When Eyes Feel -The Book

Online, May 29, 2013 (Newswire.com) - When Eyes Feel - The Book

When Eyes Feel is a novel written for an 18+ mixed audience which offers unique insight into a foreign culture through a contemporary cross-cultural marriage in a community where liberal Western culture clashes with the restrictive, patriarchal culture of the South Pacific.

This novel questions the consequences of interculturalism when East meets West with little understanding, sensitivity, open-mindedness and empathy.

With its strong plot, unique voice, compelling perspective, excellent verisimilitude and exceptional readability this novel challenges tradition and change, exposes gender violence and inequality and unravels an emotional web of lies and love, trauma and truth, pain and power.

Synopsis

When Ruth's house is gutted by fire and she takes up residence at an old abandoned beach house, she mistakenly receives a journal written by Fiawah, her husband's illiterate mistress. Ruth hates Fiawah but little did she know that Fiawah's journal would be the catalyst that would propel her to examine the fabric of her life, knitted by its scraps of memory. She reads the first journal entry triggering memories of her younger self, one who had, twenty years earlier, engineered a whirlwind romance between herself and South Pacific islander, Taumauosi, who was unaware that she had deliberately lured him to the altar with lies of her pregnancy.

With husband in tow, Ruth arrives in Malaugui, Taumauosi's home country but she is unaware that a bride-to-be (Umani) had already been chosen for her husband. At the airport, as soon as the Mokatikula clan realizes that Taumauosi has shown up with a Western wife of his own choosing, that bride-to-be is abandoned and Ruth is hustled to Taumauosi's traditional village.

In the village, Ruth discovers that the evolving stranger, her husband, has four mothers, he carves wooden figurines as a hobby, he harbours political ambitions and he cowers in his father's shadow. She is deeply perplexed by the traditional South Pacific culture where food is cooked on hot stones buried underground, stories are told by elders under the moonlit sky, young boys are schooled in weaponry and hunting, arranged marriages are conducted, bride prices are negotiated and a clan's children belongs to the entire community and can be given to childless couples within that clan community. That first night, Ruth also discovers that men stay apart from their women in their own "men's hut" but when Taumauosi attempts to follow this traditional custom, Ruth demands that he stay with her in the hut to which she has been assigned. Taumauosi complies but from that moment, the tension between his father and himself intensifies and the Chief, Taumauosi's father, unable to live down the scandal created by his son's marital union, becomes Ruth's most formidable opposition.

As the Mokatikula clan entwines itself around Ruth like a clump of tangled thread, she embarks on a 'civilizing mission'. She educates the village girls, retaliates against arranged marriages and she protests against bride prices. But while the Chief directs his hostility at Ruth for failing to conform and adapt, he maintains a stronghold on Taumauosi, his son, who he pressures into a promise that Ruth would never engage in public work. Unknown to Ruth, Taumauosi gives in to his father's demands but overwhelmed by the culture's demands on her husband, Ruth plots to escape from the indigenous village and the interfering extended family. Her plans backfire, with dire and sometimes hilarious consequences.

Ruth pauses in her recollection to read the second journal entry which reveals more about Taumauosi's mistress, Fiawah, and the lack of love that informs that relationship. The journal also highlights Fiawah's desire for children and Taumauosi's lack of interest in them. Ruth begins to empathize with the journal writer's desire for children, a yearning she well understands since years earlier, in the extended family, when privacy was hard to attain and she too yearned to conceive, she schemed her way into a teaching job in another part of the country, securing an escape for herself and Taumauosi out of the village.

However, despite their departure from the village, the Chief continues to maintain a stronghold on Taumauosi, who, to realize his political ambition and be accepted as a 'big man' in his society, must produce a male heir. Taumauosi's becomes anxious to father a child increases and as this anxiety increases, Ruth "offers to him the gift of her womb, host to his ambitions". But unknown to all, Ruth is barren.

With their relationship stifled under duties, obligations and traditions, it begins to die. Ruth and Taumauosi have their first violent fight when Taumauosi realizes that Ruth is barren and she had lied about her earlier pregnancy. His elders suggest that he gets a second wife but while he refuses to do so, he withdraws from Ruth, begins to court power and campaigns in the national elections as he reverts to his traditional ideas, beliefs and attitudes.

Desperate in her campaign to win back her husband's love, Ruth utilizes whatever means are at her disposal. Nothing is below her. Not trickery, deceit, feminine wiles or even traditional black magic. But Ruth fails to produce a child and this almost shatters her husband's frustrated and fragile love.

With Ruth's help, Taumauosi wins a seat as a Member of Parliament but he continues to emotionally abandon her. His elders again suggest that to retain his seat and the loyalty of Malauguian supporters, he should follow tradition and obtain a second wife to produce his children. He knows now that the dice is cast and he will succumb to their pressure. A few weeks later, the Chief's gift of Umani, a second wife for his son is the final straw that breaks Ruth's and Taumauosi's doomed love.

Ruth's nervous breakdown and Taumauosi's remorse are insufficient to disentangle Taumauosi from his traditional demands. He stages a passive rebellion but too weak to resist the lure of power and the power of tradition, he goes through with the wedding. Ruth resolves to divorce him but she doesn't do so, instead, she continues to wear his name and merely separates herself from Taumauosi by living alone at a house provided for her by the Education Department. Years later, when this home is gutted by fire; a fire that Ruth believes is instigated by the Chief because she had chosen to publicly and actively support a native woman in her campaign for national elections, this loss of her home triggers Ruth to take up residence in the abandoned beach house.

Fiawah's final two journal entries unravels the untold stories about Taumauosi, revealing that she had never known about his three other wives nor his two other mistresses. She had borne him a son, a son he rejects and reacting to this rejection, she murders him one night. Jailed, she dies while incarcerated and her belongings are delivered to the beach house where she had once lived with Taumauosi but since Ruth now lives in the beach house, she had mistakenly received Fiawah's journal.

Deeply moved by Fiawah's journal and healed by her 20-year old memories of Taumauosi, Ruth resolves to raise his son (Fiawah's child) as her own and according to tradition, she seeks Taumauosi's clan's support to do so. She is still his senior wife and her act demonstrates her healing and her generosity of spirit. This triggers the Chief's forgiveness so he supplies her with the shell-money, pigs and compensatory gifts for Fiawah's clan which, according to Malauguian tradition, are needed to receive the child. The Chief and Ruth's reconciliation has just begun.

At sunset, before Fiawah's clan arrives at the beach house with the child, Ruth goes to the beach and burns the journal, her favourite wedding photo, a figurine of a pregnant woman that Taumauosi had carved and articles she had kept throughout the years about his political career and so she reconciles herself to Taumauosi in death, just as she reconciles herself to his mistress whose journal had thawed her once frozen, bitter heart. The film ends with a transformed Ruth who stands on the seashore, framed in gold, scattering the burnt fragments upon the calm sea and she wept quietly, as one must, when eyes feel.