Book Review: The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism

Author: Deborah Baker
Language: English
Publisher: Penguin India
Binding: Hard Cover
ISBN 9780670085361
Pages: 256

IT is a story of how people tell stories; and how those stories change people; and then change the discourse; and, sometimes, history. It is the accumulation of memories, about a certain kind of growing up, about transition, and manipulation at the same time; and so of course, a tale of nostalgia.

In “The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism," Deborah Baker creates a faintly complex portrait of a young girl – Margaret Marcus – from a middle-class Jewish family from Larchmont, New York, who becomes a self-exiled Muslim – Maryam Jameelah – and moves to Pakistan on invitation of Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi, the leader of Jamat-e-Islami, the religio-political party in Pakistan.

Self-taught, untravelled, and unlearned in any foreign language, Maryam sacrifices the supposed freedom and privileges of a western life style to live in exile in Pakistan. Desperate to know answers to the questions she has been facing, Margaret writes detailed letters to Mawdudi. And for every question the reply promises to answer, many more arise to take their place. Margaret’s conversion is simply a battle fought in pursuit of the real identity where the strong triumphs over the weak.

She is a sensitive, mostly friendless child who bristles at her family's lack of spirituality, develops an abiding sense of moral absolutism, and becomes fascinated, then inspired, and then obsessed, with Arab culture, particularly the fate of the Palestinians following Israeli statehood and the Suez Canal crisis.

“Although I wanted to become a Muslim,” Maryam writes in her book Islam Versus the West, “My family managed to argue me out of it”. She is being warned that Islam would complicate her life since the faith is not ‘part of American scene’. At the time, Maryam writes further, her faith is not sufficiently strong to withstand the pressures”. She becomes so ill that she has to discontinue college. For a long time, she remains at home under private medical care, steadily growing worse. In the desperation her parents confine her to the hospital, where she stays for more than two years. “While in hospital, I vowed that if I recover(ed) I would become a Muslim,” Maryam writes.
 
During her teens, Margaret is like any other Jew. Coming of age up to the moment of serious self introspection, Margaret sets off for Pakistan to become, more fully, Maryam Jameelah. Her father, Herbert Marcus, warns her that she was going to be a stranger living in some other society. But by then she is no less than a stranger among her ‘own’ people. Yet landing in Pakistan is not the end of difficulties. Margaret – now Maryam – has to know new culture, new people, and new language; frame herself in the new mould of life.

Margaret’s family is too prejudiced towards Muslims – Arabs in particular. They make all their efforts to lay a false impression on their daughters mind regarding Arabs. They portray Arabs in a derogatory frame. Conflate the half truth with their more discouraging lies so as to show superiority of their clan. But how long is the sanctimoniously ridiculed impression going to prevail. It is doomed to perish. And it does.

It is in December 1960 that Margaret Marcus initiates her correspondence, with a letter expressing admiration for an essay Mawdudi had written, on the certainty of an afterlife. Reading her letter, Mawlana immediately recognises a kindred spirit. When Maryam arrives at Pakistan, she is already her daughter.

“When I was reading your articles,” Mawlana writes to Margaret during their correspondence, “I felt as if I was reading my own mind”. Mawlana is certain that Margaret would feel the same when she reads her work. And, of course, she does.

It is a time when Margaret is left to the mercy of fate by her parents. Her parents want to retire and sell their entire property and depart for a world tour. They are unsympathetically-determined to abandon all their problems, even the illness of their daughter. By now, Margaret is released from the Hudson River State Hospital. Her correspondence with Mawdudi has already started and Mawlana has invited her to Pakistan. There are ‘parents’ – the parents of West. And there is a ‘Stranger’ – Stranger of the East. Maryam’s ill health is a challenge – a perplexing one. But Mawlana’s sympathy is an ocean – a comforting one.

“After declining your kind invitation for so long,” Margaret wrote to Mawlana soon after this incident, “Would it be too late to accept it now?”

Mawlana Mawdudi has not been long out of prison when Maryam meets him first. Mawlana is sixty-one; and for Maryam it is scarcely believable. His white beard, lined face, and stiff movements looked ancient. At a very early age, Mawdudi has been a learned man, gently devout, but stubbornly at odds with the world as it was – the world of hegemony and harassment, the world of exploitation and immorality. During his twenties, his intellectual paradigms have developed sufficiently. He published his first book – Al-Jihad Fil Islam. At this time, Mawdudi was already around forever.

The book presents a clear contrast in revealing the mental stability of Maryam. The author demonstrates that Maryam is not in the state of balanced understanding yet leaves no space to doubt that Maryam is an intellectual. I wonder, how it is possible that a person can be an ‘Insane’ and an ‘Intellectual’ at the same? 'Intellectualness' has an evident association with the chiselled sharpness and creative depths of memory, while as 'insanity' is not just a state of memory loss, but, more horribly, a state of mindlessness. And one who has been unfortunately bestowed with the later ability could barely be an intellectual. Maybe, the way of Margaret would think about the existence of life in its entirety is beyond the level of comprehension of her parents. Or maybe, they know it, but are not ready to believe anything outside the domain of Jewish ideology.

On page 69 the author writes, “… In the Islam of Jamat-e-Islami, Maryam Jameelah cannot select her husband by herself”. I wonder if Jamat-e-Islami has any separate version of Islam. That is not to say that it appears to be a consciously induced conspiracy; but, at least, the author has not even vaguely touched any such idea on rational evidence that would separate Islam form what Jamat-e-Islami preaches. In Islam, women have the complete freedom to choose her life partner.

Whatever one calls it, the book has come up after an extensive research. The records that make foundation of this book can be found in the manuscripts and archives division at the main branch of the New York Public Library. And most of the letters in the archive are addressed to Jameelah’s parents.

The book swarms through the domain of entirely wrong analysis. Baker demonstrates that there used to be a time when suffering people would come to find refuge within Muslim homes. Of course there was. And for any Margaret there still is. Maybe, the “life standard” of East is little un-luxurious, but shell we not also concentrate on the moral standard of the West. If burkah clad women, who give their chastity priority over anything – are the “Unfortunate Daughters of Islam,” how fortunate are the Almost-Naked Women of West, who know not which time will be the time of their ‘Devastation’?