Shortly before my copy of Fatima Bala’s ‘Broken Not A Halal Love Story’ arrived from Lagos, the city where saints and sinners are difficult to differentiate, I saw a Qatari movie, ‘Honeymoonish’, on Netflix. A major conflict in the movie centers around a man whose aunt discourages from having sex with his wife because they might be siblings, not biological, but siblings because the mother of one of them was suspected to have breastfed the other during some babysitting sessions. It’s not Islamic for a boy and a girl in such situation to marry each other. It was a revelation to me and I felt only Muslims outside Nigeria obey this injunction until I came across it in ‘Broken Not A Halal Love Story’, a heart-wrenching x-ray of religion-cum-tradition and their effects on matters of the heart and of the mind.
Fatima Bala, with this book, offers insights into Islam but in manners that neither impugn prose nor pacing. It is not out of place to describe the novel as a crash course on this widespread religion, and it sparkles in ways that show clearly that the version being bandied by fundamentalists isn’t Islam but an aberration. It also gives great insights into the Hausa culture and traditions, which over the centuries have been under the overwhelming impact of Islam. This book has more surprises for people out of that part of Nigeria.
It is told largely in first person from Fai’za’s point of view, and in a few chapters in third person from Ahmad’s point of view.
In this novel that takes us from Abuja to Toronto, Milan and Kano, Fatima Bala’s imperfect Muslims find out that in the clash between obeying religious injunctions and letting human nature prevail, there are always casualties.
Fatima Bala starts the book starts on a tension-soaked September 2016 morning in Abuja, where a lady is refusing to talk to a man who seems to have a lot to say. The lady’s mother’s appearance provides her the excuse to escape from the scene and we find ourselves escaping into one scene after the other, with a throw back to six years back. We quickly know that this novel about choice and identity among many other things follows Fai’za Mohammed, a Northern Nigeria Muslim girl from a conservative home, and Ahmad Babangida, a sophisticated Muslim aristocrat. Fai’za is raised to always be mindful of public reactions to everything she does. Handsome Ahmad ‘forces’ her to query values she has held dear since childhood, including pre-marital sex. The tension of Ahmad’s electrifying effects on her fast-paces the plot and leaves us racing along with these lovebirds.
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The subplot that involves Afreen and Zafar is one that drives the main plot and further enlarges the cycle of flawed characters whose hearts and minds are entangled in battle royale.
The book examines other issues such as disparity in the raising of boys and girls, including how boys have freedoms girls can only dream of. Religion, faith, sexuality, heartbreak and more are also examined in manners that balance Muslim and non-Muslim readers’ sensibilities. The author punches patriarchy and raises posers about why conservative societies always ask: “why was she alone with him?” instead of “why did he do that to her?” And there is this related and germane viewpoint: “Nowhere in the Qur’an did it say that sins would be judged in accordance with one’s gender. Yet, in our culture and tradition, many Muslim rites were only applicable to women.”
We see the interesting dynamics of the relationship between girls from the North and their mothers and how so different it is between mothers and sons. We also have a glimpse of what it is like between fathers and sons and daughters and fathers.
The author shows us what the lives of educated and rich Nigerians from the North looks like, and the images that emerge are not only exquisite but alluring.
Reading the bits about wedding and marriage in the North is educating. It was quite a revelation that brides don’t attend their own Nikkah and parents play domineering roles in their children’s choices of life partners. Interesting. It’s refreshing finding out that there is room for a father to give out his daughter in marriage and there is also another route different from this.
If you’re curious about what the Islamic injunction against marriage of a man and a woman suckled by the same woman has to do with this book in which by the time the author returns us to 2016 Abuja, the novel’s takeoff point, Ahmad is set to marry Sakina, the answer is in the book. And if you also want to know how come two people were suckled by the same woman since they aren’t from the same mother, the answer is in the book, and these answers drive this sweet read. All I will tell you is that Fatima Bala resolves the conflict in a remarkable manner, manner so outstanding, so grounded you are left with only one choice and that choice is to give her her flowers.
I also need to point this out: Clever Fatima Bala doesn’t orchestrate events to suit plot development; way before a revelation, veiled references are made, but because of the wisdom behind their presentations, they come across as ordinary until the moments of truth or revelation beckon, leaving a reader saying “no wonder he did or said that”.
Fatima Bala’s writing in ‘Broken’ is one I gulped slowly like a crazily-chilled water; I chewed it like akara just off hot vegetable oil; and I digested it with the patience of a man after a beautiful woman playing hard to get. In a nutshell, this book is a great read because the author demonstrates that fiction isn’t just fiction as it often brings out sociological facts in interesting ways and forces us to be educated even when all we set out to have is just some fun.
Permit me to say this book, as the subtitle warns, contains scenes that aren’t halal, scenes that are hot, scenes that will make you scream “haba, haha Alhaja Fatima”!
My final take: Injunctions can be hard to obey, but often they help to escape being in a cul-de-sac. Like laws that are meant to minimise chaos and engender peaceful coexistence, injunctions are necessities.
