she feels she is losing herself, that she has been shredded into parts that have been scattered, like Osiris’s body... unlike him, her scattering is not restricted to Egypt, but is global: her arms in Egypt at her parents’, wrapped around them in a tight hug; her head in New York, studying and producing enviable scholarly work; her legs in West Virginia, hiking its many trails; her heart buried with Gameela. [loc. 2667]
Rose's sister Gameela has been killed by a suicide bomber in Cairo. Their parents are devastated. Rose, who's flown back from New York, leaving behind her husband Mark and her high-profile Egyptology career, is trying to make sense of what Gameela left behind: a teacup of unfamiliar pattern, documents that indicate she quit her job, a newspaper clipping of a boy with intense eyes. Rose finds parallels with her current project at the Met, which involves exploration of the ancient Egyptian view of the afterlife: a place to which one can address letters, a place from which the beloved dead can return. A place in which the avowal of a pure heart would preserve the soul.
Gameela was a devout Muslim, who wore the hijab and didn't hide her mistrust of Rose's husband's insincere conversion to Islam, undertaken so that the two could marry. Rose -- who feels nostalgic when called by her birth name, Fayrouz -- still prays five times a day, but religion isn't the centre of her life in the way that she's becoming to realise it was for her sister. And as she learns more about her sister's life and death, she comes to realise she may inadvertently have been complicit in Gameela's murder.
This was an intriguing insight into Egyptian life, and the aftermath of the 2011 revolution. I hadn't been aware of just how divided (and corrupt) Egyptian society is, or how overshadowed by postcolonial attitudes. Rose's reconstruction of Gameela's last months of life -- and her own growing alienation from her husband and from American life -- formed a compelling account of the privilege and prejudice experienced by educated middle-class women in Egypt.
But I did feel the novel didn't live up to the promise of its early chapters, the influence of ancient mythology, the history of a land that has seven thousand years of history and nearly as many of occupation. It's not Gameela who needs piecing together like Osiris: it's Rose, who contains multitudes and wears different masks for family, for husband, for Egyptian society and for her colleagues in America. By the end of the novel she's closer to reconciling the many versions of herself, and perhaps closer to understanding the decisions made and secrets kept by Gameela: it's a hopeful ending, rather than a conclusive one.
Read for the 'by an Arab woman' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2020.
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