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Week of June 29 - Minaret by Leila Aboulela.  This novel tells the story of Najwa, the daughter of a high-ranking government official in Sudan who lives a comfortable life among the westernized elite of Khartoum.  A political coup forces her and her family into exile in London.  Within a few years, her father is executed, her mother succumbs to cancer and her brother is imprisoned on a drug conviction.  Najwa’s sense of isolation grows, and through her life we get a taste of the feeling of displacement common to refugees, even those enjoying the luxury of home and health.

 

Aboulela lets us feel Najwa’s longing for something to assuage her loneliness and the difficult irony of working as a servant to an upper class family, whereas back in Sudan she was among those served.  This irony and the conflict between the social mores of Khartoum and the laxity of London society cause her to waver between accepting a local Muslim woman’s persistent invitations to attend a sisters’ group at the mosque, and falling for a fellow Sudanese who cares little for her religion - and at times for her. 

 

The plot is strikingly similar to Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb, in that it is the story of a young woman who emigrates from an east African country to urban U.K.  In both Gibbs’ novel and Aboulela’s, we read the story of a young woman bereft of family ties and lured by morally callous men.  The main characters of both novels ultimately find happiness and truth in Islam, demonstrating the faith’s ability to reach across differences in nationality, class and station in life.