Nussaibah Younis
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis unfolds in the first-person voice of Dr. Nadia Amin. Having published an article on the possibility of rehabilitating ISIS brides, she captures the attention of the UN who invite her to lead a deradicalization group for ISIS brides in Iraq. Escaping from a failed relationship and a fraught connection with her mother, Nadia accepts the position and arrives in Baghdad. She meets her team, each one of whom displays little faith in the chance of success.
Undeterred, Nadia meets the ISIS brides to begin work. While at the refugee camp, she encounters Sara, a British Asian, who became an ISIS bride at the age of fifteen. Nadia sees herself in this young woman since both are British Asian. She becomes fixated on her, determined to get her rehabilitated and returned to England. Meanwhile she ignores the other women who need assistance and who are, perhaps, more deserving than Sara.
Why these women became ISIS brides and what can be done to ensure they are no threat to society is a matter of grave concern. Unfortunately, the subject is treated with a glibness that is off putting, mainly due to the tone and nature of Nadia’s narrative voice. Nadia is self-absorbed, naïve, silly, irreverent, flippant, and prone to histrionics. She swears constantly, is boisterous, crude, and disagreeable. Her attempts at humor are obvious and strained. Her interiority and speech are littered with sexual innuendo. Her go-to response when she is confronted with an obstacle is to drink herself into a stupor and engage in promiscuous sex. Her fixation on Sara seems more to do with her need to find a purpose for herself than it actually has to do with helping a young woman redeem herself for making a serious error in judgment.
The characters are two-dimensional and cartoonish. The UN staff are self-absorbed individuals who are more interested in promoting themselves than in helping others. They play childish pranks on each other and lack moral, ethical, or intellectual depth. The focus is almost exclusively on the European staff with almost a total absence of Iraqi voices—the very people who are essential to the success of any UN mission in Iraq since they know the local population and can navigate the complex dynamics. The Arab women in the refugee camp are similarly rendered voiceless and invisible. Although a number of them are present, we get barely a glimpse of their torturous stories, experiences, and traumas because their voices are buried beneath Nadia’s attempt to bond with Sara.
The humor throughout the novel is puerile and in poor taste; the dialogue, unrealistic. And while the novel raises serious issues, it fails to address them adequately or to deliver any workable insight on resolving such a complex problem. And to top it off, the ending in which Nadia orchestrates Sara’s escape is rushed, absurd, and highly improbable.
A problematic treatment of an issue that warrants a complex and nuanced exploration.