Rabia Raihane’s story, ‘A Red Spot’ kicks off the anthology and is one of a number of stories that deals with the position of girls and women in Arabic societies. The young girls in this story are tormented by the issue of virginity and are fed misinformation on how to tell whether someone is a virgin or not. One girl the narrator knows has lost her virginity and is now a source of shame to her family, becoming meek and submissive, her family’s obedient slave. This story exhibits an economical use of prose, revealing the narrator’s environment and circumstances in just three short pages.

Rachida el-Charni’s ‘Life on the Edge’ is narrated by a girl whose father cares more for his sheep than he does for his wife and children. When some sheep go missing while in the children’s care, the father beats them, and their pregnant mother is struck too when she tries to protect them. Later, she goes into labour and the narrator is shocked when her father refuses to send for help. “Let her die, her life is cheaper than the sheep she made me lose.” Fortunately, she does not die, but she is forced to give birth alone with no one but her young daughter to help her. This story lingers in the mind long after the book is closed. Sabri Moussa’s ‘Rasmiya! Your Turn is Next’ and Mohamed Choukri’s ‘Men Have All the Luck’ also continue the theme of women’s oppression, and the first story deals with a particularly horrible murder where a woman’s body parts have been discovered in a sack. A local woman, Rasmiya, has gone missing, and many people think the body is hers since her father threatened to kill her after she committed adultery. The body is not Rasmiya, however, though as the title says, Rasmiya is next. Her father does not even attempt to hide his intentions from the police.

Of course, patriarchy affects boys as well as girls and women. ‘The Tortoise’ by Hassouna Mosbahi deals with a boy who is constantly beaten by his family so that he will grow up to become a strong man. The constant abuse of this child is horrifying. Even his own sister beats him violently.

’The Wind’ by Ali Mosbah is one of my favourites in the book, packed with beautiful prose and it reminded me too of South American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I leave prospective readers to discover this story for themselves. ‘The Myth of the North’ by Izz al-Din al-Tazi is another work that impressed me. As did ‘The Companion’ by Mohammed Dib which has a wonderfully engaging Algerian narrator. He meets a young man who has been working in France but who has now returned to Algeria. They go to a café, but their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of the police who beat everyone up and arrest them. They are marched through the streets. A European breaks through the watching crowds and beats up the narrator’s young companion. In the end the young man dies in prison and the narrator, released, has been radicalised by the experience. He has come to understand that the young man was one of those fighting for their country.

’The Furnace’ by Rachida el-Charni follows a young woman, Basma, who is forced to work in a factory. Although overqualified for the job, she has taken it because she doesn’t want her mother going out to work. But the German-owned textile factory subjects its workers to inhumane conditions - blistering heat inside the building, with the water supply cut off during shifts so that women will not drink and go to the toilet. But what shocks Basma most is the way she is strip searched at the end of her shift. When she berates the nurse who searches her, it becomes clear that the nurse is unhappy with the searches she has to carry out and is just as much a victim of exploitation as Basma and the other women.

Sabri Moussa’s ‘Sa’diya Fell From The Balcony’ illustrates a similar disregard for low paid workers, in this case a young maid who dies accidentally. Gamal el-Ghitani’s ‘The Crop’ sees a poor farmer abandoned by the rich hotel who promised to buy his crop. He waits and waits for the men in the black car to return, even as his crop withers and dies. He could have sold it elsewhere, but he believed the men’s promises.

Some of the stories in ‘Sardines and Oranges’ are very short. ‘A Plait For Maryam’ by Said al-Kafrawi is one of my favourites. The couple in this story seem to be haunted by something. The woman worries about aging, but there seems to be more to her mental suffering than this. She deliberately burns her hand on an electric fire. She shaves her head. The story opens on the sound of children outside, and closes in the same way. No children live in this home. For me, it raised the possibility that this couple were grieving for something lost or that had never been. “We have to bear it” the man says after she burns herself. The unexplained things in this story are its strengths. The story resonates in its empty spaces, in what is not said.

These are just some of the stories on offer in ‘Sardines and Oranges’, and the collection illustrates the breadth of talent coming out of North Africa. These stories and writers deserve a wider readership. Banipal Books and their skilled translators are to be credited for giving English language readers the chance to discover these authors. This is a book well worth getting hold of.

Kara Kellar Bell is a film and media graduate from the West of Scotland, with a passion for European novels, French films, silent cinema, and Brazilian music (everything from Daniela Mercury and other pop stars through to bossa nova). As a writer, she likes to have room to move around creatively, so she’s not located in one genre. She writes realism and also stories of a more fantastic nature, usually grounded to some extent in the real world. She also takes delight in writing across the sexual spectrum, and as a bisexual, considers it important to remind people that things are not always black and white, either/or, in sexuality or in gender. For a selection of Kara’s writing on the Showcase section of this site, click here

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.