Al Said The Madness of Despair

1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-913043-13-1
Verlag: Banipal Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

The Madness of Despair tells the story of Maliha, who is living in London with her husband Nafie after an arranged marriage in their distant Arab homeland. The couple become good friends with Doctor Nadim, a fellow exile, but in the twists and turns of the friendship, the men's nostalgia for their old lives - and old ways of living - come into conflict with Maliha's ambition to live and love freely and make something of her new life now she's settled in London. Though ready to throw off the constraints of her disastrous marriage at the slightest turn, Maliha is ill-prepared for the fire of emotions that overcomes her, leading to unforeseen consequences for all three. It is a powerful narrative that reveals just how much psychological suffering and cultural displacement can upset the most ordinary of aspirations for life and love.

Ghalya F T Al Said is a novelist from Oman who studied in both Oman and the UK, and has a PhD in International Relations from the University of Warwick. She has published poems, short stories and six novels. Her novels focus on immigrants in foreign, usually Western, settings and their attempts to cope and adapt to conflicting concepts of belief and culture. The Madness of Despair is her first novel to have been translated into English from its original Arabic and is one of four set in the UK. Her other novels include Days in Heaven (2005), Sabira and Asila (2007), Scattered Years (2008), The Tedium of Time (2015 and 2017) and District of the Blind (2019). She has opened a traditional Museum in Oman and plans to open a second one on culturally related themes.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Al Said, Ghalya F T

Weitere Mitwirkende

Cohen, Raphael

Leseproben

2

Nafie and Maliha’s wedding had taken place after a series of events that almost wrecked their marriage before it had even begun. The marriage happened after Nafie had decided once and for all to go back to his country and leave behind the many pressures and torments of London. Back home, his gaze fell on Maliha, and besotted, he had to make her his whatever the cost. He did just that and asked for her hand in marriage from his old friend, her brother, Abdel Wahid, who agreed without hesitation. Her whole family also gave their consent.

Maliha, however, refused to accept the idea of Nafie as a husband and swore she would never marry him whatever inducements he offered. But in the end, against her will, she had no choice but to go along with the marriage. However, she decided that her wedding night would be turned into her husband’s curse. She executed her fiendish plan the morning after her wedding night. She woke up at dawn and screamed for all to hear in the neighbourhood alleyways that her husband was impotent. To avoid further scandal, and after the advice of Maliha’s family, especially Abdel Wahid, Nafie decided to return with his wife to London, despite his fears of the problems he would face there. He knew how hard making a living would be, but he did not tell Maliha that. He did quite the opposite, and made her believe that he lived in the lap of luxury. That very evening Nafie flew to London with Maliha. The taste of his shame lingered bitterly on his tongue and he was still burning with the embarrassment and humiliation she had dealt him with her insult. Strangely, Maliha, after her outburst and upset, became calm and relaxed, as though her limbs were too languid to move and her tongue had lost its power of speech. She never imagined what fate had in store for when she began her new life in Britain.

In contrast, Nafie was flung into an ocean of worry and gloom over the future. How would his wife react to his poverty and the fact that he lived in a cramped room in a filthy hovel of a hotel? Maliha and all their old neighbourhood thought he was a rich man living in an opulent city called London, located on the edge of the beautiful continent of Europe, in a posh neighbourhood, in a big house overlooking the Thames, and possibly in a mansion in one of the areas inhabited by the rich. Nafie wondered what his wife’s reaction would be when she saw his home was like a rat hole.

He was certain that his wife would be absolutely livid at what had happened to her. The thing that annoyed her most was that her family had made her marry a man she did not want and she had only agreed to travel with him in the hope he would provide her with some material comfort. Nafie felt he was in for trouble. He looked at Maliha as she slept in her seat on the plane, in a pitiful attempt to derive strength from her and be able to banish the black thoughts gripping him and find some answers to the difficult questions that kept popping into his head. He looked out of the plane window and saw the cities, towns and villages of his country stretching out as far as the eye could see. They were threaded through by rivers and valleys and surrounded by the sea. He saw mud houses and brick buildings, mosques and churches, fields of figs and olives. He looked hard as though pleading for mercy from the merciful powers of the East to help him through the difficulties ahead.

Since Maliha had no idea about any likely problems, she started to prepare herself mentally for life with her husband in the new marital home. She knew nothing about the life awaiting her, but took consolation from the fact that London was located thousands of miles away from the painful events of the past. She would no longer encounter the faces she had seen on the morning after her accursed wedding night. She imagined that she would live together with Nafie in a spacious and comfortable place, so much better than the miserable house where she had lived with her family. It never occurred to her that she was going to live in a gloomy room in a small hotel full of refugee and immigrant families who had not been lucky enough to find a house fit for living, but found themselves in hotel bedsits with false promises of being moved to suitable accommodation. The image she had was rosy and bright.

Nafie exited the arrivals hall at Heathrow Airport with Maliha. They took the coach to the hotel where he lived in central London. The coach drove along wide streets and drew parallel with double-decker buses and trains. Maliha saw sights she had never dreamed of. She saw the organized way in which people behaved and the fancy shops. They were sights that filled her with happiness and provided proof for the positive thinking that had engaged her on the long journey from the heart of the East to the heart of the West.

When they entered the hotel, Maliha was puzzled. “Where are we?” she said. “I don’t think we’re in London. This is a hotel, not a house.”

Trying to avoid a straight answer to his bride’s questions, Nafie said: “Come along, darling. Just come with me. Please, I’ll explain it all.” Maliha remained uncertain as to whether this was where they would be living in London or whether they were in another city where they would spend their honeymoon.

They kept walking until they were standing in front of the door to Nafie’s room. Maliha grew more puzzled at what she was witnessing. Nafie opened the door and they entered the small room. They were met by a bed, so narrow it could only sleep one person. This was more than Maliha could bear and she lost her temper. “What’s this?” she yelled. “Where am I going to sleep when there’s only one bed?”

Growing yet more embarrassed, Nafie said: “My darling, we’ll sort everything out tonight, I promise. Let’s spend tonight here. You sleep on the bed and I’ll sleep on the floor. Inshallah, tomorrow I’ll start looking for somewhere else suitable for us to live, by the grace of God, and we’ll move to a better place very soon. Just be patient, and trust in God.”

Nafie tried to make up an explanation for the awkward situation. “I’m living here temporarily, I forgot to tell you. I had a smart flat but I sold it before I left. I thought I was going home for good and wasn’t planning to return to London. But, unfortunately, events were against me. The wedding was very expensive, and I had to borrow a tidy sum from the bank to cover it. I had no choice but to come back here and work to pay off the loan, because if I stayed at home, it would be impossible to make enough money. You know how few job opportunities there are in our country and how badly they pay.” Maliha did not reply to what her husband was saying. She lay down on the bed and slept until morning. Nafie slept on a threadbare couch next to his wife’s bed.

So, Nafie and Maliha began married life in a cramped hotel room provided courtesy of the benefits system. Nafie started working in a shoe factory, hoping that fortune would smile on him. Life with Maliha was full of pleasure for him; he was madly in love with her despite the scandal she had brought on him. Every morning, he left her and went to work. She remained curled up in the room, like a prisoner, awaiting his return. As the days and weeks passed she grew frustrated and bored.

She started to comprehend the problem she was in. She felt unable to take control of her domestic life and do things like cooking, the laundry, and cleaning the room. Many times, she found herself desperate to cook something she liked to eat, but couldn’t because of the difficulty of cooking there. It was hard for residents to cook at the time they wanted to. There was a single kitchen on each floor of the hotel that everyone on that floor shared. In each was a single fridge. Families had to take turns using the utensils, and had to keep their food separate in the fridge so it did not get mixed up with another family’s. When a family took someone else’s food by mistake, there would be arguments that might last for weeks. There were also quarrels over creating a roster for using the kitchen. From time to time the hotel practically turned into a war zone because of the cramped conditions and the shared use of communal rooms and bathrooms.

The tiny room and the lack of freedom to behave as one wanted and relax when one wanted naturally made Maliha feel stressed out. She would wait, at the end of her tether, for Nafie to come back each evening. The moment he came in, she would knit her eyebrows and lay into him. She had no hesitation in accusing him of failing to find a better place to live and in blaming him for their miserable situation. Showing her annoyance she would complain: “Why did you marry me when you knew you didn’t have the money for us to live a happy married life with a decent standard of living? You forced me to get married, knowing that all you had to offer was a tiny room in a crowded hotel. I haven’t had a wink of sleep because of the noise that never stops. The walls are thin and awful noises from outside come through. This isn’t living, it is just crap followed by more crap.”

Maliha went over how things had propelled her into this situation. She asked her husband about the chances of getting out. “It’s obvious that this crap is going to continue. I have absolutely no confidence in you being able to change how we’re living. What are you going to do about this mess? How are you going to get me away from this? If you want the truth, it’s my fault because I agreed to come with you. I should have refused, even if it had cost me my life.”

When she didn’t feel she was getting any answers, she started threatening him. In tears, she said: “Nafie, I’m giving you one month, no more, to find us somewhere better than this filthy...