The Cat Who Taught Me How to Fly
starts with Imad, the main protagonist, watching the inmates who are watching
the prisoners being brought from the National Intelligence Detention Centre
where he too had spent some time before being transferred to the Irbid Prison
(in Jordan). His cousin helps him settle in the new place where all inmates
don't live in the same way, meanwhile his steadfastness for the communists
against the authority's pleasure shows no sign of waning. After he is sentenced
for ten years in Prison for his communist affiliation he's famed as the Comrade in the prison, thus getting a
nickname like many other inmates have.
The scent of jasmine that he
picked from home while being arrested projects into feelings of soothing, love
and freedom to even terror and guilt, and this remains a central drive
throughout the narrative. Imad struggles to resist his yearning for freedom and
feels isolated unable to come in terms with his fate1 which could have been otherwise had he chosen to denunciate
his party. Another key character in the novel, The Cat, becomes more intimate
with Imad, who enjoys his presence and tales of adventures and dreams just like
the other inmates. And as the essence of jasmine is pivotal to Imad, he frequently
calls back The Little Prince (a novella
by Antoine de Saint-Exupery) to lift up his spirits.
1. He
thought, “Miserable is the homeland that needs heroes.” More crossed his mind:
“I am not sure who said this beautiful thing. Does my homeland need heroes? Th
e radio announcer said that my homeland is ‘an oasis of security, stability,
and is one family.’ Is my country happy that I am in prison?
Imad's friendship with the inmates puts him in
a place to hear their backgrounds, personal secrets and lies—even
sexual encounters and desires; all this makes him easy to adapt the new world
and ways of the prison. When hopes for amnesty shatter frequently, he writes2 a denouncement only to
keep it with himself but his deep-seated sense of injustice and freedom flares
up to take a form of resistance in an episode against the prison authority, and
this elevates his stature among the inmates. But this sends him to the dungeon
as a punishment where he finds a new possibility of escape as the Cat lays bare
his plans. Imad gradually absorbs the sentiments brought by imprisonment and
broods over the nature of human mind as he observes the characters around him. His
transfer to another section of the prison 'The White House'—where
most of the inmates had public service background and despise Imad for his
lowly status—makes
him stranded. The story then follows his fascination for a girl and a public
shame he faces from the authority for an incident in the bathhouse. This unsettles
him3, tortures his soul
and brings him to tears4
only to flame his rage against the snitch in his solitary self-reflection.
2. The bitter experience of the past becomes sweet
if written with the ink of the present. Time stretches under the stress of
isolation and appears short if you hold it in the palm of memory. Time is like
water; it takes the shape of the place.
3. What was the point of confrontation if man
breaks and engages in trivial and insignificant fights? Did the sheep eat the
Little Prince's flower? Man can handle being destroyed, but not defeated! What
if the Old Man in The Old Man and the Sea were falsely accused and
became the laughingstock of the fisherman, he who conquered the arrogance of
the sea?!
4. The defeated man is afraid to bring up his true
convictions; he hides behind fake masks an emptiness that makes him unstable.
With time, he gets used to disappointments and covers it by justifying what he
is now.
The novel closely draws from the prison
experience of the author and in fact in a chapter he appears as himself talking
to the readers. With the backdrop of political upheaval, the story delineates
the human struggle and resistance for his believes in a candid way. Equally
descriptive is the life of a political prisoner during imprisonment who is
subjected constantly to provocation and attraction to confess and denunciate. The
images depicted are sharp, whether they're insights of the prison wards,
idiosyncratic characters of the inmates or the street and markets that Imad
misses so much.
Finally, when the tension settles5, Imad returns to reading
books, writing and drawing figures. The role of the inmates changes, some are transferred,
prison atmosphere go back to normal and Imad is now visited frequently by the
girl he loves meanwhile The Cat plays his tricks on authorities and try to
escape with no avail. Imad's love gives him to read Jonathan Livingston Seagull (a novella by Richard Bach) and drawing
aspiration from it, his desire to be free and to understand the life better is
strengthened even when the hope of his release is almost none. In the
culmination of the novel, amid the chaos that breaks out in prison, The Cat and
Imad try their luck to be out on the streets of Irbid only to meet a fate they
hadn't expected.
5. We
resist together unified, but face abuse and torture alone, each according to his
spiritual capacity.
Just like the author said, it is
the protagonist's resilience to say 'no' and stand his ground that made him
revered among the inmates. The reflection of human beings which takes shapes in
time and space, and especially in the setting as in the novel, illuminates how
fragile and strong a man can be based upon what and how he chooses his fate. The
smooth transition from personal to larger-in-scope subjects makes it a well-crafted
story where the experience doesn't overshadow the natural progression. The
story encompasses love, relation, hatred, sex, politics and even prison
violence ranking it different from usual memoir-casted prison novels. When the
author talks about the prisoner in the introduction saying "Sadness comes
on its own. But moments of happiness need to be sought out and harvested."
he fully conveys that freedom is worth seeking at all cost.
Author: Hashem Gharaibeh
Translator: Nesreen Akhtarkhavari
Publisher: Michigan State University Press
Page Count: 182pp
Price: $19.95
Photo Credit: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1253598
Review Copy Courtesy: Michigan State University Press
