The Wedding of Zein and other stories

The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid
I did not really like this story too much. I was confused for awhile whether or not the narrator was actually talking to his son, someone else entirely, or telling a story of talking to his son in the past. Also, I could not understand why people would continue to live in an area that was so infested by the huge insects that sent people to the hospitals or to the Tree of Wad Hamid for relief or death. This story never really explained who Wad Hamid was, just that he was a former slave who then came to settle in the area and then the tomb and tree that was always bigger and stronger than the rest came into existence. This story really did not seem to have a purpose except maybe that the government does not always have fantastic ideas or something.

A Handful of Dates
This second story was better than the first, but I am not sure why I liked it, however, I did liked that it was short and simple. These middle-eastern stories always seem to have a young boy that idealizes an elder male relative, this story being a boy’s grandfather. The boy even hopes to one day look tall, lean, and have a pure, white beard just like his grandfather’s. the boy thought that his grandfather had owned all of the land that he had daydreamed about and played on, but then found out that his neighbor was actually the inheritor of it and ended up gradually selling it to his grandfather. I do not understand why the grandfather called his neighbor “indolent” because he really did not describe anything lazy. I thought that it was strange that the boy would all of a sudden just not idealize his grandfather anymore because he had tried to acquire his neighbor’s land. Maybe it was because he saw sadness in the neighbor about being indebt and loosing his assets and he saw greed and selfishness in his hero, I am not really sure.

The Wedding of Zein
Zein is an unusual character and I cannot figure out if the local townspeople actually like him or not. They seem to always want to hear from him and listen to his stories, but then they also always seem to call him “good for nothing.” I cannot figure out if I like him or not either because at first they introduced him as semi-disfigured and only having two teeth making you feel sorry for him, then he seemed like a sneaky, thieving man making you think twice about the character, but then he goes to help local people who have more difficult hardships than he has. He wants many girls in the town to marry, then takes advantage to attention he brings the girls, and then claims to have always liked one girl, who just so happens to be his cousin. This part of the book is very similar to that of The Marsh.
Zein was described as a sort of slightly disfigured in some way or as oddly shaped with bloodshot and sunken in eyes. It was weird that he was also matched with the term strong. The people of the town seemed to all know of his hidden strength and were, therefore, afraid of his attacking a man by the throat after he had returned from the hospital. It was strange that this fighting incident was what had changed Seif ad-Din who was described as a horrible, disappointing, spoiled only son who partied constantly and experienced much that was frowned on. Haneen, who was close to Godliness, had changed his life when he got Zein to withdraw his grip. This was great for him to finally grow up and live a respectful life it was only sad to figure out that he had changed after his father had died.
I could not figure out what happened to Haneen because that part of the book was incredibly hard to follow. It was stories within stories that made no sense to me and having lists of unpronounceable, similar names to describe characters or situations did not help whatsoever. There were a good ten pages where I felt like I was crazy and could not comprehend anything.
The way the wedding of Zein and Ni’ma was described sounded so incredibly different from our traditional weddings. It seemed as though the ceremonies and celebrations went on for days. Everyone from the whole town was there, which was incredible, but weird for everyone to be together because in the pages I did not understand there were different groups or gangs of people that did not get along in the town. I also did not quite understand why in the last part of the book during the wedding Ni’ma was not talked about at all, during her own wedding! Maybe this was because everyone’s focus was on Zein and they were all joyous, jealous, or surprised that he was ever to be married especially to a woman of Ni’ma’s stature. Zein was like the town’s focus through the whole book, everyone knew of him and of what he was doing. I never understood why he was thought by most to be so holy, except that he helped others that the town considered lepers.