Review of The Bird Tattoo by Dunya Mikhail

*The Bird Tattoo* by Sunya Mihail (2022). Published by Pegasus Books.

An agenda I’ve been up to lately is trying to diversify the books and movies I’m consuming even more than I already am. A large portion of my blog and career has been dedicated towards BIPOC/POC voices and uplifting them, so a lot of the books I’ve reviewed on here already are from BIPOC writers and creators.

That said, I want to go more global. I read a lot of East Asian literature out of the world’s countries, but I don’t really go beyond that in a way where I want to go. I want to be someone who has read widely, even if it means that I have to get ahold of them through outside means than my library.

Thankfully, my library system has been understanding and orders books for me when I put requests in. I try not to abuse that system, but I’m also trying to not over consume when it comes to books as well. Being a writer means you’re on a strict budget!

I spotted this book in the new section of my library, and it was the name that alerted to me that this was a BIPOC creator probably from SWANA. When I picked it up, I saw it was considered for the Arabic fiction prize, which led me to read the synopsis. That’s what finally convinced me to take the book home with me.

I read it over the course of a few days, and it kind of flew by despite the content in the book being a little disturbing at times. Here’s my review before I start rambling too much!

A young woman in Iraq is caught up in her country’s struggles and war.

In this novel, our main character is Helen, who grew up in the northern part of Iraq. She’s from a village called Sinjar, and she is from the Yazidi people. That means they have their own subsets and specific customs and traditions compared to, for example, the Iraqis from the capital city.

Her life changes when she one day spots a bird in a trap. She feels bad for it and decides to let it go, but right then the trapper shows up and is horrified to see what she is doing. He gets angry, and we learn his name is Elias. But then he realizes because of her how inhumane it is to trap these birds.

After this, the two of them fall in love. They marry and have children, raising them in the village just like they did. The title of the book gets its name from their love story; they have bird tattoos. Elias works as a journalist, but one day their peaceful life comes crumbling down when he goes missing.

He doesn’t return home, and there’s discontent throughout Iraq. There’s an extreme Islamic organization taking over all the country, and they can reach even the isolated mountains in which these two live. It is through religion they are able to disguise the brutality they inflict on their kin and countrymen.

Helen continues looking for Elias despite the danger, which leads to her being captured by the viligantes. They take women hostage and commit acts of violence against them, which can be horrific to read—so there’s a trigger warning involved with that if you can’t handle violence against women.

Some are adept at resisting, as in all conflicts throughout the world. It’s through this that Helen is ultimately able to escape, as some of her family members go along with the militia as a ruse in order to get people out, including her. However, when she emerges into the outside world, she discovers her sons have fallen captive to the ideologies that have caused her husband to go missing.

Unable to find him, this is a novel about acceptance as well. We do ultimately learn about what happened to Elias, as well as many other intellectuals and people who were caught in the wrong time and place, but a lot of what we’re reading on these pages is a reflection of modern conflict and strife.

Overall Thoughts

I’m really glad to have read this book, and as I went to catalogue it in my Goodreads, I realized it was one of the first pieces of Iraqi and its diaspora literature I have read so far. I hope we get more translations and work like this in the near future so I can read more about the region.

That said, this is a haunting book. A lot of it can be difficult to read, but I think books like these are necessary because of said difficulty. We cannot look away from what other people are living and going through all the time, and this is told through the perspective of a woman.

Now, I’m not Iraqi, but I’m Iranian. I know how significant it is to have women focused stories written by women in the Middle East. We seriously need a lot more of that—so I want to read more of these stories is what I am saying here.

Pick this one up if it sounds interesting to you!

Follow me below on Instagram and Goodreads for more.