196 Books: Eritrea

 The Consequences of Love by Sulaiman Addonia

Here's Eritrea, in Africa:

Here's the summary:

A Romeo and Juliet story set against the strict Muslim laws of Saudi Arabia, Sulaiman Addonia’s astonishing debut novel is a sensuous and intensely wrought story of a young immigrant and a girl behind a veil who defy law and risk their lives to be together.

Under a relentless summer sun, women dressed like long dark shadows and men decked out in light cotton robes roam the streets of Jeddah. While most of Naser’s friends have left town to escape the heat, he must stay behind to work. An African immigrant and outsider, Naser spends his spare time frequenting a friend’s café, writing letters to his mother in Eritrea, and daydreaming about the glamorous girlfriend he hopes to one day have.

Naser and his younger brother were sent to Saudi Arabia to avoid the war back home, but though they live with their conservative Muslim uncle they remain under the watchful, wrathful eyes of the religious police, who monitor the community’s every action, govern the near indestructible boundaries between men and women–walls in mosques, panels on buses, separate visiting quarters in houses, and, of course, the black veil, or abaya, that adorns the women–and punish any disobedience by public beating or death.

But a splash of color arrives in Naser’s world when unexpectedly a small piece of paper is dropped at his feet. It is a love note from a girl whose face he has never seen and whose voice he has never heard. To identify her among the sea of veiled women, she instructs him to look for a pair of pink shoes peeking out from under her draped abaya. Intrigued and encouraged, Naser rebels against Wahhabist Islamic convention and begins a clandestine correspondence with the girl. Yet even as the barriers that divide them begin to crumble under the weight of their passionate prose and devotion, the lovers’ illicit affair will face the ultimate and most heartrending test.

First let me complain that Google changed the format of the blog and now it doesn't show me where my readers are from and it's DUMB. I like seeing where you all come from! 

This is another book with a cool author--he was born in Eritrea, lived in a refugee camp in Sudan, then lived in Saudi Arabia before seeking asylum in London. Even though this book has the standard disclaimer of it all being fictional, I wonder how much of it he lived. Oh! There will also be spoilers sprinkled in this one, so beware!

I feel like I kind of cheated on this one because I knew it wasn't set in Eritrea. The only part set there is when Naser and his brother are being sent away from the war, and the rest is in Saudi Arabia. I picked it because there weren't very many choices, and it sounded SO GOOD (and it was). Even though I knew it would give me anxiety the whole time, which of course it did. 

We go through a little bit of Naser's early life and the difficulty of being a foreigner in Saudi Arabia. Every immigrant has to have a sponsor (kafeer) who basically controls their life. At an early age (11 or 15 I think), Naser's uncle's kafeer decides that in lieu of the increased monthly price, he will take Naser as payment. When he runs away from the uncle's house, he lives and works in a cafe where he is also basically treated as a sex slave. 

So, here's the biggest WTF in the book: men can't have anything to do with women, but it's fine to rape young boys. WHY IS EVERYONE ALWAYS HATING ON THE WOMEN?! 

When Naser gets the note from the girl, I instantly was yelling at him in my head. I was torn the entire time between "this whole system is such bullshit just let them talk to each other" and "you gotta follow the rules or it's gonna be real bad for you, bro!" They went to great lengths to communicate with each other and I was just waiting for them to get caught. It's a good thing I read it in an ebook form or I would have cheated and read the ending. SPOILER! He ends up getting betrayed, caught, and deported. At least he wasn't killed, I guess. 

But-ugh-this book did not paint Saudi Arabia in a good light. Everyone was deceitful and tricksy. Women had to wear the abaya, which is the entire body being covered-not even the eyes can show. Women have no control over their lives, refugees are beholden to their kafeers, and then there's the whole sharia law with the religious police (which kind of just seemed like police in general). When someone breaks the law, there's a public square where they get flogged, stoned, or beheaded, and everyone comes out to cheer and yell that the lawbreaker is going to hell. 

I'm guessing this book was set in the 80s, so maybe it's better now? Didn't women even get the right to drive a couple years back? I'm not sure if I'm being hopeful or sarcastic. Maybe I'll find out when I hit Saudi Arabia on my reading trip. 

196 Books: Equatorial Guinea

By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomas Avila Laurel

Equatorial Guinea is on the west African coast:

The summary:
By Night the Mountain Burns recounts the narrator's childhood on a remote island off the West African coast, living with his mysterious grandfather, several mothers and no fathers. We learn of a dark chapter in the island's history: a bush fire destroys the crops, then hundreds perish in a cholera outbreak. Superstition dominates, and the islanders must sacrifice their possessions to the enraged ocean god. What of their lives will they manage to save? Whitmanesque in its lyrical evocation of the island, Ávila Laurel’s writing builds quietly, through the oral rhythms of traditional storytelling, into gripping drama worthy of an Achebe or a García Márquez.

I also want to include the information about the author because I found it really interesting:
"Juan Tomas Avila Laurel was born in 1966 in Equatorial Guinea, Africa's only Spanish-speaking country. His parents were from the remote Annobon Island, off the West African coast. 
...Avila Laurel has been a constant thorn in the side of his country's long-standing dictatorial government. A nurse by profession, he was for many years one of the best known Equatorial Guinean writers not to have opted to live in exile. But in 2011, after a week-long hunger strike in protest against Obiang's regime, which he timed to coincide with the president of Spain's visit to Equatorial Guinea, Avila Laurel moved to Barcelona. He writes across all media, and is particularly active as a blogger, essayist, and novelist." 

This guy sounds like such a badass. 

This book totally messed with my mind because, for the majority of it, it sounds like it's set in the 1800s or something, but then there would be mention of a radio or an air purifier. And then when you find out Avila Laurel was born in 1966, it had to have taken place in the 70s. But he would talk about ships coming from other countries and I still imagined wooden pirate-looking ships.

One thing I found very interesting was that the author attributed all the bad things stemming from one incident. It was an incident involving a woman being violated with an object. Granted, she was being beaten to death by a mob, but the violation struck him so much that he blamed all of the other bad things on this. Interesting how this kid can understand how horrific something like that is, and yet grown men keep doing it.

I would have liked to hear more of his older life and how he left the island. (I'm assuming he left the island and went to live on mainland Equatorial Guinea. Btw, Equatorial Guinea is really hard to spell/type.) There's also one point that didn't make sense to me-he says he's not a writer and that the stories came from an outsider wanting to capture their folk tales. I guess it could have started that way, but he obviously is a writer so...shrug.

Anyway, this was another example of why it's so cool to do this "challenge" and learn about so many different places and cultures. I feel like my mind broadens with every book...even the ones I don't like.