We are in the Saudi Arabian peninsula during the 1920s and 1930s in a kingdom called Moorman. But this book is a thinly-disguised historical novel about the creation of the Saudi State and the rise of the house of Saud. It鈥檚 the final volume in the author鈥檚 Cities of Salt trilogy, although I did not realize it was part of a trilogy as I read it and it stands on its own.
The book is a roman 脿 clef 鈥� the main character, the Sultan, is Ibn Saud (1875-1953). His son and hand-picked successor in the story is King Saud who reigned from 1953-64 until he was overthrown by his brother, Faisal. The British tutor to the Sultan鈥檚 son is Foreign Service Officer Harry St. John Philby.
The House of Saud is expanding its empire with the help of British money and weapons. They fight against Bedouin tribes on horses and camels, mostly to expand their power and wealth. 鈥溾€his is the day for men to march and grow rich鈥︹€� is the battle rallying cry.
But it's also a holy war. It鈥檚 hard to imagine but even in the 1920s these outlying desert clans and tribes had not yet been converted to Islam. But camels and horses are becoming pass茅 鈥� the new thing is machine guns mounted on trucks. How can horses and camels compete against that?
What struck me most in the book was not the battles, which are numerous although briefly described, but the bureaucracy, intrigue and chaos of the Sultan鈥檚 court. There are 100 emirs, basically nobles in the European context. There are 100 of the Sultan鈥檚 children to be educated because he has numerous wives from various clans.
The women jockey for favoritism for themselves and their children with the Sultan, mainly by undercutting other wives through gossip and rumor, using servants and slaves as intermediaries. The chaos when the ruler is absent is such that after returning from one battle, he ordered 22 servants, slaves or eunuchs to be executed in the courtyard. Of course in everything these slaves and servants did, they were only acting on orders from their mistresses, so this was death by proxy.
Another intriguing theme is fake news. The Saud dynasty ruled by ambiguity. 鈥淭he most important thing he [the Sultan] learned was never to answer yes or no.鈥� Do gifts from the Sultan mean you will be murdered? They have a pet phrase: 鈥淏eware your enemy once, but beware your friend a thousand times.鈥� No wonder chaos reigned in the palace. So we have passages like this:
鈥淭he Awali War was hard to record or describe, because its three battles were extremely complex and confusing, the interests at stake were murky and convoluted, and reports of the war were highly contradictory. There were the discrepancies and conflicts of the narrators 鈥he paucity of surviving witnesses鈥�.History had become a huge assemblage of lies and fabrications鈥ich in chicanery and irony鈥he accumulation of small lies and the illusions that, in the end, created the single illusion of absolute truth, or the one truthful telling of an illusory history!鈥�
Another passage 鈥� In this one I鈥檓 paraphrasing: The stories rumors and tidbits about their relationships and his money were so full of contradictions and conflicting versions due to the numerous narrators and their varying motives that it was impossible to establish the truth, or even a part of it.
It鈥檚 fascinating that although men ruled the roost, in some cases women controlled the man, so the leaders went to her to influence him. Women often controlled the family wealth by hoarding gold plate. Taxation by the ruler was through a kind of 鈥渓ong-term loan鈥� that everyone understood the ruler may or may not pay back.
The Sultan picks a son to become his successor. He uses a British official [Philby] as a tutor for his son. The tutor takes the son to England several times where the British man鈥檚 aunt also tutors him. The British officer eventually converts to Islam. The English, smelling oil on the desert wind at this point, give guns and money to the Saudis but never quite what was promised or when promised.
I loved the idioms! Here are some of my favorites:
You want meat, but you get broth.
A foolish friend is worse than a wise enemy.
Know when to offer a date and when to offer a bullet.
A horse without reins is like a man without teeth.
You can splint a dog鈥檚 tail for forty days, but it will still come out crooked.
A man can stretch out his feet only as far as his carpet reaches.
There wasn鈥檛 enough fire in the world to burn all his money.
He was so cheap that he would not piss to put out a fire.
There are no bones in the tongue, my friends, so be careful.
The eyes see far, but the hand is short.
A word spoken from the heart arrives in the heart; a word from the tongue is stopped by the ear.
Mostly it鈥檚 a good historical novel about an area of the world I knew little about. But in trying to be a historical novel, the book too faithfully recounts every war and major event. It gets repetitive. There鈥檚 a war; the Sultan returns to the palace where social chaos developed while he was away; he imposes order again; he takes a new bride or two from conquered tribes; there鈥檚 an extravagant festival to celebrate a victory and the Sultan鈥檚 new marriage(s) or those of his sons, followed by a drought, a famine, or maybe a plague. The Sultan constantly negotiates with Britain to get more money and arms; then another war鈥� this cycle repeats eight or so times. Perhaps the earlier volumes of the trilogy were different?
A couple of interesting things about the trilogy. The author wrote it 'backwards' in time, so the last volume, the one reviewed here, is the earliest in the history, so in a way I was fortunate to accidentally read it first. The trilogy runs to more than 2,000 pages, making it the longest work in modern Arab literature and it was (still is?) banned in Saudi Arabia when it was published.
photo of King Saud and his army from flickr.com Middle East scenes photo of the author from shortstoryproject.com
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Contrary to what you might hear, this isn't actually the last novel in a trilogy, but the middle volume of a quintet. The later two volumes haven't been translated into English, though I did read the fourth volume, The Uprooted in Arabic some years ago. I can highly recommend the translated volumes. They are a unique thing, as various blurbists point out more lyrically than I ever could, for being one of the rare instances in modern Middle Eastern fiction where the gulfy, rentier, oil states are put on the literary spot. On a re-read, Variations seems transitory in a weird way. It shouldn't since it's basically a prequel to the previous two volumes, but having the advantage of having read #4 which advances the main story of the political shenanigans of the deposed characters from #2, to me this volume reads more like a history lesson than fiction. But if you're curious how the sultanate of Mooran under Khureybit came into being, as well as his relationship with Britain, than this is the volume for you. This gets into the awkward political machinations way more than the first two volumes, both British imperialists and the Sultan's scores of wives, and focuses on the rise of Fanar, the guy at the end of The Trench.