An Unnecessary Woman

I started reading An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine at the beginning of this month and I finally finished it last week. I don’t usually take this long to finish a book and I didn’t take this long because the book was bad. On the contrary, the book was good, so good it made me want to weep. I’ll admit, the main reason I picked this book is because it is set in Lebanon. Sometime back, in an effort to be more self aware, to figure out and subsequently claim my space in this world, I promised myself to read more of the world’s literature. This promise has led me to have a different view of the world, a better view so to speak. A view that I have been denied by the media in their attempts to chase ‘news worthy’ stories which they deem important to me.

There are a number of unusual things I did while reading this book: I only read it whilst in transit. It didn’t feel quite right to read the book while at home simply because I like immersing myself in other people’s lives and the life of Aaliya felt too similar to my own and somehow I thought it wise to create distance between Aaliya’s life, however fictional, and my own life. Inviting her to my home felt a little too intimate.

Nothing really happens in this book. But that’s all right because I think for most of us, nothing major ever happens in our lives: no earth shattering tragedy; not even winning the lottery. We are born, we live and eventually, we die. In between being born and dying, we do a lot of unnecessary things. For instance, like Aaliya, I read a lot. And I can justify my reading and list the importance of reading. But what if my reading is really unnecessary? What if, at the tail end of my life, I realise that all I ever did was unnecessary? What will be written on my gravestone–this, of course, is in my imagination because our (African/Kenyan?) graves are not inscribed; there is a cross over your grave with your name and your date of birth and death, nothing else. And yet I can’t seem to stop doing these unnecessary things. These unnecessary things, that in their own warped way, give meaning to my life.

I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time. It is the world outside that box that gives me trouble. I have adapted tamely, though not conventionally, to this visible world so I can retreat without much inconvenience into my inner world of books. Transmuting this sandy metaphor, if literature is my sandbox, then the real world is my hourglass– an hourglass that drains grain by grain. Literature gives me life, and life kills me.

Beirut, as is described by Aaliya, is so similar to Nairobi it is uncanny. Maybe it is because of this that I only read the book while commuting. It felt necessary for me to do so because I had to discern the difference.

My books show me what it’s like to live in a reliable country where you flick on a switch and a bulb is guaranteed to shine and remain on, where you know that cars will stop at red lights and those traffic lights will not cease working a couple of times a day. How does it feel when a plumber shows up at the designated time, when he shows up at all? How does it feel to assume that when someone says she’ll do something by a certain date, she in fact does it?

Aaliya goes on to wonder if one feels more in control of their destiny if things turn out as expected. I’ve wondered the same thing, only that for me, it is just not out of curiosity but with annoyance. My tolerance level for tardiness and people not keeping their word is decreasing by the day.

Other themes in the book that have kept me awake (I exaggerate only a little) are childlessness and Godlessness. I have strong opinions, as am sure everyone does, but I feel they were well explored.

You might not like the book for its uneventfulness but you might like it for its prose.