In the Country Of Men by Hisham Matar – A Book Review

          Betrayal. A stab in the back. If devoid of conscience, it is free of hurt; else you can never free yourself from the crushing ugly rock of repentance, of self pity.

            

          Did little Suleiman, a mere nine year old child know that he was betraying the ones he loved the most, murdering the hopes of a rebellion, a fight for a cause, a secret mission, a revolution to eradicate another? Was there a realization, even a tiny bit of shame when he did so?

            

          And for what, this heinous misdeed? It isn’t easy for a child to cope when the fatal realization dawns on him that his small world that he breathes in is built on a plinth of glorious lies. Is his Baba what he veritably knows him to be? Why does he leave them so frequently when he knows that Mama falls ill whenever he abandons them? Why can’t he be a simple man like Ustath Rashid, his best friends’ father? Left alone to be the man of the house, he is laden with his incapacitated Mama’s impressionable stories of her past, tales of woe and oppression a child should never discover. A boundary of hatred engulfs him when he realizes that his Baba has lied to him, to his Mama; what is this secret he can’t be told about? The internal turmoil lurking in a child’s mind can turn him into a monster, a fire breathing deadly ogre surpassing all confines of treachery.

            Hisham Matar’s story is based in Libya, during the trying times of Gadaffi’s revolutionary regime. It is a crushing tale of clandestine rebellion against this regime by a handful of comrades who strive for a better Libya, a free Libya lacking in oppression and dictatorship. It is the story of young Suleiman’s ugly and blatant utterance of truth, his gruesome effort of disentangling himself and breaking free from the cosmos of lies built around him. But truth comes at a price, at a devastating price.

           

            The writing lacks poetry, in fact is bland. It is plainly evident that the author thinks in his native language and what you read is a literal translation. You will inadvertently compare the story with Khaled Hosseini’s ‘The Kite Runner’. The stories from this part of the world are turning out into cliches but where the writing lacks in color, it compensates in its horrific simplicity and grotesque threadbare incidents of cruelty. Not for a moment did I feel any sympathy for the child; in fact I have to vulgarly admit that I hated him.

            Throttling freedom and strangling views under the veil of ideologies isn't manly, at all!

My rating : * * * * * * * * * * - 6/10

Hisham Matar