CULT CURRENT , 06 Jan 2017

When Hisha Matar was 12 years old, a hair-raising incident revealed

1       shyam

When Hisha Matar was 12 years old, a hair-raising incident revealed to him just how marked a man his father Jaballa, a Libyan exile agitating against Moammar Gadhafi’s regime, had become. Matar, flying from Cairo to Geneva, had often wondered why his dad, due to meet him at the airport, went in for cloak-and-dagger behaviour. On this occasion, Jaballa had told his son that if they didn’t cross pat

Sometimes, when Matar brings together both narratives

3       shyam

Sometimes, when Matar brings together both narratives, they end up colliding rather than complementing each other. The most comical instance of this occurs when the author recounts the audience he was finally granted with David Miliband, the UK’s foreign secretary at the time (2010). This came following a public campaign to persuade the UK, which was then cozying up to Gadhafi’s regime, to insist

with endless rooms, inescapable and haunted.” hi

4       shyam

This latter, unpredictable narrative also probes how Jaballa’s absence shaped his son. By the time he had reached his 30s, far from sublimating such rage and hatred into fine, if narrowly themed fiction, Matar was making scant headway on his first novel. In fact, he had come perilously close to allowing his inner demons to consume him. So much so, he writes, that “I found myself standing at the ed