
I wish I could say that I liked this book, I really do. But, for what it's worth, I didn't dislike it. Parts of it bothered me, but other parts were a delight to read. My favorite, in closing, is a brief snip of a story told shortly after Muhammad and Kamila resumed contact:
"Once a thief managed to get into our house early one morning. Maryam, as she was kneading the bread, spied him hiding behind the door. She pushed against the door as hard as she could, trying to squash him. All of a sudden she stopped pushing.
'For my sake,' she said, 'I hope you're not Muhammad.'
'No,' the thief replied. 'My name's Mustapha.'"
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My mother was a phenomenon to all those who knew her. She lived her hard life in a peculiar comic way. My mother lied, stole, betrayed, abandoned her children. Loved, hated and said no to her family, to her society. She was also beaten, cursed, starved and adored. She lived in Beirut. Her flat was like a hotel lobby, a psychiatrist’s couch, a stage. Young and old gathered around her as if they were in the presence of a comic guru. She took anti-depressants: "the only way to cope with her popularity," she told me once. I knew that she first took them to help ease her guilt for abandoning my sister and me. 
