Bride of the rain

The social and family relationships form the reference world from which Buthaina Al Essa draws in her novel "Bride of the Rain," as she traces a series of interconnected, multi-party, and differing in visions relationships. These relationships, which the novel explores through the subject of twins Osama and Asma, are gradually revealed. Fate willed that good looks be for the boy, while the girl became a face-ugly girl living in psychological isolation and disappointments. And if each character in the novel has a destiny that they contribute to shaping, then often the general background and fates played the main role in determining the course and destiny of the main characters. They are the two protagonists of the novel, Osama and Asma. In this atmosphere, the novel revolves, often interspersed with phrases in Kuwaiti dialect. The novelist succeeded through this in weaving a story/personal tale of a girl living on the margins, betrayed by days, and her life became a series of assumptions, and a narrow margin of options. Even the chosen margin came in the context of reaction, escape from reality, and adaptation to new developments, where she chose to live with her brother because the father separated from the mother and married three other women, so Asma has twenty brothers and sisters she does not know. She says somewhere in the novel: "When we are born females, we are born with issues because the world is equipped with ready-made technologies to limit us... I think that a woman who grows up in a homeland or in a patriarchal home is a lucky woman because she has the opportunity to fight. She has many chances to become a model. She is considered grown simply because she is female, and she is equipped with a ready-made issue..." And based on this statement, which in turn summarizes the life and story of this character, the author wanted to imply that a person does not choose their life themselves, but fate, coincidences, and the place of birth play a role in their entire life path. Even our shapes are not chosen, our colors, and our environments. So, is it human incapacity in the face of the inevitability of reality? As Asma says in the depths of the novel: "Maybe the world should stop appearing, the features of things should fade, all these colors, smells, and tasks that need to be done... I wish they would disappear... Mercy on me and all those unable to keep up, to be consistent, unable to withstand the world's heat like a pus-filled pimple, a little noble extinction, and much whiteness, blank lines, listening... and there I can think less, close my eyes more, and let the world pass me by." Thus, despite the pains of the novel, Buthaina Al Essa was able to present a work in which literature fulfills its function and role, benefits and entertains, speaks and thinks, and deserves to be read.