Book Review: The Deaf-Mute Boy (Joseph Geraci)Reviewed by Saloua Ben ZahraJoseph Geraci chose to title his novel The Deaf-Mute Boy after his fictional character of a local deaf-mute boy, a Tunisian Muslim Arab teenager. The protagonist of the novel is an American history professor from Columbia University with the French-sounding first name Maurice. He is fond of the French, and in fact, comes to compete and bond with the Europeans – French and British – over the body of the North African Tunisian deaf-mute boy he meets during a walk on the beach in Sousse, a coastal city on the Mediterranean sea and a major touristic destination in Tunisia. (He calls the city by its French name – Tunisians call it Soussa). Soussa is a real (not fictional) Tunisian city with a rich history. The title character is not the only person with a physical and metaphorical disability in the book. A number of characters with disabilities figure in the book. The disabilities of these characters are fictional, but lend themselves to being read as standing for real people with physical impairments and not being metaphors. Yet, in light of the historical developments unfolding in the country of Tunisia and the larger area of the Arab / Muslim world, the characters with disabilities positively become metaphors as well in the sense that, although muted and disabled, if we read and hear them they express and voice statements on their country, people, their impediments, hopes and needs. Such needs are mainly for being heard, understood, enabled in their pursuits of education, development and fulfillment in a context not of neo-orientalist fantasies, but of a genuinely well-intentioned, egalitarian, emphatic cultural exchange that allows them access to their tools of learning and independence: the Pen, the peaceful universally enriching and saving tool of mass education. The representations or misrepresentations of the disabled native characters in this novel are intimately connected and suggestive in the critical context of a tradition of Orientalist superficial misconceptions about that larger part of the world and its people, the North African Maghreb, Africa and the Arab / Muslim world. Besides the Deaf-Mute boy there is the character of an Islamic religious leader, a paraplegic named Al Safadi who uses a wheelchair and covers his legs apparently amputated at the level of the knees. The protagonist meets with him on many occasions for guidance in his attempts to comprehend or in his words to "scratch the surface" of the culture as he finds Tunisia to be enigmatic and elusive. Another instance of disability is to be found in an expression that the protagonist Burke uses metaphorically twice in the novel when he refers to himself in the context of his quest to know and understand the elusive and resistant Arab Islamic culture of the place as being "the blind man led by a deaf-mute" (188). This implies that Tunisia is a darkness, a dark place, where he cannot see and is reduced against his sense of superiority and pride to depend on a local deaf-mute Tunisian boy, whom he really wants to be a boy he, himself, leads, have him be his follower and direct him for his own sub-conscious personal self-promotion and gain. It is worth mentioning that the European characters who figure in the novel and with whom he deals on an equal footing would also prefer to see the Tunisian deaf-mute boy as disabled / dependent on the American professor and an object of his desire. My major argument in my reading of Geraci’s novel is that despite his protagonist Maurice’s denial and claims to be an exception to common Orientalist and ableist objectifying tendencies in the perceptions of places and people in that area of the world, he, an American history professor, tends, to do exactly that, replaying and sustaining an erotizing and mystifying Orientalist discourse. He exoticizes Tunisia into an incomprehensible entity and dangerous territory full of mysteries and dangers that he is unable to penetrate, grasp or control. The narrator engages in a hypersexed and erotic misrepresentation of a native Tunisian deaf-mute boy while claiming to himself and to the readers that his motives are to make of the boy his intended protégé and that the mission he came to adopt regarding him is a noble engagé selfless unconditional project of help and work for another human being. Symptomatic of Orientalist narratives also is the appropriation and domination of the landscape and seascape of foreign territories. The protagonist of the novel imposes on the Mediterranean his dream of appropriation as he projects his fantasies on the landscape and its inhabitants while sustaining his grand dreams of ownership of the seascape by repeatedly representing the Mediterranean as "his Mediterranean," "his sea…" The boy with a speech and hearing disability, the deaf-mute in the words of Maurice, although denied for long the dignity of a name, has in fact a name, an Arabic name – and it is Nidhal. The mention of the name is delayed and the meaning, significance and connections of the name are silenced, unheard and muted in the novel until considerably far into the narrative. The boy is more often than not referred to and defined by his disabilities instead of being named by his Arabic name. Geraci’s protagonist Maurice does not know the Arabic language and does not distinguish, for example, the difference in meaning between "Imam’ (Islamic religious preacher or leader" and "Iman" (faith). It is among other things he does not know or understand or did not want to hear, see or know about Tunisia and Tunisians as the raison of his being in Tunisia was meant to be strictly and purely of a scholarly nature. Maurice, who narrates Geraci’s story, introduces the context of his experience in Tunisia at the beginning of the novel: Maurice Burke would not have come to Sousse had he not been invited to deliver several lectures at a conference on Roman archaeology, 'Discourses of Classical Colonialism.' His book, Spirit of Place, had recently been translated into French and been favorably reviewed in the Parisian intellectual press, still of considerable influence in Tunisia. Tourist spots did not attract him… He was often heard to rant about the destruction of his beloved Mediterranean by mass tourism, the spiritual as well as physical pollution of his pristine, ageless sea. He continues: Sousse did not disappoint his aversion nor deny him the opportunity for invective. He hated it at once with a vengeance, enough of a seasoned traveler to know that his instant dislike was not simply culture shock… The hotel would never have been his choice either. The blond furnishings, white and gold walls and mirrors, mock crystal chandeliers, and garish red carpets were a tawdry imitation of what a Westerner thought the Orient would be; a tasteless hotelier creating a feeble illusion, as if that were all the Mysterious East had become. (3-4) Throughout the narrative, the journey of Maurice, focusing on North Africa and Tunisia, becomes a quest to define, redefine, get to know and try to explain what the Orient is and what it has become and is becoming. This quest for knowledge and power through knowledge is a highly competitive field where the American and European characters (a French man and a British man) contest authority over knowing the Maghreb and North Africa, bonding over that knowledge and learning from each other how best to describe, define, master and control it for personal pleasure and gain at the expense of individuals from a culture represented in veiled terms as a weaker race, more vulnerable and deserving of protection by a higher intelligence and power. Juxtaposing the British man’s knowledge of the Maghreb to the French man’s is revealing. At the conference in Sousse, Maurice meets an English man, an Oxford historian named D.J. Dobbs who has written on the influence of economics in the Romans’ choice of city and temple sites. Dobbs is described in the following terms: "Dobbs was a small man in his sixties. He was dressed in a well tailored gray suit, light blue shirt, and house-colors tie, hardly clothes for the Maghreb, Maurice thought, gazing down approvingly at his own cotton sweater and summer weight trousers"(5). The American character here seems to congratulate himself on knowing the Maghreb better through being better prepared for it and knowing how to dress for it. When it comes to the French, the American seems unable to compete. A French character by the name of Henri who figures on occasion in the narrative writes to Maurice saying, among many teasing passages, about his attraction to the deaf-mute boy: "I know North Africa." He represents the authority of the French coming from long-standing colonial powers over "former" North African colonies and continuing post-colonial ties that Maurice finds to be an expression of higher intelligence, grasp and gain by implication. The physical description by Maurice of himself and other characters is very telling. In terms of his comparative physique, Maurice thinks of himself and describes himself as strong and "solid." The British man is described as a small man. As for the Tunisian characters, mainly the deaf-mute boy and his father, they are described as opposite to and weaker than the American man and French boys they meet once by a hotel pool. The way Maurice sees the Tunisian deaf-mute boy and Tunisians can be best read through his physical descriptions of the characters and the hierarchy in his choice of words, such as in saying that Maurice "towered over the Arab Tunisian deaf-mute boy’s father." The Tunisian deaf-mute boy is also compared physically and unfavorably to the French boys. The Tunisian deaf-mute boy Nidhal is described in special detail with particular emphasis and fixation on his physical features amounting to erotic description throughout the book. The author described Maurice early on in the book by saying that "tourist spots did not attract him." Yet the ways Maurice thinks of and physically describes the deaf-mute boy are symptomatic of a pursuit of sexual tourism in quest of clean and innocent "Oriental" boys in North African and Middle Eastern countries such as Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt. Maurice is a gay man in a relationship with a man he dearly and endearingly loves who is named Eddie, is sick from AIDS and lives in New York: Thinking about Eddie made him miss him. And anxious. He had expected a fax to be waiting at the desk this morning but there was none… His own fax had gone out dutifully before going to bed, details about his last morning in Paris with their friend Henri Meursault, his delayed flight, his abhorrence of the hotel, the cute waiters…the burly mustached man who sent the fax for him…was Eddie's type, a little like himself, really, sturdy and solid but not obese, the bear-hug type. Maybe he would risk mentioning him in today's fax… If Eddie were here now he would insulate him from the horrid atmosphere. On the point of orientalist homo-erotic generic, undiscriminating yet discriminatory and derogatory portrayal, it is worth pointing out that the photograph on the cover of Geraci’s book about a deaf-mute Tunisian boy is not a photograph of a Tunisian boy, but instead that of an Egyptian boy. The photograph was a piece of work from the collection of the Egyptologist photographer named Greg Reeder. It is easy to tell that it is the picture of an Egyptian boy because the garment worn by the boy in the photograph is more typically Egyptian and it is called "Ghellabiya" in Egyptian Arabic or "Jelbab" in formal standard Arabic. It tends to be worn by farmers, people who work the land called in Arabic "Fellaheen." It was chosen for the cover of Geraci’s novel possibly based on an assumption that Arab boys in the Orientalist Western imaginaire look alike and are more or less interchangeably the same. Being deaf Nidhal naturally relied on his eyes to understand people in the world around him and to communicate by spelling words on paper with a pen, and drawing pictures in addition to using gestures with his hands and his expressive eyes. We are informed in the novel that Nidhal knows French sign language (99), reads and writes Arabic and gracefully so as he shows promise in Arabic calligraphic writing. He liked to draw and was learning woodwork. As for schooling, he is not part of the public school system and goes only to the Quranic school. Based on what we read about the protagonist Maurice in the first pages of the book, he would not have chosen to come to Sousse in Tunisia were it not for the conference and paper-writing projects, but he came. Yet, after the fact, it seems that he could not have had a better dream or fantasy than his encounter with the deaf-mute boy. The purpose of his almost accidental touristic or virtual sexual touristic journey / e¬xpedition to Tunisia came to change from its initial framework after his encounter with the Tunisian deaf-mute boy during that walk on the beach. The academic historical expedition of Maurice to North Africa would evolve into a project to know / understand the Maghreb. Whether he "arrived" in Tunisia and North Africa or the Maghreb eventually or did not arrive that remains a question. According to him he does, at least, arrive at "scratching the surface." The purpose of his travel to Tunisia also evolves from its initial framework to become a mission to help the Tunisian deaf-mute boy out of motives that Maurice would keep rationalizing to be charitable and by implication above erotic or self-serving motives. Maurice arrives at "scratching the surface" as he says. Throughout the novel, Maurice keeps imposing the idea of placing Nidhal in a special school given his disability, but there does not seem to be a special school or special teachers for Nidhal and those like him as the American Columbia university history professor wishes for him out of his desire to help and save him. Yet, he remains unable to understand for example why Tunisian children ask for pens and not just money even though he gives in by the end and buys one for a Tunisian child who asked him for a stylo / pen. That is despite his concern about the deaf-mute boy’s education and what he believed to be a necessity to place him in a special school. He used to say throughout the narrative that the boy should be "given opportunities." We learn from the story that Nidhal does not know English. He did against many odds given his circumstances and situation get an opportunity for an introduction to English, but the Europeans foreclosed it for him showing him and teaching him instead about what they thought to be a better subject for him. They chose to show him a collection of guns and Arabian swords. They seemed to think that weapons would be a more appropriate subject for the boy and possibly more relevant for his future than any advantage he might gain and have to offer from learning English through being allowed and enabled to use his eyes to read lips and help himself learn foreign European languages, English in particular. Tragically, within the scheme of the unfolding narrative, the different characters do not create or seize the opportunities to learn each others’ languages and connect genuinely humanely as fully as possible. In this context, the characters with disabilities in Geraci’s fictional work through their predicaments and impediments enact metaphors in cautionary tales about critical issues in their milieux at the intersection of the personal and political. They represent as well real people who have literal impairments with figurative dimensions in their own land and part of the world, the Arab / Muslim world and Tunisia where people and youth need more than anything else the human right to be safe and live independently in pursuit of knowledge and fulfillment not through the sword, but the pen. Nidhal goes on to signify and swim in the Mediterranean in his special ways. The struggles of the people continue on the waves and shores of the Mediterranean, mare nostrum, our sea. Struggle is an Arabic meaning of the Deaf-Mute boy’s name Nidhal.
Title: The Deaf-Mute Boy
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