Commentary: The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar
We readers all fear different things. Some of us fear length; if a book is too long, we know we won’t finish it. Some of us fear multiple story lines; if a book has too much going on, we know we’ll get lost. Some of us fear the genres we don’t like, streams of consciousness, words we don’t know, and unreliable narrators. But there is one fear many of us share that I’d like to discuss today: the fear of sadness.
Some stories scare us because they make us feel things. Things like grief, anguish, terror, loss, hopelessness. Many readers turn to books to escape those things in reality. So when a book is really sad, many of us run away. We close the cover, we hide it on our shelf so we don’t have to face it again, we sell it to a used bookstore, we lock it from our minds.
And sure, we might feel better after that. We might read happier stories. We might find comfort in other pages.
But we have also lost the chance to experience the joy in those same pages.
@zeyn_joukhadar novel The Map of Salt and Stars was at times excruciatingly painful to read. But I found immense joy when Nour found color in every sound, every smell. I found immense joy when the stars above our hero’s journey in modern day Syria would reflect back the journey of another young girl, Rawiya, 800 years ago, as she sought her fortune as a mapmaker’s apprentice. I found immense joy in the way Nour would gush with excitement over her mother’s Sfiha. I found immense joy in moments along the refugee family’s journey when they stopped to celebrate Eid Al-Fitr— they eat rice and goat and dance under the stars. I found immense joy in seeing Nour’s older sister, Zahra, grow out of the typical, angsty teenage sister role and into the blunt, yet loving character we come to understand. I found immense joy seeing Nour drop the rock she had carried in her pocket the entire journey into the sea and walk home under a canopy of white and brown wings, belonging to birds on their own migration.
Zeyn Joukhadar writes in the Author’s note and in the interview included in my copy,
“I hope that this book serves as a starting point for education and empathy and that readers will seek out additional resources [about Syria and the Syrian refugee crisis] particularly those written by Syrians in their own words.”
I said earlier that when we we avoid books that make us sad, we can lose the joy too. But really we lose something much greater— the chance to do better. And be better. Reading books that scare us is important. It does no good to hide from the truth, just because the truth hurts. Reading is more than a recreation. It’s an act of bravery and a chance for us to lock hands with people we may never meet but still see their pain. We won’t ever truly understand things that we don’t go through ourselves. That’s not the point. The point is to open your eyes and see. I encourage all of my followers to read books written by Syrian writers this year. Make the effort to find them and listen and see and feel— feel everything. It’s not for you to feel better about yourself or for the crimes we claim ignorance to as Americans. It’s for them to be heard and seen. And for us to do better— not just ignore pain because it is easier.