The Shape of Dust

by Lamisse Hamouda

An incredible true tale of overcoming injustice and ode to the fierce love within one family, The Shape of Dust is a haunting appraisal of the way Australia treats its citizens, both at home and abroad.

In 2018, on his way to a family holiday in Cairo, Australian-Egyptian citizen Hazem Hamouda disappears without warning, going missing somewhere between landing and customs.

His eldest daughter, Lamisse, has recently moved to Egypt armed with a scholarship to the American University of Cairo, and overnight her world is turned upside down. With little Arabic and even less legal knowledge, she finds out her father has been arbitrarily arrested. Going up against the notorious Egyptian prison system, Lamisse discovers that the Australian embassy provides shockingly little support to dual citizens arrested abroad.

Shouldering the responsibility of her father's welfare, Lamisse learns to navigate both deeply flawed systems, and freeing Hazem involves a reckoning with the two countries she's called home – coming to terms with the prejudice and racism of the country she grew up in and the corruption in the country she was hoping to reconnect with.

Told with exquisite intimacy by both father and daughter, The Shape of Dust is an Australian story unlike any other, and the striking debut of a writer of incredible nuance, insight and talent.

Genres: Egypt

395 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 4, 2023

Reviews

[Ayah · Rating 5 out of 5]

reading this book has been a hard thing to do, a necessary one. the pain of imprisonment is written about so aptly, that it translates and pierces through the pages. this one spoke to my own experiences as arab diaspora, and those of my family. but i was also just in awe of the writing, and how keenly aware i was that this was a poet writing a book. and how beautiful that this story was able to be told by lamisse, a person who i feel like, knows how to use words so powerfully that at the end of each chapter i felt like i’d been punched in the gut and left with the paralysing feeling of being winded. there’s so much complexity that comes with being australian and arab, going back to the country your family came from and navigating the privilege that comes with whiteness, and also the separateness. being from two countries means we cannot rightfully claim one, without discarding the other and through that neglecting a part of ourselves. i remember when i first saw this book, i thought it was yet another story of injustice in the arab world. that view was one that has been imposed on me from living in a western colony, where all refugee or migrant stories are homogenous. no two stories of injustice are the same, although we would like to believe they are. this view allows us to dehumanise people and dissociate from their pain and the cruelty they experience. i’m glad to have read this book and i encourage everyone else to read it too.

[steph · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a harrowing retelling of Lamisse's father's arbitrary imprisonment in an Egyptian prison. This book has so much heart and provides so much perspective into how quickly a life can change, and how powerless we as individuals can be at the hands of social, political and legal constructs that do not serve us.

Lamisse's writing was very powerful and shared an unadulterated and intelligent view into the gut-wrenching injustice that she, her family and particularly, her father, endured. The hopelessness of the situation was all encompassing. To think of yourself in their situation makes you thankful to never have had to know such horror. Lamisse does a terrific job at constructing a window into the pain her family had to endure and will continue to endure as a result of these unpredictable and hopeless events.

Hard topics are not shied away from. Lamisse provides a strong commentary on displacement and wrongful incarceration that gets you reflecting in a meaningful way. Her personal reflections are communicated in a clear and heart-felt way which work to shine a light on these important issues.

[Sian Willoughby · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly extraordinary book. Lamisse writes so well about politics, identity, culture, hope, faith and family. The story of her fight to get her father out of prison is confronting and gripping. I'm so glad I bought a copy, this has found a permanent space in the 'most memorable' section of my bookshelf.

[Damian “The Librarian” Ginevra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible story about unlawful detention in Egypt, presented in a super unique way (coauthored by daughter and father). Especially interesting given Australia’s own recent case around indefinite detention

[MargCal · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 ☆
Finished reading ... The Shape of Dust: A father wrongly imprisoned. A daughter's quest to free him. / Lamisse Hamouda with Hazem Hamouda … 19 September, 2023
ISBN: 9780648795117 … 371 pp. + Arabic glossary, References

Egyptian Australian Hazem Hamouda goes to visit his daughter who is studying in Cairo plus other family members of the extended family who live there. He never makes it out of the airport going from there to a police station then prison. He makes it home to Australia over a year later. It took a very long time for him and his family to find out that he was suspected of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, hated by the military dictatorship.

My takeaway from this is threefold.
- If you have left your country of birth and even if you now have a passport from another country that you call home, never go back to visit if the country is in the grip of a dictatorship, military or otherwise, where the justice/legal system is totally corrupt. It's too easy for such a country to claim you as one of them and declare an enemy of the country of your birth.
- Don't rely on an Australian Embassy or Consulate to offer you any effective help. You're basically on your own, and just be thankful if you get any help at all, no matter how small.
- Regimes such as described here are brutal. Arbitrarily so. You can rely on nothing. Although I think this is probably not the worst of such prisons. For example, visitors are allowed.

Lamisse and Hazem share the writing of about the first half of the book, roughly alternating chapters to describe what is happening to each other and their thoughts and feelings at the same time, in and out of prison. They have chosen different styles of writing. Lamisse chooses to write some things in Arabic and leaves you to check the Arabic in the glossary at the back of the book. This is frustrating because the glossary is incomplete. It was much easier to read Hazem's contribution because he provided translations wherever needed in what he wrote.
After Hazem stops writing, his contribution is provided by Lamisse either as narrative or as a transcript of interviews. It's not clear why this varies but it works, it doesn't interrupt the flow of the story.

An interesting read. Opens your eyes to what can happen even when you've done nothing wrong.
Worth a read.


Borrowed from my local library.
Purchased at my request.

[Tanya Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was terrifically and scarily real - I was also struck by the glimpses of normalcy and quiet kindnesses given by the people around Lamisse and Hazem, amid the vulnerability, depression, and turmoil of Hazem's unlawful imprisonment.

[Sia ale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Must stop reading these kind of books whilst travelling - my anxiety levels hardly recovered thinking I joined the brotherhood of Muslim during a Dubai transit 🫣

[Izzy Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal

[Farrells Bookshop · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of an Egyptian Australian man who travels back to Egypt for a holiday and is detained at the airport, then 'lost' in a corrupt jail system for months on end.

Read by Suzie

[Josie Seto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lamisse weaves together her family’s awful story with really sharp and nuanced reflections on trauma, family and being let down by systems and governments.

[Georgia Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book!!!! This book had me gripped, so interesting, so well written and highly captivating. This story was heart wrenching and felt so foreign. Thank you for sharing your story, 10/10

[Nicole]

DNF
This book was not for me.

[Elias Jahshan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honest, unflinching and courageous. Must-read.

[Annie Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a journey I have been in reading this book. Tears flowed.

I cannot recommend it higher

[Ally Scale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Swept up after hearing Lamisse Hamouda talk about “feeling over intellectualising” at MWF, I picked up ‘the shape of dust’ at the festival bookshop and I wasn’t disappointed.

This co-authored memoir (written with her father Hazem) focuses on her family’s exhausting fight to free her wrongfully imprisoned father in Egypt, and how state violence and injustice contort their lives.

It is well-paced, especially given its focus on a specific, tense period. It explores the bureaucratic maze of advocating for a loved one and the dilemma of how to fight for justice. Especially as an Egyptian-Australian moving between two worlds, encountering what Lamisse calls “the slipperiness of nationality.”

The family’s roles shift and change as they struggle to both support and advocate for Hazem, navigate their own lives, and handle the overwhelming mental load.

Hazem’s reflections from Tora Prison give a human insight into the machinations of a dehumanising system and these sections are the pulsing human heart of the book. Showing how the men create community in spite of the terror, the boredom, and the never-ending holding pattern of a life lived in limbo.

This allows us as readers to feel, not intellectualise, which was exactly Lamisse’s point. The men in Tora prison are human beings, not just a symbol of political struggle.

This is a clear-eyed, personal and honest memoir. The BEST part of writers’ festivals is discovering new authors and this was such a welcome find.

[Alex Chadwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing story. Brutal. Excellent descriptions of the emotional breadth throughout. I liked that it alternated between father and daughter’s perspective.

[Ada · Rating 3 out of 5]

An impressive and powerful account of Lamisse Hamouda’s struggle to regain her father’s freedom after his arbitrary imprisonment in Egypt. The author’s determination to achieve a positive outcome in a system where rules are opaque, the language is largely foreign to her and the society is deeply sexist, is a harrowing read at times. I found this book especially poignant in our current period of history where autocratic rulers seem to be a global threat to democracy. I’m thinking of ICE detainees in the USA, amongst others. Democracy is more fragile than we like to think.
I listened to the audiobook version of ‘The shape of dust’ and it was wonderful to hear Lamisse as the main reader. The genuine emotion in her voice moved me.