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A review by dreamtokens
Silence is My Mother Tongue by Sulaiman Addonia
I’ve been wanting to read a novel by Sulaiman Addonia for a while now, ever since I read some of his essays, so I kept an eye out for the paperbacks and finally got “Silence is my mother tongue”. The book unfolds life in an East African refugee camp in a lyrical manner, enfleshed with pain as well as pleasure. It follows the stories of two siblings, Saba and Hagos, and it begins with a trial. While most of the book is told in third person following the two, the first chapter throws us into the world of the camp from a distinct male gaze, seeing Saba as a desired object and a subject under sexist judgment. We are left with the rest of the book to uncover what has been happening, and to learn to look at Saba as she understands herself, rather than the way society does.
This novel is a fascinating exploration of queerness and gender, pulling subtly at feminist themes beneath actions of the characters, in a setting in which misogyny, gendered norms, violence and abuse are ever-present. Saba dreams of reading, studying, and going to the big city. Hagos dreams quietly, without speaking, yet we can slowly grasp what: the pleasure of soft skin, silken fabric, a certain look, a way of being. Both of them defy what is expected, one is too “masculine”, the other too “feminine”.
Friendships in the camp are not without trouble, and the colonial presence is always in the background, in shouted Italian words, British imports, in the ways NGOs control the food and clothes coming in. Life only seems to be at a standstill, for one character tells us that “People have confused being a refugee with the end of life, he said. They have mistaken being in a camp with being inside a graveyard. We are human beings. We have our needs wherever we are.” (p. 110) in his attempt to convince Saba to have sex with him. Yet Saba, stubbornly, kind of knows this already, pursuing pleasure despite it being forbidden, with men, women, and herself: “Like the flag of a free country, she planted pleasure on her assaulted body with her fingers.” (p. 160)
While the novel may seem slow in the middle, it then starts to unleash a series of powerful happenings that make it impossible to stop reading. New people come into the camp and relationships that change everything emerge. And while the arrival of animals, and thus “meat”, seems to be a sign of upcoming fortune, of a modicum of wealth, the selling, killing and consumption of “meat” becomes inextricably associated with seeing women as beings to be possessed, to be bought, as well.
It is not an easy novel to read, with its strange beauty and terrible pain. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what to think of how it writes female sexuality. It doesn’t shy away from exploring the erotic in unusual ways, nor from showing the darkest sides of life - violence, abuse and rape. Lastly, it is a novel that unfolds the English language from a writer who arrived in London as a minor, without knowing one word of it. The dialogues happen without lines or breaks in the text, almost subdued within the writing. Almost as if the silence of the incommunicable had a particular texture, one that is felt between the chapters of this fascinating work.
“WHEN YOU LEARN A LANGUAGE AS AN ADULT, WORDS ARE LIKE RAZORS ON YOUR TONGUE, THE SENTENCES YOU SPEAK ARE SO WOUNDED THAT THEY FALL APART WHEN THEY LEAVE YOUR MOUTH.” (p. 167)
This novel is a fascinating exploration of queerness and gender, pulling subtly at feminist themes beneath actions of the characters, in a setting in which misogyny, gendered norms, violence and abuse are ever-present. Saba dreams of reading, studying, and going to the big city. Hagos dreams quietly, without speaking, yet we can slowly grasp what: the pleasure of soft skin, silken fabric, a certain look, a way of being. Both of them defy what is expected, one is too “masculine”, the other too “feminine”.
Friendships in the camp are not without trouble, and the colonial presence is always in the background, in shouted Italian words, British imports, in the ways NGOs control the food and clothes coming in. Life only seems to be at a standstill, for one character tells us that “People have confused being a refugee with the end of life, he said. They have mistaken being in a camp with being inside a graveyard. We are human beings. We have our needs wherever we are.” (p. 110) in his attempt to convince Saba to have sex with him. Yet Saba, stubbornly, kind of knows this already, pursuing pleasure despite it being forbidden, with men, women, and herself: “Like the flag of a free country, she planted pleasure on her assaulted body with her fingers.” (p. 160)
While the novel may seem slow in the middle, it then starts to unleash a series of powerful happenings that make it impossible to stop reading. New people come into the camp and relationships that change everything emerge. And while the arrival of animals, and thus “meat”, seems to be a sign of upcoming fortune, of a modicum of wealth, the selling, killing and consumption of “meat” becomes inextricably associated with seeing women as beings to be possessed, to be bought, as well.
It is not an easy novel to read, with its strange beauty and terrible pain. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what to think of how it writes female sexuality. It doesn’t shy away from exploring the erotic in unusual ways, nor from showing the darkest sides of life - violence, abuse and rape. Lastly, it is a novel that unfolds the English language from a writer who arrived in London as a minor, without knowing one word of it. The dialogues happen without lines or breaks in the text, almost subdued within the writing. Almost as if the silence of the incommunicable had a particular texture, one that is felt between the chapters of this fascinating work.
“WHEN YOU LEARN A LANGUAGE AS AN ADULT, WORDS ARE LIKE RAZORS ON YOUR TONGUE, THE SENTENCES YOU SPEAK ARE SO WOUNDED THAT THEY FALL APART WHEN THEY LEAVE YOUR MOUTH.” (p. 167)