By Halla Bint Khalid
Kulturalis
9781836360421 £24.95
www.kulturalis.com
Apparently Qismah means destiny in Arabic and Naseeb means fortune. In this book the protagonist is a man called Adam. He awakens in the morning to see the title characters, two children, a boy and girl. Nervous of them (are they angels of death) he has his morning prayers and hopes they will be gone but they follow him around all day. At first he is ungrateful when breakfast is made for him, when Qismah chooses a free robe for him or naseeb a fish from a seller or shooting an arrow at purses of coins on a fig tree. It’s not quite the seven deadly sins but Adam is a little greedy, but as in all good fables he begins to see the light.
The text literally floats around the pages and once in slightly annoying parallel lines vertically, but the real joy lies in the pictures. Strangely we only see a pictures of the Qismah and not Naseeb (although his neighbour’s Naseeb who is said to look alike is depicted), but Adam appears more than once and other characters as well as things referred to such as fish or a young woman with a hawk and jewelled sword. His cat is referred to but in the picture we see it has a miniature unicorn’s horn. Whatever they are of the pictures are quite exquisite, by far the best that I have seen in a children’s book.
The key lines are early in the book we are ‘sent to help you find what you seek’ and we ‘want to help you find the bright side’. It ius only when he speaks to his supposedly more luckier neighbour who is subsequently attacked by a crow that things begin to fall into place.
Early on they give clues such as ‘I will appear to you as you describe me’ and after Adam says ‘I have no Nasseb’ he can no longer see the boy.
Since the author is from Saudi there are references to morning prayers, a holy incantation to protect from evil spirits, midday prayers etc will may be lost on a more western readership. There is an Arabic version available.