Origins – Amin Maalouf
I do admit that I came across this book utterly by chance.
The book cover looked appealing and I am all for digging up the past through
letters and stories – so I had to read this one. In the end, I am surprised
that the author is relatively unknown in our suggested readings. His writing,
though a translation (expertly translated from French by Catherine Temerson), is
exquisite.
The cover I have has a picture of trunk overflowing with letters |
Amin Maalouf was originally a journalist in Lebanon until
the civil war broke out there in 1975. He moved to Paris with his family and has
been residing there since. In this lovely, complex memoir he traces the past
when he chances upon a trunk of family letters given to him. Originating in the
mountains of Lebanon this inter-generational saga, spanning various continents
and historical events gives voice to an identity that is conveniently obscured
by the times we live in – the idea of a liberal Arab in a Muslim world torn
apart by political uprising and decades of revolutions.
He begins with a heartfelt
tribute to his family and his ancestors who were Lebanese Christians:
“I come from a clan that has been nomadic from time
immemorial in a desert as wide as the world….is the family name a homeland?
Yes, that’s the way it is.”
He recalls a time forgotten in the annals of history,
nearly a hundred years ago, when Arab liberalism was briefly at its zenith.
Enlightenment ideals of rationality, liberty, and progress were zealously
championed by schoolteachers and scientists, freemasons and poets, across the
planet—and not least in the Arab world, where many of the leading reformers
were, like Maalouf and his ancestors. Writing as a detective-historian, Maalouf
has ransacked old chests and the fading memories of relatives to tell the story
of a forgotten man of the Enlightenment—his grandfather Boutros.
His grandfather was a revolutionary idealist and
schoolteacher who having failed in business lives instead “between notebooks
and inkwells”. The other person who comes into focus is his brother who is a
study in contrast – Gebrayel, who left for the United States and later settled
in Cuba. Whereas, Botros runs away from his home and gets a western education,
scandalously refuses to have his children baptized and opens up a ‘Universal
School’, his brother is a successful retail entrepreneur in Cuba. One an
intellectual and the other, a businessman.
Maalouf is passionately devoted to fill the gaps in his
ancestors’ stories. And he does that by piecing together fragments of the
letters they exchange, by interviewing living relatives and visiting the places
his ancestors lay buried – to glean as much of truth as he can. In some
exquisite lines he explains how a quest for this origin can also be faulty and riddled
with troubling questions.
“I realize that it is always tricky to suggest a beginning
for things. Nothing is born of nothing, least of all knowledge, modernity, or
enlightened thought; progress is made in tiny surges, in successive laps, like
an endless relay race.”
You simply can’t state the postmodern condition better. I
loved some of his observations for such insights. So, in many ways, this search
and piecing together of his ancestors’ past is a telling analogy of how we
ourselves put history together – in fragments, never as a whole as we believe
it to be.
His grandfather had attempted to bring in a new age of
liberal education through his school , but political ideologies that strongly
stood against such establishments proved to be his undoing. Though his
grandmother kept the school running for another decade, she too had to shut it
down. From then, their family have been largely scattered across the globe –
traveling or even escaping from their beloved homeland due to circumstances
beyond their control.
“Here, families have sons buried in Beirut, Egypt,
Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Australia and the United States. Our fate is to be
scattered in death as we were in life.”
Amin Maalouf explores the "labyrinth of identity”
through the search for the stories of his ancestors. It's a journey showing how
we - especially Europe and the Middle East - are one multiple entity. And that
our identity cannot be reduced to a single affiliation. Amin recognises that
identity is a complex process, and he's not willing to subject himself to
categories others impose.
His views and recollections of the past were enlightening
since I knew next to nothing of the background in Lebanon. Using a trunk of letters and the stories of
his ancestors he masterfully creates a memorable niche of his own. His voice is very persuasive and a highly
relevant one.