Customer Reviews

The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story

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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.

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".

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.'"

For much of her life Hanan felt resentment towards her mother, Kamila, who abandoned the family when Hanan was a young girl. Hanan does not come to Kamila when she marries, does not think of her when her own children are born. Later in life the two reconcile, and Kamila asks Hanan repeatedly to write her (Kamila's) life story. The Locust and the Bird primarily tells Kamila's life story, from Kamila's perspective. It begins with the abandonment of Kamila by her own father, forcing herself, as well as her mother and brother, to scavenge for food. Destitute, the family moves in with relatives, leading Kamila be forcibly (while kicking, screaming, tearing at clothes, and running away repeatedly) married to her sister's widower when she is only thirteen. Kamila becomes pregnant immediately, to the horror of the doctor present at the delivery. Kamlia is independent and rebellious, and was already head over heels for a sophisticated young man when she was forced to marry. Kamila must determine whether she will take her chance for happiness with her young man, even though it means scandal for the family and being forced to leave her daughters behind, as she is considered an unfit mother.

I found this book to be very enjoyable. It presents a woman who is unique and who's story is interesting and engaging. Although Kamila is not perfect, it is fascinating to read about her struggles and her relationship with her daughters. The only thing I disliked was starting with a section from the author herself (Kamila's daughter), instead of jumping right in with Kamila. The author also provides the last portion of the story, which has a better fit.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book--so much so that I read it in one sitting, that's how good it was.

Kamila, the protagonist, grows up poor in a Southern Lebanese village. Her mother, desperate to make ends meet, picks up and moves to Beirut to stay with her kin--a move that proves pivotal in Kamila's story. Ricocheting from one heartbreaking tragedy to another, Kamila finds solace in a forbidden love and Egyptian films starring Mohammed Abdel Wahab. She is, in effect, Juliet who is separated from her Romeo by traditions and duty, learning how to behave and think from the deceptive realities of movies. She has a keen sense of survival that renders her at times unsympathetic, but most importantly, a self-preservationist. Defying religion, society and expectations, Kamila lived out her choices only to find regret tormenting her in her autumn years.

What breaks my heart and what makes this story relevant and universal is that Kamila's story is the reality of so many women and some men living today in patriarchal, religious societies. In some respect, Lebanon of 1934 is eerily similar to Saudi Arabia of 2009. Kamila's story, told beautifully by her daughter, is a window into the world of those tormented souls who carry on happily yet their hearts are heavy with despair and their spirits are acquiescent to defeat.

It's a fascinating and a depressing world, all in the same measure. Peak in, it's guaranteed to move you one way or another.

Born poor in the 1930s in Lebanon, Kamila became an unwitting bride to a man more than twice her age at 13 and a mother by 15. Her life story is so much stranger than fiction, and the enormous love and affection expressed by her author/daughter who penned this memoir is a tribute to this vibrant woman's triumph over adversity.

That said, the skill with which her life is chronicled therein is uneven. Over half the book covers her childhood and the years of her first marriage and reads like the gum-chewing, movie-going, living lie of a teen-aged bride. Oh right, that's what she was, and that sobering thought kept this reader plowing on.

The amazing part of this real-life tale shines through in the last third as her irrepressible spirit charms her family, her friends, and her neighbors. Her later years pass in far too few sentences as her children, many of whom she raised on her own, scatter across the globe, and this lovely but illiterate woman hops from war-torn Beirut to Kuwait and America and back. I wish we knew more about those years.

All in all, a satisfying and illuminating read, and a fitting eulogy from Hanan Al-Shaykh to her mom.

Hanan Al-Shaykh, the author of this book, is one of the most important Middle Eastern female writers working today. Her novels focus on characterizations of and stories about Middle Eastern women and how their conservative culture, religion and the chaos that has resulted from wars in the area have shaped them.

The book is a biography of Hanan's mother Kamila that is written in the first person with Kamila as narrator. The book will stir deep emotions in every woman whose relationship with her mother contained contradictory features. It is about a Middle Eastern woman, to be sure, but it is also more universal; I recognized and better understood many things about my own mother as I read it. I laughed and I cried, and I got indignant not just with an archaic religious and social system but sometimes with Kamila herself. But in the end, I forgave the cunning, petty and selfish parts of the central character, because this was a woman who was had to fight for herself in a marriage that was forced on her. She was passionate, she was articulate; she was illiterate, though not by choice.

You will feel the hunger and fear when you read her words about her life in a small Lebanese village after being abandoned by her father. Kamila and her brother then moved with their mother to live with Kamila's half-sister Manifa and her husband Abu-Hussein in Beirut. Kamila's other half brother Ibrahim and his wife lived in a small house next door. At the age of nine, Kamila was forced to go to work for Abu-Hussein even though she desperately wanted to go to school. At the age of eleven, after Abu-Hussein's wife dies, she was promised in marriage to him because he needed someone to care for his four children. At the age of thirteen, she met Muhammad and fell in love with him. Shortly after her first menstrual period she was fitted with a white wedding dress. When she threw a tantrum because she did not want the marriage, she was beaten by Ibrahim. Despite fighting by throwing up many obstacles and making extravagant demands, Kamila was not able to deter Anu-Hussein. Forced to marry, she was raped by him on her wedding night, and became pregnant at the age of fourteen.

This much of the story takes up about ninety-five pages. The balance of the book explains how Kamila managed to survive her marriage without turning into a lunatic. She loved the movies and learned about the world from their newsreels. She listened to songs on the radio, organized coffee mornings with friends, sneaked out of the house for excursions to forbidden locales, and eventually, began a long lasting affair with her original sweetheart Muhammad that ended when she got a divorce and married him. In doing so, she lost custody of the two daughters she had with Abu-Hussein (one of them is the author of this book). In the ten years she was married to Muhammad she had five more children, and would have had more had she not aborted some of her pregnancies by jumping off tables and taking large amounts of aspirin. Tragically, Muhammad was killed in a car accident just ten years after they were married. Kamila was not even forty years old.

Kamila then had to use all her cunning to survive. When her inheritance was squandered by relatives, she dodged her creditors, took out loans she could not pay back for school expenses for her children, struggled to put food on the table. She founded a Widows Club that eventually included widows and unmarried women who felt they were a burden to their families. She remained aloof from men because none of them could take the place of Muhammad in her heart. And eventually, she reconciled with her daughters from her first marriage, in particular Hanan, who became the writer of this and other books. I found the description of the reconciliation very moving, since Hanan had described at the beginning of the book her bewilderment and hurt as a little girl because of her mother's behavior.

Kamila is not a "heroine" of the type we are accustomed to seeing in Western literature. She is not the fantasized, poverty-stricken yet noble woman who overcomes all in the face of adversity and emerges looking like some kind of angel. Poverty and oppression do not create angelic and unselfish human beings. But Kamila is a heroine for all that, for daring to fight for the marriage and the life she wanted in an oppressive culture, for raising her children even when she felt incapable of completing that task and for building a life for herself after Muhammad's death. I liked and respected her very much by the end of the book, and I applaud Hanan Al-Shaykh's courage and honesty for letting Kamila be as she was. I strongly recommend this work.

Hanan al-Shaykh is arguably the finest Arab novelist writing today. Although she writes in Arabic, her books have typically been beautifully translated. This one is no exception. Nor is this book an exception from her other books in that it provides the reader an opportunity to feel and vicariously experience Arab society and culture. Her novel "Wild Thorns" offered readers the opportunity to experience Israel's horrendous occupation of Palestine. Her "Story of Zahra" provided a window into the Lebanese civil war, as well as the biases and sexism of Lebanese society. The Locust and the Bird is the story of her illiterate mother, who left home when Hanan was seven years old. For years, her mother insisted that her daughter the novelist write her story. FInally, Hanan did, and did so to the benefit of readers. This is not just the story of a daughter's estranged mother, but the chronicle of how Lebanese society changed over the course of the Twentieth Century. A first rate piece of work.

Title The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story
Author Hanan Al-Shaykh
Rating ****
Tags non-fiction, women, lebanon, family


Hanan Al-Shaykh is a Lebanese woman who has written several successful novels. In this book she tells the story of her mother, and, in the preface, herself. Her mother abandoned Hanan and her sister to marry another man, and Hanan was so hurt by it she had little to do with her mother, Kamila, for many years. Once adult and with children of her own she reconnected with her mother and agreed to tell Kamila's life story.

It is an amazing tale. Kamila grew up in the 30s and 40s. She was abandoned herself by her father, who paid no child support for her and her brother. They often came close to starvation, sometimes living on what was left after harvesting in the wheat fields nearby. At age eleven, she was betrothed to the widower of her half-sister, though she did not at the time realize that was the meaning of the event. At age fourteen, she fell in love with a young man named Mohammed, but against her will her family married her to her betrothed. She was a mother first at age fifteen, then three years after had Hanan. Meanwhile, she saw Mohammed as often as possible (amazingly often, actually). Their affair lasted through the years of Kamila's first marriage, and Mohammed came close to suicide at times over how much he wanted Kamila as his wife. Finally they approached Kamila's husband and she was divorced and married Mohammed. They rapidly had five children.

The book continues the tale of Kamila's life until her death at an advanced age. Throughout, we are seduced by her charm. In many ways she is superficial and selfish, but she is one of those people who is vibrantly alive no matter what circumstances life throws at her, and who has an incredible core strength, and a great deal of love for her family and others.

The book is well-written, but more, provides us with a picture of a time and place not well known to most Americans.

Recommended.





Publication Pantheon (2009), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 320 pages
Publication date 2009
ISBN 0307378209 / 9780307378200

Such a fascinating story is told in these pages, one can hardly believe it's biographical! Hanan Al-Shayk beautifully records her illiterate mother's memoirs, a potent tribute to mothers. Kamila's story begins when she is a young girl in rural southern Lebanon. Later, she is married to a much older man, but harbors a strong,romantic love for a young man named Muhammed. Her strength of will carries her through to divorce her husband, anger her family and go against tradition - and be with the man she loves. Her love for the cinema is how she learns about the world and herself. Though she never learns to read or write, she harbors a talent for words and descriptions, that the author brings through to us from her mother's retellings of the stories into these pages. Kamila is an incredible, sassy woman and it was a joy to get to know her through this book. This book was, to use a hackneyed phrase, a real page-turner!