‘Mayhoud and the Jinni’ is a story of a good, principled man wronged by an arbitrary decision; his struggles to get over it; and his gripping interactions with jinns and spirits.
It’s the latest novel by veteran Qatari journalist and writer Ahmed Abdel Malek, after his first ‘Ahdan Al-Manafy’ (The Embraces of Exiles) came out in 2005. The story is told in first-person by the titular protagonist, Mayhoud, who was also the protagonist in ‘Ahdan Al-Manafy’. Malek is also the former editor-in-chief of The Peninsula.
The novel opens with Mayhoud — a diligent, hardworking employee — one day in 2007 receiving an out-of-the-blue termination letter signed by a minister. “Only two lines.. They ended my career and destroyed my grand dreams of serving my homeland. Merely two lines cut the vein that connected me to Warda and reduced me to nothing.”
The story is set mainly in and around Warda, an imaginary city on the coast in an Arab Gulf country. The city has a corniche, along which huge skyscrapers are coming up; and a large expat population.
Mayhoud is tormented by this abrupt end to his long career, and it becomes a ‘turning point’ in his life. He ponders over why he was forced into early retirement but cannot find an answer. Retirement, he says, frees one from ‘the smart and the stupid, the qualified and the ignorant, and from those who insist they are always right and shut off any discussion’.
Trying to move on in his life, he and his wife Umm Khaled travel to Anacortes in the US. They coin with the idea of opening an Arab restaurant in Anacortes but are eventually convinced that it’s impossible for them to leave their homeland. “Trees are loyal to their soil; they die where they live. No matter how often they are chased by birds of prey, little birds return to their nests. Similarly, those who believe that they are destined to live in their homeland never leave.”
At John F. Kennedy airport in New York, Mayhoud and his wife are stopped from boarding and held for 30 hours for questioning, merely because they were Muslims and Arabs. When investigator asks him the meaning of his name, he says, “Mayhoud means ‘sick’. I am sick with love for my homeland. That is why my mother chose this name.” The plot moves to London, where Mayhoud is attending to his brother Issa who is hospitalised with cancer. Of Edgware Road, he says, “Arabs, wherever they are, carry their burdens, discussions, and quarrels along with them. This road could be considered a microcosm for the Arab world: A diligent Lebanese working in a restaurant, an Iraqi puffing at his cigarette, grieving for what happened to his country, a Sudanese who fled his homeland, a Moroccan in his traditional clothes praying for guidance, a man from the Gulf smoking Hookah near an Arab restaurant, an Iranian calling you into his restaurant, and an Islamic group calling for a boycott against Britain!”
Though a work of fiction, the author repeatedly returns to the prevailing situation and myriad crises in the Arab world. “Ever since we (Arabs) gained our independence, we were promised security, liberty, and justice. All this time later, none of them seem in sight!
The author is also fond of the folk Arab music and takes the readers back to popular songs of the 1970s and 1980s, including by Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum; Kuwaiti singer Abdul Karim Abdul Qadir; and Bahraini singer Ibrahim Habib.
With the story, the city is also moving forward, gaining prominence and attracting talent from all over the globe. Mayhoud is an upright man, who “cannot help but pointing out right from wrong’ and doesn’t believe in ‘morally grey areas’. On the other hand, he observes, most people play it safe and conform to society’s norms. He thinks his heroism might not change much and thus takes an ‘oath of silence’.
Silence, he observes, is the best way to ensure living peacefully in a world dominated by sharks, vermin, and birds of prey. The latter half of the novel is all about Mayhoud’s gripping encounters, first with the spirit of a dead character from a novel when Mayhoud and his wife are staying in a London hotel, and later during the weeks when Mauhoud is camping in the desert along with his friends.
He meets a female jinn who likes him and takes him to the jinn’s world under the mound located near the camp. This is the most interesting part of the novel. Mayhoud makes several visits to the jinns’ world over days and meets their leader, who welcomes Mayhoud and offers him to be his adviser. He observes that jinns are living in peace and harmony, unlike the humans’ world, which is afflicted by injustice, wars and suffering.
The novel conveys the message of peace, justice and respect for all. Though the two novels share the same protagonist, Mayhoud in the latest novel has grown in age and is a mature, calm man. The novel, a winner of Katara Prize for Arabic Novel 2019, ends with him being surrounded by his dear wife, children and grandchildren in a hospital room. He has just woken up from a coma after 12 years.
