sudan
bird summons
by leila abdoulela
Salma, Moni, and Iman are friends, and all active members of their local Muslim’s Women’s group, but each wants something more from her life. They travel together to the Scottish Highlands to visit the grave of Lady Evelyn Cobbold and on their journey, each experiences a spiritual awakening that challenges their egos, their choices, and their ideas of what makes a good muslim woman, wife, and mother.
Lady Evelyn Cobbold is not a fictitious character invented by Aboulela, but was a Scottish aristocrat who, in 1933, became possibly the first British-born woman to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. Born Lady Evelyn Murray in Edinburgh on July 17, 1867, the eldest child of the Scottish peer, Charles Adolphus Murray, 7th Earl of Dunmore, and Lady Gertrude Coke, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Leicester, Lady Evelyn lived for part of her life in Cairo, learned Arabic, and claimed to be a Muslim for as long as she could remember, taking the name Lady Zainab as her Muslim name. She captured her groundbreaking journey to the Arab world's holiest of places in a journal which was later published as Pilgrimage to Mecca. This book is the catalyst and inspiration for the fictional journey the three friends in Aboulela’s story undertake.
Each of the woman brings with her a particular challenge from her life. Organized, fit, committed Salma has a good marriage and an established family, but is being tempted by her recent reconnection, via social media, with her first love and the life she left in Egypt when she married her British husband and moved to England. Clever Moni gave up a career in banking to dedicate herself to the daily needs of her disabled son, Adam, and is on the brink of losing her husband and any kind of future she may have, as she can no longer separate herself from her singular identity as Adam’s carer. Iman is a beauty, young and only in her twenties, she is already on her third marriage and yearns for freedom and independence. Very soon on their journey, each woman begins to experience something inexplicable, a magical dimension that focuses on her particular challenge. Salma begins to imagine her old boyfriend running through the forest. Moni meets a healthy boy called Adam who does not speak, but is physically abled and spends hours engaged with whatever Moni wants to do with him. Iman finds a magical wardrobe filled with costumes, which allow her to experiment with her identity. She also meets a talking hoopoe, a bird cast in Sufi tradition as a spiritual guide and metaphor for the perfect man. Aboulela writes in her author’s note: “I wanted to explore the extent to which a journey could change them. The Hoopoe in the novel comes with stories. Stories by the Sufi mystic poet Rumi and the Sanskrit animals fables of Kalila and Dimna… the Hoopoe is also well versed in the folk tales of Aberdeenshire and the surrounding areas. He is familiar with The Pilgrim’s Progress and the fantasy worlds of George MacDonald.” The Hoopoe borrows from all these traditions to offer spiritual guidance to the women, but he’s only able to guide them so far, in the end, they must choose for themselves and find their own way home.
Leila Aboulela was born in Cairo, grew up in Khartoum, Sudan, and now lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. BIRD SUMMONS draws on the disparate geography of Aboulela’s life, and takes the reader on a deep contemplation of friendship, womanhood and spirituality, as Aboulela’s three protagonists all get what they most need from the experience, rather than what they think they want. BIRD SUMMONS is a quick, accessible read, which puts close attention on the interiority of her characters and defy’s stereotypes, but I thought Aboulela tried to do too much—weaving and layering multiple religious, cultural, and literary traditions together in a way that was intended to clarify but, in my opinion, bogged down the story and the women’s awakening. By the time the three friends could all attempt the final purpose of their journey, the intended 12-mile walk to Lady Evelyn’s grave, I had lost my connection with the characters and what they hoped for themselves and for one another.
