#blog #blogger – the shiny diaries

📍 Iraq 🇮🇶

Dr Nadia Amin, a British Pakistani professor of criminology living in London, gets asked by the UN to join their new agency UNDO in Baghdad, aimed at deradicalisation and rehabilitation of ISIS brides. At this juncture, Nadia’s personal life is in disarray. Her relationship with her mother is fractured and precarious following Nadia’s apostasy. What started as a friendship with Rosy evolved into a “situationship” only to devolve into an unrequited love from Nadia’s end. While she is caught in the midst of this frustration, emotional chaos, maternal abandonment and an existential ennui, she decides to undertake the Baghdad assignment, hoping that this humanitarian cause would bring her purpose and fulfilment.

Upon her arrival at the UN Headquarters in Baghdad, Nadia finds herself on unfamiliar terrain and often lacks crucial contextual knowledge. She is surrounded by her subordinates who question her capabilities and remain indifferent and unsupportive. Her boss, Lina, with her quirky avian obsessions, expects Nadia to demonstrate exceptional competence while Lina herself remains opaque and obtuse in her suggestions and instructions. All she is concerned with is UNDO outperforming other UN departments and proving to the international and Iraqi media that their rehabilitation program has been a successful endeavour.

As Nadia immerses herself into the program and starts engaging with ISIS women, both Iraqi and European, she confronts the depth of their indoctrination. Many were radicalised at a young age by ISIS men peddling a violently distorted version of Islam. It is here that Nadia encounters Sara, a fierce and volatile British Pakistani woman with whom she forms an immediate bond. Sara’s journey from London to Iraq was undertaken willingly, only to later realise the magnitude of her betrayal. Her daughter by one of the ISIS men gets legally separated from her after the fall of ISIS and is sent to live with the man’s parents somewhere in Iraq. Nadia takes it upon herself to reunite Sara with her child without fully apprehending the dangers behind this mission, even if it means Nadia losing her coveted UN job and becoming an international fugitive.

Nussaibah Younis crafts a gripping narrative that takes us on a journey from the bureaucracy of the UN, the geopolitics of Iraq to the mindless savagery of ISIS. She highlights the covert corruption, performative humanitarianism and rigid hierarchies present even in international humanitarian agencies. Sara’s character isn’t the most likeable but her personality rightfully reflects the psychological conditioning and the internalised misogyny, violence and terror justified in the name of religion. Her story is a chilling reminder of the consequences of voluntarily surrendering one’s agency to fanatics and fanaticism wherein the radicalised victim starts humanising, rationalising and normalising blatant violations and atrocities.

Nadia is the quintessential star of the book whose nonchalant chutzpah, determination, compassion and resilience are contrasted with her low self-esteem, maladaptive coping, compulsiveness and impetuosity. She carries unprocessed trauma, refuses to accept uncomfortable truths about relationships, resorts to alcohol and casual sex to quell the internal dissonance, yet never relinquishes sincerity and integrity. Nadia’s curiosity and generosity draw her towards people and situations that exploit and manipulate her. This indirectly helps her gain emotional maturity and the author charts it with such sensitivity and subtlety, the proof of which gets revealed at the end of the book when Nadia is faced with an exceptional betrayal.

Another character who left a lasting impression is Farris. In his brief appearance, he embodies a kind, benevolent Muslim man respectful of women and humanity alike. Characters like Farris are vital; they reflect the real face of Islam, a religion that has been wronged by zealots and Islamophobes.

Dr Nussaibah Younis, an Iraqi-Pakistani living in London, is a peacebuilding practitioner and a globally recognised expert on contemporary Iraq. Her writing is crisp, controversial and considerate. The unmissable humour, often dark, sometimes satirical is deftly woven into the book. Rather than resorting to stereotypes, she insists on nuance, even in the bleakest moments. The climax delivers a startling twist that injects an urgency and a muted sensationalism into the story. My sole reservation lies with the ending which felt a tad improbable and discordant with the otherwise uncompromising authenticity of Younis’s voice. I wonder if she was mollycoddling the readers of the actuality.

Fundamentally which was shortlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction, is about fundamentalism and fundamentalists who hack your conscience to further their personal and political agendas. In today’s world, fundamentalists are no longer confined to terrorist organisations, they increasingly masquerade as saviours of religion, democracy and humanity. We are being governed by fundamentalists whose intentions are rooted in fascism and capitalism. These aren’t just politicians but ordinary citizens too who have been radicalised by majoritarian narratives that claim historical grievance while actively othering and annihilating minorities and vulnerable communities. Fundamentally, any extremism that thrives on fear-mongering and propaganda, is single-leader-centric, and demands unquestioning allegiance is a gateway to monarchy, totalitarianism and capitalist terrorism.

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🤨

Leila Mottley’s second outing has grown bigger in terms of its stature, calibre, characterisation and language. Her first book, Nightcrawling, confronted racism, police brutality, vulnerability and poverty; The Girls Who Grew Big tackles the uncomfortable realities of teenage pregnancy and the familial and societal ostracism that accompany it, all set against the backdrop of eroding reproductive rights and restricted abortion access in contemporary America.

Set in the beach town of Padua, in the Florida panhandle, the story is about a group of young teenage girls banding together as they face rejection, ridicule and discrimination for being pregnant. Calling themselves ‘The Girls’, they find a sense of community, safety and emotional security through this sisterhood. Among them, the author principally focuses on three protagonists: Simone, Emory and Adela.

Simone, the eldest at twenty, is raising her twins, Luck and Lion. Their father is a wayward, irresponsible guy called Tooth with whom she tries to maintain civility for the sake of her children, despite the disgust she feels for him. When she discovers she’s pregnant again, her desperate attempts to find a safe abortion lays bare the grim realities of reproductive inequity in America today.

Emory, a white girl disowned by her family for getting pregnant with a Black guy, finds solace with the Girls. She comes to live with her grandparents who aren’t the most welcoming of her or her situation. The constant rebuke, revulsion and mistreatment that she experiences at her grandparents’ home makes her determined to complete her education despite the odds. After she gives birth to Kai, her vulnerability coupled with maternal guilt makes her reconsider her earlier choice and instead she decides on marrying the father of her child when he proposes to her, though she is now in love with another girl. The emotional chaos paves the way to a penultimate moment that is singularly powerful and unconventionally self-affirming that forms the emotional heart of her narrative.

Adela, who comes from a privileged background, is sent away from Indianapolis to Padua by her conservative, devout parents to stay with her grandmother Noni, so that her pregnancy, which they consider an abomination, can continue in secrecy and after the delivery, she can come back to them sans the child and go back to living her original life of becoming the best swimmer in the country. After she meets Simone and Emory, her priorities start to shift and she starts enjoying their camaraderie. However, impulsive decisions and a string of reckless behaviours soon upend her life and her friendship with Simone and Emory, so much so that the three girls are forced to arrive at the thresholds of an emotional precipice that will reshape and realign their lives forever.

Simone, Emory and Adela represent the section of the society who are always shunned into oblivion for an occurrence that involved an equal contribution from a man. Their stories are a telling of the unprovoked patriarchy, chauvinism and misogyny that comes disguised as morality. Their standing in the face of social adversity that demands obscurity of them, which often gets labelled as resilience and courage, is in fact a mirror of the helplessness and humiliation bestowed upon them by the society at large. Simone nurtures her children and the other girls in spite of her dire financial and living circumstances, to build this sisterhood, which she knows is going to protect them all. Emory’s radical decision, which can be perceived as selfish and antithetical to motherhood, is essentially a defiant act of self compassion that speaks of her need to self actualise her reality, rather than be consumed by its consequences, hence reframing motherhood through the lens of autonomy. Adela’s necessity to build a falsified image of herself to gain affection is symbolic of the various ways in which patriarchy operates. She does reclaim her dignity through self acceptance, refuses to self flagellate, despite the retribution and continues to take accountability for her actions without letting them define her.

The Girls Who Grew Big, as a book, is an intricate, intimate portrait of pregnant teenage girls that doesn’t resort to sensationalism or melodrama. There is a quiet fortitude in its pages that gets revealed slowly and steadily. It’s a scathing commentary on the circumstantial evolution of motherhood from romanticism to ostracism, invisibility to hypervisibility, pride to shame. Leila Mottley has proven once again that she is a master storyteller and a gifted writer, and one who can navigate the most complex human emotions and experiences with the needed attention and affirmation. If Nightcrawling demanded a brutal urgency, then this book requires and delivers, patience and tenderness, empathy and nuance. Mottley, through her ingenious writing, has kept sisterhood as the overarching theme, and hasn’t reduced it to a trope or made it synonymous with toxic positivity. Instead, she has shown sisterhood to be a living, shifting force, that can empower, protect and ultimately redeem.

As the girls grow, physically, emotionally and spiritually, so too does Mottley, cementing The Girls Who Grew Big as a work of remarkable maturity and depth.

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 😇