NAW Reading Challenge: The Tribe by Michael Mohammed Ahmad
To celebrate our inaugural New Australian Writing (NAW) Award shortlist, we’re running a NAW Reading Challenge.
This week our participants have read The Tribe by Michael Mohammed Ahmad. Here are their responses to the novel (Ed. note: may contain spoilers!).
Alice says:
We are born, we procreate, we die. Birth, death and marriages are ceremonialised in all human societies. They are an integral part of what makes us humans the social animals we are. In The Tribe, Ahmad uses these social occasions of birth, marriage and death to reveal, through the honest (sometimes brutally so) eyes of a child, the essential nature of ‘The Tribe’ as a society. This society is defined partly by its geographical locations (Alexandria, Lakemba) and origins (Lebanon, Syria), partly by blood ties (the House of Adam), and partly by religion – none of these things being either necessary or sufficient to ensure membership.
The first part of the novel, ‘The House of Adam’, reads like the Book of Genesis – all that begatting: She reveals to me eleven scars … ‘This is your father, Jibreel… Here is your uncle Ehud.’ Then she points to another and another and she lists her other three sons… Throughout part one, there are constant reminders of birth, of genealogy and of family resemblances (or the lack of them): As soon as Bilal was born they got pregnant with me, and as soon as I was born they got pregnant with a girl… Pregnancy is an integral part of the gritty mix of daily life: Once, when she was pregnant with Zahra … Uncle Osama threw a kick at Aunty Nada that landed square on her pregnant belly.
The second part of the book, 'The Children of Yocheved’, is all about marriage with its detailed description of a wedding reception, while the third part, The Mother of Ehud, is about the passing of Tayta, the matriarch of the family.
The society described in The Tribe is in many ways very attractive – its sense of loyalty, of shared joys and hardships; the warm embrace of safety and belonging. Like all societies, however, it also has its less attractive aspects, in particular its attitudes towards women (as possessions, sex objects and servants) and its violence (knives and guns appear regularly) both of which are often closely related.
For example: The girlfriends … wear … tight tops … exposing flesh that my sisters are taught never to expose because a woman’s body is sacred. Ibrahim’s women are white, always white, except for this one time when she was black…
Or: It is a curse on all women in The Tribe that they become an extension of their husbands.
Nor does it occur to Bani to break this pattern: I’ll tell her that I lived just the way I wanted to, and I’ll know that she has lived better than she could have hoped because I was good to her, better than any man could ever be.
Cherie says:
The Tribe by Michael Mohammed Ahmad is a fascinating read. The book consists of three stories and this structure reflects the nature of life itself: birth, life, death. The narrator, young Bani, takes us into his house in Alexandria, introduces us to his extended family and gives an honest and intimate insight into his life and culture: People sometimes think because we’re Arabs, that I mean the city in Egypt, but the Alexandria we’re from is actually a suburb in Sydney’s inner-west.
Bani is a perceptive young man and intersperses the stories of his family with his personal observations and commentary. He pieces together the little bits of information he gathers and tries to make sense of it. At the time he may not understand (in the case of why Uncle Ibrahim sleeps in the garage for example) but he eventually figures things out and sometimes he even questions contradictory aspects of his culture. Bani acknowledges that change is inevitable and while watching Zubaida and Uncle Ali during their wedding says: … but what if the desert in my grandmother’s eyes came to an end? What if it collided with the sea, somewhere, beyond the dunes. Maybe my bride is there, across the sea.
In the final story Bani tells of his grandmother Tayta’s illness and eventual death. He has to cope with his own grief as well as the overwhelming grief of all those around him. Bani sees his father standing next to his Aunty Mariam, who he hasn’t spoken to in years and the story concludes on a hopeful note with his father calmly saying to her, ‘Stay here’. Tayta would have been glad that her daughter was home again.
Jill says:
In the 80s, performance poet Kominos delighted in reading ‘Grannies big pink underpants’ to anyone who would listen (you can still hear his reading many years on by clicking here). The Tribe took me back to this territory. The book invites the reader literally through the front door of The Tribe’s inner city Sydney terrace, chocka with Syrian-Lebanese, and later to their home in ‘Lebkemba’. It is both intimate in style and about intimacy – the kind of intimacy felt best in big families where, as Ahmad writes, everyone is a cousin. The narrator’s grandmother bookends the story, in much the same way that Kominos is enveloped by (and maybe, in his case, smothered by) his Greek grandmother. This is important cultural terrain for writing at present as debate swirls around notions of ‘Team Australia’, and as Muslims in Australia feel increasingly under siege.
I enjoyed this invitation into the home of The Tribe but I wanted more. I felt like the narrative was leading up to something which didn’t quite play out. Was it the hidden religious affiliation of the grandmother (Shia and not Sunni)? The family barred from the wedding? I’m not sure. I felt Ahmad created the backdrop but that the narrative tension was missing.
And our favourite response for this week (not to mention the winner of our $100 gift voucher) is…
Antonella says:
The Tribe is an honest, emotional and confronting story about a boy called Bani and his struggle with belonging and identity. It tells the story of the complex family dynamics in a Lebanese Muslim family in Western Sydney. As a daughter of migrant parents, Bani’s struggles and experiences are familiar to me – the importance of food and family, idolising Elvis, the drama and excitement of family weddings and, of course, squeezing in one too many aunties into the family sedan. The Tribe also explores the contradictions between religion and growing up in suburban Australia, where issues such as drugs, domestic violence and mental health are prevalent.
The paternal grandmother and family matriarch, Tatya, is a powerful figure in the book. Tatya represents the old world, a reminder of where Bani’s ancestors were from and where Bani thought he belonged. Belonging is both important and complicated in this book. Bani’s aunty no longer belongs to The Tribe and an uncle living in the garage is also seen as an outsider. Bani says: I imagine where I really come from. Not here. I belong in the desert. I belong in the sand. I belong with the camels. Bani tells the reader that he has never visited Lebanon, rather, as a young child he thought that Melbourne was Lebanon after spending time there with his maternal family.
Ultimately Bani discovers what most children of migrants experience in Australia, that despite the sand (or in my case, the spaghetti) that runs through my veins, to feel loved, included and valued in a community and family is to belong. The Tribe is an important Australian story and compulsory reading for all Australians.
