[Microreview]Novella: The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia

 A queernormative story of refugees, oppression and the legacies of empire, against the backdrop of a magical medical mystery.

Cover art by Elizabeth Story

The Bruising of Qilwa follows Firuz-e Jafari, a healer fled to the Free Democratic City State of Qilwa to escape the dangers to their people in their homeland, and particularly for those of their people who practice blood magic. In Qilwa, Firuz has found a clinic that will hire them - Sassanian heritage and all  - and so they masquerade as a practitioner of more acceptable magics, trying to eke out a sufficient existence to feed their family and find them a home outside of the dangerous slums. But when a mysterious new disease starts to show itself, they find themself unable to resist using blood magic to delve into it.

There are three major strands to the plot and themes of the book, the first of which is the medical mystery - Firuz works in a healer's clinic that particularly is willing to cater to those who can't pay in money (or sometimes at all), and so we get to see their daily experience of illness as it affects those on the margins of society, and those who have been forced into the direst of circumstances, many of whom are refugees like Firuz. This in and of itself is well-done, but it gets better when it's intertwined with magic - magic used in small ways, day to day, for small things and as part of a broader set of healing sciences. It's a super effective way of creating a world in which magic is incredibly normalised, and giving space for us to see it as an intrinsic part of Qilwan life, as well as Firuz's life, and that of Kofi (their boss). We don't get to see the schools that teach it, or learn much about it in the abstract, but this is all in favour of seeing it as a part of people's general experience, and how it touches on daily life, rather than magic as something apart. And particularly, in the case of the mystery, it may be the only way the healers will discover exactly what's causing the lethargy, strange bruises and other ailments that seem to be increasingly plaguing the clinic's patients. While the mystery is in many ways the main plot driver, it also dips in and out of focus, as we look at Firuz's life outside of their work, but it never feels forgotten or abandoned - because the plot is so rooted in Firuz's life, and how incredibly busy they are, juggling so many different responsibilities, it feels extremely natural in context for their attention to shift between whatever the current crises are as needed, which gives the story space to put certain things on the back burner for a little while, without seeming to drop them entirely. The work in the clinic is a touchstone the plot always returns to, and the ebb and flow of patients an easy way to introduce and reintroduce themes that affect the healers and their patients.

We also get to see the intersection of the clinic's patients' refugee status and their political position, as the powers that be, and the general populace, in Qilwa, seek to blame them for the spread of plague through the city, and the effect that has on how Qilwa legislates medical care, and tries to protect itself, or the parts of itself it cares about, further.

And this is the second strand, on refugees, and how the world looks at them, treats them and holds them to account for things beyond their control. The precarity of life in a hostile world for those fleeing for their lives. The standards they are held to, the barriers they have to cross. While I can think of many SFF stories in which one could argue that the protagonist or major characters are refugees in their contexts, I cannot think of many that choose to grapple with that as one of their major focusses, and so it is extremely welcome here, doubly so because, as the story progresses, we see that the political issues at play, both in Qilwa itself and in the refugees' homeland of Dilmun, have further complexities and histories to them than we might have seen at first.

Which is the third thread, though one only briefly explored, about empire and its legacy, and how different people experience those histories. About the changing shape of nations, cultures and communities, and how power can shift and change, how people can shape that power, and those changes, based on the histories they've experienced. In their afterword, Jamnia talks about how their background, how their parents were Persians emigrating from Iran to the USA, influenced the world they created - the multidirectional tides of oppression and persecution, pride in the history of one's culture and the awareness of what that culture may have done, the flawed and the good, and how the good cannot be disentangled from the flaws in the society that made it. And this thoughtfulness and awareness constantly shows through in the story, in how they portray the three cultures, Qilwan, Dilmuni and Sassanian, throughout the story. There's very little in the way of big paragraphs of exposition explaining each's relation to each. Instead, we learn their histories primarily through how the people in the story interact with each other in the present, and how those histories have left a mark on them and their own conceptions of the world - and how those can differ, even among those who are friends. Jamnia has the knack for creating a complex world told in short ways and little space, while never sacrificing that complexity, and it is a joy to behold.

All of this is set against a backdrop of an immersive, evocative city, of which we see little, but feel very clearly, even from the first moment. It is also a city, and presumably a world, which is quietly but constantly queer-normative - we see it in the casual mentions of pronouns and terms of address (when being politely introduced, our protagonist is styled "they-Firuz", and another of their colleagues "she-Malika"), in references to people's parents or friends or mentors or past loves. We see a teenager who wants to medically alter their body's gendered characteristics as they go through puberty, and how magic can have an impact on that. None of these are the primary purposes of the plot, but nor are they sidelined or backgrounded - they are an intrinsic part of the world of Qilwa, and again, they are done with a deft hand at creating complexity in swift strokes.

The Bruising of Qilwa manages to marry an interesting medical mystery plot with the feeling of a slice of life view into moving through a fantasy world as a refugee, giving us realistic-feeling politics, sympathetic characters (who have very sympathetic disputes, where both sides have a genuine point) and above all, a protagonist who, run ragged as they are, is striving extremely hard to do good in a world that is making their life as difficult as it can be. It's a fantastic book, and I'd be extremely keen to read more from Naseem Jamnia, whether written in this world or something new.

--

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 tension between protagonist and their brother is really well-managed, with both sides of the argument incredibly sympathetic

+1 being partly based (according to the author) on Anders and his clinic from Dragon Age 2

Penalties: -1 would have enjoyed seeing more of some of the other characters outside of Firuz

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 very high quality

Reference: The Bruising of Qilwa Naseem Jamnia [Tachyon, 2022]

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroform_tea

Microreview [book]: On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu

A lightly speculative story of a refugee family, told with unflinching empathy

Content Warning: On Fragile Waves contains violence (individual and systemic), abuse and racism

I'm excited by Erewhon Press, the new independent SFF publisher on the block whose offerings almost all seem tailor made to hit my "must read" list. One of the earliest stories I got excited for in their catalogue was On Fragile Waves, a intriguing looking tale of refugee migration from author E. Lily Yu. Originally slated for a 2020 release, On Fragile Waves was pushed back to early this year, and now this prettiest and bleakest of stories is finally coming into the world.

On Fragile Waves is a refugee story, centred around young girl Firuzeh Daizangi, along with her younger brother Nour, and her parents (generally referred to as Abay and Atay, but named Bahar and Omid), as they flee Afghanistan and attempt to reach Australia, falling foul of the country's inhumane policy towards refugees in the process, before finally trying to begin making a new life for themselves despite their still-uncertain status in Melbourne. Firuzeh's story is one impacted by both the deep traumas of her refugee experience, particularly during the boat trip from Indonesia and her family's subsequent stay in Nauru, and the more mundane challenges of being a loved but often overlooked, or overburdened daughter, with an irritating, spoiled younger brother and parents trying to adapt to challenges of their own.

The other defining aspect of Firuzeh's experience is the book's speculative element -although it's important to note that readers approaching On Fragile Waves solely because of its speculative content are likely to come away disappointed. During the family's journey to Australia, Firuzeh meets another girl, Nasima, whose is also fleeing the country with her parents. Self-important, status conscious, and confident about her new life, Nasima isn't a particularly pleasant friend to Firuzeh, but she nevertheless offers continuity and connection which is cut tragically short during the boat ride the two share from Indonesia. Afterwards, Firuzeh begins to see and confide in Nasima's ghost to make sense of developments in her own life, and even to begin to imagine (or exert?) some tenuous control over certain circumstances. The connection between the two girls, despite their brief friendship and diverging paths, underscores the fragility which forms the book's core (the clue is in the title). Everything that separates Firuzeh's life from Nasima's death is built on fragile foundations, and one moment of luck - and Firuzeh and her family have to build their lives within a system that never lets them forget it.

On Fragile Waves is mostly told from Firuzeh's perspective, in sparse but often beautiful prose, but it diverts often into different perspectives and voices, building up a picture of the people around them. These range from the small-minded racist guard whose chapter only serves to highlight the difference between his internal monologue about his actions and their external impacts on the refugees he holds power over, to the language tutor who volunteers with the family, to Nasima's older brothers, already in Australia and waiting for the rest of their family. Each of these chapters takes on a different tone and voice, and the effect is a novel whose prose is a fundamental part of its characters. There are also chapters where the narration becomes significantly more fragmented and poetic, including an opening which effectively summarises Firuzeh's first six years and introduces, in just a few lines, the interplay between threat and beauty in which the rest of the novel takes place, and later on, some of her dreams are told in the same style. One or two stylistic choices aside (the lack of quoted speech always takes a little while for me to get used to), On Fragile Waves isn't a demanding read where its prose style is concerned, but it is a book that encourages its reader to pay attention to style and language to get the most out of it. There's also a distinct separation between the first half of the book, which covers the family's journey from Afghanistan to Nauru and their time there, and the second half in Australia: it feels like because we see Melbourne through the eyes of an older Firuzeh, there's more direct representation of the interpersonal complexity, as well as a greater understanding of her parents' trauma and how it continues to affect them. In contrast, the family's time in Nauru contains more depictions of overt brutality and horror, but some experiences - like Firuzeh's brief befriending of a camp sex worker, and an attack perpetrated against her mother for being late for a bus - are beyond her capacity to process in the same way as the audience does, leaving us to piece together the broader dynamics from her incomplete perspective.

Yu - who is from the USA - has noted that a decade of research went into On Fragile Waves, and there's even a chapter with a self-deprecating self-insert character (a US researcher who doesn't know any of the right questions to ask of the refugees she is interviewing, and has to be set on the right path by a more experienced Australian woman.) The question of authenticity is, on one level, hard to escape from - is Yu the right person to be writing this refugee story? Does this capture the reality of the experience? - but it's not a question that I, as a British person with no refugee experience, can begin to answer. What I can say about On Fragile Waves is that its empathy leaps off the page: an empathy that doesn't shy away from showing characters at their lowest, or darkest, or most destructive, but is always fundamentally generous about the circumstances and motivations that underpin those dark moments. I found it impossible not to feel for almost all of the characters (shitty racist camp guards obviously being among the exceptions), even when their motivations conflicted or it was obvious that one character's emotional response to a situation was notably shallower than the other parties involved. For instance, Grace Nguyen, the language teacher who volunteers with the Daizangis, laments the amount of food at that Bahar insists on her leaving with and considers her Vietnamese family's own refugee experience; we know from Firuzeh that the food Grace has left with will result in the Daizangi family themselves going hungry, in the name of maintaining a form of hospitality which doesn't even cross the cultural divide particularly well. Yu's choice of narrator, and the detached way the narrative plays out, seems to reflect that focus on seeking empathy rather than full understanding Firuzeh's childish reactions to her circumstances require a different sort of narration to what her mother or father's perspective might look like, and I think it was the right choice for the book to avoid making any specific judgement about her parents' motivations. This story isn't the right one to give them a direct voice, and I think that's OK.

On Fragile Waves is a hard book. Given the subject matter, there's no responsible way for it to be anything but a hard book. But it's also a book which ends, however tentatively, with a feeling of hope: that despite systems of oppression, people do survive, and things do get better, and there will always be people who care and try to do right by each other even when our experiences make it hard for us to understand. Despite that, I think it's an excellent read - one which I devoured in an afternoon and found myself deeply satisfied by. If this is where Erewhon is going with it's line, I'm more invested than ever before.

The Math

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 A deeply empathetic story that works within the boundaries of its own undersatnding

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10

POSTED BY: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

Reference: Yu, E. Lily. On Fragile Waves [Erewhon, 2021]