Introducing Haji Jabir's award winning Arabic novels
Haji Jaber is an Eritrean novelist, born in the coastal city
of Massawa in 1976. He escaped with his family to Jeddah while he was breast
feeding, to escape Ethiopian atrocities. He grew up and studied in Jeddah. As
an immigrant in Saudi Arabia it was difficult for his family to find him a
school but at last, he was able to get private education. He has published so
far four novels: Samrawit (2012), winner of the Sharjah Award for Arab
Creativity in 2012, Fatma's Harbour (2013), The Game of the Spindle (2015),
which was longlisted for the 2016 Sheikh Zayed Book Award, and Black Foam (2018)
which won the prestigious ‘Katara Prize’ In the category of the published Arabic
novel. Eritrea is vividly present in his novels.
Samrawit (2012) is about discovering Eritrea after a long
immigrant life in Jeddah, it is about the author’s or at times the main
character’s first his interaction with the Eritrean Embassy there. It was about
‘home coming’. His first emotion-laden travel to Asmara and Massawa. Though the
author had no personal memories about Eritrea, his collective memories are rich
taken from his family who talked about the country daily. His mother’s longing
to Zewditu, her close friend in Massawa. The main character falls in love with
an Eritrean girl, Samrawit who lives abroad but was visiting Eritrea the same
time he was there, he is being a Muslim and she being a Christian had its
challenges. Samrawit is about this journey.
His second novel, Fatma's Harbour (2013) is about the main
character from Ghinda who lives in Asmara and falls in love with a secondary
school student who fails her exams deliberately to avoid Sawa and who lives at
the old street of ‘Mersa Fatma’ meaning Fatma’s harbour. The street is close to
Enda Mariam. Through the main character, the author takes us to youth life in
Asmara, the Asmara University refusal to go to Kemtawi Maatot in 2001, the
measures taken by Eritrean government, life in the national service in Sawa, the
kidnapping by the Rashaida (what the author calls the Shifta), life in Shegerb refugee
camp in Sudan with its old refugees of the 1960s and the new one. All those
events are beautifully narrated in the journey of the main character in search
for his lover. The novel was translated to Italian under the title’ La fuga della picola Roma’.
His third novel, The Game of the Spindle, centers around the main character, who is a
charming girl who had lost her both parents in the struggle and who lives with her
grandmother who excels in spinning yarn and telling stories. The story centers
in the newly formed Archives Department, where the charming girl is employed.
The archives department aim is to digitalize documents written by fighters during
the liberation. The folders are marked by three colors, BROWN which are
considered public, YELLOW which are regarded semi-confidential and RED which
are strictly confidential. People are recruited to this department after a lot
of scrutiny. The beginners are given only the BROWN files and as their loyalty is
tested their gradually deal with the confidential files. The main character
starts with the BROWN ones, but quickly finds them boring and uses her beauty
to get to the RED files. The Red files
get edited by the president of the state. She starts manipulating the stories
in the files, re-writing them as she would tell the story. It is in those RED
files she discovers a stunning history about her parents and about the
President.
Black Foam follows a group of Ethiopian Jews, the “Falash
Mura”, who are driven by poverty and desperation, emigrate to Israel in search
of a better life. Amongest them is Dawoud, who changed his name to “Dawit” so
that western NGOs can take him to Europe but fails. Upon learning that Falasha Jews
are being transported to Israel, he invents a new identity, changing his name
and history, so that he can travel to Israel alongside the Falasha Jews.
However, on arrival, he faces the trials and suffering experienced by
dark-skinned immigrants in the country.
