Tags
12th century, betrayal, book review, court politics, feminism, historical fiction, infidelity, Jamila Ahmed, literary fiction, patriarchy, Persia, Saladin, Seljuks, Sheharazade, The Arabian Nights, Third Crusade
Review: Every Rising Sun, by Jamila Ahmed
Holt, 2023. 416 pp. $29
During the latter twelfth century in Kirman, a Persian city home to various dynasties, Sharyar, a Seljuk king, rides high. He would appear the most fortunate of men, possessed of great power, dignity, humor, tolerance, and a wife renowned for grace and beauty. The malik (king) also has wise counselors, among them his vizier, Muhammad, whose two spirited daughters, Shaherazade and Dunyazade, have the run of the palace.
However, Shaherazade stumbles on the queen in flagrante with a lover and wonders what to do. If she informs the malik, will he turn on her father and their family? But if someone else tells the malik first, and he finds out she kept silent, what then?
Complicating matters is that Shaherazade has loved him from afar since girlhood:
I lean over the crenellated wall toward the excited cries of men below. Across a ground kept verdant by underground pipes, the Malik and his companions play polo, their horses sailing beneath them and the ball zipping between thwacks of their mallets. Town children cheer their Malik as he executes a particularly gallant goal. He grins at them and looks up, catches me watching from my perch. Before I can drop my eyes, he raises a hand to his heart and bows from the saddle. My own heart slides into my stomach, burning all the way.
Consequently, when she thinks of alerting him to his wife’s betrayal, is she merely indulging her ambition? No matter, for the malik finds out for himself and has his queen executed. Wishing to remarry immediately, he chooses three young women in succession from prominent families, marries them, and kills them right afterward. The city seethes with anger. The malik, to amuse himself, goes on drunken raids with his friends, sometimes attacking villages of rival tribes.
Shaherazade, now nineteen, persuades her loving, terrified father to present her as the malik’s next bride. But this setup from The Arabian Nights bears little resemblance to the original. Yes, Sheharazade tells stories, breaking off before the end, counting on her husband’s curiosity as the means to live another day.
But Ahmed has focused on the bard herself and her surroundings, creating many-faceted characters with ever-changing motives, all astutely observed, and though the tales her protagonist spins are fantastical, the lives portrayed are real. And in a brilliant stroke, the tale that fascinates her husband and the court the most has to do with a young woman who seeks adventure and overreaches, just as Sheharazade does.
Over the course of only a year, she tries her best to keep her jealous spouse content—let’s not say happy—and fends off political enemies at court. But she’s also trying to help rule a fractious kingdom beset by internal and external threats. And when she prods the malik to heed the great warrior Saladin’s call for aid against Richard the Lionhearted in the Third Crusade—thinking that joining that war will relieve pressures at home, matters don’t go as planned. Has waging a foreign war to distract from domestic trouble ever gone smoothly?
Then again, nothing does. The “no—and furthermore” here, constant and wholly credible, derive both from the author’s informed imagination and the historical record. Saladin (Salaq al-Din) is a hero of mine, so I like those sections very much, but even if you’ve never heard of him, Ahmed brings the Third Crusade to life, and with it, Shaherazade’s political maneuverings.
A woman in a patriarchal society influencing the rise and fall of empires—it’s a heady concept. And Ahmed complicates it by rendering the malik distant, unloving, and constantly suspicious, which sparks dreams in his unhappy young bride that she must keep to herself. There’s much going on here.
Every Rising Sun is a rewarding novel, all the more amazing as a debut. At times, though, the author’s inexperience comes through, as when the narrative tells feelings when showing them would do better. Moreover, when it comes to showing, Ahmed likes to convey anger, fear, or desire through sizzling, buzzing, or burning sensations, a device that gets old quickly.
And though I like Sheharazade as a feminist figure, I sense a softer, more conducive environment to her views and activities than I’d have expected in twelfth-century Persia. (Similarly, her father, a really sweet guy, seems like a modern dad, maybe a little idealized.)
I would have liked a map, because until I consulted my historical atlas, I had trouble figuring out how Sheharazade seems both Turkic and Persian at once. And though I don’t mind a sprinkle of untranslated words in languages I don’t know, a glossary of Arabic would have enriched my reading.
But Every Rising Sun is a fine novel, full of the panoply of the past, delivered with verve and insight. I highly recommend it.
Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.