Review: The Unfurling by Nimah Ismail Nawwab
A Saudi poet writing in English gives voice to women, faith and change in the kingdom, years before reform became official policy.
When a flag is furled, it is wrapped tightly around its staff; when it unfurls, it catches the wind. Nimah Ismail Nawwab chose the image for the title of her first collection, *The Unfurling*, published in 2004. It announced a voice that would become one of the best known in Saudi literature in English.
The poet
Nawwab, born in Mecca to a family of scholars, is often described as one of the first Saudi women to publish poetry in English. She has worked in communications and has been active in youth and cultural initiatives. She has performed her poetry in the kingdom and abroad.
The poems
The Unfurling ranges widely. There are poems of faith, rooted in the landscapes and rituals of Mecca. There are poems about the Arab world's wars and injustices, from Palestine to Iraq. Most striking for readers at the time were poems that spoke about the lives of Saudi women: their constraints, their ambitions and their inner freedom.
The language is direct and often declamatory, written to be read aloud. Some critics found it uneven. Others valued it precisely for its openness at a time when such subjects were rarely discussed publicly in the kingdom.
Reading it now
Twenty years later, Saudi Arabia has changed in ways few predicted. Women drive, work in growing numbers and attend concerts. Nawwab's collection now reads as an early record of the aspirations that preceded those reforms. It is evidence that change in the kingdom had been imagined and argued for long before it was decreed.