When I moved to the UAE ten years ago, I knew very little about the place I would come to call home, and when people would ask me to describe it, I was often at a loss for words. How should I speak of it without falling into stereotypes, repeating the well-worn tropes of futurism, ease and prosperity that everyone pushes? I admit to being personally less interested in musings about the future than I am in the excavation of the past. History has always held a fascination for me. In a sense, Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi’s memoir Let Them Know She Is Here is the story of the UAE that I have been waiting for. It isn’t focused on the recent narrative of nation, but on the whispers of the land, whispers that we all have become deaf to in recent times.
The story begins, and continues, as an adventure, breathtaking at times and told in beautifully rendered prose. Sheikha Bodour walks us through the landscapes of Mleiha, a globally recognised UNESCO World Heritage Site. She is a perfect guide for us here, an anthropologist, studied and wise in the language of the earth upon which she treads. She names the indigenous plants, unraveling their histories and mythologies with the care that one would give their beloved, not missing a single detail in her portraits. One example is her rapturous description of the Samar tree, a profound source of sustenance and medicine not only for the people of the land, but for the land itself. I confess that these are some of my favourite passages in the book, and my own experience of the flora of the UAE has changed as a result of reading them.
From here, the book is propelled by Sheikha Bodour’s childlike curiosity and steadfast devotion as well as her erudition. She traces the lineage of her people back to the distant past. Back to their Neolithic ancestors who lived in semi-nomadic communities, built burial chambers and performed funerary rites. Here, no modern stereotypes of masculine power and domination are taken for granted — through careful and sustained archaeological work and research, she brings to light clues from an ancient civilisation that may have been ruled at one time by queens.
Her search takes her far and wide, and she unveils for the reader the histories of the ancient queens of Arabia, their names stamped in coins, written in ancient Aramaic, a language of political power and sovereignty at the time. Myth and intuition mingle with recorded fact, and threads must be disentangled.
Throughout the book, Sheikha Bodour clarifies that her journey is not linear but spiraling, a multidimensional path that moves inward as well as outward. She is not only uncovering the history of her people, but she is descending into herself as well. Research and extensive study are an undeniable part of the process, but as she seeks, unexpected revelations come to meet her. The past she looks for is waiting to be found. Weaving is a central metaphor through the book, the weaving of a story, of a world and of the self. This travail is unmistakably feminine, receptive as much as it is active. “The sand was guiding me,” she says, “teaching me, reminding me of something I had forgotten.” Steered by dreams and visions, she listens as much as she speaks, relying on non-rational forms of knowing alongside scientific expertise. Along the way, she understands that the sovereign feminine spirit she seeks is not only external to her but within.
Facing trials and disappointments along the way, Sheikha Bodour turns often to verses from the Holy Quran to re-centre herself, and sprinkled among her musings are the words of great spiritual masters that she continually draws inspiration from: Rumi, Hafez and others. The ideas of Jungian psychoanalyst and cantadora Clarissa Pinkola Estes also appear. These aphorisms are an offering to the reader, solace for their own inner search for meaning.
The pages of this book are haunted by those who have come before, their words, spirits and even their longings. The story that unfolds does not read as the journey of a single woman through a land, but as the movement of ancestors, their voices echoing in the vast desert. “This is the land where my ancestors once walked — barefoot, prayerful, present. They are the guardians of my soul, whispering from the eternally-bound past, calling me here — not as a visitor, but as a daughter returning home,” she writes.
The message is clear, and holds relevance far beyond the history of a single nation. The land is alive, and our dead are speaking. It’s time we listened.
Source: Khaleej Times