Saffron Dreams – Shaila Abdullah
If your husband, who is a waiter in the Window on the World Restaurant in one of the Twin Towers, is killed during the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, you would have every right to be angry at the perpetrators. You would have every right to hate them. You would have every right to express your anguish of your pain and loss. But if your husband, who is a waiter in the Window on the World Restaurant, is killed during the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and you and he are Muslims from Pakistan, does that mean you no longer have that right? Does that mean you lose your status as a victim and you lose your right to mourn? This is one of the themes that Shaila Abdullah explores in Saffron Dreams, a thought provoking and emotional story of one woman’s survival through just this scenario.
Arissa Illahi came from a well off family in Pakistan, with a kind father and a distant, promiscuous and careless mother. She grows up adhering to tradition to an extent, but not in the strict way that we are led to believe everyone who is ‘other’ conforms to. Her marriage is still arranged, but it is arranged with Faizan – a man she met only briefly in a library in New York, but who fell in love with her and whom she fell in love with. The marriage was a good one. The couple lived in New York just like the multitude of other diasporas, getting on with their lives and planning their futures.
Until that day. Arissa – pregnant with their first child – has her life torn to shreds over the space of a few hours as her husband, who was working as a waiter while he completed his novel, becomes one of the thousands of victims of the 9/11 attacks. His body is never found, just like so many others. But while he disappears, Arissa is suddenly faced with the loss of everything she loved and a life ahead of her. When Raian is born, he is severely disabled. As she learns to care for her child, and overcome her loss, the character grows in ways which are both heroic and normal. Of course they are. She is a human with a heart and needs and feeling just like me. In the circumstances, would I not do the same?
Of course, this process is made all the more difficult by the blind prejudice which is immediately flung towards anyone who looked remotely alien by the grieving people of New York. It is such a tragic part of human nature that when we suffer tragedy, we look to blame someone. Even if that someone has suffered the same tragedy, we try to repair our own hearts by directing our anger at others. At one point, Arissa is asked by a journlist how she feels seeing her husband was killed by ‘her own people’. The narrow minded, stereotyping in that comment was inconsiderate beyond belief. Nobody likes the havoc that is wreaked by most fundamentalist religions, but that doesn’t mean that every single person who practices (or even doesn’t practice) that religion should be tarred with the same brush. Why, as humans, do we have to box people up into categories. You wear a veil, therefore you are a terrorist. You wear a cross, therefore you are a homosexual hating bigot. You don’t wear anything, therefore you are an immoral reprobate. How about you wear what you choose, and you are a human being, just like me?
As anyone who has read this blog will know, I have read several other books about the situation of Muslim women, particularly in Afghanistan. You will know how angry they make me as to me, every woman deserves respect, equal treatment, choice and a life free of violence and oppression. It means that I am wont to stereotype as well, so I found this book even more fulfilling because it made me stop and think. I am just as guilty of tarring everyone with the same brush as the next person. Meeting Arissa, I hope it will nudge me one step closer to stopping that.
This book examines the cultural mix as Arissa struggles to find equilibrium. Raian, so physically damaged himself, is her shining light and the hope and strength she needs to keep going. And through Raian she comes to realise that she can survive, she will manage and she can find happiness with herself again. It is a wonderfully uplifting story of struggle and survival, and yet another necessary work of fiction. Saffron Dreams is one of the reasons that fiction is so powerful. It helps everyone to understand a different life and a different point of view, and makes people stop for a moment and look outside of the walls within which they live. It is through fiction that you get the opportunity to touch a life which may seem alien and through touching it, realise that it has many similarities to your own.
Shaila Abdullah has also written a book a short stories about women in Pakistan. When I had to re-buy this book, I used it as an opportunity to also purchase her first book. After finishing this one, her short stories have found there way on to by to-be-read-soon pile so look out for the review of that one shortly.
ISBN: 978-1-932690-73-6
Publisher: Modern History Press
Year: 2009
Date Finished: 22 March 2009
Pages: 232
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Thank you, Nancy for hosting me and for the review.
Shaila Abdullah
Wow. I am immediately buying this one. Not sure if its out in the US but I don’t mind getting it from AmazonUK. Your review is extremely powerful and as I read it I am struck (and saddened) by the fact that I do not meet many people who think like you in everyday life.
“Why, as humans, do we have to box people up into categories. You wear a veil, therefore you are a terrorist. You wear a cross, therefore you are a homosexual hating bigot. You don’t wear anything, therefore you are an immoral reprobate.”
My feelings exactly. Thank you.