A review by arirang
Beyond Babylon, by Igiaba Scego
3.0
Oh, Mar, you have so many cities within you. You represent Venice and also Genoa, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Mogadishu, Rome. And who knows how many others, hija. What absurd journeys your ancestors made to be able to create you, star of my sky.
Beyond Babylon, translated by Aaron Robertson from Igiaba Scego's Italian original Oltre Babilonia is the latest from Two Lines Press.
The story focuses on two girls, half-sisters although they do not realise it, living in Rome, but of (part) Somalian descent.
It is told in 8 section each with 5 chapters that switch between the different perspectives (sometimes first person, sometimes priviliged third person) of five characters, the girls and their mothers, both also living in Italy. The chapters have the titles: and main characters -
Nus-nus: Mar Gonçalves, of mixed Argentine-Somali descent (Nus-Nus is Somali for “half and half"), and also recovering from a traumatic incident when her lesbian lover first insist Mar get pregnant, inseminated by a male friend, then that she abort the child, and then herself committed suicide. Although her reflections on Argentina also include her love of football and her own vocation as a goalkeeper, following her idol Amadeo Carrizo, perhaps the most influential goalkeeper of all time (https://ahalftimereport.com/2015/12/18/amadeo-carrizo-the-man-who-redefined-goalkeeping/).
The Negropolitana: Zuhra Laamane, a victim of sexual abuse from the school caretaker when a child, and now unable, pyschologically, to see the colour red.
The Reaparecida: Miranda Gonçalves, a poet originally from Buenos Aires, and Mar's mother, now living in exile in Italy after her brother became one of the los desaparecidos, detained and tortured by the Argentinian military regime in ESMA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_Petty-Officers_School) and almost certainly later murdered.
The Pessottimista: Maryam Laamane, originally from Mogadishu but who fled the Siad Barre regime, whose closest and oldest friend, who came with her from Somalia to Rome, has just died. Her sections are in the form of a tape recording of thoughts to Zuhra, who asks her if she experienced pleasure when sleeping with Zuhra's father. Her account starts with the declaration of independence for Somalia in 1960.
The father: Elias also from Somalia, Maryam's ex-husband and Zuhra's father, but also, after a one-night affair with Miranda, Mar's father. Elias's section is also in the form of a recording that he is asked to make by Mayram for Zuhra, who doesn't even know his name, in which he is supposed to introduce himself, but which he uses to explain not himself but his own family background.
Mar, Miranda and Zahra (who is a fan of Miranda's poetry) all meet in an Arabic language school in Tunisia in the mid-2000s, although unaware of the connection between them.
The novel comes with a helpful introduction from [a:Jhumpa Lahiri|3670|Jhumpa Lahiri|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1378932972p2/3670.jpg], reproduced here:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/04/12/the-creative-clamor-of-igiaba-scegos-beyond-babylon/ and the translator also provides a helpful overview here (https://pen.org/from-beyond-babylon/) alongside an extract from a section written by Miranda, addressed to Mar and looking back on Argentina:
I only learned who had been detained in Esma afterwards, though. We discovered a lot of things afterwards. Before, nobody knew, they suspected. Or rather, we all pretended not to know. They kidnapped your neighbors, and you covered your ears as forcefully as you could. The soldiers turned the radio volume up. You didn’t overthink if one day you didn’t see Veronica again, who always went to buy bread for her mother. Beautiful smile, eighteen years old, a baby bump, her whole life ahead of her. And then suddenly, no more Veronica, no more bread for her mother, and her child perhaps adopted by assassins. These were recurring things in Argentina. One couldn’t fret about it. An entire country was desaparecido. Everyone pretending like things were going fine. You went grocery shopping, you planned parties, you watched the World Cup. But then, when someone you knew was swallowed up, chupado, as they say now, you thanked the on-duty military for turning the volume up. Hearing a man scream like slaughtered veal did not sit well with anyone, and it ruined your digestion.
One of Scego's key themes is how Italian fascism was essentially exported to Argentina, and the dictatorship there which modelled itself on Mussolini's movement, but also to Somalia. In the 1950s, Somalia was designated an Italian protectorate, with the idea of the Italian colonial powers establishing democracy, but in the view expressed in the novel, they instead taught the Somalians what they knew best - corruption and fascism, leading to the dictatorship of Mohamed Siad Barre.
Behind Alcide De Gasperi stood everyone else, people like him, founding fathers. They had fought Mussolini and fascism. Valorous people. But on the colonial question they behaved exactly like The Duce.
The background of the section sets in Tunisia also focuses on the lingering effects of Western neo-liberalism and colonialism on the society. The passages that follows is particularly prophetic given the novel was published in 2008 - the Arab Spring was to begin with protests in Tunisia two years later:
Sometimes there was an ephermeal twinkle in the well-mannered Tunisians' eyes. In some eyes more than others. A shimmer. It wasn't slyness. It was hatred. Hatred for the fact that Tunisia's land was besmirched with Western artifice. Hatred for a dictatorship that had devoured their rights, their dreams, their belongings. But it was only a shimmer. The violence had to be sedated for a while yet. It would come soon enough.
This is also a visceral novel, with a particular focus on the repression of female sexuality and, in particular the practice of FGM, but more widely, as Lahiri explains:
3.5 stars
Beyond Babylon, translated by Aaron Robertson from Igiaba Scego's Italian original Oltre Babilonia is the latest from Two Lines Press.
The story focuses on two girls, half-sisters although they do not realise it, living in Rome, but of (part) Somalian descent.
It is told in 8 section each with 5 chapters that switch between the different perspectives (sometimes first person, sometimes priviliged third person) of five characters, the girls and their mothers, both also living in Italy. The chapters have the titles: and main characters -
Nus-nus: Mar Gonçalves, of mixed Argentine-Somali descent (Nus-Nus is Somali for “half and half"), and also recovering from a traumatic incident when her lesbian lover first insist Mar get pregnant, inseminated by a male friend, then that she abort the child, and then herself committed suicide. Although her reflections on Argentina also include her love of football and her own vocation as a goalkeeper, following her idol Amadeo Carrizo, perhaps the most influential goalkeeper of all time (https://ahalftimereport.com/2015/12/18/amadeo-carrizo-the-man-who-redefined-goalkeeping/).
The Negropolitana: Zuhra Laamane, a victim of sexual abuse from the school caretaker when a child, and now unable, pyschologically, to see the colour red.
The Reaparecida: Miranda Gonçalves, a poet originally from Buenos Aires, and Mar's mother, now living in exile in Italy after her brother became one of the los desaparecidos, detained and tortured by the Argentinian military regime in ESMA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_Petty-Officers_School) and almost certainly later murdered.
The Pessottimista: Maryam Laamane, originally from Mogadishu but who fled the Siad Barre regime, whose closest and oldest friend, who came with her from Somalia to Rome, has just died. Her sections are in the form of a tape recording of thoughts to Zuhra, who asks her if she experienced pleasure when sleeping with Zuhra's father. Her account starts with the declaration of independence for Somalia in 1960.
The father: Elias also from Somalia, Maryam's ex-husband and Zuhra's father, but also, after a one-night affair with Miranda, Mar's father. Elias's section is also in the form of a recording that he is asked to make by Mayram for Zuhra, who doesn't even know his name, in which he is supposed to introduce himself, but which he uses to explain not himself but his own family background.
Mar, Miranda and Zahra (who is a fan of Miranda's poetry) all meet in an Arabic language school in Tunisia in the mid-2000s, although unaware of the connection between them.
The novel comes with a helpful introduction from [a:Jhumpa Lahiri|3670|Jhumpa Lahiri|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1378932972p2/3670.jpg], reproduced here:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/04/12/the-creative-clamor-of-igiaba-scegos-beyond-babylon/ and the translator also provides a helpful overview here (https://pen.org/from-beyond-babylon/) alongside an extract from a section written by Miranda, addressed to Mar and looking back on Argentina:
I only learned who had been detained in Esma afterwards, though. We discovered a lot of things afterwards. Before, nobody knew, they suspected. Or rather, we all pretended not to know. They kidnapped your neighbors, and you covered your ears as forcefully as you could. The soldiers turned the radio volume up. You didn’t overthink if one day you didn’t see Veronica again, who always went to buy bread for her mother. Beautiful smile, eighteen years old, a baby bump, her whole life ahead of her. And then suddenly, no more Veronica, no more bread for her mother, and her child perhaps adopted by assassins. These were recurring things in Argentina. One couldn’t fret about it. An entire country was desaparecido. Everyone pretending like things were going fine. You went grocery shopping, you planned parties, you watched the World Cup. But then, when someone you knew was swallowed up, chupado, as they say now, you thanked the on-duty military for turning the volume up. Hearing a man scream like slaughtered veal did not sit well with anyone, and it ruined your digestion.
One of Scego's key themes is how Italian fascism was essentially exported to Argentina, and the dictatorship there which modelled itself on Mussolini's movement, but also to Somalia. In the 1950s, Somalia was designated an Italian protectorate, with the idea of the Italian colonial powers establishing democracy, but in the view expressed in the novel, they instead taught the Somalians what they knew best - corruption and fascism, leading to the dictatorship of Mohamed Siad Barre.
Behind Alcide De Gasperi stood everyone else, people like him, founding fathers. They had fought Mussolini and fascism. Valorous people. But on the colonial question they behaved exactly like The Duce.
The background of the section sets in Tunisia also focuses on the lingering effects of Western neo-liberalism and colonialism on the society. The passages that follows is particularly prophetic given the novel was published in 2008 - the Arab Spring was to begin with protests in Tunisia two years later:
Sometimes there was an ephermeal twinkle in the well-mannered Tunisians' eyes. In some eyes more than others. A shimmer. It wasn't slyness. It was hatred. Hatred for the fact that Tunisia's land was besmirched with Western artifice. Hatred for a dictatorship that had devoured their rights, their dreams, their belongings. But it was only a shimmer. The violence had to be sedated for a while yet. It would come soon enough.
This is also a visceral novel, with a particular focus on the repression of female sexuality and, in particular the practice of FGM, but more widely, as Lahiri explains:
the novel is steeped in bodily imagery and thick with bodily traumas. In Rome, a city known for its appreciation of the quinto quarto—the parts of the animal most people ignore, prized in Roman cooking—this focus on the body and its functions, its innards, its mysterious and occult workings, its cramps and urges, is particularly resonant. This is a novel that talks openly about defecating, menstruating, vomiting, fornicating, and evacuating—not just urine and feces and uterine linings, but also life itself, in the course of an abortion. It can claim Rabelais as an ancestor, and Boccaccio. It elevates what society tells us to keep to a private sphere, and makes it the subject for literature.In terms of its political resonance, particularly between Italy, Argentina and Somalia, the book was a success. But I found it a little less successful as a story - having brought the two girls (and one of their mothers) together, Scego doesn't then really do anything with this set-up, and there is a lot of detail of the other classmates on the language course, and other characters in their personal backstories that felt rather a distraction.
3.5 stars