Silence Is A Sense by Layla AlAmmar

Silence Is A Sense by Layla AlAmmar

Published by Algonquin Books ISBN 9781643750262

Hardcover, $25.95, 304 pages

I've never read a book that does a better job of putting the reader inside the mind of the narrator than Layla AlAmmar's novel Silence Is A Sense. 

The unnamed narrator is a 24 year-old Syrian refugee who has resettled in Great Britain. The novel opens with her narrating the sights she sees looking from her apartment into the windows of other tenants in the complex. 

There is Juice Man, a very fit man who has a stringent exercise program and entertains several women and a few men in his apartment. There is an elderly man who also lives alone, a family where the father beats the mother, while their teenage daughter sits in her room with headphones on and their teenage son has anger issues, and Tom and his wife Ruth, who keeps tabs on activities in the complex. We see them so clearly through her eyes.

Our narrator doesn't speak, leaving her neighbors to believe her deaf. She doesn't disabuse them of this notion, it makes it easier to avoid any type of relationship with them. She is too fragile.

We learn that she fled the violence and bombings in Syria, losing contact with her family in the process.

She made her way through Europe, through horrific conditions in refugee settlements, and a young woman on her own in this situation suffers physical, sexual and emotional violence that causes unbearable trauma.

The narrator gives us glimpses of her previous life- her parents and siblings, life at university protesting the brutal Syrian regime of Al-Assad, the daily barrage of bombings that killed so many thousands of innocent people. 

She writes essays under the name The Voiceless, and her editor pressures her to reveal more of her life fleeing Syria, something she is unable to do as she is "cornered by memories, caged in by recollections". Her pieces become more controversial as she is critical of the people who are marching with their posters, willing to speak up but not actually do anything to help the humans fleeing their homeland.

A violent attack on a Muslim forces the people in the neighborhood to face up to the racism and religious intolerance amongst them. The Imam of the mosque said of it:

"No god you believe in will be okay with this. You must do unto others as you want them to do to you. That is it. That is all of it. There is nothing else which matters. That is what all the great religions of the world tell us."

That resonated so much with me. 

I can tell how much I get from a book by how many highlights I make. Silence Is A Sense is covered with highlights, with insights into the plight of refugees, how memories can be deceiving, how dangerous it is for us to blame "the other" because we don't want to face up to our fears that the world is changing, and how "we all want the same things- freedom, happiness, safety". 

The writing is deeply affecting, and looking at the world through our narrator's eyes is enlightening. I will be thinking about her and Silence Is A Sense for a long time to come. I give it my highest recommendation.

Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Layla AlAmmar's book tour.