Bookreporter.com - THE LOCUST AND THE BIRD by Hanan Al-Shaykh

THE LOCUST AND THE BIRD: My Mother’s Story
Hanan Al-Shaykh
Pantheon Books
Memoir
ISBN: 9780307378200

I’ve never said this about a book I’ve reviewed, but THE LOCUST AND THE BIRD is one of the best pieces of literature I’ve ever read. The writing is flawless, the story is completely captivating, and the fact that it’s all true is remarkable.

Hanan Al-Shaykh writes this heart-wrenching account of her mother Kamila in Kamila’s voice. Unlike most memoirists, Al-Shaykh is filled with mixed emotions about the protagonist, sharing --- and even hearing --- this story initially against her will. Because she was abandoned by her mother at an early age, it takes decades for her to open herself up to her mother’s plight and to learn why her mother had let her go.

This is the story of a Lebanese girl born into poverty and married at the age of 13 to her deceased aunt’s husband, 20 years her senior. Throughout (and before) this marriage, she is in love with a young man named Mohammed, but is unable to be with him because of her arranged marriage. We follow Kamila all the way from childhood to her death, seeing her struggle to find her own identity in her male-dominated world. Kamila spends her life secretly viewing movies in the theater and feeling an affinity for the heroines who are unable to be with the ones they love. Because she is illiterate, the cinema is her guide to the outside world, to possibilities and to misfortunes. She tries with all her might to keep her life a comedy, but what unfolds on the page is true dramatic tragedy, made light only by Kamila’s own sense of spirit and joviality. With class differences, secret rendezvous, political upheavals and damsels in distress, Kamila’s story is itself worthy of the big screen.

What we do have, instead of a screen, are pictures. One picture, at the back of the book, is referred to often throughout. It is of Kamila and Mohammed, with Al-Shaykh and her sister etched out of it. Naturally, Al-Shaykh grew up with this erasure breaking her heart, as if her mother wanted to deny her existence. As we read the pages, this picture comes to life. We realize its importance and significance through the pen of one of its ghosts. It’s as if we’re watching the end credits of a movie based on a true story and are being shown pictures of the actual people the actors played, reminding us that this is no fanciful fabrication.

Al-Shaykh portrays Kamila as a multidimensional heroine. She is at once benevolent and selfish, wise and naïve, and childlike and old beyond her years. She does her justice by showing all sides of her --- making her neither a villain nor a saint. Those of us who have grown up with even a hint of poverty can understand her obsession with material possessions, which give her not only the feeling of social standing but something that is hers in a world where she owns nothing --- not even her own children, or herself. It will also naturally resonate with any of us who have lost a parent at an early age --- either through abandonment, remarriage, or any other means by which children do not understand their parents’ separation from them.

For all of us, this story can be one of healing --- of seeing our parents for the children they once were and for the obstacles they had to overcome. Like Kamila, my father spent much of his life lying in order to protect himself. My heart goes out to Al-Shaykh for being able to hear her mother’s true story before she died.

--- Reviewed by Shannon Luders-Manuel

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