Bachtyar Ali; trans. Kareem Abdulrahman
The Last Pomegranate Tree by Bachtyar Ali, translated from the Kurdish by Kareem Abdulrahman, blends magical realism, myth, fables, and narrative threads that record the atrocities perpetrated by Saddam Hussein against the Kurdish people in northern Iraq. The narrative unfolds as an extended flashback in the first-person voice of Muzafar-i-Subhdam, a former peshmerga who fought Saddam’s oppression. He is on a ferry boat with other refugees trying to reach Europe. His narrative is peppered with the occasional direct address to his audience/the reader.
Muzafar had been imprisoned for twenty-one years in a remote facility in the middle of the desert, isolated and out of touch with the rest of the world. His one thought was of finding his son, Saryas-i-Subhdam, who was just a few days old when Muzafar was incarcerated. When Muzafar is set free, he is taken to the home of a fellow Kurdish soldier, Yaqub-i-Snawbar. Yaqub insists on keeping him captive for his own protection. But with the help of Ikram-i-Kew, Muzafar manages to escape and begin the search for his son.
Muzafar’s search follows a meandering path in which he learns there are three Saryas-i-Subhdam, one of whom may or may not be his son. He recounts the story of Muhammad the Glass-Hearted who died of love; makes the acquaintance of two sisters who vow never to marry and always wear white; learns of the death of one Saryas-i-Subhdam, the incarceration of another, and the severe burns of a third. He narrates how two of the Saryas-i-Subhdams and Muhammad the Glass-Hearted met, each of whom has a glass pomegranate in his possession that binds them together. The friends travel to a mysterious place where a magical pomegranate tree with life-changing properties flourishes. The tree straddles the two realms of dreams and reality.
Muzafar unravels one lead which leads him to another which leads him to another in a mosaic of interconnected stories. In the process, he encounters those who have suffered in the hands of Saddam and his security agents. One of the most gruesome scenes is toward the end of the novel where Muzafar goes to a children’s hospital to locate a Saryas-i-Subhdam. He encounters victims of Saddam’s atrocities—young boys with missing appendages; horribly disfigured, burned faces; and misshapen bodies that seem to have been cobbled together with various body parts.
This haunting narrative is, at times, difficult to follow because of its fragmentary nature and digressions; because it weaves in and out of different threads, scrambling chronology; and because of its unflinching honesty in depicting the horrors of war. Its disjointed structure echoes the way in which war ruptures lives and disrupts reality. The narrative is peppered with philosophical musings about the meaning of life, illustrations of man’s inhumanity to man, and the traumatic impact of war on the collective psyche.
A challenging but worthwhile read.