Black Foam by Haji Jabir, co-translated from Arabic by award winner Sawad Hussain and Marcia Lynx Qualey the mind and heart behind ArabLit, is the tragic story of a journey through identities and worlds, but how stories and dreams may both save and kill us.
Dawoud-David-Dawit is a storyteller by the force of things, jumping with the devotion of people having nothing to lose, from one disaster to another, from one boat of hope to another. Until there will be no hope. He is the prototype of the average, ´normal´ human who just want to settle and breath. But fate made by other humans wanted something else. From Addis Abeba to Eritrea and Israel, he switches stories and identities, hiding one past from one present, floating at the foaming level of things.
´In bed, at night, he was proud of his ability to invent elaborate lies´. A life wasted in lies not because some bad diagnosed psychological disorder as customary in our ´free world´, but because truth may lead to an absurd death. Sharing with the world who you are may force you to admit the psysical end of you. Then, better hide behind words and imagined worlds, while meeting story-hungry, yet fully ineffective and cynical international employees - ´What makes you think you deserve to be resettled in a third country?´ - to suspicious travel mates and abandoned lovers.
In addition to asking the questions asked when thinking nowadays about displacement and enstrangement and how conflicts - Eritrean-Ethiopian war - it also features the Beta Israel Jews - they are also named Falasha, but it is rather a pejorative term nowadays - from Ethiopia, a group rarely - if ever - featured in the literary realm. (On a side note, when (p.61) mentioning the main character´s journey within Israel, at a certain point it is said that in the room where he temporarily lived, there were some ´copies of the Holy Book´ - Jews do have a ´Holy´ Book in book-readable format).
The main book character and his tragic journey to a lifeless life is haunting and a reminder that destinies may be so unfair.
The book is a pleasure to read - both in terms of characters and story construction and of the topics. Episodes of the story are replicated through musical intermezzo and ArabLit justly created a special playlist in the honour of the book launch, tracing the journey.
In a world of overnauseating ´positive thinking´ and delusional ´storyfy-ing´, Black Foam shoes the brutality of stories in a world where direction is given by the absurdity of the bullet take. No destiny written in heaven. Not at all.
Rating: 4 stars
Disclaimer: Book generously offered by Sawad Hussain but the opinions are, as usual, my own
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