The book-packing journey reaches the Middle East with this novel set in Baghdad in 2002, where the story centres on the lives of three women and their relationship.
Rania Mansour is an artist, granddaughter of a sheik - not that that counts for much in the new Iraq ruled by clerics and the mukhabarat (secret police) thugs. She finds herself in gentle decline, selling off the family assets to maintain the appearance of a lifestyle. She has a teenage daughter, Hannan.
Huda’s origins are humbler. Though she and Rania were friends as girls they have since moved in different circles. She has a husband, Abdul Amir, and a thirteen-year-old son, Khalid, and works at the Australian Embassy.
Ally, ten years younger than Rania and Huda, is the wife of Tom Wilson, Deputy Ambassador at the Australian Embassy, but (keep this quiet) she is American by birth and cub journalist by previous profession. Either of these facts could get her thrown out of the country, or worse. But she has a personal reason for her risky presence in Baghdad – to find out about her mother’s life there before she married, had Ally, and died young.
The shadow of Saddam Hussein lies heavy on the land. Rania and Huda have their own reasons to live in fear. Huda is instructed to befriend Ally and pump her for diplomatic titbits; Rania is commissioned to paint a portrait of the glorious leader. Worse for both is the potential fates of their children – Khalid to be conscripted into a brutal cadet force, and Hannan to be ‘spotted’ and ‘taken in’ by Saddam’s notoriously lecherous son, Uday.
It is Ally who brings Rania and Huda back together when she requires Huda to accompany her on a visit to Rania’s gallery. It turns out there is a reason why the childhood friends are now distant, but as things progress needs must that they forget their differences and work together on an audacious plan to save their children.
It is atmospheric and menacing. The point of view switches between the women as each of them work to their own goals, weighing up the amount of trust they can give and receive. Thus, Wilkinson sensitively illustrates the dilemma of everyday life in Iraq (or any totalitarian state) – to accept the wrongs of the regime and survive, or work against them and risk ruin, torture, or death.
A decent, if
workmanlike, read.
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