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Pooja Dadwal


The Tiller of Waters
By Hoda Barakat.Translated
by Marilyn Booth Women Unlimited. 
Pages 200. Rs. 375 

Hoda Barakat’s award winning novel, The Tiller of Waters (Harith al-miyah) translated by Marilyn Booth, is a beautifully rendered tale that weaves together the heart ache of the past with the uncertainty of the present, in the dreary landscape of war torn Beirut. The novel presents a phantasmagoria of events, both physical and psychological, juxtaposed with "history, past and present" all in the backdrop of the Lebanese Civil War.

The Tiller of Waters is a deeply nuanced narrative of a man, Niqula Mitri, who happens to be estranged during the harrowing period of Beirut’s war wrecked years. The son of a cloth merchant who made his way to Beirut from Egypt, Mitri finds himself staying in the basement of his father’s gutted cloth shop after the death of his last-living family member – his mother.

The story unfolds in various layers and traces the passage of time through conversations and clothes. Mitri’s fevered reminiscences of his father, mother and Shamsa, the Kurdish maid, make the storyline more gripping and mesmerising. Right from the debilitated urban landscape to the landscape of Mitri’s mind, The Tiller of Waters is a deliberation on disaffection and disillusionment from the eyes of a man who seems to hover on the brink of insanity.

The author, Hoda Barakat, has yet again, very masterfully, captured the feeling of alienation. The protagonist seems to be cocooned in his own mind; caught in the vortex of his own thoughts and those of his parents’. The most striking thing about Barakat’s work is the wealth of knowledge, which she in the form of her characters, shares. This is when she emerges from the narrative and speaks to the reader so fervently that it really isn’t difficult to hear her in Mitri’s passionate words.

Much like the silk and lace Barakat talks about, her storyline is interlaced and interwoven very dexterously with information and acumen. The fabric of the story is decorated with the threads of century old tales, historical accounts and scientific exposition on plants, customs and clothes. In fact, clothes seem to be the metaphor against which the author portrays and judges the state of humanity. Clothes also stand for the protagonist’s love affair with Shamsa, the Kurdish maid, and the passage of time.

The Tiller of Waters is an honest work that hooks you deep into its heart. The writer knows how to the embers of curiosity aglow. There’s sensuality to her depiction, especially of clothes. The author very lustily and very skilfully takes you back and forth from the various layers she introduces into the tale. The Tiller of Waters, which won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2000, was first published in Arabic in 1998. It has since then captured the minds and fired the imaginations of people the world over. The Tiller of Waters has been published in India through Women Unlimited — an associate of Kali for Women — as a part of the publishing house’s Arabesque collection. Arabesque brings forth the pleasure of reading few of the most thought-provoking and intellectual West Asian women writers. With Hoda Barakat, Women Unlimited has chosen the perfect author to initiate substantial Arabic writings for the discerning Indian reader. The novel has a few proofreading errors, but besides this, right from the jacket to the cover, this hard-bound copy is a pleasure to leaf through.

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