After an 11-year absence from the realm of short stories, Arabic Booker Prize winner Bahaa Taher makes a remarkable comeback with “Lam Aaref ina Al-Tawawes Tateer (I Didn’t Know that Peacocks Could Fly).
Taher’s latest short story collection is the Egyptian writer’s first work since winning the first Arabic Booker for “Wahet Al-Ghroub (Sunset Oasis) last year. Taher also went on to win this year’s Mubarak award for literature.
The multitude of themes these short stories encompass, and the worlds they glance at, are covered in little space. One minute you find yourself playing with a two-year-old boy, the next, you re on the trail of a peacock rescue mission. In another, you re thrown into a heated argument between an unhappy bourgeois couple fighting over their pet dog.
Ending the first five stories on a slightly downbeat note, Taher rebounds with a hopeful, life-affirming last tale about an old French woman prevailing through hard times.
Although disparate in their themes and settings, the struggle with identity and estrangement permeates the six stories that make up this collection. All but one is a first-person narrative. In more than one account, the author/narrator attempts to establish a connection between himself and the animals or characters he encounters. The trick works, but ultimately, the novelty of the technique runs dry so that by the third story, both the search for these parallels and the analogies themselves become somewhat redundant.
The titular story is full of intrigue and insight into the psyche of its narrator. Taher describes a peacock garden with effortless command using distinctive, beautifully flowing phrases.
“The green watered pastures surround me, creating a moist blanket that covers the vast garden. In its center lies tufts of tall grass whose tips sparkle in the sunlight like the heads of golden spears.
The narrator, who works for a company based on the other side of the garden, has always been as equally enchanted by the beauty of the peacocks as he was appalled by the screeching noises they collectively made. The climax of the short tale is when one peacock decides to fly up a tree, defying efforts of a rescue crew to bring it down.
As the crowds cheer for the peacock not to surrender, the narrator gradually drifts into his own thoughts, reflecting on “days gone by, unrequited love, lost love, the cruelty which we intentionally and unintentionally exercise upon others, old age, loneliness … particularly loneliness.
He soon gets caught up in the action, cheers for the peacock to resist coming down, to fight and fly away. He doesn’t realize that he’s actually cheering for himself, for the shackles he wishes to break but ultimately can t.
“Sokan Al-Qasr (Residents of the Palace), a personal favorite, has an air of perfectly structured secrecy and mystery. Lurking behind this simple allegory is an ironic look at the power relations between the governed and the governors in present-day Egypt.
The palace stands tall as a complete enigma in the face of the area residents who’ve been conjuring conflicting conspiracy theories about it for more than two decades.
What organization is using it? Why the secrecy? What s it doing in this slightly crowded neighborhood? Could it be anything other than a government organization? If it isn t, how could the government allow building such a fortress in such an area? But then again, if it is indeed a government organization, why the secrecy? Shouldn’t the public be informed of the activities their government is carrying out in there?
The ingenious assumptions of what the palace hides span the gamut from a security organization to a hub for Satanists. Most residents in the neighborhood feel that whatever is happening in the palace, the government knows about it. “So what harm can it pose then? Taher asks rhetorically.
One evening, the cloak of mystery shrouding the palace is almost unveiled when one of its residents comes under attack. Dogs are heard barking, bullets are fired and the lights are switched on. Something has happened. At this point in the story, the curious neighbors watching the unfolding action feel completely helpless. The powerful residents of the palace are clearly good at guarding their secrets.
Will the on-looking neighbors find evidence of wrongdoing that might have happened in the palace that night, or any other night for that matter? Do they care that much to seek the truth? And, most importantly, if they did, will they be able to do anything about it?
“Lam Aaref ina Al-Tawawes Tateer (I Didn’t Know that Peacocks Could Fly)By Bahaa Taher, Published by Dar Al-Shorouk.Available at bookstores across Egypt
