EC's Adventures

Thoughts on "The Other Hand" (aka, "Little Bee")

Last Friday, I bought "The Other Hand" by Chris Cleave (this book is known as "Little Bee" in the States) and was so engrossed with it that I finished it by Saturday afternoon.  I couldn't put it down because I just had to find out how it ended. Now, just over a week later, I am still thinking about the book and have decided to write down my thoughts. 

I can't really say all I want to say about the book without discussing the basic plot and the ending.  So, if you want to read this book, which I do recommend, don't read past the break. So much of the fun of the book is discovering the plot as it unfolds through numerous twists and turns.  If you've already read it, then continue on reading.

ALERT: SPOILERS BELOW * * * ALERT: SPOILERS BELOW * * * ALERT: SPOILERS BELOW

The basic plot of the story unfolds from the perspective of two women, Little Bee and Sarah.  Little Bee is a 16-year-old refugee from Nigeria. Sarah is a magazine editor who lives in Surrey with her son Charlie.  Sarah's husband, Andrew, has committed suicide by hanging himself one morning while Sarah was at work and Charlie was at nursery.  Charlie is a 4-year-old who will only wear a Batman costume and answer to "Batman."  Charlie is my favorite character in the book.

We learn over the course of the book that Sarah and Andrew met Little Bee on a beach in Nigeria 2 years before the events taking place.  Sarah and Andrew went to Nigeria for a vacation to try to save their marriage after Andrew learned that Sarah was having an affair with Lawrence.  They chose Nigeria, because as an editor of a magazine, Sarah receives all kinds of free stuff, one of which was a trip to a Nigerian beach resort.  They wander off the resort's guarded beach one afternoon and find two girls, Little Bee and her sister, Nkiruka.  They girls ask Sarah and Andrew to take them back to the resort because men were hunting them with dogs.  A guard from the hotel tries to get Sarah and Andrew to head back to the resort without the girls.  The men with the dogs arrive at the beach and an encounter occurs that changes forever the lives of everyone involved.  The resort guard is killed in a skirmish with the men.  The men say they will let the girls survive if Andrew cuts off one of his fingers. Andrew can't do it, but Sarah takes the machete and chops off her own finger to save the lives of the girls. Sarah and Andrew run back to the resort after she chops off her finger.  However, since Sarah was the only one to chop off her finger, the men decide that only one girl should live - Little Bee. They rape and torture Nkiruka for hours before they finally kill her, as Little Bee sat hidden under a washed-up boat.  After listening to the horrific end to her sister's life, Little Bee takes off and makes her way to a shipyard.  She stows away on a boat headed for England, taking with her Andrew's wallet that he had dropped on the beach.

She is discovered on the boat, so immigration picks her up when the boats arrives in England. She is placed in an immigration detention facility where she waits for 2 years to be released. Little Bee describes in detail the detention facility.  It is basically a jail where people are held indefinitely while they await the outcome of their asylum cases.  Little Bee learns proper English while she is in jail by reading newspapers and magazines.  Speaking and reading correct English is very important to her, because she thinks it will help her be able to stay in England.  Little Bee and three other girls are released from the detention center without the proper paperwork, because one of the girls had made a deal with a guard.  In exchange for sex, he would let her out, along with some other girls.  So, Little Bee is free from the detention center, but is an illegal immigrant.  She uses the information in Andrew's wallet to call him and let him know she is coming to see him. 

Andrew and Sarah had assumed that both Little Bee and her sister died that day on the beach. Andrew, already depressed before the fateful trip to Nigeria, could not get over his guilt of not being able to save them and had become severely depressed.  So, when Little Bee calls him, he thinks he has lost touch with reality.  When she shows up at their house 2 days later, he freaks out and hangs himself.  Little Bee, still outraged that his cowardice caused the death of her sister, watches as he kills himself and does nothing to save him.  

Little Bee shows up at Sarah's doorstep on the day that they are going to bury Andrew.  Sarah did not know that Little Bee had already been there or that her husband knew she was there.  Sarah welcomes Little Bee into her home and decides to help her get her immigration status in order.

Shortly after Sarah buries Andrew (like maybe the day after), Lawrence invites himself to stay at Sarah's house for a few days.  Lawrence and Little Bee do not get along. He is excited to have Sarah to himself and does not want anyone taking her attention away from him.  He gets angry at Sarah for missing Andrew.  In all, Lawrence is an unbelievable jerk. He is my least favorite character in the book, with absolutely nothing redeeming about him.

Lawrence, Sarah, Batman, and Little Bee are at the park one day when Batman hides and no one can find him.  After frantically searching for Batman, they send Little Bee off to get the police to help.  The police realize Little Bee is acting suspicious, so they do a background check on her and find out she is an illegal immigrant.  She is taken into custody to be shipped back to Nigeria.  In the meantime, Batman comes out of his hiding spot, so her capture was all for naught.

Up until this point, I am in love with this book.  The twists and turns and excellent writing made me unable to stop reading the book. But now, we enter the part that pisses me off.  Sarah and Batman end up on the same plane as Little Bee, because Lawrence pulled some strings to find out the flight info for Little Bee's trip back to Nigeria.  I understand the connection Sarah felt to Little Bee and her desire to go to Nigeria to help her.  Little Bee had said along that if she were sent back to Nigeria, she would be killed.  But come on, what mother in her right mind would take her 4-year-old son with her to a place where she had witnessed and knew about such danger and brutality?  Sarah has the belief that the Nigerians wouldn't do anything to Little Bee with Sarah and Batman at her side.  So, she was willing to use Batman as a sort of shield for Little Bee?  Really?  I just can't imagine choosing to put my child in danger over someone else, no matter the connection I may feel towards that person.

Before they left for Nigeria to save Little Bee, Sarah had found research that Andrew had been doing on Nigeria and the violence that had occurred there.  Sarah decides to quit her magazine job to write the book about Little Bee and Nigeria.  While Sarah, Batman, and Little Bee are in Nigeria, they are kept guarded in a hotel.  They bribe the guards to allow them to leave during the day, so they can gather collaborating stories from other Nigerians about the violence that had taken place there.  They go for a longer excursion one day, so that Little Bee can go back to the beach where her sister is killed and say good-bye to her.  The Nigerians catch up with them there.  Batman almost gets shot by the Nigerians in the process of them tracking Little Bee down.  Yet again, I am furious that Sarah would be so careless with her son's life.  The book ends with the Nigerians capturing Little Bee.  We do not know what happens from there.

There were so many things I liked about this book.  It was exciting. I couldn't wait for the pieces to be put together so that I could know what was happening.  This sounds weird, but I liked that Andrew was depressed before they went to Nigeria and that Sarah had been cheating on him before then.  I think that if Sarah had started the affair with Lawrence after Nigeria, I would have felt like she was wrong in some way, like Andrew's inability to chop off his own finger to save the girls was a reason for her infidelity.  Maybe that's because I can't say for sure that I would chop off my own finger to save some random girls on a beach.  (Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't. Here's hoping I never have to find out.)  For the same reason, I am glad Andrew was depressed before Nigeria.  If this event took a really happy guy, with a happy marriage, and ruined it all, that would just bum me out.  But, they had a crappy marriage and he was already depressed, so the event on the beach just made things worse, but didn't take something good and make it bad.  I don't know why that was so important to me while reading this book, but it was. 

I loved Batman. The author did a fantastic job of capturing the personality of this little guy.  He spoke like a 4-year-old, and I can still hear his little voice in my head.  I may forever refer to bad people as "baddies" and mentally replace "my" with "mine," as in "mine cat" instead of "my cat."  The fact that Charlie would only wear his Batman costume or answer to "Batman" showed that this little guy picked up on the demons that his father was fighting.  He needed super hero powers to fight off the baddies and to feel safe.

I always like books that open my eyes to cultures or things that I do not know about.  Reading about Nigeria and about the detention facility was fascinating to me.  Immigration is one of those things that can be so black and white in the abstract, but hearing personal stories makes it much more gray.  It's easy to think of illegal immigrants as people who are breaking the law and who should be shipped back to wherever they came from.  Of course, my recognition of the gray area related to immigration occurred years ago when I met Cesar and visited El Salvador for the first time.  But, it's always good to have it reinforced from another perspective - this time from Africa instead of Latin America.  After reading this book, the part of me that seeks to make the world a better place would love to do something to help those stuck in detention facilities for years and years.

There were a few things I didn't like about this book.  I hated Lawrence.  I hated that he invited himself over to Sarah's to stay with her and Batman so soon after Andrew died.  I hated that he expected Sarah not to mourn her husband, like he thought she would be celebrating his death or something.  Yes, they had a bad marriage, and, yes, she was cheating on him. But, he was her husband.  They had been together for years and had a son together. Of course she was going to mourn his loss.  Of course she was going to miss him. For better or worse, he was an integral part of her life. To expect otherwise is selfish and ignorant.

As I mentioned above, I didn't like the last part of the book.  The whole thing with Sarah and Batman going to Nigeria was just stupid.  But, most of all, I hated the very end of the book.  To go on the journey of the book only to be left hanging on the ending made me mad, livid, actually.  I felt robbed.  Did Little Bee get killed?  Or was she put in jail?  Did Sarah write the book exposing all of the violence in Nigeria?  Did Sarah and Batman even get out of Nigeria alive?  It seemed to me as if the author got tired of writing and simply stopped writing.  There was so much more story to be told.

Despite my displeasure with the end of the book, I did enjoy reading it.  I read this for my book club, but won't be able to make it that week, which is too bad, since I'd love to hear what others think of it as well.

Binge Drinking in the UK

The Washington Post recently published an article that describes the problem of binge drinking in the UK.  I've often wondered if the extreme drinking I have witnessed here was exaggerated in my mind since I no longer drink due to my chronic migraines. On the other hand, the extreme drinking here has been a topic of conversation between Cesar and me for quite some time, so I knew I wasn't totally alone in thinking that the levels of intoxication here seem to go far beyond what is normal in the US.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I am no stranger to having a good time while drinking and certainly did my fair share of it when I was younger.  Also, even though I no longer partake in alcoholic beverages, I certainly do not begrudge those who do.  I still enjoy going out for an evening of fun and whatnot.

But, the drinking here is really something else.  It's unlike anything I have ever witnessed.  One of my first encounters with excessive drinking happened not long after I moved to London.  I was walking home from work one evening around 6:30 or so.  Three girls (probably in their late teens / early 20s) were walking on the sidewalk in front of me, each wearing the micro-skirt and low-cut shirt that seems to be the uniform for a night out in London.  One girl was so wasted that her two friends were propping her up to help her walk. Of course, they were wasted as well, so the three of them swayed and bobbed somewhat in unison as they staggered along. Suddenly, the girl in the middle stopped walking and put her head between her knees.  I understand that motion - it happens when the world is spinning and spinning and it just seems like everything would stop and feel better if your head is between your knees.  But, alas, we were on a busy sidewalk in the middle of London, and this young woman had on a very, very tiny skirt. Thankfully, she was wearing a thong, so all I saw was her naked butt cheeks rising up in the air in front of me.  Part of me wanted to mother her: I wanted to go to her, make sure she was OK, and let her know that while putting her head between her knees may seem like a good idea, it really wasn't as she was mooning half of London.  My mind raced thinking of all the terrible things that could happen to a young woman who was this drunk in such a large and potentially dangerous city.  The other part of me thought, "Well, she's stupid enough to get this drunk and put herself in this position, so I guess she will just have to learn her lesson the hard way."  Not being one who likes to interact with strangers, I kept walking and said a little prayer that she'd be OK.  Little did I know that this scene would be one that I would see over and over again in London.

Then there is the vomiting.  Oh the vomit!  I actually cannot count the number of times I have seen people throwing up from being too drunk here.  I've seen people throwing up (and the vomit they've left behind) on streets and sidewalks, in the Tube stations, on the Tube, in parks, and even on the sidewalk in front of my flat in leafy Hampstead (aka, the suburbs).   I recently had a conversation with one of my friends at work during which we compared all of the places we have seen vomit.  Seriously, people, why so much puking?  GROSS! (I especially do not appreciate having to dodge vomit on the sidewalk in front of my flat on my way to work in the mornings, thank you very much.)

Then there are just the random drunk people I've seen everywhere.  If I work late (8:00-ish), I am guaranteed to have someone on the Tube with me who is wasted, sometimes even to the point of being nearly passed out.  Cesar and I have seen girls passed out in Tube stations with their hair a wreck, their make-up smeared and running, their skirts akimbo, and hose ripped. Even though I could have just described a hooker after a bad night, unfortunately, it's just another night in the life of a young Londoner.

I bet many people reading this might think to themselves, "Geez, I've had a night where I've ended up like the people described in these stories." Yeah, well, so have I. But, there is just something different here than in the US.  First of all, it's the scale of the problem.  It's pervasive.  As the Washington Post article explains, binge drinking is part of the UK culture.  In the US, there would sometimes be those one or two people in a group who were out-of-control drunk, but it rarely seemed to be the WHOLE group of people.  Not so here. 

Another thing that is different about the drinking here is that people will be completely wasted very early in the night.  Note that my story about the three girls on the sidewalk happened at 6:30 at night.  How early do you have to start drinking to be fall-down drunk by 6:30?

That leads me to another big difference here: drinking at lunch.  Take a walk around London between 12 and 2 any afternoon of the week, and you will see people on their lunch breaks having a pint (or more).  Every time I see a pub packed with people in business suits on, say, a Tuesday at noon, I am astounded.  What kind of jobs do these people have that they can go back to work after drinking at lunch?  Why don't they get reprimanded by their bosses for boozing up during the day? (Probably because their bosses are drinking too.) 

Now, of course, I don't know all of these people that I have witnessed passed out, puking, or otherwise being a drunken disaster, so I can't say for sure what happens the next day.  But, based on the widespread behavior, I can't imagine that there are too many consequences for them (other than terrible hangovers).  My experience with drinking in the US was quite different.  If someone got too drunk and acted like a jerk or said or did things that were out of line, there was a certain amount of shaming involved the next day.  His friends would recap the night and let him know that his behavior was not cool and was unacceptable.  Discussions would be had.  Promises to behave better would be made.  Somehow, I just don't see that happening here.

Needless to say, when Cesar and I saw the Washington Post article this week, we felt a little vindicated.  It wasn't our imaginations playing tricks on us.  We didn't just happen to witness numerous people on their worst night of drunkenness.  Binge drinking truly is a problem in London, we can definitely attest to that.

I Hate Dieting

Like many (if not most) women in our society, I feel the pressure to be thin and fit.  I want to look in the mirror and not see lumps and rolls or squishy parts.  I want my cheekbones to be prominent, not hidden by a layer of fat.  I do not want a muffin top when I wear jeans. 

I feel like I have been in a battle to lose weight for over 20 years.  Sometimes I have been on the winning side of the battle - wearing a US size 4 or 6.  Sometimes, I have been on the losing side.  As an adult, my weight has swung by 40 pounds more times than I can count.  I gain the weight, I lose the weight. I re-gain the weight, I re-lose the weight.  These 40 pounds just don't seem to want to stay away. Right now, I am on an upward swing and have gained about 15 pounds in the past year and a half.  I only have one pair of trousers that fit, and my jeans are a bit snug.

Over the past year, I have tried counting Weight Watchers points, counting calories, and excluding breads and starchy carbs, yet I have continued to gain weight. I went to a personal trainer for a few months and did not see much in the way of results. I have seen a nutritionist, hoping she would provide the magic bullet.  She was helpful, but there are no magic bullets.  The fact is that I hate dieting.  I am tired of fighting the battle to be a size 4 or 6.  I hate feeling guilty for eating specific foods.  I hate the way I feel about my body.

So, as of today, I am going to try a new way of thinking about my body and my eating habits.  I am going to try to focus on being healthy instead of being thin.  My goals for each day will be to: 1) eat at least 7 servings of fruits and veggies a day, 2) stop eating when I am not hungry, 3) stop feeling guilty for eating certain foods, and 4) exercise for at least 30 minutes every day.  I think all but the first goal will be a true challenge for me.  But, I hope that by focusing on being healthy rather than thin, I can achieve some sort of balance in my life. I may not be a perfect tiny size, but hopefully I can be happy and confident in how I look.

Borough Market

One of my favorite things to do in London is to have lunch at Borough Market.  Last summer, Cesar and I went almost every Friday because, fortunately, it is not far from my office. We haven't been as much this year, but it still holds a special place in my heart (and stomach). 

Borough Market is a giant international food market. They have meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, cheeses, sweets, breads, and all kinds of specialty foods.  Walking around the market and looking at the various food stalls is like going on a culinary world tour.  There are bratwursts, spanish chorizo, and thai curry stands.  There are places that grill exotic meats like ostrich, wild boar, and bison.  One of my favorite stalls has roasted meat sandwiches and I refer to the one I usually get as "Thanksgiving on a roll" because it is roast turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce on a large baguette.  (YUM!)  The stalls of sweet treats are tantalizing, and I often stare longingly at the brownies, tarts, meringues, cakes, and candies.

  

The meat and fish tend to be on the more expensive side.  However, we bought a leg of lamb the last time we went there and it was quite delicious.  I get the feeling when I am buying from the butchers and fish mongers at Borough Market that I am buying as close to the source as I can by skipping all of the middle men involved in grocery store shopping.

Borough Market can be quite crowded during the summer months, but fighting the crowds is, in my opinion, part of the experience.  It's fun to people watch during lunch.  Many people, like me and Cesar, head there during their lunch hour.  Others are clearly tourists.  But, everyone seems to enjoy looking at the food stalls, having something delicious and different for lunch, and shopping for those hard to find ingredients.

Grey, Cold, Rainy London

Last week we were in Italy, basking in the Tuscan sun. Until then, I had almost forgotten how good it feels to have the sun warm my skin.  I am not adjusting well to my return to grey, cold, rainy London. Every morning this week, I have dressed for work in a skirt and short-sleeved blouse, wearing my comfy flip-flops for the commute to work.  Unfortunately, upon stepping out of my door, the shock of cold, damp air startles me. You'd think that by now, after a work-week of experiencing this, I would learn.  But, no, this morning I stubbornly dressed in my summer attire only to be greeted with cold, damp air yet again.  I miss the warm weather. I want a proper summer, not the 2-3 weeks of warm-ish weather we get here in June or July.  I miss the sunshine.  It's August for goodness sake.  I don't want to have to wear a jacket or coat when I am outside!

OK, enough complaining.  I guess I am just having a hard time with the post-Italy adjustment.  Maybe I am also a tad homesick.  I go through spurts where I think I could live here for years.  Then, suddenly, all I want to do is move back home to be closer to my friends and family.  Such is the life of an expat, I suppose.

My donation page for the Adidas Women's 5K Race

Wow, it's been so long since I have signed into this blog that I had to reset my password. Not a good sign. I promise to do better. I have a few thoughts swirling around my mind and will try to put those down soon!