The
Mortar and the Mosque
Here’s a challenge for
Canadian writers: “We need a new metaphor for our country.”
This seemed to be the
consensus at the opening of the Contesting Canada's Future conference in
Peterborough last week (May 21-23, 2015). None of the old concepts – “the
cultural mosaic,” “the two solitudes,” “the frosty salad bowl,” “not-a-melting-pot,” “the
fur trade folks,” “people living on land stolen from aboriginal people” - seem all
that useful in today’s Canada.
This philosophical discussion
spun around my head as I headed back to the Best Western on Lansdowne Street that
night, flopped down on the bed, and picked up where I left off reading Laughing All the Way to the Mosque by journalist
and screenwriter Zarqa Nawaz. The book stands out on the 2015 Leacock Medal
shortlist as the work of a woman humorist, a story rooted in the Prairies, and
a window on a particular element of our hard to describe society. It kind of speaks to the need for a new
national metaphor too.
In the book, Nawaz,
the creator of the successful CBC series Little
Mosque on the Prairie, shares her life through vignettes that rely heavily
on dialogue and have the feel of a TV sitcom at times. Laughing
All the Way to the Mosque does what viewers of the TV show might
expect. It documents in a cheerful way
the incongruous circumstance of a girl growing up in the Canadian west as the
protected product of Pakistani immigrant parents. The stress of hairy legs in gym class, the
allure of tight jeans at Muslim summer camp, the adventure of talking to boys, and
teenage rebellion (albeit by being more conservative than her parents) could
fit into TV.
Laughing
also
covers subjects like “ass washing,” clips and weights to restore the foreskin
of circumcised penises, sex rules around the pilgrimage to Mecca, and references
to “white people” ways that do not normally make it onto the little screen. This,
of course, all adds to authenticity and avenues to connect with Zarqa’s
experience.
But these stories amount
to something special because they go beyond the Muslim in Canada
fish-out-of-water formula. They almost
equally tell, with charity and humour, the experience of a Westernized,
moderate Canadian in the Muslim world. Her reaction to the Halal butcher’s mix of
prayer mats, trinkets, and Frankenstein cow parts could have come from the mouth
and mind of any Canadian, and her naiveté in facing conservative backlash to
the Little Mosque series comes across
as the perspective of someone with one foot in and one foot outside each community.
When she makes her
Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, she and her husband view the spectacle as people
from the Canadian prairies and are comfortably stationed in the camping area
for Canadians.
Through this mix,
Nawaz pulls us into her story and allows us to laugh along with her. We recognize how much
we all have in common, and there’s something hopeful in the fact that we have a
nexus point where we can share the joke.
Often, I saw passages
in Laughing All the Way to the Mosque which
could have come with little alteration from early Leacock Medalists like
Morley Torgov’s avoidance of medical school in the tiny Jewish community in
Sault Ste. Marie or Sondra Gotlieb’s pressure to choose between marriage and
university in 1950s Winnipeg. Leacock
Medal winner Ian Ferguson’s life growing
up as a “white kid” on an Alberta Indian reserve, and 1948 medal winner Angéline
Hango’s life as a French Quebecoise in English schools all had strong
similarities, in essence, to experience mapped out in the Nawaz story.
In 1948, it is likely
that French Quebec was just as clichéd and “other” as the Muslim community
might feel today. (If you ever have a chance, read the jacket cover of the 1940’s
Truthfully Yours and then that of Laughing All the Way to the Mosque – I’m
not sure publishers and publicists do subtle humorists and affectionate memoirs
a favour with hackneyed adjectives like “hilarious” and “laugh-out-loud,” but
the shared spin shows how similar the presumptions about the market and context
were.)
Of course, misconceptions
and the interface of cultures provides great raw material for humour and,
perhaps, for finding our way as a country.
That opening session
at the Peterborough conference ended with the Chair suggesting, in a joking
way, that the metaphor for Canada in the 21st century should be
Hegel’s description of life as “the union of union and disunion.”
A bit too theoretical for me, but I guess he
meant the country consists of the things that hold us together whether there is
a natural bond or not.
It’s like the spirit
of Canada is the mortar between the tiles in the mosaic, not the individual
tiles nor even the whole. I think you
find that mortar in people, like the Canadian race – the Métis - that bridge different cultures and that teach
the rest of us how to smile at the challenges.
People like Ian Ferguson, Angéline Hango, Morley Torgov, and now, in
2015, Zarqa Nawaz.
Writing Exercise
You are the daughter of Canadian parents living in a small village in Morocco. Write a short story describing how you successfully make friends at your new school by starting a hockey pool.
DBD
May 2015
May 2015