picador australia

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PICADOR AUSTRALIA NOTES FOR READING GROUPS

Loubna Haikal SEDUCING MR MACLEAN

Notes by Robyn Sheahan-Bright

CONTENTS: • • • •

Thematic & Plot Summary Writing Style & Techniques The Author Questions for Discussion

THEMATIC AND PLOT SUMMARY ‘After all, I was representing my country and it was in a state of war and I didn’t want to start another one in Australia.’ (p.21) This novel is about migration and the aspirations of a Lebanese family, the members of which flee from the war in Beirut hoping for a peaceful and successful life in Australia. They find themselves embattled in a range of ways which prove even more taxing than hiding in bomb shelters and fearing for their lives. First they discover, to their disappointment, that Lebanese immigrants are not always popular in Australia. They become embroiled initially in what proves to be a miniature Arab Conflict. Then, not only are the Australians whom they meet less than welcoming, but their own country men prove to be unscrupulous and dangerous too. ‘Trouble came from all over the Middle East.’ (p.253) Living in Australia is like being at the frontline every day of their lives and they need to learn some new strategies for survival - fast! Things after they arrive in Melbourne don’t go entirely to plan for Naiim and his wife Hayat. They work as taxi driver and airport cleaner respectively, in order to support their eight children. Hayat feels isolated and culturally impoverished and Naiim feels ‘castrated’ by his lack of power in this new society, particularly since Hayat’s wages are essential to the household’s survival. Their eldest daughter Samia falls pregnant to Fathi, a married Turkish Muslim and bears him a hyperactive son, whereupon she’s banished to Sydney for fear of the neighbours finding out (p.11); her beautiful twin brothers defer their first year of engineering ‘for four years’, and share a girlfriend Sharon, who is a psychologist with the welfare department (p.12) ; their ‘dark and hairy’ (p.13) younger sisters, Jamal, Manal, Amal, Nawal, are described by Hayat as ‘a chain of grief’; they’re unlikely to find a husband, and at St Brigid’s Primary School they’re transformed into Janie, Minnie, Amy and Nelly. The unnamed narrator therefore bears the brunt of all her parents’ expectations as their second daughter, since her siblings fail to prosper. The novel begins with her graduation as a doctor, jubilantly celebrated by Naiim, the community, and his VIP friends and acquaintances. The night becomes a fateful one when Naiim dies while performing the dramatic crouching jump. ‘And the doctor who had just graduated and was going to save all the Lebanese, could not save her own father, could not even delay his final moment.’ (p.9) The novel then takes a backward turn as the narrator recalls the years of her study leading up to her father’s passing. She tells of how the beneficent Mr Shareef ‘takes the family under his wing’ when their fortunes look gloomy and inveigles them into all sorts of illegal activities by appealing to the fact that they know that they are a better class of Lebanese than the village people. He helps them to ‘rise in society’ by first offering them bribes to store illegal goods in their ceiling, and then by acquiring the Restaurant Antar for them. There Mr Shareef and his friends store stocks of increasingly more dangerously illegal goods, and the male twins in the family become ‘police men’ who are paid by Shareef and his powerful friends. Wealthy patrons ensure that the Antar escapes the attention of the law - in fact one of Shareef’s most influential friends is the Police Commissioner who ensures that no one interferes! Naiim begins an affair with the Egyptian cook, Elham, and Hayat is so incensed that she lures Naiim into resuming their conjugal relations and becomes pregnant. The baby boy, conceived ‘to keep dad at home and stop him straying with that other woman Elham’ (p.13) is not yet born when dad collapses and dies. Meanwhile the novel also relates the narrator’s efforts to fit in at medical school and her confusion regarding male/female relationships in Australia via her romance with a fellow student Robby and her seduction of (by?) her Professor Maclean. This novel satirises, in order to explore, the marked differences between the Anglo-Australian and the Lebanese-Australian, and how the family try to resolve these differences in their own

ways. ‘But I felt like two - you know, like two people, one local and another imported, and they wrestled in that strange room that afternoon ... my genes ... would never disappear and become diluted’ (p.195) Her lack of understanding about the culture is painfully obvious in her clumsy handling of the Professor of Medicine’s less than subtle seduction techniques. First she is flattered by his attentions and assistance: ‘I was amazed by my progress since the beginning of the year, when I had felt so nervous and strange in a room with an Australian ... I had become comfortable with his culture, feeling almost as if I was an actress in an American movie.’ (p.34) Then she realises that she’s out of her depth. ‘I knew I was in foreign territory and I needed to explain to him about the Evil Eye, ... But I couldn’t ...’ (p.37) Double entendres abound in this satire of cultural misunderstandings; the Professor searches for her ‘ruby’; she thinks her mates are talking about crickets when they are discussing sport and resolves to admire their dedication and thinks that ‘for Lebanon to get anywhere we should start appreciating the small things.’ (p.43) Conversely, when the Professor talks of ‘bowling maidens over’ (p.43) she blushes. Her ‘difference’ is alluring to him and exciting for her. She loves that he calls her ‘exotic’, for at home in Beirut she’s just another Lebanese girl with nostrils which are too large for her face! Fitting in at university is hard. Even though she speaks both English and French fluently, becoming an Australian medical student takes a certain dedication. She practises being ‘one of the boys’ and learns to speak as they do. ‘Words I must have picked up en passant, ... and I felt as if I was rehearsing a new language, someone else’s language, other people’s lines, and I just spoke them raw, unedited, and that made everyone crack up.’ (p.41) She feels liberated at uni, ‘I felt anonymous, I had no family names, no country, no mother and no father to worry about.’ (p.60) Similarly although the rest of the family resist it, they too become more Australian. ‘Australians abbreviate everything.’ (p.42) Her sisters’ names are Anglicised and friends try to change dad from ‘Naiim Abou eltowm’, meaning, ‘Naiim the father of the twins’ (p.43), to Norm. Looking back, though, she realises how her parents subtly changed, despite their resistance. Mum gave up her weekly hairdressing appointments and began to leave the house without lipstick or stockings; dad stopped throwing cigarette butts in the street. It was ‘as if we had gone through a tunnel and come out with different eyes, and I must admit with a different brain.’ (p.70) She also realises that her love for Robby was part of this process, ‘He had become my identity, the proof that I had made it to the heart, the centre of Australia. I could have become whatever he wanted me to be.’ (p.75) Her mother ‘had forgotten everything that she came with and replaced it with nothing, work and worry. So Mum went to the bombs and the shelters to recover from the stress and the cameras.’ (p.158) Lebanese people are portrayed as being far more passionate and involved than AngloAustralians, because of the struggles they’ve faced as a people, and because of their attachment to their culture and traditions. The Professor advises her to, ‘Dissociate and concentrate ... They are the key to progress. That’s why you people are still behind. That’s why you keep on fighting each other, you can’t do either.’ (p.35) Whilst her fellow students discuss holidays and football she talks about things she knows, ‘like the war, weapon trade, politics, arms deals and how ‘Lebanon was transformed into a Vietnam when it was the country of apples and Gibran.’ (p.39) The family’s first disappointment occurs at Port Melbourne on their arrival when no one welcomes them into the country and subsequently when no one invites them over. The contrast is most visible in the uncompromising portrait of Robby’s parents who are painfully insular and desperately set in their boring ways. When Shareef pays for Hayat to take a holiday at home she is met by her relatives (in stark contrast to the lack of welcome they received when they arrived in Melbourne). ‘From the airport Mum was taken straight to the shelter. She was with family so she didn’t care ... In Australia she was not living, she was just killing time. Life had no meaning there, it was flavourless, like eating cardboard, dry, with no sauce, and she was a working machine, a number.’ (p.163) The dichotomy between this passionate culture and the ‘sameness’ of Australian life is constantly suggested, ‘I would rather the war than the emptiness.’ (p.93) This inertia in Australian society is also symbolised in the closing pages when the narrator fires a gun near Robby’s house simply to get some reaction. His mother responds with no emotion at all, and simply pulls the curtains as if that could keep any unnecessary disturbances out of her home. The Professor, laughing uncontrollably, shouts at them to ‘Wake up!’ (p.318) This novel presents a salutary lesson about other cultures’ attitudes to Australian culture. To those who parade its virtues as the best country in the world, Naiim’s family begs to differ.

Naiim believes that the Phoenicians are the superior race and discovered nearly every part of the world. (pp.65-6). He says that the Lebanese in Australia ‘are not the true Lebanese. Only the desperate ones come to Australia. Australia is still backward and too far for the classy ones - they go to Europe...’ (p.66) He tells Robby there is ‘too much law’ (p.67) in Australia, but writes to relatives that it is an easy country to make money in! When Hayat is going home for a visit she can find no presents that would impress them: only ‘made in China’ junk. The only thing of value is dollars, and tranquillisers. Though she has eight bags, ‘Mr Shareef, we knew, would get them through customs without paying one extra cent of excess luggage.’ (p.157) When they learn that the Professor is an orphan they pity him, but presume that his air of elitism must stem from some breeding. He seems an atypical Australian for they are all from convict stock: ‘the chance of meeting anyone in Melbourne without a blemish in their personal records or family tree was remote.’ (p.286) There is an undercurrent of savagery presented in Australian culture here, too, which is alarmingly familiar. Even the sophisticated Professor, in the confines of an Aussie pub begins to behave boorishly. He relieves himself publicly; makes fun of her accent and taunts her to belly dance. Her reaction though is typical; not to spurn him but to be relieved when a joke distracts him, and she feels ‘safe’ again. (p.48) When Shareef forces Naiim to open a restaurant he dismisses Australians: ‘Let them bring their eskies and beer and feed them bread and hoummous all day ... you can even feed them stones ... as long as they can drink they will think they are at the best restaurant, they won’t know any better.’ (p.160) This ‘superiority’ extends to intra-cultural differences too. No culture is entirely mono-cultural - every culture is made up of class and religious differences. Naiim and Hayat presume they are superior to many of their countrymen and neighbours in the Middle East. ‘Make sure you tell the Dean the Lebanese are very different from the rest of the Arabs. Tell him we are more like the Westerners. Tell him Beirut is the Switzerland of the Middle East and better. Don’t feel embarrassed and forget how to talk. He needs to know who we are, you are our spokesperson now, be proud.’ (p.17) Difference is most closely observed in terms of the narrator’s relations with Australian men, for Lebanese men are very different! Robby is at first not sure of her background (p.51) but instantly attracted to her. ‘I looked so aloof, so self-possessed, so exotic, he said that I looked too good for him.’ (p.51) When they do get together he calls her his ‘Lebanese queen’ (p.52). He loves her Lebanese self and wants ‘to belong’. But cross-cultural male-female attitudes differ. Her culture must protect virginity at all costs, and gives men the power to dictate in intrusive ways. ‘for a long time, I protected myself from him. No, he wasn’t my enemy, not at that stage ... So, even though I loved Robby, whenever we were alone, particularly in the dark, I saw him purely as a threat’ (p.53). ‘Being alone with Robby was a mighty effort, it was like playing with fire ... Love is strong and devious.’ (p.55) Her parents disapprove of Australian boyfriends because they do not have the same values, but accept him because he seems willing to marry and to adopt their customs. But his family’s lack of emotion is always a problem. And she fails to realise immediately that once she’s ‘given herself’ to him, he loses interest in her because his fantasy has been destroyed. The final straw is the Palm Sunday Mass when a child sets fire to his blonde ponytail and he tells her that it’s all too ‘intense’. Though she vows to ‘tone down’ for him the damage is irreparable. ‘Robby was burnt out. He craved chops and vegetables and the screen of a coloured TV and an afternoon of watching a VFL football game and the unconcern of his own home life.’ (p.138) The Professor also loves her because she’s exotic, and he imagines that he wants to ‘become’ like her, as well. She feels pressured by him to behave ‘authentically, like an authentic virgin, a shy one, or maybe like a Lebanese goddess.’ (p.272) ‘I was his Sheherezade but he was my captive.’ (p.291) Metaphors of war, death and injury help to cement the ideas of difference and conflict being expressed in the novel. ‘The war in Lebanon was intensifying. So was the war in Melbourne.’ (p.59) Death and injury are presented via the comparisons between war scenes and the cadaver room in the medical faculty. ‘With so many cadavers lying on trolleys side by side it looked too much like the scene of a massacre. I had never witnessed nakedness and death in one room ... Dead relatives and friends in Lebanon were honoured at the burial with the best clothes and perfume.’ (p.49) Again, though, this theme is treated light-heartedly. ‘Dissection demolished one of the nicest treats of Lebanese cuisine and turned me into a total vegetarian for the rest of that year.’ (p.50) Difference is also explored in terms of its easy transition into prejudice and ignorance. The narrator knows that Robby’s parents hold deep suspicions about her, ‘There I was, a terrorist

in their peaceful God-loving home and they didn’t know what to do with me.’ (p.74) They are complacent, non-demonstrative and totally ignorant of her culture (pp.72-3) to the point of rudeness. Robby’s dad truly believes that other cultures are lesser ones. ‘It’s harder for us to adjust to your customs than it is for you to adjust to ours.’ (p.85) These attitudes when carried further have been transformed into disputes such as those Australians have had in recent years regarding both detention centres and movements such as Hansonism. The novel also suggests that prejudice can lead to both exploitation and corruption. Both Anglo and Lebanese Australians are shown here to have been tarnished by the need to gain the upper hand in the battle for supremacy which is being waged. ‘Melbourne was craving exotic food, culture, girls. It wanted so much to be an authentic international city and we were there to do it.’ (p.175) The family make up stories with which to entertain their guests and feed them inferior food which will seem authentic when spiced with stories of war. ‘We polished and edited a whole past for ourselves while the customers enjoyed our dishes.’ (pp.173-4) This theme of corruption seems embodied in the person of Mr Shareef ‘the silent achiever, the silent provocateur’ (p.79) who is revealed gradually not only to have jeopardised her romance with Robby but also as the seducer of Samia, her elder sister, and as the man who introduced both her parents and brothers to illegal activities. His friends in high places such as Mr Whiteside, the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, and Mr Hunt, the Police Commissioner, guarantee that his nefarious dealings are not to be interfered with. He is able to sit at any table and receives an honorary doctorate despite his apparent illiteracy. ‘Any operation at government level that had anything to do with the Middle East, Mr Shareef was called upon to oversee it’ (p.166). ‘I had never seen so much power in silence.’ (p.167) The twins go from being drug dealers to policemen and ‘could just as easily have been headhunted by the army, into the position of commandant ... Thanks to the war, they had experience that could slot them into an enviable position anywhere in the world.’ (p.182) They also service Mr Hunt’s needs - his South Yarra apartment is his office (his wife and family live in Toorak) and the twins take turns to enjoy the fruits of their ‘labours’ for him by alternately staying there in luxury. They begin to wear outfits which smack of the gay Mardi Gras, and demand that Hayat wax their bodies - in the restaurant kitchen! Shareef is ‘known as the firemaker - he not only generated warmth in people with his donations, but he resorted to actual fire as a form of renewal, whenever any of his properties needed upgrading.’ (p.237) He also ‘trades in’ his old wife when he desires a new model and ‘buys off’ the old one with a house and a Mercedes, and her brothers, by buying them a mixed business. (p.239) It’s suggested that his example encourages other men in the community, like Naiim, to stray, into illegal activities and into sexual infidelity. Sexual corruption is also implied by the night arranged by Mr Whiteside who promises the narrator unlooked-for political power and then arranges ‘a double date’ which gets ugly. ‘It felt like a game but I had no proof.’ (p.192) She manages to elude his plans to make an interesting ‘foursome’ by engaging only in minor foreplay but is aware that the game Mr Whiteside was playing was deadly serious. The danger inherent in these games of power play are revealed in the final chapters when the twins are punished for trying to escape Shareef’s employ, in order to open a gym next to the restaurant, and are victims in a vicious road-side shooting. This satire is about cultural confrontation. It is about seeing oneself in relation to ‘the other’ and about the progress from innocence to experience in a new culture. It’s about identity, illusions and the mismatch between expectations and reality. It’s about war and peace. It’s also about the difference between contentment and inertia. ‘I had become a chameleon that best enjoyed lying on fair skin.’ (p.146) This family with simple dreams are buffeted by misfortunes and on the greatest day of their lives, their father Naiim lies dead. The story of their gradual enticement into the seedy world of ethnic politics, and of their various seductions is grim and frightening, although the levity does not allow this story to become maudlin. The narrator is no closer to understanding Australia or to being truly accepted there, but somehow, on the day of Naiim’s funeral, she finds a sense of having become part of this strange new society. ‘It was on that day, when I saw Dad’s body go inside the earth, that I began to feel at home in Australia.’ (p.297)

WRITING STYLE AND TECHNIQUES 1. Satire or black comedy is a genre (used by other writers such as Fay Weldon) which enables writers to make fun of serious subjects such as ethnicity, death, despair and love. Movies, too, such as Wog Boy have satirised ethnicity in order to make a point. eg The narrator’s parents like to go to doctors, not for cures but ‘simply to make up for what they missed out on in Lebanon.’ (p.25) The twins are the classic ‘spivs’ with dark glasses, gym passes and disco outings, they ‘acquired Mr Shareef’s silent language and shoulder movements, and were always in a hurry ... So they acquired an earring each’ (pp.11314). They ‘had skyrocketing overheads, they were spending it like mad on their friends their cops, on cars, mag wheels, sound systems.’ (p.159) Similarly, Naiim can’t understand why the police arrest people for wearing pyjamas in the street as he did at home and yet ‘people were allowed to go out in what looked like G-strings’ (p.120) in Melbourne. The most hilarious incident is when Hayat plans to lure Robby back to the family by mixing her daughter’s urine with the coffee he loves, but when he knocks the cup onto her new couch she is so preoccupied with cleaning that she forgets the plan, and Robby is released. Did you feel that this novel gave you more insights into immigrant experiences than it might have had it been written in a serious voice? 2. Structure is used here to maintain suspense and develop theme. This moves back and forth to reveal the influences which have brought her to graduation day, a technique which allows her to keep ‘secrets’ from the reader. eg Mr Shareef is described with foreboding but we don’t know the extent of his crimes until later in the novel. This moving to and fro in time and space also highlights the fragmented lives of migrants, having to live physically in one space and spiritually in another. It continuously brings back the conflicting values, ties and commitments between two countries and hence in their lives. Would this have been less suspenseful and less thematically insightful if it had been told as a chronological narrative, from the day they arrived in Australia? 3. Metaphors of medicine are used throughout the novel to make this a parallel between the notions of curing or making better, and killing or destroying. Choose a passage which particularly interested you and discuss. 4. Setting and time periods are important. This is set in the 1980s and this determines a lot of the action and characterisation. What differences would there have been, had it been set in the 1990s? 5. The novel draws on classical Middle eastern literature as a frame of reference. For example, it opens with a quote from Khalil Gibran which summarises migrant experience. It uses the idea of Sheherezade as metaphor for the ‘ideal’ woman in classical Arabian literature. What other texts were referred to in the novel? Discuss one of them. 6. Women’s body images, seduction, and rituals such as belly dancing are used as a focus in much of the figurative language used in the novel. eg Hayat’s breasts and belly looked like ‘two cannons sitting on a hill pointing proudly at the guests’ (p.3); the removal of hair is an expression of femininity, estheticism, and of cleanliness; the narrator’s nose is an emblem of her ethnicity. Were there any similes or metaphors which particularly entertained you?

THE AUTHOR Loubna Haikal was born in Beirut. She has lived in Australia since 1969. This is her first novel.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. The cover blurb of this book says it is in ‘the great tradition of migrant Australian satires.’ What other such works have you read? Discuss and compare. 2. Lebanese dress (p.30); food (pp.31,288), religious celebration (p.132+), superstitions (pp.22,143) and customs are described. Read more about the culture, and about multiculturalism. Read books on Orientalism such as Edward Said’s Orientalism or Ghassan Hage’s The White Nation to inform your discussion of the treatment of migrants as ‘the other’ in order to discuss the novel. 3. What do you think the novel is implying about the fate of her romance with the Professor at the end of the novel? Is he simply on ‘an ethnic holiday’ or does he really care for her? Migrant women are treated here as exotics; there is a fetishism about the Professor’s regard for her beauty. Is this typical of how Australian men treat women from other cultures? Are they regarded as ‘exotic’ commodities? 4. The topic of war is satirised, ‘I felt embarrassed, you know, that my parents kept on breeding, in the midst of all those bombs, with all that misery and even hatred all around them ... my youngest sister’s first word was bomba, bomb in Arabic.’ (p.33) Media images of the Lebanon have familiarised Australian viewers with unrest and chaos, but has given us a sanitised view. What do you really know about the conflicts there and their origins? 5. The pub in Australia is described as ‘a man’s world ... the loud incomprehensible language, the laughter confident, territorial.’ (p.40) Is the Australian drinker a deeply insecure personality or just a very friendly one? Are Australian pubs welcoming or threatening? 6. Robby’s dad is painfully ill-informed: ‘these races - the Lebanese, like the Aborigines - are backward, they should remain colonies because they can’t govern themselves.’ (p.74) Are his attitudes unusual or typical of Australians today? 7. ‘The land of no return, it swallows you, you disappear... Australia was the shark that swallowed us.’ (p.95) Do most migrants feel like this in your experience? 8. Police corruption is satirised here with the fake drug bust, but the media is even more mercilessly pilloried. The list of meaningless stories on the nightly news report (pp.124-5) and the manipulation of current affairs (p.170) is painfully familiar. Are we regularly patronised by our media, or is it simply providing the sort of news which most people demand? 9. ‘But even if the village in Lebanon changed, Pheonecia Lane never did. In Australia it was preserved at all cost as the only piece of Lebanon left in our world.’ (p.84) Does the novel help to explain the complex forces which determine such segregation? 10.‘I knew enough not to cause harm. That was all the examiners were looking for.’ (p.288) What sort of picture does this novel present of the medical profession and of the Australian health care system? 11.Men in this novel lack control over their lives; they suffer from an ability to determine the direction in which they should be heading. What is the difference between caricature and stereotype? Does a caricature allow the reader to remain detached as with a stereotype or does it implicate the reader? Naiim is inclined to boast and to swagger; Robby is weak and easily led; the twins are confused between what’s right and wrong, are caught between two cultures and by the corrupt predators; the Professor is needy and selfish, his efforts to learn Lebanese dancing are patently ridiculous, and when he becomes addicted to tahini, she ‘couldn’t help thinking of him as a baby, wondering whether the breast milk he drank had had tahini ... all the things which brought Lebanese breast milk on.’ (p.287) Is this a novel which suggests that even in a patriarchal society it’s the women who hold the cards? 12.‘Writing does seem nothing but a form of gossip, useless at best and harmful most of the time, talking about someone’s private life like that, stripping them in front of strangers.’ (p 283) What do you imagine the writer’s family and friends would make of this novel?

SEDUCING MR MACLEAN Loubna Haikal Picador Australia ISBN: 0330363042 These Notes may be printed or viewed for your own private, non-commercial use. This material is copyright and may not be repackaged, resold or posted electronically on networks without prior written permission from Pan Macmillan Australia Pan Macmillan Australia Level 18, St Martin’s Tower 31 Market Street, Sydney NSW 2000 www.panmacmillan.com.au

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