Rodaan Al Galidi

Published on : September 20, 2022

4.5⭐️

“My journey began long ago in that tiny village: a journey that I thought was about getting to know the Dutch people, but that I should now confess was really about getting to know myself.”

Samir Karim, an Iraqi immigrant, receives his residence permit after a long wait of “nine years, nine months, one week, and three days” in the asylum seekers’ center (ASC) in The Netherlands. Samir is a university graduate, a qualified civil engineer, having escaped Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to avoid being conscripted into the army. He aspires to travel to Tarifa in the south of Spain but is required to maintain residence for at least five years before he can be issued a passport for onward travel. His journey as a resident begins in a Dutch village where he shares accommodation with a friend in the shed of the home of the kind Van der Weerdes family. Here he meets Leda, who captures his heart and Diesel, her dog who Samir dubs “a dog and a guru, also a psychologist”. His feeling for Leda and his failed romance deeply impact Samir and Leda’s gift of “a dog leash and a rubber ball” plays a significant role in Samir’s socialization efforts. Samir is fond of collecting photo albums and one of his prized possessions is a garbage bag full of photo albums discarded by strangers. He spends his free time poring over the albums and making up imaginary stories about the people in the pictures. As the narrative progresses we follow Samir’s journey from the village to a monastery, a building housing several students, and an apartment building housing undocumented people and asylum seekers. He encounters people from different walks of life- asylum seekers like himself from different countries who are struggling to find their way in a new land , established immigrants who are well settled some of whom offer to assist newcomers and Dutch nationals - some of whom are sympathetic, some not so much. Racial stereotyping, language and cultural barriers, a general distrust of outsiders and limited employment opportunities are just a few of the challenges Samir has to deal with. He refuses to live on welfare and does not hesitate to pick up any odd job that would enable him to earn an honest living. In describing his experiences as he navigates his way through a new country, culture and language, Samir's tone remains respectful of both cultures- that of his home country and his adopted country. His perspectives on life in the West as compared to the life he has been accustomed to and the resulting culture shock leads to some hilarious and some heartbreaking situations and insights.

“Grief from war, murder, death. Grief from poverty, illness, or injustice. From the loss of a loved one who had disappeared or fled. But never did I see grief completely paralyze a family the way it did the Van der Weerdes.”- Samir’s observation on the death of the Van der Weerdes family’s pet rabbit.

One of Samir’s efforts to engage with Hollanders involves pretending to own a pet dog, walking through the streets with the leash and ball gifted by Leda.

“With a leash in your hand, the Hollanders think you have a dog. Then they think, maybe he’s a Muslim, but a good one, not so hardcore and scary.”

The Leash and the Ball by Rodaan Al Galidi (translated by Jonathan Reeder) is an honest, refreshing take on the socialization process of an immigrant as he acclimatizes to his newly adopted country. With a healthy dose of sardonic humor, the author manages to keeps the tone light and even when alluding to Samir’s nostalgia and homesickness, unhappy memories of war and political unrest in his home country, does so without the narrative becoming too heavy. The prose is simple, the tone is conversational and the style of writing is congruent with the main character as we get to know him through his first-person narrative.

Though the pace of the narrative is on the slower side, Samir’s search for a feeling of belongingness and his efforts to feel at home in a foreign land will touch your heart. In Samir, the author creates a memorable character, one that you sympathize with and respect for his honesty, integrity and indomitable spirit. Overall, this is an entertaining, engaging and insightful novel and I eagerly look forward to reading more of this author’s work in the future.

(Two Blankets, Three Sheets is the prequel to this novel and follows Samir’s journey to The Netherlands and his nine-year wait in the ASC. I would like to point out that this novel is perfectly readable as a standalone novel.)

Many thanks to NetGalley and World Editions for providing a digital review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.… (mais)

4.5⭐️

“Picture yourself waiting at a station or a bus stop with a few people, and not knowing when the next train or bus will arrive. Within fifteen minutes you’ll start feeling restless and will look around at the other people, who are getting restless too, and will also look around or at their watch. Now imagine a building with a few hundred waiting people, not for fifteen minutes, but for year after year. Not waiting for a bus or a train, but for their life to begin again.”

In February 1998, Samir Karim arrives in the Netherlands, seven years after leaving his home in Iraq. A civil engineering graduate, he flees Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to avoid being conscripted into the army. After seven years of forged passports, smugglers’ routes, and a kaleidoscope of experiences in various Asian countries, Karim applies for asylum and what follows is a complicated, frustrating and demoralizing nine-year wait for his resident status. His initial three months are spent in a reception center (RC) in Haarlem after which he is sent to an Asylum Seekers’Center (ASC) which houses 500 asylum seekers like himself. Both the RC and the ASC allot “two blankets, three sheets, a towel, a pillow, and a pillowcase”, returnable upon the end of his stay.

“Inside the building there was an amazing smell. A smell I had never smelled before, and will never forget. And nowhere else in the whole world could you observe, at least not so clearly and for so long, what happened here: waiting. If waiting has a smell, then it is the smell that permeated the ASC. The make-up of the approximately five hundred residents changed sometimes monthly, sometimes weekly. People came and went. Some vanished, others appeared. And they all waited.”

As the narrative progresses we are introduced to numerous individuals who are housed in Samir’s ASC- people from different nationalities, of a different faith, male and female, young and old, each with different stories and each with dreams of starting over in a new country. While some wait for years on end, some are luckier. While some cases are approved, others are issued deportation orders. While some wait, with nowhere else to go, others take drastic steps. In Samir’s nine years at the ASC, he has witnessed eight people commit suicide. We follow Samir as he navigates the bureaucratic procedures, unreliable interpreters and apathetic lawyers while trying to survive on the allotted pocket money and the basic amenities provided in the ASC. Twice he attempts to leave The Netherlands and seek asylum elsewhere, once in Germany and once in Norway but was unsuccessful. He is a keen observer of the Dutch people, culture and society in general which makes for some entertaining anecdotes. Though some of the staff in Social Services are sympathetic to the plight of the ASC residents, they remain a stickler to the rules and restrictions imposed including prohibiting them from seeking work outside the ASC though they are allowed to leave the premises during the day. Samir, however, does his best to learn the language, work odd jobs and help as an interpreter. But it is impossible to be unaffected by the general feeling of isolation, despair and frustration within the center and its inhabitants.

Two Blankets, Three Sheets is an exceptionally well-written book. Some of the characters and their stories reduced me to tears, some made me smile and though the author injects his own characteristic brand of humor to diffuse the depressing tone of the narrative, it is difficult to laugh without feeling guilty for doing so. Though Samir is a fictional character, the author also mentions, ” People might ask me if this is my story, to which I will say: no. But if I’m asked if this is also my story, then I will say wholeheartedly: yes.”

I recently read a DRC of Rodaan Al Galidi’s forthcoming novel The Leash and the Ball which follows Samir in his life as a Dutch resident. I was so impressed with his writing that I could not resist grabbing a copy of this one and I am so glad that I did. (Both books are perfectly readable as standalone).

Excerpt from the Author’s Foreward:

“This book is fiction for the reader who cannot believe it. But for anyone open to it, it is nonfiction. Or no: let this book be nonfiction, so that the world I had to inhabit for all those years will be transformed from fiction into fact.”… (mais)