Fragments of Riversong by Farah Ghuznavi

reviews house she worked as a cleaner. The boy’s family paid Rose-Anne’s a large sum of money in settlement, and Rose-Anne gave birth to a baby girl shenamedCarla.Fifty-fiveyearslater and just before her death, Rose-Anne tells this secret to her granddaughter, Alexia, who was her beloved confidante and constant companion, and asks her to keep it from everyone and to be careful in relationships with boys. Carla, now married with twin children, Alexia and Johnny, eventually learns from her uncle that she was a rape child and that the rapist had become a respected and wealthy bishop. Having been brought up by a stepfather, she tells her husband , Michael, and also her twin children that she intends to seek acquaintance with her real father. They all support her but consider unpalatable any close relation with one who is, they think, a “monster” and a criminal, particularly Alexia, who had known the secret before them and suffered from it. It is around this simple plot that Shaw J. Dallal, emeritus professor of Middle East studies at Colgate University , weaves his sensitively written second novel, his first being Scattered Like Seeds (1999). It is a novel of feelings and conflicted attitudes, and Dallal deftly develops it through dialogues, some of which are mundane and quotidian and lengthen the novel unnecessarily. But some are serious, like those questioning God’s omnipotence and goodness in relation to the existence of evil in the world. Carla and her family meet Bishop Philip Arlington—who admits to being Carla’s father and expresses his repentance for his sinful act as a young man—and she changes her attitude toward him and readily forgives him. Her husband does too, but Alexia and Johnny have reservations : Alexia always remembering her grandmother’s description of the sexual violence of the rapist, and Johnny continuing to question the sincerity of the bishop’s fervent expressions of Christian ideals. Even when Johnny relents, Alexia remains haunted by her grandmother’s story, and this feeling depresses her and leads to tragic consequences. Dallal portrays each of the novel ’s characters with deep understanding and sympathy as they go through the difficult situation arising from Alexia’s condition, a condition that is not uncommon in many families. Spanning four generations, this soulstirring novel is fittingly dedicated by its author “to all victims of rape and their families, who inspired it.” Issa J. Boullata Montréal Farah Ghuznavi. Fragments of Riversong. Dhaka, Bangladesh. Daily Star Books. 2013. isbn 9789849027195 Explicitly aware of Farah Ghuznavi’s famed pedigree and background as a development consultant for over two decades with the nongovernmental sector, I wondered into what dangerous and domineering depths her short narrative prose might plunge. Contrarily, Ghuznavi ardently and forthrightly etches beyond and beneath the surfaces of South Asia’s most treacherous social issues. Several of the pieces of short fiction in Fragments of Riversong are narrated firsthand from the unrehearsed and inimitable perspective of young adults, adolescents, and children who spontaneously unearth experiences of caste, class, inequality, and poverty in the subcontinent of Bangladesh amid its rural and urban spheres. The collection opens with “Getting There,” taking place during an unsettling car journey from the coastal city of Chittagong to the capital city, Dhaka. As Laila, a young architect, accompanies her nieces, fourteen-yearold Yasmin and six-year-old Aliya, to Dhaka following a family tragedy, Laila reminiscences about her stifling childhood and the tensions of being raised amid submissive wives, mothers, and sisters in a patriarchal society. “Old Delhi, New Tricks” is a witty and crisp tale about the encounters of Katy, an Englishwoman, and Shilpa, a Bangladeshi who has been away in England, on holiday together in the Indian capital of New Delhi. The narrator struggles with newfound vegetarianism and the old tongue of Hindi, exerting herself to feel at home amid the local crowd, plainly to realize that not only is she a migrant between the borders of London/Delhi and Dhaka but also a migrant within the borders of her own country and in between its convoluted stratifications. “Big Mother” is a personal favorite , a complex and layered tale of young Lali, the...

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