The Stone Woman
Tariq Ali Verso, 271pp, £15
ISBN 1859847641
The third novel in a planned quartet charting the tensions between Islam and Christianity, Tariq Ali's The Stone Woman sets up the Pasha family from Istanbul as a microcosm of the Ottoman empire at the end of the 19th century. Drawing on a rich tradition of mythmaking and storytelling, Ali creates an enchanting, sometimes harrowing, fable of a family whose stability and harmony, like the empire to which they belong, is largely predicated on undisclosed information and recycled myths.
Ali teases out these secrets with the grace and guile of a natural storyteller. A weathered sculpture of a pagan goddess - "the repository of all our hidden pain" - becomes the focal point for those concealing difficult truths. Each character approaches her and confesses a story (of forbidden love, real fathers, desires beyond the codes of Islam). Each riveting disclosure has its own voice, but they are all a little wise, sad and humane.
When not in confessional mode, the novel is narrated by Nilofer, returning from an exile imposed on her when she married a Greek. Determined to prevent the household from dictating the course of her life, Nilofer meets Selim, a young barber, and they begin a romance that Ali invigorates with many touches of tenderness. Eventually, Nilofer marries the barber - which would once have been scandalous - and, by having his child, she signals her will to disregard anachronistic codes and expectations.
Yet the novel does not operate solely on an allegorical level. As you might expect from a writer who is also a historian, there are many discussions of politics, philosophy and the past; and for a family whose status quo has been maintained by endless stories from the glory days of the Ottoman empire, there is also plenty of mischief-making. It is here that Ali's gently tweaking revisionism comes in. Nilofer's brother, the cynical Salman, challenges tales of Memed the Great's heroism by pointing out that Memed acted brutally towards his own family. Impatient with the rituals of Istanbul life, Salman also bemoans how "the empire has been irreparably decadent for three hundred years".
Most of the political discourse is saved for family friends, Memed and the Baron. They talk of the empire's decline in relation to the Russians, the Austrians and Bismarck's Germany. They call for a rational approach and for modernisation during a time of radical change that has turned "many ordinary people into madmen and assassins". In effect, the Baron is a mouthpiece for the author's not always subtle historicising; there are details of defeats suffered, territory lost and speculation on what might have been.
The Baron's numerous debates allow Ali to offer conflicting opinions on the demise of the Ottoman empire, and to convey the uncertainty of the times through the clamour of competing voices. As Memed and the Baron argue the veracities of Islamic history, there is talk of the army deposing the sultan and establishing a republic. Salman, however, like his sister, is in favour not of wars, but of planning against "tradition and obscurantism at home".
It is this intertwining of political, religious and national posturing with simple tales of family life and love (suicide, madness, defiance) that makes The Stone Woman so captivating.
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