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

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

Coming Soon...

The Bird Tribunal
by Agnes Ravatn
Translated from the by Rosie Hedger

Odyssey with an Antihero

The pair of suicidal mother and her son is separated by Social Services. Already rebellious with the world and fascinated with Mafias, Rappers and Drugs, the child creates trouble enough to be shifted from one foster family to the next. We see him grow up as an adult and forming his own version of the world, of course, inside his head, that has explanation for all motives and likings, and where all steps are calculated to fit his intentions. We identify with him feeling sorry for his traumatic childhood¹, and though his cunning ways or even his characters are immoral, we become his thoughts, we can sense his angst and also the love he is trying to regain in his adventures/misadventures to find his mother.

1.       It's actually the same problem with foster families. People are keen to take their cheque and shine their halo, but they don't want the problem kids, the disabled ones, or any other demanding little brats. People want children in need, but just enough to fill their own needs. Abandoned animals and children are advised to be cute. I'm well placed to tell you this

Written in the first-person confessional narrative, the story follows the recounting of an unnamed narrator who after being separated from his mother at an early age develops unlikely characters that are welcomed nowhere. However, his seamless descriptions pose, a criminal mind, a naturally formed status that has both tender and crooked selves. Money matters to him the most (sex and drugs accompanies it) and he has high hopes for himself, at times completely immersed in anticipation, grandeur and imagery. He realizes that the people around him cannot understand him; also his attempts to form relationships are busted one way or other. He flees the scenes in disturbing acts, only to follow another of his important passions or to be free. He fakes pathos, fabricates lies, all the while taking doses of drugs to keep his invented spirit² alive.

2.       … In life, you have to get going without asking yourself too many questions. Questions give birth to doubts and doubts attract trouble. Once you've made up your mind, you need to run at the wall until it falls over. I'm a decisive man.

Already dreaming of being in prison and getting tattoos one day he looks for houses he can burglar or items around him he can steal. With his own revenge list, crime is his passion, and it never makes him feel guilty about anything he does (even killing the cats). His attempt to be among and like other people is never realized; having no close friends or relatives. All the same, the name of the chapters defines a coming of age story, where in a grand perspective, we see a troubled orphan boy trying to get his family back, having no sense of his oddities. His personal world is perfect, full of proofs (Well Documented!) but also with troubles. Mama's Boy is a voice we have to hear it to believe it. With traces of Catcher in the Rye, Mama's Boy is a dark, funny and even saddening tale of an orphaned boy where hypocrisies are to be re-examined and immorality to be re-considered.

Author: David Goudreault

Translator: JC Sutcliffe

Publisher: Book*Hug Press

Page Count: 200

Price: $20

Author Photo Credit: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Goudreault
Review Copy Courtesy: Book*Hug Press

To the Lighthouse

When Nerea's mother Luisa is suddenly struck by amnesia, the graveness of the situation puts Nerea in stress, burdened with guilt and fear of losing her mother's memory forever. The photographs from Nerea's childhood bring back memories of the lives they shared, but now she feels it is parting away. Luisa is in hospital bed, and she doesn't recognize her daughter or son, and of little she speaks Nerea has no way to connect what she means. Nerea belatedly calls her aunt Dolores in Germany to let her know about her sister, feeling helpless. After all, she was the one who has known Luisa in the best way. Aunt's visit and Luisa's reaction thereafter hints a long forgotten episode of their lives which Luisa never shared with her children. 

Nerea is torn between her job as a journalist, the guilt of not taking seriously her mother's early symptoms, her role as a wife and mother which has now seemed to her out of balance and her mother's condition. It is hard for her to cope with this status, and she sees no way out, until her reluctant aunt shares the story of Luisa's past. In the meantime, Nerea has her own trouble dealing with a faded memory¹ and now sudden appearance of an individual from the past has made her further restless. We see, Nerea and Luisa bearing almost the same fate of being haunted by lost love and longing. The culmination of the novel is Nerea and Luisa trying a way out, to help her mother recover her memory or at least her deeply buried wish be fulfilled. Within this escape, Nerea too finds her way back into the life, refilled with courage.

1.       "We repaint ourselves endlessly, putting one event on top of another, forgetting the one underneath or thinking we've forgotten. But one day we take a hit,"

There are so many stories that are unspoken of², and the motherhood bears it all, embraces the new way to find and furnish happiness in many lives. But something stays, as a part of our identity, only to be realized by few who experience the same or have the need to know. The dramatic appeal of the conversations or images/photographs in the novel captures the tense ambience where memory and love dominates all in existence.

2.       The things that are not said earlier cannot always be said later, and one cannot give after death hugs that were left ungiven in life.

Senses and dreams revolve around questions people try to solve in their lives. The liveliness can suddenly be turned into an unexpected loss, and in this horror of being forgotten Nerea struggles to help her mother, and tries to relive the life her mother and aunt lived. The story suggests, we try to keep the tragedies to ourselves, as if they are our personality, but the fear of being left alone also torments us. The fate and the choices — Nerea tries to clear this fog, and attempts to make the best of what's left to her. The references in the Her Mother's Hands also point to the need to be daring, to seek for the second chance. The novel's subtlety is in its meaning that life is divided into precious moments and we have little time to appreciate or be nostalgic except for to live it with courage.

Author: Karmele Jaio

Translator: Kristin Addis

Publisher: Parthian Books

Page Count: 122

Price: $ 11.99

Photo Credit: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karmele_Jaio

Review Copy Courtesy: Parthian Books

Coming Soon...

Among the Lost
by Emiliano Monge
Translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne