The Hidden Light of Objects

by Mai Al-Nakib

A young girl, renamed Amerika in honour of the US role in the liberation of Kuwait, finds her name has become a barometer of her country’s growing hostility towards the West. A self-conscious Palestinian teenager is drawn into a botched suicide bombing by two belligerent classmates. A middle-aged man dying from cancer looks back on his extramarital affairs and the abiding forgiveness of his wife. A Kuwaiti woman returns to her family after being held captive in Iraq for a decade.

The headlines tell of war, unrest and religious clashes. But if you look beyond them you may see life in the Middle East as it is really lived – adolescent love, yearnings for independence, the fragility of marriage, pain of the most quotidian kind. Mai Al-Nakib’s luminous stories carefully unveil the lives of ordinary people in the Middle East – and the power of ordinary objects to hold extraordinary memories.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Middle East, The World, Short Story Collection, Asian Literature

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 10, 2014

About the author

Mai Al-Nakib is the author of An Unlasting Home, a novel published by Mariner Books/HarperCollins in 2022. Her collection of short stories, The Hidden Light of Objects, published by Bloomsbury, won the Edinburgh International Book Festival's First Book Award in 2014. Her short stories have appeared in various publications, including, Ninth Letter, The First Line, After the Pause, and World Literature Today. She holds a PhD in English from Brown University and teaches English and comparative literature at Kuwait University.

LIKE on Facebook: facebook.com/maialnakib

Reviews

[Melanie]

Considering this was a slim little thing, this took me an absolute age to read. I have to sit with this for a while. Quite honestly not sure what to make of it. Is it brilliant and I cannot see it? Or is it terrible and I am coaxed into believing it is good because of the flowery language? Hm.

Reading this for The Read Around the World Bookclub for our April Read. The RATW is a bookclub travelling the world in books reading one woman author from each country (if we can find them).

[emre · Rating 4 out of 5]

ilk defa kuveytli bir yazarı okudum ve açıkçası hakkında neredeyse hiçbir şey bilmediğim kuveyt'e dair çok şey öğrendim, bu öğrenmeler bilgi öğrenmesi değil, duygu öğrenmesi ama. açıp kuru kuru tarihini okusam kavrayamayacağım şeyler. öykülerin birbiriyle iç içe geçmeden birbirine el sallaması, aynı nesnenin farklı öykülerde farklı biçimlerde yer bulması çok "hayat gibi"ydi. al-nakıb'ın şiire yaslanan dilini çok sevdim.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books)]

The prose impressed me at the beginning, but its floweriness has overwhelmed me, like being stuck in an elevator with someone wearing too much perfume. Bailed just shy of the 20% mark.

[LU · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm pretty sure the characters, their stories and all those objects described within the stories will get stuck in my mind for a long time!
بعد از مدت‌ها یه مجموعه داستان انقدر تاثیرگذار خوندم. فضای داستان‌ها، شخصیت‌ها، اشیایی که به قصه‌ها وصلن... همه‌شون فوق‌العاده آشنا و محسوس هستن. با قصه‌های این کتاب خندیدم، گریه کردم، عاشقی کردم، خجالت کشیدم، سرخ شدم، نوجوون شدم، بالغ شدم، پیر شدم... عجیب دوست داشتم این خانوم می النقیب رو و بی‌صبرانه منتظرم رمان اولش رو بخونم.

[Stacey]

3.50-3.75

I was impressed with Al-Nakib's insight. Although her stories are accessible and easy to read, there is an undeniable depth. She has a firm hold on her Kuwaiti culture and how it translates in the West. It seems some of her wisdom is gained from travel; many of her stories contain travel as a significant theme and her comprehension goes beyond reading. She dispels misconceptions about her middle eastern culture by defining the individuality of family and person, freedom of choice in education, religion, love, and life trajectory. I was lulled by her description of peaceful Kuwaiti life before Hussein invaded and America bombed the country.

There were nine stories and there was only one I didn't finish. My favorites in order are: Chinese Apples which brought with it a lightness and happiness, Amerika's Box which was culturally informative, disbanded stereotypes, enjoyable but heartbreaking, and The Hidden Light of Objects so thought provoking, and raised so many questions, I am still pondering the subject.

A couple of quotes that stuck with me are,
"There are days when the pouch opens. A tear in the constellation letting old light in..."

And my favorite,
" The thing is to be as light as air, like a shawl through a rose gold ring. To be present and, at the same time, to wander through the alley's of the past, plucking memories and possibilities like grapes off vines."

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was the April pick for the Round the world book club where the focus is on female writers from a different country each month. Mai Al-Nakib is from Kuwait and part of what made this book such a great read was the insight given into the everyday realities of the country from the simpler days of desert living, to the oil exploration and the First Gulf War.

Al-Nakib’s writing is beautiful and often verges on folk or fairy tale particularly in stories like Echo Twins and Elephant Stamp which are tales of love and mystery. Among these more whimsical stories are ones of tragedy and brutality although the brutality is often referred to obliquely. Playing with bombs set in Palestine and the titular story are examples of this where the realities of living in this part of the world at a certain time are made clear but through very individual stories, something that we often fail to get in the news.

Before each longer story is a short vignette which initially I was unsure about, some of them seemed to give insight into the story that came after, some seemed completely unconnected but I wonder if a closer read would reveal a greater connection. The stories are also paced so well and although things can be unresolved or unexplained at their end, they do not abruptly stop as in some short stories but seem to end very naturally.

Several of the stories are interlinked either through characters or, fittingly, through objects, a pink tissue wrapped pack of cards, for example, appears in both the first and last stories hinting at yet more stories untold and again this made me want to reread to see other items and links I might have missed.

Only Bear didn’t work for me and I wasn’t alone in this, I believe several members of our group found this story the weakest but this is made up for by the strength of the others. Many are based on the lives of teenagers at international schools in Kuwait and as the group that lies between the innocence of childhood and the awareness of being an adult their perspective was an interesting one, how despite the changes taking place, there are still love affairs and teasing.

There are also stories, however, that focus on couples both younger, like those in Her Straw Hat, and older as in Snow Dossiers, stories that could be about couples all over the world and both of these stories are set somewhere other than Kuwait. In contrast, The Hidden light of Objects which is one of the most powerful in the collection, is firmly situated in the aftermath of the First Gulf War.

I’m so glad I was given the opportunity to read Mai Al-Nakib’s work and look forward to reading the novel that her goodreads profile tells me she is in the process of writing.

[Hanan Muzaffar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deeply moving collection of short stories separated (connected?) by colorful vignettes. The language is my favorite thing about this book. It is rich in its description of events and objects, and passionate in its story-telling.

The stories are often connected, though each can easily be read alone. The strongest link I saw, aside from being in or around Kuwait, is this desire of most of its characters to collect, organize, or remember objects, a desire that seems to stem from a need to find some kind of order in a world too chaotic and haphazard to be seen as anything more than strikes of luck, often, here, unlock(?). (Everything is in fours. Another attempt to organic life in a four-cornered box?)

It is a sad book though, clouded by a sense of loneliness and loss, mostly loss of mother. Death is a recurring image. But the opening vignette already warned of this: "Once there was still mischief to be had and we were safe as crystal dreams" naturally foretells of the unheimlich of the last chapter. Kuwait no longer feels like home. Home is lost. Dead, as all things die, in spite of the "promise to love despite war and unrecoverable time. A way home" that ends the last story.

Read it.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful book, vaguely mystical with warmhearted murmurings.

[Eleni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finishing the book, I felt like the aftereffect of a sweet toothache.... the stories took me longer to finish reading than expected, mainly because I wanted to return to the Desert or by the seaside at the end of the day and look out for the bougainvilleas. I also wanted to preserve the stories in my memory as units. So I gave them some time to breathe.

In many occasions, I missed the connection between the vignettes and the subsequent stories. To my mind the vignettes served like a prologue to what was coming next or what concluded the story in a reverse way. Whatever the purpose, some stories could stand without the vignettes offering anything further.

Every story comes with a secret, which is a stereotypical fictional tool but I liked the idea of exploring the stories of the objects connected with either a trauma or just unleashing imagination. With this in mind I might have liked more depth to the actual situation described and their consequences. I was moved to find so many accurate Greek references in several stories, and the oxymoron use of the name Zoé (meaning Life in Greek) in "Her straw hat".

That was my first fictional encounter with a Kuwaiti cultural perspective, my rating ranges between 3-4 stars and it has definitely created an appetite for reading more from Middle East authors.

[Martha Payne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting in both theme and language, THE HIDDEN LIGHT OF OBJECTS was clearly written out of deep wells of love--the helpless love Al-Nakib feels for her homeland and the troubled Middle East, the love of family, and the love of life, even when that life is so filled with pain as to be unbearable. Read these stories. Go walk the streets of 1970s Japan with its paper lanterns and cherry blossoms. Meet a mysterious old man there and come home with a magical cluster of Chinese Apples. Go to the blood-stained streets of Palestine and realize you are not really there, you are in a Paradise populated with young men who've sacrificed themselves for a cause too unwieldy for them to understand. Go to Beirut; go to Kuwait and feel the angst of first love lost, and go there again and experience the heartbreak of a charming young girl named Amerika, who loves her namesake nation largely because she loves its souvenirs and its cliched language. Go with Al-Nakib, and feel your mind expand and your heart swell.

[Marguerite · Rating 3 out of 5]

I took my time with this book and just finished it today. I enjoyed the stories. Al-Nakib's writing was very easy to read and a bit fanciful especially when she recounted childhood experiences.
The vignettes were very intriguing so I looked forward to the story following but I didn't always feel there was a connection. There probably was but I just didn't grasp it.
While reading I always felt something bad would happen so I read on with a sense of dread...maybe a foreshadowing because of the setting? So if I described the stories I would say sad though I don't think all stories were sad.
Overall like most collections of short stories there are some to recommend and others I wouldn't but as a collection I think it was worth the read.

[Kathrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful collection of short stories describing people/ events in, around or connected to Kuwait. The language the author uses is very flowery, especially in the first half and then gets more sober in the second half. Some of the stories are connected but really only like two streets are connected at an intersection. Many of the stories hint the First Gulf War, but only in passing. I really enjoyed this book and insight it provides.

[Batul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very inconsistent read. Mai Al Nakib's writing is lyrical and visually rich, perhaps too rich at times. For about half of the stories, it's easy to be pulled in by the characters she creates and to live in their heads. But there in lies the problem. The remainder are frustratingly over-stuffed with metaphor and whimsy. Often, the images are incoherent and the use of fragments is excessive. References to Kuwait's socio-political landscape are sometimes awkwardly forced in.
That said, this book did make me a bit weepy a couple of times so I can't not recommend it.
Approach with patience.

[Zain Mirza · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took my time reading this, preferring to savour every word of the beautiful writing. The book brings forth an interesting notion, of how objects can hold stories, memories, even secrets. Most of the stories hold a touch of poignancy, and Mai Al-Nakib's descriptions and brilliant choice of metaphors paint stunning pictures in the reader's mind. A couple of my favorite lines:

"In Kuwait, bougainvillea is called mejnooneh, crazy, notably in the feminine. Crazy because the fuchsia tissues multiply with an exuberance bordering on madness despite the heat and dryness."

There were quite a few details and events that'd occurred in my childhood that I'd forgotten about and it was interesting to relive them through the book. The stories are all placed against the turbulent backdrop of the Middle East, and as an expat living in Kuwait, I loved the glimpses of Kuwaiti history, culture and society (pre-1991) interspersed in some of the the narrative.

You may not be able to relate to some of the characters or their experiences, but that is of no consequence. Read it for the language, for an alternate outlook on the Middle East from the one portrayed by the media today, for a peek into a different world.

[Candace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hadn't gotten far into this collection before I felt thoroughly--"bewitched" isn't the right term, and neither is "entranced"--perhaps "engaged" is the best word for how the writing affected me. I will not deny that some of the stories engaged me more than others, but--damn, this is hard to describe without sounding like all of the blurbs that have come before. I was poked, prodded, and provoked into seeing a variety of situations in ways I had never even imagined.
Rather than fumbling around any further in my (futile) attempts to describe this collection sans cliches, I shall leave you with a few of my favorite sentences:
"Without the usual tonnage of verbal distraction, I was free to devise my own."
"She had returned to take over someone else's responsibilities. Bird feeding, heart mending, memory gathering."
"His life isn't history, but it is in ruins."
"That place--the broken Middle East--often felt foreign to her, an uncomfortable elsewhere."

[Roozbeh Daneshvar · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the stories and the writing rather immature, although they improved towards the end of the book. The writing was too complicated and sometimes with bombastic words. I think the style was trying to take the form of a "modern" and "artistic" writing and I think it greatly failed. I take it as a red flag when the author writes overly complicated, introduces new styles and tries to make the text artificially deep. What I find more difficult (and a true work of art) is when the author writes in a simple and clear way, yet manages to add more layers to the story behind the first (and comprehendible) layer.

[Mehmet Koç · Rating 3 out of 5]

This compilation by Kuwaiti-British writer al-Naqib, consists of striking stories regarding the peoples of Middle Eastern countries such as Kuwait, Palestine and Lebanon. We will see this international award-winning book in Turkish soon.

[Priscilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won this book in a giveaway. It was okay. I don't know why it took so long to get through. I lost interest a number of times.

[Jennifer Pletcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories. There are stories of war, love, loss. But if you look deeper, you find that the stories are mostly about life in the Middle East. Each story talks of small objects that the people treasured. Memories that are encapsulated in the smallest things that hold deep meaning for the bearer. There is the young girl named Amerika who loves her name until 9/11 happens. There are the families torn apart by loss of a young child, or the wanderings of a father. The stories hold a lot of sadness but also beauty. And they are wonderfully told.



I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would. I don't really love short storied books- most of the time I just don't get much out of them. You don't develop love for the characters and sometimes you find there are truly only one or two that you enjoy. It was not true for this book. These stories are wonderfully, expertly written. The language is beautiful (although something to get used to) and that made it hard for me to put it down. The stories are all tragic. In the short pages you do develop feelings for the characters because of how well the stories are written.



While it just gives a small glimpse into life in Kuwait, I am glad I chose this one for this country. I saw a different side, told by an author who actually lives there, and it made me feel differently.

[نجمة إدريس · Rating 4 out of 5]

نور الأشياء الخفي / ميّ النقيب
ترجمة : ليلى المالح

كما تفعل الطفلة في القصة الخرافية حين تنثر وراءها الحصى كي تستدل على الطريق حين العودة، تترك ميّ النقيب إضاءاتها المقصودة قبل كل نص من نصوص المتتالية القصصية (نور الأشياء الخفي)، لنستدل به في غابة الكتابة.

أشياؤها الصغيرة التي تفتح كل واحدة منها كوة نحو دهليز، ثم نحو نافذة، ثم نحو فضاء، هكذا بالتدرج صاعدة سلم الذاكرة ، محمولة بنوستالجيا تتراوح بين اليقظة وخدر الماضي وصور الطفولة ولا يقين الصبا.
كانت وحدة المكان وكثافة الزمان حاضرين معاً، ليصيغا لغة تراوحت بين الكولاج الحلمي والانسياب اليقظ، وكانت المترجمة هنالك حاضرة تواكب النقلات وتركب موجتها بمحبة وفهم عميقين.

أن نكتب للآخر بلغته عن أشيائنا الحميمة وقضايانا المعقدة وبيئتنا وقصصنا، تلك بادرة ذكية ومستحقة. وهذا ما فعلته مي النقيب حين صدّرت هويتنا المحلية للآخر بتلقائية العارفة وشفافية الطفلة. ثم جاءت المترجمة ليلى المالح لتلتقط الخيط وتحيك سجالاً موازياً يلاحق ذلك (النور الخفي) المكنون في (الأشياء).

[lizzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars!!

This book is possibly the first evber anthology I gave 5 stars. The prose was just amazinggg. The stories made me laugh, cry, and reflect on so much of the human experience.

My favorite story from the book is Bear. The description of the gifts, the letter, and the utter hopelessness of a love that could never be had me staring blankly in a public place.

Back to the prose. The prose was just something I felt was so fitting for short stories. I never felt more engaged in the stories of all these characters whose lives couldn't be any more different. It's just the way the author writes (although I was at a loss sometimes since English is not my first language) that unravels the story at the perfect pace.

Looking forward to reading more of the author's works.

[the.smashbot.diaries · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have not read a more poignant, engulfing set of short stories in a long time. I have never been to any of the locations described in the stories, but felt them around me nonetheless. Al-Nakib weaves through the stories and vignettes between them using objects that surface over and over like a verbal where's waldo. The stories are particularly moving since the characters are painfully familiar and yet the decisions they must make are often quite foreign. Beautiful writing, expressive descriptions and memorable characters.

[Brittany · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed these short stories. At times, the flowery, vague language got to be a bit much for me, though. There's a limit to the number of "deep" phrases and sentences that require the meaning to be puzzled out that I enjoy and she definitely exceeded that limit in some places, some phrases not seeming to have any discernible meaning at all other than existing for the sole purpose of providing confusing imagery. Overall, though, I appreciated the authors voice and the content of the stories. One of my favorite non-fantasy collections.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I loved about it? It's power to completely draw me into the stories, the exploration of emotion and memories, the descriptions of both the landscape and the characters. I found it to be powerful. What I did not like? The sadness, the inevitable tragic endings and the raw exposure of human failings/sins of hubris, greed, power. The story of the woman suffering from post partum depression may possibly be a lesson in educating as to its severity.

[Amalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories hidden in objects and in places that all bear traces of journeys and changing ownership. Everyone a potential storyteller. The shadow of war and destruction and death, lives snuffed out too soon, looming behind the next page even as all are drunk with success in the present. I found Al-Nakib's prose frustrating now and then but these are all lovely stories and paint a wonderful, complex image of (mostly) Kuwait at the end of the 20th century.

[Riona O · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This was a really nice, poignant mix of stories separated by short vignettes. I really liked that the stories and vignettes all sort of wove together to create a tapestry of the lives of Kuwaitis and of life in Kuwait during the second half of the 21st century and the early 21st century.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Global Read Challenge 111: Kuwait

Some of the stories were very good. Overall I found the flowery language was really distracting and detracted from the stories. It just felt like it was trying too hard to be poetic. There were also some tense changes that bothered me and the stories were repetitive in tone and theme.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful writing. Sparkling little gems of stories strung together like a necklace of remembrance. One or two stories seemed too obscure for me, but most of them are resonate, mythical and haunting.

[Mohsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

" علي أن أسعى إلى حياة أستطيع أن أستعيد ذكراها، حياة أبحث عنها في المستقبل، عن زمن حاضر سأفقده من دون شك في المستقبل، أضيعه كي أعثر عليه ثانية. علي أن أحيا حياتي ثم أكتب عنها. أو ربما أكتب عن حياتي ثم أعيشها."
احببت القصص وطريقة السرد عن الشخصيات وعن الكويت والمتغيرات التي حدثت لها

[Beatrizmallow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed bag, just like every other short story colection I've read. It was a good insight into life in Kuwait and only for that it was worht the read.