About
Author: Ibrahim Nasrallah (Jordan)
Genre: Socio-Political
Setting
Place: Al Qundufah, Saudi Arabia
Time: 1970s-1980s
My Rating (see what this means)
My Subjective Rating: 4
My ‘Objective’ Rating: 3.17
Introduction
Ibrahim Nasrallah, in his book Prairies of Fever, manages to create a haunting reality of statelessness with such beauty – you have to take several pauses to appreciate and understand it – for it is not an easy book to read.
Imagine – 5 shadowy figures, speaking with one voice, visiting you one day to demand payment for your funeral. No argument is enough to convince them you are alive – for a beating heart just isn’t enough proof. Imagine – on the very next day now, you are alive and chased by 5 policemen for the murder of your roommate – who shares your name and your physical appearance, and has gone missing. And who probably doesn’t exist.
Intriguing? Certainly.
Easy to read? Not. The narration jumps between the first, the second and the third person making finding a footing in the novel as difficult as it would the slipping sands of a desert – a desert which makes for the brutally picturesque backdrop of the story.
“the devasting aura of the place disperses you in a slow hemorrhage of time”
Worth reading? I will tell when I read it the second time!
Synopsis
Prairies of Fever is overflowing with metaphors and allusions and only after I stumbled on this research paper2 that I found myself able to make better sense the book. (It is marvellous to read, even when understanding eludes you)
“We don’t exist when a place refuses to acknowledge our presence”
– Muhammed Hammad, the missing roommate of the protagonist Muhammed Hammad
Reading Muhammad Hammad – our protagonist’s life as an example of bare life which is deprived of juridical shelter yet bound by the enforcement of the law and exposed to its violence2 – exposes the devasting reality of statelessness with a vivid beauty. Both existent and non-existent for the authorities at the same time – who acknowledge him only when they want to punish him; forced to stay some distance away from the village where he teaches to maintain the honour of its women, looted by landlords – the protagonist is not the only sufferer from statelessness in the book. There is also Abu Muhammed – a farmer who finds it impossible to turn the sand into earth, no matter how hard he tries. And his daughter Fatima, whose honour the village seems less concerned about.
“That’s OK,” you said, “the important thing is that you came. You know, someone must ask in the end (about the missing roommate), someone has to, even if it’s a policeman?
But, on occasions – I did feel there was another way to look at the story –
“We don’t exist when a place refuses to acknowledge our presence”
– Muhammed Hammad, the missing roommate of the protagonist Muhammed Hammad
The narrator protagonist Muhammed Hammad talks about the origin of mistrust in his missing roommate Muhammed Hammad when he counters the above statement with – “I’m starting to get accustomed to life here together.” Then I corrected myself. “No”, I said, “I’m on my way to getting accustomed to the things that surround us here”
Can we read the book, not just an allegory on external statelessness in an barely welcoming geography, but as one of internal peace made with hopeless circumstance. No wonder the roommate who demanded his presence be felt goes missing. And no wonder – the policeman of the place (the circumstance that killed the spark) have no success finding him. Perhaps the only option available to what remains of him was to –
“nurse the illusion of two birds in a cage, searching for freedom, each in the other.”
Needless to say – a lot of allegories alluded me in my first reading of the book – and I can only wait for my next reading to appreciate the book more
Picture Credits:
- Cover Picture: https://superstitioustimes.com/shadow-figures-and-their-ties-to-sleep-disorders/
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333940246_Wanted_Dead_or_Alive_Bare_Life_Non-Grievability_and_Spectrality_in_Ibrahim_Nasrallah’s_Prairies_of_Fever
- https://refugees.org/what-is-statelessness/
- https://www.anprebuy2023.co/?category_id=6511123