Name: Pomegranate
ISBN: 9781945371004

Weam Namou

In the weeks before the election of Donald Trump, Niran, a young, liberal, Iraqi Muslim immigrant struggles to find her footing in a neighborhood of well-to-do, conservative Iraqi Christians. Inspired by her idol Enheduanna, the first recorded writer in history and famed priestess of Ancient Mesopotamia, Niran navigates societal challenges, fights against cultural stereotypes, and most of all, aims to make her voice heard by all around her. With a desire to study, work, and love, Niran rediscovers her purpose in life. But surrounded by strong, opinionated women, can she live up to their expectations while meeting her own?

Pomegranate

aliza

** spoiler alert **
           This was such a short and comprehensive read honestly, i wasn’t expecting to like this book much & yet ended up really liking it ! i will definitely be needing quite a few business days to recover from this until then, heres a few of my favourite annotations from the book.

1.
“I am a rebel child. My body, my voice! Don’t tell me 
what to cover. Or what to leave exposed. Don’t tell me 
what I need. Or how to wear my clothes.”

2.
“My parents wanted a boy (As all of them do) Instead, 
they got a girl: A girl who has the heart and brain of 
a thousand men, the extraordinary design of a 
warrior, the fearlessness of a jungle cat. Push me 
down and tell me I can’t do it, and I will prove you 
wrong once again! My parents wanted a boy (As they 
all do) Instead, they got a warrioress.”

3. 
“The shoe is, well, dirty. It 
is on the ground and associated with the foot, 
the lowest part of the body. So, hitting 
someone with a shoe shows the victim is 
regarded as even lower than dirt. It’s the 
ultimate insult, sort of. For Muslim mothers, it is 
a weapon. That was why Ali had chosen to 
become an atheist and sever ties from Arab 
tradi-tions. Something his mother did not need to 
know.”


( The shoe getting called a weapon for Muslim mothers was such a real moment 😭🙏 lol !! )

4.
“He again asked himself a series of questions. 
If he, a mere mortal, could not handle the 
sight of the world’s present condition, how 
could God, the omniscient, all-lov-ing, all-
powerful, accept it? What kind of a God 
would let this happen? Why did He require 
constant prayer, praise, and rituals from people, and why did He respond to some prayers and not others? Were the starving children and help-less women not 
praying hard enough?” 

( I feel like we all at some point question this too i used to think it was a huge sin to even think about questioning God’s ways of doing things bcs thats what was ingrained into me from a very young age. Being curious about my religion was not an option if the questions asked were considered disrespectful to Allah’s way of doing things. )

There are so many more of my favourite annotations in there which i plan on typing out here later. Either way this was definitely a great read & i loved it !! 🫶🏻

i really wanted to like this book, i did, but the writing was too absurd. for example: 

"Well, I’m sorry massa!” Niran said, suddenly with a Southern accent and a timid voice, her fingers trembling as she pretended to be frightened of Mary. “I ain’t mean to anga ya! I was simply replyin’ to you comment! I fogot you was white! Don’t whip me massa!”

???? what

and then we have: 

"Wearing headphones over her hijab and a scarf around her hips, Niran belly danced as she swept the floor. The slight jiggle of her curves added to the meaning of this mundane work, and it was also a time for introspection and a chance to embrace her natural, feminine, hourglass figure. She shook her buttocks and breasts and twisted and rotated her hips in a most alluring manner. She used the broom as her dancing partner and did sensuous lift and drop moves with her hips and shoulders, even spinning and swinging the broom and throwing her leg over it."

aside from the derangedness of ass shaking in a hijab, this reads like that "male authors writing female characters" meme—if you told me this was satire of "she breasted boobily down the stairs" i'd believe you. and who wears a hijab in their own house??

even not including the nonsensical scenes above, i couldn't stand the writing style. it wasn't exactly "timmy picked up the ball. timmy threw the ball. timmy was a strong boy" but is was pretty damn close. the introductory paragraphs for mary was whole lot of "she's so nice! she's so charitable! she helps everyone do food stamps!" stop telling us what she is and show us??

also, this might be a bit petty of me, but i hate songs/poetry in books. now, i don't know anything about poetry, so i can't tell you if niran's poems were objectively good or not. i can tell you that to me, they seem very similar to corny tiktok "i am divine feminine" rupi kaur garbage, and most of them irritated the hell out of me.

in terms of plot point, i hated that the trumpian christian was presented as "normal" with views that we're supposed to take seriously, or at least with equal value as the muslim perspective. that niran continues to be mary's friend despite her blatant racist, trumpian nature, and that mary faces no consequences for her views, is just so insane to me.

(i'm never going to take criticism of islamic misogyny from a christian seriously, and if the author wanted to go that route, she should have made mary an atheist)

onto the reason i'm giving this two stars and not zero: niran's storyline, which i truly love and empathize with, pomegranate's saving grace. perhaps this is oversharing, but i've been forced to wear the hijab since i was five, and the burqa since i was eleven. i utterly despise the hijab and everything associated with it, having been forced into "modesty" at the threat of homelessness while my male family members get to walk around shirtless in public. every time i put on a hijab, something inside me dies, so niran questioning the patriarchal structure it represents—from the perspective of a muslim woman, not a christian fascist—means so, so much to me. i was delighted when she took off the hijab at the end of the book.

this is one of the only things i've read where the hijab is discussed through a feminist, antipatriarchal lens, instead of the same old racialized criticism or the even worse "hijab is a choice!" liberal choice feminist bullshit. hijab isn't a choice if you've been groomed into as a child, if you're constantly told you'll go to hell if you don't wear it, if in most muslim countries and muslim diaspora communities you can and will be raped and killed if you don't wear it. even it was a choice for some women, participating in such a ritual upholds patriarchal double standards of modesty for which other women are killed, so i love, love, love niran for taking it off. i'm so seriously proud of her, and i wish we had more characters like her. i wish someone else with a ...different style of writing had authored this book and given niran the story she deserves.

of course, the feminist lens of the book falls apart five minutes later when niran is going on about how much she loves makeup, another patriarchal concept forced onto women. i understand how niran can find it freeing after being forced to hide herself her entire life, but I don't like the idea that hypersexuality/makeup/beauty is somehow more liberating for women than modesty/hijab/tradwifism, when they are both sides of the same coin. but that isn't the point of this book, so i digress.

2.5 stars. thank you to booktasters for the book.

Pomegranate

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