Skip to main contentDiana Abu-Jaber's second novel, Crescent, was almost completed on Sept. 11, 2001. But the events of that day nearly shelved it. "I called my agent in despair," Abu-Jaber recalls. "I said, 'I think I should ditch the whole book.' Thank God she said, 'I feel like more than ever we need to hear these kinds of stories.'"
Though the timing of her novel about Iraqis in America is coincidence, the story resists tendentiousness. Abu-Jaber began writing Crescent four years ago; the rockets that flash white in Baghdad's night in the novel's opening pages come from Iran, not America. In fact, Iraq is less a backdrop than a shadowy character in a love story that unfolds in contemporary "Teherangeles"--Los Angeles' enclave of Middle Eastern immigrants, refugees and students.
Here, in the roasted lamb-scented kitchen of Nadia's Cafe we meet Sirine, a white-blond 39-year-old Iraqi-American chef. Unmarried, attractive and detached in her romances, Sirene is independent yet sheltered by her upbringing.
Born in the United States to a Jordanian father and American mother, Abu-Jaber, author of Arabian Jazz, spent her youth shuttling between the two countries. She says Sirene's displacement typifies that of first-generation children of immigrants: "There's slippage, uncertainty about where you belong. You grew up to be unorthodox. You have to create yourself."
Meeting Hanif--a handsome Iraqi expat and intellectual--unsettles Sirene's passive, contented existence. Sirene seems to want to absorb Han's dark otherness into her own pale skin, as if to reconcile her fractured identity. Yet Sirene's impulse also evokes the narcissism inherent in any romantic attraction. The fairest-skinned of her siblings, Abu-Jaber says her own "Arabness" is often ignored or denied by others, an exchange that, she says, "feels like an assault."
Han's own ambivalent relationship with America echoes from his past. In a richly drawn, Oedipal flashback we learn that as a teen in Iraq he benefited from the questionable affection of the blonde wife of an American diplomat. Homesickness and heartsickness are, for Han, the same sort of longing: "You," he tells Sirine, "are the opposite of exile."
Like its characters, Crescent's setting is also infused with ambiguity. America is apparently not at war with Iraq, and it's unclear whether the 9/11 terrorist attacks have occurred. The reader wanders in a haze that conjures the anxious existence of the books' Iraqi students. Abu-Jaber's message is inclusive: As lovers we are all expatriates, picking our way through an unfamiliar landscape mined with risk, desperation and false assumptions.
The cafe's staff forms Sirene's extended family. Um-Nadia, the cafe owner, and Mirielle, its feisty waitress, bring to life a matriarchal power often missing in contemporary depictions of Arab-American women. Though they are secular Muslims and de facto feminists, the women are also resolutely apolitical--a combination virtually nonexistent in American mass media.
Embarrassed by her lack of understanding of the Middle East's troubled politics, Sirene is much like every other CNN-watching American. With refreshing candor, Abu-Jaber describes another invisible population--the Arab-American whipsawed by cultural confusion. Prayer does not come easily for Sirene, but she has her own brand of spirituality, which Abu-Jaber says "lives in the body." The ritualistic way she prepares food is a sacrament.
It's in the kitchen that Abu-Jaber's writing is especially pungent. For Sirene, cooking is worship and seduction, heaven and earth. In much the same way, Abu-Jaber's use of poetic Arabic endearment underscores the way the ancient language marries the erotic to the divine.
As in any new affair, Sirene has misgivings. These feelings are heightened by her questions of identity. Sirene thinks she spies her lover with a hajib-wearing, politically astute student named Rana. Is Rana her rival, or is Sirene threatened by the culture she seems to represent?
Throughout the book, Sirene's present-day travails are interspersed with the ancient fable of Abdelrahman Salahadin, an Arab slave who escapes his master. Abu-Jaber says she clung to this structure--against the advice of her husband--because she wanted to honor the storytelling tradition of her family and ancestors. Abu-Jaber's husband was right. The fable, while poetic, rests uneasily next to the swirling, dramatic entanglements of the other characters. It often seems like an obstacle to the action, and Abu-Jaber acknowledges this. At one point the storyteller even addresses the reader directly, chiding American impatience.
Readers fixated on politics may prefer a more ham-fisted perspective on current affairs, but Abu-Jaber serenely refuses to give it, just as she refused to appear on "one of those shouting shows" on FOX. "Nothing kills art faster," Abu-Jaber insists, "than your politics." Yet Abu-Jaber has managed to combine them. Though small in scope, Crescent shines with insight in this current long, dark night.
By Diana Abu- Jaber (Norton, 349 pages, $24.95)
Diana Abu- Jaber will read from
Abu- Jaber teaches in Portland State University's English department, though she's just accepted a post in Florida at the University of Miami.
WWeek 2015