The Situe Stories

Frances Noble's ^The Situe Stories" is a gem. "Situe" is "grandmother" in Arabic, but you don't have to be either a grandmother or Arabic to find yourself captured by the vital, unusual characters, of both sexes and all ages, in these poignant, humorous, perfectly-written, incredibly appealing stories. The eleven stories, each a jewel, accumulate almost magically into what is almost a novel. It would make a good movie. It is an insightful and compassionate view of events wondrous, sad, funny, wry,and uniquely "ethnic" in the lives of a Christian Arabic family over nearly a century, told as fiction but picturing many of the author's relatives whom she knew or heard about as a child. We follow them as they move from "the old country" (Syria and Lebanon) in the late nineteenth century to Los Angeles and the twentieth century, indeed to our own decade. Hasna, inspired by the author's grandmother, is the main character in the beginning and concluding stories and appears also in some of the others. We see her first as an infant, then in young and middle life, and in old age. In her native country, when as a baby Hasna falls ill of a raging fever, she loses all her hair, and her mother "hid the black curls in a clean muslin cloth in the bottom of a dresser by the window." Hasna remains bald until she is a young woman, and when the hair grows in, it is blonde--in a culture where everyone else has dark hair. My favorite views of Hasna are as a young woman, her blonde tresses in the wind as she whirls over the Arabian countryside on her golden stallion, a gift from brothers who have prospered in America. And when Hasna herself goes to the new world, she takes the horse with her on the ship, "scooping the horse manure and tossing it into the ocean with abandon." Later we see Hasna providing a hiding place to her granddaughter's war-protesting young lover. The police search the house but do not find Rosemary and Dominic snugly hidden and having sex in the potato cellar, its door concealed under Hasna's kitchen linoleum. Frances Noble has a gift for sketching with a quick pen these memorable personalities, with their individualities and foibles, and letting us know not just what the characters do but what is in their minds and how they think and feel. I won't spoil the stories by telling too much, but I can't resist mentioning a couple more of my favorites. There is Jimmy, paralyzed from the waist down, confined to a hospital bed in the home of his sister and brother-in-law, who sets up a successful bookie business among fellow-Syrians, answering the telephone with a code word, Arabic "burakee," meaning "blessings." There is Genevieve who works as a "heeler" in a shoe factory and keeps secret her marriage to Sal (because Sal is Italian). You will have to read the book to find out how she eventually breaks the news to her family. Certain traits mark many of the family members--vigor, equanimity, and an ever-ready joy in the sensuous: the s

Frances Khirallah Noble has written a fine collection of short fiction that hungrily demands to be enjoyed with food. Her colorful descriptions of life and the passing of time in a family over several generations and two continents inspires laughter, a tear and a desire to call mom. Though there are some moments when her prose tastes a little too much like a Hollywood film, each course here is served with enough flavor to satisfy the stingiest connoisseur of good writing. What is most impressive about this collection is the way Khirallah Noble has managed to isolate small, physical, vivid moments and turn them into pivotal pieces of the lives of each character. Her smart and often charming sense of humor is a garnish; her insight into the interior lives of such rich characters makes The Situe Stories a memorable feast indeed.