Moving on from the theme of communication examined in her last novel, Bitter Orange Tree, International Booker-prize winner Jokha Alharthi turns her exacting focus and lyrical style to marriage and motherhood in contemporary Oman. Sensitively translated to reflect Alharthi’s ability to switch seamlessly between the different voices of her two central characters, one pragmatic, one passionate, the story also touches on the constraints and expectations of Omani society where traditional beliefs persist despite rapid modernization.
The story begins in the 1980s in the backwater village of Sharaat Bat. Two girls, Asiya and Layla, known by her nickname Ghaazala (gazelle), grow up as closely as sisters, partly because Ghazaala receives far more love from Asiya’s caring mother, Saada, than her own. Their rural childhood is idyllic until Saada has another girl, Zahwa, who absorbs all her attention. Unfortunately, Zahwa drowns and Saada blames herself. Stricken with grief, she dies. Shortly afterwards, Asiya and her father quit the village without saying goodbye.
Deprived of emotional support, Ghaazala seeks affection elsewhere. Her family relocates to Muscat where, at the age of 16, she falls for an older neighbour, The Violin Player. Against her parents’ wishes they marry but The Violin Player quickly tires of the mundanity of family life. By the age of 22, Ghaazala has twins, a BA in business studies and is divorced.
The degree allows Ghaazala to work and send her children to nursery rather than let her unreliable mother (or aunt) look after them. During her studies, she makes friends with another female student, Harir, whose life, unbeknownst to Ghaazala, has also been changed by a separate encounter with the vanishing Asiya.
After college, convinced that only romantic love can unlock the meaning of life, Ghaazala pursues an unsatisfactory affair over the internet and, later, another with a married man. Meanwhile Harir ponders her own parents’ loveless relationship and its impact on her.
These three women are the most obvious candidates for the gazelles of the novel’s title but the metaphor can be extended to almost every other female character and some of the male ones too. Initially strong, graceful and free to roam, the gazelles’ spirits are eventually crushed, primarily by the demands of children and partners. Ghaazala’s identity, her online lover observes, has been reduced by the twins to merely a function.
It didn’t matter whether she was young or old, abandoned or beloved, whether she could live without love or could not—she was a mother. She was not a human being but a role, a set of tasks.
In turn, Ghaazala sees that her married lover is stuck in a “cement strait-jacket” of duty to his wife and family. Meanwhile Harir has settled for a “friend” as a husband and prefers to let the maid bring up their only child. The aspirational notion of a happy family is exposed as a myth.
This argument could be a little one-sided without the inclusion of Ghaazala’s aunt, the gloriously spiteful Maliha. Like a pantomime Ugly Sister, she jumps off the page as an embittered spinster who blames everyone else for her situation while, using food as consolation, literally eating herself to death. She is scathing about Ghaazala (“spoiled, misguided, wayward”) and dismisses Harir as “a piece of silk”. Her perspective begs the question, why are these women, who appear to have everything, so unhappy?
It is easy to blame conservative Omani society for the women’s woes. Maliha was not respected because she was unmarried. Harir enjoys horse-riding as a child and Ghazaala swimming, only to be barred from them as teenagers as they were unseemly for young women. Yet both Ghaazala and Harir finally discover true joy on re-engaging with these activities in later life. Could they have found nirvana earlier if they had been allowed to continue these sports?
The answer is more nuanced than “yes”. Contemplating Ghazaala’s break-up with the married man, Harir realises the sorry tale is almost a cliché. But, like a cliché, it reveals an element of truth:
The painful shocking affirmation that at their core people are always alone-and it has to be recognized again and again, every time love fails, as it must do, to unite two beings who are essentially separate and alone.
In contrast, swimming and horse-riding provide Ghaazala and Harir with a more secure connection, to nature and beyond. Ghaazala is shown to experience completeness only when she is one with the water, free of human contact and, finally, at ease with herself. Maliha and Asiya don’t reach this understanding. The suggestion is that seeking fulfillment in union with others is fruitless; it is the communion with oneself which is key.