On Translating a Novel of Might-have-beens in ’60s Dubai – ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY

New publishing house ELF Publishing has brought out Emirati author Reem Al Kamali’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction-shortlisted Rose’s Diaries in Chip Rossetti’s English translation. The novel, set in 1960s Dubai, is told through the eyes of a young woman named Ruza who wants a much larger life for herself — of travel, scholarship, and adventure — but is hemmed by family after the deaths of her parents.

In this conversation, we talk about why this novel (why now), how the novel is haunted by the lives Ruza could have had, the many words left untranslated, the role of clothes and fabric in the book, and working with a new publishing house.

Tomorrow, we’ll have an excerpt of the novel in Rossetti’s translation.

What brought you to this book? Previously, you have a strand of Egyptian work (AKT’s Utopia, Sonallah’s Beirut Beirut, Magdy’s Metro, and Makhzangi’s Animals in Our Days) a strand of short fiction, particularly that moves beyond realism (Animals in Our Days and Diaa’s No Windmills), and of course your interest in premodern Arabic literature, esp. al-Gharnati. But what made you decide: Yes, this novel, now?

Chip Rossetti: Sometimes, there are books that I seek out because they sound intriguing, and then I end up wanting to translate them. Other times—as with Rose’s Diaries—it’s a fortuitous set of circumstances that leads me to the book. In this case, in December 2021, Banipal approached me about translating an excerpt from what was then a newly-published novel, and I agreed. I was immediately taken with the section she wanted to include. It was a self-contained narrative, one of the protagonist’s stories-within-the-story, where Ruza imagines the reason why the madman in her neighborhood lost his mind. It read like a sly folk tale, as though Chaucer’s Wife of Bath lived in 1960s Dubai.

Previously, I had read Reem al-Kamali’s first novel, Timthal Dilma (The Dalma Statue), and from both books, it was clear that she is interested in the long history of the Gulf region, including the trade routes and empires that have shaped the political and cultural landscape. What struck me as well was the novel’s interiority: much of the book takes place within Ruza’s head, and (without giving away the ending) there is a sharp contrast between her wide-ranging imagination and the strictures and frustrations of her actual life. As you point out, Rose’s Diaries is very different from some of the other texts I have worked on previously. I thought that would pose an interesting challenge for me as a translator. I had met Reem briefly at the IPAF awards when her novel was on the shortlist. A few months later, when I moved with my family to the UAE for my work, it seemed to be perfect opportunity to translate this novel.

It is a novel told in small diary slivers, and so many of them feel like they’re haunted by the lives Ruza could’ve had but that didn’t happen. The life where Ruza’s mother is alive, the life where her brother is alive, the life where she isn’t prevented from going on a school trip to Baghdad with her friend Hind, the life where she went to university, where the bridegroom didn’t die, where she became a writer. By the end of the novel (excerpt for the very end, which I won’t spoil), these emptinesses that Ruza has accumulated feel heavier than her life. I did feel that the burden of these absences particularly came through in the translation. Besides these ghosts, what other elements not immediately visible on the surface did you want to get across? 

CR: Absolutely, those absences are very much present. The ghosts of “what might have been” haunt Ruza’s story, and reflect the thwarted aspirations of women of Ruza’s generation—particularly since she is well aware of the political and cultural changes sweeping through the Arab world at the time, such as Arab nationalism and leftist political currents, and particularly with regard to the position of women in society. The “what if” I found the most compelling in the novel is Ruza’s discarding of her diaries in the Creek, a repeated act of self-erasure imposed on her by the prying eyes of others. One element that wasn’t immediately visible to me at first, but which I only came to realize over the course of translating it, was that the text—both the novel as a whole and Ruza’s own writings—offers a kind of counter-history. It narrates histories that run counter to colonial pasts (such as Ruza’s “Mrs. Taylor” story, or the play-within-a-novel, where Hengam Island is a speaking character), to the idea that the “real” history of the Gulf only starts with the oil boom in the 1970s, and to a history of women’s narratives being lost or effaced.

One of the choices you make in your translation is to leave a lot of local terminology, particularly with seafaring terms, although not limited to that. To me, this leaves the reader with a couple choices — they can either look up what a “yida rope” is (although I admit I only found results when I googled as “اليدا”) or else they leave a sort of blank space in the text that they fill in with their imagination of what a yida rope would be, an almost magical-realist aspect to the translation. Why did you decide on this, rather than — for instance — well, ok, I don’t know any nautical terminology offhand.

CR: I wrestled with the question of whether to retain or domesticate these very local words. While it’s true that reads may be puzzled by what exactly a “yida rope” or a “hil” bracelet is, I thought it was more important to retain the unfamiliar vocabulary, even in the translation. Even for the book’s Arabic readers, many of those words will seem strange or new. The novel takes pains to evoke a local past and local forms of knowledge and I didn’t want to simply elide those elements for the benefit of the English-language reader.

I was particularly fascinated by all the names for winds that occur during different times of the year—a reminder of just how important seafaring was, as both a livelihood and a means of travel. Sure, in English, we’re familiar with the idea of sea chanties, but the Gulf tradition of a nahham—a singer who performs for the crew on pearl-diving boats—is certainly worth retaining in the book. It does, as you suggest, add a magical-realist element to the story, but I think that’s a feature, not a bug!

I was struck by how significant clothing was for Ruza, and the choices she made about what to wear and when. Also, when these things were her decisions, and when they were decided by others (such as when her grandmother decides she should wear all her clothes inside-out, so that her luck is turned). Is there anywhere you gloss the text to help us see her clothing and what it signifies to her and the people around her? Or what other strategies did you use to help us see these clothes? 

CR: I think it would require a very different kind of book to truly convey the significance of these different fabrics, for Ruza and for her family members. I included a glossary at the back of the book, which at least offers readers some idea of the distinct features of particular fabrics—their patterns, whether they are worn on formal occasions, whether they are better suited for warm weather or winter. In translating the novel, I found some very helpful resources online, including publications commissioned by UAE government ministries such as Zayna wa-azya’ al-mara’a fi dawlat al-imarat al-‘arabiyya al-mutahhida, by Fatima Ahmad ‘Ubayd al-Mughni al-Naqabi and al-Azya’ al-sha’biyya fi dawlat al-imarat al-‘arabiyya al-mutahhida, edited by Juma’a Khalifa Ahmad bin Thalith al-Humayri, which greatly helped me identify the look of different types of fabric and how/when they are worn.

In chapter 18, Ruza mentions the clothes her family has put aside for her, all of which are called “kandura mukhawar wa-thawb.” Reem and I had some back-and-forth about how these two items are normally worn together, and given that these are elegant clothes owned—but never worn—by her uncle’s wife, I ended up translating it as a “flowing mukhawar gown and outer thobe.” As Ruza explains near the end of the book, her family “weighed me down with gifts of clothes and with servants doing things for me so I could be comfortable,” but denied her the inheritance due to her from her father’s share of the house, and I hope my rendering of the names for all these rich fabrics helps convey this idea that Ruza finds herself in a gilded cage.

You published this book with Emirates Literature Foundation Publishing, and this is — I believe — their very first novel in translation. What was it like to work with a press just starting out? Do you know where the book is mostly being distributed? Is the aim to bring this out more among English-language readerships in the Gulf? 

CR: It’s a bit different working on a book for a very new publisher: Rose’s Diaries was one of eight books that Emirates Literature Foundation Publishing launched at the Emirates Airlines Literary Festival this past February. The other seven included several children’s books, an encyclopedia of the UAE, and an English translation of nabati poetry by Ousha Bint Khalifa Al Suwaidi. The publisher’s stated aim is to focus on books about the region, by both Emiratis and expats, so Reem’s novel was a perfect fit for them. I had a great experience working on the book, although deadlines, unfortunately, are always tighter than one might wish! I have to particularly thank Flora Rees, whose careful editing greatly improved my translation.