Full review on: FLIPPING THROUGH THE PAGES

Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is my first Moroccon contemporary read and also it is my first book by Laila Lalami. And I loved the experience. This is a literary fiction written in the form of short-stories.

In the first chapter we see that how a group of people set to leave from Tangiers , on a small boat, to cross the strait of Gibraltar and try to enter Spain illegally. There are mainly four people whose stories we follow in the later chapters. Some made it Spain while some did not and were sent back to their cities. In the following chapters we get to read about each of these people, two men and two women, and what lead them to think about leaving their cities and seek refugee in a foreign land.

There’s Murad, a gentle man living with his mother, sister and younger brother. He had a degree but was still unemployed so he was reduced to hustling tourists around Tangier. He saw Spain as his only hope. Then we have Halima, a married woman with a child whose drunken husband physically abuses her. She decides to flee the slums of Casablanca with her child in hope of finding a better life. Aziz, who lives with his wife and mother, was trying to run his family after his father’s death but was finidng it impossible by each passing day. He decides to leave behind his devoted wife in hope of getting work in Spain. And finally we have Faten, a student and religious fanatic who appears to be very devoted towards her faith. But then she makes a friend and her friend’s father sees Faten as a wrong influence on her daughter and tries to get her out of their lives. Faten finds her faith deviating and decides to flee to Spain seeing no future for herself in the city anymore.

This book is just under two hundred pages but you can’t underestimate the power of it. The book is divided into “Before” and “After”. This is the first time that I am reading a book in which the story actually starts in the “During,” but that unique thing proves to be a great hook for readers. This allows the readers the understand how all four of them got to make the decision they made and what consequences they had to endure because of their decisions. As a debut this book is strong. The writing style is very simple and to the point. It is a pure storytelling with fascinating content and without any unnecessary metaphors or authorial artistic flair. The author left her message clearly through the narratives of these four characters.

At the heart this story is about immigrants and the situations that force them to take those decisions. Although this book was written 15 years ago, it remains true for today too. We often hear news of refugees illegally trying to reach to cities like Cuba, Spain, Italy from countries like Syria, Morocco and Cuba. Some of them make it but most of them don’t but in either case, there are many lives left behind. But the question is what leads them to leave their country in the first place?

Laila Lalami has given some insight into the various segments of Moroccan society through her story. We get to see how the issues like unemployment, corruption, and inequality are major problems and affecting the lives there. Because of this, to Moroccons, the idea of escaping to the West gives them hope and a promise of a better life. They think that it will be easier for them to get a job there and then they will be able to feed their families. But they are often unaware of the prejudices in foregin land. I feel that I am lucky to live in a country like India and have a balanced life. After reading the situation of Morocco and the similar refugees, I feel blessed.

Overall this is a wonderful short novel which is clear and easy to read. It truly explores the idea of hope and what it means to some people. Through the crisp narrative, the author has wonderfully depicted the various social and economical problems of Moroccans that they are still facing. It is sad to see that the situation hasn’t changed much even after all these years. This strong novel shouldn’t be missed.

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