You know this man. He sits in the middle row of your classes, raises his hand meekly but talks in a voice akin to the sound of scratching o...
You know this man. He sits in the middle row of your classes, raises his hand meekly but talks in a voice akin to the sound of scratching on a blackboard. The man will ask you to please “repeat” yourself, please “speak louder”, erasing his privilege with an unutilised eraser. (If you’re smart, you know he’s choosing not to listen to you). He’s not a sexist; he says “please”, he asks you to “repeat” yourself because he values your voice, and he’s not (not) like other men. Little America’s Sharif Barkati is such a man, and Zain Saeed’s prose grants him a disintegrating pedestal.
The epistolary as a blueprint
Saeed exercises the epistolary form of storytelling through Sharif’s letters to his favourite novelist Laal Ghazali. These letters are directions before they are stories. Laal, along with the readers, is told what to expect. Although Sharif writes from prison, he spends far too much time asking the reader (who, according to him, is only Laal) to listen.
His promise is of a story that’ll sell in America. “This story, my friend – my story –” says Sharif, “has everything”, and it does. Saeed’s perhaps purposeful sketch of Sharif’s humblebrag outlines his character. It reeks of desperation, an...
