Caravanserai

Abstract

A cavaranserai was an inn where travelling Muslim merchants would gather at night to relax after a hard day’s journey, share meals, and tell stories to each other. These themes of travelling and storytelling set the scene for Hanifa Deen’s wonderful book about these people, who, originally travellers themselves, arrived on the continent around the eighteenth century. Moreover, the book is a story of Deen’s journey around Australia to collect the stories of her fellow Muslim compatriots. Caravanserai was originally published in 1995. The impetus behind the book was Deen’s sense during the first Gulf War (1991) that Muslims in Australia did not have a human face – they were known by the general public only through negative stereotypes. She sought to tell some of their stories to show that Muslims, just like any other group, were human beings who “mow their lawns, are preoccupied with losing weight, worry about their jobs and mortgages, play sport, swap jokes or tell their children bedtime stories” (p. 8). She set out across Australia to collect their stories. At the time, Deen found that Muslims were making their way in Australia, becoming more accepted by the wider community and established as one of many others in Australia’s multiethnic, multireligious society. The 9/11 tragedy changed all that, and Muslims in Australia, as in other western countries, found themselves treated as “enemy aliens.” Believing that the clock had been set back, the author felt an urgent need to retrace her steps to find out how her country’s Muslim communities were faring. The result of the second journey appears as part 4, and its three long chapters make up nearly one-third of the book. Deen writes that she was asked time and again what kind of book she was writing and, surprisingly, found that answering this question was rather difficult. As she travelled, met people, and collected their stories, the style of Caravanserai emerged: part storytelling and part commentary. This combination has served her well, for her renditions of her interviewees’ stories are beautifully written. She describes the people she meets, the scene and ambiance of their meeting, and her thoughts and emotions as she retells their stories. She writes so well that I often felt that I was in the room with her, interacting with the people around her. This was all the more poignant for me, since I am an Australian from Perth, like her, but who became Muslim only after emigrating to Canada. Deen’s stories connected me with the Muslim community in Australia that I have never known ...