I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody

It is no coincidence that the central character of this 99-page novella is a university student in Saddam Hussein's Baghdad, who wants to write a thesis on George Orwell's "I984" only to discover that the book has been banned. Though set in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, the action of the novel takes place in a world that is notably Orwellian. Crowds are forcefully gathered to show support for the "Father-Leader" and his ongoing military efforts against "the enemy." The slightest deviations from strictly enforced rules of conduct are harshly dealt with by the police, and freedom of expression is severely limited. Meanwhile, the government spies on its own citizens, the leader's cronies are appointed to high-level positions, and his son acquires his own football team with hand-picked players from all the other teams in the country. The central character, an aspiring young poet, finds that his efforts to write anything remotely critical of the regime land him in prison, where he is subject to physical and psychological abuse, humiliated, and dehumanized. The book is a manuscript he has left behind, recording his memories, dreams, hallucinations, and experiences as a prisoner. Among his memories is a budding love affair with a young woman. There are a few moments of pleasure seized from that relationship, but his story is that of countless young people whose hopes have been crushed by totalitarian regimes. The "rhapsody" of the title is ironic. The intense feelings portrayed are of anger, frustration, and despair.

I'jaam is completely different than anything I've ever read. I rarely give books, even good books such a large number of snaps. Several times throughout the book I was horrified, others I was drawn into love, and throughout the entire book a common theme of fear and terror is dreadfully looming. If I'jaam doesn't smack you in the face to say wake up! it is already too late for you, blood has left your veins cold. I had to try my hardest and not underline the entire text! It was that good. I'jaam is a novel, but Sinan Antoon insightfully writes this masterpiece as a manuscript that was found in the an inventory of the general security headquarters located in Central Baghdad. The writings are of the life of a young man and an educated prisoner all in one. His thoughts are so segmented that you see the disjointedness he must feel, which is in every way spawned through fear, heartless acts, and a lack of freedom. He goes back and forth between what happened, what is happening and what is in every bit too horrible to ever imagine happening to any human being.The novel is set in a time where The Leader (Saddam) is in power, a time when life is full of fear and complete inconsistency. Even though suffering and fear are the themes throughout, there is also love, family, education and life to show that all dreams are not lost, even if they are extremely hidden, and held close to oneself. The will to live life is the hardest to snuff, when there is even an ounce of hope and Antoon shows hope in this novel again and again, in a real way that is never false and always just right. Feel the outcry of humanity and read this novel, I'jaam by Sinan Antoon. I am changed, and my outlook is forever different because of this one all too short novel. Below are some quotes that were just craziness to leave off, wet your tongue on this and get your hands on the book! " We have been taught to call these frequent events "revolutions," when they are actually scars on our history. A bunch of sadists get sunstroke and declare themselves saviors. Then they begin to torture people and ride them like mules, especially after they discover that this is easier, and perhaps more pleasurable, than fulfilling their promises. Later, another group will come along to dispose the first, brining with them longer whips and chains of a more economic metal. A sadistic circle forever strangling us" (p. 11). "Hey! What are you doing here? It's forbidden!" "Forbidden" was the most often-used word in the country, especially among those who enjoyed a bit of power, or imagined that they did" (p. 56). "The family, as an institution, is stronger than all the armies of the world" (p. 57). " A simple idea came to me at that moment: isn't freedom the most beautiful feeling in the whole world? Simple, trivial, everyday freedom. I didn't even allow the "No Walking" sign stabbing the grass to spoil my mood" (p.93).

I'jaam's lucid flashbacks and hallucinatory passages written during narrator Furat's Iraqi imprisonment reminds me of similar political or existential novels The Stranger and The Plague. There is even something about I'jaam to recall the less mature Stephen King novella, The Long Walk, and the more artificially constructed, e-less novel from Georges Perec, A Void. But while those books had much looser ties - if any - to a kind of truth, it is not difficult to find the reality that motives the surreality of I'jaam: the Orwellian-like regime of Saddam Hussein. As a novel, I'jaam is beautifully done: believable in its premise; effective as a written artifice; reluctant to use heavy-handedness and anger when its portrayal of soft tragedies, and a lost romance, bring Furat's imprisonment a readier display of human endurance, justification, and regret. This novel, like the era it captures, needs to be elevated into broader view.

I'jaam: an Iraqi Rhapsody, by Sinan Antoon, is one of the two current works of fiction set in totalitarian Islam that I recommend without qualification. The other is In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar. Kafka and Solzhenitsyn gave us the classics of living in European Police States. Antoon and Matar give us an artistic hint of such life in two secular Arab states: Khadafi's Libya and Hussein's Iraq. I'jaam is the most brilliantly artistic, ranking easliy with the best of Kafka and Solzhenitsyn. Set in Hussein's Bagdad in perhaps 1982,it is filled with ambiguity -- an imaginary prison memoir. Written ostensibly from a mixture of memory and nightmare, we are jerked from the prison isolation cell to the dreams of events and loves before imprisonment. In one paragraph we are with his grandmother, or his co-ed university friend, and suddenly we are back in the terror of the isolation cell. Imprisoned for who knows what? He doesn't know. His condition is not unlike the condition of hundred or thousands of Iraqi's currently incarcerated as a result of the Iraq War, and so it has real current relevance. The central conceit of the novel is the ambiguity inherent in the written Arabic language. Certain of the letters require dots (I'jaam) or the word cannot be understood -- it may have any one of several meanings. This fictional prison document was written without the dots, which were inserted by a government functionary. Antoon has built from those beginnings a masterpiece of the imagination. Lionel Youst

Antoon's novel is an incredibly well wrought study of imprisonment, empathy and the experience and power of writing; its construction is very clever indeed, and one puts it down (reluctantly) feeling shaken and bewildered, impelled to act and desirous of leading a life more immediate and brave.