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Al Fohoud’s Tree: a Jordanian chronicle

By Hend Fayez Abuenein

Tuesday, 03 November 2009 01:14

In 2007, in a farewell celebration held for the Swiss ambassador in Amman, he vowed that upon his return to his country he will see to it that proper care is taken to translate the works of Ms. Samiha Khrais to German and French. At the time I had only read about her fertile imagination and talent. But after I read her famous “Al Fohoud Tree” it became clear to me that translations of this particular novel would indeed present all that is Jordanian; a narration of our heritage.

The Fohoud’s Tree is a two-part family saga novel that spans over two generations in twentieth-century Jordan. Set in the cities of Irbid and Amman, it picturizes the evolution of life in these cities. Every intellectual stream, social practice, taboo, and political landmark is registered in this plot.

It’s a story about the dynasty of a peasant from Irbid. Fahd, the head of the family marries repeatedly and has many offspring, and all together they share an extended family life, just as was the social norm in those times. They all share life in a single house on a hill owned by Fahd. The first part of the novel - subtitled “Details of Life” - travels through the twenties till sixties of the elapsed century, and truly captures the details of life in Irbid through the growing complications in the plot. The author stops at every event in picturesque elaboration. The extended wedding parties, stolen nights in gypsy tents, contradicting religious practices, male-only social rituals, discrimination against women, youths’ aspirations under poverty, the rise of the Kingdom from Ottoman reign, even the unjust practices of the then-young government against those who spoke out, all was registered in an extended yet capturing plot. And when it comes to drawing places and faces, the author leaves out no details, giving her reader full description of the landscape, architecture, traditional attire, and spoken accents.

Given the complex and extended family ties in the novel, a reader is bound to wonder how the author memorized all the names and their relations. The title of the novel leads to the suggestion that to weave such a perfect knit she must’ve drawn a tree, a drawing that probably needed a wall of size, and affixed the names and relations to its leaves and branches. Despite the number of characters in the novel, the novelist managed to give each one of them its own individuality, strengths and flaws in a way that interlocks them all into a magnificent suspenseful plot.

The second part of the saga, named “Details of Love”, captures the modern history of Jordan. In the frame of a love story, the plot continues from the first part to a third generation of Al Fohoud in the sixties till mid nineties. In this part, the novelist narrates through the voice of a young girl who tries to cope with the rapid changes and storming events taking place in the Jordanian life. Politically, she lives through the invasion of 1967, and the battle of Al Karameh. The sounds of life under bombardment are recorded in her memory. She witnesses how the unforgiven Black September civil war left an unseen cleft in the community, putting painful ends to love stories and lifelong friendships. The novelist assumes a distant voice of reprimand to call for a new era of forgiveness and unity. The Israeli invasion of south Lebanon, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the Arab Israeli peace treaty were all shadowed in the novel, although neither was directly related to the events, which can only indicate that the novel was really meant to be a chronicle.

Socially, the novelist captures the close yet different customs between the Muslims and Christians of Jordan. She lingers in description of social changes that involve educating girls, the changing dialect in Amman due to the melting of origins, the influx of villagers to the capital and the differences they meet, and the evolving political freedom in the Kingdom. There was no chastising regarding the social wrongs in the community, only an expose of rituals, taboos, and customs.

Various streams are running through the modern literary world. Some have made the novel a mere log of its author’s memoirs, others took readers to world’s that can only be reached in the imagination. But those that remain in the memories of readers are the works that record the culture and heritage of nations. Like Homer’s Odyssey, Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, and Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Bird’s, Al Fohoud’s Tree will go on endlessly to tell nations about the Jordanian heritage.

Global Arab Network

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