Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez translated by Gregory Rabassa

Publisher: Penguin Books

Date Read: May 2018

No. of Pages: 128 pages

Date Published: April 23, 2014

I find it really hard to explain this word Honor to people who live in modern nations and since this word with its meaning could be found in many societies but unless you lived in traditional society this short novella wouldn’t have much resonance with you.

how can you explain how my people consider Honor which is made up of  certainly a women, and that how my society sees women doesn’t look much different than how this novella town sees them, men honor depends on women and women honor depends on her virginity,what i found strange how a person dignity and humanity can be summarized to a small sheath of skin which determines how good or bad she is.

how many wars between tribes happened and how many people lost their life because of this word and how many societal tragedies has happened because of this word,

for instance in my hometown a women has fell in love and  run away with a man since her family refused the idea of her marrying a man from lower castes and since she run away with man she has dishonored her family name and the family has killed her with her lover,what i found inhumane was that no one tried to save the girl when she screamed for help and  the people divided between those ignoring her call for help and others actually cheering and supporting this crime.

The brothers were brought up to be men. The girls had been reared to get married

this short novella which is my second book i read for Garcia and i have read in almost two hours consecutively and while reading it it both reminded me how sexist societies are and how unfair they are to women and how your gender can determine how your parent would welcome you in the first hours of your birth to how much education you get and how much income your receive.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Nobel prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a novella which the story of Santiago Naser who is murdered by the twin Pedro and pablo Vicario  and how his murder was so foretold that no one believed when it happened and everyone is doubted it could happen.

when Bayardo San Romá  proposed to Angela Vicario she didn’t feel any affection or love toward him and she told her family of her refusal to marry him but

her mother demolished it with a single phrase:
“Love can be learned too.”

and after get married and her husband discovers her loss of virginity he peacefully returns her to her mother who with her twin brothers forced her to say the name of her lover

found it at first sight among the many, many easily confused names from this world and the other, and she nailed it to the wall with her well-aimed dart, like a butterfly with no will whose sentence has always been written.
“Santiago Nasar,” she said.

but what is wrong in this murder is that no one was sure that Santiago was her lover since no one saw them together but since Santiago reputation was famous as womanizer around the town no one also thought he was innocent also

 

and since the twins were so much eager to revenge against Santiago but also so hesitant they told all the town about their impending crime so someone could stop them but no one thought their talk was serous so no one tried to warn and save the victim earnestly

eventually crime occurs and the twins will be pardoned since this is honor crime.

although this is a short novella it fills you with so many questions about sexist societies are and  how humans are so fragile and weak that no one remembers the same thing exactly and still in many societies including my own how women value is determined by her virginity and how men value is determined by how he protects his women or how he takes revenge for it.

ironically just as i finished this novella i discovered in Sudan a young teen Noura Hussein who was forced to marry  a man and she accidentally killed him was sentenced to death because of that

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/sudanese-teens-death-penalty-marital-rape-case-highlights-widespread-problems-2078372463

 

 

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The Beekeeper by Dunya Mikhail tr by Max Weiss and Dunya Mikhail

Staying alive doesn’t mean permanent survival. Anyway,what is survival when the calamity survives along with you? To survive all alone is the worst kind.

Format eBook

Publisher New Directions Publishing Corporation

Publication date Mar 27 2018

Language English

Pages 240

Price $16.99

ISBN-13 9780811226134

While i was reading this book i remembered the promise mankind promised to itself when the horror of holocaust was revealed to mankind and that the holocaust would be the last genocide mankind would face, but since humans and nations  have short span memories we repeated the same mistakes and genocides again and again with a short term remorse and a long term amnesia.

while i was reading this book also i remembered some of my friends and cousins who have joined ISIS  in 2014 and 2015 not because of their love for death or killing but because their need for belief and their belief that ISIS was going to change the fate Sunni of Syrian and Iraq who were massacred by their country government, were they among the monsters who have kidnapped and killed the Yazidi women in Iraq,but they are all dead and i cannot ask them about their deeds or beliefs anymore.

this short book took me a three compete days to read not because of my busy life or lengthiness but the amount of horrors contained in it forced me sometimes to stop and run away from it and sometimes contemplating to stop turning the pages.

this book tells the story of modern Schindler the Beekeeper Abdullah who transformed after ISIS attacked his hometown in 2014 from beekeeper to human smuggler who smuggles Yazidi women abducted by ISIS from Syria,

Yazidi plight starts as ISIS starts a ferocious attack in mount Sinjar which is home to small Yazidi religious minority who their faith is linked to ancient Mesopotamian  religions with a small amount of Islam and Christianity and Zoroastrianism added in it.

after the attack the whole population was to school were men were first divided from women and after gathering men in big trucks they were driven to big trenches were they were shot to death and the old women with their grand children were driven to small fish pond  were they were buried alive, the remaining women then were driven either to Mosul or Raqqa where they were sexually enslaved.

these book is collection of victims testimonies and these victims are the lucky ones who were smuggled from ISIS grip but what is lucky if you come to home where most of your family member are either kidnapped or killed.

our first victim is Nadia who according to ISIS price list worth $85

Nadia was sold to Chechan man who bought her with her children and usually beat her and her children if they didn’t recite Quran correctly and used to rape her in front of her children

 beside being sex slave to ISIS member show was forced to work 12 hours a day making detonator and rockets eventually after tired of her life one day while ISIS member was absent she escaped from the home and went to internet cafe where she called her cousin Abdullah who managed to smuggle her out of Syria and she was able to come home where some of her family survived.

our second victim is miss Raghda

 miss Raghda with her children also were kidnapped from Iraq and sold in Raqqa slave market with her children and were used as cheap workers in rocket manufacturing and here is a transcript of a conversation with the two young children

What’s your name?
Hoshyar.
How old are you, Hoshyar?
Three.
Where were you before you came to Baadhra?
With Daesh.
Where with Daesh?
In Syria.
Hoshyar, were you in a madrassa with Daesh?
No, I was in one of their houses.
What were you doing in the house?

Who was teaching you Quran?
Abu Jihad.
Why were you there?
They made me go with them.
Where did they take you from?
Raqqa.
The man who was teaching you Quran, where was he from?
Russia.
And how did you know he was from Russia?
He told me.
Who else was there with you?
My mom and my sister and three children with their mother.
Did they teach all of you Quran?
Yes. And we built rockets.
What were you building?
Rocket, rocket.
And what do you remember from the Quran?
I was in Syria with Daesh.
I want to know what you can remember from the Quran.
In the Name of God, most gracious, most compassionate, praise be to God, Lord of the two worlds, the gracious, the compassionate, master of the Day of Judgment . . .
Do you know what that means?
No, no I don’t.
Hoshyar, what did they feed you?
Bones. Abu Jihad would eat meat and then give me the bones. I couldn’t eat the bones but he used to make me stand on one leg for an hour.
Were you afraid of them?
He told me he could cut my head off if he wanted to.
Why did he say that?
He told me to pray, he said that when I grew up, God willing, I would go fight with Daesh.
Hoshyar, where are you right now?
In Baadhra.
Is your situation okay right now? Better than being with Daesh?
I’m at home. I’m good.
Thank you, Hoshyar. Could you hand the phone to your sister?
Hello.
How are you, Rula?
Fine.
How old are you?

Seven.
Can you tell me what you did when you were with Daesh?
They beat me while we made rockets for them.
What kind? And how did you make them?
TNT. From chemicals.
Did you also study Quran and prayer?
Yes.
Did you understand the words you were memorizing?
No.
Who was your teacher?
Daesh.
What was the name of the person who taught you?
Abu Jihad.
Did you learn how to pray?
Yes, but now I want to forget.

using these small children to work in the dangerous manufacturing Chemicals was one of the instances that forced me to cry while i was reading the book and made me rethink about reading this book but i continued and after chapter you dive deep into this innocent people misery and how sometimes life is unfair to certain people.

while this book continues telling the survivors of these genocides the author delves deep into her past and her family past as also a christian minority who were treated better than the Yazidi people and were only forced to leave the city without their belongings.

but most important person is Abdullah who thanks to his dedication to saving his people from ISIS was able to start a small smuggling unit which was able till the publication of the book to smuggle 70 people and return them to their families or what remained of

them

 The Beekeeper by Dunya Mikhail

The Orange Grove Larry Tremblay, trans. from the French by Sheila Fischman

Living in Somalia where it is tribal country where you have hundreds of people who you can claim they are your cousin and they are your shelter when everything around is crumbling.

At one side being tribal it means you have cousins who will help you in marriage,cousins who would help when disaster or death struck you family as they are your only social security

but this model also has negative sides to it , if you were unfortunately killed by people from other nation or tribe you can be sure that your tribe would eventually take revenge for you, and those who will help you seek justice or revenge are your fellow cousins from your tribe

this social model has led my nation to go through 25 years of civil war where you don’t know where this cycle of violence has started  but you sure it would continue for long time.

this social model is also what made the America to be stuck fighting 17 years with tribesmen all way from Mali to Somalia to middle east to Afghanistan and it seems there is no end to this endless war

this is short which is almost 174 pages which explores the nature of terrorism and extremism,how young children are recruited to be killing machine and how religion can be corrupted and used to explain the horrific things humans can do to each other.

this novel starts with the twin who lives happily in their orange farm where suddenly a missile launched from the other side of the mountain struck the twin grand parents

Amed and Aziz found their grandparents in the ruins of their house. Their grandmother’s skull had been smashed in by a beam. Their grandfather was lying in his bedroom, his body shredded by the bomb that had come from the side of the mountain where every night the sun disappeared.

after that unfortunate incident the family is approached by three men who want to condole the family for their tragedy but also see if they are ready to take revenge of the people who launched that missile into their grandfather home

but before the one of the twins are chosen to be martyr or to carry out suicide attack they are visited by their older friend who is 15 and was about carrying suicide into the people from other side of the mountain.

here comes Soulayed who is recruiting this children to their demise and here is how he is convincing Halim the twin older friend to not be sympathetic with the enemy

Your softness weakens us and brings us shame. Where is your anger? I do not hear it. Listen to me, Halim: our enemies are dogs. They are like us, you think, because their faces are faces of men. That’s an illusion. Look at them with the eyes of your ancestors, and you’ll see what these faces are really made of. They are made of our death. In a single enemy face, you can see our annihilation a thousand times

eventually he

crossed the frontier. Soulayed told him how. He passed through a secret tunnel. Then he climbed onto a crowded bus. At noon, he blew himself up.”

this book tries to explain how people fall into terrorism hands and how they become radicalized and how even childhood is lost is corrupted when you are in a war

To kill time, they played at blowing themselves up in the orange grove. Aziz had stolen an old belt from his father that they weighted with three tin cans full of sand. They took turns wearing it, slipping into the skin of a future martyr. The orange trees also played war with them. The trees became enemies, endless rows of warriors poised to launch their explosive fruits at the slightest suspicious noise. The boys worked their way between them, crawling and scraping their knees

eventually even after one the twins are selected to carry out the suicide operation and the death one the twin the book leaves us with this question

He was asking himself the same questions about evil. It was too easy to accuse those who committed war crimes of being assassins or wild beasts. Especially when those who judged them lived far from the circumstances that had provoked the conflicts, whose origins were lost in the vortex of history. What would he have done in a comparable situation? Would he, like millions of other men, have been capable of fighting for an idea, a scrap of earth, a border, or even oil? Would he, too, have been conditioned to kill innocents, women and children?

it is quite amazing book to read especially if you are a Western who are baffled  and incapable of understanding why war in this region continues for so long and most of the time.