“He trained his eye on the barren land below, thinking of the concentration of human history here, in such a small corner of the globe—and yet how clean and innocent the desert looked from the air. After a lifetime spent in the urban landscapes of California, he liked this easy legibility of form, the broad and simple sweep of it, and played with the notion that his life here could reflect the same spacious characteristics.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (JAN 27, 2011)

In the period right after the first Gulf War, an uneasiness hung all over Kuwait—its residents forever waiting for Saddam Hussein to strike again. As an American expat in the country for five years around that same time period, author Anastasia Hobbet witnessed this unease first hand. It forms a perfect backdrop for her novel, Small Kingdoms, which tells the story of an assorted set of Kuwaiti and American characters.

One upper-class Kuwaiti family includes Mufeeda, the wife, and her doctor husband, Saaleh. They live in a huge mansion with their kids (who, they worry, are fast becoming too Americanized), Saaleh’s domineering mother and a whole assortment of maids and help. Across the street lives an American expat family—Kit who is a wide-eyed American who is trying to go beyond her humble Oklahoma roots; husband, Jack, who works at the Kuwait branch of an American company and their two children.

At the hospital where Saaleh works is an American doctor—Theo, a recent transplant to the country. Theo takes lessons in Arabic from a Palestinian woman in the country—Hanaan. The two are rebels from their individual cultures in many ways and it is perhaps inevitable that they soon fall in love.

The story that moves this novel forward revolves around the help, usually provided by South Asians. There have already been three cases of severe abuse and death of South Asian maids recently but nobody is paying attention. “…They’re mistreated and yet that fails to move us because we consider them so far beneath us,” says a local of the South Asian workers, “They’re cheap and expendable.”

But then, a similar situation arises close to home. Mufeeda’s cook, Emmanuela, a young immigrant from Goa, India, has been sneaking food and trying to get it through to a severely abused woman who is working next door. Deprived of food and fresh air, this woman is enduring the worst abuse and it is only slowly that word about her situation leaks out. Soon most of the primary characters—especially the women—will play a part in saving this woman from what would be an assuredly miserable fate.

Small Kingdoms succeeds in large part because of the tremendous observational powers of its author. Hobbet’s unerring rendition of even the smallest of details works to create a fascinating portrait of the Kuwaitis for sure, but also of the relationships they have with people outside their immediate circle. Very few authors are able to weave these kinds of precisely observed details effectively into stories (Jhumpa Lahiri is one who readily comes to mind) but Hobbet does so beautifully. In one instance Theo thinks back to his interactions with South Asians in his native California, when he meets an Indian doctor. He notices “the same blunt style he’d noted among newly-arrived Indians in the U.S.: Where do you live? What is your salary?” Hobbet writes. Even this seemingly insignificant detail is a precise capture of the community.

Class and status are important considerations in the society—Hanaan, native to Palestine, is considered a “bidoon” (a person without a state) and Hobbet writes about the class system that exists not just between the rich Kuwaitis and their help but also within the help itself. The driver for example, complains when his task is handed over to the gardener. “But he is just a gardener,” he says.

Especially interesting is the nuance Hobbet paints even the Americans with. To the Kuwaitis, Americans all seem like one big homogenous group: “Perhaps this was the essence of Americans. They could be fine people: sincere, well-educated, and yet very raw,” Mufeeda thinks. Yet, it is obvious that class plays out even internally within the expat community. Kit, who comes from a small community in Oklahoma, finds it difficult to get used to the idea of having someone else do the cooking or the dishes. She also doesn’t readily identify with other American women expats who come from presumably more urban backgrounds. “Everything’s alien to me, even other Americans,” she says.

As the book moves along, Hobbet also shows how many characters must face compromises that pit their cultural values against what they believe is right. The final choice might not always be what the reader (or the character) wants but it’s certainly understandable.

In a final sequence of events, the women in Small Kingdoms act in concert to save the starving Indian maid. In banding together they prove capable of uniting despite their cultural differences. What’s more it’s apparent that these bold acts are as much of a challenge for Kit as they are for Mufeeda. This is the only part of the novel, which I thought strained credulity a bit. Some readers might find it hard to believe that the ever-diffident, conformist Mufeeda would ultimately suddenly garner so much inner strength as to do what she does in the end.

The increasing tension surrounding the maid’s condition and the women’s attempts to free her is tied to a separate accelerating set of events—another strike from Saddam is imminent and the American families are ordered to evacuate. So essentially Kit must take part in this heroic effort as she races against the clock, trying to wrap it all up before she boards a plane for England with her children. This pacing too seems a little forced and eventually a little melodramatic.

In the end though, Small Kingdoms will be treasured for its contribution to literature about a place that is little understood. Hobbet’s enormous powers of observation allow her to weave a tale that is an insightful peek into daily life in Kuwait. The picture she paints with a varied and interesting set of characters is vivid and vibrant. You can almost taste the sand in your mouth.

What’s especially interesting is how much Kit and Mufeeda—women from two radically different cultures—have in common. It is Hobbet’s ability to shine light on their shared humanity that ultimately makes Small Kingdoms a moving read.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 19 readers
PUBLISHER:	Permanent Press (January 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Anastasia Hobbet
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another novel with insight into a Middle East country: In the Walled Gardens by Anahita Firouz

Bibliography:

• Pleasure of Believing (1997)
• Small Kingdoms (January 2010)

“It was as if growth had been the country’s vengeful response to Saddam. Spanking new three-story cement mansions sat on lots only meters bigger than their outer walls; all the freeways had been rebuilt; and the Cornice along the Gulf had been redesigned in its entirety, stripped bare of its immediate history as a battleground of the war. And everywhere, litter. It blew with the sand and grit of the city, tracing the fence-lines and thoroughfares, and cluttering the flat, dismal beaches. Children, standing on car seats, always unbelted, threw paper cups and candy wrappers from car windows like confetti, opening their little fists into the hot wind.”

Book Review:

Review by Debbie Lee Wesselmann (MAR 7, 2010)

Anastasia Hobbet’s novel about life in Kuwait between Saddam’s invasion of that country and the American invasion of Iraq is both gorgeous in its prose and compelling in its varied perspectives. Kuwait here is a real country, not a geographical footnote to a war, populated by people, both Kuwaiti and not, who navigate the difficult terrain of fear, loyalty, and social conventions. The story follows its characters to the brink of the second war where they, like the country they inhabit, face the changes ahead.

Theo, an American doctor who arrives in Kuwait following the death of his poet father, confounds the Kuwaitis and the Indian doctor for whom he works. Why would he want to work there if he did not have to? Even to the Kuwaitis, the country is a desolate choice for an American. The son of the Indian doctor, Theo’s friend Rajesh, warns that “there’s no more calamitous place on earth than the Middle East,” yet Theo yearns to erase his easy Californian identity for something more poetic: falling in love with a country not his own. When he meets his Arabic tutor, Hanaan, a Palestinian denied Kuwaiti citizenship despite having been spent her entire life there, he is faced with cultural barriers that seem impossible to bridge.

The other American protagonist, Kit, is the wife of an executive assigned to a temporary stint in Kuwait. Like Theo, Kit has recently lost a parent, but, for her, the geographical separation causes her more pain than comfort. Kit finds herself uneasy with the country and its social constructs, and she fears for the safety of her two children as rumors circulate of another attack from Saddam Hussein. At first, Kit is isolated, left mostly alone by her workaholic husband. She finds herself unable to identify with the other wives, who all seem more worldly and adept than she. When she meets her neighbor Mufeeda by accident, she finally glimpses the culture of her host country. Many traditions seem unfathomable to her, while others she finds exhilarating; however, what she learns about the underside of Kuwaiti society shocks her into action.

Kit’s neighbor Mufeeda, a true Kuwait in social standing unlike most of the other characters, is a devout Muslim married to the agnostic Saleh, a doctor and Theo’s colleague. Mufeeda runs her household staff as generously as she can facing the tantrums of her grim mother-in-law. Of all the characters, Mufeeda is the most traditional, a woman of her upbringing and station in life. As much as she hates it at times, she submits to the hierarchy of authority, both within her family and outside. For comfort, she turns to her religion. In one memorable scene, she runs into Kit and the other American women at the market where she finds herself caught between obligatory hospitality and horror at the brash manner of the Americans. Fittingly, she becomes transformed only because, out of an inability to rebel, she is dragged into a situation that confronts her with an ugly truth.

Emmanuella, a maid from India whose entire family depends on her meager salary, works for Mufeeda and, eventually, part-time for Kit. Emmanuella is the most vulnerable of the main characters, as her employers have her passport and can deport her at any moment. She risks everything to help the abused maid next door, and, in the process, finds herself at the mercy of a higher-ranking male servant and Mufeeda’s mother-in-law.

The paths of the characters intersect as the novel progresses, each story touching upon the others. Love, friendship, loyalty, and safety are tested. Theo, especially, makes an excellent guide through the intricacies of Kuwait from an outsider’s perspective, and both Mufeeda and Emmanuella offer what the jacket copy refers to an “Upstairs/Downstairs of the Arab word.” Ironically, given that she seems most modeled on Hobbet’s personal experience, Kit’s character is the least interesting, as her actions and motives are never as complex as the others’. Her naiveté often seems a device used to explain Kuwait to American readers, unnecessary since Hobbet’s descriptive language and other characterizations advance that understanding with ease. By the end, however, Kit is a pivotal character, as her actions propel the resolution for all the others.

Although the individual stories unfold with their own conflicts and outcomes, they share a common theme: challenging the societal norms. Each character faces a point at which he or she risks ostracism or physical danger by following his/her conscience instead of convention. This makes the author’s sensibilities seem typically American, but the novel does not suffer from this perspective; on the contrary, it gets its power from the courage of its characters and its critical dissection of cultural mores.

Perhaps most astonishing in this accomplished novel, Kuwait becomes a place so definite, so well-described that it comes alive on the page. Hobbet’s characters make worthy guides through this country of natives and internationals. Most Americans know Kuwait through images broadcast by CNN during the Gulf War, a country rich in oil but incapable of defending itself. Anastasia Hobbet offers a much more intimate portrait of a country struggling to come to terms with itself.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 19 readers
PUBLISHER:	Permanent Press (January 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Debbie Lee Wesselmann
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Anastasia Hobbet
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another novel with insight into a Middle East country: In the Walled Gardens by Anahita Firouz

Bibliography:

• Pleasure of Believing (1997)
• Small Kingdoms (January 2010)