Terrorists, especially these days, are understood to be ruthless, fanatical and evil people; their motivation understood as blind hatred and rage. Viken Berberian's unnamed narrator in THE CYCLIST is a terrorist moved to violence by the injustices he perceives around him. Yet, stronger than his rage is his humanity. With sharp wit and stinging insight, Berberian's short novel allows the humanity of his terrorist to take center stage.
Berberian's terrorist is a cyclist. Cycling is his preferred method of transportation, his intended means of delivering a bomb, one of his passions. His other passions are food, his girlfriend Ghaemi, and justice, roughly in that order. The novel begins with our unlikely protagonist lying in coma after a bicycle accident. His time is spent thinking about food, his family, Ghaemi, and his terrorist organization, The Academy. The Academy is multi-ethnic and multi-national and seeks justice only through retribution and violence. Its plan is to bomb a Beirut hotel during a bicycle race, killing hundreds of civilians. And, it is, of course, our narrator who is to deliver the bomb. His plans, however, are challenged after the death of a comrade and some amazing news from Ghaemi. He must now reconsider the effectiveness of his proposed bombing and the sacrifices he is willing to make in the name of his cause.
One of the ways Berberian is successful in humanizing his narrator is through an obsession with food. For the cyclist, as for all of us, food has emotional connotations that transcend the need for sustenance. His musings on food are poetic and wonderfully descriptive. For the cyclist, food represents health, safety, and happiness; it represents the best of all the cultures found in the Middle East. The few details we can garner about his identity or past are often linked to the types of dishes he describes. The foods he craves most are the ones that connect him with his varied heritage and those that remind him of his girlfriend. Food, or descriptions of, and cravings for food are in fact the main means of emotional expression we find in the narrator. Even The Academy realizes the importance of food --- its links to memory, emotion, and culture --- and it provides its members with a chef.
We learn that the cyclist's family is loving, open-minded and multicultural. His parents represent the peaceful possibilities of the Middle East and, in fact, have overcome stereotypical prejudices to marry each other. The cyclist's idyllic childhood was shattered, however, when a bomb was dropped on his quiet village. After that tragedy, both Ghaemi and the cyclist become politically radical and are thus encouraged to join The Academy.
More of a character sketch than a plot-driven novel, THE CYCLIST is at turns angry and sweet, brutal and funny, surreal and realistic. The scene and character motivations are purposefully vague; the cyclist is undoubtedly Middle Eastern, yet he is seemingly affiliated with the Druze, Muslim, and Jewish cultures. His plans are short-sited and often selfish, and it is not until the end that he begins to think of the future. Despite its reliance on humor, THE CYCLIST is not an uplifting nor even optimistic book. Reminiscent of the type of cynical and violence-filled humor of Israeli author Etgar Keret, THE CYCLIST is at once terrifying and hilarious. It is not a defense of terrorism but instead the tale of an endearing and conflicted character that will undoubtedly remain in the mind of the reader long after finishing the novel. Berberian's first novel is highly recommendable despite a less than clear ending.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
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