The Indian writer Benyamin was suggested to me following a conversation with a bookstagrammer about subtleties of culture and novels that are somewhat missed in translations, leaving the readership of translated works to perhaps under appreciate novels that native speakers love. It was in relation to 'Ghachar, Ghochar' by Vivek Shanbhag which I read earlier this year. It had many positive reviews but I found it trite. I fear that 'Goat Days' has suffered a similar fate although I definitely enjoyed it a lot more than 'Ghachar, Ghochar' and got a real sense of it being about a culture, place and people far removed from my own.

It is a story of Hakim, desperate to provide for his wife and soon to be born child and faced with few stable prospects in his village. He turns instead to the seductive hope of working and earning his fortune abroad. Similar in some respects to the graphic novel 'Alpha' (see earlier post and which incidentally powerfully conveys the following theme) this is a tale of the exploited émigrés who leave hardship under false expectation, thinking that honest hard work will be enough to earn them the modest security they require, only to find themselves in a situation a thousand times worse than their previous lives.

I must admit, the fact that this was a somewhat true story based on the life of a real 'Hakim', leaves me feeling harsh. Politically and morally, I despise corruption, abuse and every horrendous event the main character has to endure but I guess I'm judging this as a novel. And as that, it was good in parts but in other parts felt like I was going through the motions of a well worn tale of which I knew the end. Conversely, to hark back to my opening comments, perhaps the translation alienated me to the story a little - or I could just be dead inside!

The good parts were definitely the communication of Malayam culture and beliefs, the tacit methodology of how to accept suffering and the way in which Benyamin dissolves the reader into his main character: you learn what he learns, experience his hardships and in some respects you suffer with him.

I read this some time ago but writing this review has been enjoyable: clearly the book has made impressions on me and I've enjoyed remembering it - so 3.5/5 - only a little dead. ( )

Originally published at https://reallifereading.com/2017/05/21/asianlitbingo-goat-days-by-benyamin/


Yes there are goats in this story.

But first, we meet Najeeb, and he and a friend are trying their very best to get arrested. Life in prison is far better to what he has suffered through recently.

What could be worse than prison?

It is the 1990s. Najeeb is from Kerala, a state in India. He’s intrigued by all the stories of those working in the Gulf and thinks it a quick easy way to make some fast cash and take care of his pregnant wife and their future child. But things do not go the way he expects.

He is put to work with goats. He tended to goats, milked them, fed them, herded them. The goats were treated better than he was. He didn’t have a cot to sleep on, or shelter. And this is the desert, which means ridiculously hot days and freezing cold nights. The precious water was meant for the goats so he wasn’t allowed any water to wash up with. He is only given khubus (a kind of bread) to eat for lunch and dinner, and some raw goat’s milk in the morning for breakfast. And barely enough water to drink.

We follow him through his days. His hard, painful, extremely dirty days where the only other human he sees is his Arab owner, a mean man who watches him through binoculars to make sure he doesn’t run off while herding goats – and won’t hesitate to shoot. When finally Najeeb meets other people, two Sundanese men who come to shear the sheep, although they don’t have a common language, he is just thrilled to see different faces, to smell a different smell.

“The sense of dejection that descended one me as they departed! I had been enjoying the scent of two humans till then. Now, there were only the animals and me. Grief came, like rain.”

He didn’t expect to be a goat herder. He just wanted to make easy money – his relative got him a work visa. And when he landed in Saudi Arabia, not speaking a word of Arabic, not knowing any details except a name. Someone comes to claim him and they drive far off into the desert where he begins work. There is no choice for there is nothing but sand around. Where can he go? He doesn’t know where he is. He can’t speak the language. And somehow he survives three years, barely human, treated worse than an animal. He is a slave.

“My thoughts were not of my home country, home, Sainu, Ummah, my unborn son/daughter, my sorrows and anxieties or my fate, as one would imagine. All such thoughts has become alien to me as they were to the dead who had reached the other world. So soon – you might wonder. My answer is yes. No use being bound by such thoughts. They only delay the process of realization that we’ve lost out to circumstances and there is no going back. I realized this within a day. Anxiety and worry were futile. That world had become alien to me. Now only my sad new world existed for me.”

What a painful read, brutal even. It’s hard to attract people to read such a book, I know. But I am glad I read it. It is a short read, at just 255 pages, and essentially while it is a rather simple story, it is well portrayed, it is moving and a very unique look at life in Saudi Arabia, far from the towering skyscrapers and modern amenities, far from another human face. It is terrifying to think that this is happening out there.

“Every experience in life has a climax, whether it be happiness, sorrow, sickness or hunger. When we reach the end, there are only two paths left for us: either we learn to live with our lives or protest and struggle in a final attempt to escape. If we choose the second path, we are safe if we win; if not, we end up in a mental asylum or kill ourselves.” ( )

Imagine being thrust into a situation where you’re expected to have unique skills and knowledge (which you don’t possess) and then not having any way to communicate and learn other than through charades, being beaten when you guess incorrectly. Goat Days by Benyamin was an eye opening account of a man simply looking to provide for his wife and unborn child--to raise their standard of living. When a friend tells Najeeb there is a visa available for purchase (through the friend’s brother-in-law), Najeeb makes arrangements to buy it and travel to Saudi Arabia as a guest worker. The arrangements are somewhat nebulous, though, and when Najeeb makes the long trip with an acquaintance from his village, things quickly go awry when their contact doesn’t meet them at the airport. They are stranded and have no way of communicating because of the language gap. The construction job he’d expected soon evaporates, and because he doesn’t speak Arabic, he finds himself in the middle of the desert, enslaved by an unscrupulous boss, forced to work with goats--something he knows nothing about. He quickly realizes that his survival depends on his acclimating himself to his new “job.” What he experiences is truly a trial by fire.

Stripped of his possessions and forced to wear a disgusting, smelly robe, he sleeps on the bare ground. With no plumbing or access to basic hygiene, he experiences the equivalent of the cable show “Naked and Afraid” where the participants are dropped into a harsh environment with nothing but a single article of their choice. (Except the participants willingly sign up for this and have an idea of what’s in store for them.)

With the extreme deprivation and abuse he suffers, it’s a wonder he survives. But he relies on his strong faith to get thim through.

Based on a true story, the author did a good job depicting Najeeb’s struggle and also shedding a light on the predicament of the guest worker in different parts of the world where they are prey to exploitation--especially if they’re working illegally and are undocumented--often being denied basic legal counsel and due process.

Here is a link I found to a recent article about guest workers facing execution in Saudi Arabia for practicing “witchcraft.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/29/indonesia-workers-in-saudi-arab...

At times hard to read, I felt such empathy for Najeeb yet also inspiration. This story is a real testament to one man’s inner strength.
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Loved it.
One of the best beginnings I have read.

Awesome read. ( )

Way back in the 1990's, I remember reading a story by Ursula K. LeGuin: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. It disturbed me greatly at that time. It was about this perfect country, Omelas, where there was no sorrow or disease, and everybody was happy. There was only one catch: Omelas was paying for this happiness through the misery of one child, kept locked in a cellar and treated cruelly perpetually. This was the pact that Omelas had made with the powers that be: the misery of one human being in exchange for the bliss of one country. Quite a bargain, if you think of it.

But there were people, when the truth became known, walked away from Omelas; because they could not make peace with the bargain. They were the hope of humanity. When I initially read the story, I proudly said to myself that I would be one of those. Now I hang my head in shame...

...because in reality, I do not walk away. I stay there and enjoy life.

The term "Middle East" brings to mind images of prosperous towns populated by beautiful people, enjoying the glittering night-life with wine and song, all powered by the petro-dollar. What the casual observer misses is the depths of misery just below the surface-the misery the novelist Benyamin has brutally portrayed in his award-winning Malayalam novel, "Aadujeevitham" (Goat Life).

The story is narrated in first person by Najeeb, your average lower middle-class Muslim youth from Kerala in India. He does not know anything of the Middle East, other than that the "Gulf" is an endless source of prosperity. Like many of his countrymen, he also yearns to work there, earn some quick money, pay off his debts, build a house and generally live a moderately good life. However, fate has something else in store for him: whisked away from the Riyadh airport in Saudi Arabia directly into the heart of the desert by his Arab sponsor, he is put to the job of tending goats.

This is not your pastoral idyll. Najeeb is forced to stay all time in the open desert, whether it is the blazing hot summer noon or the biting winter night. He is given only Kuboos (Arabic bread) soaked in water to eat; water, and occasionally goat milk, to drink. He has only one set of clothes, which he is supposed to wear continuously. Baths are out of the question.

Najeeb tends goats, sheep and camels without rest throughout the day. Any small mistake results in horrendous beatings. He slowly realises this is going to be his life from now on-like the goats, castrated and penned in, till one day they make the final journey to the slaughterhouse. He forms a deep kinship with the goats; gives them the names of his acquaintances from home and talks to them regularly. He rejoices when they give birth and mourns when they die. Towards the end of the story, as his humanity is almost totally stripped away, he even sleeps with a she-goat.

Najeeb is a pious, God-fearing Muslim. True to the meaning of “Islam” (surrender) he surrenders to the will of Allah, the all-merciful. This, coupled with the fatalism that is the hallmark of most Indians, Najeeb is the perfect victim, the slave every owner would love to have. But it is also this unquestioning acceptance of his fate that allows Najeeb to survive his ordeal for three and a half years. Finally when he escapes, that too is orchestrated by others – even though, ironically, he is the only one who escapes.

The depths to which human beings can plunge is narrated without any sentimentality or righteousness, almost in the tone of a child which has met unfair treatment at the hands of its parents. The tortures the sponsors mete out to their “employees” are mentioned so matter-of-factly that we catch ourselves flinching. Benyamin tells the whole story in unembellished, first-person narrative; while it makes for rather simplistic writing at times, the voice of the protagonist flows through clearly. The writer is all but invisible, and that is the novel’s greatest strength.

This is a brutal book which does not pull any punches. But then, it should not. Thousands of the poor from India pay huge amounts for visas to the Gulf countries, to agencies who fleece them mercilessly; only to discover when they reach the Promised Land that they have sold themselves into virtual slavery. By then, it’s too late.

Benyamin does a great thing: even though he does not walk away from Omelas, he shines his light on the abused child, not allowing us to forget its presence there. Maybe, in the end, it’s better than just walking away-for the child too, may ultimately get the justice that’s its due.
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