Huzama Habayeb’s evocative novel a few displaced Palestinian household neatly illustrates Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s epigraph to his 2002 memoir, Residing to Inform the Story: “Life shouldn’t be what one lived, however what one remembers and the way one remembers it with a view to recount it.”
Earlier than the Queen Falls Asleep, nimbly translated by Kay Heikkinen, is a layered exploration of reminiscence, exile and survival. Providing parallels together with her personal life, Habayeb’s feminine protagonist is a second-generation Palestinian refugee, raised in Kuwait, who turns into a profitable author.
Given a boy’s title, Jihad is handled just like the eldest son by her mother and father. She does nicely in school, teaches English and shares the monetary burdens of an increasing family together with her father. Solely later does she query his abdication of accountability: “Maybe he wished me to make up for his many shortcomings; within the course of I grew to become a lot much less.” At Kuwait College, Jihad begins writing fiction, however her transient independence and inventive flourishing is shattered by the Gulf warfare. The household transfer to Jordan, the place they rebuild their lives in one other overcrowded home.
Now middle-aged and residing in Dubai, Jihad revisits her previous together with her daughter Maleka (that means “queen”) who’s about to go away dwelling for college overseas. The tales she tells – concerning the Palestinian diaspora, motherhood, love and loss – are a research in resilience. In a chapter on frugality, as an example, we study of the household’s “secret hiding locations” for his or her meagre financial savings. Jihad’s aunt conceals cash in her ample bosom, one grandmother stows valuable dinars in her lengthy knickers, one other hides her earnings in small linen pouches stashed in jars of dried grains.
All of the whereas, Jihad circles round her story’s emotional coronary heart: a doomed love affair and the circumstances of Maleka’s conception. By specializing in household and neighbours, she delays having to confront her personal ache. However as Garcia Márquez noticed, our recollections outline our lives. Habayeb’s narrative is intentionally meandering, like reminiscence, however her affecting denouement is definitely worth the wait.
