THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 19“WE ARE NOTprovided with wisdom,” Mar-
cel Proust wrote in “Remembrance of
Things Past,” “we must discover it for our-
selves, after a journey through the wilder-
ness which no one else can take for us.” In
Salar Abdoh’s latest novel, “Out of
Mesopotamia,” the journey leads to the
most recent wars in Iraq and Syria. Saleh,
the protagonist, is a journalist embedded
with the Iranian-backed militias that have
fought against the Islamic State for the bet-
ter part of a decade. Early on in his story,
which toggles between the battlefield and
the home front, Saleh finds a volume of
Proust’s masterwork, left by a fighter in a
ruined building. This text underpins Ab-
doh’s novel, which is as much a meditation
on time and memory as it is a book about
war.
Like Proust’s literary devices, the mod-
ern battlefield has collapsed traditional ex-
periences of time; now, fighters dodge bul-
lets one minute while texting their loved
ones the next, and the metric of a success-
ful suicide attack is measured by how
many likes its video gets on Facebook. Thisis a new, disorienting conception of war,
one that Saleh must navigate as he travels
between the front lines and his home in
Tehran, where he attends literary events,
art show openings and meetings for a tele-
vision show he is writing about a heroic
sniper based on a dead friend. Always, the
battlefield beckons, and he struggles to ex-
ist between these disparate realities. “I do
not know in how many worlds a person can
live simultaneously,” Saleh wonders, “be-
fore they lose themselves completely.”
Dogged by his handler from state securi-
ty, unscrupulous art dealers and the wom-
an who broke his heart, Saleh ultimately
finds the battlefield a respite from life’s
mundane demands. In this, he isn’t alone:
Among the militias is an international co-
terie of clerics and fighters lured to the
front because “the war wasfresh. It made
everything else irrelevant.”
To make sense of his own life, Saleh
aligns himself with two divergent yet inter-
related forces: war and art. His sojourns to
battle are punctuated by a religious pil-
grimage to the holy city of Samarra with
Miss Homa, an elderly artist whose work
finds value only in her twilight years. Thetrips frame the novel’s larger questions
about the meaning of life and its interrela-
tionship with martyrdom and death. These
themes sound weighty, but the novel car-
ries them lightly. Abdoh skillfully captures
combat’s intrinsic absurdity. He sketches a
particularly colorful Frenchman, Claude
Richard, whom his comrades give the nom
de guerre Abu Faranci (Father of the
French), and who seeks martyrdom in Syr-
ia after a contentious divorce. His fate, like
war, is both affecting and ridiculous.
For many Americans, the conflicts in
Syria and Iraq have become abstractions,
separated from our lives by geographic as
well as psychic boundaries. Abdoh col-
lapses these boundaries, presenting a dis-
jointed reality in which war and everyday
life are inextricably entwined. The result,
Saleh asserts late in the novel, is that “the
transience of it all made us mad men.” This
discovery of collective madness seems
closest to the achieved wisdom Proust al-
luded to, attained only after a long journey
through the wilderness. The novel arrives
at that wisdom by shining a brilliant, fe-
verish light on the nature of not only mod-
ern war but all war, and even of life itself. 0The Battlefield Beckons
In this novel, a journalist aligns himself with two divergent forces: war and art.
By ELLIOT ACKERMAN
OUT OF MESOPOTAMIA
By Salar Abdoh
237 pp. Akashic Books. $26.95.
ELLIOT ACKERMANis the author of several
books, most recently the novel “Red Dress in
Black and White” and the forthcoming “2034.”
BEN HICKEYPROVIDED LOVE INheartwarming excess
by her family, Kirabo enjoys a happy rural
childhood in the Ugandan village of Nat-
tetta — yet she cannot shake her sense of
longing for a mother she doesn’t know.
Kirabo’s loneliness is further complicated
by a new discovery; she possesses a rebel-
lious “second self” that does “mad things”
and flies out of her body in episodes of un-
controllable deviance.
Connecting this development to her
mother’s absence, Kirabo seeks answers
from a local witch, Nsuuta. Kirabo is lucky,
the witch insists, because the second self is
the nature of the “first woman,” which
most women no longer possess.
Nsuuta lures Kirabo with the promise of
finding her mother, teaching her about the
rebellious start of all women and the power
of myths. What ensues in Jennifer Nansub-
uga Makumbi’s novel is a richly complex
journey into girlhood and womanhood, set
against the backdrop of a changing nation,
suffused with glimpses of Uganda’s own
second self — the traditions before Christi-
anity, before colonialism, before Idi Amin
and many of the “befores” that time has
subdued but not quite erased.
While reconciling her family’s expecta-
tions with her desire to find her mother,
Kirabo also confronts the idea of being a
woman. Makumbi introduces readers to
the Indigenous feminism rising out of the
experiences of mwenkanonkano, a Ugan-
dan movement predating Western femi-
nism.
This coming-of-age story also explores
how women make other women suffer. We
see feminism splinter along class, urban
and rural lines, along differences of tribe
and race. These sometimes uncomfortable
awakenings are woven into Kirabo’s own
without becoming dull anthropology or
heartless manifesto. Makumbi neither
preaches nor condescends, but success-
fully captures the reader’s imagination.
”A Girl Is a Body of Water” is about the
necessity of examining old myths and the
urgency of creating new ones. Makumbi
does not allow the reader to think of themyth without also considering the myth-
maker. Her powerful novel dwells in the
universe of power as it relates to love and
sisterhood.
The cast of witches, harlots, husband
stealers, baby killers, flawed feminists and
bossy sisters is so fully constructed, each
one feels alive — even if they are villains,
poor allies and perhaps poorer
friends. Even in anger and
harshness, cruelty and affec-
tion, hatefulness and long-
ing, there’s something ap-
pealing about these char-
acters. Furthermore, the
radical empathy of Kirabo,
even in her pettiness, is
contagious. One instance
that comes to mind is when
Kirabo reunites with a charac-
ter with whom she has a com-
plicated friendship: “This was
no longer the innocent beauty
of childhood; this was sharp
and malignant. You saw it for the first time,
you looked away. Then you stole small se-
cret glances until you got used to it. It was
the kind of beauty that made you hate a girl
who had done nothing to you.” Kirabo feels
this envy, fears that her friend sees it and
tries valiantly to be glad to see her again.Ugandan myth is prevalent in this novel,
but readers need no prior knowledge to un-
derstand it or be strongly affected by it.
The dialogue has Ugandan nuances — for
instance, one letter exclaims, “These news
are so burning it is a surprise the paper is
not on fire.” The cadences train you to fol-
low along; it’s impossible to imagine this
book without them. Readers have
the pleasure of watching Kirabo
evolve from childhood cle-
verness to cunning and wis-
dom, her awareness of her-
self and her place in the
world increasing all the
while. Makumbi’s voice
evolves organically, seam-
lessly, as her character ma-
tures.
The reader cannot escape
the intimacy of this story.
Makumbi’s prose is irresist-
ible and poignant, with re-
markable wit, heart and
charm — poetic and nuanced, brilliant and
sly, openhearted and cunning, balancing
discordant truths in wise ruminations. “A
Girl Is a Body of Water” rewards the
reader with one of the most outstanding
heroines and the incredible honor of jour-
neying by her side. 0Motherless Daughter
A Ugandan girl learns to make her own way in the world.
By KHADIJA ABDALLA BAJABER
A GIRL IS A BODY OF WATER
By Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
560 pp. Tin House Books. $27.95.
KHADIJA ABDALLA BAJABERis a poet and nov-
elist, and the first winner of the Graywolf
Press Africa Prize.
PHOTOGRAPH BY DANNY MORAN
Jennifer Nansubuga
Makumbi