Small Kingdoms Review

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Small Kingdoms ReviewI've read Small Kingdoms, in manuscript form, several times over many years. I had the good fortune to meet Anastasia Hobbet and her husband, back in 1996 when we all lived in Kuwait City. It was a very odd environment, really. You were in a foreign land, and at the same time you weren't. We used to read the local English language paper The Arab Times. Along with the stories of car wrecks, and the Emir's occasional threats to give women the vote, and photos of various dishdasha-wearing dignitaries cutting ceremonial ribbons with giant swords, or cutting the throat of a young camel during a celebratory anniversary sacrifice, were stories of suicides by maids and servants. It was Anastasia who pointed out to me that there was more going on, and I began to pay more attention to these back-of-the paper stories. The Philippine embassy had to charter a special plane to return the hundred or so maids who had been taking asylum there, with no passports and nothing but the clothes on their backs, after escaping their "employers." A maid had committed suicide. Another maid had committed suicide. A maid was arrested for having stolen property in her room. A maid was found murdered and the body dumped at the roadside. A Mercedes had pulled up at the hospital and disgorged a terribly beaten maid, then driven off. There were no corresponding articles discussing the arrests of the perpetrators. We realized that these women were being horribly abused.
As American expats we were treated well. As an American woman, you could have Kuwaiti women friends. But once Anastasia pointed it out to me, you could also see the pain and suffering all around you. You could read about it in the paper every week, about another maid found dead in her room. Sometimes the article said they were pregnant, implying that the young woman was of low morals and had no doubt deserved her death, or killed herself from shame. But how could a young woman, not allowed out of the house, get pregnant in the first place? The dark rumors, the rumors we heard from our own maids, were that the men of the household - the sons, the husbands, the uncles - raped women with impunity. Maybe a high percentage of the reported suicides were really suicides. What does it say about the lives of these young women that suicide was the best option?
What may not be obvious in Small Kingdoms is just how everyday and ordinary a story this is. The social world, the suicides and beatings, the stories of abuse, the wonders of an exotic market, the enchantment of making friends with a face behind a veil, the fabulous tapestry of sights, smells, flavor, and sounds - it was all just like that. The beauty and magic were real, the heat was real, the grunge and filth were real, the dark undercurrent was real, the sense of vulnerability was real. All I can think is that it was all so overwhelming, and so different, that it was just easier to focus on the good than on the fearful.
Anastasia Hobbet did more. She wrote a book about it. She bore witness to the hidden and unseen suffering of women who suffer still. For this is not the ancient past. These women toil still in other people's mansions in a hot, hot land. The beatings continue, the abuse continues, the suffering continues, the story continues. And yet there is hope. Where light shines, darkness vanishes. I won't give away the ending of the story - this is only one story, after all, and as many of these small stories end happily as end tragically. But the world Hobbet populates in Small Kingdoms is not only inhabited by oafs and overlords. It is also peopled with those who care, who love, who are curious, who are friendly. One of the women in the story reflects on her life, on what it means to be a good person, and struggles to stand up for what she knows to be right and righteous. This woman is not an American. One of the women in the story fears the monster to the north (at the time, Saddam Hussein still threatened), fears public ridicule, feels helpless in the face of centuries of culture. This woman is not Kuwaiti. One of the women in the story struggles though a painful illness without complaint, not to better her own situation, but to reach out to save one less fortunate than herself, even at the cost of her own welfare.
Small Kingdoms is a small book about small ordinary lives in a small country halfway around the world from here. But there is nothing small, or ordinary, or distant about it. Power and privilege crush the spirits of the downtrodden and poor in this country, too: wherever you are, there are wrongs being wronged. Power and arrogance take what they want: in your country, in your state, in your town, in your home, even, if you care to look, in your heart. It takes a special kind of gift, of courage and talent and compassion, to be able to see into the heart of inhumanity and hold it up to the light so that others can also see. This is the gift that Hobbet offers in Small Kingdoms.
This beautifully crafted story is more than just some interesting characters working out their problems for our entertainment. It is all that: a beautiful, entertaining, and beguiling story of an exotic, faraway land. It is also an illumination of the misery and mute suffering that lies just below the surface in this world, in this day. If you have ever driven a car that burns oil from the desert, you have taken your place in a chain of consequences that reaches down to the people in this novel. The novel's protagonists struggle with right and wrong, class and society, are tempted to take refuge in comfort, are tempted to tune out the suffering of others. Yet they trust in what they know is right, they follow the dictates of their hearts, and they fight courageously to do the right things. It is in these small victories, these smallest of difficult but morally right choices, that we find what is best in ourselves. Hobbet's novel strikes a chord that reverberates far beyond the borders of faraway tiny Kuwait, and echoes in every human heart.
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