Note: This book review was originally published under my pen name of Suzan Abrams in The Iranian as part of the editor’s selection. Together with another of my reviews, ‘Let It Be Morning, The Attack was also chosen for publication in Cafe Arabica, an Arab-American news portal discussing topical social and political theories of the time. I believe the site may have closed down although keywords will still reveal this review in a Google cached version.
The brilliance with which the 52-year old Algerian novelist and French resident – this novel The Attack was translated from the French by John Cullen – Yasmina Khadra highlights the plight and eternal pain – even if it may be done through
compelling fictitious episodes – of families who suffer the curse when one of their own turns suicide bomber, is beautifully fragile while reflective of the primitive decisions that still encompass society’s present modernism.
When revenge and preaching utterances may be recited in the form of bloodied limbs and confused death calls, such strange doings and structured tragic consequences stay dismissive in theory but hold as real as day; in the murky depths of fanatical events that continue to replay themselves like eerie premonitions in elusive spaces. Perhaps the most recent being the bombings in a Baghdad market, in Islamabad and in Hyderabad.
No matter the questions of the puzzled observer and the clever expert, there are never
any proper answers. Forget the possibility of fragile theories. The mind of the suicide bomber already blessed for her spiritual martyrdom, is unworkable for a psychological penetration, mute to ramblings and secretive to disclosures. The icy personality disguised behind a feminine veil, shuns any attempt at recalling the basic laws of compassion and the resurrection bearing any normal perspective of humanity that would have long faded away, by the time the hour of the ghastly act dawns.
To the neutral observer, The Attack proves insightful, guarded by a clarity of terrifying distortions which masquerades an image of a forced vague truth; one that shrouds the minds of revolutionaries, terrorists and radical religious worshippers.
In this instance, Dr. Amin Jaafi, an admired and distinguished Arab-Israeli surgeon at a Tel Aviv hospital is faced with an emergency call when an explosion kills several people in a cafe. It soon turns out that within the dead lie is his once comely wife Sihem; now
represented only by a mass of sticky flesh for a body and the disembowelled mannequin for a closed face – apparently as is often the trademark of the dead female
suicide bomber.
Then began the questions and interrogations where soon afterwards when all is dusted and done; the appalling deaths of each rosy ideal that for so long shielded a snug
upper-class life, loom larger than life. The surgeon is horrified when his supposed saintly wife is declared the criminal.
Dr. Jaafi is himself questioned as a suspect then cautiously released. His home in an expensive residential suburb is ransacked by police, then vandalised by mobs. Some of his valuable possessions are also whisked away by detectives. He is watched and his
movements recorded. Later, all is restored as Dr Jaafi is declared innocent.
Not that Dr. Jaafi is astonished in the least.
As part of an old Bedouin family with ties to Palestine, Dr. Jaffi had tasted his fair share of prejudice while studying to be a doctor in Israel. The curtailing of friendships and relationships by distrustful Jewish students, appeared in all normalcy, the appropriate orientation. It was after all, expected that the Jews would turn their noses up at an Arab. Later, when Dr. Jaafi goes to Bethlehem to seek the terrorist group that may have influenced his wife to commit the atrocious crime; he is viewed as no less a traitor by
the Muslims who hate his Israeli citizenship.
With the help of his disgruntled and scared sources, Dr. Jaafi sets out on various nearby regions in the Middle-East to meet the fanatics, guarded by their robotic clinical minds and responsible for his wife’s doom.
When he is finally offered strange revelations that betray his vulnerable trust towards a marriage he had cherished more than life itself and now threaten to shake the core of every fragile leftover memory, Dr. Jaafi becomes a different man and it is this new
zealous quality that will block his return to the old destiny, even as he must continue to trudge a newer, harder one.
Khadra’s story stays detached from mawkishness from start to finish.
He employs bluntness while dealing with grief. The Saharan-born author who holds a rich ancestry of warriors and poets, portrays a powerful plot born of catastrophe and misadventure through the use of a character’s mismatched actions rather than the reliance of descriptive emotions or numerous adjectives that act as hangers-on. The idea of heavy-heartedness as a trait, prefers to race along the plot with brisk purposefulness, rather then linger with a doleful air in the shadows. It is a tragedy designed to engulf the story with angry flames rather than a staggering bout of self-pity.
in the novel, which is what makes reading him superb. It may have just been the reader’s gift while dwelling on the plot, to have been afforded the study of complicated characters with meticulous ease.
Khadra is eager to share the character’s pain with his reader but without stepping on any toes or carelessly creating distaste. With what could only have been a brooding thoughtfulness, Khadra draws the outsider, in from the first outset to inherit Dr. Jaafi’s confused emotions and to watch with bated breath, the peeling of the hero’s reasoning to a definite logic. Khadra’s story is full of good manners….the author himself playacts the perfect gentleman while talking of full-blown horror.
There is diplomacy and tact that encircle themselves with raw anguish. The reader is never left to mourn alone.
with his lost wife, Sihem in happier times is deeply poignant, enchanting, childlike and reminiscent of all the magic likely to sparkle with a first love.Once more, these sections are never overly-sentimental but rather that they are held up to the skies like a
sparkling shard of glass being watched over for an ugly stain.
There are no signs of scars and yet, the pointed glass is ready to stab any sign of musing that go wrong. The omen humming blight and affliction lurks as an uncomfortable bystander and grief is held to a sophisticated measure in the novel.
scene was described in a predictable way so as to grant a reader the outcome of the episode, even before the book’s hero had a chance to figure things out. The second lay in the almost surrealistic effect of the ending; something unexpected and extraordinary but which managed to spell for me personally, a moment of high defeat.With the exception of the above however, Khadra has written an exceedingly clever
and lucid novel. His lessons on contemplation for the reader are priceless. The Attack by
Yasmin Khadra was recently shortlisted for the IMPAC International
Literary Prize.
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