From Zahran Alqasmi’s ‘Honey Hunger’
Editor’s note: There are two redemptive keystones in the life of our protagonist, Azzan, during the course of Honey Hunger, a novel published today by AUC Press’s Hoopoe Fiction imprint. One is the bees he both raises and hunts, in pursuit of their honey. The other is an elusive goat herder named Thamna, who Azzan meets in the scene excerpted below.
Throughout this beautifully meditative novel — which transports the reader into Oman’s rocky terrain — we spend time contemplating the journeys and life cycles of bees, as well as other animals, including humans. Yet here, humans are just one part of the natural landscape, and not its dominating force.
From Honey Hunger
By Zahran Alqasmi
Translated by Marilyn Booth
Just as, finally, he spotted the new young queen on one rim of the final frame he inspected, he heard her voice, coming from far away. Or at least that was how it seemed to him. He raised his head sharply and studied the heights surrounding him, hoping to hear goats bleating or the bark of a dog. And then suddenly the voice went silent. Had the voice come from inside of him? Maybe he had imagined the sound, the strains of her taawibeh. Or had he really heard her?
Working since early morning, he had been able to form twelve new hives. He would take them over to the nearby site he had already selected. Separating these bees from the others meant he was expanding his colony. He had placed several hives in that new location and now he could deposit the new groups in them.
Because he needed to be sure that he was not depriving the old hive of its vigor, he would take out a small number of bees along with their queen, their mother bee, leaving the rest around the new queen. If she was laying eggs, then he would know that his hive was strong, that it had a young and energetic population, that it would fill up with newly hatched bees who would contribute their share when the gum acacias flowered, for then he would be able to see masses of lively bees bringing back nectar and pollen, inundating the hive with honey.
Once he was certain that the new hive was launched, a few days later, he would provision the old queen bee’s hive with new, closed frames that would be filled with their own eggs about to hatch. That would guarantee its viability through the approaching season.
He worked for three solid hours and then stopped to brew coffee. He drank several small glasses of it. He must finish this task and deliver the new companies of bees to the other site.
A cup of coffee, ahh?
This unexpected query startled him. He had been so deeply inside of his own thoughts and plans. She didn’t give him time even to stand up before she sat down opposite him.
The honey has stolen you! she said, her voice teasing him. All your time and attention … She picked up a date and rubbed it between two fingers to soften it before popping it into her mouth. As he poured the coffee he was stealing glances at her face. He tried to bring back the feeling that had haunted his mind following his first encounter with her. And he sought a way to break the heavy silence between them.
Where do you live? he asked.
She stared upward into the mountains. Everywhere, she said. A person like me doesn’t need a house. My home—it’s the high plains and the wadis.
She told him that she had been in these parts for several months. That the pasturage here was rich and provided good grazing for her animals, and so she was partial to this region. It was why she would settle here for long stretches of time, moving from one locale to another amongst its hillocks and higher elevations, always looking for new pastures and searching for water- courses where she and her herd could drink. For a time, she had camped beneath a particular gum acacia that grew on the edge of nearby Wadi al-Ghaf because the wadi provided such an abundance of water. She’d left all her belongings there beneath the samur tree; early each morning, she took her goats to pasture, returning only in the hot midday or even not until the late afternoon as the sun was beginning to dip in the sky.
A woman alone with her herd and a dog; these animals were her only companions. How was she able to live by herself, so completely cut off from the world? His mind was asking him that question before his voice asked her about her family. She swallowed her coffee and gave him a sharply condensed version of her long story. She was an only child and her parents had died some time ago; and then her husband followed them to the grave. She and he had not had a child. She had no family in this earthly life apart from these goats, no home other than these wilderness lands.
Something in his spirit seemed to grow lighter as he gazed at her face. A tiny seedling was breaking through the dark soil of his days, opening its minute leaves to fresh air and sunlight. The arcs of her eyebrows sloped lightly to each side of her brow. Her eyes were large and clear and he thought he could see the legendary magic of the ancients reflected in the soft whiteness around the pupils, shaded by long lashes which tracings of kohl had made even lovelier. Her nose was small and delicate over small lips. The smooth, flat surface of her chin was interrupted only by a slight, pointed swell outward.
Like a thirsty creature yearning for a sweet gush of water to engulf him, he wished she would go on speak- ing. He wanted to keep on drinking in her words. The hoarse tone infusing her mellow voice did not startle or grate on him—this low melodious voice that seemed to have been formed inside the herders’ songs, and yet was one with the open spaces that gave rise to their taawibehs…. This voice made his blood quicken. He felt the heat of it in his fingers: a voice, a timbre, he had never heard before, or perhaps he had but he didn’t know where.
After her fourth cup she got to her feet, thanking him and in the same breath teasing him again. Town folk, she remarked, are so miserly! They don’t invite their neighbors over. He apologized, giving the excuse that he hadn’t been aware of her presence here until she had been there asking her question. She laughed and the sound of it seemed to split open the stony interior that had been his heart as long as he could remember, opening a space from which imaginary birds burst forth to circle overhead.
Zahran Alqasmi (Author) is an Omani poet and novelist, born in the Sultanate of Oman in 1974. Honey Hunger was his third of four published novels, and in 2023 he won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) for The Water Diviner. He has also published ten poetry collections and a collection of short stories.
Marilyn Booth (Translated by) is professor emerita, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Magdalen College, Oxford University. She has translated many works of Arabic fiction into English. Her translations of Omani author Jokha Alharthi include Bitter Orange Tree and Celestial Bodies, which was awarded the International Booker Prize. She has also translated Hoda Barakat, Hassan Daoud, Elias Khoury, Latifa al-Zayyat, and Nawal al-Saadawi. Her research publications focus on Arabophone women’s writing and the ideology of gender debates in the nineteenth century, most recently The Career and Communities of Zaynab Fawwaz: Feminist Thinking in Fin-de-siècle Egypt.