Review: "Killers of the Dream..."
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 21, 2014
N.G. Hanna has successfully woven a number of important themes into her first novel. The novel spans a good half century, with one of the climatic moments being the events of Tahrir Square which brought down the three decade rule of Hosni Mubarak. The euphoria of this triumph briefly flitted across the Western media; the reaction, and the restoration of "Plus a change, plus c'est la mme chose" was not as photogenic, and hence "flew under the radar" of international news coverage. I recently finished reading Marcel Proust'sThe Guermantes Way, set in a time period more than a century after the French Revolution. Proust depicts a social structure that had largely replicated the hierarchical privilege and economic injustice that was pre-revolutionary. Proust has a character say that Waterloo was necessary in order to have the Restoration (of the monarchy.)Hanna has her protagonist, Galeila, later to drop her first syllable, and simple be known as Leila, as in the title, play a demonstrative role in illustrating how the 1% restore their "privileges." In Egypt, they fanned sectarian differences, between Muslims and Coptic Christians, and between fundamentalists and secularists. Galeila is caught up in the middle, a "pawn in their game." I thought of Lillian Smith's classic work, written in 1949,Killers of the Dreamabout how the 1% in the American South would use race to divide poor whites and poor blacks, and thereby having each focus on the other, rather than examine the economic structure that held them in poverty.It is also a novel involving family relations and the longings of the heart. And in particular, it is on the difficulties women face in Egyptian society. Yes, many an unhappiness, each in their own way. Meshmesha means apricot; "country people" would often give their children the names of fruits. Galeila's mother was so named, born in the countryside in 1950. At the age of 9, she becomes a "maid," (effectively, involuntary servitude) to a journalist's family in Cairo (Hanna notes the irony that he was a liberal journalist writing on the conditions of the poor... and somehow those folks never seem to look inside their own households). Meshmesha grows up within this household, and eventually marries, and Hanna deftly handles the circumstances surrounding the conception and birth of her only daughter, Galeila. The latter's search for her father is also a dominate theme in the book.  Ah, father-daughter relationships.In the background is Egyptian history, particularly the (little recalled, nowadays, in the West) war in the Yemen, in support of Republican forces. Hanna uses one of her characters to sarcastically deride concepts such as "Pan-Arabism." The Six Day War with Israel also plays a part, with more modern concepts of PTSD.  Even more modern, and more impressive, was the soldier involved just faking it?Countries export various products. In Egypt's case (along with the Philippines, Indonesia and Pakistan) it seems that their principal export is their own people. This is another theme woven throughout the novel, starting with Meshmesha's husband having to emigrate to France and Libya in search of work, and ending with a large scale migration to Canada, of numerous principal characters, towards the end of the novel. The pros and cons of Galeilia's (Leilia's) new "heaven" are aptly described.Should one maintain ties with the past, or "move on" is another climatic question that the author handles well. I was convinced in reading this work that it HAD to be largely autobiographical. Although Hanna is Egyptian, and now living in Canada, she says that it is NOT. If so, and why should I doubt, it is an impressive work of empathy and imagination. 5-stars.