Amin Maalouf: Leo the African

     I’d no idea it was so long since I last read this novel, which never ceases to amaze me, because it is a (fictionalised) account of a real life, and I really don’t believe you could make it up.

Jews, Muslims and Christians live reasonably peaceably alongside one another in pre-Reconquista Granada; there is a recap of events leading to the fall of Granada to the Spanish in 1492, and the mayhem which follows for those who are not of the Catholic faith. There is the full vileness of the Inquisition, persecution and the inability of Christians to accept that anyone might be different. Our hero, and narrator, is a Muslim. And though it’s technically a novel, it’s also an autobiography: we cannot have the same expectations of plot as we might have of a completely fictional text; the narrative is linear, but we do grow inevitably attached to people and places.

The narrator and his family leave Granada and settle in Fez; we learn of schooling and lifelong friendships. Eventually he becomes a rich and successful businessman, close to those in power, travels widely and is used on various diplomatic missions by the authorities. His weirdest adventure is his kidnapping by Christians and presentation as a gift to the Pope! Here, his knowledge and skills are put to the service of the incredibly corrupt Church at the time of the Reformation; he is baptised against his will, but escapes being ordained priest before one of his missions. In the end, after years of wanderings, he is able to return to his home and family and live out the remainder of his life in peace as a devout Muslim. I had mis-remembered the plot from my earlier readings, and forgotten how small a section of the novel is his life in Rome at the service of the Pope.

I realised that the narrator’s famous book The Description of Africa is based on his travels all over the north of that continent; when I last read the novel, I had yet to track down that book. Leo travels in the footsteps of his earlier Muslim forbear Ibn Battutah, whose journeys a couple of centuries earlier rivalled those of Marco Polo.

I found the first person narrative effective and convincing. In the back of my mind was always the thought, this stuff is true; the narrative style is that of a devout Muslim, whose faith is at the forefront of his life and deeds (most of the time), and the adventures are almost non-stop. Towards the end of the book, the narrator is at the centre of world-changing events, with the Reformation, the attempts of an incredibly corrupt papacy to consolidate its power and build alliances to secure its future, even if this means joining forces with the Ottomans, and also the various rivalries weakening the Muslim world in those tumultuous years.

Over the years I have come to realise how good a writer Amin Maalouf is. Not only has he written some very good novels, but also a number of very interesting historical and social texts in which he presents thoughtful and powerful analysis of the current state of the world. He has received recognition by being elected to the Académie Française, but that’s all, as far as I’m aware. At the moment, I’m reflecting on what is different about Arabic fiction, thinking of Maalouf, and also Naguib Mahfouz in particular. Maybe it’s my position as an ‘outsider’ to their world, but I’m conscious of a different feel to their novels, one which cannot just be explained by the Muslim background that is omnipresent in a way that Christianity isn’t in Western fiction, for instance. Does anyone out there have any pointers?

Laila Lalami: The Moor’s Account

Another book from my Christmas wish list read and enjoyed! And this is a marvellous and very moving story. Although I tend mentally to sniff a little at ‘historical fiction’ I suppose I actually do read and enjoy quite a lot of it: genre labels are often unhelpful..

Last summer, on my travels, one of the books I listened to in the car was The Journey of Cabeza de Vaca, an account written by a Spanish nobleman of eight years he spent lost, with three companions, wandering around the area that is now Florida, Texas and Mexico, in the company of various native tribes. One of the three companions was the Moorish slave of one of the other three Spaniards; he merits a single line in the narrative, and it’s from this that Laila Lalami has crafted her novel: what would Estebanico the slave have made of the journey, the Spaniards, the natives, his experiences?

Historical novels are limited – obviously – by the facts and details that are known and cannot be changed, which means that the creative efforts of a writer are differently directed: perhaps plot is not so important, because circumscribed by actual events and people; tension and suspense are rather more difficult to make use of when the eventual outcome may be known. Instead, a writer may focus more on empathy, on fleshing out events, characters and their responses to them, bringing them to life, and out of the history books, as it were.

The Moor’s Account is narrated from the viewpoint of an outsider from both worlds: neither conquistador nor native American, he becomes curious and perhaps impartial observer of both, yet with his own personal story and agenda: the plot is initially structured from two interwoven strands as his backstory is imagined alongside his sea journey to the Americas; what he wants above all is to be able to return home, a free man.

Lalami is of Moroccan-American origin, and has read and used some of my favourite travellers (Ibn Battuta and Leo Africanus) as background source material; her novel joins others which explore interaction between West and East, Christian and Moslem at this interesting time in world history, such as Amin Maalouf‘s Leo The African, for example, or which seek to give Westerners insight into the rich life of the Muslim world, such as Gilbert Sinoué’s Avicenne (only available in French, as far as I know). I enjoy these insights into the world from different perspectives; I know I’m reading novels, which are perhaps primarily entertainment, but I find it heartening to find common links of humanity between peoples, races and religions when so many nowadays want to convince us we are alien to each other… and yet, the small, sceptical part of me also wonders if there is not some romanticising of the past lives and interactions between Christian and Muslim worlds? In the end, however, what we share must surely outweigh the ways in which we differ.

Estebanico inevitably observes and interprets the world he sees in a different way from his Spanish masters; sometimes this is helpful to them all, but at others, it seems to him, brings disaster. All four are inevitably shaped and changed by their experiences in various ways – some learn from them and others do not. And our hero, in the end, is torn between his yearning for his home, family and community back in Africa, and the new life and possibilities which gradually reveal themselves to him in the Americas. My final response was also modulated by the realisation (which a historical novel can give) that he throws in his lot with a native people who are ultimately doomed by historical inevitability. It’s a slow, subtle and very powerful read.