5: Enter Ghost

I picked 'Enter Ghost' by Isabella Hammad from the Women's Fiction Prize shortlist from last year, and it sat waiting for quite a long time. It follows Sonia as she returns to her homeland of Palestine after a long time living in London, reconnecting with her sister and her country. It is set in 2017 and so very much predates the current violence but as I read you feel aware all the time of the tension between the residents of the West Bank and the occupying Israeli forces. Sonia is an actor and, lacking anything particular to spend her time on, she ends up joining a theatre group staging Hamlet in Arabic. Much of the story is taken up with the relationships within the group of actors and watching them rehearse. It was a serious read, lots of literary references, that would no doubt mean more to someone familiar with the play, I often felt I was missing something more subtle. It's very much a book about identity and sense of belonging. And yet also there is also an atmosphere of weary resignation amongst the Palestinians, of acceptance of the restrictions imposed on their lives and the pointlessness of resisting them.

Couple of long quotes, the first really struck me, an incident where they pull up at a checkpoint that bought home the tension of the whole situation:

"One foreign national with an Arab name, two Palestinian citizens of Israel and one West Bank resident with a temporary permit sit in a car with yellow Israeli plates approaching a checkpoint. The line is sluggish: the soldiers are investigating every vehicle, regardless of the number-plate colour. Near the windowless tower, a shabby Israeli flag roils on the wind, looking not at all like those forlorn fraying Palestinian flags that, once illegal but now par for the course, adorn electricity pylons across Ramallah, but rather somehow eternal and careless, a mark of the ragged outposts of empire. Part of the checkpoint itself is surrounded by scaffolding, and the red plastic webbing around the base has broken down, the stick supports in the corners pointing at odd angles. A tap on the driver's window: a slender soldier bends over wearing a very large green helmet like an upside-down basket. He has blond eyelashes. A typical rigmarole of identification cards and passports ensues, conducted in Hebrew with the driver. Then the soldier points at the youngest of the men, the West Bank resident, sitting in the back. Hebrew switches to Arabic. The soldier tells him to get out of the car.

'I have a permit,' says the young man.

'He has a permit,' repeats the woman driving.

Another soldier appears on the other side of the car. He opens the rear door and orders the young man out; the threat has materialised so quickly, unspoken, that if he does not comply they will force him out. Wael gets out. The soldiers escort him into the building at the checkpoint.

As they are passing through the doorway, the blond soldier taps him on the back of the head, and Wael's shoulders flinch into an automatic hunch. It is as though the scene is being played out on a roll of film, from which this frame onward has been bleached.

I was hardly aware of my body as I thrust my door open. I only knew my vision filled with white. And now I was outside, and the morning air was cool on my face and hands. Propelled by an alien force I marched over the uneven, untended terrain that preceded the checkpoint, the rubble and trash and random horizontal blocks of concrete, towards another soldier now standing to attention with his gun ready. Dimly conscious that Mariam and Ibrahim were shouting at me from the car windows, Come back, Sonia, come back, the crucial thought swooped through my mind that the soldier might suspect I had a knife, a suspicion I knew was grounds for shoot to kill, and although my ability to pass as a foreigner might offer me some protection I nevertheless dropped my pace and lifted my arms to make clear that my hands were empty. Rage was making me vibrate. Strangely, as I neared him, the soldier turned to one side, as if to ignore me, except that his hands were on his weapon and he looked ready to use it. He was young, probably eighteen or nineteen. Perhaps he didn't know how to respond to this situation, the approach of a possibly raving woman in white linen trousers and Converse sneakers. He spoke rapidly into his walkie-talkie. Oh god, what am I doing? I thought, and then said loudly in English: 'Where have you taken my son?' The voice came from somewhere other than my mouth, somewhere further away." (p. 153-154)

It is another feature of the book that she frequently finds herself observing, as if she is not part of the scene. And lots of theatre-y language and references, and some of the 'scenes' between the characters are written in the form of a play. It is designed to make you aware of the very fine dividing line between reality and performance; how much of the time we are all playing parts. Here they are seeing the outdoor set that has been constructed for the performance for the first time, having just heard the news that a cast member has received an interrogation order. Where earlier Sonia had been outraged and forthright, here she seems to have accepted that control over her actions is limited:

"Jenan and Wael returned to their positions to complete the dialogue. Both looked rattles, particularly Jenan, which was understandable: she'd just joined us, she was feeling out our dynamic, and now not only was a new dynamic hatching but a threat had materialised of interrogation, of danger. Of dissolution, even. As far as I was concerned, if the Israelis really made an effort to stop us it would not be worth the fight. We were mere human beings, there was only so much we could do. The only person who didn't look unnerved was Mariam, who stared at her actors as though with the force of her gaze she could make them more sturdy. I had a feeling I sometimes get when I drink too much coffee, which was that while standing still, watching Jenan and Wael, another more agitated Sonia was wriggling inside my skin, trying to get out. I was thirsty as well and I needed the loo, and in this state of physical discomfort something strange happened. My viewpoint switched, and as though I were in a dream and my perspective had been breached I moved like a surveillance drone and saw our project from above, situation fragilely in time and place, this summer, this side of the wall. Accompanying this vision was a fear, almost a premonition, that it was all foretold anyway, everything had been decided in advance, we were only acting parts that had been given to us, and now some inexorable machinery was being set in motion that would sooner or later throw our efforts out into the audience, dismantle our illusions, and leave us cowering before the faceless gods of Fate and State." (p.223-224)

Seriously thinking about making some fatet betenjan.

Stay safe. Be kind. See you tomorrow.

Fourth day: Bee Movie

 Some of my favourites, the furrow bees, they are not cute and fluffy, in fact they look like tiny black flies, but they are busy doing the same job as all the others.

I watered the garden ... so of course it finally rained.

Stay safe. Be kind. See you tomorrow.

Day 3 and a half : Book Club Books

'The Gentleman from Peru' by André Aciman was our book club book in April. I am pissed that I spent my hard earned money on it. The premise must have seemed interesting since we must have voted for it at an earlier meeting but it only took a couple of pages for me to know it was going to annoy me. A group of affluent young Americans are stranded at a hotel on the Amalfi coast by a boat breakdown and they meet a fellow resident, the gentleman from Peru. The minute he rests a hand on one of the young men's shoulders and appears to cure a nagging injury I admit I developed a bad attitude to it. I hate this kind of tosh. The use of a description for the character rather than his name to create some kind of fake 'mystery' was annoying too. His magical abilities seemed many and various and were never questioned, but mostly he had contrived their presence in order to befriend one of the women, and proceeds to tell her she is the reincarnation of his lost love. He wines and dines her and takes her to places he used to go with his former love, until she begins to remember her past life. But he is old and dying and tells her that their lives are out of synch and it will be three hundred and something years before the two of them will be reincarnated and young at the same time. Bleurgh ... I notice now, looking at the book, "Readers adore the Gentleman from Peru" it claims but that nobody has put their actual names to the 'recommendations' on the cover. We did have quite an interesting discussion about the book, the young woman leading the group had plenty of questions to keep the chat going, and I love the fact that people are there for the books and have opinions they are happy to share.

Then this month's book was 'To The Dogs' by Louise Welsh, that I fortunately ordered from the library and read in pretty much one sitting. It was a crime thriller set in Glasgow about a university professor who hasn't quite managed to escape the criminal roots of his family, as he discovers when his son is arrested for drug dealing. It was fast paced and well plotted but I hate it when characters make stupid choices and behave in irrational ways. So while I'm going to go to the meeting next week I am disappointed that this was the second book in a row that I found weak and uninteresting. I am sticking it out thanks to Irena Rey, because I do love having people who want to talk about books, and hoping that there will be other good reads in the months ahead.

Stay safe. Be kind. See you tomorrow.

Third day - Irena Rey

I read 'The Extinction of Irena Rey' by Jennifer Croft a couple of months ago for my book group (yes, this is how far behind the reviews are). I knew I was going to love it after the first page, and even more so when I discovered she had translated for Olga Tokarczuk. I was perturbed to discover that most people in the book group did not like it very much (more book group issues to come).

So the book is about a group of translators who are going to stay with their author, Irena Rey, to work on her next book. This is her routine, to get them all together so she can supervise ... and control. In the first part of the book they are all just referred to by their language, as the story progresses they learn each other's real names. While the book appears here in English the story is being written by the Spanish translator (presumably in Spanish), and then of course translated by the English translator, a woman who is of course a character in the story. Others in the group did not like the 'translator footnotes', but I enjoyed the light it shone on the relationship between the two women. It's all about the layers. There is lots of talk about translation, and about literature. It's a very intellectual book, lots of obscure references, and vocabulary that I was not familiar with. It starts out kind of normal but then Irena disappears, and her husband, who usually takes care of the domestic stuff, is absent. The translators don't know what to do with themselves. They flail around waiting for her to return, but she doesn't. It wasn't until weeks after the meeting (shows it was a good book because I was still thinking about it) that it occurred to me that it was a grown up version of Lord of the Flies. They are dumped in a strange, scary environment (the house is on the edge of a strange and forbidding forest) without the usual support, they forage for food in the forest, leaders emerge, they create their own rituals, they explore their environment, rivalries develop ... and someone dies falling off a cliff. The whole book had a surreal, dreamlike quality, nothing they thought they knew about Irena or each other turns out to be true.

None of the quotes I noted down seem to make any sense now so I'm just going to give you this long bit because I feel it captures the atmosphere of the book. Book club people didn't like the 'descriptive' bits either so I was left wondering what they wanted from their reading:

"Dawn was impending; already the sky was blueish grey. I took Tropinka Street out of the village, east into the national park, walking carefully so as not to crush any of the infinitesimal frogs that burst from the pine needles half a dozen at a time; like translators, perhaps, they were invisible other than in motion. I shuddered to think what bad luck it would be ifI were to crush an infinitesimal being underfoot.

Because I didn't feel confident in my ability to detect the kugans and other unmarked graves around the forest, I determined to limit my purview to the known dead. Still, I wanted to feel at least a little brave, so I set out for a place I'd never been but that I'd read about, a so-called place of national memory about three kilometres away.

As I walked, I saw that some of the trees wore more strange symbols, white lines with red between them; their paint was fading, chipped. A massive sign at a crossroads listed all the things you weren't allowed to do inside the national park part of the forest: hunt mushrooms, smoke cigarettes, stray from the official path. Yet on either side of the official path the forest floor was soft with moss, opulent, beckoning, extending an almost opiate effect.

To my left, I saw smoke rising, and I strayed a little from the path. Beams of light that were so bright they seemed opaque, almost solid, embraceable, had touched down upon a mossy stump. the rest o0f the tree lay in the grass, the exposed wood rough as though after an explosion - just as Petra had seen in her dream.

I squatted beside it, searching for the fire. But there was no fire, and the smoke must have been steam, abundant and unfurling, the metamorphosing dew the moss had gathered overnight. I watched it a while: It was beautiful, but it was also disturbing. I decided to take a picture, not to keep as a souvenir, but to study later, after I was fully awake.

When I pressed the shutter circle on the screen of my iPhone, the artificial click dispelled any lingering ease. I rose from the ground and felt wild as a hunted animal. Leshy or the archer could be anywhere, I realised - in the moss, in the mushrooms, in the trees. I thought I heard steps, or something that sounded like steps. It was a deer, I told myself. Just red deer grazing.

I remembered the path, and then I saw it, and without thinking of the tiny frogs I leaped across the moss field and retook it. I began walking quickly without allowing myself to turn around. I knew that this was happening because I lost my lucky acorn, and because I had failed to understand Irena, and most of all because none of us had acted - had ever acted - -in time. The steps got louder, and I took off at a run." (p.149-150)

Stay safe. Be kind. May see you later with more books.

Day 2 - Visitor from Japan

Well, I totally failed that. I sat down with the computer yesterday but got distracted. Whatever. 

Today the house has rarely been so clean, not in recent memory anyhow. Monkey sensei's friend Tomoya is arriving from Japan tomorrow, for, shall we say, an extended visit. It started off as perhaps a couple of weeks, but in the end he's staying till August. In Japan you do not quit your job to go off travelling. It's just not done, so it's safe to say he is taking a chance to do this. He wants to improve his English, go to gigs and spend extended periods browsing in record shops. Monkey is very worried that he is so laid back about the whole thing, he insisted I did not need to meet him at the airport so he's getting the bus on his own ... but at least he'll look the right way when he crosses the road.

His mum and dad have made Monkey very welcome when she visits so I wanted to do likewise:

Stay safe. Be kind. See you tomorrow.

100 Days to Offload: Day One

Way back in 2020 when the first weeks of Covid lockdown were dragging out I joined in with 100 Days to Offload. I was just looking though old blog posts for the name of a bush in the yard and was reminded of the challenge, and how it did motivate me to write more regularly, to not worry about just chatting and not having anything very significant to say. So I thought I would do it again. No pressure, and no beating myself up.

I have had a lovely couple of afternoons potting up seedling, mostly kale and salad leaves, and then doing some tidying in the yard, rejuvenating old compost with worm compost. Then I turned round and realised that the physocarpus opulifolius was humming with bees and hoverflies, and it made me happy because it's World Bee Day, and I determined to spend more time watching the bees (and other flying creatures) this summer.

Stay safe. Be kind. See you tomorrow.

I who have never known men

I am going to get back on track with everything, reading, reviewing, watering the garden, learning Japanese ... I know that's not going to happen but I'll make a start, because the rule says you don't beat yourself up about stuff.

(Sorry, some spoilers as the book is not really about what happens.)

So, 'I who have never known men' by Jacqueline Harpman was the most weird of reads, and seeing from Wiki that the author was a psychoanalyst explains it somewhat. We start in a bunker prison, in which forty women are held in a cage, without explanation, guarded by men who provide for and punish them but who never speak. It has been years, mostly they have forgotten the outside world. The book is narrated by the one younger woman; having been imprisoned as a child, she is the only one with some curiosity and desire to understand what is happening. She begins to measure time using her own heartbeat and becomes obsessed with watching a younger guard. Just when you begin to wonder where the story is going an alarm sounds and the guards abandon them, the keys in the lock. With some trepidation the women make their way up the stairs out of their bunker to find a strange empty world. 

The description of their existence in the cage was so unremittingly hopeless that I found it stressful and anxiety making simply to read; it was claustrophobic and terrifying in the extreme. The powerlessness and hopelessness, and yet they just lived on. And then they emerge into a world in which they are no less trapped and hopeless. The bunker is mysteriously supplied with electricity, food and water, but little else of use. And no information about the world and what became of it. After a time they decide to walk away, taking supplies. They find other bunker prisons, filled with the corpses of prisoners who had been abandoned without hope of escape. But nothing else. A world of isolated prisons. And in the end I read the book as a metaphor for the human condition, and an examination of what gives life meaning and makes us human. The young woman is almost devoid of personality as she has no experiences and no real connection to other human beings; they were forbidden to touch each other and my mind broke at the notion of such a lack of human contact. They struggle to make some kind of new existence outside but there is nothing in the world for them, so they are tied to the resources available at each of the prison bunkers that they find along the way. The young woman has a yearning to keep looking but the older women want to just settle and live, which is what they end up doing. Gradually, over years, the women die off, until she is alone, and she sets off wandering again.

So all you are left with is questions. Are they really any more free outside the prison? Are we, as people, trapped inside the society we have created, free? What is freedom? What makes a human society meaningful? It was all very existential.

Here, they discover the first of many prisons, it gives a good impression of the dispassionate nature of her telling, she is observing, with very little emotional engagement:

"It was the half-light of night-time, but I could see the cage: the floor was strewn with dead women. They seemed to be everywhere, lying across the mattresses, flung on top of each other, groups of them gripping the bars, in heaps, scattered in an appalling chaos. Some were naked, the dresses of others in tatters, they were in frightful attitudes, torments, their mouths and eyes open, their fists clenched as if they'd fought and killed one another in the madness from which death had snatched them.

Here, the siren had gone off in the middle of artificial night, the door was locked and the guards - of course! - hadn't bothered to open it. The women had tried. They'd died of grief, long before hunger killed them. Without food, furious and desperate, how many days had they spend clawing at the bars with their remaining strength, trying to prise open the lock without keys or tools, their fingers bleeding, trying to achieve the impossible - sick, crazed, lying down exhausted and then getting up again to attack there steel with their bare hands, screaming, crying, dazed, sometimes recovering their wits to contemplate their fate and flee to it in fury, and now they stank, distended, putrid and green, infested with maggots that swarmed over their decaying bodies, a grotesque image of the fate that could have been ours, had it not been for an incredible stroke of luck." (p.90-91)

Stay safe. Be kind.