TheDaak review

Book: Silence is My Mother Tongue by Sulaiman Addonia, London: The Indigo Press, 2018, 204 pages, £12.99, ISBN 978-1-9996833-2-0

By Malika Kukreja

Set in the backdrop of a Sudanese refugee camp, Addonia explores themes of war, violence, sexuality, and dreams through his book, ‘Silence is My Mother Tongue’. The story is based on the life of the protagonist, Saba, a strong-headed woman and her older mute brother, Hagos, who have fled Eritrea to the designated Sudanese camp along with their mother. The special relationship between Saba and Hagos, as she plays his voice for others and being a body that he dressed each day, raises inquisitive eyes in the camp. The war with Ethiopia has not only forced them to leave their homes and belongings, but Saba’s ambition of joining a university after school to become a doctor, also stayed back in their home country. The book begins with Jamal’s cinema in which each character has the freedom to dream and aspire, a life that the camp withholds through the hands of the aid workers, midwife, trial committee and others, that bends into social norms. The camp life is a makeshift arrangement of families residing together in huts wherein Saba befriends other girls like Samhiya and Zahra, the latter becoming the final motivation for Saba to flee the camp after being assaulted by her businessman-husband, Eyob’s son, Tedros. The book is not just a mere description of the everyday life at the camp, but provides a deep insight into the complicated morals that dictate a society in which the notions of gender, power, intimacy, and sexuality seem to prevail universally, yet can be challenged silently. 

Addonia explores the intricate web of gender norms and societal expectations of a woman from her birth until her death through Saba’s eyes. The fixed duties of men to carry out physically challenging tasks outside the house and women’s obligations towards household chores sustain its universality and applicability even in the camp, where Saba is expected to cook food and do laundry, while Hagos must get ration from the aid center. Back at home, “he carried out domestic chores, bought her clothes and shoes, took care of her hair, all while she focused on her studies”. However, the role reversal between the siblings depicts Hagos’ contentment towards their home and Saba’s desire to stay outside of the confines of their hut. Regardless of their individual preferences for doing their chores, their mother’s disapproval of the same matched the social expectations of them as Saba often heard the conversations between her mother and the midwife that insulted her as “being manly”. Nonetheless, she often turns a deaf ear to all these claims and relentlessly follows her dreams to learn English at the camp, takes a job at Eyob’s house and even at a prostitute’s house, earning to save enough for being able to go to school after leaving the camp. Yet, her personality does not reflect upon all women in the camp, as trials in the camp always blamed women for any act of seduction, relieving the man of any punishment, let alone guilt, while confining the woman to “the backroom of life”.

The author unravels the several ways in which women bear physical violence throughout their lives, the happening of which multiplies significantly when in a refugee camp. Although Saba’s character is portrayed as a bold and unbending woman, she experiences sexual assault along with her brother during their early years at the hands of their uncle, an incident that intertwined their lives silently. “You are both mute now, he said to Saba and Hagos. You hear?” It is ironic how Hagos’ muteness is imitated by Saba during these times, yet making their bond inseparable and complicated for everyone else to comprehend at the camp, to the extent that Saba is put to trial and a virginity test for having incestuous relationship with Hagos. Unfortunately, it is a woman who has to bear the brunt of all unfavorable actions of men’s sexual desires throughout the book. Towards the end, Zahra is ‘defiled’ to a near fatal condition by Saba’s step-son, Tedros, as his ego is inflated due to Saba’s relentless defiance towards him. The affirmation of a man’s dominance over a woman’s body through sexual control is replicated yet again when Saba gives in to the demands of the nomad for rescuing Zahra and herself from the camp. Such instances assert that violence over a woman’s body can foster a man’s ego and justify his actions, which sadly, is also upheld by women in the camp such as the midwife, who routinely tests Saba’s status of virginity through her fingers.

Nonetheless, even though Addonia highlights the prevalence of gender norms that are entrenched universally, the book is a brave attempt at challenging the binary sexual standards through its characters. Not necessarily fitting into the category of queers, but incidents of physical intimacy have been shown between Saba and her friend, Samhiya or with Nasnet, the prostitute. The desire of an intimate feeling that transcended the social boundaries of the confines of marriage is witnessed between Saba and Jamal, her silent admirer, both having felt this reciprocation towards each other. Unconventionally, upon getting married to Eyob, she takes Hagos along with her to the marital hut as a pre-condition to the wedding, through which she becomes aware of the secretive physical relationship between these two men. This moment of war and life in exile is a victory for her and Hagos as she says “his words might have been caged forever inside him; his love was not”. There exists an underlying yearning throughout the book for women’s emancipation and freedom from the universal rules of their subjugation towards men and worldly obligations. Zahra’s mother, a soldier in the war wrote to her, “I am here to bring back my country, where my daughter will have the same rights as someone else’s son”.

Silence is My Mother Tongue is an example of a writing that does not bend traditionally to the rules of gender, sexuality and identity completely, making characters complementary to one another, wherein while one follows, the other stands out to challenge them, in the cinema frame that captures the beginning of the book. Addonia is fearless and inspired through his own experience of his life in a war-ridden camp during his early years, reflecting the reality of a refugee memoir through the eyes of its multiple characters.

©TheDaak2023