Nuri is 14 when his father disappears under mysterious circumstances. Abdu, an ex-minister in an unnamed country’s government and a confidant to the fallen King, is kidnapped from his mistress’ flat, never to be seen again. Nuri is left with no family except young step-mother Mona, whom Nuri has a crush on, and more questions than answers. Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar is a beautiful and quietly brutal coming-of-age story, dealing with loss and father-son relationships.
The story is told by Nuri himself, looking back and reflecting on these monumental events as an adult from his exile in Egypt. A cloak of secrecy surrounds Nuri’s childhood. He doesn’t really know what his father’s job is, his beloved mother has a mystery illness which eventually causes her death. Overdose? Suicide? Nuri never finds out. Indeed there are more monumental secrets to come Nuri’s way, some revealed with time, most never to be found out.
When the grieving father finally muster up the energy to take Nuri on a beach holiday to the coast of Alexandria, they encounter Mona, a stunning British-Egyptian 26-year-old. ‘I did see Mona first’, our protagonist reminds us, as if he somehow has the right to her. 12-year-old Nuri falls instantly in love in a school-boy, first-love fashion and so does his father who seems unperturbed by the 15 year age difference. A complicated love triangle ensues and one in which the adolescent Nuri is sure to be the loser. Before he knows it, Mona and Abdu travel to London to get married, leaving him behind in Cairo. Soon thereafter, Nuri is packed off to boarding school in England, only to be paid an occasional visit by his father.
Disappearing fathers and mothers with mysterious illnesses are recurring themes in Matar’s fiction. Partly autobiographical, Matar’s own father, a Libyan dissident critical of Gaddafi’s regime, was abducted in Cairo never to bee seen again. To this day, Matar still doesn’t know if he’s still alive.
There is something calm yet mysterious about this novel which makes it a hard to put away. At the end, there are more loose ends than answers, just a vacuum of information in which Nuri is supposed to continue with his lives. A vacuum that most of us would find unbearable to live in but which is the reality of people like Matar. A quiet but compulsively readable novel.
Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar is published by Penguin, 256 pages.
