Muddy people, a memoir by Sara El Sayed

‘Muddy’ is a word that 4 year old Soos confuses with ‘sunny’, scared to step into the ‘sunny’ puddle of water. El Sayed’s memoir is about life as a muddy skinned girl, but is full of sunny, funny moments. Yes, as an Egyptian-born Australian growing up in a Muslim family, she encounters racism and Islamophobia, but this is mostly a story of a child’s love of her parents and grandmother, and the funny and confusing moments in her life. There is a lot of humour, comic episodes involving poo, piss and periods, the humiliating moments that we might all recognise from our childhood, but wouldn’t now share with others. El Sayed shares it all. And though we might laugh, there is also empathy for those embarrassing times.

The description of Soos’s longing for the pretty pink bikinis that her classmates wear for the school swimming carnival, instead of her blue Speedo one-piece, recalled for me, her short story in Arab, Australian, Other of the Arab girl’s longing for the sparkly blue dance leotard worn by the girls in the aerobics class, instead of the shorts that her parents insist on. In her memoir, El Sayed writes that Soos wants to fit in with the other girls but that she also wants to respect and please her parents.

It is a difficult time for Soos, as her parents are divorced. She navigates the shifts between the two homes, shifts to new schools, attempts to make friends and fit in to the group, trying to get a boyfriend, as well as the continual struggle with being the obvious outsider, a target of bullying. And then there are the rules that she must follow as the child of a Muslim family – no fighting with your brother, no pets, no dating, no staying out late, no shoes in the house, etc.

I must admit to being shocked by the description of Soos smiling as her best friend does a presentation on stopping Muslims coming to Australia, and her laugh as the school bully shouts that her musical instrument case might contain a bomb. These are daily incidents. But what is important in the end, and something she reiterates, is the love and respect within her family. Her parents are divorced, they have different values, but they are good people and she loves them both, and they love her.

Themes: Memoir, Family, Migrant experience, Traditional values, Muslims in Australia, Racism, Bullying, Islamophobia.

Helen Eddy