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| Velvet / Huzama Habayeb trans. from the Arabic by Kay Heikkinen Cairo: AUC Press (Hoopoe), 2019, c2016. 312 p. |
I wanted to read this story as soon as I saw in the blurb that learning to sew helps the main character construct her life. But it's also the story of a woman raised and living her whole life in a Palestinian refugee camp.
Hawwa grows up in the camp with her family; harsh mother, cruel father, sisters and two brothers. Their father is an angry man and beats his children and wife, and worse. One of Hawwa's brothers grows up with this behaviour reflected in the way he lives his own life, as well.
She learns to sew as a teenager after being apprenticed to Sitt Qamar, a glamorous seamstress who lives in a nearby town. (There is a chapter in this section that moves away from Hawwa to tell us Sitt Qamar's own tragic love story). Sitt Qamar loves fabric and stitching, and during Hawwa's time with her, Hawa learns about the luxury of beautiful fabrics, being a businesswoman, and a more independent way of life. The existence of velvet is a sign of a richer, more
Velvet has an aroma of its own, Sitt Qamar would tell her. “It's the aroma of warmth, of dormant heat, of depth and expanse; it's the aroma of wishes and desires, of maturity, maturity of love and of age; it's the aroma of clean flesh, of flesh suffused with yearnings and the sweat of lust.”
As it turns out, Hawwa is a natural, and becomes a gifted seamstress herself. But as we meet the middle-aged Hawwa at the start of the book, she has splurged on a length of pale blue velvet (silk velvet, no poly blends for her) for a wedding dress -- there is a sensuous description of velvet and the secret joy she has in it, imagining her wedding outfit.
She has fallen in love with a gentle man, some years after being divorced by the abusive husband she was married to by her parents when she was young. She is now caring for her cruel but decrepit mother, and puts off remarrying because she's afraid of what her brother and her son will say - she's been meeting her new love privately, a no no in the eyes of the horrible men in her family.
The brother she protected all her life, and the son she cared for, treat her like a food producing machine and money dispenser; they are utterly useless and disrespectful of all women, but somehow especially Hawwa. She prepares a big dinner for them, planning to tell them about her intention to marry, but things do not go well. They have already heard.
The violent ending was a shock and ruined this book for me, I couldn't take it. I was completely engaged in the story, and imagining just one good thing for Hawwa right alongside her. I understand the events of the story, I can see how it came to the conclusion that it did, but I didn't like it. It just seems like there was so much constant misery for all the women in this book, from Hawwa to her mother and sisters and relatives. Only Sitt Qamar seemed to control her fate, but in the end it was a man who destroyed both her business and her life.
I thought this was a powerful book, worthy of its Naguib Mahfouz Literary Award, but I just wish that the misery was not quite so unrelenting, that these women were given even a ghost of chance.
How sad that the book ended that way, how awful. Some of us don't realize just how lucky we are. Thank you for this review.
ReplyDeleteYes - the ending made sense and was congruent with the book but it made me so sad!
DeleteI've commented here before, but never mentioned I've lived in the middle east. It is a sad thing, what the results of certain ideologies tend to lead to.... there were women whose husbands were openly 'shopping around' for a second or third wife, while neglecting the first, and/or even expected to HELP FINANCE his efforts at getting another wife! Outrageous, honestly. There are two youtubers who really help me to remember that there is humanity there, even though many are deceived, and hurting others as a direct result of that. One man has written a satirical/activism song based on the Bob Marley song "no woman, no cry"... his is titled "no woman, no drive". I love it, although the back story makes me very sad. (women whose husbands died, or divorced them, or chose to add someone newer/younger/fresher to the mix... are left incredibly vulnerable, especially in Saudi, where, at the time, women couldn't drive. Made getting a job to FEED your children, very, very difficult) The man who wrote this song, definitely one of the better men, imo. He cares, clearly. Just publishing this song put him in danger.
ReplyDeleteThe other youtube song that helps me to recall the humanity of the Islamic world is titled "I'm Yours" (the arranged marriage version) This song hits the mark, will make you smile... but sadly, because this shouldn't be as true as it is.
I still have wildly mixed emotions about the middle east. Somehow everything is more intense there... some say this is partly because of the heat. I think there may be something to that.