Because Stories Are Not Always Fairytales

To be honest, I didn't think I would really get into the plot of "A Girl Made of Dust", but I am finding myself unable to put it down as of late. And it's not the plot that's really driving my interest,anyways, I suppose, but rather the way I find myself relating to the characters and their relationships, cutting and pasting the archetypes of this small family in a war-torn Lebanon to my own world frame. I find that this is much more a story about the fragility of human relations than anything else. And it is also about how we tell stories. About how much is told and yet untold in every story we choose to speak or write, or hand down in some way, or entrust to some other person, or some other thing, even if it is just a story written in a notebook that nobody will ever see.

In one part of this book, eight year old narrator Ruba's Uncle comes to town, and he tells her a story that I can't get out of my head. It's about a man who loves a woman and spends all his money trying to woo her, to no avail. She marries someone else, and has a son, and then her husband dies. The man who tried to woo her is left poor, and all he has left to his name is a falcon. When the son is playing in the countryside he meets the man and his falcon. One day the son falls sick and asks for the falcon to make him feel better. The woman is determined to make her sick son happy, and goes to meet the man with the falcon to ask for the bird. But when the man sees her coming down the hill, he thinks he must prepare something for her, and he cooks the falcon. They eat is for supper, and then the woman asks for the bird for her son, but there is no more bird. They have eaten it, and the son dies without his wish granted.

I am trying to make sense of this story as it is placed within the narrative of this book. I think it might have something to do with the complete absurdity and senselessness of war, the way in which victims are so random and nothing makes sense. But it is about more than war. It is about a feverish yearning for relationships, touch, and love that make no sense. It is about wanting something so badly, and it always being out of reach. It is about a pain so shocking, so upfront, so deep-seeded, that we can only process it in bits and pieces, in story form. Stories can ease pain, but they can also be a regurgitation for the namelessness of loss. We are so used to the story as fairytale, as band-aid, but sometimes the story is just a festering wound, and we must sit with that.

With every story there is corresponding silence. And this book is filled with silences, where characters move but don't speak. Ruba says, "Uncle said there's no such thing as silence. He said that every silence says something: the silences between words, between notes in music, and between people." Silence is an alternate language, transposed on and between text. In this vein, even the story is a type of silence. Words say one thing, and convey quite another meaning. Like sediment, there are so many layers to the spoken and unspoken. If I could have any superpower, it might be to see every layer of meaning told in every word and (corresponding) un-word. If these layers were color-coded, the world would be a very colorful place.

Of course, the plot of this story is getting more interesting. Ruba finds out the secret behind why her father has pretty much gone insane. There is outright conflict between the Muslims and Christians. Ruba's own brother seems to be involved with military activity. And there is still a lingering sexual tension between Ruba's mother and brother-in-law.

But, the plot, sometimes, is not the story we read. We read fingers, corners of mouths upturned or downturned. We read about birds cooked for dinner, and think about old lovers, estranged mothers, and words we never spoke of, and never will.