Reading Mexico:
Stories by Josh Barkan will make one think that Donald Trump’s demand
for the border wall is justified. Mexico
comes across in these 12 stories as a country of drug dealers and their mafia
along with prostitutes and quite many people who resort to violence without too
much provocation. The stories are set in
the capital city where “To live ... you have to pretend there aren’t many
dangers” [‘Everything else is going to be fine’].
Each of the
twelve stories shocks us with a different variety of danger. In the very first one, ‘The Chef and El Chapo’,
we meet “the most badass narco in the country” who is ushered into the Chef’s restaurant
by a retinue of his AK-47 swinging guards for a uniquely tasty meal. The Chef is under duress to prepare that
exquisite meal the type of which the Boss has not tasted so far. The reputation of the Chef is at stake. Worse, his life as well as those of the
clients present in the restaurant is in danger as the Boss’s ego can be
provoked dangerously and too easily. The
Chef finds a way. He mixes his blood
with the dish. But his blood has certain
bitterness that comes with age and experience of the world. So he adds the blood of a little innocent
girl whose thumb he cuts in order to procure the blood. The Boss who does not know of the secret
ingredient yet relishes the meal. But
the subsequent knowledge does not bother him unduly. He cannot go back on his promise to reward
the Chef if he relished the meal. The
Chef’s ego is comparatively diminutive and hence he regrets what he did.
The violence
and darkness notwithstanding, each story has much humanity too in it. Each story throws light on both sides of
human nature: the dark and the bright; sin and the potential for
redemption. This makes the collection
eminently rewarding in spite of all the darkness that may nauseate the reader occasionally.
I found the
story ‘The God of Common Names’ particularly profound. “This is a Romeo and Juliet story.” Thus begins the tale which goes on to narrate
the tragic end of two adolescents in love.
The boy and the girl were the offspring of two notorious drug dealers
who are each other’s rivals. Their
teacher, a non-religious Jew, tries his best to save his students but
fails. The teacher himself married a
woman against her father’s fervently religious appeals. The very religious father, according to the
teacher-narrator, negates life (not very unlike the drug pusher) while wrapping
his self in a small bundle of virtue, blind to essential things of life. Like most religious people, the father wants
the teacher to “denounce who he was” for the sake of God and religious
traditions.
Every story is
a gem by its own right. The drawback,
however, is the violence in which each is steeped. Each story is narrated by a first person
narrator which makes the story very convincing and personal. But as we move on to the second half of the
book we may feel a sense of déjà vu in spite of the fact that the narrator is
an entirely different person, belonging to another walk of life that we have
not seen so far.
We meet a
whole spectrum of narrators in this collection ranging from a retired nurse to
a drug peddler, musician to plastic surgeon, painter to architect. But all of them present a rather dark picture
of Mexico City. The book deserves to be
read, however, if only to realise that there is much potential for redemption
in spite of all that wretchedness.
PS. I received this book from Blogging
for Books for this review.
Visit Josh
Barkan, the author, at his website HERE
Definitely sounds dark based on your review and the 'thumb' incident.....
ReplyDeleteThe thumb incident shows how the narco dealers feed on human blood metaphorically. But it can be very offputting, no doubt.
DeleteI wonder, how you managed to keep reading the stories one after another, if every new story kept introducing new shades of darkness only.
ReplyDeleteIt took me a week to finish the book, Kaustubh. Anyway, as I've mentioned in the review, there is a redeeming factor in every story in spite of the violence and darkness.
DeleteSounds like I should also give this book a try.
ReplyDeleteThanks for inspiring
Welcome, Rakhi.
Delete