“Jumaana Abdu is extraordinary and I will read everything she writes.”
I am delighted to say that I agree with Hannah Kent, whose quote adorns the beautiful cover of Jumaana Abdu’s debut novel Translations (2024). An exercise in elegant and measured prose, Abdu’s literary offering is an open invitation into the garden that is the lives of its inhabitants, permitting us to visit an ecosystem of human emotions in just 318 pages.
We follow Aliyah and her nine-year-old daughter Sakina who, in the wake of personal loss, move to their newly-bought property in rural New South Wales while her ex-husband remains overseas. Embracing horticulture and her job as a nurse, Aliyah digs her feet into the town’s soil, despite withholding herself from finding her place within the community.
To run her farm, Aliyah enlists the helping hand of a Palestinian man whom she nicknames ‘Shep’. From early on, we witness Aliyah gradually shedding her protective exterior, as she begins to form closer bonds with her new boss and friend, Kamilaroi midwife Billie, and her husband Jack, as she remembers the value of connection and intimacy alongside independence.
This is somewhat threatened and enhanced by the sudden return of her childhood best friend Hana, whose arrival forces hidden traumas and silences to rise to the surface – and be confronted. As they say, something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue take on a new meaning in Aliyah’s life in the form of Hana, Shep, the farm, and naẓar as loyalties become tested.
Abdu’s characters are compelling, and at times messy, but never unlikeable. There’s an indescribable force that pulls you into the internal and external worlds of Aliyah, where things that are said and left unsaid are given the same weight.
Having read the blurb and interpreted the sentence “tensions rise as Aliyah’s growing bond with Shep strains her devotion to Hani” as alluding to a love triangle, I was pleasantly surprised when this was not the case. Instead, the power of looks, silences, small talk, deeper conversations, and challenging perceptions leads to a relationship that you root for and enjoy the scattered moments involving the two characters.
Aliyah’s friend Hana is an elusive character and remains so by the end. However, this adds to the impenetrable bond between her and Aliyah, that not only survives across time and trauma, but as they mature into their own separate lives.
While I was particularly interested in placing a greater microscope to the mother-daughter relationship between Aliyah and Sakina as they reshape their lives in a new place and mindset, Abdu does not develop one relationship at the expense of another.
Abdu, who wrote the book while attending medical school and hospital placements, shows her deftness in eliciting more than just physical atmosphere but that of the soul and yearning. With the majority of action taking place at Aliyah’s property in Shepherd’s Mill, I was reminded of the centrality of Netherfield Hall in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). This is particularly resonant as Abdu credits Brontë’s novel as a partial inspiration in her reading and writing journey.
Islamic theology, religion, spirituality, and dreams are emphasised throughout the novel, never feeling didactic, even when in monologue. Abdu had previously written in an article, “I have interwoven my characters’ dreams as navigation, as a unit of interpersonal exchange, as a ‘mysterious sense’ of the soul. None of it can be made true, and yet I find this is no barrier to making it meaningful.” This is on display in this novel, and it seems that we are not only privy to the innermost thoughts of Aliyah’s mind and soul but we the readers become entangled within them until we are unsure if they are hers or ours.
I encourage you to pick up Translations when you can. You will not only be transported and return an enriched reader, but you are left with no choice but to introspect — and maybe, just maybe, open your soul up to what you may have forgotten and thought was forever lost.
Translations (2024) is in bookstores everywhere. Jumaana Abdu will also take part in the Palestinian Authors Panel at the Student Media Conference on Saturday 28 September.
