Under the title “Providing a Slight of Innocence,” José Saramago writes an introduction to the novel by Brazilian writer Jorge Amado, “Coffee Women,” published by Dar Al-Saqi, translated by Malik Suleiman. He begins his introduction by saying that for many years, Amado sought to be the voice, feeling, and joy of Brazil, and he succeeded in doing so. Therefore, few writers succeed, as Amado succeeded, in becoming a mirror and the image of an entire people, as many foreign readers got to know Brazil by reading Amado’s books.
Many of these people are astonished when they discover in Amado’s books those transparent features that indicate the complex racial and cultural diversity that characterizes Brazilian society. That general and stereotypical image of Brazil, reduced to whites, blacks, mulattoes, and Indians, was subjected to rapid and unequal evaluation, as a result of that. Developmental dynamics in the country’s various sectors and social activities are also met with a sober and entertaining denunciation in Amadou’s works.
In what looks like a review, Saramago says: “We were not unaware of the historical Portuguese immigration, nor of the German and Italian immigration, which occurred at a different level and in different periods, but it was Amado who made us realize the extent of our ignorance of it. The ethnic spectrum that softened Brazil was richer and more diverse.” From European perceptions, that spectrum included the huge numbers of Turks, Syrians, and other Lebanese who left their countries from the nineteenth century, and during the twentieth, up to the present day, and surrendered, in spirit and body, to the temptations and dangers of the Brazilian paradise.
a trip
In this book, “Coffee Women,” Amadou presents the story of two Arab men, Radwan Murad and Jamil Bishara, who decide to immigrate to America, in pursuit of wealth, but the story that indicates the connection soon branches off into other stories, revolving around dozens of other violent men’s characters. To the women who thirst for a comfortable family life, and all of this is in the Itabuna district of Bahia, the birthplace of Amado, to find ourselves in the world of hired killers, cocoa farms that were once gold mines, knife fights, and officers who have powers beyond their control. Law, no one can understand where it comes from, and these people are obsessed with devoting money.
People who are obsessed with love in a country whose men fight and fight, but which opens the doors of ambition and dream for all of them, Jamil Bishara, the dreamer of wealth and love, Radwan Murad, the eloquent speaker, Ibrahim Jaafar, the sad and suffering widower. There is not a single real Turk among them, but the people of the country have always called immigrants from The lands of the Ottoman Sultanate belong to the Turks.
Saramago says: “Nevertheless, something of innocence (which worries the reader) emerges from this turbulent story haunted by evil people, something that is created naturally like the wind that blows, or the water that runs, spontaneously like the grass that emerges after a rainstorm. The “Coffee Women” that… It constitutes a marvel of narrative art, despite its methodological brevity and apparent simplicity, worthy of a place it deserves among the great novels.