Dear readers, let me start this post with a quick apology. I'm sorry that this post didn't go up on Wednesday as planned, my only excuse being that this has been quite a busy week with job interviews and applications. Thankfully things have calmed down a bit now, leaving me with the time to give this post the attention it deserves.
As I mentioned in the last post, this July I set out to read Fadia Faqir's novel Willow Trees Don't Weep by the middle of this month, a task I can now say was successful. I actually finished the book on around the 10th July, leaving me with enough time to finish another novel (the devastating Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn) before it came time to start my second West Asian novel of the month.
Let me not get off track though. This post is specifically about Willow Trees Don't Weep, not Here Comes the Sun or The Beauty of Your Face - although I'm sure that they are deserving of their own posts.
Willow Trees Don't Weep is a novel by Jordanian-British author Fadia Faqir, published in 2014. Its plot follows Najwa, a young woman in Amman whose family is left struggling after the death of her mother. Her father, Omar, abandoned his family to join the so-called "global jihad" when Najwa was just a baby, leaving Najwa and her grandmother to fend for themselves after Najwa's mother passes away. Fearing for their safety as lone women in a patriarchal society, Najwa and her grandmother decide that Najwa must leave Jordan and go to find her father. This quest takes her around the world, from Pakistan to England, following in the footsteps of her father as she tries to find out what happened to him.
One of the things I liked most about this book was the character of Najwa. I thought she was an interesting, complex person, and I found her relatable even though her struggles were unlike anything I've ever experienced. Her mother renounced Islam and became determinedly secular after Omar left, associating Islam with the loss of her husband. This means that Najwa grows up feeling conflicted about her religious identity, torn between her mother's secularism and her grandmother's faith, while also being uncomfortably aware of the impact religion had on her father's path in life.
On her journey, Najwa fluctuates between determination to continue to search for her father and teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown. I liked that Najwa came across as resilient without being stoic, and the way that her journey was not easy for her made it seem that much more realistic to me. Likewise, I appreciated Najwa's ambivalence towards her father. On one hand, she is actively seeking him out, missed his presence during her childhood, and wants him to come home to Jordan. On the other hand, she hates him for abandoning his family, for causing her suffering, and for the violent acts he took part in as a member of terrorist groups.
While I appreciated Najwa's ambivalence about her father, I have to admit that my opinion on him was a bit more one-sided. Even though the book is interspersed with Omar's diary entries, starting from when he was in Amman with his wife and child and leading all the way up to his reunion with Najwa, I found him a difficult character to sympathise with. When you read about his experience as a doctor in a war zone, it's hard not to feel upset or nauseated by the descriptions of what he had to do, and of course I felt bad for him when he experienced the loss of those close to him in the fighting. However, I felt I didn't have that great a sense of what motivated him as a person, particularly what would compel him to leave his wife and young child. Omar more or less attributes this to a combination of wanting to protect his friend Hani, who was radicalised in Jordan, and wishing to get away from his nagging wife, but neither of those reasons seemed sufficient to me. They only felt flimsier later, as Omar's actions become worse and he gets ever deeper involved in Islamic totalitarian movements. It might have been enlightening to read from the perspective of someone who became so devoted to this cause and to perhaps understand what could motivate them to do some truly horrible things, but I felt Omar's account fell short of doing this.
There were other things I liked and disliked about the book which are perhaps less central than these two main characters. I enjoyed the descriptions and imagery, and I found parts of the book very impactful emotionally. I wasn't so keen on the ending, nor the elements of the plot which seemed to pop up and then be more or less disregarded a few chapters later. While the book overall was intriguing and emotional, there was something of an unfinished quality about it. I would perhaps recommend this book to someone who is looking for work by a female Jordanian author, as I was, or to someone who wants to know more about Islamic totalitarianism and/or the conflict in Afghanistan - I can certainly say I came out of this book knowing more than when I went in. Overall, it was a decent book with some important themes, and I don't regret reading it.
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