Recently, I may’ve lost a friend. Whether I ever had this friend is maybe debateable, since in the losing process, it’s possible to see revealed that the friend and me saw each other differently. That is, the friend, looking at me, saw not me but who she wanted me to be – I think that’s how it was, but who can tell?

Whatever, I get this feeling she never knew me well.

Like a veil you trail, (the poet Wordsworth said), ‘clouds of glory’ in childhood – but as students, wives, mothers, that bit of life’s gone, over, we’ve moved on and what clouds we trail, (what personal traits, what interests, opinions, activities, and what family comes attached, as a given, to make or mar or enliven the friendship, or otherwise, what knowledge, what experiences good or unwanted), is liable to transmute over time. The clouds, that is. They transmute. The glory’s changed. In 40 years of friendship, can/does a person stay in the same ‘place’ if even in the same ‘space’?

My first friend, the one I first remember losing, was lost to me at about age 5 (along with my lovely grandparents): she went to my school, lived in a house that backed onto the District railway, somewhere between Wimbledon and Putney, she was called Janet West, and of course I believed that a friend once found (like grandparents) was there for life. Not so. Life flowed on very soon, taking Janet with her. With Daddy Janet’s work. This you learn: can’t clutch another person to you and think you have more power than what, in a charming Edwardian kid’s novel I read as a child, were called ‘The Olympians’… parents, family, the job. Or even the friendship itself wears thin. Or, as with my just-lost friend, friendship is fragile, prone to change, and if you can’t both roll with it, it may break.

A friend is not a sister or a brother, a husband, wife, lover, parent: these come attached, givens, or selected, bound by legal ties, children, a mortgage, the concept of faithfulness (or not…). A friendship is a delicate thing. Pour out your heart, share your sorrows, and your happiness, try out your latest theory of how to grow potatoes, children, an art project, old gracefully, or whatever. Shop, (‘Does my bum look big in this?’ ‘No, but it’s not your colour…’). Moan about your partner. See a movie, lend a book. Measure out your friendship in coffee spoons.

A friend discovering that another sees them as a sister, husband, brother, parent can be forgiven if they flee… (I must forgive myself…)…for heavy to carry is a friend who’s tangled up in you… after all, the job may take you far away, the partner or the kids may need you more, the business may demand your (reluctant) time, your elderly parent can’t be left…a friend is not a partner nor family, a friend is chosen…and remains free… while I love my friend, I still need to be myself…that is the fragility and lightness of friendship, however close the bonds.

Tread softly, for you tread on my friendship, friend, and I can be no more, no less, than friend… sadly writing is a very time consuming calling… Thank you to all my lovely friends who are still here…thank you for seeing me as me, and still being there.

18/02/2012

Where do you keep the books you have ‘on the go’– those books begun, got into, but somehow not engaging enough although you do really mean to finish them? And the ones which defeat the woolly weary brain, but are great for an early-night read? Plus, of course, that light, funny one which is wonderful for a few lines before sleep takes over?

I have basket by my bed. A lovely square Fair Trade basket made of banana leaves. Or similar. Right now, it’s rather full: I lost my phone in its book-ridden depths. Hunting through, what was that thick red book?

That Eugenides novel? Had forgotten all about it …the Eugenides Marriage Plot so wonderfully written up in reviews that I’d bought it from Amazon – (having enjoyed Middlesex a clever novel about a hermophrodite, written by someone who can’t have experienced this for himself.) But this one’s a hugely disappointing read. The guy has done so much research, describes so cleverly the contrasting lives of the bio-scientist and the religious seeker, yet smudges it all over with useless, confused, messy in every way, sex. To the extent that the characters are borne down by their instincts to a place where despite the higher activity of the brain, the biological urges of the body will always win out. As for the woman caught in the middle, how can she ever escape this hormone-driven existence to do anything useful, interesting, or fulfilling?

Maybe that is his point? If so he takes an awful lot of pages to make it….
pause for thought…

What am I reading now?
• Alexander McCall Smith’s The Importance of Being Seven – wonderfully fantastical and creatively real. McCall Smith observes humanity’s foibles with a smile, rather than a sneer or a sigh of despair.
• Fiona McCarthy’s big fat biography of Edward Burne Jones The last Pre-Raphaelite . Who was related to whom in important London society of Victorian England? What drove the creative set? Wonderful photos. Fascinating insights.
• A mystery novel by someone I kind-of know, awaiting review.
• The winter copy of Mslexia magazine ‘for women who write’. At least two main articles in there which have got the grey matter working on controversial issues. Poetry, short stories which are… predicatable? Sociological? Clever? Great writing exercises.
• Two books which are background research for my novel-in-waiting: Tom Wright’s Virtue Reborn and Robert Winston’s A Child Against all Odds And, dare I admit it, my NIV Bible is also in that basket…

But… that Eugenides novel… the guy’s done the best job of pointing out the futility of human existence, blown to bits (note verb) any idea that passion and romance are sweet-smelling, joyful, mutually satisfying or lead anywhere but towards boredom, dissatisfaction and tawdry gloom… painted a wonderful picture of the mutual exclusivity of the aims of male and female… a tour de force, really … even a document to send more of us into the life of celibate contemplation of the Other… How far from poor Mr Burne Jones, and his bohemian high-society friends… the foibles never show a funny side, there is no virtue to be re-born – the lesson of mature adulthood is a hard one in Eugenides’ upper-crust, intellectual, privilegedly-educated North American world.

We all have our ways of looking at stuff. Here are two more, admittedly not contemporary…

‘God loved this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life ….’
(The Bible, John’s Gospel chapter 3)

I wish I loved the human race
I wish I loved its silly face
I wish I liked the way it walks
I wish I liked the way it talks
And when I’m introduced to one
I wish I thought ‘What jolly fun!’

(Sir Walter Raleigh, apparently, who lived 1861-1922, not the one who knew Queen Elizabeth 1st)

Egyptian-born Leila Aboulela grew up in Khartoum, Sudan, and her 2 novels, Lyrics Alley and Minaret reflect this. In both, she explores the interactions of family life and Muslim society, moving from a situation of relative discontent and chaos for the protagonist to resolution and peace, with a light touch of genuine spiritual progress.

Living in the West, in a culture which has, in public and in the majority, abandoned the idea of spiritual progress for one of economic progress, I found these novels refreshing. Aboulela doesn’t make out that the West is ‘wrong’, she isn’t heavy-handed. But a story set amongst a group who take seriously their boundaries and customs, and struggle to make sense out of a society which struck me as in many ways more diverse, not less, than ours, she has the raw material of real conflicts and tensions. More diverse? Yes, because although all the main characters are Muslim, and Egyptian or Sudanese, the range of their degree of traditional outlook, religious belief, and ‘westernisation’ actually drives the plot. As it leads to situations of conflict and total incomprehension within one family and for the main woman character, within one person. An interesting, significant point for contemporary Western storytelling, is that with secularisation and prevailing liberal attitudes upheld as the norm, we have possibly ironed out the creases which previously provided conflict, tension, and plot. Everyday life is too easy for a novel, it’s ‘boring’. We are driven to find plot in crimes, extremes, and fantasies.

Not so in the East. Like the leading characters of Adhaf Souief’s novels, the well-educated young women must tread a careful path between what is expected of them and how they see themselves (what they ‘want’?). And the considerations, the process of choosing, is a serious, thoughtful, process, in which we follow the maturing of a favoured, pampered, girl, owned by her family, to an independent woman. I found Soraya, and Najwa, (of Lyrics Alley and Minaret respectively) both more satisfying to read about than Soueif’s Asya – who admittedly gets into worse tangles in her relationships, and is more introspective. Aboulela’s leading women are a little tougher emotionally.

Aboulela’s writing also hints strongly, and realistically, that it is possible that in going beyond ourselves we may find, if not the pleasure we set out to discover, then a complex and affirming maturity. And reflected in this maturity, the image we see of ourselves is of a person of more depth, and more value to themselves and to others around them, than the rather shallow first ambition. A chrysalis with a purposeless lifestyle has become a butterfly with strength, compassion, realism. A woman who is a force in the world.

This process, for anyone, may include that we do not end up with the person we first thought of, in terms of walking into the sunset with the partner we lusted for at the beginning of our tale. But in these books, life is definitely a journey, and we keep on walking. Bad stuff can be turned to good, if we accept it and work with it. Often a hard lesson. Actually, never ever an easy one. On the positive side, if you can become less brittle, you may not actually break.

In Lyrics Alley, the bad stuff is truly awful for Nur, the boy whom Soraya wants to, and imagines she will, marry. Yet it takes many years for her to accept and to feel for him – rather than for herself. And also, to understand she just isn’t right for him. Badr, the educated son of a rural farmer, must care for that farmer in his old age: the portrait of Badr is wonderfully drawn. A man who gives up and gives up for his family, and at last gains at least an apartment in a high rise, with mod cons. And, touchingly, adores his daughter, born after four sons. Badr, in a sense, is the image of the human who lives for others, symbolically (perhaps) a tutor in the house of the well-off Abuzeid family. But Badr is not trying to teach the Abuzeids his philosophy, that would be a plot line too obvious.

A huge contrast with these writings is Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, which I’m now reading: a tale of privileged Brown-university American graduates. Absolutely not the book to follow on with. Their dreary existence: campus life laced with parties, sex and ‘disillusion’ born of studying deconstruction, is told with meticulous attention to detail. So much detail you could be there, in their timescale. These characters may be dealing with similar issues of coming of age, becoming young adults who will have to fend for themselves. Surrounded by such opportunities, and the ability to indulge is such clever conversations, they enrage the reader with the way they waste time, waste money, and generally waste themselves.

I guess I shall finish the book. I may as well know the outcomes. I am at present sorry for poor Madeleine, with her immense pain over loosing the rather obnoxious Leonard. Eugenides certainly makes the point here that even in – even in – our democratic society where women are equal, the girls still trail around behind the boys, desperately needing the ‘love’ which is expressed by the sex act, messy though it is to describe. Humiliating though it can be. Where I am in the novel right now, Madeleine is taking the labels off boxes she packed to take along when she trailed off with Leonard to his next step on the way towards earning a living: while she herself has no firm plans or place to go. And now, they’ve broken up – so she really has absolutely no place to go. Without her virginity – ironically so highly prized by the rather more backward grandmother Waheeba in Abulela’s Lyric Alley that female circumcision is practiced, to the fury and dismay of her modern Egyptian daughter in law. Without her virginity, or her self-respect, or even having attended her own graduation ceremony, Madeleine must move forward and become. What or whether she becomes, we shall see. (I fear a housewifely existence, playing second fiddle to a useless husband, and working as an editor in New York?)

A few questions: For this we got education, the vote, the equal opportunities act? For this we regard the casual loss of our virginity a step forward to becoming an autonomous adult?

And isn’t this a casual loss of more – of innocence, of spiritual values, of the journey of life, of ourselves?

And, was decadence ever attractive?

As an undergraduate, of course, it was seductive!

In the Eye of the Sun

An editor faced with facts which are fascinating and educative (eg the recent history of the Middle East) obviously let this one through, for here’s a gallimaufry indeed: all the research and experience gathered up for several novels, but put together into one! No wonder it’s nearly 800 pages of smallish type.

Having said this, Soueif has something here which has gripped me: I do care about what happens to the characters. And so, (having dipped in at various points to assess whether I’m going to stick with this book) I read on.

Reading reviews has given me added insights into this book and its popularity among many Amazon reviewing readers. Many loved it for its compelling picture of the classic woman’s problem: ‘my life or their expectations’, set in a non-Western context.

My main critique would be, the feminist politics. So familiar to anyone who was grown up enough to read The Women’s Room or similar, way back when. I read it in the late ‘70’s or maybe early ‘80’s, when I was a mum of small kiddies. Although there is, undoubtedly, a validity in what can be broadly called the ‘women’s movement’ I’m going to dare to be controversial here, and say that women writers continuing to describe the difficulties of having a female body and an educated mind (yes, me) in terms which kind of complain gets a bit wearying. Especially when it means all that stuff about how we work vis a vis reproduction, ‘sex’, miscarriages, periods, and giving birth: enough writers have given us the details in the past 20-30 years. I’m not convinced that too much physical detail adds to, or replaces, a good, profound analysis of the female/male relationship, its joys, griefs, possibilities, and ways to reconcile and live together harmoniously. The question is, possibly, a spiritual rather than a physical one. As yet, biology remains a given.

But Soueif doesn’t stop there: we have extracts of Asya’s thesis studies and work, accounts of the Middle Easterm political backdrop, and lots of lines from appropriate songs of the time. Undigested, these could be ‘show don’t tell’ and we draw our own conclusions: I wasn’t convinced. Those read more like raw data which needed work by the writer to integrate into the storytelling.

Whatever: we have here a sensitive picture of the roller coaster of life for a girl growing up in Egypt and Europe over the exact time I was growing up in England. Surrounded by war and the expectations of others, Asya the ‘Princess’ who keeps up her perfect physical appearance at nearly all times, moves increasingly towards a preference for art over life. In a way, this is almost predictable, whatever she ‘really wants’, given her parents are academics. If society and religion put obligations upon you, then art can form a safe haven. Soueif brilliantly demonstrates the sensitivity of her heroine to the suffering she sees in others: some brought about by war (religion, in war, is in reality politics), some by societal norms or simply illness. You can feel her teeth on edge with the sight of it: you empathise. A particularly poignant instance is when she visits the disabled woman, living in poverty and squalor, who’s sewing a complicated quilt for Asya’s marriage bed: having seen this, she doesn’t want the quilt anywhere near her.

On the other hand, society is people, among whom we have to live. And religion: well, even secularism is a kind of religion, as religion finds its force and meaning basically as a set of guidelines for living among other people. Rather than necessarily a belief in God. Autonomy can be a goal, but autonomy doesn’t free us from either our own mortal bodies, or from our needs for love and affection, which if we are to enjoy relationships we must balance by giving in kind as well as receiving. I think Soueif does show us this: Asya is continually hunting for how to relate and her neediness blocks her from knowing how and what to give. And when to walk away.

Asya though adult is not yet a mature woman by the end of the book. You just hope she will find and give love (sex alone would short-change her) before too long. War, sadly, and politics, seem unavoidable: we’re all tossed on the sea of human societies and the more so the more ‘globally intertwined’ the interactions of countries, economies, and continents becomes.

For a more concise novel on the lives of educated women under the Egypt of Mubarak, with much else beside, read Hugh Miles’s
Playing Cards in Cairo, based around the trip when he met the woman who is now his wife.

I’ve just bought, and am listening to The Secret Sisters . On the cover, the sisters, Laura and Lydia, appear wearing wonderfully evocative retro tea dresses, and appropriate femininely carefully coiffered hair and bright lipstick.

And, mostly, they sing up-beat cover versions of some very retro songs, even recorded with old technology. It’s all great fun.

Is Retro here for a reason? Did the fashion pundits (whoever they are!) anticipate the coming of “austerity measures” or did they just get lucky?

Whatever: here’s a thought. While the shops are (trying to) sell us tea dresses, Liberty prints, and bright red lipstick, and the cuts and unemployment are rising, maybe we can use the retro thing as more than a fad. Could we adopt a retro lifestyle? In a good way? Is it possible to make a 21st century version of frugality, make-do-and-mend, or home cooking?

In the days of the tea dress, these things were necessities, not just “boring virtues”: it was how you got by. We all need to get by, possibly we’ll do more than just get by if we all try to live simply. Living simply can be fun? (Oh yeah??) Living simply can develop your creativity, in menus, in how to entertain children, in how we celebrate weddings or do birthday treats, in where and how we take a holiday.

Of course, we wouldn’t want the 1930s and 1940s back: poverty, unemployment, war … (hum, what is in the News right now?). Back then, no easy contraception, no safe terminations, all manner of discrimination … But… what if we get them back anyway, and we women have to, as they did then, shave our legs and then draw a black line down the centre back to imitate sheer stockings? Go back into the kitchen because there aren’t the jobs or the childcare? Give up the car?

Just musing…

For an account of women’s lives in the retro era, try The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (a novel based on 1947-1941) or Can Any Mother Help Me? by Jenna Bailey (non-fiction, the letters a group of home-based, educated mothers sent around to each other as a magazine).

Celebrate retro: be glad of what we have!