Unspoken Spaces

Akanksha Singh interviews Jokha Alharthi about her latest novel, “Silken Gazelles.”

By Akanksha SinghDecember 5, 2024

• Fiction

FOR THE MOST PART, straight single women’s lives don’t appear to pass the Bechdel test in today’s world. Despite all our best efforts at “decentering” men, women exist, if social media is to be believed, solely on a spectrum ranging from tradwives to child-free cat ladies (or childless, depending on whom you ask).

In her new novel Silken Gazelles, Omani author Jokha Alharthi poses the question of why it is that we still place such an emphasis on romantic over platonic love—an emphasis that transcends geographic borders. Through a touching, intricate narrative, Alharthi centers women’s relationships and inspects their elastic but fragile nature.

Set in Oman, the novel follows two childhood friends, Asiya and Ghazaala, who both suckled at Asiya’s mother’s breast and are thus termed “milk-sisters,” and two adult friends, Ghazaala and Harir. As a reader who spent a large part of her childhood in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, while the cities were still somewhat mellow, I found the novel to be deeply affecting. There’s a strong nostalgia at play that is induced by the thought of lost loved ones. Female friendships are beautifully complex globally, and we probably don’t read enough about them. Silken Gazelles goes some distance toward rectifying this neglect. (The novel is superbly translated by Marilyn Booth, who also handled Alharthi’s Man Booker International Prize–winning effort, 2018’s Celestial Bodies.)

Via email, I asked the author about her novel and the importance of trusting readers to fill in the blanks.

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AKANKSHA SINGH: Something that took me by surprise in the novel was the change in viewpoint characters. We start with two young girls, “milk-sisters” with an impossibly close friendship, but we later get Harir, who narrates her portions in first person and acts as a foil to the older Ghazaala. What made you introduce her as a viewpoint character?

JOKHA ALHARTHI: It is as you say—they are foils for one another. Ghazaala is very emotionally driven while Harir is different: she discovers the strength of her feelings only as the novel progresses. This makes her interesting as a viewpoint character. It also perhaps explains her concern for Ghazaala and her interest in her story. Perhaps as we grow up and become individuals, our milk-sisters’ place in our lives changes, but the hold remains strong. This explains how Harir and Ghazaala engage differently with another character, Asiya.

I feel as if a lot of key scenes happened off the page. For example, we fast-forward through Harir’s mother’s recovery from cancer and Harir’s own marriage. I think a lot of contemporary English-language literature would’ve drawn these scenes out, so your method took me by surprise. Similarly, Harir and Asiya’s relationship is never spelled out. The question of who they were to each other haunts the reader. Tell me about the power of the unspoken or the implied in your work.

As a reader, it disturbs me to see every single detail of a story narrated. Sometimes, I really enjoy a novel—the scenes, the details—but still don’t like the fact that there is very little left to my own imagination. Thus, I like to leave a space for my reader to think and imagine what I have not written about. I like to emphasize some details, but not all the details. Also, this unspoken space opens the door for interpretation: readers can have their own versions of what has happened. Of course, I tend to leave hints and signs to guide them through my text. I just do not want to hold their hand all the way. One lets go at a certain point.

As a reader of English literature myself, I understand perfectly what you mean. Authors like Philip Roth or Barbara Kingsolver amaze me with their ability to narrate scenes in great detail, but this is simply not in my style of writing. Some readers have said that they think of my novels as puzzles or games. I didn’t mean for them to be puzzles, exactly. I just invite my reader to color in the white space. Some characters are felt most in their absence, and this is true of other novels too, however elaborate or pared-back the narrative. So I suppose we as readers are always coloring in, in some way.

One thing that struck me about the narrative was how there was an impending, overarching sense of destiny. Asiya plays a huge, almost omniscient role in both Harir’s and Ghazaala’s lives, yet she wasn’t really physically present outside the opening chapters. Why is that? The effect is very dreamlike, and this is especially true of the ending. Did you toy with the idea of a more typical (or even predictable) ending?

Asiya is present in her absence. As you have noticed, she plays a huge role in both Harir’s and Ghazaala’s lives. We don’t know clearly what happened to her after she left her childhood village, but we do get glimpses of her life through the narrating voice of Harir and the imagination of Ghazaala. It’s important to me that Asiya is not speaking directly to us—we don’t want to face her; we don’t want to ruin her ambiguity. She appears as a dreamlike figure for both Harir and Ghazaala. At one point, we listen to Harir thinking of Asiya:

I reached my hands out to you, Asiya. My hands are the soft, pliant leaves of the henna tree. I called out to you. My voice echoes across the wind by way of witches’ magic wands. I have waited for you, standing as still and straight as a date palm that has not had water to drink for a thousand years.

And you—what are you?

Your hands—thorns. Your voice—silence. Your still, upright figure—thirst.

I think the ending of the novel leaves room for our imaginations to expand and fill the space instead of concluding things too definitively. I’m still thinking of Asiya now, and I hope that my reader will feel the same. I hope that they still think of her even after turning the last page.

I think the novel speaks to how our childhoods shape our experiences as adults. In particular, I love how it depicts men and how straight women have a tendency to center them—you refer to them as the Elephant, the Violin Player, and the Singer to the Queen. Was it important to you that the men in Ghazaala’s life remain unnamed for this reason?

Yes, it was important to me that the men in Ghazaala’s life are unnamed. What seems to be crucial is the role they play at a particular moment in her life. She is born for love, and she is disappointed in love, and she struggles with the depth of her feelings. There is a significant moment when she becomes infatuated and follows a married co-worker in her vehicle. It is not a rational thing to do. He can be called Ali or Ibrahim or anything at that moment—it is what she represents about the possibility of love that is most important.

It is also the case that Ghazaala is a single mother, and thus the romantic happiness of others is challenging because she feels her status keenly. The novel is also about how these unnamed men can behave—as they like. The imbalance between the freedoms men and women have is a factor here too.

I found a lot of this novel nostalgic because of my familiarity with the Arabian Gulf setting. However, when I was in school in Dubai, the role of Afro-Emiratis and enslaved pearl divers was invisible, much as it remains today. Yet it was a practice that cost thousands their lives. What role do you think literature plays in righting the wrongs of our pasts?

Without falling into obvious agendas, I would say that literature plays a prominent role in our rereading—and challenging our perceptions of—the past. It is one of the most powerful media for grappling with difficult and uncomfortable questions about history. For example, Toni Morrison’s works provide readers with a deeply personal and immersive exploration of African American history, particularly the traumatic legacy of slavery and the complexities of racial identity. Unlike traditional history books, Morrison’s narratives bring to life the emotional and psychological realities of these experiences. Through her stories, we are invited to confront the silences and omissions of conventional historical narratives, gaining a more comprehensive and humanized view of the past.

Reading Palestinian author Adania Shibli’s 2017 novel Minor Detail may change the viewpoint of many readers regarding what happened in Palestine in 1948. The discourse of history usually doesn’t discuss people’s feelings, and it often overshadows less fortunate people’s lives. But novels can address these things. For the few pages I include on pearl diving, I had to go to museums and read many books to understand the complicated relationship between the divers and the boat owners and the pearl traders. It was the first time I encountered the term “the pearl slaves.”

The Gulf, of course, is not unique in having elements of its history hidden from view in the confusion of the present. This is another reason why fiction can be valuable, even in its small details, in looking either at the present or at an earlier time, or both.

Tell me about having your work translated and working with a translator. What role do you think translations play in making different styles of literature accessible to a wider audience? As someone who writes in English, I find it difficult translating wider cultural contexts for the reader—how do you balance asking the reader to step outside their frame of reference while ensuring your work remains accessible?

I have just finished reading Indonesian author Eka Kurniawan’s 2004 novel Man Tiger. It made me think again how lucky we are to have literature in translation. It allows us to transcend the boundaries of language, culture, and geography. Through translation, we gain access to the vast and varied landscapes of human experience. It offers us insights into lives, emotions, and histories that would otherwise remain foreign and inaccessible. Imagine the loss if we were confined to stories only within our own language—how narrow our understanding of the world would be, how limited our empathy.

In the Gulf today, we have many Indonesians working as laborers. Yet we don’t have an easy opportunity to know about their lives and art beyond this sphere of work. Translation opens a precious window to look upon the other, beyond and outside of our familiar perception of them.

I know you’ve worked with Marilyn Booth before. Can you tell me if you’ve found it at all difficult, being translated as a writer?

It is, of course, a privilege to be translated and to reach readers in different languages. Marilyn Booth is very eloquent about translation as a way to convey another place—in my case, Oman—to readers outside of Arabic, but to convey it in its richness and complexity, to embrace that. This is one of the joys of reading a book in translation, I think—to be transported to another cultural context, and to learn through literature.

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Jokha Alharthi was the first Omani woman to have a novel translated into English. Celestial Bodies (2018) went on to win the Man Booker International Prize and become an international bestseller. Alharthi is the author of three collections of short fiction, three children’s books, and four novels in Arabic. She completed a PhD in classical Arabic poetry in Edinburgh, Scotland, and teaches at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat, Oman.

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Featured image courtesy of Jokha Alharthi.