The Sea Cloak
Nayrouz Qarmout
Comma Press
Throughout The Sea Cloak, a collection of translated short stories, Nayrouz Qarmout challenges aged perceptions of life in Palestine. Qarmout, a journalist and social activist who’s currently working in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Gaza, guides the reader through the territory’s landscapes without rendering them exotic. ‘Gaza’s coastline is not clean. Everything is scattered about in disarray. The sand is littered with rubbish and tents dot the beach like bales of hay, where dreaming souls shelter, conversing with their most intimate imaginings.’ The reader is immersed in ‘The Anklet of Maioumas’, but is kept at a distance in ‘Our Milk’. Both deal with visceral descriptions of conflict, death and destruction, but Qarmout never glamourizes violence, doesn’t exploit her characters’ suffering for a sense of tragedy.
Family plays a strong role throughout the collection, both positive and negative. The protagonist of ‘The Sea Cloak’ experiences life in the camps, and the titular short story begins: ‘Once again, she retreated into the past, to a sprawling camp buzzing with children playing marbles and forming teams for a game of Jews and Arabs.’ The reader is given a snow-globe, so the playfulness of the children feels fantastical, just as the implied dichotomy of ‘Jews and Arabs’ remains a very real separation that the characters feel in their lives. Her brother punches a boy who compliments her butterfly hairclip and calls her ‘a “hussy”, a word she did not understand.’ When Qamar is late for a class Mr. Ibrahim tells her, ‘“You know, on judgement day, you’ll hang from that braid of yours? Not to mention smoulder in the fires of hell for leaving it exposed? Your voice should be put to better use, like reciting the holy Qur’an.”’ This frankness is not just relegated to memories and hindsight. In ‘The Long Braid,’ Qamar recalls her music lessons, ‘“Open your mouth wider, Qamar. All the way. Don’t be embarrassed by the way it looks. The most important thing is for your voice to be heard.”’ Here, the translation of Perween Richards must be acknowledged. There are no clunky translations of terms used in the Arabic vernacular. The publisher, Comma Press, has always managed to tie writers with translators who give life to the language. English is more than the vehicle through which these stories are told.
Harmony within chaos is a recurring theme in this collection. In the ultimate form of defiance, Qarmout’s characters rebel against the roles they’re expected to fill. They hurt as much as they are hurt. Still, they manage to transcend boundaries by existing as more than people under occupation, their voices echoing through this collection thanks to Qarmout’s impactful storytelling.
—Mohamed Tons