Minaret
by Leila Aboulela
Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2007, Women's Prize Longlist 2006
Date Read: October 21, 2022
Minaret is my third novel by Leila Aboulela and I find each of them captivating, providing a window into a culture that I wouldn’t otherwise have a view of. Minaret, more specifically, allows the reader to glimpse a portrait of Islam that they may not have previously understood. Many Americans know of Islam through what they watch on TV news, which portrays all Muslims in a negative light.
Minaret follows the privileged life of Najwa as it crumbles down around her. She goes from the fortunate daughter of a politically important business man in Sudan, living a secular life and enjoying her friends to an impoverished maid living in London. When Sudan undergoes a violent coup, Najwa’s father is arrested, tried and hanged. Their mother, her brother Omar and her make a desperate escape to England. With their father a political prisoner, their funds are frozen and the money they came to rely on disappears.
Omar basically continues the life he was living in Sudan when he gets to England. In Sudan, he was a notorious partier and drug user. Now living in exile, his drug use seems to escalate and not long after arriving, but long enough for their mother to pass away from cancer, Omar is involved in a violent altercation and sent to prison. He disdains anything that remotely evokes Middle Easternism or Islam, looking down on anyone trapped in that mindset as backward.
After Omar’s arrest, Najwa finds herself now alone in London with no way to return to Sudan. She experiences some kindnesses from women from the local mosque and envies them their peace, quiet determination and knowledge of the Quran. With invitations long unaccepted, she finally attends a women’s talk at the mosque and slowly begins her immersion to a world she had only seen from afar but never lived. Her new faith offers her comfort and a certainness about her orientation in the human experience.
Out of necessity, having no training for a career, Najwa becomes a personal assistant and then a maid/nanny to a local Sudanese family. The mother is a PhD that lives in Cairo but travels for speaking engagements. The daughter is in London studying for her PhD and she has a daughter, Mei, and a perpetually absent husband. The son and brother, Tamer, is also a practicing Muslim and is being forced to study business, much to his dismay. He doesn’t agree with his mother’s and sisters’ non-believing ways and desperately wants to study Middle Eastern culture. His relationship with Najwa, a slowly building friendship that begins to burn into something much brighter, offers consolation and deep understanding for both.
I didn’t realize that Minaret is Aboulela’s debut novel and I can somewhat see that in hindsight. Of Lyrics Alley, The Translator and now, Minaret, the former seems to be somewhat less focused and polished than her other two novels but no less engaging, insightful and captivating. I still believe her to be exceptionally talented, lyrical in her prose, with a depth of knowledge about Sudanese culture and Islam to offer a varied perspective many other authors can’t replicate.
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