The Good Muslim [Hardcover]

The Good Muslim by Tahmina Anam is a wonderful story about the birth of the Bangladeshi nation and the suffering endured to bring this about. Following the path of Maya we journey between her rebellious flight from home to work as a doctor in the rural parts of the country. Here she encounters the sufferings of desperately impoverished people caught up in the struggle for freedom. Maya devotes her service to pregnant women and endures many a fight with the conservative male population who fail to appreciate the need for maternal health care, both before and after birth.

Following a particularly difficult encounter Maya returns to her parental home and longs for the relationship with her brother, Sohail, who fought in the war, to be as it was before they went their separate ways. But Sohail has been hurt by his war time experiences and has sought refuge in a strict interpretation of Islam. This retreat from Maya and their mother intensifies when his wife dies. He seems to care little for his son, Zaid or his mother suffering from terminal cancer and this shocks Maya. Zaid's rescue from the madrassa ends in tragedy.

Beautifully written and covering the pain and bitter sweet aspects of most of our lives as we struggle with terminal illness, broken relationships, the judgement of others and the utter hopelessness felt when governments turn against their own people, Anam still brings us to hope.

Set in Bangladesh it is a refreshing read for those who know little about this country or its customs. While wholly familiar it also challenges the stereotypes and pre-judgements we unconsciously hold onto. A wonderful expression of our global village growing into mutual respect and understanding through the simple vehicle of a well-told story.

This is the second novel in a trilogy by Tahmima Anam, which fuses the background to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, with the deeply personal experiences of one family against the backdrop of that conflict, and the subsequent divisions which it creates both within the country as a whole, and within the family itself. It continues the story from her debut novel, the award winning and deservedly richly praised 2007 debut `A Golden Age'.

The story is of Maya, her brother Sohail, and their beloved mother. The siblings have taken very different paths in the conflict, and we return to them here as Maya is coming home to Dhaka after being a doctor for a decade in the north of their new country. She is an independent and confident woman, who still wants to remain true to her revolutionary self; as opposed to her brother, who has taken the path of Muslim fundamentalism. Maya has little time for his faith, and rebels against it, especially where his young son Zaid is concerned.

Maya cannot tolerate or forgive her brother's seeming abandonment of his son after his wife's death in favour of his fervent religion. But she is not allowed to really look after Zaid or educate him either. It is only later on in the story that some of the full horrors of Sohail's war experiences are revealed, and offered by way of an explanation for his behaviour and his devotion to his religion, and rejection of his previously held beliefs.

Anam again weaves a wonderful story, which tells of the personal journeys of the different family members, mainly from the point of view of Maya herself, and meshes that with a fascinating insight into the war that ravaged that country. It is deeply engrossing and powerfully engaging. But you do need to read the first part of the trilogy to make sense of the different threads that she is bringing together here. I only hope it is not another four years before we are treated to the final enriching instalment.

Tahmina Anan's "The Good Muslim" is beautifully written and has much to say about the effects of war and the nature of love and faith.

Maya and Sohail Haque lost their father when young and are very close: "he was father and mother and bhaiya to her. Her closest human." When the Bangladeshi War of Liberation breaks out in 1971, they and their friend Joy are each of student age. Sohail joins the guerillas. Maya, a trainee surgeon, is assigned to perform abortions on women raped by the enemy. Joy is captured and tortured while in prison. After the victory, all three embark on separate journeys in reaction to their trauma. Joy becomes a taxi driver in New York. Maya ends up a country doctor in Rajshahi. Sohail's journey is inward: he abandons his sharp western clothes, burns his scholarly books and reincarnates as a strict, reformist Muslim, converting his mother's "upstairs" into a jammat where he presides over readings and prayer meetings.

Twelve years later, Maya returns to Dhaka. She must rebuild relations with her mother, Rehana, who becomes seriously ill, her friends, including Joy who is also back following the breakup of his green-card marriage, her hospital colleagues and especially her brother. She also tries to "save" Sohail's neglected and wayward son, Zaid, which like other of her well-intentioned but overly zealous interventions has tragic, unintended consequences.

The novel is titled "The Good Muslim" and indeed the subject of Islam is central, if by no means exclusive. The book is peppered with Arabic salutations, salawat and imprecations to God. We see a fierce, uncompromising form of the religion spread across the countryside, squeezing out older, more tolerant local practices involving saints and seasons, and we see the name of Islam being cynically suborned by the corrupt "Dictator" who has subverted the promise of this "poor broken wish-bone of a country." We also see the contrast between the generosity of Rehana's traditional interpretation of her religion and the meanness of the reformist version practiced in her "upstairs" and the madrassa to which Sohail sends his son.

Above all, we see it play out in the relationship between Maya and Sohail: for Maya, her brother "was going somewhere, somewhere remote and out of reach, somewhere that had nothing to do with her." For Sohail, "It is the greatest thing that has ever happened to him. He has found something, something that explains everything." Maya cannot break through Sohail's new persona - there are mere flickers of a glimpse that he is the same person. At the same time, she herself catches a sense of the attraction of his faith. During her mother's illness she attends taleems in the upstairs and finds comfort in the community and shared ritual: "it felt like the only place in the world where I had hope she wouldn't die."

Anam's writing is superb. Her characters and the complex relationships among them are finely developed. The novel, though narrated in the third person, is written mainly from Maya's perspective and it is her persona that supplies its exquisite emotional intensity and torque. Here, for example, is part of a conversation between Maya and Joy:
"She felt the tears coming again. `Twice in one day,' she said dabbing her face with her free hand. `You might think I cry all the time.'
`No, I imagine you hardly ever cry at all.' "

Maya is driven: "she worrie(s) ... because she might never be able to love anyone enough, love them enough to swallow their loneliness and make it her own." From her brother's perspective her failing is that "she put her will before God's." By the end of the book, she achieves some form of redemption but it is the emotional charge that comes before that will stay in the reader's mind.