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Definition Of A Miracle ReviewAlthough the book is not autobiographical, author Farida, like her heroine, has cerebral palsy.
This joyous and exuberant novel will warm the cockles of your heart and it is frequently side-splitting. When you get beneath a person's skin color, beneath prejudices and religious beliefs, when you get right down to the core of a person, to his soul perhaps, you'll see that people everywhere in the world are really very much alike. Nevertheless when the heroine, eight year old Zaara, and her family move to Ghana after spending years in England, there is a series of cultural shocks.
Her parents are highly educated Oxford graduates and Mummy is a lawyer. He is Muslim, she is Christian. In Ghana disabilities are not understood and Zaara, who has cerebral palsy, must have been visited by evil spirits or gods or bad karmas or a wicked witch. Therefore an exhortation must be performed by a tribal elder or a witch doctor or a fiery preacher A spiritual healing must take place
Zaara, without self pity, explains to her readers her disability:
"People who have all their body parts functioning as they should be take a lot for granted; little privileges such as taking a walk alone through a green meadow or running with the wind in your hair, or buttoning your shirt knowing your fingers will cooperate, go unappreciated."
Ghana is a country where witch doctors and soothsayers abound, where people speak in tongues and writhe and really get into things while attending the so-called "spiritual crusades."
The children, Zaara and her sister Bath and her brother Jalal, will visit their father's native city in the north of Ghana where a soothsayer will give each child a special name. A live chicken will be beheaded and thrown to the ground where it will writhe for a moment or two and hopefully die either on its back or stomach, both good signs so the special name is given and the child will have a prosperous life. However, Zaara's chicken succumbs on the left side- a bad sign. Another chicken is sacrificed and it dies on its right side. A third chicken is guillotined and it flops on its left side. The soothsayer says this is a bad omen but Zaara gets her special name. The soothsayer will later pacify the gods with special rites so that Zaara's future is bright, too.
The grisly ritual results in the children's being splashed with blood and the children desperately want to go back to England and leave forever this country of horrid rituals, potholed streets, absence of toilet paper and toilets that won't flush and many languages they can't understand. And they feel they'll never eat chicken again.
But Zaara's Mummy is determined to have her daughter healed and the little girl is dragged from one spiritual "crusade" to another. The preachers are Oral Roberts types. There's lots of chanting, and speaking in tongues with the congregation yelling responses of Amen and Hallelujah and some members even faint on the floor. Poor Zaara is paraded to the front where she is ordered to stand without her crutches and she does for a moment or two before she collapses.
Zaara isn't reduced to spiritual slavery but Mummy is. One Auntie Ofolley gathers Mummy into her spiritual clutches, giving Zaara gallons of healing holy water to drink every day, even at breakfast.Mummy and Daddy start bickering constantly both over Mummy's gullibility and everything else. Their home life becomes rife with argument and on top of that unpleasantness, drinking all that holy water is sheer hell.
Luckily Zaara goes to a public school for the first time where she becomes an object of curiosity. But she makes a lot of friends, and she learns much about herself: she's smart. She's pretty, too, and she finds a gold mine of strengths tucked away in her small body that she didn't know were there.
Mummy has to be exorcised from the bad karma of Auntie Ofolley's holy water and finally another preacher does this and Mummy sees the light. The family is at peace again.
Volatile, warm and exuberant and sometimes greedy, a fine assortment of Ghanaians is paraded before you in this charming book. I guarantee you will not stop laughing until you reach the last page. The human spirit is a wonderful thing. And the definition of a miracle? This miracle is Zaara herself. She may never be able to stand alone but she comes to terms with her disability. She has a warm, supportive family around her, she will never be like the crippled beggar on the street. And she has a first class intellect which will carry her to new heights.
A wonderful read!
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