Francesca Marciano has a unique gift for pairing character and settings in a way that unearths the complexities of both. “Rules of the Wild” (1999), set in Kenya, backs untethered lives with implacable nature and a society in which the characters are a forgettable footnote. In “Casa Rosa” (2003), the line between right and wrong blurs in the stark light of southern Italy.
And now, in “The End of Manners,” Marciano takes her readers on a new foreign journey, this time to the rocky cold of present-day Afghanistan. It’s one in which the narrator, 32-year-old Maria Galante, discovers previously unsuspected personal resources and strength.
Maria is a photographer. Once an award-winning photojournalist, she now takes pictures of lush food layouts for glossy magazines, returning alone to her small apartment in Milan. A romantic breakup has left her unwilling to engage with the world: “The food does not talk back to me and it does not cry or yell, either. If I don’t like the way it looks, I throw it out and get the kitchen to make me another.”
Her agent, Pierre, calls with an offer he thinks is too good to refuse. A London magazine, The Observer, is sending one of its top journalists to Kabul, to do a story on Afghan women and arranged marriages. Imo Glass has seen Maria’s work; she wants her on the story.
Maria is ultimately unable to resist Pierre’s gauntlet. She travels to London to meet Imo, and to undergo “hostile environment training,” required by the insurers for those traveling in dangerous zones.
Imo is a steamroller of a woman, at once charismatic and determined. She believes that a freer flow of information is leading more women to choose suicide over an arranged marriage. She tells Maria, “Before, and under the Taliban, every girl knew that she belonged exclusively to her father and then to her husband, and that was the end of the story. But now the more they know, the more desperate they feel about the condition they’re in. As a result, the suicide rate among women who are forced to marry has increased. Numbers are sketchy, but they’re on the rise.”
It’s a story she’s determined to get, and she wants Maria to provide the pictures. Imo waves away the notion that it might be difficult to photograph Muslim women and could actually endanger their lives. Nothing is going to stand between her and the story.
The two travel to Kabul, where Maria finds a world that is still torn by conflict: “The war was over and this was a time of reconstruction, the politicians kept saying. Pierre had stressed this too in his first phone call; the military presence was only a force to ensure that the process of peace and democracy followed its course. Yet this felt nothing like peace. Not just because of what I saw out on the streets — a half-destroyed city besieged by soldiers and guns — but because of what I felt in the air. It was plain to see we had entered a world out of bounds, a world of far greater insanity than anything I could’ve envisioned back home. What was worse, I could tell nobody was in control of the situation. I just sensed it like a dog sniffs fear in people around him: everyone had to be constantly ready for any eventuality. No, nothing looked like peace to me on the streets of Kabul.”
They hire a local, Hanif, to serve as their fixer. He is “someone who knew lots of people in various ministries, who could easily get permits, get us through checkpoints without a problem, who spoke English well and who was used to working with Westerners.” He devotes himself to helping get their story, though his wife — seven months pregnant — is hospitalized.
Marciano tends toward characters buffeted by the society around them as much as by their choices, and “The End of Manners” is no exception. In Kabul, the women find a city in which the foreigners are either idealists, as are many from the nongovernmental organizations there to rebuild the city, or opportunists, weapons dealers and bodyguards.
Imo catches the feel exactly when she tells Maria, “To me this seems to be the place where all good manners have come to an end . . . And it’s not a very good sign if you ask me. If there were any hope — if any of them actually believed this country could still make it and get back on its feet again — these people would still be engaged in some kind of civilized behavior. But could they care less? They know this is the last stop. After this one there’s only chaos.”
The trio — Imo, Maria and Hanif — travel to a village in the hope of getting women to talk about their lives. They find that the women are invisible and that getting anyone to open up to the foreigners looks like an unlikely and possibly dangerous task. But they also find that a mirror is being thrust in their face, as if to ask just who is living in the more restrictive world, the Western journalists or the Muslim women?
Marciano writes richly in prose that is direct and lean. The violence that seethes under the surface in Kabul, the cold of the countryside, the strong sense that these female journalists are much out of place, each is rendered directly and to great effect. The resulting novel is not very long, but it is long enough to pack a nice punch. Marciano transports the reader to a foreign world rendered with empathy.
Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer who reviews books for The Denver Post and Buzz in the ‘Burbs.
Fiction
The End of Manners, by Francesca Marciano, $23.95
