The Pickup

Nigel Summers, Continued

Another posting from Ariela Rutkin-Becker:

Last week I wrote about Nigel Summers’ limited understanding of Julie and its parallels in my own life.

This week I want to write about the final line that Julie’s father leaves his daughter with on page 98: “You choose to go to hell in your own way.”

What a line, huh? This line epitomizes Nigel’s confusion about Julie’s actions.  In his mind, Julie is heading down an unstable, dangerous path-and he has practically given up on trying to reverse her direction.

But on further thought, is “going to hell in your own way” really such a bad thing to do?

Class of ’11, welcome to college.  Welcome to a new stage in your life-and I say “stage” intentionally, as a theatrical stage.  As the years fly by here at Cornell, you might find that people who have played large roles drift into more minor, supporting ones.  You might find that some people who used to stand on the same stage as you drifting into the audience.
All of a sudden, you’re on a stage which is really yours to control.  For the first time ever, you’re directing the lighting (when do I sleep?). The sound (frat party tonight or Jazz at the Johnson?). Choosing the action (What will I major in? What clubs do I want to join? What road am I going down?)

And what comes naturally with an audience? The theater critics.  I’ve found that the more action I’ve taken of my life, the more I have made my own production public- the more I’ve put myself out there to be open to criticism.  This criticism has come in blatant ways- Facebook comments and emails about a controversial Sun article- or much more subtle ones- like losing contact with people from home as we pursue our own dramas, our own stages.

I can’t control what people say or what stage they are on in their own lives.  The only thing I can control is how I interpret their criticism.  It’s a tricky balance to vulnerably listen to what people have to say and reflect on it, and on the other hand to keep your head up high, marching to the beat of the drum that maybe only you can hear.

But that balance is exactly what college is for, to me.  Taking risks.  Figuring out what makes your stage your own. Choosing to “go to hell” in my own way: or, to re-work it, choosing to go wherever my drama leads me to.

So, even if in a critic’s eyes I’m going to “hell,” I can know that it’s a hell that I’ve created. A hell that is comprised of my accomplishments and my mistakes.  A hell that Nigel Summers can’t define, and a hell that Julie Summers doesn’t fear.

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

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.

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.

Where is Abdu from?

Gordimer never tells us exactly.  We are given hints to his identity, but not his nationality. There is sand, there are oil fields over a border where a brother works, and his village has a small mosque.  We are told that he is an Arab, but only indirectly at first. ("Are you a Buddhist?" "--I'm not Indian.--")

So he is from an Islamic country in a desert. 

When Julie asks him:

“He named a country she had barely heard of. One of those partitioned by colonial powers on their departure, or seceded from federations cobbled together to fill vacuums of powerlessness against the regrouping of those old colonial powers under acronyms that still brand-name the world for themselves.” (p. 12)

That essentially describes most of northern Africa and the Middle East. But “nationality” is not how Abdu identifies himself. When Julie’s café friends pry his story from him, he says:

“--I can’t say that--‘my country’--because somebody else made a line and said that is it. In my father’s time they gave it to the rich who run it for themselves.  So whose country I should say, it’s mine.--" (p. 15)

If you look at the various maps and images assembled for a Survey of the Political History of the Modern Middle East, you will see just how contentious and controversial these lines in the sand have been. And our current headlines are a daily reminder of how unsettled these issues are. 

Why is a young Arab man with a university degree in economics living in South Africa as an illegal alien and migrant worker?  Is he a refugee from poverty? Or an ambitious dreamer with a plan for success?

For more information and maps of the region, you can go to the Library's Maps & Geospatial Information site, Cornell's Department of Near Eastern Studies, or the Africana Studies & Research Center.

Lingua Franca

While we are discussing language and syntax, let me share my thoughts on the short, choppy sentences we are having so much trouble reading.  I think that they are written in English, but it is English as a foreign language.  They seem to be the words and constructions of a non-native speaker.  This is literally true when Abdu talks, but in general we are made to feel uncomfortable with our own language.  It is both familiar and foreign to us all at the same time, it is not quite what we expect to read or hear.

Language is part of our identity.  We are what we speak.  And what we can understand.

Let's put this in context.  Gordimer, a South African, is writing in English, but English is one of eleven official languages used in the country: Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, and Xitsonga.

At The Languages of South Africa web site we learn that: 

"English is generally understood across the country, being the language of business, politics and the media, and the country's lingua franca. But it only ranks joint fifth out of 11 as a home language...As a home language, English is spoken by 10% of the population - one in three of which are not white. South Africa's Asian people, most of whom are Indian in origin, are largely English-speaking, although many also retain their languages of origin. There is also a significant group of Chinese South Africans, also largely English-speaking but who also retain their languages of origin as well."

On the very first page of the book we hear Julie being cursed in a language she does not fully understand. A friend offers a polite translation a few pages later.  And when she first walks into the garage she encounters a "white man speaking Afrikaans to the black man at the machine."

Think of the complexity of this multlingual and multicultural environment. Think of the difficulties in communication and understanding.  As a for instance, I leave you with the following set of instructions:  Inserting Tshivenda diacritic symbols into MS Word.