I’ve just finished reading The American Granddaughter by Anaam Kachchi. It’s a captivating novel that was able to transfer me in a matter of couple of pages to a world that is so foreign to me, yet generating familiar feelings of love, fear and loss. The novel tells the story of Zeina, an Iraqi American. Zeina immigrated with her family to the States, after her father,  a TV presenter, was tortured for allegedly criticizing the regime. She left her homeland while a teenager, leaving behind her loving grandparents.

Zeina has spent around 15 years in the States but managed not to lose her native language, the reason for which she was hired by the American army. Zeina goes back to her homeland as an interpreter working for the American forces that invaded Iraq.

The novel is about identity crisis; the lost identity of an immigrant whose homeland is a distant memory. It is a story of a struggle to reconnect with what is left of old Iraq. It is also the story of Iraqi people whose oppression under Sadam’s rule ends with a catastrophe, and the story of the American forces who believe that they are there to free the people of Iraq.

Zeina, like her American colleagues, thinks that Iraqi people will greet them with roses for ‘freeing’ them but find angry people whose misery has not ended but intensified.

Zeina, when in Iraq, seeks out her loving grandmother, who discovers that her own granddaughter is on their enemy’s camp and is what she considers a traitor.

The novel compresses Iraq’s invasion and documents the lives of ordinary people that were ruined by the American occupation. It also gives glimpses of Iraq before the war and the tolerance and coexistence between the minority Christians and Muslims. It also touches on the sense of patriotism that Iraqis feel whether inside or outside Iraq- regardless of their political affiliation. The novel, in translation, shows us the modern, progressive and educated Iraq, Iraq under economic sanctions and now the divided Iraq.

Zeina’s fragmented identity is mirrored in fragmented Iraq. She falls in love with the enemy, a milk brother and a fighter against the American forces. Her love story is doomed and ends with her leaving Iraq after her grandmother’s death. With the novel’s open ending, none of the issues raised get resolved because simply in reality nothing is resolved yet.

The novel is originally written in Arabic and has been translated into English. The translator successfully transferred the same effect of the Arabic phrases, idioms and says of the Iraqi dialect. As a bilingual, the translation was capable of making me convert the words into images, forgetting what language it is I’m reading; still knowing it is a language that managed to touch me as a reader.