IRELAND

READ

The book I chose for Ireland, Normal People, by Sally Rooney, is a New York Times bestseller and the basis for an Emmy-nominated series on Hulu. A character-driven book with no real plot, it follows the relationship of two young people living in the fictional Irish town of Carricklea, located in the province of Connacht.

Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron attend school together, although they don’t talk to each other there. Connell is popular, a good student and a key member of the school’s soccer team, while Marianne, while also a good student, is awkward and has no friends. Marianne’s family is wealthy, and the way that she and Connell begin to connect is during the times that he comes to her house to pick up his mom, who cleans house for Marianne’s family. They begin to develop a relationship, but Connell makes Marianne promise that she won’t tell anyone at school about it. She is okay with that up until the time that he does something especially humiliating.

They both end up attending Trinity College in Dublin. By that time, they are no longer in communication as Marianne has stopped returning Connell’s calls. When they do reconnect, it seems that Connell is now the awkward one with few friends, and Marianne is popular, having fit in better with the more affluent students that attend Trinity. Throughout the rest of the book, Marianne and Connell come together and then, either through purposeful acts or misunderstandings, drift apart. At times they are a couple, and at other times, they are in relationships with other people. But they almost always remain each other’s best friend.

Both Marianne and Connell have serious self-esteem issues and suffer from bouts of depression. Marianne’s father is dead, so her family consists of her abusive brother and her cold, unsupportive mother. She tells Connell that she wonders why she can’t make people love her. “Sometimes I think I deserve bad things because I’m a bad person,” she says.

Connell has a wonderful relationship with his mother, who got pregnant at the age of 17 and had to drop out of school. He doesn’t know who his father is, and doesn’t really care. Having been popular in high school, where everyone had known him all his life and it didn’t matter that his family had no money, he is unprepared for the solitary life he leads in college. He wonders why his mom didn’t get an abortion, which would have made her life much easier, and he has a certain amount of guilt about the dysfunctional nature of his relationship with Marianne. He “feels like he has ruined the life of everyone who has ever even marginally liked him.”

Normal People is not a happy book, but I thought it was a page turner. I found the ending somewhat abrupt, but by then I was familiar enough with the characters to have a pretty good idea of how their lives would proceed for many years to come.

COOK

Food was barely mentioned in Normal People, and Irish food not at all. I ordered a vegan corned beef, thinking I would make corned beef and cabbage, but decided I’d better find out whether that’s really a traditional Irish dish. It is not. It’s apparently a dish that American Irish people created after leaving Ireland, so that wasn’t going to work for this blog post.

Instead, I found a recipe for vegan Irish stew on the Brand New Vegan website, using portobello mushrooms in place of the traditional lamb or mutton. And for all you vegans who want your food to be oil-free, this recipe contains not a drop of oil. Although it’s really too hot to be making and eating stew right now, I enjoyed this dish and will look forward to making it again this fall and winter.

GIVE

Suicide is a recurring topic in Normal People. At one point, Marianne tells Connell that the last time she was home, her brother told her she should kill herself, and her mother just said something like, “oh, don’t encourage her.” Someone Marianne and Connell knew in high school commits suicide a few years after graduation. And Connell finds himself having suicidal thoughts and ends up seeing a therapist.

So when I found a project on the GlobalGiving website offering counseling help to suicidal Irish people, that was where I chose to send my donation. According to the project description, “There is an increase in self harming in Ireland, with official guesstimates around 60 000 cases per year. In 2015 Ireland was recorded to have the second highest statistics per capita for suicide for young men under 19 in Europe and the highest stats for young women in that age group. Most counselling support is concentrated in cities, whilst less is offered in the midlands, or the west of Ireland.”

This project will “offer low cost, holistic counselling and support in the midlands and west of Ireland where clients can explore issues cognitively, emotionally or spiritually. Our target group are people who may be isolated or disconnected within the community, or feel they are not coping with life issues. The emphasis is on finding hope and purpose in life and in so doing addressing poor mental health.” More information about this project is available at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/counselling-help-to-20-suicidal-irish-people/.

NEXT STOP: ISRAEL

IRAQ

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The book I chose for Iraq is Absent, by Betool Khedairi. It follows the life of Dalal, a young woman who was orphaned at the age of four months and lives in Baghdad with her aunt and her aunt’s husband, who took her in following the deaths of her parents. Life was pretty good for the family until Iraq’s government decided to invade the neighboring country of Kuwait, which led to international condemnation, economic sanctions, and the Gulf War. Now they struggle to make ends meet, since Dalal’s aunt’s husband can no longer work as a tour guide and the family is dependent on the money her aunt makes as a seamstress. They wistfully refer to the good times of the past as the “Days of Plenty.”

The family lives in an apartment building populated by a number of interesting characters: Umm Mazin, a fortune teller who dispenses advice and potions to the women who seek her help; Saad, a hairdresser who gives Dalal a part-time job in his salon; Ilham, who works in a local hospital and suffers from breast cancer; and others.

Dalal developed a type of facial palsy in her early childhood, leaving her with a deformity that would require plastic surgery to correct. The family has money set aside for that purpose, but as their financial situation becomes more dire, Dalal’s aunt’s husband uses the money to buy bees and set up a bee colony instead, thinking the money from the sale of honey will be enough to sustain them. But the family is helpless against forces operating outside their control.

At the end of the book, the author has written a short piece about life in Baghdad and about the effects of war and economic sanctions on her country. The plot and characters of Absent reinforce and amplify this message. Missile strikes leave death and displacement in their wake, but also create a psychological minefield for the survivors to navigate. Economic sanctions cause hunger and homelessness, but they also lead to other types of more permanent loss. For example, at one point, Ilham tells Dalal that she has heard “… large areas of the green belt around the cities have started to disappear. This is because people have been cutting down the trees in order to use the wood as fuel.”

The author laments that “[t]hroughout history, Iraqis have been under the stranglehold of the Ottomans, the British, a local dictator, and now the Americans.” In the pages of Absent, we see how those with no political power learn to survive under increasingly chaotic circumstances.

COOK

Food didn’t play much of a role in Absent, with the Days of Plenty long past. Some nights, Dalal’s family has nothing but potatoes for dinner. At one point, however, Dalal is attending a meeting pertaining to her aunt’s husband’s honeybee business, and she offers the guests “a sweet snack, dates stuffed with nuts and sesame seeds.” So when I found a recipe on the International Vegetarian Union website for Iraqi Date and Nut Cake Gilacgi, it seemed like the perfect choice.

This cake is actually more of a pie, with a flour and Cream of Wheat crust, and a date and walnut filling. The filling was outstanding, but the crust was too dry, too crumbly, and there was way too much of it. I won’t make this recipe again, but I may try to figure out something else to make with the filling part of the recipe.

GIVE

The GlobalGiving website lists several projects in Iraq. Since none were particularly relevant to issues discussed in the book, I chose one providing COVID-19 relief. According to the project description, “Iraq has been hard hit by COVID-19. [Iraqi Children Foundation’s] "Rapid Response Fund" supports urgent action for orphans, street kids, and other vulnerable children and families. Across all projects, ICF has already provided a week's worth of food and hygiene supplies to support 3,000+ kids and family members. Up next: 1) more critical food and hygiene supplies for kids and families; and 2) hiring vulnerable moms (with children to support) to sew thousands of protective face masks.” More information about this project is available at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/iraqi-children-covid-rapid-response-fund/.

NEXT STOP: IRELAND