By Megan Thomas
This memoir by Iraqi novelist Mortada Gzar has been on my TBR pile for years, which I got while working on a translated non-fiction campaign years ago. Initially, I struggled to get into the swing of the abstract prose, but with time it became positively musical.
It’s safe to say Gzar has lived a remarkable, terrifying life that most people (certainly in the Western world) probably can’t imagine, having survived Saddam Hussein’s regime as well as in a US-occupied Iraq. Gzar is openly gay, and in addition to dealing with violent cultural homophobia, fell in love with an African American soldier called Morise – complicating matters, for sure. The pair agreed that one day, they would meet in Seattle, and this is where our central narrative takes place, interspersed with memories which chart Gzar’s route from Baghdad to Seattle and the sacrifices which made it possible.
We meet such an eclectic cast of characters that you’d be easily fooled into believing it is fiction – from Gzar’s quirky housemates in Seattle, to the people he collected scrap-metal with in an Iraqi war zone for income. But through it all, where is Morise?
For some reason, I often find myself hesitating when it comes to translated literature, being aware of how many English-language stories I haven’t read yet. However, the boundaries pushed in this Arabic memoir were a reassurance of what a privilege it is to even be able to read such a unique and authentic story in my own language – enabled by translators like William Hutchins.
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