Fiction Review
The Lebanese Dishwasher
by Sonia Saikaley
Toronto, ON: Quattro, 2012
120pp. $14.95
Sonia Saikaley’s novella takes us between continents and time frames to portray the experience of a young Lebanese man coming to terms with his sexual identity in the face of past personal trauma and present prejudice. Amir, the novella’s protagonist, is a young immigrant to Canada who left behind his restrictive family and war-torn homeland in search of freedom and dreams of becoming a professor. Five years on, he has found himself unable to leave his job as a dishwasher in a Middle Eastern restaurant in Montreal. “I feel my spirit and dreams have somehow drowned in foamy dishwater,” Amir admits to himself glumly. His life changes however when he is introduced to Rami, the charming nephew of Salem, one of the cooks in the restaurant. Amir and Rami become friends and ultimately lovers; in finding love and a sense of ‘home,’ Amir is able to release the scars of the past.
One of the most powerful elements of this novella is the intriguing parallel structure of the narrative. Amir’s life in Montreal bumps up against his past, specifically the experiences of his childhood and adolescence in Beirut. The present day story is told in the first person, highlighting the immediacy of the action. The childhood story, told in the third person, also succeeds, through its imagery and themes, to draw us into an immediate experience. The two stories are complementary, using repeating words and symbols that create a powerful link between Amir’s past and present. For example, throughout the story, interior spaces are presented as sites of suffocation and even violence. Amir is invited to dinner with Salem and his family. He feels uncomfortable watching Salem’s wife (we never learn her name, as she only introduces herself as “Salem’s wife”) obediently serving the family meal. When Amir catches Rami’s eye and feels attraction, he must quickly look away under Salem’s disapproving glare. Paralleling this is Amir’s childhood home, which becomes a site of terror after a teenaged Amir is raped in his parents’ bedroom. His inability to speak of his experience to anyone, and the accompanying shame and fear drive him to emigrate to Canada
Exterior spaces symbolize freedom. When Amir seeks escape in Lebanon, he heads out walking, to the beach and the crashing of the waves: “He wipes his eyes and stares down at the sea once more and knows he could bury these shameful feelings there. Toss them in the water where they’d be swallowed by fish or become entangled in seaweed.” Incidentally, this is also the place where he catches his first glimpse of gay men engaging in sexual acts behind boulders at the water’s edge. In Canada, escape is found by walking the icy sidewalks with Rami. The homelessness that Amir feels is shared by Rami, a Palestinian whose family was shattered by war and violence. Their conversations in the frigid Montreal air provide a safe space for Amir to share his trauma for the first time.
What is interesting is that Saikaley does not portray Canada as an automatic safe haven for Amir and for his sexuality. Amir’s mother’s cautions him as he leaves his birthplace: “No matter where you go, you’ll always find trouble. You were trouble from day one, my son. Who’s going to feed you now? Don’t starve.” Canada becomes the site of a different kind of claustrophobia, a combination of the cultural pressures Amir faces (in the guise of Salem and the Middle Eastern restaurant) and his own personal demons. The kitchen where Amir washes dishes is a space dominated by male chefs and busboys. Despite the fact that these men are cooking, Salem laughingly tells Amir that he does not cook at home because that is “woman’s work.” Reminders abound of the differences between men and women, as when Salem advises Amir to marry a nice Lebanese girl. “You should marry your own kind. These Canadian women are too liberal. You can’t boss them around.” Salem represents the staunchly traditional, the repression which Amir sought to escape.
The frozen streets of Montreal are contrasted to the blazing heat of Lebanon, but the bombs that are unpredictably dropped on the latter reverberate just as menacingly in the frigid air. The climax of the novella is an act of violence that strikes the reader as overly dramatic, its resolution overly optimistic. Amir and Rami’s intimacy and their discovery of “home” in each other provide the emotional substance of the conclusion. “At least we have peace here,” Rami says to Amir, and, gazing down at the soapy dishes in the water, Amir muses, “I realize that I can change this, I can change everything…It’s all in my hands. I know this.”
Saikaley’s work was a deserving co-winner of the 2012 Ken Klonsky novella contest, and is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the obstacles faced by those navigating new lives in Canada.
