Maturity above and beyond youthful years
Shahid Alam finds a work on the mind's complexities disturbing
If one would just let one's imagination run loose, Her Story could just as well have been one's story. Mercifully, it is not, and the reader will realize why as s/he comes to the end of a compelling, in patches, disturbing, first novel. Zahrah Haider is a fifteen-year old British national with Bangladeshi roots. And her novel is set in England. It revolves around Amelia, a fifteen-year old girl who was born in August, the very month that Zahrah was born. Like the author, her fictional character enjoys listening to music, and being around pets. That, on the face of it, is as far as the superficial similarities between the author and her principal protagonist go. Her Story is the story of a teenager all right, but it is not one about the regular everyday existence of an average adolescent. It delves into the dark recesses of Amelia's mind, and it is a disturbed mind, one which teeters between normalcy and a manic-depressive state. Having lost her father by way of cancer when she was nine, and her mother as a result of an automobile accident when she was fourteen, she had no choice but to enter an orphanage because none of her relatives would take her in their respective homes. She had shown ample evidence of neurotic behaviour before her mother's death, including habitually mutilating her wrists with a knife that "sometimes…made signs, and sometimes…were just the symbol of a depressed girl." Haider states at the outset of the novel that Amelia "was not a normal child." More significant, as well as worrying, was the puzzling reaction of her schoolteachers to her self-mutilation: "She never bandaged her wrists, and went to school with blood running from her clothes. Her teachers tried not to take any notice of it; to them, a wayward child would always be a wayward child." There is an irony about Amelia's middle name: Felicity. "Felicity meant happiness, although she was anything but happy." She went into an even more unhappy state of mind when she was adopted, and taken into their magnificent mansion, by the wealthy movie director husband-and-wife team of Thomas and Jeanne Marie Moore. She lacks for nothing in terms of lavish living at her new home, where her room felt like it was bigger than her parents' house. "It was like a fairytale place, the mansion, with fountains and little rock gardens. For a minute, her nature changed, just for a second, and it became more 'girly'. For the first time she could actually see the beauty of the garden itself, but one shake of her head and it was gone. She became what she started as." The garden theme would return, more constructively and lastingly, later on, in a different place and setting, reinforcing her love for flowers and nature, but the exquisitely manicured garden of her foster parents could not lift her depression, and, consequently, surly, rude, and rebellious behaviour. Her demeanor does not change a whit at the exclusive prim and proper high school her new parents sent her to, driven to and from her house in a chauffeured limousine. She drives her robotic teachers to the wall with her antics, and there is this delicious little observation about her headmistress that could be interpreted in a number of ways: "Amelia found herself wondering why being part German had anything to do with someone's temper." Then there is the amusing equating of the cosmopolitan school's cafeteria with a farmhouse. And here is this bit of wisdom that many would agree with: "It was always imperfect food that tasted perfect…." Amelia was mentally contrasting the burgers and French fries she was eating at McDonald's with the food she used to have at the mansion, which was cooked too perfectly for her taste. By this time she had run away from her synthetic soulless spic-and-span existence at the mansion to an aunt's house where she finds a semblance of normalcy, and actually begins to relax. Nightmares have never abandoned her altogether, though, but, except for the odd occasion, they do not overwhelm her into becoming a nervous wreck. The author takes the reader through the feverish mind of a disturbed teenager with impressive insight. In fact, Haider's efforts at capturing the depression, hopelessness, angst of the adolescent mind is a notable tour de force. Nonetheless, notwithstanding her periodic black moods, Amelia finds some tranquility to the point where she "no longer hated thinking about her parents." She enjoys happy moments with her aunt, cousin Michael, neighbour Louise, and, most of all, her son of Amelia's age, Chester. Eventually, Amelia's near-idyllic existence at her aunt's comes to an end as her foster parents have her tracked down and forcibly brought back to their mansion. The novel's denouement then proceeds. But, before that, she spins some thoughtful homegrown philosophy to Chester and Michael. To Chester: "…killing yourself won't help you find what you're looking for." And she began writing "Her Story" at her aunt's house, after having admitted to self-doubt about her writing ability. "Where did I even get the idea that I could write…." Her relationship with Chester was not the normal teenage romance. It was not even romance. When they went to visit his grandparents' farm, they "got separate rooms each." Nothing unusual in that, but they never even desired to take the plunge of sneaking in to the other's room. They appear to want to be just friends, but one could reasonably read into subliminal desire for something more, particularly on Amelia's part, or in Chester's vehemently defensive indignant riposte when a friend suggests that they should become an item. This is noticeable in Her Story. There is almost total absence of any physical relationship. There are passages and passages of serious psychological probing of a disturbed teenager's mind, but a distinct effort not to come anywhere near any physical relationship. That is not to say that the author should have gone down that road, but only that the artless, teenaged Zahrah Haider coexists with the precocious author of the dark corners of the human mind. It is fascinating. The author's first novel should not be her last. Zahrah Haider has years left in front of her, and the welcome luxury of further exploring the complexities of the human mind, and the human being's relationship with each other and the society s/he happens to be a part of.
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