When you have a goal, you go for it. Wadjda wants a bicycle. This wouldn't be that big a deal, except for the fact that she's a girl. And she lives in present-day Saudi Arabia. Will she be able to make her dream come true?
The Green Bicycle by Haifaa Al Mansour
Wow! The Green Bicycle was published in September
2015, after the very successful 2012 feature film Wadjda garnered
world-wide respect for Haifaa Al Mansour, the first female director to come
from Saudi Arabia. Sometimes I make the
mistake of setting my expectations for a long-awaited book too high, but this
book did not disappoint me. In fact, Al
Mansour captures every facet of a middle-class, working woman’s world in Saudi
(reading this brought me right back to my eight years in Kuwait). The tendency for Westerners to think of all
Saudis as oil rich snobs or overflowing with new money has got to be stopped. Increasing exposure to Western culture often
sends middle-class Muslim girls mixed messages that a coming of age story is
perfectly suited to deal with. Wadjda’s
struggles to remain independent are innocent, but also become more weighty as they
begin to affect those around her—her family, her friends, her classmates, and
mostly, her own sense of being. The
theme of Wadjda’s struggle to find herself is very much echoed in the subplot
of her mother’s struggle to be a woman of independent means in a patriarchal
society where both men and women suffer because of cultural and moral
restrictions placed upon them. For
example, Wadjda’s mother is forced to teach at a school two hours from home
because teaching in an all-girls school is one of the only acceptable
professions for Saudi women and local positions are flooded. So she and 8 other
completely-covered female teachers must endure a two-hour drive to and fro on a
crazy-dangerous desert highway, in a van with no A/C, driven by a surly
Pakistani man who is her social inferior due to his illegal immigration status
but who feels he can berate her because
she is a woman. There is also the tense relationship between Wadjda’s mother
and father. What happens when a Saudi
woman cannot bear a son?
What superstitions would keep a girl from riding a bicycle
in the first place? Everything about
this book was so real—the streets, the empty lots, the dust, the political
elections. The longing of Wadjda’s mother to break social norms, but her
reluctance to do so because of social tradition. The principal of the school,
Ms Hussa, with her designer clothes, high heels and sense of self-importance,
the attitudes of the girls in Wadjda’s school.
Seriously, I felt like I was right back in the Gulf.
I don’t think, as some critics have said, that Al Mansour
seeks to cast Saudi in a bad light. She
is showing it with ethos and pathos. She completely honors Koran. The plots are beautifully woven, and shine
brightest in the moment that Wadjda and her mother recite Koran which brings
them together, “And of His Signs is that He creates for you mates out of
yourselves, so that you may find tranquility in them; and He has put love and
mercy between you.” This is beautiful, and Al Mansour turns a traditional
male-female dynamic on its head by reinterpreting it as an unbreakable and
triumphant bond between a mother and a daughter.
Vital Stats:
Al Mansour, Haifaa. The Green Bicycle. London: Puffin, 2015. ISBN: 978-0-141-35668-6
Read the book or watch the movie. Either one would be a positive experience.
Movie trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3koigluYOH0
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