“Men find it easier to believe they have been swindled by a witch than outwitted by a woman.”
From the grand storytelling tradition of Sinbad the Sailor comes Shannon Chakraborty’s Medieval-era tale of Amina al-Sirafi. Sailor, adventurer, pirate, witch. Famous and infamous (depending on who you talk to) for her ability to fight, explore, steal, and basically survive the hell out of anything, she is now happily retired, thank you.
It’s just that the secluded house she’s retired to is very secluded, too secluded for her young daughter to be able to attend school. And also the roof is falling apart, her extended family could really use more support, and after a lifetime of adventure it’s been very hard to settle down with “quiet” and “good”. So Amina can’t resist the temptation – and doesn’t ask the necessary number of questions – when someone tracks her down with a generous offer after she draws attention to herself by saving a couple of idiots from a demon.
God as my witness, none of this would have ever happened if it were not for those two fools back in Salalah. Them and their map.
When people say “Medieval-era” they tend to think “Great Britain”, and if the Crusades are mentioned it’s generally as the backdrop for a tale of British kings and knights. You know, brave knight bravely crosses the ocean to bravely slaughter the infidels (or misguided family spends all their wealth on a misguided effort to kill a lot of innocent people and pillage under the misguided cover of Christianity), that sort of thing. Chakraborty here has pushed most of that aside and immersed the reader in the vibrant cultures of the countries around the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. There’s a different experience in every port, a wide variety of foods and fabrics and treasures, and impossible landscapes and monsters dreamed up from the myths and legends of so many cultures and religions.
And all of it centers around a cranky mother with a bad knee and quite a few regrets.
This book uses a storytelling tool that I’ve been seeing more and more often: delivering the backstory as if there are a whole series of books we just haven’t read yet. It’s an effective way way to deliver exposition, because the reader gets drawn in by all the tantalizing little bits of information: throwaway mentions about past adventures, in-jokes and other signs of people who know each other so well that they don’t even need to explain themselves (one person suggests a diversion like “the gold market in Kilwa”. “Fine. But we have no elephant.”). Most importantly there are a lot of references to “what happened to Asif”, Amina’s greatest shame and regret as she curses her last husband (husband number four) for being responsible and hopes the fact that he’s buried in a chest under the high water mark means he’s really dead. Intercut that with Amina’s hilarious first-person narration (including arguments with the scribe taking down the story) and swashbuckling battles with humans and monsters (using sword and dagger and holy Islamic phrases) and you’ve got a wildly entertaining narrative.
“Neither drowsiness nor sleep overtakes Him! To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth – will you get off of me?” I elbowed the creature hard, and it spit in my face.
Amina is joined on her adventures by a pleasingly diverse collection of friends and former comrades who don’t need too much persuasion to come along for one final adventure. Christians, Muslims, and South-African Hindi are all represented here, each with their own reasons for coming along, their own dark secrets, and their own special set of skills that make them useful to a pirate captain.
We used to joke that of the three of us, I could kill you up close, Tinbu could kill you from another ship, and Dalila could kill you from a different city three days later.
(Dalila joins my long list of favorite female characters. Half-bind and missing an eyebrow from her “experiments”, wearing a cap decorated with tiny vials of potions that you really don’t want to breathe, and a little too eager to solve problems with explosions, Dalila gets a starring role in a moment where I cheered and got teary-eyed.)
The book’s characters are a celebration of diversity in religion and culture. Amina’s relationship with her own culture and religion is…complicated. Not being late for her daily prayers is important, and she tries to stick to at least a few rules (No sex outside of marriage being one of them, hence all the husbands). She’s got the ever-present creeping guilt at running away to the sea as a child and becoming the complete opposite of a “good” Muslim (Or daughter. Or mother. Or wife), while knowing that doing so has given her the freedom to be anything she wants.
There’s a lot of discussion about a woman’s place in society, and how women are both put on a pedestal and dismissed and abused, sometimes by the same people, at the same time, and Amina has opinions. She also has a lot to say about motherhood. While she loves her daughter more than her own life she wants, really wants the world to acknowledge that mothers are important for more than just making children and raising children, they’re human beings with their own agency and desires. Even if some of those desires are just about getting a good night’s sleep.
(Like most desperate new parents, I was not able to resist the siren call of the spells and talismans people swear will help your baby sleep. All failed. Fussy babies answer to no authority.)
Amina’s love for her child, added to her desire to be the famous Amina al-Sarafi again, and her history of making terrible decisions (especially regarding men), turn her final adventure (with a comfortable fee) into blackmail and a terrifying race to protect her family and to stop a sorcerer (a man with his own reasons for hating the Crusades and who took the exact wrong lesson from them) from getting hold of a magical relic that will let him challenge God himself. There’s no chance to be bored as we jump from a prison-rescue caper in a port town, to a battle with a monster at sea, to a picnic with new friends aboard ship, to a fantastical island where birds talk and inanimate objects bleed and humans are not allowed. It’s a delicious mix of stories, from the mini-chapters that have some of the more improbably tales told about the unkillable sea captain, to the many variations of the origin story of a legendary relic, and then my favorite ones, where somebody finally loses their patience and says okay, shut up and sit down, let me tell you what really happened…
Cover illustration by Ivan Belikov.