Deserts of January

January feels like forever. There is a dearth of steadying holidays to act as landmarks (for this reason I recommend practicing Burns Night). Some give up booze. Without realizing it, this go-around I read four books that vaguely deal with dry expanses, namely deserts.

The Handmaid’s Tale for Gen Z?

The most straight-forward of these books is I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, a French novel from 1995 that is blowing up on TikTok (The Handmaid’s Tale for Gen Z, raves The Cut).

It’s a bleak novel! Sparse, in multiple ways! It’s fitting that Sophie Mackintosh wrote the afterword in the edition I read: her book The Water Cure has a similar but, I’d say, more creative premise. (If you’re looking for a novel where women choose to separate themselves from men, Harpman’s isn’t it.)

But parts of I Who Have Never Known Men did remind me of the best aspects of Station Eleven — sometimes describing hunger is the best way to describe food. And if the kids like it that must mean something.

Man-hating in a dystopian American West

The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter is easily the wildest of the books I read this month. Not for the faint of heart! If Harpman is too minimalist and quiet for you, Carter is the other extreme.

I’ve been a big Carter fan since I read her Nights at the Circus a decade ago, but she is not for everyone. (I think Circus or The Bloody Chamber are the best starting points for most people.) I only recently found this 2018 documentary on Carter by the BBC, which is on YouTube. The documentary addresses New Eve at minute 23.

New Eve moves from scenes reminiscent of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York to Mad Max: Fury Road / Tank Girl to Virginia Woolf’s Orlando at whiplash speed. Gender and genitalia are toys for Carter to play with. (See also: Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin.) Eve is a great segue to my third book…

You can just read the Qur’an

In the shadow of Trump’s inauguration, it somehow felt right to reach for a copy of the Qur’an that I had bought for myself a while ago (after a little research, I went with the Oxford World’s Classics edition, translated by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem) but hadn’t yet opened.

I decided to jump in and read it straight through with basically no prep. I really enjoyed the experience — it was almost a hypnotic experience. And I, a lapsed Protestant (Congregationalist), may have found comfort in its message of an all-powerful God, particularly in passages like this one:

In general I saw similar messages to those I got from what Christianity I was exposed to growing up: Give to the needy, don’t be a hypocrite, pray often, honor thy parents, violence only in self-defense, etc. I don’t really know how feminist the Bible is, but I wouldn’t call the Qur’an a feminist text.

I hope it’s not controversial to say that the God of the Qur’an is not particularly loving — the word appears only a handful of times in the Haleem translation. (For you Christians, think God of the Old Testament.)

So Rumi turned out to a be a great chaser.

Revisiting Rumi

Rumi was a Sufi (Islamic) preacher-turned-poet who lived in the 13th century who had absolutely no problem writing about love in all of its forms. I still don’t quite know if Rumi is basic in 2025 America, but I first read him at a perfect time for me: freshman year of college.

In that quirky seminar, we read a translation by Coleman Barks, which I now know has lots of issues. But nevertheless, these poems helped change a 19-year-old who had been voted “Most Stressed” in his high school yearbook into a more emotionally intelligent, joyful person.

Reading this newer collection called Gold, translated by Haleh Liza Gafori, 18 years later, I was pleased to feel a bit of that giddy reckless feeling again. (Though if you find it live-laugh-love-y, I get that.)

We could do a little analysis here: Rumi preached the Qur’an for the first part of his life. Can we see the inspirations? I’d say that “Curb your insatiable hunger” and “When greed groans, / I act deaf” are both sentiments that would fit in the Qur’an. The imperative to “curb” would certainly fit grammatically.

But there’s a recklessness in Rumi is so different from the moderating lectures of the Qur’an. The Prophet Muhammad certainly does not command his followers to “Make room for Love’s wine. / Be its cup.”

I’m not the first to wonder about the extent to which Rumi incorporated existing religions, or even tempted to believe that he was rebelling against those strict moral codes and inventing something new. From that New Yorker piece:

Dessert (movies)

Do all these films, set in deserts, portray Muslims accurately and fairly? Nope. But all of them are fun.

• The Mummy (1999) is on Hulu, as is its decent sequel

• Tank Girl (1995)

• Hidalgo (2004)

• John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)

• Either of the George Miller Mad Maxes

• Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

• Sahara (2005)

• Raiders of the Lost Ark, of course

• The Jewel of the Nile (1985)

• Any of the Dunes