The Map of Salt and Stars- Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

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The Map of Salt and Stars review- Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

The Syrian refugee crisis could not be more prominent within the media than it is at present, with news alerts appearing almost every day, screaming headlines on conflict and suffering. But how often is it that we receive a perspective untainted by prejudiced assumptions, unbiased and unaffected by fear-mongering and exaggeration? In The Map of Salt and Stars, Syrian-American author Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar places the story back in the rightful hands of the Syrians themselves, through her compelling tale of one families' struggle to escape their war-torn country, and re-define what it means to be at home.

Joukhadar presents this journey through the eyes of 12-year old Nour, who has spent most of her life in Manhattan, before the family return to their home in Syria, only to have it torn to pieces. Speaking just a sparse amount of Arabic, Nour must come to terms with the loss of a country she barely even knew, and hold onto the fragments of her shattered identity.  Running alongside this narrative is the ancient tale of Rawiya, the young apprentice who disguises her gender in order to accompany map-maker Al-Drisi on his expedition around the globe, with the purpose of creating the most accurate world map ever to exist. Thus, beyond anything else, this is a novel about journeys- it is Nour's journey towards discovering who she really is; Rawiya's journey through unrecorded landscapes, and the Syrian journey towards an unknown, unstable future.

Nour's 12-year-old perspective is particularly interesting, as her character shows aspects of intense, adult-like responsibility and awareness, alongside child-like inquisitiveness and wonder. She marvels at beautiful stones as she stands at the Egyptian border with her family's life at risk, and muses on the "colours" of human voices as she waits in hospitals. This has a harrowing effect on the reader as it reminds us that those children we see everyday on the news, bare-footed and solemn-faced, blurred into a position of anonymity, are still very much children-dealing with so much at such a young age. This idea also links to the strong-willed character of teenage Rawiya, forced out of childhood and femininity in order to hold rank as part of an esteemed expedition. She is depicted almost as Nour's idol: hers is the story she was told each night, and hers is the sense of hope she carries with her.

A reviewer on Goodreads described the novel as being 'to Syria what the Kite Runner was to Afghanistan', however I regard this comment as quite reductive, as it links the two novels together based on their depiction of suffering, with the implication being that such countries can only tell one type of story. In fact, this comment also ignores the influence of Rawiya's narrative, which moves beyond harsh reality to the realm of fantasy. The expedition are taunted by a mythological bird of prey, for example, and face other fantastical obstacles during their journey. Whilst Joukhadar based the map-maker, Al-Drisi, on a real individual, the rest of the narrative was fabricated to create a kind of ancient fable, which explores a genre of writing that is often absent in the modern world of literature. And this decision was not random- as Rawiya's story, albeit fictional, draws interesting parallels with Nour's life, which the reader becomes increasingly aware of throughout the novel.

Perhaps, this is the most creditable aspect of the novel: that it manages to say something about Syria, whilst being able to say so many other things as well. The life of a 12-year-old child is not defined by conflict and loss, it is full of magic, imagination (and yes, indeed, 'Salt' and 'Stars.') What Joukhadar has managed to achieve, within her debut novel no less, is something that re-establishes the humanity behind terms such as 'refugee' and 'crisis', providing a refreshing alternative to the media's distorted depiction.