Saud Alsanousi: لبامبو (The Bamboo Stalk)

The latest addition to my website is Saud Alsanousi‘s لبامبو (The Bamboo Stalk), the first Kuwaiti novel on my website. It tells the story of José/Isa, son of a Filpina woman and a Kuwaiti man. Josephine, José’s mother, goes to Kuwait to work, to escape her difficult father, traumatised after his involvement in the Vietnam War. She works for a rich family and is shown sympathy only by the son, Rashid, who talks to her, marries her and impregnates her. His family is horrified and she returns to the Philippines with her baby. Though the couple divorce and both remarry, Rashid keeps in touch and Josephine always hopes her son can return to Kuwait, where, she believes, he will have a better life. However, Rashid suddenly stops writing after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. We later learn that he had fought in the Kuwaiti resistance and been captured, later dying in captivity in Iraq. However, his best friend, Ghassan, contacts Josephine and invites José to Kuwait when he is a young man and off he goes. The second part of the book deals with his difficult time there, as he is not generally welcomed by his family and, in some cases, his presence is blatantly resented. Alsanousi tells an excellent story of the struggles of dealing with being of mixed race and two races of very different values and cultures.