The Pickup

Somewhere Else

For all of their obvious differences: gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, culture, religions, and motivations--all of the borders and boundaries between them--what is most interesting to me about Julie and Ibrahim are their similarities. They appear to be two halves of a single whole that offer two perspectives of the same thing.

Look at the parallels: They are both in their late 20s; they both have college educations that they have not put to full use (for very different reasons); they both have strained or difficult relationships with their parents; and they both have generous uncles who offer them help and support. Neither of them practice their formal religion, and both have rejected their roles in their traditional families. They have both chosen to leave their homelands and familiar societies.  It is a matter of belonging. 

As Ibrahim says of Julie: "Like me, like me, she won't go back where she belongs...She looks for somewhere else." (p.262) Both of them are just trying to find a place, a situation, a  home where they fit in. A place where they belong.

It is the quest in the heart of all individuals, the search for self. It is the hope of a new beginning that is the essence of all migrations--"immigration as a human solution." (p.48) It is "the great adventure, the achievement that is emigration, not understood but sensed." (p. 266)  Do they travel together or apart?

Let us go to another country...The rest is understood

Questions in a Son's Return

As I reread the chapters detailing Ibrahim's return to his mother and father's home, I can't help but wonder, why did Abdu/Ibrahim bring Julie with him to his native country?  It strikes me throughout a number of passages -- Ibrahim is resentful, angered and embarrassed by her presence: "this Julie who is not for him" (p. 113); "as a reject, with nothing but a wife -- a foreign woman" (p. 114); "have you got something else to put on" (p. 115); "she had made her choice; here it was.  She was the one with the choices.  The freedom of the world was hers." (p. 115); "to signal her closeness she had lifted her glass to him...but it did not come, his glance met her a moment" (p. 120); "had she any idea of what a burden she would be...Madness to think she could stick it out, here...he was angry...to have to tell her other unacceptable things, tell her once and for all what her ignorant obstinacy of coming with him to this place means, when she failed, with all her privilege, at getting him accepted in hers." (p. 122); "and she, the one he has brought back with him, all that he has brought back with him, is the cause of this pain" (p. 123).

The anger is palpable; yet, I can't get beyond the fact that he chose to go along with her plan to return with him.  Why?  Did he bring her back as a gift to his family?  Is she -- and the affluence she represents -- a glimpse of the life that Ibrahim is so desperate to bring to his family?  Did he bring her because returning with her was better than returning with nothing?

Who is Abdu?

In her country, he is Abdu. As the reading guide provided by the book's publisher tells us,"In Arabic, the name "Abdu" literally means "servant" (and is often an abbreviated form of "Abdullah," meaning "servant of God")." While his status and work there are servile, he is not a servant to anyone or to any thing--not family, country, or god. And perhaps not even to his new wife or marriage. Abdu is for Abdu. He is ambitious and very determined to succeed at those ambitions.

In his country he is Ibrahim ibn Musa. That is "Abraham son of Moses"--the "name that he has come back to be rightfully known by." (p. 133) It is a name that denotes family heritage, cultural traditions, and faith. See PERIOD ARABIC NAMES AND NAMING PRACTICES by Da'ud ibn Auda (David B. Appleton) to learn more about how to "read" and understand Arabic names. But it is a name and identity that seems to burden him. From the moment he steps off the plane and sees his family again, he is pained and angered and embarrassed by them and "what he comes from."

Ibrahim is caught between the modern world that he aspires to and is rejected by, and the traditional world that he has rejected and tried to flee. Given these circumstances, and the timing of the book's publication, it is important to note what Ibrahim is not. The Pickup was first published in America on September 12, 2001. Ibrahim is not an "Islamic fundamentalist" nor a terrorist. 

Ibrahim is for Abdu.

Love (?) in The Pickup

Today Wendy and I are joined by a guest student blogger who will be contributing posts here on Thursdays over the next month. 

Ariela Rutkin-Becker is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, majoring in Near Eastern Studies. This summer she is in Ithaca, officially employed as a bookworm (leading a Book Club for teens through Cornell Adult University).  Ariela was involved with the Gatsby Reading Project last year as well, and in her free time is attempting to learn how to golf.  Here's her first posting:

At the end of reading The Pickup, and even months after, I feel an ineffable discomfort that has been shared by my friends to whom I've recommended the book. Do we feel this unease because we are left wondering if Julie and Abdu truly love each other?

In a society in which books such as Wuthering Heights, The Thorn Birds and, of course, Romeo and Juliet reign over the English classroom and thus help us to mold our adolescent views of an all-encompassing, blinding love, can we accept Julie and Abdu's relationship?  As the book proceeds, we see that the characters not only have very different backgrounds, drastically different ideal dreams for themselves, but also very different views of what the other should be.

Vanity Fair wrote that Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (a professor at Cornell) was the only convincing love story of our age. This invariably causes a visceral snort; Lolita on the surface is about a twelve-year-old who becomes victim to the will and desire of her much older, obsessive stepfather.  Hardly a love story, at first glance, eh?

Can the same, then, be questioned about The Pickup? Is The Pickup a
convincing love story--is it even a love story? Are we convinced that
people such as Julie and Abdu exist, and that if they do exist, they could form a relationship similar to the one Gordimer creates?

Is Julie and Abdu's love simply more realistic than we're used to--the
setting of the actual Pickup, the friends' reactions, the complications
that arise--and in a romantic society it's hard for us to swallow a
less-than-perfect love story? Perhaps they're just attached to each other for personal gain and it's not love? Or a combination of both...?

Who is Julie?

"It came to her that she was somehow as strange to herself as she was to them: she was what they saw. . .She was aware of this with an intrigued detachment.  And it meant that when she went forward to his family in this state, with him, the son who belonged to them, she could do so offering herself in an emotional knowledge: if she was strangely new to them, she was also strangely new to herself." (p. 117)

Is it intentional that we, as the readers, only get a vague sense of Julie while she is in South Africa?  Gordimer reveals little; only that Julie is motivated by a rejection of the privileged ways of her father.  She is shallow and naive; there is little depth to her, making it difficult to understand her desires and motivations.  Why does she seduce Abdu; why does she choose to move to his homeland; why does she marry him?

Yet, almost instantly, upon arriving in Ibrahim's country, we sense an awaking of Julie.  Not only do we begin to understand her emotions (the desire to reinvent oneself in a new place), she seems more open -- to Ibrahim, to his family, to the townspeople, to the customs of this new land.  She is free to discover herself without the constraint of other's expectations of who she is.

Product Placement

When Abdu discusses his country with the members of The Table, he states, "Where I  come from--no capitalist economy, no socialist economy.  Nothing...Feudal." (p. 22)  He tells Julie, "Nothing much to see...It's very dry--dust, dusty. Sand."

But when Julie and Ibrahim arrive in his country, the first things that she sees from the window of their taxi are "decaying...industrial buildings, vehicle repair shops and tarpaulined nooks under Coca-Cola signs" and the "cubist shapes of buildings pierced by the index fingers of minarets." (p. 110)

Later when they return to this city, they pass by a McDonald's and alley-way bazaars where one could purchase "Nike boots, cellphones, TV consoles, hi-fi and video equipment." (p. 203)

Globalization has brought about an interesting mixture of cultures and attitudes. All the world is one big market for our things. It seems strange that Julie sees a Coke advertisement before she even sees a mosque. And what do suppose is on the menu at that Arabian McDonald's?

You Are What You Read

And presently more than 8 million readers in the United States and countless more worldwide are young wizards.  (I am the designated second reader of our household copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so please, let's not talk about the details of the book just yet.)  For now I remain in the desert with Julie and Ibrahim, and with the photographer, Edward Curtis, in Marianne Wiggins' new novel, The Shadow Catcher.

Last week the New York Times ran a story about what some of our corporate leaders are reading, C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success.  (Remember you will need to acquire a free registration from the Times to access this article from their website.) It was fascinating to learn that Steven Jobs recently sold his collection of William Blake books.  (Gordimer quotes from Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience on p.66 of The Pickup.) And the venture capitalist, Michael Moritz, occasionally re-reads T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom for inspiration. (That's Lawrence of Arabia. Julie refers to him dismissively on p. 198.)

At Harry Potter in translation we learn that many of the Potter books have been translated into multiple languages, including Afrikaans and Arabic. I don't believe Ibrahim would read Harry Potter.  We are told that, "he is a reader of newspapers" (p. 35). Perhaps Cornell professor, Robert Frank's new book, The Economic Naturalist would interest our former economics major? Maybe not.

However, I'm fairly certain that Julie has put down her Dostoievsky and is reading Harry Potter along with us this summer.

Harry Potter Fans Unite!

I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this, but, stop reading The Pickup right now!  Instead, take a long nap this afternoon, find a pair of plastic black glasses, snap off a twig from the tree outside, and join me at the Grand Hallows Ball this evening at midnight to celebrate THE book of the year!

According to The Regulator Bookshop, a well-known, independent bookstore in Durham, North Carolina, "this is the last Harry Potter book, and it will quite likely be the last time in any of our lifetimes that people will line up, in the middle of the night, all across the country, and all across the world, to buy a book to see "what happens next in a story."  The only other time this has ever happened...was with Charles Dickens more than 150 years ago when crowds waited on the quays in New York for the ship carrying the latest installment of The Old Curiosity Shop to dock, calling out to the passengers and crew, "Is Little Nell dead?."

This is why I am taking our two daughters (ages 4 and 2) to the midnight celebration of the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Although they have no idea who Harry Potter is, they will someday become absorbed in Harry's adventures (if I have anything to say about it).  I feel it is my parental responsibility to ensure that they are a part of this historic moment.  I want them to be able to say, "I waited at the bookstore until midnight when the final installment of Harry Potter was released."

I just received an email from a coworker last night asking me to contribute my predictions about who will die in the final installment.  I was surprised by the diversity of responses; I thought everyone, like me, assumed it would be Harry and Voldemort.  So, what do you think; who will meet their death in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows?

Global Migration

Check out this interactive map from the New York Times.  This Global Migration map provides a snapshot of the flow of people in and out of countries around the world by tracking the average annual number of migrants from 2000 through 2005.  Before linking to the map, can you guess the top three countries that individuals are migrating to from the following list: Afghanistan, Canada, France, Germany, Italy. Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, or the United States?  Post your answers in the comments section.

Challenge question: which country is experiencing the largest exodus of citizens?  Hint: it is NOT Iraq.

Nelson Mandela

He is not mentioned in The Pickup, nor is the word apartheid to be found there. Yet the post-apartheid South Africa that we are reading about came to be because of this man.  And because of our author. Nelson Mandela turns 89 today. Many events are scheduled this week to celebrate and honor this anti-apartheid activist who lead the African National Congress (ANC) and later became the President of South Africa.  To read more about his extraordinary life and accomplishments, see the ANC biographies, or go to the PBS Frontline site for The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela.

When Mandela was freed from prison in 1990, Nadine Gordimer was one of the first persons that he wished to see. You simply must have a look at Nadine Gordimer and the South African Experience and read how these two Nobel Prize winners have shaped the destiny of the country that they share. It is truly inspirational reading. Individuals can change the world.  (The picture of the two of them together is from November 2006 when Gordimer presented Mandela with an Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience award.)

"Mr. Mandela, all of us at Cornell want to wish you a very Happy Birthday."