Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. While Abu-Jaber glories in Jordan’s beauty and culture, the shadows of poverty and authoritarianism are ever present.Ī slightly overwrought family drama set against a fascinating backdrop of late-20th-century Middle Eastern politics.Ī flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. Personifying Jordan, King Hussein is idealized as a grand-hearted optimist, a warrior for peace but his government’s secret police allow no opposition, and corruption is the norm. Jordan’s poor are meagerly represented by stereotypically devoted servants and noble traditional Bedouins. Abu-Jaber focuses on the ruling-class Hamdan family-generous, striving, proud of their Bedouin and Orthodox Christian roots.
The novel’s third, most complex protagonist is Jordan itself. Hafez is a disturbing villain: a feminist, an intellectual, and a loyal aide to his king but also selfish, vengeful, anti-democratic. Inadvertently, Amani also upends Hafez’s private agenda for the Hamdan brothers’ reunion, plans motivated by a combination of greed, envy, simmering resentment, and genuine affection for his favorite niece.
Amani is the usual contemporary heroine of this somewhat contrived romantic melodrama: She starts as passive and insecure then, through a series of plot manipulations and skillfully described adventures, particularly getting lost alone overnight in the desert, she discovers inner strength as well as the love of a courtly, handsome man who's half Muslim and half Jew. Along the way she uncovers a dark family secret concerning a long-lost relative. Gabe’s daughter, Amani, a recently divorced poet and professor, joins Gabe on the trip, her curiosity concerning her family history whetted after finding a scrap of poetry written and translated into English by her long-dead grandmother. Hafez Hamdan, a Yale-educated adviser to the king, has invited his younger brother, Gabe, who (like Abu-Jaber’s father) had been the king’s sparring partner years earlier, to participate in a fencing demonstration with the king. The 1995 monthlong birthday festivities are the government’s attempt to highlight Jordan’s influence in the region and Hussein’s peacemaking skills. A woman from Syracuse, New York, makes her first trip to Jordan with her immigrant father to celebrate King Hussein’s 60th birthday.
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