Reem Gaafar's Blog: Life From Reem's Perspective - Posts Tagged "sudan"
What's in a name?
Writing in English about people who are not English can be confusing, particularly when it comes to names. I was recently asked by a friend and reader why I had 2 Fatimas in A Mouth Full of Salt - cousins who had the same name. I wasn't really sure to be honest, but I think I chose the second Fatima because I was tired of thinking of names. Also, Fatima is a very common name and its normal to have several of them in the same family.
But one thing I learned from A Mouth Full of Salt - especially after listening to the audiobook - is that names are extremely tricky, particularly names that are foreign to the reader/listener. And when I think about it, I often get lost as a reader trying to remember who this character is and how they're related to that other character when the name is foreign to me. I actually ended up changing the names of the characters in my second novel so they were simpler, distinct, and would be easy to read.
I find that this is one of many challenges we face as writers of English material who are telling stories about our own countries and contexts which are far removed from the English-speaking world. Names of people and places, names of food and household items, proverbs and sayings, all end up sounding as meaningless gibberish to the reader who is already finding it 'difficult to relate' to what they're reading. And while its nice to have the reader make an effort to understand and emphathise with the story, I do feel that we don't need to make it that more difficult by our choice of names for our characters.
The difficulty would then be in choosing what to compromise to gain your reader while remaining authentic to yourself and your story.
But one thing I learned from A Mouth Full of Salt - especially after listening to the audiobook - is that names are extremely tricky, particularly names that are foreign to the reader/listener. And when I think about it, I often get lost as a reader trying to remember who this character is and how they're related to that other character when the name is foreign to me. I actually ended up changing the names of the characters in my second novel so they were simpler, distinct, and would be easy to read.
I find that this is one of many challenges we face as writers of English material who are telling stories about our own countries and contexts which are far removed from the English-speaking world. Names of people and places, names of food and household items, proverbs and sayings, all end up sounding as meaningless gibberish to the reader who is already finding it 'difficult to relate' to what they're reading. And while its nice to have the reader make an effort to understand and emphathise with the story, I do feel that we don't need to make it that more difficult by our choice of names for our characters.
The difficulty would then be in choosing what to compromise to gain your reader while remaining authentic to yourself and your story.
Saving the Savages
I just finished reading the Game of Thrones series (caution: do not attempt to read these books if you have deadlines and children to feed because you won't be able to put them down). In the last couple of books the dragon girl Daenerys Targaryen invades and then abandons several cities, and then decides to stay in the last one to rule as queen, even though she's not even from this place and is supposed to be a queen in another place halfway across the world. She breaks into this last city by force and frees all the slaves. The idea is that these cities are slave ports who lifestyles and trade have relied on the slave trade for centuries. Many of the freed slaves rise up against their former masters and kill them and take over their homes - but she grants them amnesty.
She is then known to the people she is ruling as their 'mother', and she refers to them as her children whom she must take care of and will not abandon. When the people of the city rise against her and start killing her soldiers, they are branded as dishonorable cowards (because they kill people at night). The main narrative of this part of the book is that the innocent, good-hearted, well-meaning queen is being plagued by cowardly criminals who resist her presence in their city, and by the original city folk who resent her destroying their slave trade overnight.
I think you see where I'm getting here. Or, if you're not from a country that was occupied by any of the leading empires of the last few centuries, you may not see what I'm getting at here. This whole narrative just stinks of justifying occupation as a force for the good of the indigenous savages who must be tamed and civilized, and who, when they dare resist this occupation, are labeled as criminals and cowards. The primitive and barbaric practices that support their livelihood (i.e. slavery) are the perfect (and unoriginal) pretext for justifying this occupation. The occupier is a saviour, a gentle and well-meaning mother who is needed by her children because they cannot fend for themselves without her. Those who support her are good friends, those who oppose are traitors.
Sudan was occupied twice by the British Empire up to independence in 1956. There were several resistance movements throughout the country that were dealt with harshly and made an example of, as was the same in all the other African countries occupied by Europeans. True, Sudan did not fare as badly as countries like Congo where more than half the population was killed in the name of King Leopold II from murder, starvation, exhaustion, dismemberment and plummeting birth rates. When you read about the years under occupation and the events leading up to expelling the British Empire from the country, the picture drawn in British documents is of a loving ruler who wants what is best for the Sudanese. They worry about the greed of Egypt and its bad influence on the innocent Sudanese, about wanting to make sure the Sudanese are fully capable of taking care of their own country before leaving. But occupation is occupation, be it in the 18th century or in present day Palestine, be it direct occupation like the Americas and Israel or indirect like China and Russia.
I had a lot of respect for George R. R. Martin for this phenomenal piece of work that is Game of Thrones, but this whitewashing and romanticising of occupation is frankly nothing short of despicable. I would say I was surprised that we're still talking about this in this day and age, but that would mean that individuals/countries colonizing other people's countries was a thing of a past, when we all know that its not. Its just taken another form. But the image is the same: occupation for the better good, to save the savages from themselves. Despicable.
She is then known to the people she is ruling as their 'mother', and she refers to them as her children whom she must take care of and will not abandon. When the people of the city rise against her and start killing her soldiers, they are branded as dishonorable cowards (because they kill people at night). The main narrative of this part of the book is that the innocent, good-hearted, well-meaning queen is being plagued by cowardly criminals who resist her presence in their city, and by the original city folk who resent her destroying their slave trade overnight.
I think you see where I'm getting here. Or, if you're not from a country that was occupied by any of the leading empires of the last few centuries, you may not see what I'm getting at here. This whole narrative just stinks of justifying occupation as a force for the good of the indigenous savages who must be tamed and civilized, and who, when they dare resist this occupation, are labeled as criminals and cowards. The primitive and barbaric practices that support their livelihood (i.e. slavery) are the perfect (and unoriginal) pretext for justifying this occupation. The occupier is a saviour, a gentle and well-meaning mother who is needed by her children because they cannot fend for themselves without her. Those who support her are good friends, those who oppose are traitors.
Sudan was occupied twice by the British Empire up to independence in 1956. There were several resistance movements throughout the country that were dealt with harshly and made an example of, as was the same in all the other African countries occupied by Europeans. True, Sudan did not fare as badly as countries like Congo where more than half the population was killed in the name of King Leopold II from murder, starvation, exhaustion, dismemberment and plummeting birth rates. When you read about the years under occupation and the events leading up to expelling the British Empire from the country, the picture drawn in British documents is of a loving ruler who wants what is best for the Sudanese. They worry about the greed of Egypt and its bad influence on the innocent Sudanese, about wanting to make sure the Sudanese are fully capable of taking care of their own country before leaving. But occupation is occupation, be it in the 18th century or in present day Palestine, be it direct occupation like the Americas and Israel or indirect like China and Russia.
I had a lot of respect for George R. R. Martin for this phenomenal piece of work that is Game of Thrones, but this whitewashing and romanticising of occupation is frankly nothing short of despicable. I would say I was surprised that we're still talking about this in this day and age, but that would mean that individuals/countries colonizing other people's countries was a thing of a past, when we all know that its not. Its just taken another form. But the image is the same: occupation for the better good, to save the savages from themselves. Despicable.
