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by: Jameela Siddiqi
Publisher: Bogle L´Ouverture Press, London, 2002
Reviewed by: Peter Nazareth Jameela Siddiqi was a student at Makerere University in 1972 when her Uganda citizenship was taken away and she was one of the Asians expelled by Idi Amin. She has worked in England as a television documentary producer and broadcaster, receiving a Sony Gold Award for her BBC series Songs of the Sufi Mystics; written about music, including Bob Dylan; translated Urdu Hindi poetry; produced CDs. Her first novel is primarily about the expulsion of Asians from an East African country called Pearl—Churchill called Uganda the Pearl of Africa—which "was never home, but was the homeland." The leader of the country after a coup is a Muslim who announces the expulsion of Asians because of a dream. The story is juxtaposed with the making of a movie in England financed by a rich man who was a shopkeeper in Pearl whose only condition is that the movie star a certain Bollywood actress. The producer/director, an Englishwoman who knows Urdu, has a script about a Lucknow courtesan, Tameezan, who was obsessed with the musician the Grand Ustad ("He Who Lights up the Universe"). Asians in Pearl offer a lesson to India about multi-religious, multi-ethnic harmony. But there is a hitch: "this kind of give-and-take among the settlers from India, was only possible out of a sense of having a common enemy — the Black Man." Yet people cross barriers, as music does: "Everything and everyone made music. Every moment of time was filled with the magical sounds of being. Every living creature sang in unison, exalting the glory of creation. The crickets sang special songs to welcome the rainy season. The mosquitoes composed symphonies to celebrate the warm, clammy nights. The snakes rattled in syncopated glee, the geckos tapped their tongues in time to the buzzing, on-off dance of the fire-flies. And Nature’s Light and Sound Show was aptly complemented by man-made sounds." The novel, too, is full of music, and when the right ghazal is composed, the movie begins to fall into place. But in the last thirty pages, stars and time planes collide, leading to a Bollywood ("Dream Machine") ending. We have been reading a script by Ash who took material from the computer of Sonia. The characters are doublings, "twins" of the "real" ones. The script-writer is the "chautara" (half breed), son of the actress, Mohanji’s daughter-in-law, who had thrown him into a bush. He is a phoenix who arises through the script. He makes his mother and grandfather confront each other. Sonia’s platonic but controlling relationship to him becomes that of the Producer to a Personal Assistant who is a bisexual in a loveless marriage while Ash’s stepfather gives unconditional love to his mother. People pursue love in various forms: the Groupie wants to sleep with the gods and the Composer with the Muse (he is obsessed with the Producer, who married him for three days). The largest love is beyond the script. The person who cleaned the lavatory was drawn to Mohanji’s daughter, the seamstress called the Widow, and had vowed (dreamed) that he would free her. He became the leader of Pearl and announced the Expulsion, thus keeping his promise. Her songs and rhythms had unconsciously laid the foundations in the great Composer, then a boy brought up as a girl, whose mother, a teacher, did not know that her mother in England was the daughter of Tameezan. The Widow, now Zarine, is a qualified dream teacher. "Once they learn to dream properly," she says, "they learn there is no dividing line between dreams and reality." Jameela Siddiqi brings light to the Age of Kalyug (darkness and treachery) by providing clues that glow when re-read. We understand through various art forms the life and values of a shopkeeper, shopkeeper’s wife, seamstress, courtesan, teacher, guru, religious leader, student, musician, composer, producer’s assistant, script-writer, groupie, general... The Feast of the Nine Virgins is a brilliant novel that frees the feminine to orchestrate a new recital. |
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