‘Wasmiah’ still resonates 2 decades on
Al-othman’s magnum opus
Fictional
stories tend to be mere projections of their writers’ personalities and their life experiences and that is perhaps what gives each author’s literary oeuvre his or her particular niche rendering for us keen readers — in all parts of the world — a broad and diverse exposure to an infinite and overwhelming wealth of world’s literary heritage.
With every book one reads comes along a new acquisition of knowledge, a journey into the author’s world: his/her mind, his/her life and his/her personality. In every personality of each author there exist cumulative spans of eclectic life experiences relayed in disparate narrating styles in the many languages known to man forming mounds and mounds of information.
Knowledge
One wonders what would be the size and surely the significance as well as impact of that abundance of knowledge on mankind that no doubt would intrigue and baffle the smartest of onlookers! Some compiled lists prepared by specialists in literature sometimes indicate the impact of certain selected tales that were written decades ago and still resonate powerfully into our lives in our present day! Such lists would be, for example, the 100 — or any other number — most important novels in the 20th century, in the last 50 years, in the last decade and so forth are some examples.
Storytellers are chroniclers of events happening in their times or possibly other times. Raconteurs who choose specific times and locations for their tales become inevitably historians and often eyewitnesses of all that and their books become — by default — important documented references for successive generations — whether printed or digital to probe and examine.
A prolific Kuwaiti woman writer, considered one of the pioneers in the storytelling realm in the country was born in the early 40’s in Kuwait; a daughter of an erudite father; she has written more than 20 books as novels, short stories, biographies and travelogues; an essayist who has given innumerable presentations in many parts of the world advocating noble values in important subjects that the Arab world has been involved with. She has six
children and five grandchildren.
Childhood
She has been an avid reader since her early childhood until present times and a keen traveller too; a writer of compelling fiction with abundant and indomitable literary presence not in Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf but also in the Arab world and the world at large. Many of her stories were translated from Arabic into many languages and some have been adapted into television episodes for Kuwaiti television or performed live on stage.
Laila Abdulla Al-Othman is a distinguished and prolific Kuwaiti novelist and short stories’ writer par excellence. Her many tour de force stories draws the reader into her world of intricate details, smoothly flowing prose, vivid imagery and lyrical narrative in many parts of her books that depict life beautifully in the harbingers of early Kuwait in the past century. This year marks the 27th publication anniversary of her magnum opus novella “Wasmiah Takhruj mena al-Bahr” that could be translated as “Wasmiah Rising from the Sea”: it was translated into Italian and Russian but not English.
The story was republished three times after 1985. “Wasmiah” was chosen as one of the most important novels in Arabic literature written in the 20th century along with internationally acclaimed Arab novelists’ works such as the Nobel Laureate — the prize-winner in 1988 — Naguib Mahfouz’s (1911-2006) as his 1200paged “The Cairo Trilogy” is considered one of the towering Arabic fic-
tion in the past century.
Merchant
Al-Othman’s novella “Wasmiah”, of 200 pages, is narrated by the young protagonist Abdullah himself, the son of a widowed “dallala”, called Mariam, who ran ad hoc errands and helped in housework in well-to-do Kuwaiti households in old Kuwait. Fishing was Abdullah’s means of living in the Arabian Gulf: its enchanting shores and its glistening surface were Abdullah’s beloved abodes. Wasmiah, a pretty young girl, was a daughter of an affluent Kuwaiti merchant in whose opulently furnished household Mariam, Abdullah’s mother, served in from time to time.
Wasmiah and Abdullah played together when they were children. An affectionate relationship grew between them until she came of age, as social customs dictated, entailing that Wasmiah had to be bound only to the boundaries of her and her relatives’ homes only. Abdullah longed in vain to see Wasmiah, to talk to her and exchange their passion for one another as they used to do in their childhood, to meet on the shores of the majestic Arabian Sea that they both adored. He was forced to marry a girl with whom he lived whilst his heart longed for Wasmiah. Abdullah and Wasmiah arranged to meet on the sea for a while to relive their passion for the sea, and they succeeded in doing so but their reunion as friends was interrupted by an unexpected passer-by that made Wasmiah head to the sea to hide.
Abdullah returned trying to search for her but what he could see floating was only her black “abaya” (a long black attire worn by Arab women). Distraught and despaired he plunged into the sea in hopeless search for her. The Kuwaiti tiny village was badly stricken by the loss of a dear daughter to the sea and Abdullah’s mother took the blame on herself that she was there when Wasmiah drowned and was unable to help the girl as the sea drift was too strong for her frail body to resist.
Abdullah heads to the sea as if in a delusion or a trance when an apparition of the beautiful face of Wasmiah appears in front of him rising from the sea; he followed it and was virtually devoured by the strong sea waves. It is a love story between two young people who were destined to succumb helplessly to social constraints and finally became preys of the towering power of their beloved sea — as the living on land had denied and denounced their pure bond of love in life the majestic sea has poignantly united them in death.