Caravanserai Journey among Australian Muslims by Hanifa Deen (Australia: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2003. 400 pages.)

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 ...