Eight Months on Ghazzah Street
2020
Inkjet on watercolour paper
90 x 67.5 centimeters
Much is left unsaid in Hilary Mantel's 1987 novel, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, because the narrator is unsure about what is happening in the unfamiliar world she has reluctantly made a home in. The novel is based on the four years the author spent living amongst the expatriate community in Saudi Arabia and the texture of the story is framed by her status as an outsider in a society whose morals and politics are baffling to her. She is constantly guessing what the events she witnesses mean and the attitudes of her expatriate colleagues don't help, they are there for the money and their feelings towards their host society are dismissive and often contempuous.
This reimagining shows the narrator reading the local news on a tablet device, her slumped shoulders and the instinctive grasping of the knees suggest unease, the empty wine bottle and glass reveal the consumption to alcohol her community turns to as a means of coping. The room has the barenness of a temporary dwelling, it is decorated in an insipid monchrome colour and the air conditioner is a defence against the relentless heat bathed city seen through the blueish tinted windows. Outside, a spiked gate indicates distrust of strangers, a freeway overpass implies that this is not a pedestrian friendly city, a police car visible through the left window is a metaphor of an authoritarian society and the distant buildings represent the twin pillars of corporate and religious power.