IN THE COUNTRY OF MEN

In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar, depicts the turmoil within both a country and a family
during a time of extreme political and social change, betrayal, and danger: the rise of the Qaddafi
regime in Libya during the summer of 1979. Young Suleiman el Dewani, the 9-year-old narrator,
remains confused throughout the novel by the happenings around him, both in his country and
within his family. He witnesses the brutal oppression of the Qaddafi regimesymbolized by the
arrest, televised confession, and public hanging of his best friends father and college
professor, Ustath Rasheed. He also bears witness to his own familys disintegration, as his father
is hunted by the Revolutionary Committee for his pro-democracy activities, and as his young
mother, Najwa, drinks herself into unconsciousness to cope with her own despair and anger.

Themes of secrecy and betrayal permeate Suleimans world. For example, Farajs frequent
business trips abroad, running his successful business, are not always what they seem;
Suleiman sees his father in town when he is supposed to be out of the country. Left frequently at
home alone with his mother, Suleiman alternately feels responsible for her emotional and
physical wellbeing and trapped by her alcoholism and emotional needs. She tells him the stories
of her life, including her forced marriage at age 14 to Faraj and motherhood at 15, when she gave
birth to Suleiman, her only child. Her drinking continues, however, whenever Faraj is not at
home. Without parents to guide him, Suleiman turns to Kareem Rasheed, his best friend, and his
fathers best friend, Moosa.

Suleimans narration of life in Tripoli during this time period offers a glimpse into the lives of
ordinary peoples attempts to survive while trapped within the political oppression of Qaddafis
rise to power. At the beginning of the novel, Ustath Rasheed, Kareems father, has already been
arrested. Farajs activities soon bring the unwelcome attention of the Revolutionary Committee
to his own home, bringing about searches, wiretapping, spying, and eventually Farajs arrest.
During his arrest, Faraj is tortured, but he eventually returns home, a psychologically and
physically damaged man.

Another significant theme lies in the powerlessness of children, women, and even grown men at
the different levels of the Libyan society. Children, of course, live with the least autonomy, both
in the society and at home, while women fair little better. Women cannot even choose their own
husbands, as represented by Najwas story. Though married against her will at age 14, she has
affection for Faraj, particularly taking great care of him when he returns from his imprisonment.
However, she has little influence over Faraj, and she has no social life outside the home. Men
rule the home, but even they are powerless against Qaddafis Revolutionary Committee forces.
The message clearly comes across from Suleimans narration that no one has control over his
own life or the freedom of self-determination.

Suleiman lives a claustrophobic life, with most of the scenes in the novel taking place within his
home or garden, with a few excursions into the outside world to play in the streets with the
neighborhood boys. However, the pressure never lets up, even in play, because these boys are the
sons of the newly risen government officials or pro-democracy rebels. When the outside world
intrudes into the home, it is typically in the form of danger or bad news: phone calls, radio
broadcasts, televised interrogations, or visitors, including the spying or searches of the
Revolutionary Committee.

Suleiman himself betrays both his friend Kareem, telling the other neighborhood boys Kareems
secrets, and own his father, helping the security services who have taken his father awayin a
confused and helpless ragehoping that somehow his collaboration will help his father. These
betrayals highlight the fact that no one escapes the contamination of a dictatorial regime.

It becomes clear, however, that Suleiman is narrating this novel as a 24-year-old man looking
back on that time in his life. His parents, fearful for his life in Tripoli, send him to Cairo to live
with Moosa and his family, who have been exiled from Libya. Suleiman believes this visit is
only for a short time, but soon he learns that there are no plans for him to go back home. In a
very real sense, Suleiman is betrayed by his own parents. When his father dies a short time later,
Suleiman is not allowed to return to Libya for the funeral. Suleiman is left to construct his life
from the remnants of his scarred cildhoohd.

This first novel by the Libyan writer Hisham Matar, who has lived in London for many years,
has generated much excitement in publishing circles. The Bookseller hailed it as the most highly
prized literary debut of the autumn.

Within a week of Matars literary agent submitting the novel to publishers, it was the subject of a
highly competitive auction in the UK. The auction was won by the Penguin imprint Viking,
which gave Matar a two-book deal. There were also auctions abroad, and the rights to the book
were sold in 14 countries prior to publication.

Vikings editorial director Mary Mount, editor of the novel, rates it as a very rare find . . . the
sort of book that makes publishing worthwhile. Matar is a very serious writer who puts an
enormous amount into his writing.

Some novels fail to live up to their pre-publication publicity, but In the Country of Men fully
deserves the accolades it received before publication from novelists of the calibre of JM Coetzee,
Nadeem Aslam and Anne Michaels. Matar has produced an accomplished and moving novel, at
once accessible and mysterious. It is a literary novel, yet intensely readable. He has written
poetry for much of his life, particularly focusing on it since the mid-1990s, and his gift for
language is much in evidence in his prose.

In the involving, many-layered narrative, first-person narrator Suleiman looks back to his nine-
year-old self trying to make sense of the confusing family and political events that whirled
around him in Tripoli in summer 1979, that last summer before I was sent away. The novel is
expertly paced, and the tension builds to an almost unbearable pitch as the net closes around
Suleimans father and his associates, who are linked to a student democracy movement.

In the books concluding section Suleiman, now 24 years old, tells of the fifteen years that have
elapsed since his parents sent him into exile in Cairo. Although he integrated quickly into
Egyptian society, I suffer an absence, an ever present absence, like an orphan not entirely
certain of what he has missed or gained through his unchosen loss.
Matar was born in New York in 1970 to a diplomat father, and lived in Tripoli between the ages
of three and nine. In 1979 the family was forced to leave Libya and moved to exile in Egypt after
his father was threatened with interrogation and arrest during a crackdown by the regime.

Much worse was to come. In March 1990, while Matar was at school in England, his father
Jaballah disappeared from the family home in Cairo. It is assumed that, like several other Libyan
dissidents, he was abducted and handed over to the Libyan regime. To this day, despite
representations to the Libyan leadership and the taking up of the case by human rights groups
including Amnesty International, Matar and his family do not know whether his father is alive or
dead.

Matar stresses that his novel is not autobiographical, although it is permeated by a sense of loss,
exile and ambiguity. Nor does he see himself as a political writer. Rather, he is concerned with
how people change over time, how circumstances alter the human heart. He set the novel in
Libya because of his interest in certain themes that are very much to do with Libya. And I also
feel that as far as the literary voice of Libya is concerned, its not a very vocal voice. Its a silent
country at least thats the impression the world has, I think with good reason.

He adds: The kind of literature that stands the test of time is the kind of literature that comes out
of urgency, that comes out of a sense that it has to be written. In a way the book writes the
author, and that kind of book doesnt come by choice.

The novel is intricately structured, but Matar did not start out with a plot outline. For him writing
is exploration, and what determined the structure was the voice. The voice really intrigued me,
and it is what kept me interested and committed. It kept nagging at me.

Matar spent the first phase of work on the novel trying to meet the technical challenges of
writing in the voice of a nine-year-old. What does it mean to be nine years old? How do you
perceive the world? There is something quite unique about children, the present seems eternal
and there isnt really any experience of time passing. In many ways its quite a positive thing
because a lot of them live in the moment and their living experience tends to be extremely
intense.

One theme running through the book is Suleimans anxiety over questions of masculinity and
what it is to be a man. Suleiman is an only child, and when his father is away on business trips he
is forced to become the man of the house and to look after his mother. She drinks the medicine
(illicit grappa) that she covertly obtains from the local baker, and when she is drunk, or ill as
Suleiman interprets it, she uses her son as the sounding board for her dissatisfactions. She recalls
that black day when she was forced by her brothers to get married to a stranger at the age of
only 14 after she was seen in a caf drinking coffee with a boy.

Matar charts the boys ambivalence towards his mother. I remembered the words she had told
me the night before, We are two halves of the same soul, two open pages of the same book,
words that felt like a gift I didnt want.
In the novels opening scene Suleiman has been told that his father is away on business, but
during a shopping trip with his mother he glimpses him in Martyrs Square followed by his
office clerk Nasser carrying a typewriter. His father enters a building, and Suleiman sees him at a
top floor window hanging a small red towel on the clothesline. He is a rather distant figure whom
Suleiman wishes could be more like Ustath Rashid, his fathers best friend, or Moosa, the
Egyptian judges son who provides Suleiman with friendship and affection.

On their way home, mother and son are followed by a car carrying four men in dark safari suits.
I felt my heart jump. They were the same Revolutionary Committee men who had come a week
before and taken Ustath Rashid. Suleiman witnesses Ustath Rashids televised confession,
summary trial and hanging in a sports stadium in front of a hysterical cheering mob. The
televised execution of Ustath Rashid would leave another more lasting impression on me, one
that has survived well into my manhood, a kind of quiet panic, as if at any moment the rug could
be pulled from beneath my feet.

The novel depicts a society of informers and mukhabarat, where leaflets criticising the
Revolutionary Committees circulate overnight, and where telephones are crudely tapped.

The world of boys and their games runs parallel to the adult world. Matars best friend Kareem is
Ustath Rashids son and the arrest of Ustath Rashid affects the dynamic between the boys.
Suleiman is caught up in betrayals and complicities and experiences the fleeting pleasures of the
misuse of power.

The mother and Moosa burn the fathers books in order to protect him, but Suleiman hides one of
them. After the father is seized, the mother makes a humiliating appeal for his life to a neighbour
who is a senior member of the mukhabarat. When Suleimans father returns home from his brutal
ordeal, he and the mother draw closer and find a new mutual need and passion which tends to
shut out their son.

After Suleiman is sent alone to live in Cairo, a series of decrees in Libya ruin his parents
financially and his father goes to work in a pasta factory. Suleiman finds the Libyan embassy has
a file on him as an evader because he has not returned for military service. When he is fourteen
a decree is issued warning that all Stray Dogs who refuse to return will be hunted down. His
parents are refused an exit visa, holding them hostage, as it were, until the evading Stray Dog
returns. Suleiman asks: Why does our country long for us so savagely? What could we
possibly give her that hasnt already been taken?

In the Country of Men has a transcendent quality that lifts it above its often harrowing subject
matter. As an adult, Suleiman learns what became of the people he knew as a child in Tripoli,
and how they have adapted to their situation. The novel ends on a note of gentle and hopeful
resolution.

n 2003 the UN lifted sanctions on Libya, and western capital flowed in, hungry for the country's
oil and gas reserves. Since then, leading European politicians, including Tony Blair, have shaken
hands and signed agreements with Colonel Gaddafi. Politicians argue the pragmatic need to do
deals with dictators. "People should not forget the past, they should move beyond it," Blair said
of his visit to Tripoli.

It is this platitude that Hisham Matar, a Libyan exile, confronts in his debut novel, which chooses
to remember the brutality of Libya under Gaddafi. "The country of men" is inhabited by torturers
and their victims. The former, guardians of the 1969 revolution, are bent on closing down
anything pleasurable and free. The latter are Libya's intelligentsia, people like the boy narrator's
father, Baba, and his best friend Ustath. Baba is an urbane and widely travelled businessman, an
avid reader who tries his hand at translating foreign texts into Arabic. He is jailed and tortured by
Gaddafi's men for inciting a student revolt. When he is let out his mind is damaged (in prison,
under torture, he betrayed his friends) and his body a bloody pulp. His friend and fellow
conspirator is less fortunate - his show trial, humiliation and hanging at the basketball stadium is
televised live. Ustath, before he wet his trousers at the scaffold, was an art historian, a bridge
between the ancient world (he is an expert on Leptis Magna, the Roman site where he takes his
students) and modern Arab life.

In killing Ustath, Gaddafi is severing links with the outside world, and with Libya's history - so
as to re-write it. Books are burned, pictures replaced in the home by images of Gaddafi. The
tragi-comic incident of a young man running across Martyr's Square with a typewriter, chased by
a group of revolutionary guards, tells of the peril and predicament of the Libyan artist.

The political world of male violence is paralleled in the domestic sphere, where women are the
property of men. At the heart of the novel is the relationship between the nine-year-old Suleiman
and his mother. Theirs is a desperately tender and fragile relationship, Suleiman having to guard
his mother against her alcoholism and the designs of revolutionary guards. The mother's
biography is interwoven with allusions to the plight of Scheherazade at the hands of King
Shahryar, the ancient Persian tale casting light on modern Arab life.

This time there is no severing of links between past and present; nothing has changed.
Suleiman's mother, as a child, was beaten for talking to the neighbour's son. Aged 14, she is
locked away for drinking coffee with the boy and forcibly married to a stranger after a decision
made by nine male members of her family, a "High Council" as merciless as any of Gaddafi's
revolutionary committees.

Suleiman dreams of rescuing his mother and restoring her to romance. He yearns to grow up, to
become a man, not for "the things normally associated with manhood" but "to change the past, to
rescue that girl from her black day". Of course he fails. He is sent away to the security of Egypt.
Years of forced separation from his mother mean he has forgotten what she looks like.

And yet he will not surrender. He struggles to remember the playful innocence of his youth, the
beauty and the love shared with his mother, those intimacies easily crushed by dictators but
which survive in memory. What emerges from this moving and graceful novel is the insistence
that memories of love will survive the country of men.
first novel, one of the surprise inclusions on this year's Man Booker Prize shortlist, takes the
reader to the Libyan capital Tripoli in the 1970s, and explores Gaddafi's political terror as seen
through the eyes of a child.

The narrator is nine-year-old Suleiman, a boy oppressed by the weight of many secrets. First,
there's the secret he carries for his unhappy mother, with whom he is wrapped up in an intense,
sometimes smothering relationship. During the long, lonely nights when his father Baba is away,
Suleiman is the only witness to his mother's addiction to her "medicine", the illegal alcohol she
obtains by stealth.

Then, when the Revolutionary Committee men come to drag off one of Baba's friends as a traitor
to the regime, there is another confusing secret for Suleiman to keep. Baba's collection of books,
with titles like Democracy Now, must be hurriedly burned and no-one is to know. But there is a
policeman lingering in a car outside Suleiman's home who would like to hear more about the
activities of Baba and his friends, while a mysterious echo sounds on the family's telephone.
Some secrets are hard for a child to keep.

Matar's depiction of the brutal Libyan regime gains power from being viewed from Suleiman's
guileless perspective. The child is cruelly exposed to its worst excesses, as public executions are
broadcast in all their obscenity on the television screen. But more subtly, Matar also suggests
how political terror stains everyone who lives under it: dissident Baba, who crumbles under
torture; Suleiman's mother, who must grovel to neighbours she detests in order to protect her
family. Even Suleiman himself, just an ordinary child with all a child's unruly and passionate
impulses, can be tempted into acts of betrayal. A chilling passage in the novel shows how easily
Suleiman is drawn into complicity with the secret policeman seeking evidence against his father,
seduced by the lure of adult attention.

Sadly, the author knows his territory only too well. Hisham Matar is the son of a Libyan
diplomat, and was forced to leave Tripoli at the age of nine, when his father's name appeared on
a list of people the regime wished to interrogate and it became too dangerous for the family to
remain in Libya. They fled to Egypt, but later, while Hisham was at boarding school in England,
his father was kidnapped by the Libyan secret police and taken back to the country to be
imprisoned and tortured. Nothing has been heard of him since 1995; the Matar family do not
know whether he is alive or dead.

The shadow of that trauma hangs over the book. Yet if In the Country of Men offers insights into
experiences few British readers have had to share, many of its themes are deeply familiar. The
anxious bond between Suleiman and his alcoholic mother is one of the strongest elements of the
novel; Matar has written not just a story about a troubled country, but also a beautifully nuanced
tale of the complexity of family relationships and the painful vulnerabilities of childhood In the
Tripoli of 1979, nine-year-old Sulaiman considers the origins of mulberries. They are, he
decides, "the best fruit God has created", and imagines young angels conspiring to plant a crop
on earth when they hear that Adam and Eve are being sent down there as punishment. This could
be simply a charming piece of whimsy invented by a child - but the time and place in which
Sulaiman imagines it reconfigures the story into a tale of dissidents (angels) and exiles (humans).
Sulaiman - whose adult self is the narrator of In the Country of Men - is himself the son of a
dissident, Faraj. His family lives on Mulberry Street, along with the families of Ustath Rashid
(who is arrested prior to the start of the novel for treasonous actions) and Ustath Jafer (a
government official). The street was named for an orchard of mulberry trees, but now only one
tree remains - in the garden of Ustath Rashid.

Of course, no tale of heaven and earth can be complete without acknowledging the third player.
Sulaiman brings him into the story thus: "God knew of course, he's the Allknowing, but He liked
the idea and so let the angels carry out their plan." In the novel, the figure of the Almighty is
called not God but - close enough - Guide. "The Guide" is Colonel Gadafy who, Godlike,
remains unseen but ever-present throughout this haunting debut of growing up in a world of
uncertainty.

One of the book's most satisfying and moving aspects is Hisham Matar's decision to make
uncertainty manifest itself to Sulaiman through the figure of his mother, Najwa. At nine,
Sulaiman is able to remain relatively unaffected when Ustath Rashid, the father of his best
friend, is taken away in a white car. He even finds himself somewhat drawn to the figure of
Sharief, one of Rashid's abductors, who later takes to watching Sulaiman's own house when
Sulaiman's father falls under suspicion of treason. But he cannot be unaffected by his mother,
who starts taking copious amounts of "medicine" - sold to her by the baker in brown paper bags
from under the counter - each time her husband is away (engaged, as she knows, in subversive
activities). Under the effect of alcohol Najwa tells her son things she would never say when
sober, revealing how she herself was crushed by authority when, as a 14-year-old girl, she was
married off to a man more than twice her age after being seen holding hands with a boy in a
coffee shop. What makes Najwa's tale distinctive is the fact that her laments stem not from a lack
of care for her husband, but rather from the fact that his anti-state activities put him constantly
under threat of discovery by the Guide's men. This is the other side of a dissident's life: the price
paid by the family, who must live with fear at all times.

Away from his parents, Sulaiman's world is made up of the neighbourhood boys. But here, too,
politics is never far from the reader's thoughts, even if the boys themselves aren't fully aware of
how the state impinges on their childhood games. The boys are sons of governments officials or
of dissidents - their parents are connected in a web of arrests, favours, confessions and betrayals.
And as the neighbourhood games grow darker, Sulaiman learns about betrayal, violence and
shame at first hand.

Ultimately, this is a novel most concerned with relationships between people - friends, spouses,
comrades and, particularly, parents and their children. Matar movingly charts the ways in which
love endures in situations of great repression, but also shows how repression threatens
everything, even love, putting relationships under a strain that can be unendurable.

And whatever his subject, Matar writes beautifully. In describing the world of seas and
mulberries he is a sensualist; when writing of executions and arrests he is a nuanced observer
with a gift for conveying both absurdity and raw emotion. His description of a public execution
is an exceptional piece of writing - he is not afraid to bring in details that seem entirely
incongruous with the setting, yet serve to give it an air of greater verisimilitude. A man trying to
resist being taken to the gallows reminds Sulaiman of "the way a shy woman would resist her
friends' invitation to dance, pulling her shoulders up to her ears and waving her index finger
nervously in front of her mouth". The scene is by turns absurd, painful and terrifying - and, with
consummate confidence, at the crucial moment of the hanging Matar is able to step back from
the detailed descriptions and evocative imagery to tell us, simply and chillingly: "Everybody
seemed happy

Throughout, the narrator turns his questioning in on himself. It is here that one of Matars most
powerful themes, the convoluted roots of betrayal, slowly takes shape. The boy betrays his best friend,
his mother and his fathers closest friend and would, if not for developments elsewhere, also betray
his father. Alongside his faithlessness, his capacity for sadism particularizes. He throws a rock, and
although he denies he aimed at a seriously impaired friend, a boy he respects, he nonetheless badly
injures him. He tries to save the neighborhood beggar from drowning, then inexplicably finds himself
kicking the man in the face

In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar

Even the title, In the Country of Men, reflects Hisham Matars concerns that there is no place for
a womans desire in Muammar Gaddafis Libya. Recalling one of his last summers in 1979, the
nine-year old Suleiman is scarred by the circumstances surrounding his fathers political
activities and his mothers desperate search for happiness. The young boy learns that there are
many different types of betrayal which overlap in dramatic ways, just as there are various ways
that one can exploit and misuse power. Matar develops parallel stories that reflect the nature of
the fathers and the sons struggles to negotiate conflicting loyalty structures as they both
struggle for survival both physical and psychological.

Matar depicts a corrupt political system that confines characters to marginal statues and rules by
fear. The power of the dictator, or the guide, is compared to the sun that is everywhere,
flooding and swelling with heat. The unrest and disturbance caused by the overwhelmingly
powerful sun is made clear in the depiction that every person went in desperate search for
shade. For the people, there is no respite from the intrusive surveillance methods employed by
the government. Their telephone lines are tapped, their homes are searched, their cars pursued by
military vehicles, even the wall has ears.

It is clear that the government has diverged from its supposed role as a service provider for
people living in the country; rather, it becomes an instrument at the hands of the dictator to
exploit and manipulate people.

Due to the brutal and oppressive tactics employed by the state to control its citizens, peoples
moral compass becomes disoriented. The majority of Libyas citizens are portrayed as
compliant. There is an absence of morality, critical thinking and decent behavior, which is
illustrated by the loud, hysterical and constant chanting and cheering when Ustath Rashid is
executed. They become nonchalant to others sufferings, and lose their sense of moral
imperative.

Sharief & Jafer

As a brutal political machine, the state betrays and kills its enemies. In Libya, intellectual and
social freedom is a threat.

Even the perpetrators, represented by Sharief, become victims in the sense that they have been
brainwashed to such a point that they never question the leader. They are heart and soul
devoted to the Guide.

They help the Guide to use terror to eliminate anyone who stands against the revolution.Those
who oppose the Guide or his Revolutionary Committee are traitors andconspirators. Anyone
who criticises the Guide becomes a target and Mama believes that they are going to get us all in
trouble.

Ustath Jafer is a typical servant of the Guide. He is devoted to him and well rewarded. He lives a
life of relative luxury. Such ruthless officers prosper in Gaddafis Libya. He is a member of the
secret police, having been trained by the KGB in Moscow. (160) Suleiman and his friends
admire his power. This is because he alone decides who was to remain in front of the sun and
who to be fixed firmly behind it (160)

Um Masoud attributes their good fortune and luxury to the Guides generosity. It wouldnt
be right to bite the hand that feeds you.)

How do we see the power of the state?

The victims are whisked away in cars without the right of reply. Thats the fate of all traitors,
says Um Masoud when Rashid is taken. The members of the secret police in the car kick, slap
and humiliate their victims. No one is ever beyond their reach. There is no space to argue or
to say no.

The secret men who listen to all their conversations are brutal and rude. Why dont you stuff
this telephone up your arse, fucker.

The secret states exploit an individuals weaknesses

Sharief knows Mamas guilty secret and tells Suleiman you will have to help me. Sharief
wants the names of people who have been involved in Babas secret activities. (132) Suleiman is
pressured to help Sharief who coerces him into providing information to protect Mama. Sharief
also tells Suleiman men are never afraid. And you are a man, arent you? (132) The police
state encourages people to betray their honour. Mamas offer of the cake to Um Masoud is the
beginning of her subservience. It is the dark art of submission (157)

Even the children also learn to distrust one another

Mama tells Suleiman that this is a time for walking beside the wall and urges him not to be too
close to Kareem. As for Kareem, a certain sadness had entered his eyes the day Ustath Rashid
was taken. It was the sadness of betrayal, the silent sadness that comes from being let
down. (40)
Siham, who appears withdrawn, loses her brother in very sad circumstances. She tells Suleiman
your father has brought ruin on my brothers head (154)

Revolutionary Fathers and their sons

Moosa and Nasser are two impressionable young activists who admire and follow Baba.
(150/136) Judge Yaseen believes that Baba is responsible for his sons disappearance and tells
him, you have ruined my son. Mama tries to dismiss this terrible affair as just childs
play. It is children playing with fire. (Nasser is labeled a conspirator and traitor, which
leads to imprisonment. (He is eventually released because of an arbitrary amnesty)

Enemies and betrayal

Ustath Rashid and Faraj (Baba) and their families are constantly watched by the states
revolutionary committee. Rashid is an educated and idealistic history professor who is loyal to
his political cause and he believes that his politics are worthy of his commitment. He engages in
the resistance activities and attempts to overthrow the corrupted government. But because of his
involvement, he is arrested, tortured, and eventually executed.

Mr Rashid appears, in contrast to Baba, to be the ideal father. Mr Rashid teaches Kareem how to
drive and lets him drive around the quiet streets of Gergarish (22). Mr Rashid is approachable
and friendly. I watched Kareem muzzle into his fathers side (29) He has a good rapport with
his students; he is a liberated (free-thinking) man. During the excursion to Lepcis the whole bus
began singing and clapping. (25) The point of the excursion is to celebrate their ancient history
and visit the Roman ruins founded by the Emperor Septimus Severus.

The only mulberry tree, which symbolizes wisdom and righteousness left on Mulberry street, is
planted in Rashids back garden. This symbolism suggests that Matar agrees with Rashids
resistance, and deems it to be heroic and honorable. Dissidents such as Rashid focus on the
paradise and forget their fear: it is with their undaunted spirit of justice that they put up a
decent fight. Although their deeds elicit the wrath of the guide, their bravery and ideals live on
in the mind of younger generation. Their sacrifice, like that of Prometheuss, will be
commemorated.

In contrast, Baba is aloof and Suleiman regrets that he does not share a similar close
relationship with his father.

Unlike Rashid, who demonstrates more affectionate and human characteristics, Faraj is a distant
figure for both his wife and his only son. He appears oblivious of his wifes addiction to alcohol.
Instead, he entrusts Suleiman with the household, reminding him that, You are the man in the
house. Suleiman feels the burden of responsibility; he has to guard his ill mum and he
never could nap, as he is afraid of her craziness.
Ustath Faraj appears to be playing with fire because he pursues his human rights agenda. He
wants a better Libya and according to Suleiman, he gathers with a handful of men in a flat
on Martyrs Square writing pamphlets criticising the regime (96)

Matar suggests that during times of political oppression individuals make very difficult decisions
which often come to define them in damaging ways. When faced with torture, individuals often
compromise their heroic principles. Baba betrays Rashid. Matar suggests that individuals make
difficult decisions under stress. Matar depicts political activists who often betray each other to
escape torture.

Suleimans innocence evaporates when he learns that his father has betrayed his friend Rashid.
Although he learns from the Revolutionary Committee officer, Sharief, that Baba melted like
butter, Suleiman begins to realise just how difficult it is to defend ones principles in Libya.
There is no doubt that Baba is tortured, but at some stage, Baba is defeated by the brutal power
of the state. Suleiman becomes aware that his father is no longer a political idol.

Eventually, Babas betrayal of Rashid comes to define him in very damaging ways. When he
eventually returns home, Moosa cannot bear to look at him. He states, the betrayal in his eyes
his voice scorches me, this is worse than death forgive me this is the blackest day of my life
(107) Moosa and Suleiman are disappointed. Their disappointment reveals the difficulty of
remaining a martyr in very difficult decisions. As Mama says, the fact that Baba would not die
for another is a source of deep regret for Moosa (107) who loses his political idol.

In humiliating and disgraceful circumstances, Rashid is hanged in the National Basketball

Stadium. At first, he begs for mercy, pleading like a guilty child (185). The noisy crowd yells
for death, jumping and howling (Hang the traitor) Crying pitifully and soiling himself,
Rashid climbs the ladder and is yanked by the guards who ignore his cry of confession. The
crowd celebrate. (187)

Even though Rashid weeps when he is hanged, and even though Baba betrays his friend, there is
still a sense that these men acted in heroic ways. Both challenged the state and were defeated in
different ways. In his new workplace, Baba still preaches to the men about their freedom,
honour and principles.

The television broadcasts Rashids interrogation. (114-115) Importantly, he defends Baba when
the name, Bu Suleiman is read out. Earlier, he had gifted Baba with his undying loyalty and
during this incident he honours his pledge (115). Rashids defence of Baba and the denial, no,
makes a big impression on Suleiman. He states, what heroic chords that word caused to
resonate in my ears! (115)

Suleiman compares Rashids act of heroism with that of the slaves in America who united
against their masters. Something in the no reminded me of that solemn standing ovation the
slaves had given to their masters. (115) In this case, the hysterical crowd reflects the mind and
soul of a ruthless state that becomes the cruel betrayer of peoples freedom. The crowds
chanting and cheering was so loud, so hysterical and constant, that it fused into a continuous
hum, like the hum of a giant vacuum cleaner (184) Also the two henchmen are representatives
of the state who humiliate the victim as he begs for life.

Patriarchal power: the High Council

Symbolically, as the power of the father merges with the power of the state, Suleiman wonders:
Can you become a man without becoming your father? (149) In this case, Suleiman thinks
about the father as a symbol of an oppressive regime where male authority tramples on womens
rights. Mama refers to YOU in the plural form to refer to all men who reject and betray her.
You all leave me alone. (*143)

The father is the man of the High Council who has the ultimate say in the mothers fate.
However, Matar also suggests that the father is both cruel and kind, or has to be cruel in order to
be kind. During one key moment, Mama cries because his mercy was harsher than his justice
and she sees a glimpse of a troubled man. (173) Mama knows only too well, that her own
romantic model of stories is a disappointment: Scheherazade accepted slavery over death
(129).

A thwarted love story: Mamas lost soul

Matar weaves the romantic stories of Mama and her obsession with Scheherazade, throughout
the narrative, offering parallel stories of misuse of power and betrayal. Growing up, Suleiman
learns the full extent of Mamas despair and unhappiness in the embedded story of her betrayal.
This betrayal also reflects his awareness of the brutal power of men and its terrible
consequences.

Mama becomes a victim of the oppressive decisions taken by the high council of men in her
family. According to Matar, the High Council represents the power of men in Libya and there
are similarities between the High Council and the Revolutionary Guards. As Mama often says,
all you men are the same.bMatar states: When it comes to a daughters virtue, we are fierce,
deadly and efficient. They are as efficient as a German factory (147)

Mama fell in love with Jihan, a Christian from Palestine. They were 14 years old. She confided
in her brother Khaled, who, despite his liberal ideas, betrayed her to the High Council. Uncle
Khaled tells their mother to marry her now, or shell shame us all. (147). To hold hands, as
Mama did, is to be a slut (147). Matar shows how the family is more concerned about its
reputation and pride than about Mamas happiness.

Her own mother also betrays her. So annoyed is she at the love affair, the grandmother states that
she would marry the mother to a slave as black as this night if he would propose. Mama refers
to the black day that she married Baba. She suffers from depression because of her stress and
unhappiness and the secret medicine she takes becomes a source of shame for both mother and
son.

Suleiman: loss of innocence

As he emerges from innocence, Suleiman also becomes aware of the extent of his mothers
oppression owing to that black day and he begins to entertain fantasies of himself as the
saviour. From that time, the mother seemed to descend into despair. She only briefly emerges in
the days after Babas recovery when she seems to get some enjoyment out of their sexual
encounters. Eventually Mama and Baba repair their relationship but this is because he gives up
his political dissent. As a result, Mamas health also improves. Their new life together, where
Baba never went away and Mama was never ill, distanced me from them (221).

Sulemain and Kareem

Matar parallels the sons and the fathers stories to show how Kareem and Rashid are, both,
betrayed by Suleimans family. In this case, the personal and the political are intertwined.
Suleiman is ashamed of the way he treats his friend, and believes that he does not have the
courage to make difficult choices and defend his principles. Suleiman gives names and addresses
including Rashids, to Sharief, a member of the Revolutionary Committee and naively believes
that he might be able to save Baba.

He tries to give Babas book Democracy Now to Sharief, tells the voice on the tapped line of
the whereabouts of Nasser and even offers to give more information that would put the adults
around him in danger. However, rather than portraying Suleimans betrayal as malevolent
actions, Matar suggests that he innocently and naively tries to do the right thing, which is to
abide by his government. Therefore, betrayals conducted in these circumstances are not
condemned; rather, they are seen as misplaced loyalties and symptoms of a sick regime.

The betrayal is particularly shameful, because the boys were like brothers, playing their games to
fill in their days. More worrying, Suleiman wonders whether he betrayed his friend, Kareem,
through a deliberate misuse of power.

In the company of his friends, Suleiman states that Kareems father is a traitor. Everybody
knows your father is a tr-. (108) Whilst they seek to humiliate Kareem, Suleiman further
charges his friend with being a coward, a crybaby and a girl. Kareem is offended and
humiliated by Suleimans statement. In a fit of anger, he leaps upon Suleiman and Osama tries to
separate them, who challenges them both to a game of My Land, Your Land. Suleiman betrays
Kareems confidence and confession to him that, every time he heard a love song he would go
all soft in the stomach for her. (110).

Kareem accuses Suleiman of a lack of principles. He states, you have no word, you are not a
man because you have no word. (110)Matar depicts Suleimans internal discussion which
shows his guilt. The voices in his head which are telling me off (111) reinforce his anxiety
and inner demons. When the Day of Judgement comes . . . your heart will be seen for what it
is: empty and cruel (111) This voice addresses Suleiman as you in the second person, as if his
conscience is giving him a lecture. Suleiman is unable to defend himself convincingly and must
face the full extent of his treachery, You even enjoyed it, admit it.

Mama and Salwa

Najwa also betrays Salma. They are described as two lost sisters who had finally found each
other. Salma even cares for Najwa on the occasion when she sees she is intoxicated. However,
when Rashid is taken, Najwa becomes fearful and withdraws her friendship, advising Suleiman
to not be close to Kareem. Najwas desire to protect herself and her family comes before
loyalty to her friend.

Her identity as a mother gives her the courage to protect her son regardless, even if it takes the
last of [her]. Mama is ultimately a woman who has the courage to try to resist. Suleiman refers
to her as, the mother who tried to never have me, the mother who never chose it, the mother
who resisted in all the ways she knew how. (245) Suleiman describes her as the mother who
resisted in all the ways she knew how. For her, Suleiman is the light of her life and they are
life two halves of the same soul, two open pages of the same book.

Mama loses everything that she cherishes. Her ultimate act of loyalty is to send the son to Egypt
for a better life. I will get my son out of this place if it takes the last of me. (97) Her decision
is against her husbands reservations and her only sons plea. At the airport, Mama tries to
conceal her deep sadness. She has one hand over her mouth, her eyes concealed behind the
black sunglasses. At the airport, Mama tries to conceal her deep sadness. She has one hand over
her mouth, her eyes concealed behind the black sunglasses which cover the extent of her
misery.

When Suleiman leaves for Egypt he is aware that he will probably never see his father again and
that he will also lose his intimate and loving relationship with his mother. In Egypt, the young
boy lives with an ever-present absence, like an orphan not entirely certain of what he has
missed or gained through his unchosen loss. The Stray Dog does not return as he is forever
threatened by the Evaders prison sentence for deserters. Ironically, his father dies just a few
days after the leader lifts the ban on Libyans travelling abroad.

Salma

Najwa is not the only women to endure a miserable life in such a patriarchal society. After her
husband, Ustath Rashid, is taken by the Revolutionary Committee, Salma has to fend for herself
and her son, Kareem, alone in a world of men, and the greed of men. She loses her husband to
the ruthless government and loses her friendship with Najwa.

They eventually end up leaving their home due to the stigma of disloyalty. The poor woman
now suffers the consequences. They are vulnerable and socially isolated, but perhaps are
rewarded with a happy streak owing to Kareems relationship with their childhood flame, Siham.
Forever faithful, Kareem keeps Suleiman informed about his mothers wellbeing, and becomes
alarmed at her depression following Babas death.Kareems letter to Suleiman reflects Matars
central concerns: In this country we dont understand the illnesses of the heart. (238)