Rabih Alameddine is explaining the ways he’s not like Aaliya, the reclusive central character of his captivating novel “An Unnecessary Woman.” Besides the obvious ones — she’s a woman, he’s a man — he says he’s much more outgoing than she is.
Still, Alameddine admits he loves living alone. “I need my space,” he says. “It’s difficult for me to imagine using the word ‘we.’ ”
OK, so maybe Alameddine is a little like Aaliya, who lives alone in a Beirut apartment, surrounded by books. Once a year, she translates one of her favorites, but her translations never see the light of day; once completed, she seals them in boxes and stores them in the bathroom. Eccentric? Yes. But Aaliya’s also brilliant and wryly funny — much like Alameddine himself.
“I jokingly say that Aaliya is who I aspire to be,” says the cheerfully misanthropic author over tea in a bakery near his San Francisco home in the Castro.
“An Unnecessary Woman” is Alameddine’s fifth book, and it represents something of a departure. Where his previous novel, “The Hakawati,” was vast and densely peopled, the new book focuses on Aaliya. Divorced, childless, scorned by her family, her one close friend long since dead, she is truly “unnecessary” to anyone.
“A lot of the idea for Aaliya was a contrast to ‘The Hakawati,’ ” Alameddine says. “That book was painted with exuberant colors. This time I wanted a quieter book.”
Alameddine was also moved by one of his favorite authors, Polish writer and artist Bruno Schulz, who was famously protected, albeit temporarily, by a Nazi commander who wanted him to paint a mural in a child’s bedroom. (Schulz was later gunned down by another Nazi officer.)
“He was classified as ‘a necessary Jew,’ ” Alameddine says. “I was fascinated by that term — what makes somebody ‘necessary?’ I started thinking about Schulz himself — if we had not gotten the two books of his stories that we have, would his life have been ‘unnecessary?’ It was this idea of the value of a life.”
Aaliya began to take shape as an unnecessary woman — “someone who could walk the street and no one notices,” Alameddine says. “She cannot engage life directly — she’s an observer much more than a participant. She loves literature, and she translates from translations — a double remove.” As she works, Aaliya refers to the writers she loves — Schulz and Calvino, Proust and Bolano, Magris and Alice Munro — and those she disdains. “The books she loves, I love,” Alameddine says.
The surprise of “An Unnecessary Woman” is how funny it is. As she recalls the past, endures intrusions from three neighbor women she calls “the Witches” (those women originally appeared in an earlier Alameddine story, titled “The Half-Wall”) and occasionally ventures out into the streets of Beirut, Aaliya narrates her story with sharp wit spiced with dashes of venom.
Talking with Alameddine, it’s easy to see Aaliya’s origins. Born in Jordan, raised in Lebanon and Kuwait, the author has pursued a singular path, often confounding critics who can’t seem to decide if he’s a Lebanese writer or an American one. He was educated in England, but came to the United States to study engineering; in 1982, he moved to San Francisco to earn an MBA at USF. He still maintains a home in Beirut, but he does most of his writing in San Francisco.
He says he’s always had “a vivid inner life,” but came to writing relatively late. He started his career as a painter; despite some success, he “always felt like a fraud” in the art world.
His first novel, “Koolaids: The Art of War,” launched his literary career. Each successive book has earned acclaim, but Alameddine says he doesn’t particularly enjoy the process. “For me, writing is torture,” he says. “It’s not easy, it’s not helpful and it’s not therapeutic.”
Still, Alameddine says he’s quite happy where he is — living alone and writing. If that sounds like something Aaliya would say, he’s not complaining.
“I get offended when people think Aaliya’s bitter, or that her life is sad,” he says. “From where they come from, they would see her life as poor. But she’s fully committed to life. To live true to oneself is what matters. She’s been dealt this set of cards, and within that hand she plays it to the max. I love that.”
As we part, Alameddine says he’s heading back to his apartment, where he’s working on a new novel. “What can I say,” he says with a shrug. “I’m congenitally single. Put that down — ‘congenitally single and available.’ But most likely it ain’t going to work.”
Contact Georgia Rowe at growe@pacbell.net.
