Book: Bitter Orange Tree
Author: Jokha Alharthi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Price: Rs. 699
At the heart of Jokha Alharthi’s latest novel, Bitter Orange Tree, lies a chapter titled “Nostalgia”. In a sense, the entire novel, translated by Marilyn Booth, is an extended examination of the dynamics of nostalgia. In the course of this probe into the labyrinth of the human mind and memories, it blurs the lines between longing and belonging in cadenced, lyrical, and poignant prose.
Narrated from the perspective of Zuhour, an Omani student studying at an English university, the narrative unfurls the varied and intersecting lives of numerous people, most of whom are women. These women comprise an intricately woven network of relationships to which Zuhour both longs to return to and desires an escape from. In crisp, short, individually-titled chapters, the narrative moves fast, but not always forward. Alharthi has experimented with non-linear story-telling in Celestial Bodies; a similar technique has been pursued here. Though most of the narrative is filtered through Zuhour’s consciousness — she is the first-person narrator for more than half of the novel — there are juxtaposing experiences, voices and perspectives, especially that of Zuhour’s foster-grandmother, Bint Aamir, and her sister, Sumayya, who used to be known as “Sumayya the Dynamo” in the family before her abusive husband’s accidental death silenced her forever.
The bitter orange tree of the title is an embodiment of Bint Aamir’s life-long desire to own a plot of land planted with fruit trees, especially a bitter orange tree. She does plant a bitter orange tree in the course of her life, but on land owned by others. Under her “green thumb”, plants grow and thrive, but none of them belongs to her. This lack of possession — the absence of any legal rights over people and things that populate her life — makes Bint Aamir a peripheral and dependent entity within a household that curiously centres around her. Bint Aamir had been the foster mother to both Zuhour’s father, Mansour, and her brother, Sufyan. In spite of having a biological mother and a grandmother, it is Bint Aamir, the foster grandmother, who invades and remains a constant presence in the life and the consciousness of Zuhour. In her attempts to forge connections with people in a foreign land, suffering from a deep sense of alienation, Zuhour’s mind constantly turns to the life of her foster grandmother, her “Maah”. The narratives of the two lives mingle, blurring the divisions between the past and the present; between a small, nameless village in Oman and the modern metropolis of London. Alharthi’s narrative style might be described with the help of an expression from the novel itself. It is an assemblage of kaleidoscopic voices and perspectives within which time and personalities loop back among themselves and one another.
Zuhour finds a parallel to her deep sense of non-belonging to her surroundings in Bint Aamir’s experiences of deprivation. Thrown out of her father’s household at the insistence of her stepmother, Bint Aamir had had a life of tremendous hardships till she is absorbed into the household of her relative, Salman, and his wife, Athurayyaa. Athurayyaa’s all-engrossing interest in theology and spirituality makes Bint Aamir the de facto mistress of Salman’s household. When Athurayyaa rejects her new-born son, Mansour, in a severe bout of post-partum depression, it is Bint Aamir who nurses the infant, a pattern that would be repeated with Mansour’s own son, Sufyan. In spite of being at the heart of it all, Bint Aamir does not possess a single thing that gives her life its significance. As Zuhour points out, reminiscing over her death — “She had died, gone silent, left the world as she lived in it, without a home, without a field, without a beloved to hold her close, without a brother to take care of her, and never having had children who came out of her own body.” In Bint Aamir’s fate, Zuhour, hopelessly in love with the husband of her friend, Imran, seems to anticipate her own destiny. In her nightmares, the corpse of Bint Aamir becomes her own corpse. Not only Bint Aamir and Zuhour, but almost all the other women characters in the novel have experienced loss and deprivation, their agency over their own lives ranges from severely restricted to completely non-existent. Even under such circumstances, women like Bint Aamir find solace in fostering the children of their relatives and immersing themselves in household chores. Alone in an alien city, young Zuhour is still in search of a source of solace.
Marilyn Booth’s translations of both Celestial Bodies and Bitter Orange Tree offer a seamless reading experience. The bitter-sweet taste of the narrative gets effectively filtered through Booth’s prose and conveys a strong sense of melancholy to the readers.
