Title & author
Silken Gazelles by Jokha Alharthi
Synopsis
In Jokha Alharthi’s latest novel to be translated into English, Silken Gazelles, platonic relationships between women are prioritized by the writer, even if not by all the protagonists. The result is a story that challenges societal notions and preferences of love, one that displays fully why these relationships deserve just as much—if not more—attention and affection as romantic ones.
Who should read this book
Fans of Enter Ghost and Celestial Bodies
What we’re thinking about
The significance and necessity of platonic love
Trigger warning(s)
Miscarriage, death of a parent and child, depression, substance abuse, sexism
There’s a quiet beauty that runs through Jokha Alharthi’s books, one that artfully displays the strength of relationships between women—mothers and daughters, friendships, and beyond. In her latest novel to be translated into English, Silken Gazelles (Catapult, 2024), these relationships are prioritized by the writer, even if not by all the protagonists. The result is a story that challenges societal notions and preferences of love, one that displays fully why these relationships deserve just as much—if not more—attention and affection as romantic ones.
Raised as sisters, Ghazaala and Asiya are separated in their teens, not staying in touch. Years later, when Ghazaala and Harir meet in college, Ghazaala has two small children and a marriage on the verge of divorce. Harir is in the throes of obsessing over an unknown woman in her dorm, following her around campus, sneaking into her room while she is out. Both women are in search of something, a longing consuming their every day, and they search for it in the people surrounding them.
For Ghazaala, that manifests romantically, for Harir via friendship. Ghazaala feels “every kind of love there could be in the world” once her sons are born, yet “she was a mother. She was not a human being but a role,” (Alharthi, 91, 53). So she seeks out romantic love, “her desire simply to be his beloved” (194). Harir, on the other hand, questions, “What if Gazaala hadn’t married?...What if I hadn’t gotten married?...What if we weren’t mothers?” (200). She craves a life with more than romantic love, than being a mother.
“This is Ghazaala,” writes Harir in her diary, “not interested in firm ground or hard realities. Rather, she’s focused on shattered feelings and how we all use our memories to serve our own particular needs and aims” (247). But Harir is no different; both women long after a friendship they once had. “Maybe Ghazaala had been given her lot of love in childhood, and all of her miserable love affairs were nothing more than an attempt to regain the purity and depth of that early love. The love of Asiya and her mother” (255-6).
In Angela Chen’s ACE, Chen writes: “Believing that everything containing a special, charged energy must be sexual is not only simplistic; it can also shift how a relationship is perceived in a harmful way.” Our societal emphasis on romantic relationships over friendships, weighing the former as more important and exceptional than platonic love, benefits nobody in Alharthi’s story. Both Ghazaala and Harir spend their days lost in yearning—they are married, with careers, with children, both with full families. And yet, they dream of a love with “purity and depth,” something they’ve only been able to find in friendship. The shared understandings and experiences they have had in such platonic relationships are unmatched, their friendships—and its cultivation of self—proving more significant in the end.
“Maybe Ghazaala had been given her lot of love in childhood, and all of her miserable love affairs were nothing more than an attempt to regain the purity and depth of that early love. The love of Asiya and her mother.”
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Which protagonist in Silken Gazelles did you relate to most and why?
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