The tiny and almost invisible kingdom of Orap, situated somewhere in the Middle East, is experiencing periodic political upheavals, swinging wildly between a debauched jaded faux royalty and a repressive religious fundamentalist cohort. The royals are booted out as the radical fringe sweeps in with a Taliban-like regime. Those who were farsighted got out in time and the rest either faced execution or refugee status. Every time a new regime takes power, the calendar is set back to zero, as if time begins from that point on.

There was a calendar on the wall. The year is back to zero. All the women in our family were born in the year zero. The last three successive regimes have changed the calendar to suit their own story of the world. They have tried to start the world again.

Marguerite Fatagagas, born to Orapian parents, Ishmael and Farah, in a refugee camp, but raised in Ireland and the U.S., is in a jail cell in Orap, accused of crimes against the state, protesting the treatment of women in this repressive religious climate where currently women are publicly stoned to death for the mildest of infractions. She is regularly tortured and raped by the young male guards, as are all the women prisoners here. She becomes pregnant while in prison and expecting death through execution, begins to talk to the unborn child she’s carrying.

You build yourself inside me, and everything is for you and nothing for me. You are active while I wait, slumped and removed. You are coming through me, oblivious to me. I can’t stop you. I have to tell you my story because it will be your story too….When I was a young girl, they told me that women are like water: their lives should flow into their family’s desires, and a good woman should take on the shape of whatever container she is poured into. But there’s always a river inside. I’m just not sure if it can help me this far along. Beware of me, Baby Zero. Everything gets brought back to the same moment, until there is no mystery in starting over.

But let’s back up here for a moment and see how Marguerite arrived at such a dire place in time. The Fatagagas family is part of the upper middle class in the pre-revolution Orap. Two brothers, Ishmael and Mo are actually of the peasant class, both of whom have managed to escape that life, having gotten themselves through medical school. There are already two Fatagagas brothers that are renowned plastic surgeons in Orap but Ishmael and Mo move in, co-opting the name and the benefits of the established reputation. Ishmael and Farah are fruitful and multiply, at least to the extent of two children, Zolo and Leila. Zolo, the older boy is smart and spoiled, in the tradition of the patriarchal society while Leila, also a brain is practically treated as an afterthought, also in step with the culture. A brief idyllic picture of an indulged carefree life before it all comes crashing in on the social and economic spin cycle that passes for civilization and government here. Ishmael’s brother, Mo, feels the winds of change early on and bails, lighting out for the territories, literally, landing in southern California and pretty much picking up where he left off, doing vanity plastic surgery. Ishmael and Farah leave it too late and wind up in a refugee camp with the kids, a humbling experience as they’re forced to share their lives with every class of Orapian.

Zolo and Leila are slipped out eventually and end up in the States, theoretically under Uncle Mo’s guardianship but this is a farce as Mo really doesn’t do kids and they’re shunted off to a motel on the freeway. Ultimately, Zolo scams his way into a high school and in meeting new friends there, takes Leila along with him. In meeting Jack Clancy & his sister Desiree and reclusive brother Ernie, they find a quirky family to adopt them and begin a madcap existence entering the American pop culture experience. Leila moves in with the Clancy’s and takes Ernie’s room (he’s never there) and discovers his penchant for scrapbooks containing various collected clippings.

Leila liked Ernie’s home-made books, and she decided to adopt them and continue them with her own clippings and notes. They needed a theme. A story. She would work on that.

She documents many things, widespread interests – places, history. The settling of the west, the slaughter of Native-Americans and the buffalo. She develops into a powerful storyteller -- this is important and her scrapbooks/clippings will figure in later as artifacts and evidence of her existence as she is a ‘baby zero’ as well.

This is a fantastic and powerful book – also wildly funny. Powerful as a statement of how a woman is mapped not only in a repressive patriarchal society but in a theoretically liberal and free society as well. Hypocrisies abound. Martin is global as she goes from Middle East to Europe (Dublin) to the U.S., examining the culture and idiosyncrasies of each. There are brutal savage murders and various atrocities as well as brutal savage humour. Martin will take you from the vulgar opulence of ridiculous Mid-East oil wealth to the dehumanizing scenario of a refugee camp and back to the material vulgarity of southern California, with hilarious road trips and stops in Las Vegas and Tijuana, two classic American examples of the end of civilization as we know it. Martin captures perfectly, as seen through the eyes of these refugee kids, tons of icons and touchstones that describe and qualify the American experience as well as the Irish and Middle Eastern. The rest of the cast of characters in ‘Baby Zero’ are equally well crafted and contribute to the tale.

At the heart of it, it’s a story about women and their powerlessness and invisibility, but with a sense of their ultimate power. It also examines the tragedy of their dispensability – the ease with which they can be discarded. I once saw an art piece installation, an ofrenda (altar) at a Mexican Day of the Dead exhibit that commemorated the thousands of Mexican women that daily cross the border to find work and just disappear, presumably murdered. It was a desk table with drawers pulled out and various objects like make-up, lipstick cases and thread spools lying around in the sand under it to indicate the ephemeral and fragile transient nature of it all. I think Emer Martin has, among other accomplishments in this book, commemorated this as well.

There is no getting away from the concept of zero and how it symbolizes a number of things, among them, women’s’ nothingness but also the completion of cycles and beginnings. The heritage of zero as passed down from woman to woman.

I have a vision in my boredom. I see the prison open and one line of women march out. The town is sleeping, but more women creep from their houses and glide down the streets in silence. I see all the black-veiled women line up in twos. As they step closer, one woman is subsumed into the other until, in a flash, there is only one line of women. Woman minus woman. I see the mountain open and all the women go into the mountain. They turn, each one, as they enter. They look back.

Baby Zero, listen carefully, for this is your story too. Your messy inheritance. I know, I am baby zero too.

Marc Goldin currently lives in Chicago, with three cats, each one more long-haired than the last. Interests have ranged from medieval monasticism to discontinued stations on the London Underground – literary likes too diverse (some would say schizo) to list here although the last several years have been witness to an intimacy with Scottish and Irish literature. American Southern and Beat era lit also account for some of the ‘missing years’. Music tastes run the gamut from Cuban Danzon to Ska (all three waves but having a specific attachment to the second, two-tone period) to the Tuvan throat singers. Has written book reviews for a now defunct Irish literature site and has several short stories in various stages of development. Mad for black and white photography and aspires to someday have a complete collection of photos documenting every close in the Grassmarket area of Edinburgh. Works in the IT dept. of a French company in the current political climate. In football, supports Chelsea, Hibs, and for the sake of employment security, Marseille. For more articles and reviews by Marc on The New Review, click here or to read Marc's story, 'Plastic Paddy' on the Showcase, click here