‘Intolerable’ by Kamal Al-Solaylee

Reviewed by Niku Shaeri

“I am the son of an illiterate shepherdess who was married off at fourteen and had eleven children by the time she was thirty-three.” So begins the introduction to Kamal Al-Solaylee’s memoir Intolerable. This first line of the book serves to transport the reader to another time and place: the Arab world in the mid-twentieth century. This world, where Al-Solaylee’s story begins, is central to his memoir.

Intolerable was released in the spring of 2012. Just a year and a half earlier, a twenty-six-year-old Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire, and died as a result, after he refused to bribe government agents and had his goods confiscated. This event sparked an uprising in Tunisia which spread like wildfire to surrounding countries including Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Nicknamed the Arab Spring, this series of uprisings captured the attention of media outlets around the world.

Al-Solaylee’s memoir starts in the mid-1960s in Yemen. Those unfamiliar with the Arab world at this time may be surprised by the relatively liberal character which Al-Solaylee attributes to it. With careful nostalgia, the author describes his family vacations, which involved visiting parks and the zoo, going to the movies, shopping for clothes, and going to concerts by famous Egyptian singers. Intolerable is the story of one family, and their experience living through the transition from such a social and economic climate, to the conditions that led to the Arab Spring. The story follows them as they move from Yemen to Syria to Egypt and back to Yemen, all the while experiencing more and more limitations on their freedoms which came along with the rise of fundamentalist religion in the region. Al-Solaylee also offers his perspective on reasons for the shift, particularly the drastic decline in living standards.

As well as being a tale of Al-Solaylee’s family, it is also a deeply personal one. Al-Solaylee received a Ph.D. in Victorian literature and now works as an associate professor and undergraduate program director at the School of Journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto. This career path speaks for itself about the distance the memoir covers.

The story of the author’s experience growing up in the changing political and social climate of the middle east includes the discovery of his sexual orientation, and his realization of what that implied for his future. Al-Solaylee’s description of his self-discovery throughout the memoir is a very personal one, written in a way that invites the reader to re-live the pivotal moments of self-discovery with him. These moments are often reflected on with humour, and sometimes suggest a sense of sympathy for his younger self (and in a way for everyone who has struggled with their identity). The reader is privy to many of these key moments, including the author’s experience first learning about the term homosexual from one of his brother’s books, coming out to himself at sixteen, and finding love as an adult.

The author describes one experience that happened while watching TV as a toddler:

I wasn’t five yet when I noticed that I loved looking at a Palmolive ad on TV (and in print) that featured a hairy man, all lathered and grinning because he’d just showered with that brand of soap. Of course I didn’t know what that sensation was, but in retrospect it was my earliest homoerotic experience.

The inclusion of photographs in the memoir serves as another element which acquaints the reader more intimately with the author’s memories. The black and white photos create the feeling of an old family album. Throughout the book, pictures of Al-Solaylee and his family in their various homes and vacation spots are included. As well as putting faces to the names the author writes of, the pictures themselves speak volumes about the changes the family members experience throughout their lives.

For example, among the pictures from Al-Solaylee’s childhood is one of him and his family at an Egyptian nightclub in Cairo. Another is of his family at the beach in Alexandria, his sisters dressed in bikinis. In contrast are the images he includes from later in his life, particularly those taken on a trip to Yemen to visit his family. At that time, the family faced financial struggles, and the settings of the photos are more modest – in the living room, or by some hills in the countryside. The bikinis of his sisters in their younger years are replaced by hijabs, speaking to the radically increased religiosity of the region.

These pictures also sometimes convey emotions that the author hasn’t articulated. One picture taken in 1968 features a five-year-old Al-Solaylee and five of his siblings all of whom are laughing. This picture conveys a tenderness between him and his siblings, particularly with his sister Hoda who is holding him in the picture. Al-Solaylee does not dwell much on the emotions between him and his siblings in the text, and in this sense the photo goes beyond the text.

Al-Solaylee’s experience in the field of journalism is apparent in his writing style. He reports clearly on what was going on around him, and even inside of him, in a way that is accessible to the reader. For those unfamiliar with Arab culture, Al-Solaylee draws connections to the Western world to make it more accessible. Cairo, where he spends much of his childhood and youth, is described as the Paris of the middle east when it comes to fashion, and later he compares Cairo to both London and New York in terms of being a centre for music, film, theatre, and publishing.

The author also shares about the western pop culture that made its way to his city at various times, serving to create a sort of timeline. For example, he mentions watching ‘Bewitched’ on primetime Lebanese TV as a toddler, and going to see Xanadu in theatres as a teen.

Kamal Al-Solaylee’s memoir provides both an accessible and intimate look at his life, his family, and the ever-evolving Arab world where their stories take place. The memoir succeeds at telling the story of a boy and his family, as well as offering a perspective on the world which surrounds them. At one point after Al-Solaylee’s settled in Canada, he returns to Yemen to visit his family. He tells his nieces and nephews that if they want to follow in his footsteps, they should finish their education and get out of Yemen, and he describes what he learns from their reactions:

But their emotional bonds with their parents and their brothers and sisters were much stronger than mine ever had been twenty-five years ago. They wanted change, but they were not willing to abandon everything they knew and loved (and even hated) for it. I didn’t know it then, but what I was witnessing in Nagala, Yousra and Motaz were the seeds of the revolution that swept through Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world in 2011.

HarperCollins | 224 pages |  $27.99 | cloth | ISBN # 978-1554688869