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All That I Want to Forget
Fatima loves poetry and wants to study French literature--both of which are anathema to her strict and conservative much older brother, Saqr. While living under his roof, Fatima's hopes and dreams are scrutinized, mocked and slowly crushed as she is forced into his narrow vision of the right path.
Then Fatima meets Isam, a poet like her; they email love letters to each other and meet in secret. Saqr, however, has other ideas: she is married off to Faris, a complete stranger. He's not the cruel tyrant her brother was, but still she did not choose him.
Will she escape her past to live the life of love and poetry she craves?
Then Fatima meets Isam, a poet like her; they email love letters to each other and meet in secret. Saqr, however, has other ideas: she is married off to Faris, a complete stranger. He's not the cruel tyrant her brother was, but still she did not choose him.
Will she escape her past to live the life of love and poetry she craves?
224 pages, Paperback
Published March 5, 2019
4 people are currently reading
472 people want to read
About the author
Bothayna Al-Essa
23 books242 followersBothayna El Essa (Arabic: بثينة العيسى) is a novelist from Kuwait. A well-known author in modern Arabic literature, her novel The Book Censor's Library was longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction in their category for translated literature.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 15, 2019
This is easily in my top half dozen books, ever. It’s a passionate, tragic, uplifting, fragmentary story. It’s mostly prose, but reads as poetry. A positive paean to the need to write in one’s own voice, whatever the personal cost. Literature is her passion, and poetry her compulsion. I wept for a stranger who is no stranger, who has aspects of me and surely of you.
There is nothing here that I want to forget.
“The moment that poetry materialises in my life not as an identity or talent, but as a saviour, an active force in my life.”
The world of an oppressed Kuwaiti woman was totally unfamiliar to me, and yet we have so much in common. Literature unites.
Worlds Collide
On a Saturday evening, in a trendy Mexican restaurant in Soho, London, a woman came and sat at the next table to us. She ordered and ate alone, eagerly reading a book all the while. She was in her late-30s, wearing a hijab (headscarf) and a long brown robe. The title and cover looked incongruous, and when I later looked it up I was fascinated that a conservatively-clad Muslim woman was reading such a radical book in public.
This is That Book
“I am far and you are near.”
• This is not a story of love found and lost - though it is.
• This is not a story of sudden bereavement and emotional abuse - though it is all that too.
• This is not a story of rebellion and escape - though that happens in secret and literal ways.
• This is not written to give insight into the lives of Kuwaiti women in conservative Muslim families - though it does.
It’s a poetic, philosophical portrayal of a psychological, sociological story.
“All of the beautiful things departed at once… Everything died; everything except me.”
Fatima’s comfortable, loving, relaxed childhood is destroyed when she is suddenly orphaned, aged thirteen, and her very conservative half-brother takes her in. She is “raped of her childhood” and he is Big Brother (she later references Orwell’s “boot stamping on a human face - for ever”). Saqr controls, bullies, demeans, indoctrinates, monitors, and moulds her to be a suitable wife for whoever he chooses. There is no comfort, let alone love; he’s only interested in finding and eliminating her flaws. By stripping her of every personal trait, and removing all autonomy, “I was no longer mine”. She is broken and compliant, “the bird enamoured of its cage, the one with a phobia of the sky”. But poetry gives her a tantalising glimpse at the sky. She meets a poet. A marriage is arranged - but not to him.
Note: no spoilers above: that’s on the back cover and early pages.
Dozens of very short chapters skip and traipse between different episodes in her life, interspersed with more poetic paragraphs. The long middle epistolary section comprises intimate, poetic emails with Isam, and is even more exquisite than the rest, but magically avoids prurience.
Image: Kuwait City (Panorama) by Saad Al-Enezi - an outwardly modern place (Source).
Grief
"The pit I fell into is in me, the pit is me, the fall is me."
"A pit opened up around me ready to drink from my soul."
I’m not consciously seeking books about grief and bereavement, but after my father’s totally unexpected death at the end of last year, where such themes arise, I’m raw to the message. This was viscerally poetic and unexpectedly pertinent on sudden bereavement, though the many mentions of tombs and pits are more literal for her than me, and for much of the time, she has no one sympathetic to her pain, and some who make it worse:
“I followed the conversation from the deepest of the wounds I’d acquired after my parents died. I could feel their hands reaching deep inside me and pulling the scabs off.”
This is an uplifting book, in part because it is a triumph over the grief at its heart:
“My heart is a black hole
Sucking everything in
I am the crushing mouth of nonexistence
I am the end of the world.”
Poems Need an Audience
“His poetry overflowed with orphanhood and exile… I felt he made the disaster inside me speak.”
The whole book is poetic, and much of it is about creating, protecting, hiding, destroying (“drowned in a bucketful of tears”), or publishing them, but there are few whole poems. The great revelation is how they change, and are reborn, when shared:
“My poems, my little creatures, will wrap my voice around their shoulders and soar into the air… I am setting them free today, weaning them, granting them their wider existence outside of me.”
Forgetting to Forget
If Google is more accurate than the publisher, the title is actually "I grew up and forgot to forget", which fits more closely with the opening page:
"They always told me, 'You'll grow up and forget all about it.'
When I fell and cracked my skull...
When the vessel sheltering my spirit broke.
When my parents died.
When I didn't die.
When the world was too much and I was alone.
When my brother tore apart my doll because Barbie is haram...
When I wrote my first poem on the bottom of a box of tissues,
Trembling in fear...
When he finally slapped me.
They all said, 'You'll grow up and forget all about it.'
Problem is, I grew up and I didn't forget.
I grew up and I didn't forget all that I want to forget."
Image: Erasing memories (Source.)
Quotes about Writing
• ”What is Poetry? What are Words? Is poetry the ends or the means?”
• “The first time I traveled without going anywhere, it was through a foreign language… Like music - you love the way it feels in your ear and in your mouth… its ability to melt on your tongue”
• "I embrace the shattered pieces of myself so that I might write...
Give me my language so that I might think, so that I might exist,
So that I might know myself, so that I might know You."
• “I write the silence and melt inside it.”
• “Writing is an act of listening more than one of disclosure.”
Other Quotes
• “Love is a crime and a punishment… For the crime of allowing love to happen.”
• “Love that is slowly being woven between our fingers.”
• “My best friend and my worst enemy, work steadily, with my blessing, toward my undoing.” (Antidepressants.)
• “A cheap hotel that flaunts its ugliness as if it were an achievement.”
• “In this world, men sleep with a woman and then get to know her.”
• “He was ideal… except that he’d never once been a party of any of my dreams.”
• “Television, my master, my first husband… smuggling me out of my reality.”
بثينة العيسى (Bothayna Al-Essa)
Image: Bothayna Al-Essa, surrounded by books (Source).
Her name is transliterated from Arabic in multiple ways: I’ve seen Bothayna and Buthaina, sometimes a middle name of Wail or Wael, and a last name of al-Essa, Al-Issa, and Alissa.
This seems to be her only novel available in English. It’s not especially autobiographical: she is a Kuwaiti woman, but she had a good education (medicine, then switching to finance/management) followed by a government job, but she always had a passion for literature that, for years, she felt was slightly shameful. Fortunately, she’s come to embrace it, publicly and eloquently.
More about the author:
• Her commencement speech (translated to English) at Kuwait University in 2018, where she explains her path from science to literature, and the importance of finding one’s voice: HERE.
• Her blog posts on takweeen.com (right click to translate): HERE.
Image: Bothayna Al-Essa, surrounded by books (Source).
There is nothing here that I want to forget.
“The moment that poetry materialises in my life not as an identity or talent, but as a saviour, an active force in my life.”
The world of an oppressed Kuwaiti woman was totally unfamiliar to me, and yet we have so much in common. Literature unites.
Worlds Collide
On a Saturday evening, in a trendy Mexican restaurant in Soho, London, a woman came and sat at the next table to us. She ordered and ate alone, eagerly reading a book all the while. She was in her late-30s, wearing a hijab (headscarf) and a long brown robe. The title and cover looked incongruous, and when I later looked it up I was fascinated that a conservatively-clad Muslim woman was reading such a radical book in public.
This is That Book
“I am far and you are near.”
• This is not a story of love found and lost - though it is.
• This is not a story of sudden bereavement and emotional abuse - though it is all that too.
• This is not a story of rebellion and escape - though that happens in secret and literal ways.
• This is not written to give insight into the lives of Kuwaiti women in conservative Muslim families - though it does.
It’s a poetic, philosophical portrayal of a psychological, sociological story.
“All of the beautiful things departed at once… Everything died; everything except me.”
Fatima’s comfortable, loving, relaxed childhood is destroyed when she is suddenly orphaned, aged thirteen, and her very conservative half-brother takes her in. She is “raped of her childhood” and he is Big Brother (she later references Orwell’s “boot stamping on a human face - for ever”). Saqr controls, bullies, demeans, indoctrinates, monitors, and moulds her to be a suitable wife for whoever he chooses. There is no comfort, let alone love; he’s only interested in finding and eliminating her flaws. By stripping her of every personal trait, and removing all autonomy, “I was no longer mine”. She is broken and compliant, “the bird enamoured of its cage, the one with a phobia of the sky”. But poetry gives her a tantalising glimpse at the sky. She meets a poet. A marriage is arranged - but not to him.
Note: no spoilers above: that’s on the back cover and early pages.
Dozens of very short chapters skip and traipse between different episodes in her life, interspersed with more poetic paragraphs. The long middle epistolary section comprises intimate, poetic emails with Isam, and is even more exquisite than the rest, but magically avoids prurience.
Image: Kuwait City (Panorama) by Saad Al-Enezi - an outwardly modern place (Source).
Grief
"The pit I fell into is in me, the pit is me, the fall is me."
"A pit opened up around me ready to drink from my soul."
I’m not consciously seeking books about grief and bereavement, but after my father’s totally unexpected death at the end of last year, where such themes arise, I’m raw to the message. This was viscerally poetic and unexpectedly pertinent on sudden bereavement, though the many mentions of tombs and pits are more literal for her than me, and for much of the time, she has no one sympathetic to her pain, and some who make it worse:
“I followed the conversation from the deepest of the wounds I’d acquired after my parents died. I could feel their hands reaching deep inside me and pulling the scabs off.”
This is an uplifting book, in part because it is a triumph over the grief at its heart:
“My heart is a black hole
Sucking everything in
I am the crushing mouth of nonexistence
I am the end of the world.”
Poems Need an Audience
“His poetry overflowed with orphanhood and exile… I felt he made the disaster inside me speak.”
The whole book is poetic, and much of it is about creating, protecting, hiding, destroying (“drowned in a bucketful of tears”), or publishing them, but there are few whole poems. The great revelation is how they change, and are reborn, when shared:
“My poems, my little creatures, will wrap my voice around their shoulders and soar into the air… I am setting them free today, weaning them, granting them their wider existence outside of me.”
Forgetting to Forget
If Google is more accurate than the publisher, the title is actually "I grew up and forgot to forget", which fits more closely with the opening page:
"They always told me, 'You'll grow up and forget all about it.'
When I fell and cracked my skull...
When the vessel sheltering my spirit broke.
When my parents died.
When I didn't die.
When the world was too much and I was alone.
When my brother tore apart my doll because Barbie is haram...
When I wrote my first poem on the bottom of a box of tissues,
Trembling in fear...
When he finally slapped me.
They all said, 'You'll grow up and forget all about it.'
Problem is, I grew up and I didn't forget.
I grew up and I didn't forget all that I want to forget."
Image: Erasing memories (Source.)
Quotes about Writing
• ”What is Poetry? What are Words? Is poetry the ends or the means?”
• “The first time I traveled without going anywhere, it was through a foreign language… Like music - you love the way it feels in your ear and in your mouth… its ability to melt on your tongue”
• "I embrace the shattered pieces of myself so that I might write...
Give me my language so that I might think, so that I might exist,
So that I might know myself, so that I might know You."
• “I write the silence and melt inside it.”
• “Writing is an act of listening more than one of disclosure.”
Other Quotes
• “Love is a crime and a punishment… For the crime of allowing love to happen.”
• “Love that is slowly being woven between our fingers.”
• “My best friend and my worst enemy, work steadily, with my blessing, toward my undoing.” (Antidepressants.)
• “A cheap hotel that flaunts its ugliness as if it were an achievement.”
• “In this world, men sleep with a woman and then get to know her.”
• “He was ideal… except that he’d never once been a party of any of my dreams.”
• “Television, my master, my first husband… smuggling me out of my reality.”
بثينة العيسى (Bothayna Al-Essa)
Image: Bothayna Al-Essa, surrounded by books (Source).
Her name is transliterated from Arabic in multiple ways: I’ve seen Bothayna and Buthaina, sometimes a middle name of Wail or Wael, and a last name of al-Essa, Al-Issa, and Alissa.
This seems to be her only novel available in English. It’s not especially autobiographical: she is a Kuwaiti woman, but she had a good education (medicine, then switching to finance/management) followed by a government job, but she always had a passion for literature that, for years, she felt was slightly shameful. Fortunately, she’s come to embrace it, publicly and eloquently.
More about the author:
• Her commencement speech (translated to English) at Kuwait University in 2018, where she explains her path from science to literature, and the importance of finding one’s voice: HERE.
• Her blog posts on takweeen.com (right click to translate): HERE.
Image: Bothayna Al-Essa, surrounded by books (Source).
September 16, 2019
This is easily in my top half dozen books, ever. It’s a passionate, tragic, uplifting, fragmentary story. It’s mostly prose, but reads as poetry. A positive paean to the need to write in one’s own voice, whatever the personal cost. Literature is her passion, and poetry her compulsion. I wept for a stranger who is no stranger, who has aspects of me and surely of you.
There is nothing here that I want to forget.
“The moment that poetry materialises in my life not as an identity or talent, but as a saviour, an active force in my life.”
The world of an oppressed Kuwaiti woman was totally unfamiliar to me, and yet we have so much in common. Literature unites.
Worlds Collide
On a Saturday evening, in a trendy Mexican restaurant in Soho, London, a woman came and sat at the next table to us. She ordered and ate alone, eagerly reading a book all the while. She was in her late-30s, wearing a hijab (headscarf) and a long brown robe. The title and cover looked incongruous, and when I later looked it up I was fascinated that a conservatively-clad Muslim woman was reading such a radical book in public.
This is That Book
“I am far and you are near.”
• This is not a story of love found and lost - though it is.
• This is not a story of sudden bereavement and emotional abuse - though it is all that too.
• This is not a story of rebellion and escape - though that happens in secret and literal ways.
• This is not written to give insight into the lives of Kuwaiti women in conservative Muslim families - though it does.
It’s a poetic, philosophical portrayal of a psychological, sociological story.
“All of the beautiful things departed at once… Everything died; everything except me.”
Fatima’s comfortable, loving, relaxed childhood is destroyed when she is suddenly orphaned, aged thirteen, and her very conservative half-brother takes her in. She is “raped of her childhood” and he is Big Brother (she later references Orwell’s “boot stamping on a human face - for ever”). Saqr controls, bullies, demeans, indoctrinates, monitors, and moulds her to be a suitable wife for whoever he chooses. There is no comfort, let alone love; he’s only interested in finding and eliminating her flaws. By stripping her of every personal trait, and removing all autonomy, “I was no longer mine”. She is broken and compliant, “the bird enamoured of its cage, the one with a phobia of the sky”. But poetry gives her a tantalising glimpse at the sky. She meets a poet. A marriage is arranged - but not to him.
Note: no spoilers above: that’s on the back cover and early pages.
Dozens of very short chapters skip and traipse between different episodes in her life, interspersed with more poetic paragraphs. The long middle epistolary section comprises intimate, poetic emails with Isam, and is even more exquisite than the rest, but magically avoids prurience.
Image: Kuwait City (Panorama) by Saad Al-Enezi - an outwardly modern place (Source).
Grief
"The pit I fell into is in me, the pit is me, the fall is me."
"A pit opened up around me ready to drink from my soul."
I’m not consciously seeking books about grief and bereavement, but after my father’s totally unexpected death at the end of last year, where such themes arise, I’m raw to the message. This was viscerally poetic and unexpectedly pertinent on sudden bereavement, though the many mentions of tombs and pits are more literal for her than me, and for much of the time, she has no one sympathetic to her pain, and some who make it worse:
“I followed the conversation from the deepest of the wounds I’d acquired after my parents died. I could feel their hands reaching deep inside me and pulling the scabs off.”
This is an uplifting book, in part because it is a triumph over the grief at its heart:
“My heart is a black hole
Sucking everything in
I am the crushing mouth of nonexistence
I am the end of the world.”
Poems Need an Audience
“His poetry overflowed with orphanhood and exile… I felt he made the disaster inside me speak.”
The whole book is poetic, and much of it is about creating, protecting, hiding, destroying (“drowned in a bucketful of tears”), or publishing them, but there are few whole poems. The great revelation is how they change, and are reborn, when shared:
“My poems, my little creatures, will wrap my voice around their shoulders and soar into the air… I am setting them free today, weaning them, granting them their wider existence outside of me.”
Forgetting to Forget
If Google is more accurate than the publisher, the title is actually "I grew up and forgot to forget", which fits more closely with the opening page:
"They always told me, 'You'll grow up and forget all about it.'
When I fell and cracked my skull...
When the vessel sheltering my spirit broke.
When my parents died.
When I didn't die.
When the world was too much and I was alone.
When my brother tore apart my doll because Barbie is haram...
When I wrote my first poem on the bottom of a box of tissues,
Trembling in fear...
When he finally slapped me.
They all said, 'You'll grow up and forget all about it.'
Problem is, I grew up and I didn't forget.
I grew up and I didn't forget all that I want to forget."
Image: Erasing memories (Source.)
Quotes about Writing
• ”What is Poetry? What are Words? Is poetry the ends or the means?”
• “The first time I traveled without going anywhere, it was through a foreign language… Like music - you love the way it feels in your ear and in your mouth… its ability to melt on your tongue”
• "I embrace the shattered pieces of myself so that I might write...
Give me my language so that I might think, so that I might exist,
So that I might know myself, so that I might know You."
• “I write the silence and melt inside it.”
• “Writing is an act of listening more than one of disclosure.”
Other Quotes
• “Love is a crime and a punishment… For the crime of allowing love to happen.”
• “Love that is slowly being woven between our fingers.”
• “My best friend and my worst enemy, work steadily, with my blessing, toward my undoing.” (Antidepressants.)
• “A cheap hotel that flaunts its ugliness as if it were an achievement.”
• “In this world, men sleep with a woman and then get to know her.”
• “He was ideal… except that he’d never once been a party of any of my dreams.”
• “Television, my master, my first husband… smuggling me out of my reality.”
بثينة العيسى (Bothayna Al-Essa)
Image: Bothayna Al-Essa, surrounded by books (Source).
Her name is transliterated from Arabic in multiple ways: I’ve seen Bothayna and Buthaina, sometimes a middle name of Wail or Wael, and a last name of al-Essa, Al-Issa, and Alissa.
This seems to be her only novel available in English. It’s not especially autobiographical: she is a Kuwaiti woman, but she had a good education (medicine, then switching to finance/management) followed by a government job, but she always had a passion for literature that, for years, she felt was slightly shameful. Fortunately, she’s come to embrace it, publicly and eloquently.
More about the author:
• Her commencement speech (translated to English) at Kuwait University in 2018, where she explains her path from science to literature, and the importance of finding one’s voice: HERE.
• Her blog posts on takweeen.com (right click to translate): HERE.
Image: Bothayna Al-Essa, surrounded by books (Source).
I first posted this review under a different edition, with the author's name in Arabic. There are some good comments under that review, which is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
There is nothing here that I want to forget.
“The moment that poetry materialises in my life not as an identity or talent, but as a saviour, an active force in my life.”
The world of an oppressed Kuwaiti woman was totally unfamiliar to me, and yet we have so much in common. Literature unites.
Worlds Collide
On a Saturday evening, in a trendy Mexican restaurant in Soho, London, a woman came and sat at the next table to us. She ordered and ate alone, eagerly reading a book all the while. She was in her late-30s, wearing a hijab (headscarf) and a long brown robe. The title and cover looked incongruous, and when I later looked it up I was fascinated that a conservatively-clad Muslim woman was reading such a radical book in public.
This is That Book
“I am far and you are near.”
• This is not a story of love found and lost - though it is.
• This is not a story of sudden bereavement and emotional abuse - though it is all that too.
• This is not a story of rebellion and escape - though that happens in secret and literal ways.
• This is not written to give insight into the lives of Kuwaiti women in conservative Muslim families - though it does.
It’s a poetic, philosophical portrayal of a psychological, sociological story.
“All of the beautiful things departed at once… Everything died; everything except me.”
Fatima’s comfortable, loving, relaxed childhood is destroyed when she is suddenly orphaned, aged thirteen, and her very conservative half-brother takes her in. She is “raped of her childhood” and he is Big Brother (she later references Orwell’s “boot stamping on a human face - for ever”). Saqr controls, bullies, demeans, indoctrinates, monitors, and moulds her to be a suitable wife for whoever he chooses. There is no comfort, let alone love; he’s only interested in finding and eliminating her flaws. By stripping her of every personal trait, and removing all autonomy, “I was no longer mine”. She is broken and compliant, “the bird enamoured of its cage, the one with a phobia of the sky”. But poetry gives her a tantalising glimpse at the sky. She meets a poet. A marriage is arranged - but not to him.
Note: no spoilers above: that’s on the back cover and early pages.
Dozens of very short chapters skip and traipse between different episodes in her life, interspersed with more poetic paragraphs. The long middle epistolary section comprises intimate, poetic emails with Isam, and is even more exquisite than the rest, but magically avoids prurience.
Image: Kuwait City (Panorama) by Saad Al-Enezi - an outwardly modern place (Source).
Grief
"The pit I fell into is in me, the pit is me, the fall is me."
"A pit opened up around me ready to drink from my soul."
I’m not consciously seeking books about grief and bereavement, but after my father’s totally unexpected death at the end of last year, where such themes arise, I’m raw to the message. This was viscerally poetic and unexpectedly pertinent on sudden bereavement, though the many mentions of tombs and pits are more literal for her than me, and for much of the time, she has no one sympathetic to her pain, and some who make it worse:
“I followed the conversation from the deepest of the wounds I’d acquired after my parents died. I could feel their hands reaching deep inside me and pulling the scabs off.”
This is an uplifting book, in part because it is a triumph over the grief at its heart:
“My heart is a black hole
Sucking everything in
I am the crushing mouth of nonexistence
I am the end of the world.”
Poems Need an Audience
“His poetry overflowed with orphanhood and exile… I felt he made the disaster inside me speak.”
The whole book is poetic, and much of it is about creating, protecting, hiding, destroying (“drowned in a bucketful of tears”), or publishing them, but there are few whole poems. The great revelation is how they change, and are reborn, when shared:
“My poems, my little creatures, will wrap my voice around their shoulders and soar into the air… I am setting them free today, weaning them, granting them their wider existence outside of me.”
Forgetting to Forget
If Google is more accurate than the publisher, the title is actually "I grew up and forgot to forget", which fits more closely with the opening page:
"They always told me, 'You'll grow up and forget all about it.'
When I fell and cracked my skull...
When the vessel sheltering my spirit broke.
When my parents died.
When I didn't die.
When the world was too much and I was alone.
When my brother tore apart my doll because Barbie is haram...
When I wrote my first poem on the bottom of a box of tissues,
Trembling in fear...
When he finally slapped me.
They all said, 'You'll grow up and forget all about it.'
Problem is, I grew up and I didn't forget.
I grew up and I didn't forget all that I want to forget."
Image: Erasing memories (Source.)
Quotes about Writing
• ”What is Poetry? What are Words? Is poetry the ends or the means?”
• “The first time I traveled without going anywhere, it was through a foreign language… Like music - you love the way it feels in your ear and in your mouth… its ability to melt on your tongue”
• "I embrace the shattered pieces of myself so that I might write...
Give me my language so that I might think, so that I might exist,
So that I might know myself, so that I might know You."
• “I write the silence and melt inside it.”
• “Writing is an act of listening more than one of disclosure.”
Other Quotes
• “Love is a crime and a punishment… For the crime of allowing love to happen.”
• “Love that is slowly being woven between our fingers.”
• “My best friend and my worst enemy, work steadily, with my blessing, toward my undoing.” (Antidepressants.)
• “A cheap hotel that flaunts its ugliness as if it were an achievement.”
• “In this world, men sleep with a woman and then get to know her.”
• “He was ideal… except that he’d never once been a party of any of my dreams.”
• “Television, my master, my first husband… smuggling me out of my reality.”
بثينة العيسى (Bothayna Al-Essa)
Image: Bothayna Al-Essa, surrounded by books (Source).
Her name is transliterated from Arabic in multiple ways: I’ve seen Bothayna and Buthaina, sometimes a middle name of Wail or Wael, and a last name of al-Essa, Al-Issa, and Alissa.
This seems to be her only novel available in English. It’s not especially autobiographical: she is a Kuwaiti woman, but she had a good education (medicine, then switching to finance/management) followed by a government job, but she always had a passion for literature that, for years, she felt was slightly shameful. Fortunately, she’s come to embrace it, publicly and eloquently.
More about the author:
• Her commencement speech (translated to English) at Kuwait University in 2018, where she explains her path from science to literature, and the importance of finding one’s voice: HERE.
• Her blog posts on takweeen.com (right click to translate): HERE.
Image: Bothayna Al-Essa, surrounded by books (Source).
I first posted this review under a different edition, with the author's name in Arabic. There are some good comments under that review, which is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
August 16, 2019
All human beings want to be respected and given independence. Sometimes it's difficult to realize that you are a woman and cannot have the same level of respect and independence as men. And yes, this differs from culture to culture. In Fatima's world, she was literally imprisoned by sexism whether it be in her brother's home or in her marriage. There was so much satisfaction in seeing her break free and refuse to accept that her life had to be like that. It was her discovery of her passion for poetry that led her to this freedom (and the author's love of it that made the writing so enjoyable). The love story was also deeply satisfying and I appreciate the author not making this one good man in Fatima's life her savior. She was her own savior.
January 27, 2019
“Writing is a glue:
It pulls me together,
Saves me just in time,
And leaves me to perish.
All that I want to forget is Bothayna Al-Essa’s latest novel which is translated in English by Michele Henjum. It is a coming of age story about a woman who loves and writes poetry and the oppression she lives under in Kuwait. The novel follows Fatima and her life after her parents die. She is made to live with her older brother, Saqr, who is married with children. Fatima looks back on her time spent under his roof and tells you with clarity how strict he was, the effect this had on her mental state and how she had no choice but to flee her forced marriage years later and run away. Saqr promises to look after Fatima following the death of her parents. The reader is told he crumbles her inside.
Al-Essa recounts Fatima’s wedding night, the “disaster” she has entered into and her husband who appears to be a kind gentleman. The next chapter details the time she moved in to live with Saqr, how she is shown her new home - a basement, undecorated, with cracks and moulds. She counts the fourteen steps she has to go down to enter and how she will spend seven years of her life there. Fatima is pulled under with emptiness, through Saqr’s removal of her personal items, the photos of her parents, no listening to music or chewing gum in public, no reading and no poetry. Everything is decided for her; mostly everything is prohibited. The language is clear, raw and direct. Al-Essa wants to lay bare how Saqr treats Fatima with no room for arguments.
Fatima gets no praise or emotional warmth. Whilst his own children are adulated for their work, Saqr ignores Fatima. She begs him - “say something nice to me to keep me going, before the ugliness takes over completely.” Fatima convinces herself she is a failure, worth nothing. It would be a surprise if anyone would marry her because she is foolish and an “old maid.” She is physically and mentally abused, tortured till she feels invisible.
Fatima’s saviours are her poetry and love for the written word. She wants to write meaningful poetry and study French, but is told Arabic is the best of all the languages and, therefore, the only one worth studying. She writes in secret with her first poem written on the bottom of a box of tissues. She is given forty lashes because Saqr finds the word ‘wine’ in a book she is reading. She wants to study at the College of Arts but spends months with insomnia and anxiety. The novel almost reads like a memoir; the writing was so personal and deep.
Fatima has one close school friend, Hayat, who one day offers to take her to a poetry reading. This is where she meets Isam and her life changes completely. They share a minimal few words yet feel a connection and exchange email addresses. The next couple of chapters take the form of their email communication; at times obsessive, occasionally tender and beautiful. Their relationship continues for over a year, with secret meetings and contact, until Fatima is encouraged to read poetry at a reading. Accidentally, this is published in the local newspaper and Saqr finds out. As a consequence and punishment, she is physically abused, starved of her computer and left in solitary confinement for three years. Fatima is forced to marry Faris as a means of escape.
The rest of the book details the collapse of her marriage, how she feels unworthy of her husband’s love and does not know how to accept it, to welcome it, to allow herself to be loved. Al-Essa examines how Fatima goes from one control to another; the acute level of insight she possess’ to know that Faris wants to control her narrative and have her living inside the house with no life outside. She looks at what it means to be a woman and that being female in this particular part of the world, may mean for some that someone else must take care of you because you are incapable of doing so yourself. The role of guardians are also studied in the book – who they are, what it involves and the fact that they are always correct, no matter what.
Fatima is “raped of her childhood” yet she sees her oppression and wants to rise above it. Our protagonist is strong and despite going through levels of isolation so many of us have no knowledge about , she stands and demands change. In a Middle Eastern society, I feel there will be many who can take courage from this. She craves warmth and love from Saqr but instead is given the opposite and, of course, much worse. He is an extremist, an oppressor, someone who feels women are below him, that raising children is “women’s work.”
The novel is a broken and damaged story, intertwining with the past and the present until they both combine. Women can fight and achieve great success anywhere in the world. There is a wonderful chapter in the book where Al-Essa examines the written word, whether it holds any meaning and if words are the cause of all misunderstanding in the world. Whether she is talking about her own writing or not, one cannot be sure. It is a loaded novel and one which communicates clearly to the outside world, providing ample room for discussion. Whilst it does portray the perpetual narrative that it is always the female who is oppressed in the Middle East, it also shows the authenticity of these stories and the courage to overcome the deprivation of education, of not allowing someone to reach out and learn, to expand their own mind.
It pulls me together,
Saves me just in time,
And leaves me to perish.
All that I want to forget is Bothayna Al-Essa’s latest novel which is translated in English by Michele Henjum. It is a coming of age story about a woman who loves and writes poetry and the oppression she lives under in Kuwait. The novel follows Fatima and her life after her parents die. She is made to live with her older brother, Saqr, who is married with children. Fatima looks back on her time spent under his roof and tells you with clarity how strict he was, the effect this had on her mental state and how she had no choice but to flee her forced marriage years later and run away. Saqr promises to look after Fatima following the death of her parents. The reader is told he crumbles her inside.
Al-Essa recounts Fatima’s wedding night, the “disaster” she has entered into and her husband who appears to be a kind gentleman. The next chapter details the time she moved in to live with Saqr, how she is shown her new home - a basement, undecorated, with cracks and moulds. She counts the fourteen steps she has to go down to enter and how she will spend seven years of her life there. Fatima is pulled under with emptiness, through Saqr’s removal of her personal items, the photos of her parents, no listening to music or chewing gum in public, no reading and no poetry. Everything is decided for her; mostly everything is prohibited. The language is clear, raw and direct. Al-Essa wants to lay bare how Saqr treats Fatima with no room for arguments.
Fatima gets no praise or emotional warmth. Whilst his own children are adulated for their work, Saqr ignores Fatima. She begs him - “say something nice to me to keep me going, before the ugliness takes over completely.” Fatima convinces herself she is a failure, worth nothing. It would be a surprise if anyone would marry her because she is foolish and an “old maid.” She is physically and mentally abused, tortured till she feels invisible.
Fatima’s saviours are her poetry and love for the written word. She wants to write meaningful poetry and study French, but is told Arabic is the best of all the languages and, therefore, the only one worth studying. She writes in secret with her first poem written on the bottom of a box of tissues. She is given forty lashes because Saqr finds the word ‘wine’ in a book she is reading. She wants to study at the College of Arts but spends months with insomnia and anxiety. The novel almost reads like a memoir; the writing was so personal and deep.
Fatima has one close school friend, Hayat, who one day offers to take her to a poetry reading. This is where she meets Isam and her life changes completely. They share a minimal few words yet feel a connection and exchange email addresses. The next couple of chapters take the form of their email communication; at times obsessive, occasionally tender and beautiful. Their relationship continues for over a year, with secret meetings and contact, until Fatima is encouraged to read poetry at a reading. Accidentally, this is published in the local newspaper and Saqr finds out. As a consequence and punishment, she is physically abused, starved of her computer and left in solitary confinement for three years. Fatima is forced to marry Faris as a means of escape.
The rest of the book details the collapse of her marriage, how she feels unworthy of her husband’s love and does not know how to accept it, to welcome it, to allow herself to be loved. Al-Essa examines how Fatima goes from one control to another; the acute level of insight she possess’ to know that Faris wants to control her narrative and have her living inside the house with no life outside. She looks at what it means to be a woman and that being female in this particular part of the world, may mean for some that someone else must take care of you because you are incapable of doing so yourself. The role of guardians are also studied in the book – who they are, what it involves and the fact that they are always correct, no matter what.
Fatima is “raped of her childhood” yet she sees her oppression and wants to rise above it. Our protagonist is strong and despite going through levels of isolation so many of us have no knowledge about , she stands and demands change. In a Middle Eastern society, I feel there will be many who can take courage from this. She craves warmth and love from Saqr but instead is given the opposite and, of course, much worse. He is an extremist, an oppressor, someone who feels women are below him, that raising children is “women’s work.”
The novel is a broken and damaged story, intertwining with the past and the present until they both combine. Women can fight and achieve great success anywhere in the world. There is a wonderful chapter in the book where Al-Essa examines the written word, whether it holds any meaning and if words are the cause of all misunderstanding in the world. Whether she is talking about her own writing or not, one cannot be sure. It is a loaded novel and one which communicates clearly to the outside world, providing ample room for discussion. Whilst it does portray the perpetual narrative that it is always the female who is oppressed in the Middle East, it also shows the authenticity of these stories and the courage to overcome the deprivation of education, of not allowing someone to reach out and learn, to expand their own mind.
June 16, 2020
The story is set in contemporary Kuwait. When her parents die in a car crash, young Fatima's life changes drastically. From a loving, open and modern household she moves to the guardianship of her much older brother, already married with children her age. Conservative, cruel and suspicious, Saqr intends to bring her up according to a strict code. She lives in a windowless basement room where she writes poetry and studies. When Saqr learns she is attending a writers' group and writing poetry, he drags her home and imprisons her for three years in the basement until he finds a suitable husband for her. After crushing her will with violence, sarcasm, degradation and isolation, he is only too eager to be rid of her. The groom, Faris, turns out to be a kindly person in the beginning but he too believes in the Islamic code of submission by women. Determined to save herself, Fatima runs away.
The story of Fatima's recovery of herself and a full life is moving and hopeful. But the story is really about how poetry enters into one woman's soul and opens the world to this nearly broken imprisoned girl. In language that is often poetic and mesmerizing, the author takes us into the strange world of a woman struggling to know herself and make a place in the world according to her own lights.
Originally written in Arabic (the author is Kuwaiti), the translation/text is a pleasure to read and I never felt something was lost in translation, that the text seemed to be missing a fuller comprehension. Highly recommended.
The story of Fatima's recovery of herself and a full life is moving and hopeful. But the story is really about how poetry enters into one woman's soul and opens the world to this nearly broken imprisoned girl. In language that is often poetic and mesmerizing, the author takes us into the strange world of a woman struggling to know herself and make a place in the world according to her own lights.
Originally written in Arabic (the author is Kuwaiti), the translation/text is a pleasure to read and I never felt something was lost in translation, that the text seemed to be missing a fuller comprehension. Highly recommended.
November 24, 2023
I feel like whatever I have to say about this book will be less than of what it is. It’s incredible. It definitely deserves more recognition.
My mum bought it for me from The Library Of Alexandria, when she visited Egypt and she just told me she had a surprise for me. She knows my love for books and poetry and, while I prefer to be one to pick the books that go on my shelf, I didn’t mind this one. It seemed very interesting from its description and it really caught my attention. My mum was right after all. I loved this book.
I have to say, the description doesn’t do it justice. It makes it sound like it has very plain writing, maybe even a common love story, like some if not most love stories, in which I don’t mind, but reading the inside felt completely different to what the description…well…describes. I really wish this book gets more recognition in the future. It’s so beautiful and it brings you so many emotions. That’s it. For anyone reading reviews debating whether they should read it or not, yes. Do it.
Side Note:
Not going to lie, Isam kind of creeped me out ‘cause he seemed slightly obsessed with her, on an unhealthy level, but, I mean if Fatima is okay with it, I’m okay with it.
Oh and Saqr, go to fucking hell, thank you.
And one last thing. I was trying to find any flaws that might want to make me say that it’s a 4 star book or I like I don’t know, but I seriously found no flaws whatsoever. Amazingly well written, short chapters, not many pages, not too much description or extra unnecessary details, amazing dialogue and strong characters. Everything about it is perfect.
One slight flaw that I noticed is the hard vocabulary and many unknown words or sentences that I struggled to get through but overall, I made sense of it. The poetry was incredible, the story was incredible, and oh my god I’m so glad I have this book on my shelf. Go read it. Now. Thank you.
My mum bought it for me from The Library Of Alexandria, when she visited Egypt and she just told me she had a surprise for me. She knows my love for books and poetry and, while I prefer to be one to pick the books that go on my shelf, I didn’t mind this one. It seemed very interesting from its description and it really caught my attention. My mum was right after all. I loved this book.
I have to say, the description doesn’t do it justice. It makes it sound like it has very plain writing, maybe even a common love story, like some if not most love stories, in which I don’t mind, but reading the inside felt completely different to what the description…well…describes. I really wish this book gets more recognition in the future. It’s so beautiful and it brings you so many emotions. That’s it. For anyone reading reviews debating whether they should read it or not, yes. Do it.
Side Note:
Not going to lie, Isam kind of creeped me out ‘cause he seemed slightly obsessed with her, on an unhealthy level, but, I mean if Fatima is okay with it, I’m okay with it.
Oh and Saqr, go to fucking hell, thank you.
And one last thing. I was trying to find any flaws that might want to make me say that it’s a 4 star book or I like I don’t know, but I seriously found no flaws whatsoever. Amazingly well written, short chapters, not many pages, not too much description or extra unnecessary details, amazing dialogue and strong characters. Everything about it is perfect.
One slight flaw that I noticed is the hard vocabulary and many unknown words or sentences that I struggled to get through but overall, I made sense of it. The poetry was incredible, the story was incredible, and oh my god I’m so glad I have this book on my shelf. Go read it. Now. Thank you.
March 29, 2023
There is something about translated fiction that is otherworldly and magical, how a translator can grasp the essence of another voice, another language, another culture, and do it all justice in a poignant novel is so impressive.
This story made me angry, sad, and joyous at the same time. A women in an oppressive culture fighting for freedom, fighting for love, fighting for herself, all through the medium of poetry. In simple yet eloquent language the narrator is both brutally and beautifully honest, with some sentences reaching unexpected depths.
“I am a poet in secret. I write the silence and melt inside it. The world has no room for my poems.”
Whist others are so relatable to many;
“I would read, guarded by the spirit of the poets and philosophers, making friends with the characters in novels, and living other lives.”
I felt every ounce of rage, frustration, and sadness for Fatima who represents so many women in oppressive cultures, and grateful for the medium of writing and poetry to set them free.
This story made me angry, sad, and joyous at the same time. A women in an oppressive culture fighting for freedom, fighting for love, fighting for herself, all through the medium of poetry. In simple yet eloquent language the narrator is both brutally and beautifully honest, with some sentences reaching unexpected depths.
“I am a poet in secret. I write the silence and melt inside it. The world has no room for my poems.”
Whist others are so relatable to many;
“I would read, guarded by the spirit of the poets and philosophers, making friends with the characters in novels, and living other lives.”
I felt every ounce of rage, frustration, and sadness for Fatima who represents so many women in oppressive cultures, and grateful for the medium of writing and poetry to set them free.
July 24, 2024
Beautifully written with poetry interspersed throughout the book and an emphasis on the fact that identity remains incomplete without expression (through language or other means). (Hoped for a more detailed ending).
"Give me my language so that I might think, so that I might exist...”
"we couldn't be more insolent in our desire to ignore the true essence of things and force them to submit to our whims"
"You want to risk a lot for a little
Because a lot is a little
And a little is more."
2/3/24
"Give me my language so that I might think, so that I might exist...”
"we couldn't be more insolent in our desire to ignore the true essence of things and force them to submit to our whims"
"You want to risk a lot for a little
Because a lot is a little
And a little is more."
2/3/24
July 23, 2025
There’s so much that works for this book. I saw myself in Fatima. I remember how it feels when someone threatens you with house arrest. I remember the shame that came with breaking social rules and having male friends. Books like these, stories like Fatima’s can feel stereotypical. They can feel stale. You know the ending.
But they help us, Arab women, remember what life was like when we were weak and helpless and under guardianship.
Beautifully written. Beautiful ending. Painful to read but worth the flashbacks of memories my mind convinced me didn’t matter anymore.
But they help us, Arab women, remember what life was like when we were weak and helpless and under guardianship.
Beautifully written. Beautiful ending. Painful to read but worth the flashbacks of memories my mind convinced me didn’t matter anymore.
March 18, 2020
An eloquent story through the eyes of a girl stricken with grief and a novelty of being a poet. Would definitely recommend this book to friends & family.
July 25, 2020
It’s beautiful. Strong and insightful and smart. Read it as soon as you can!
April 15, 2025
beautiful 3.5 ⭐️
July 26, 2024
Beautifully written with poetry interspersed throughout the book and an emphasis on the fact that identity remains incomplete without expression (through language or other means). (Hoped for a more detailed ending).
“Give me my language so that I might think, so that I might exist…”
“we couldn't be more insolent in our desire to ignore the true essence of things and force them to submit to our whims”
“You want to risk a lot for a little
Because a lot is a little
And a little is more.”
2/3/24
“Give me my language so that I might think, so that I might exist…”
“we couldn't be more insolent in our desire to ignore the true essence of things and force them to submit to our whims”
“You want to risk a lot for a little
Because a lot is a little
And a little is more.”
2/3/24
September 7, 2024
teared up at the end of the book > loved it
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