The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story

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.

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 amount

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".

At the age of 11 Kamila was told to say "You are hereby my witness" in the presence of a group of men. Kamila had no idea that she was being tricked into pledging herself in marriage to her dead sister's husband, Abu-Hussein. Kamila was in love with the scholarly and poetic Mohammed, but at 14 her marriage to "the old man" was consummated against her will and at 15 she was the mother of his child. She responded by rebelling against her husband in the same manner many teenagers rebel against their parents. Her heart and spirit would not be caged. Above all her love for Mohammed, made Abu-Hussein pale in comparison. Given their culture, Abu-Hussein was actually quite lenient and patient with Kamila. But she never became the wife of his dreams because Kamila saw only his part in the treachery. With the help and consent of her family members, he had forced himself upon her. "The Locust and the Bird" is an honest portrayal of Hanan Al-Shaykh's mother, Kamila. The fact that Hanan does not make her father a villian, gives this particular memoir a deeper level of honesty and credibility. Kamila's early hatred and resentment of Abu-Hussein is tempered by the fact that the reader senses that he has some redeeming qualities. Throughout the book I kept thinking that Al-Shaykh wanted the reader to know that there was more to Abu-Hussein and I really wanted to find out what it was. In "A Note on the Author", my question was answered. As she was raised by Abu-Hussein, she knew him to be a kind, steady, and loving man. I respect her so much for being able to tell her mother's story without trampling on her father's dignity.

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 fam