Monday, June 3, 2019

Little Prince Who Flew Like a Seagull

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
Page Count: 182pp
Price: $19.95

Photo Credit: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1253598
Review Copy Courtesy: Michigan State University Press



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