TONY'S READING LIST
‘THE PRESIDENT’S GARDENS’
BY MUHSIN AL-RAMLI
(REVIEW)
Tony
Malone
July 3, 2017
For those of us who grew
up in the eighties and nineties, Iraq has never been far from the news
headlines, mostly for the wrong reasons, and over the past few years, books
telling of life in the country have started to be translated into English,
particularly since the downfall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. However,
today’s choice takes a longer view of events. Rather than focusing on the
aftermath of the invasion, or looking at an isolated incident, the author
follows a small group of friends over a period of decades. In the
process, it tells the story of a country plunging into the depths of a
catastrophe, one it still hasn’t managed to claw its way out of…
*****
Muhsin
Al-Ramli’s The President’s Gardens (translated by Luke
Leafgren, review copy courtesy of MacLehose
Press) starts rather dramatically, with an early-morning discovery the finder
would rather not have stumbled across:
In a
land without bananas, the village awoke to nine banana crates, each containing
the severed head of one of its sons. Along with each head was an I.D.
card to identify the victim since some of the faces were completely disfigured,
either by torture before the beheading or by something similar after the
slaughter. The characteristic features by which they had been known
through all the years of their bygone lives were no longer present to
distinguish them.
p.7 (MacLehose Press, 2017)
p.7 (MacLehose Press, 2017)
As the
village awakes to the gruesome discovery, one of the nine heads causes
particular distress to Abdullah Kafka (so called for his nihilistic views on
life). His best friend Ibrahim is among the casualties, bringing to an
end a close relationship spanning decades.
At this
point, the story takes us back in time to when three youths, Abdullah, Ibrahim
and the third member of their band, Tariq (nicknamed ‘the Befuddled’), roamed
the village dreaming of a bright future. Tariq, the son of the village’s
spiritual leader, takes on his father’s role and manages to become a respected
(and wealthy) model citizen, but his friends will not be so lucky. The ensuing
decades are to be times of war and hardship, and Ibrahim’s nickname, ‘the
Fated’ is to prove unfortunately apt.
The
President’s Gardens is fascinating tale in which the writer introduces a tragic
event before taking the reader back in time to see how we got there.
It’s a story of the country’s recent history which is told through
the experiences of three friends born in 1959, a generation living through
turmoil, but it’s also a history lesson for those unfamiliar with these events.
Abdullah and Ibrahim are unlucky enough to be conscripted for military
service just before the Iran-Iraq war breaks out, and when it seems as if the
country (and the friends) are recovering, Saddam’s disastrous decision to
invade Kuwait sends Ibrahim back into the war zone.
Al-Ramli doesn’t
shy away from describing the hardship his people faced. We learn
of Abdullah’s captivity and torture in Iran, before the story moves on to
the events of the following decade:
What
they saw was a true hell in all its horrors. In their entire lives, they
had never seen, nor would they ever see again, an event as terrifying as this,
a madness incarnate. Severed body parts and scraps of metal were
scattered amid tongues of flame and the thunder of explosions. The road
was transmogrified into an explosion of fire, smoke, limbs, blood, destruction,
ashes, death. It was a highway of death, on which and around which
everything that moved was ground together in flames. (p.70)
Through
Ibrahim’s eyes, we experience life on the front line, or rather carnage in the
desert, yet the effects of war aren’t restricted to death and mutilation.
The use of chemical weapons in the earlier conflict brings unexpected
consequences for one of the group.
The twist in
the novel comes when Ibrahim needs to move to the city to get better medical
attention for his dying wife, with Tariq’s contacts coming up with a
well-paid, exclusive position. The catch? The war hero is sworn to
secrecy (not that he’d be tempted to open his mouth about his new job). Ibrahim’s
first task is to tend to the gardens of the title, catching a terrifying
glimpse of the country’s leader in the process. Later, he is given a new
position, one that comes with more money and prestige, but involves some even
dirtier work.
The
President’s Garden is an enjoyable read on many levels, and Leafgren has done
excellent work in producing a flowing English text with a distinct style,
using exaggeration and anecdotes, as well as providing a sense of elegance
and tranquility. Al-Ramli teases the reader a little, introducing several
ideas in passing, only to leave us in the dark as to the full story. It’s
only later, when he circles back to fill in the gaps, that we understand
the full significance of, or motives for, certain actions (such as why Ibrahim’s
daughter is so keen to find her father’s body).
Part of the
pleasure of the novel is the picture the writer develops of the main
character’s home village. It’s a very different kind of place to that
most readers will be used to, with the men tempted to take multiple wives
(and often under pressure to marry widows). Everyone knows everyone else
(and their business), and when there’s something to celebrate, there’s gallons
of tea, but not a drop of alcohol in sight. Yes, there’s a lot of trauma,
but some of the best scenes show that life goes on, too.
One slight
issue I did have with the book was the structure. The
President’s Garden’scontains several major strands which, at times, seem to act against
each other. The secret of Abdullah’s birth swings between a major
development and a minor detail, and when Ibrahim gets his new job, the
story almost develops into a new book (and, to be honest, probably could have).
Al-Ramli does tie everything together eventually, but (for this reader,
at least) it felt a little unbalanced at times.
These are
minor quibbles as, for the most part, The President’s Gardens is an
excellent novel, entertaining, informative, thought-provoking and well-written;
of the few Iraqi books I’ve read, it’s probably the one I’ve enjoyed most,
largely due to the extended scope. More importantly, though, Al-Ramli’s
novel reminds us that the casualties we hear about in the news are real people,
each with their own lives:
Each
head had a story. Every one of these nine heads had a family and dreams and
the horror of being slaughtered, just like the hundreds of thousands slain in a
country stained with blood since its founding and until God inherits the earth
and everyone on it. And if every victim had a book, Iraq in its entirety
would become a huge library, impossible ever to catalogue. (p.12)
Every victim
has a story, and this is Al-Ramli’s attempt to tell just a few of them.
*****
Tony Malone
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