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A review by kmardahl
If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga
2.0
I had very mixed feelings about this book. I do believe strongly in reading books from outside one's own culture. That can also mean I will bring conscious and unconscious bias to the book, so it's a balancing act, that can get better over time.
I listened to the audiobook, which made it easy for me to move from the two voices in the story. I can understand that some people dislike the typography of the two voices in the printed form. I wonder, but do not know, if this back and forth is from middle eastern or arabic storyteling. I know I first encountered the concept of repetition in a book by Nawal El Saadawi, so I wonder if there is some literary tradition for this style that I am unfamiliar with. I think it works fine, and I don't see a problem with it at all.
There were nice bits of descriptive writing here and there that I enjoyed. Sorry, I am not good at capturing these elements. I just noted that I really liked the writing itself now and then.
I was looking for a shorter story to read, and I dived into this one almost the moment I discovered it, so I had no time to speculate about it that much. I did expect something about culture clashes. There were cultural clashes, but not what I expected. I have to continue behind spoiler tags.
The unnamed male protagonist has no visible means of support until he moves in with the unnamed female protagonist. I was quite surprised that he had a cocaine habit without any income, unless he had saved up from his years as an active photographer, which I doubt he did based on other signs.
I assume there is some rebelling against her parents over her move from NYC to Cairo, even though she is in her twenties. There is still something going on since it's her mom who gets her the job at the embassy. Don't want to live with mom, but thanks for the job, mom? I am unsure about her taking up with a drug addict, although he doesn't seem to be so hard pressed when they first meet. Does she think it is edgy, or do they really have a connection? I am also a bit surprised that if she has a relationship with an Egyptian, and she has plans to move permanently to Cairo, that she doesn't take Arabic classes. She expresses frustration over some misunderstandings, so why doesn't she rectify that with language classes?
He changes character a lot toward the end - or his true nature comes out. He has some quite misogynistic and abusive fantasies about her, as a way to get back into her life. This all felt very uncomfortable.
Suddenly (when Part 3 opens) we are back in a writing workshop/classroom in NYC, and we learn the previous pages were a memoir. Now the female protagonist is named Noor. Is this the author, and did all this really happen to her, or is it fiction, and she uses her own name for the protagonist by chance or to tease) The really awkward part for me here is that if this all really happened to real or fictional Noor, how does she know what the male protagonist was thinking? Why would she write such horrible thoughts for him to have?
In fact, the ending of Part 2 was so abrupt that I thought William got knocked off the balcony and not the male protagonist. I had to relisten to catch the exact wording. That would have changed things a lot! So he gets killed and she goes back to NYC. I can fully understand how traumatic that all was.
In the end, I had no idea who to believe or what to believe. Abuse is horrible, but it doesn't seem to come out in her part of the story in Parts 1 and 2. She ponders differences in Eqyptian and American society a lot, but it sounds like she brushes a lot away after a brief comment. He seems to be smouldering over many issues, which she doesn't seem to notice, which sounds very dangerous. He had horrible fantasies about her being in danger and he sweeps in a rescues her. When she is in a dangerous situation - the "bald" man who starts walking with her - she seems to pity the "bald" man because he is, to her, clearly mentally ill, as well as drunk, while the male protagnist has no such pity and wants to beat up the "bald" man - possible as an outlet for lots of bottled up frustrations and anger and a lot of things and a lot of people. For me, this episode showed that the two people are on different planets with regard to their cultural understanding and feelings. They really are doomed. She can walk away from it all, yes, with a trauma, but still, she walks away. This is NOT to say I condone any sort of abuse. It is to say that there are some storylines that get terribly messed up and confusing here. There are issues of power (colonizer-stuff, too) and privilege here, as well as the topic of gender roles in society. He seemed to be a terrible, abusive person in the end, so good riddance to him, as one of the workshop people stated quite bruntly! At the same time, there seems to be a commentary on society with class and privilege. I got a new definition of clean here as street slang for all that is desirable by everyone, and it basically translates into privilege and being white or foreign or both, and so on. In this scenario, I kind of felt sorry for him getting metaphorically stomped on by everyone else. I don't want to feel sorry for an abuser, so this is where I started getting confused as to what message Naga was sending or wanted me to get. Because I had now learned that the female protagonist wrote the male protagonist's thoughts throughout all of Part 1 and Part 2, I didn't know if I was dealing with an unreliable narrator, or what.
Maybe the bottom line is that Naga was trying too hard, and some editor didn't wield the red pen enough? I felt enough confusion by what was happening in the end, that what started out as an interesting read possibly on its way to three, four, or five stars, ended up with just two stars. Perhaps my comments mean I would rank this as a one-star book, I felt there was promise in the writing in Part 1. Just needs major editing to tighten up all the items that left me utterly confused or puzzled.
I listened to the audiobook, which made it easy for me to move from the two voices in the story. I can understand that some people dislike the typography of the two voices in the printed form. I wonder, but do not know, if this back and forth is from middle eastern or arabic storyteling. I know I first encountered the concept of repetition in a book by Nawal El Saadawi, so I wonder if there is some literary tradition for this style that I am unfamiliar with. I think it works fine, and I don't see a problem with it at all.
There were nice bits of descriptive writing here and there that I enjoyed. Sorry, I am not good at capturing these elements. I just noted that I really liked the writing itself now and then.
I was looking for a shorter story to read, and I dived into this one almost the moment I discovered it, so I had no time to speculate about it that much. I did expect something about culture clashes. There were cultural clashes, but not what I expected. I have to continue behind spoiler tags.
Spoiler
I will move around the story in this spoiler section, and there are some major spoilers here, so be prepared!The unnamed male protagonist has no visible means of support until he moves in with the unnamed female protagonist. I was quite surprised that he had a cocaine habit without any income, unless he had saved up from his years as an active photographer, which I doubt he did based on other signs.
I assume there is some rebelling against her parents over her move from NYC to Cairo, even though she is in her twenties. There is still something going on since it's her mom who gets her the job at the embassy. Don't want to live with mom, but thanks for the job, mom? I am unsure about her taking up with a drug addict, although he doesn't seem to be so hard pressed when they first meet. Does she think it is edgy, or do they really have a connection? I am also a bit surprised that if she has a relationship with an Egyptian, and she has plans to move permanently to Cairo, that she doesn't take Arabic classes. She expresses frustration over some misunderstandings, so why doesn't she rectify that with language classes?
He changes character a lot toward the end - or his true nature comes out. He has some quite misogynistic and abusive fantasies about her, as a way to get back into her life. This all felt very uncomfortable.
Suddenly (when Part 3 opens) we are back in a writing workshop/classroom in NYC, and we learn the previous pages were a memoir. Now the female protagonist is named Noor. Is this the author, and did all this really happen to her, or is it fiction, and she uses her own name for the protagonist by chance or to tease) The really awkward part for me here is that if this all really happened to real or fictional Noor, how does she know what the male protagonist was thinking? Why would she write such horrible thoughts for him to have?
In fact, the ending of Part 2 was so abrupt that I thought William got knocked off the balcony and not the male protagonist. I had to relisten to catch the exact wording. That would have changed things a lot! So he gets killed and she goes back to NYC. I can fully understand how traumatic that all was.
In the end, I had no idea who to believe or what to believe. Abuse is horrible, but it doesn't seem to come out in her part of the story in Parts 1 and 2. She ponders differences in Eqyptian and American society a lot, but it sounds like she brushes a lot away after a brief comment. He seems to be smouldering over many issues, which she doesn't seem to notice, which sounds very dangerous. He had horrible fantasies about her being in danger and he sweeps in a rescues her. When she is in a dangerous situation - the "bald" man who starts walking with her - she seems to pity the "bald" man because he is, to her, clearly mentally ill, as well as drunk, while the male protagnist has no such pity and wants to beat up the "bald" man - possible as an outlet for lots of bottled up frustrations and anger and a lot of things and a lot of people. For me, this episode showed that the two people are on different planets with regard to their cultural understanding and feelings. They really are doomed. She can walk away from it all, yes, with a trauma, but still, she walks away. This is NOT to say I condone any sort of abuse. It is to say that there are some storylines that get terribly messed up and confusing here. There are issues of power (colonizer-stuff, too) and privilege here, as well as the topic of gender roles in society. He seemed to be a terrible, abusive person in the end, so good riddance to him, as one of the workshop people stated quite bruntly! At the same time, there seems to be a commentary on society with class and privilege. I got a new definition of clean here as street slang for all that is desirable by everyone, and it basically translates into privilege and being white or foreign or both, and so on. In this scenario, I kind of felt sorry for him getting metaphorically stomped on by everyone else. I don't want to feel sorry for an abuser, so this is where I started getting confused as to what message Naga was sending or wanted me to get. Because I had now learned that the female protagonist wrote the male protagonist's thoughts throughout all of Part 1 and Part 2, I didn't know if I was dealing with an unreliable narrator, or what.
Maybe the bottom line is that Naga was trying too hard, and some editor didn't wield the red pen enough? I felt enough confusion by what was happening in the end, that what started out as an interesting read possibly on its way to three, four, or five stars, ended up with just two stars. Perhaps my comments mean I would rank this as a one-star book, I felt there was promise in the writing in Part 1. Just needs major editing to tighten up all the items that left me utterly confused or puzzled.